Al Steiner

Doing it All over

Chapter 1

"I wanna go back and do it all over, but I can't go back I know I wanna go back cause I'm feeling so much older but I can't go back I know" – EDDIE MONEY

I was feeling stressed that day. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect it was perhaps the wisest thing I've ever said in my life.

I picked him up at a convalescent home in suburban Spokane; a withered, emaciated ninety year old. His race was indeterminable, he was so withered by time but his name on the bank of paperwork the con home staff had given me identified him as So Li, which, I was reasonably sure, made him Chinese. He was suffering from cancer, not just to one particular body part but throughout his entire body. I took one look at him and knew he wasn't long for this world. His breathing was ragged and irregular, his skin pale and feverish. His body probably weighed about seventy-five pounds if he was lucky. There was absolutely no muscle in evidence upon his bones and his flesh hung loosely from every extremity. Despite all of this he was mentally quite aware of his surroundings, something else I recognized almost immediately.

"How are you doing Mr. Li?" I asked him, bending over his form on the hospital bed.

"Can't…" He puffed softly. "Breathe." He finished.

I nodded, taking the stethoscope out of the leg pocket of my jumpsuit and putting it in my ears. I listened to his lungs, hearing nothing but bad news. He was barely moving any air at all. I'd been a paramedic for eight years but even a newbie could have seen that Mr. Li's survival on the trip to the hospital was in question. He needed a breathing tube placed in his lungs to help him.

The nurse (and I use that term loosely) was the epitome of white trash. Bleach blonde, sixty or so pounds overweight, and chewing a large wad of bubble gum as she peered at us. She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him LESS oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in the con home. My partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to our portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Li a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated." I said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" The nurse yelled, startling me. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Li gave her a contemptuous glance and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Li, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel NOT to use advanced life support measures to save their life. After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Li back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing me of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" I asked her pointedly.

She dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. I looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the Doctor's signature were all present. "Okay." I said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future." I advised the nurse. "Mr. Li can hear everything you say."

She scoffed at this, giving me a condescending look. "He's a gork." She told me, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And a gook on top of that. What's the big deal?"

I turned away from her in disgust. As hardened as I've become doing this job, it never fails to amaze me how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses can be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working THERE.

I returned to my patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Li?" I asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"

Looking in my eyes, he nodded his understanding.

"Is that your wish Sir?" I asked him. "For me NOT to do anything?"

He smiled slightly. "Yes." He panted. "It's… " A pause to breathe. "My time."

"As you wish." I told him

We loaded him onto our gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back I hooked him up to my EKG machine in order to allow me to watch his heart rate. I put my pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Li was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.

"Mr. Li?" I addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at me.

"I'm gonna start an IV on you." I told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to, you know, help you with the pain and the discomfort."

He smiled, nodding at me.

I went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile that I was forced to use the smallest needle that we carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. I threaded it in slowly, cognizant of the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.

"I'm sorry Mr. Li." I told him when I finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."

"Thank… " A pause. "You."

"No problem." I told him.

While I adjusted the drip rate I noticed him staring at me, a queer smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.

"You're a… good boy." He said, panting. "You treat me… with… respect… where… others don't."

"I'm just doing my job." I told him, returning his smile.

He shook his head. "Been taken… before… " He said. "Not all… like you. Not at… all".

"Well." I shrugged. "I try."

"What… " He asked. "Is your… greatest… wish?"

"My greatest wish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. He nodded.

I laughed, thinking of my life. I was a thirty-two year old private paramedic that had been doing the job too long. I wasn't a dirtbag by any means but I wasn't at the pinnacle of success either. My job was constantly in jeopardy of being taken away by the Spokane Fire Department, who were just itching to get into the ambulance business. Like many fire departments around the country, they had initiated so many fire codes and regulations over the years that they no longer had any fires to put out. They knew that it wouldn't be long before the tax-payers started wondering just what they were paying these guys for anyway and, as such, their mission for the next century it seemed, was a take-over of the medical aid business. Private ambulance companies, who didn't have the political clout or the hero reputation to exploit, had already fallen to them in cities and counties all around the United States. It was a nationwide trend. Spokane FD had already tried twice, getting voted down by the city council once and then, having the same body approve them later, they were stopped by a superior court judge. At my age, I was too old to get picked up by them when they were eventually successful and I didn't know how to do anything else. I had an ex-wife and an ex-kid to pay money to each month. In short, I was in a rut that I saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as I'm prone to doing, that shift. For that reason I answered Mr. Li the way I did.

"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"

He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.

I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.

Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.

I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.

Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?

I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.

I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?

A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.

"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."

School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.

"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.

"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.

"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."

This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."

"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"

The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"

"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."

She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.

Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!

I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.

I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).

"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.

I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."

He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.

I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.

As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.

"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.

I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."

She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.

"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.

There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.

She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."

"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."

"What?!" She said, amazed.

"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"

"Huh?"

"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"

She gaped at me, not answering.

"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"

"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."

I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"

"What do you… "

"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.

"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"

I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.

"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."

"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.

"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.

By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?

Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.

SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. AT amp;T BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.

I finished up my breakfast and found, after some searching, my backpack which contained all of my schoolbooks and papers. If my fifteen-year- old self was true to form, I knew my homework wouldn't be done and my assignments wouldn't be read. That was something I would have to rectify, I figured. One of the things I regretted later in life were my poor high school grades and study habits, which precluded me from getting into a top-rated college. How hard could the work possibly be now?

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of Mike Meachen, my best friend back in high school. Mike was a year older than I and had always been the dominant member of our friendship. From Mike I learned how to smoke marijuana, how to drink beer, how to smoke cigarettes, how to cut school. Mike would drop out in the eleventh grade and work a few menial jobs for a few years before taking his GED and joining the Air Force where he was eventually dishonorably discharged for marijuana use. I hadn't talked to him in years but the last I'd heard he was still living with his parents. Could I steer Mike onto a different path? I wondered as I went to the door and bade my family farewell.

Though I was expecting it, it was still startling to see him as a sixteen-year-old again.

"Sup?" He muttered to me, his version of 'what's up?'.

"Not much." I told him, careful to give no hint of the startling change in me just yet. I closed the door behind me and we started the two-mile walk to our high school.

I was surprised at the immaturity of his conversation as we trodded to school. It centered on his phony sexual exploits with girls I'd never met, which girls at our school he'd like to fuck, and other adolescent posturing. I had to remind myself that my conversation back then had been pretty much the same and that I now had seventeen years of maturity over him. I nodded and responded to his statements with appropriateness. He noticed no change in me. I'd always been quiet anyway.

As we got close to the school feelings of unreality washed over me again. I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in years. But I was seeing them as they were then, not as my mind was telling me they should look now (I had to keep reminding myself that NOW was THEN). They were in ones, two, and even groups of six or more, heading for school. Boys and girls both. I saw Steve Johan, who would join the Army after graduation and be killed in a helicopter crash. I saw Nina Blackmore, a skinny, nerdish, friendless girl who would go to medical school and work as an emergency room doctor at Spokane's trauma center. She would also acquire good looks early in college as her body filled out and marry a rich neurosurgeon. I saw Carrie Founder, one of the best looking girls in the school giggling with some of the other elite. Carrie I knew, would marry a loser and pump out four kids before divorcing. During that period she would put on nearly a hundred pounds. Eventually, she would end up living in a trailer park with some other white-trash loser. As I paramedic I would one day pick her up for overdosing on anti-depressant medicines and pretend I didn't know her. I saw lots of others that I hadn't thought of in years and others who's faces I recognized but who's names I could not come up with.

I would be lying if I said that my attention was not distracted by the girls. Like many men there was a special place in the part of my mind that controlled lust that was obsessed with the idea of bagging a teenager. It was no doubt because they were forbidden. It was something I'd never done or attempted to do before, knowing that the risks were not worth the benefits. But things were different now, weren't they? A horny part of my mind asked me. I was a teenager now! I could do it legally!

I had been shy back in high school, a phase I'd gotten over later in life. But as a result of this shyness, I did not manage to get myself laid for the first time until I was a senior in high school (and to be honest, it was late in the year at that). But I wasn't shy now, was I? My eyes began tracking through the crowds, taking in the lean forms of the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old girls, their tight asses, their firm breasts. I began to imagine the possibilities and my fifteen-year-old dick began to stir in my 501s. Although I intended to do as much good with the gift I had been given; there were so many things I could change or prevent now that I had pre-knowledge of it; it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a little fun; would it? Of course not.

My musings were interrupted by Mike.

As we came to the front of the school he jerked my arm, pulling me backward. "We'd better go around the other side." He said, alarmed. "Richard Fuckface and his asshole friends are standing over there."

I looked where he was indicating and saw a real blast from the past. Richard Fairview was one of many bullies at our high school. He was about six feet tall and about as dumb as a person could get while still remembering to draw breath every couple of seconds. He'd been one of the terrors of our school, his scam, when he wasn't beating people's ass for the fun of it, to post himself at an entry point and rip off lunch money from arriving kids that were dumb enough to approach him. As always he had five or six companions lounging there with him. They were all smoking cigarettes and eyeing the approaching throngs, looking for targets. I'd had my ass beaten by him a time or two. Had that happened yet? I wondered, unable to place just when those occurrences had taken place.

A smile formed on my face. In the ensuing seventeen years I'd learned a lot both about psychology and physical combat. Bullies, I knew, relied mostly on the complacency of their victims. They relied on their size and intimidation to get what they wanted. Very few of them actually knew how to fight. I, however, had worked for years at a job where physical assault by one's patients or one's patient's family members was an almost daily happening. Though somewhat of a wimp in high school, life had taught me a thing or two about hand to hand fighting. The most important thing I'd learned was that, while getting hit by a fist was painful, it wasn't THAT painful.

"C'mon." I told Mike, smiling still, heading directly towards Richard and his co-horts.

"Are you high?" Mike asked me. "He's got his friends there. I could kick his ass any day one on one but his friends will jump in."

"No they won't." I told Mike confidently. "Just watch. Stand back and don't do anything. His friends won't get in on anything."

"Bill?" He said, alarmed, but I strode purposefully forward. Reluctantly, he followed. I had to give him credit. He was loyal, willing to back me up in the face of these six guys.

"Trust me." I assured him. "Richard's about to fall from grace, big time."

As we approached the gang of bullies Richard himself eyed us and stepped forward, blocking our paths. To our right were the chain- linked bike racks. To our left was the school's perimeter fence. It was Richard's kind of tactical situation all right, blocking his victim in.

"Hey Billy-fag." He hailed, his gray, stupid eyes boring into me. "You got change for a dollar?"

I stared back at him, barely able to suppress a smile. "Yeah." I told him, my voice full of mocking contempt. "But you ain't getting' it."

He looked at me in shock, almost stepping backwards at my boldness. I think that he would have backed down right there except for the fact that a group of junior and senior girls were happening by at that particular moment and, hearing my words, stopped to see what would transpire.

"What did you say you little fuckin' pussy?" He enquired toughly, in disbelief.

I had to search through my memory banks to come up with a statement that was suitably insulting to a high school bully from the eighties. After a moment I came up with one. "I said, why don't you suck my dick asshole, if you're not too tired from fuckin' your momma all night."

His friends, as well as the group of teenagers gave a collective gasp. "You gonna let him say that shit to you Richie?" One of them asked, goading him.

"You're dead motherfucker." Richard said, advancing towards me, his fists clenched and raised in a pseudo-boxing stance.

I snorted contempt, which again almost gave him pause. He threw a haymaker right at my face, which, had it impacted, probably would have broken my nose. But it didn't. I easily sidestepped to the left, allowing his fist to whiz through thin air and spin his body around. Once he was turned away from me I stepped forward and drove my right elbow into his back, right above the kidney, as hard as I could. There was a solid thump followed by the whooshing of air being ejected from his lungs and a startled, painful cry from his lips. His hands dropped instantly down and he staggered forward two steps, holding his back.

I raised my right foot off of the ground and slowly placed it against his ass. With a hard shove of my leg, he was propelled into the chain link of the bike racks, making a musical jing as the metal was struck. He bounced off and landed on his ass on the grass, a stupid expression of surprise on his face.

While his friends gaped, unmoving at this development, the girls all erupted in fits of derisive laughter, pointing at him. As I'd planned, this infuriated him. He leapt to his feet and charged me, meaning to grab hold of me and take me to the ground, I was sure. But he hadn't learned from his first attack. He threw his weight forward and, once again, I easily stepped around him. As he passed I kicked his feet out from beneath him. He became horizontal for a brief second before crashing to the pavement, scratching up his hands and knees.

As he tried to get to his feet I hooked my foot forward, as if I was performing a kick-off in a football game, and connected directly with his face. There was an audible crunch as his nose was shattered along with several teeth. I pulled my foot back and watched as blood began to pour onto the ground from his face. He seemed quite dazed, frozen in place, so I stepped forward and kicked once more, this time connecting with his rib cage. I felt the crunch of ribs fracturing this time and Richie finally collapsed unmoving to the ground, guarding his side.

I looked at his friends, who were staring at me, mouths agape in disbelief. They could have stomped me to death in less than a minute had they wished but, as I'd figured, they didn't. I locked gazes with them, putting on the meanest expression I could call up. "You guys want some of this too?" I asked toughly.

None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.

"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.

I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.

I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.

From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.

"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.

"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."

We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.

"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.

I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."

"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"

Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.

"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"

"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."

"I thought so." I said.

Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.

"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.

I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"

"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.

I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.

"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."

"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"

I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."

"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.

"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"

"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.

"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."

"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.

"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."

He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.

While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.

"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."

She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.

"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"

"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "

"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"

"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "

"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "

"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.

She blinked at me in surprised respect.

"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."

"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"

She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "

She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?

The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.

"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.

"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.

A minute later, the class began.

I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.

My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.

Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.

"Now we've been discussing the circulatory system for several days now." She said at one point. "So can anyone tell me the complete route a blood cell takes through this system?"

Obviously she was expecting no hands to go up. It was almost, but not quite, a rhetorical question. She was met with blank looks from her class of thirty or so until I, deciding to have a little fun, put up my hand.

"Yes Billy?" She asked impatiently. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

I smiled at her shyly. I knew she was expecting nothing from me beyond that. I'd flunked her class. "No." I told her. "I was going to answer your question."

Her eyebrows went up. "YOU know the route a blood cell takes through the circulatory system?"

The class was looking at me now, obviously expecting me to make a joke of some sort, although I was not even known for that sort of behavior.

"I think so." I said softly.

She gave a patronizing smile. "Well do tell." She said.

"Okay," I began. "Why don't we start with an oxygenated cell as it leaves the heart. Is that a good starting place?"

She raised her eyebrows higher. "Sure." She finally said.

I nodded. "Okay. An oxygenated cell will be pumped from the left ventricle, through the aortic valve, into the Aorta, which will then branch into the descending and ascending Aortas. Of course at this point it may be sent to the coronary arteries but let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is not. From the aorta the cell will be pumped through the arteries into the arterioles and finally into a capillary bed somewhere where it will then give up it's oxygen molecule to a cell and pick up a carbon dioxide molecule for transport back to the lungs. At the point of transfer the capillaries will become veinuels. The cell will pass through these into veins, eventually making its way to either the superior or inferior vena cava, depending upon what part of the body it just oxygenated."

Mrs. Crookshank was obviously in shock, as if she'd seen a monkey suddenly start to talk. "Go on." She said numbly.

I nodded. "The vena cava lead, of course, to the heart. Specifically the right atria. The cell will enter the right atria and will then be pumped to the right ventricle. From there the cell will be pumped through the pulmonary valve to the pulmonary artery, which, I might add, is the only artery in the body to carry unoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery will take the cell into the pulmonary capillary system where it will drop off its CO2 molecule, which will then be exhaled by the lung, and pick up another oxygen molecule from the alveoli in the lung. From there the now oxygenated cell with pass through the pulmonary vein, the only vein in the body that carries oxygenated blood, to the left atria. The left atria will pump the cell into the left ventricle and the process starts all over." I smiled. "Takes a little over a minute I hear."

The class was completely silent, staring at me. Finally Mrs. Crookshank spoke. "That's exactly right Billy." She said. "Very good."

"I read a little bit on it." I said, casting my eyes back to my desk.

At lunchtime it became quickly apparent that I'd altered history, as it was, a little already. As I waited in the snack bar line, and as I found an empty seat on the quad, I could see that people were pointing at me and looking at me. When I would turn to look at them, they would cast their eyes away. I figured the word had spread about my fight with Richie. People were probably in disbelief. I could almost hear the conversations they were having. Him? That little wimpy guy? Kicked Richie's ass? Sent him to the hospital? How? Does he know karate or something? He must!

I didn't mind. Obviously the word on the fight had not leaked to the wrong set of ears. If it had, I probably would have been pulled into the principal's office to talk to the cops. After all, what I'd done was felony assault. Not that I was worried about that either. Would the cops really believe that I'd done such a thing?

Finally someone came over to ask me about it. It was one of the hard- core stoner crowd; a group that I'd sometimes hung out with but had never really been a part of. I remembered smoking grass with the guy, who was a junior, on occasion, but I couldn't remember his name. He had long, unkempt black hair and the beginnings of a mustache on his lip. I wondered if he knew how ridiculous it looked. He approached carefully, as if I might suddenly lash out at him.

"What's up dude?" He asked me.

I shrugged. "Not much. What's up with you?"

"Nothin'." He paused. "I heard you got in a fight with Richie Fairview today."

"You could say that." I agreed.

"I heard you put him in the hospital."

"Wouldn't know about that." I replied. "But I doubt he'll be rippin' off people for a while." I smiled. "And if he does decide to go back into business, he might just think twice about who he fucks with."

The stoner who's name I couldn't remember grinned. "You know karate or somethin'?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Just a little about psychology and life."

His eyes widened. "Trippy." He finally said, reminding me of a phrase I hadn't heard in a while. "Listen, me and Raisin and Debbie are gonna blow this scene and head over to Raisin's house. Smoke some buds and listen to some AC\DC. You wanna come with us?"

I didn't have the slightest idea who Raisin might be, but I knew who Debbie was, even without a last name supplied. She was a cute, though skanky redhead that hung out with the stoners. She always kept close to whomever possessed the little baggie, hanging all over them and flirting with them. But, if I remembered correctly, she very rarely gave up any pussy. The polite term for her would be cock-tease. And no matter how many times they failed to get laid by her, they still fell for it every time. Thinking of her made my dick stir a little in my pants again. She was older than I was, sure, but I was definitely more experienced. Could I seduce her? And even if I couldn't, the thought of smoking a little grass was appealing in and of itself. As a paramedic we were drug tested. I hadn't smoked any pot in the last seven years.

"I'm in." I told him, standing up and throwing the remains of my burrito in the nearest garbage can.

Apparently Raisin was the one with the pot. I remembered him when I saw him. He was a short, bleached blonde who, like many short people, had adapted humor as his defense. He was one funny motherfucker. We climbed into his car; an early seventies Ford Falcon. My as-yet- unnamed friend and I climbed in the back. Debby climbed in the front with Raisin, who was looking real hopeful about his chances.

As he screeched out of the school parking lot Debbie giggled. "Fire up a joint NOW Raisin." She said. "C'mon. Getting stoned always get me horny."

"Can't Baby." Raisin replied, turning a corner at near-suicidal speed. "Don't have any rolled yet. Just hold your titties for a few. We have to get some papers."

She feigned a pout at his words and I took a moment to appraise her. She really was pretty good looking in a future trailer trash sort of way. Her red hair appeared natural, her tits firm and jiggly. As was the style of the eighties, she had on too much make-up. But I felt I could live with that. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, fresh no matter how skanky she appeared. I was determined to bag her. I thought I knew how.

Raisin pulled the Falcon into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. He backed into a spot near the back corner.

"Okay, here's the deal." Raisin told my back seat companion and me. "Bill, how much money you got?"

I shrugged. "About three bucks or so."

"Good." Raisin said. "You go up to the counter and buy a candy bar or something. Lonnie," He turned to my now-named companion. "While he's got the clerk distracted, you swipe a pack of papers from the display."

"Man, I hate doing this shit." Lonnie whined. "Why don't we just use a toilet paper roll or somethin'?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' barbarian?" Raisin enquired. "I refuse to smoke out of something that used to hold paper that I use to wipe my ass with. Just get the fuckin' papers."

Lonnie exited the vehicle, still whining, and I exited with him.

"Why don't we just buy the papers?" I asked, following behind him.

"Cause," He explained, as if I was an idiot. "They won't sell 'em to kids."

"As far as I know it's not against the law to buy papers." I opined. "Let me handle this."

Lonnie was doubtful but obviously agreeable to anything that didn't put him in harm's way. I pushed through the door of the store, making a little bell chime. The clerk was smoking a cigarette and watching a small television set. He was about twenty or so and looked as if he'd been rolling up some herb himself. He eyed us suspiciously as we entered.

I pulled out my money and then pulled a pack of zig-zags from the display and put them down on the counter. The clerk looked at them for a minute and then looked at me.

"How old are you kid?" He asked, taking a puff off of his smoke.

"Fifteen." I said.

"Uh huh. And what are you going to do with those? Let me guess, they're for your father."

"Nope." I said simply, shaking my head. "They're for my friends and myself. You see, we just scored some killer bud and now we want to smoke it. That requires papers, as I'm sure you're aware. So, how much?"

The clerk stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

"Now come on." I said reasonably. "Would you rather we came in and tried to steal them? That would be counter-productive for all concerned, wouldn't it? We're not asking to buy cigarettes, just papers. They're not controlled substances are they?" I smiled. "C'mon, didn't you used to cut school and get stoned? Help out the younger generation here."

He stared for another instant and then began to chuckle. "Fuckin' classic." He said, shaking his head. He picked up the pack of zig-zags and rang them up. "Seventy-nine cents." He said.

I started to hand him a buck and then paused, my eyes looking at a display behind him.

"Oh," I said. "And how about givin' me a three pack of those Trojans there? The unlubricated ones." I winked at him. "We got a girl with us too and I think I might find some use for them."

"That was fuckin' radical." Lonnie proclaimed as we left the store. "Totally!"

"Let me tell you somethin' Lonnie." I told him. "I've found that you'll get a lot farther in life using that approach then tryin' to sneak around the issue. Keep that in mind."

"Trippy." He said again. "But why'd you buy the rubbers? You don't think you're gonna get into Debbie do you?"

"You never know." I told him. "It's best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Avent-you-what?"

"Never mind." I said, opening the back door. The condoms were in my pants pocket. The papers I tossed to Raisin. "Let's go get stoned." I told him.

As I suspected she would be, Debbie was putty in my hands. We went to Raisin's house, which was actually an apartment. I'd been in the apartment complex many times as a paramedic on calls. It was populated with various varieties of unemployed trash living off of welfare. It was strange being in them in a way. They looked exactly the same as they had\would in my when. Raisin's mom, a single mother, was employed and spent the day at her job. This made Raisin's apartment a favored locale for school cutting, pot smoking teenagers. The apartment was cleaner than most I entered on calls, but not by much. It was a two bedroom and there were dishes scattered everywhere but at least the laundry was picked up and there were no roaches in evidence. The entire place reeked of stale cigarette and pot smoke.

Raisin put on an AC\DC album, Highway to Hell, and cranked up the volume. He then went about the task of rolling up a fat one which he lit and passed around. Predictably Debbie sat next to him on the couch, cooing at him and flirting with him. By the time the third cut on the album was playing, we were all pleasantly stoned; me probably more so than the others since I'd been away for a while.

"Isn't Bon Scott the greatest fuckin' singer on earth?" Raisin asked the room at large.

Lonnie gave a concurring opinion and even Debbie agreed, although it was easy to read her face and see that she didn't give a rat's ass about Bon Scott. I tried to remember who teenaged girls had been into back in the early eighties and drew a blank.

The conversation traveled around the room for a few minutes, long enough for me to be appalled by its immaturity. Both Raisin and Lonnie were trying like hell to win Debbie's favor but their attempts were pathetic at best. Lonnie was talking about how many push-ups he could do. Raisin was talking about how many beers he could drink before he puked. Had I been like this once? I feared that I had. No wonder I hadn't gotten laid until I was nearly eighteen. It was time to liven up the conversation a little.

"Have you guys ever considered," I asked. "How much religion has fucked up our views on sex?"

That got their interest. They all looked at me, wondering if I was telling a joke.

"What?" Debbie finally squealed.

"Think about it for a second," I explained, knowing that when you were stoned it was real easy to 'think about it'. "The drive to reproduce is, aside from food and water, the most powerful urge in the human body. We want to have sex; we NEED to have sex. It's programmed into us, into our genes and chromosomes. If a species didn't want to have sex, which after all is for reproduction, it could not perpetuate itself."

"Per-what?" Lonnie, his eyes open less than a quarter inch, asked.

"It could not keep the race alive." I termed it. "If we were not programmed with the urge to screw each other, we would have died out long ago. So, the urge to screw is given to us by God or chance or whatever, so that we will survive forever. It's a natural urge that serves a basic function, right?"

"Yeah." Debbie said, her eyes twinkling a little. Lonnie and Raisin had to agree with my logic too.

"Now we all feel these urges. I myself feel them very strongly." I gazed meaningfully at Debbie as I said this. She blushed a little but held my gaze. "Sometimes it's all I can think about. It's a bitchin' thing really. For the most part, guys want to put their dicks into a girl's pussy. Girls want to have a dick put INTO their pussy. Am I right?"

"Fuckin aye!" Lonnie nodded.

"Hell yeah." Raisin agreed.

Debbie refused to comment, she just giggled.

"But then you got religion fuckin' us all up." I went on. "There's some other social factors in there too, but religion is the biggest one. Here you have a natural urge, the urge to reproduce. It's a function of your body. But you got religion tellin' you that it's dirty. They make people feel guilty for these urges which occur through no fault of their own. They tell you that sex is wrong. They tell you to NEVER do it before marriage, and then they tell you that it's okay to do it when you are married but not to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you're sinning."

"Yeah!" Lonnie put in. "That's fucked up."

"And if that wasn't bad enough." I went on, watching Debby carefully now. She was staring with rapt attention. "Religious influence throughout our history has led to the passing of laws against certain types of sexual acts. Did you know that in the State of Washington it is illegal for a man to eat a pussy."

"What?" Debbie and Lonnie said together; Debbie blushing a little.

"Yep." I nodded, picking up the roach in the ashtray and taking another hit. I was really rocking now. "And it's also illegal for a woman to suck a man's dick. Its called oral copulation in the penal code and it's listed as a crime. Now here we have an activity that people enjoy doing to each other." I paused, smiling at Debbie. "At least I know I enjoy the shit out of eating a nice pussy. An activity that hurts no one but that if fact brings a GREAT deal of pleasure to people. At least when I do it anyway. But, thanks to religious assholes back in our history, it's illegal. I could be arrested for, say, eating out Debbie there. And she could be arrested for giving me a BJ."

"You've never eaten a pussy before." Debbie giggled, her eyes shining.

I looked at her meaningfully. "Debbie, I'm an expert at eating pussy. I bet that I could make you come in less than ten minutes using only my tongue upon your gorgeous body."

She swallowed nervously. "Oh really?"

"Really." I said. "Come here a second." I patted my lap.

"Why?" She challenged. Lonnie and Raisin were both speechless, watching this development.

"Just come here and let me give you a little sample of what my tongue can do for you." I chuckled. "Unless you're scared that is. Afraid I might make you lose control."

"You talk pretty bold little boy." She informed me nervously.

"Come here." I whispered, staring lustfully at her. "Let me show you a sample."

She hesitated for another second or so and then curiosity got the better of her. She stood and walked over to me. I patted my lap again.

"Sit down." I told her, reaching out and touching the side of her right leg. The denim of her jeans was tight. Tight enough to let me feel the muscle of her leg beneath it.

She sat on my lap, turning her face towards me, her eyes transfixed upon my face. "Well?" She said.

I reached up and took her face in my hands, feeling the soft skin of her cheeks. I pulled her forward, drawing her lips to mine. She came willingly, parting her lips. I kissed her softly, feeling her puffy lips meeting mine. I darted the tip of my tongue forward slowly, touching the inside of her lip and running it back and forth, tasting the smooth membranes and feeling the back of my tongue rubbing against her top teeth. I withdrew my tongue for an instant and then darted forward with it once more. Her tongue shot out to meet it this time. I swirled the tip of mine with hers, marveling at the fact that I was making out with a sixteen year old girl. My cock jumped to full attention.

I gave her my best kissing, sucking lightly on her tongue and lips, nipping a little at them. It was undoubtedly a far cry from what she was used to, which was probably some brute ramming his tongue down her throat. I used my tongue like an instrument, tasting her young mouth, and arousing her. She pulled herself closer to me, forgetting that two other people were in the room. Her sweater clad breasts pushed against my chest.

I kissed across her cheek to her neck, licking and sucking on it softly, working my way upward, nibbling at her soft flesh. When I reached her earlobe I nipped at it and then slid my tongue softly through the hollow of her jaw. I blew lightly in her ear and then began to whisper to her.

"Have you ever been kissed like this before?" I asked.

"No." She groaned, her hands moving up and down my back.

"Do you like the way my tongue feels against your skin?"

"Yes." She panted, trembling all over now.

"Imagine this tongue and this mouth sliding all over your beautiful body. Imagine it suckling your nipples like a newborn baby. Imagine it kissing your tummy, your legs, sucking on your toes, and finally going between your legs and licking you there. Eating you until you come in my mouth."

"Ohh." She squeaked.

"You want that, don't you?" I whispered in her ear. "You want to come in my mouth, don't you? Has anyone ever made you come before?"

"No." She shook her head as I nibbled her earlobe again.

"I can." I told her. "I can make you come until you beg me to stop. I can make you come until you scream. Would you like me to?"

"Oh god." She whined, loud enough for the other two to hear.

"Would you?" I repeated.

"Ohhhh." She was now trembling all over, her skin flushing.

I ran my tongue across the side of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, until it was teasing the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. I sucked a little and then raised up and kissed her again. Her tongue eagerly sought out mine, sucking it into her mouth a little harder than I liked, almost painfully. That was okay. I knew I had her.

I pulled her tighter against me, feeling her breasts push into my chest. They were firm and oh so young. My instinct was to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted her to ask me, to beg me to take her there.

I put my lips back near her ear and began to whisper to her again. "You're getting hot from my mouth, aren't you Debbie?"

"Yessss!" She hissed, breathing rapidly. "I've never…, ohhhh!"

"I've gotten you this hot by just kissing your face and your neck." I whispered. "Imagine what else I can do for you. I can give you pleasure you've never dreamed of before. All you have to do is ask me. Ask me to show you."

"Ohh God." She moaned again, grasping me tighter against her. She was approaching the edge of control. I knew that she was now mine, that if I stood up and led her to the bedroom, she would come. But I wanted her to ask me.

"Just ask." I told her, nibbling her ear again. "Just ask me to show you and I will."

"Please?" She said immediately. "Show me. You have to show me!"

I smiled, breaking the kiss. I gave her butt a little pat, indicating she should stand up. She did so, ignoring Raisin and Lonnie, just staring at me with glazed, lustful eyes. I stood too.

"Hey Raisin," I asked, smiling. "You mind if I borrow your room for a while? Me and Debbie have to talk."

He was speechless, just staring at me. Though I didn't want to, I could see that he'd sprung a woody watching the two of us.

"I'll take that as a yes." I said, grabbing Debbie's hand and leading her there. She didn't even look back.

Raisin's room was suprisingly pretty neat. His bed wasn't made but the floor was free of laundry and there was little debris lying around. I led Debbie inside and then shut the door. It was latched less than a half a second before her mouth slammed into mine and her tongue was probing for my tonsils. She pulled me tight against her, grinding her crotch into mine, rubbing her hips in circles.

"Oh god," She said, breaking the kiss and licking at my neck. "I've never been this fuckin' turned on before. I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I have that effect on women." I said, kissing her back and leading her over to the bed.

We sat down on the foot of it and I kissed her again, running my hand up under her sweater. I felt her smooth stomach and the cups of her bra for a moment before pushing upward, lifting the hem of the sweater over her head. She raised her arms to allow me to remove it. I tossed it to the floor next to the bed.

I began kissing her smooth shoulders while my hands slid around her back, finding the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick of my fingers the clasp was undone, allowing the bra to sag free. I pulled it off of her and tossed it to the floor next to her sweater.

I leaned back and stared at her chest for a moment. Her tits were almost more than I take. I had to restrain myself from simply attacking them. Though large for a teenager, they were firm, unaffected by years of gravity pulling on them. The nipples were small but erect, standing out proudly. The flesh was slightly paler than the surrounding skin. Sixteen year old tits! My mind screamed at me.

She saw my gaze and flushed deeper, covering them with her arms. Obviously my eyes upon her embarrassed her.

Gently I reached out and pulled her arms back down. "Don't cover them up." I said softly. "They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

She was nervous, not saying anything but giving me a slight giggle.

I reached out and stroked them softly with my fingers, running the tips around the perimeter, feeling the young, springy flesh, testing the weight of them. She sighed a little as I did this. Again, she was probably expecting me to maul them as a normal teenager would. I let the tip of my fingers circle inward, finally just flicking her nipples. She shuddered at the contact.

She was actually trembling as I leaned forward and began planting kisses on her bare shoulder. I let the underside of my tongue slide downward along her flesh, across the top of her heaving chest until I encountered the swell of her tit. I began sucking and licking the delicate skin there, giving the occasional soft nip with my teeth. Her hands landed on the back of my head, trying to push me down to the nipple. But I refused.

I kissed and sucked my way all over her right breast, moving from top to bottom, running my tongue over the underside and her lower chest, relishing the taste of her young skin, driving her nearly crazy with my teasing, but avoiding the nipple. Finally I repeated the process on her left breast. I then slid my tongue between the two, feeling them pushing into my cheeks on either side. She was now whimpering, almost crying in her desire.

At last I moved my mouth to the right nipple. I flicked at it with my tongue, tasting and feeling it's texture. At the contact she pushed her chest forward, trying to force it into her mouth, but I backed away at the same rate she advanced, frustrating her. I began sliding my tongue around the perimeter of the nipple, making it swell further. Finally I took it in my mouth and began suckling it gently, just as an infant would do.

"Ohhhh." She moaned, her fingers running through my hair. I pushed her to her back on the bed and went to work in earnest.

I worked on her nipples for more than ten minutes, moving from one to the other, tasting them, sucking them, loving them, until her hips began to move up and down. As I did this I reached down with my hands and pulled off her shoes, letting them fall to the floor. Her socks followed this.

Once she was barefoot, I began kissing my way downward, paying particular attention to her flanks, which I'd realized in my mid- twenties was a powerful erogenous zone on women when a tongue and mouth is applied to them with the right pressure. When I reached the waistband of her jeans I kissed along it, heading for her stomach, darting under the hem with the tip of my tongue. Her tummy was a work of art in and of itself. It was as smooth as the proverbial baby's butt, unlined by stretchmarks or any other signs of time. I reached her bellybutton and teased it for a moment, making the muscles in that part of her body go into seizure. I then trailed the back of my tongue downward again, until I reached the top of her jeans.

She was wearing button-fly jeans. I reached up and slowly undid the first button, revealing just a hint of her lower stomach. The flesh there was even paler than that of her breasts. I kissed and sucked that which was revealed for a second and then undid the second button, repeating the process.

When I undid the third button the top of her panties came into view. They were sparkling white, a sharp contrast against her skin. I captured the cotton material in my teeth for a second, pulling them lightly away from her body briefly before releasing them. As I did this I caught the first whiff of her odor. It was fresh and musky, the scent of a teenager, and only touched my olfactory senses for an instant. But it was enough to make me pick up the pace.

I ripped open the rest of her buttons and disengaged myself from her, so that I was kneeling at the foot of the bed. I put my hands in the waistband of her jeans and began tugging.

"Raise your hips." I commanded.

She instantly obeyed, obviously eager for me to get on with what I'd promised her. I pulled the jeans downward, struggling a little but finally removing the tight material from her body. They joined the sweater and the bra on the floor, leaving her lying before me in only her white, cotton panties.

I paused long enough to take off my own sweater, leaving me bare from the waist up. She stared at me lustfully as I did this, her legs twisting this way and that, unable to come to a rest. They were very pretty legs, smooth as silk, lightly tanned. Looking between them I could see that the crotch of her panties was wet, sucking lightly into her pussy. My mouth began watering as I captured her legs and placed them on my shoulders.

I reached forward and grabbed the waist of her panties. She raised her hips without instruction this time and I pulled them off, tossing them to the floor and returning her legs to my shoulders. I was now looking at her pussy. An actual sixteen year old pussy. The lips were swollen and inviting, her clit peeking out of its hood. There was a growth of reddish-brown hair, thick on the top, sparse around the lips. Her odor was now strong in my nostrils, making me giddy, the smell of a teenager in heat.

"Have you ever been eaten before?" I asked her, letting my finger lightly slide between her wet lips, parting them.

"Yes." She panted, still trembling. "Once."

"How was it?" I asked.

"It was okay." She said. "Please, do it now?"

I smiled. "Okay? Did you come?"

"No." She shook her head and then repeated. "Please?"

"Then you were just licked before." I told her, sliding my finger into her about a half an inch, far enough to feel that she was TIGHT. "Prepare to be EATEN."

"Ohhhh." She moaned as I moved my head forward.

I licked between those wonderful lips, tasting her nectar, feeling her smooth membranes with my tongue. I probed in and out, lapping like a cat a bowl of milk. She moaned as I did this, spreading her legs wider. I ran my hands up and down her smooth thighs while I continued to lick at her.

Her pubic hair tickled my face as I sucked each lip in between probes with my tongue. When her hips began gyrating on the bed I began making stabs at her clit. The stabs took her breath away, made her squeal in delight with each one. I ran my tongue around her erect clit for a few moments and then finally took it between my lips and began to suck on it gently.

"Ohhhh!" She screamed. "What are you…? Ohhhhh!"

I increased the suction on it, stabbing rapidly with my swirling tongue as I did so. Her hips began moving up and down rhythmically. Her sexy legs wrapped around my back, pulling me closer.

"Ohhh Yesss!" She cried. "Ohhh Yesss! Oh God!"

Shortly her clit sucked back into its hood and her hips and pubis began slamming into my face. It became difficult to keep my lips where they belonged but I had experience reading the rhythm. I plunged two fingers into her, feeling that tight sheath contract around them. I almost came in my pants right there when I felt that tightness. Oh how good that was going to feel when I got my cock in there.

With a long, high-pitched scream she came in my mouth, her hips battering me nearly senseless and then finally slowing to a stop. But I wasn't done yet. I pulled my face away from her but continued to finger-fuck her. I looked in her eyes as I did it. Her eyes had a mad glint in them; an expression she wasn't supposed to wear for another five years or so. She was panting and licking her lips, her tits heaving up and down.

"Did you like that?" I asked her, driving my fingers in and out. Her hips already were picking up the rhythm again.

"Yess!" She hissed. "Oh god, I never knew anything could… " She couldn't finish. She simply closed her eyes and humped back at my hand.

I smiled and then lowered my face to her crotch once more.

"Again?" She cried. "Ohh God!"

It only took two or three minutes to pull the second orgasm from her. The third took even less time. By the time I pulled my face away and stood up, she looked nearly insane.

"Are you ready to get fucked now?" I asked her, opening the fly on my own 501s.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her eyes glued to my crotch.

"Answer me." I told her. "Are you ready to get fucked?"

"Yes!" She yelled, nodding vigorously. "Oh yes!"

I kicked off my shoes and socks and then dropped my pants, pausing long enough to pull one of the condoms from the pocket. I tossed the condom on the bed by her feet and then dropped my underwear, letting free my straining, fifteen-year-old cock. It wasn't quite as long and thick as it would eventually be but Debbie didn't seem to mind. She spread her legs wider.

"C'mon!" She told me. "Let's do it."

I picked up the condom and ripped the package open, letting it fall to the floor. I rolled it over my cock expertly, giving it a tug to make sure it was on correctly. It was. Debbie watched this all with aroused curiosity. It was obvious that she'd never seen anyone put on a rubber before, though I was sure, due to the lack of a hymen, that she'd been fucked. I understood. Teenagers didn't give a shit, didn't think about consequences. But I did.

I climbed back on the bed and positioned myself over the top of her. Our lips came together again, our tongues swirling back and forth once more. Her firm tits were against my chest and my outer thighs were against her inner thighs. I grabbed my cock in my hand and put the head against her wet lips, sliding it up and down a few times, wetting the condom.

"Do it!" Debbie yelled, pushing her hips upward.

Slowly I pushed forward, allowing the head of my cock to slide inside of her. Her tunnel grasped me tightly, feeling as if a hand was gripping me, and I could slide no further. I pulled out and pushed again, gaining a little more ground with each thrust. Finally I was all the way inside the tightest box I'd ever imagined, let alone been in. This was what fucking was supposed to be like.

I began to thrust in and out, feeling her clamping on me as I slid back and forth. After a few moments she loosened up a little, allowing me to pick up the pace. I then began to slam in and out with practiced strokes, being sure to grind my pubic bone against hers with each thrust. She moaned and clawed at my back with her nails as I fucked her, her hips rising and falling counter to my own. Her skin began to perspire heavily, making our bodies slide exquisitely together, as if greased. She kissed on my neck and my ears, her tongue strokes copies of what I'd done to her earlier.

I suddenly got up to my knees, putting her legs on my shoulders while I continued to fuck her. I was able to look down upon her supine body, to watch my cock sliding in and out her slit, to see her sweaty tits bouncing back and forth, to see her face, to watch the rapture in her eyes. I stroked her legs up and down, kissing on her calves for a while and then I began feeling those beautiful breasts, squeezing them a little rougher now. I slammed harder and harder into her, making her grunt and moan. When she came again she pulled me back down to her and thrust her tongue back in my mouth.

I was at the end of my rope by then so I went for the final push. I fucked as hard as I could, sweat dripping off my face, that tight pussy gripping and releasing me. I felt the sensation of pure pleasure starting in my groin and spreading quickly throughout my body from there. I began to groan myself, losing control of my thrusting rhythm, only battering her like an animal. The pleasure of orgasm assaulted me, had its way with me, completely took my body over for an indeterminate amount of time. It was pleasure on the purest level. My God, I could not remember when orgasms had felt like that. It made the ones I had as an adult feel like a little spasm in comparison. I shot blast after blast inside of her (inside the condom actually), continuing to pound away until I fell exhausted atop of her.

We kissed each other for a moment and then looked in each other's eyes. Hers were full of confusion and doubt.

"Wow." She whispered finally. "That was… that was awesome. Totally bitchin'."

I smiled, kissing her nose and pulling myself out of her so the condom wouldn't come off in her pussy.

"Thank you." I said, rolling to my back next to her.

She was still looking at me. "It was almost like…, I dunno." She shook her head.

"Like what?" I asked, grabbing the condom and pulling it off neatly, not spilling so much as a drop.

"Like you were, oh, I dunno, older or something. It didn't seem like I was doing someone younger than me."

I stared at her for a moment, holding the slick condom between my fingers. I chuckled. "I'm just wise beyond my years baby. That's all."

She looked at me doubtfully as I tied a knot in the condom and stood up. "What now?" She asked. "Are we like, going together now?"

Going together? I thought, accessing my memory again for what that term entailed. Finally I remembered. Boyfriend/girlfriend type of thing. Not supposed to date anyone else. I certainly didn't want that. "No." I told her. "We were just two stoned friends having a little fun together. That's all. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?"

Relief was evident on her face. She didn't want to 'go' with anybody either. "I guess it don't." She answered, then she soured. "But I guess I'll be the school slut for a while." She looked at me as I picked up my clothes from the floor. "You know, it was worth it though. Where did you learn how to, you know, like that?"

"Oh, here and there." I answered. "But there's no reason why you have to be the school slut you know. I'm not gonna tell anyone what we did."

Her smile was cynical beyond its years. "Sure you won't." She answered. "You won't tell anyone that you're the one to bag Debbie Walker."

"I won't." I said, pulling on my pants. "For what purpose would I do that? So all of you girls can talk about what a fuckin' blabbermouth I am? How will I ever get any pussy that way? No girl's gonna fuck a loudmouth. However, if you have the reputation as someone that can keep his mouth shut no matter what… well, where do you think I learned how to do what I did?"

She looked hopeful for a moment, wanting to believe me. But then she shook her head. "Even if you do keep your mouth shut, which I doubt, Raisin and Lonnie know what we did. They won't keep theirs shut."

I shrugged. "I'll tell them you wouldn't give it up. I'll call you a fuckin' cock tease when I tell them about it, kissing on me and lettin' me feel your tits a little through your sweater, but not lettin' me go any further. They'll believe it."

"YOU are going to tell them THAT?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd just explained that there really was a Santa Clause and an Easter bunny.

I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Sure." I told her quietly. "You can trust me for that. You really can. I promise. And you don't even have to trust me. Just say you didn't do anything with me but kiss me. If I'm lying and I blab to everyone, how much worse off are you anyway?"

"I suppose." She said doubtfully.

"But do me a favor." I said.

"What?"

"Well, I know you don't believe me now, but when a few weeks go by and you find out that I kept my promise, just keep me in mind the next time you get a little horny. I can be very discrete."

"Discrete?" She asked.

"Never mind." I said, pulling on my shirt. "Just keep me in mind. And if you and some of your friends ever get to discussing things like sex with each other, and if one of them ever happens to express frustration that she can't get herself fucked without the whole school knowing about it." I smiled. "Maybe you could just mention my name to them. If you know what I mean."

She stared at me for a second and then started giggling. "Are you SURE you're only fifteen?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "The best age of your life Debbie. Believe me."

Chapter 2

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all" – PAUL SIMON

Raisin dropped me off at home about 2:30 that afternoon. It was more than a half an hour before the time I was SUPPOSED to get home from school, but I knew that both my Mom and Dad would still be at work. Debbie had already been dropped at her own house. She was walking a little funny as she headed for her front door. We all watched her ass as it retreated. The moment she was out of earshot the interrogation began.

"How was she?" Lonnie asked, nearly slobbering with excitement. "Man, I can't fuckin' believe you scored with Debbie. "

"Yeah," Raisin grinned. "What a slut. Wait'll everyone hears about this shit!"

"Fuck that bitch. " I grumbled, sinking in my seat. "She wouldn't give it up. "

"What?" They said in unison.

"But we heard you in there. " Raisin protested. "She was moanin' like a fuckin' freight train. "

I shook my head. "She's a good actress. " I told them. "All she let me do was feel her tits a little through her sweater. Every fuckin' time I tried to put my hand underneath it she'd slap it away. Fuckin' cock-tease. "

"You didn't fuck her?" Lonnie asked, crushed. "What were you doing in there all that time?"

"Just makin' out. " I said. "Believe me, I tried but that bitch is harder to get into than Fort Knox. "

They were looking at me in confusion. The rule of teenaged boys of course is that even if you didn't fuck them, you told people that you did. I could almost see the wheels of irrational logic turning in their heads. If I said that I hadn't fucked her when I could easily have claimed that I had, I therefore must not have even come close to fucking her. The thought that I might actually have bagged her and was keeping it secret was so foreign a concept to them that they were able to ignore the overwhelming evidence before them and draw the conclusion I wanted them to draw. They probably figured I was even lying about feeling her tits since some embellishment was mandatory.

"That's too fuckin' bad man. " Lonnie commiserated. "I really thought someone was gonna bag that bitch this time. "

"Nope. " I said. "The same old shit. Why do we even try?"

"Some day," Raisin vowed with all the dramatics of Scarlet O'Hara proclaiming she would never go hungry again. "That bitch is gonna give it up. "

"I doubt it. " I offered. "She's good at giving blue balls though. The cunt. "

They bid me a sad farewell as I exited the car and soon the Falcon was roaring down my street, belching huge clouds of black, stinking exhaust from its tailpipe. As they disappeared I sighed with the kind of satisfaction that only a man who has just gotten laid can display. I headed for the house thinking that being fifteen again was all right. I'd wished well.

I was appalled by what I found inside. When the door opened the sound of Van Halen cranked at top volume hit my ears. The smell of marijuana hit my nose. Tracy was sitting on the couch with Cindy and a football player from school that I recognized as Cindy's boyfriend, although I could not remember his name. Cindy and the football player were kissing each other in heated passion while Tracy was flipping through a teen magazine and pretending to ignore what was going on. A plastic bong sat on the coffee table next to a paper plate with pot in it. Pepsis and a bag of chips were sitting next to this. The bong still had tendrils of smoke curling out the top of it.

They didn't even hear me come in the house, the music was so loud. I remembered that Tracy had been busted for just such a thing during her senior year when my mother had come home from work unexpectedly and had walked in on just such a scene. God, my sister was a stupid teenager too.

I kicked the plug out of the stereo system, causing "Ain't Talkin' About Love" to wind down and die. The three people on the couch jerked almost painfully in alarm. Cindy and her boyfriend separated so fast that it looked as if they'd burned each other. Cindy's boyfriend made a grab for the pot on the table. They all stopped when they saw that it was only me. They relaxed a little.

"You scared the shit out of us!" Tracy yelled at me. "You little asshole! What the hell are you doing home now anyway?"

Cindy's boyfriend was giving me a hostile look, a look that made me wonder if another Richie type encounter was brewing.

"The same thing you are. " I told her mildly, kicking the door shut. "Cutting school and smoking weed. " I looked around the room, shaking my head sadly. "However, I'm a little smarter about the way I do it than you idiots are. "

They all gaped at me. It was an expression that I was starting to get used to. I was starting to think of it as THE LOOK.

I stared at Tracy. "What if I'd been Mom coming home from work a little early because she didn't feel good or something? That kind of shit can happen you know. Do you think Mom would call the house to let someone know she's coming home? Why would she do that? Nobody's supposed to be here. You got the music turned up so fuckin' loud you didn't even hear me open the door. The damn door wasn't even locked. You guys are a freakin' bust waiting to happen!"

Cindy and Tracy just stared at me in shock. Like I said, I had always been shy before and to them my personality would have appeared to have changed radically overnight. The old Billy would, upon interrupting their session, have simply blushed and muttered a brief apology before slinking out of the room. They did not know what to say or what to think about what I'd said. But the football player reacted as his personality instinctively commanded him to.

"What the fuck is it to you?" He asked me, glaring.

"Shut your ass ball boy. " I shot back at him. "You're in MY house and I wasn't talking to you. "

His face reddened with rage. He stood up suddenly. "What did you say to me you little pussy?"

"Jeff, leave him alone. " Cindy spoke, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back down.

He shook her arm off angrily, "Say that again to me faggot. " He challenged. "I fuckin' dare you. "

"You fuckin' dare me?" I answered mildly. "Okay. " I nodded. "I told you to shut your ass. I then made a derisive remark aimed at your meager football skills. Did you hear me that time?"

"You're dead kid. " He said, starting to move towards me.

"Jeff!" Tracy spoke now. "Leave him alone!"

Jeff continued to head towards me. He was actually planning to beat me up in my own living room in front of my sister who had invited him in there. Christ why was everyone so violent? No wonder the human race fought so many wars. "Richie Fairview told me I was dead too. " I told him. "Right before the ambulance picked him up and took him to the hospital. Would you like to join him there asshole?"

He stopped. Apparently he'd heard that story. His eyes showed immediate doubt as he stared at me. I stared back.

"Go sit your ass down. " I told him. "Before you get hurt. "

He licked his lips nervously, sparing a glance at the two girls.

"I think you'd better do what he says Jeff. " Tracy told him. She was hiding a smirk as she said it. I suddenly realized that Tracy didn't like Cindy's boyfriend too much. Interesting. Was there hope for her yet?

"You're lucky they stopped me. " Jeff finally blurted. A pretty pathetic face-saving measure I'm sure even he would agree. He returned to the couch and sat down.

"Yeah, I guess I'm lucky. " I agreed, turning to Tracy. "If I was you I'd open up some windows in this house before Mom and Dad get home. The whole place reeks of pot. Do you guys do this sort of thing a lot?"

"No. " Tracy told me, obviously lying.

"Well it's amazing you haven't been busted yet. " I told her, casting my eyes on Cindy, who was looking at me as if in awe. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose fitting sweater. I'd forgotten how pretty her eyes were. They were a deep blue, the kind of eyes you could melt in. Currently of course, they were very reddened and only about half-staff and her honey-blonde hair was in disarray from Jeff's fingers. Her neck was marred by a red hickey; Jeff's territorial mark. I supposed it was better than peeing on her like a dog with a fire hydrant. I wondered about the possibilities of Cindy. Could I do it? It would be more challenging than Debbie had been.

I gave her a seductive smile and she blushed deeply. Jeff saw it and fumed at me but didn't make a move. Finally, without another word, I headed upstairs to my room, closing the door behind me.

My room was a filthy mess. I was offended by it. During my adult years I'd lost my teenaged sloppiness and had become something of a neat freak. Though I was still feeling the effects of the marijuana I'd smoked earlier and desperately wanted to lie down and take a nap, I began picking up the room.

It took me nearly two hours to get it clean, but it was a fascinating two hours none-the-less. I came across many objects and possessions that I had not seen in years. I found places for them and by the time I finished it was quite a startling change. But there was one thing missing.

While I'd been cleaning I'd heard the sound of my father coming home. I sincerely hoped for Tracy's sake that she'd cleaned the house well enough. I guessed that she had since she and Cindy were in her room, looking through some magazines as I passed by. Jeff of course, was long gone. Both girls watched me as I went by, shutting up with whatever they'd been talking about. I smiled, especially at Cindy, who returned it weakly.

Dad was sitting in his chair and drinking a bottle of beer. The television was on, showing an early edition of the local news. Again I found myself staring at him, marveling on how young he looked, how thin. He wasn't much older than I was in a way. He caught me staring at him and looked at me.

"You okay Bill?" He asked, concern in his voice.

"Oh sure Dad. " I nodded. "I'm cool. I was just tryin' to picture you with gray hair. "

"What?" He chuckled. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, Grampa has gray hair doesn't he? It stands to reason that you will too doesn't it? I was just trying to picture what you would look like. "

"That's kind of depressing. " He smiled, sipping out of his beer. "What brought you to that subject?"

"Oh, uh, we were studying genetics in Anatomy the other day. That's a dominate trait you know?"

"I've heard that. " He answered. "What're you up to?"

"Just getting the vacuum cleaner. "

Now he really looked at me strange. "The what?"

"The vacuum cleaner. " I said. "I just got done cleaning my room and now I need to vacuum it. "

"You cleaned your room?" He asked in disbelief. "You?"

"Yeah. " I nodded. "It was pretty dirty. Why did you guys ever let me get away with being so messy anyway?"

"What?"

"Never mind. " I said, moving towards the living room closet. I opened it and the vacuum was there. "I'll bring it back in a minute. "

While I carried the appliance upstairs his puzzled look followed me up.

After I stowed the vacuum back in its closet I went back upstairs to lie down. Though I was exhausted I could not sleep. For one I was afraid. What if I went to sleep and woke up back in my other life? Was that possible? I surely didn't know. What I was dealing with here was way beyond my limited range of knowledge. My very existence back in 1982 was something I'd thought impossible but here I was. Somehow that dying Chinese man had done this to me. How I knew not. Were there any rules? I could conceive of being only allowed one day. It seemed possible that I was only allowed one waking period back here. I was not ready to return yet.

But there was also the possibility that I was stuck here for good. I had to consider that too. In fact I considered that the most likely scenario. There were many ramifications to that possibility and I needed to think them through carefully. How much did I dare to change? How much could I change?

What would happen if someone found out about what had happened to me? There were people in the world that would do almost anything to get their hands on me if my situation became known. Governments wanting to know about the next seventeen years, business people wanting to know about stock trends. I could envision my family being held hostage to get me to do their bidding.

My initial thought had been to confide in Tracy. But I wondered if that was so wise. Tracy was after all, a teenager full of teenage stupidity as my earlier discovery graphically pointed out. I no longer thought that she could be trusted with a secret of this magnitude. But at the same time I needed to make sure that she did not get in the car with that college student on her graduation night. I had vowed to myself that I would prevent her death even if I could change nothing else on my return trip. That conviction was as strong in me as ever. Tracy would NOT die that night. One way or another I would see to it.

But that brought me back to the one night theory. If I couldn't tell her my secret, but if I was only allowed one night here, how could I make sure of her survival? I thought about that one for a while and finally I came up with something.

That left me to ponder the other questions in my mind. Suppose I was here for good. What else could I change? And how could I better myself and my family? I certainly did not want to end up right back where I was in seventeen years. I wanted to do things differently this time. But how? What could I do?

I reluctantly admitted to myself that I would lose Becky, my daughter in the process. This thought hurt me more than anything ever had before, but it was simply inevitable. Becky had been a very pleasant side effect of a brutal mistake that I'd made in my previous life. I simply could not, no matter how much I loved my daughter, repeat that mistake. I couldn't. I told myself that I wasn't killing her. She would just never exist in the first place. My mind was able to draw a distinction between those two things; a shaky one, but a distinction.

I lay there for more than two hours, until my mother called me down for dinner. I had a rough plan of sorts in mind by then. It was a plan that would be extensively modified and revised, but it was a plan. I felt better just having one.

Dinner was my mom's tacos. They were fried in grease and would be politically incorrect by today's standards. Each one had to have at least a hundred grams of fat. But God they were delicious. I chowed down five of them, shoveling in mounds of rice and beans as accompaniment and then washing the mess down with two Coke's from the refrigerator. The only thing that would have made them better would have been a pitcher of margaritas but I figured mom probably wouldn't whip up a batch for me.

She seemed gratified to see me eat so much. It probably put her worries about drugs aside for the moment. I remembered that I was living in the midst of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" era and that my mom had had her drug worries fueled by the little pamphlets that this era produced. The pamphlets always had "warning signs" that your kids were on drugs printed in them. I remembered how bizarre those so called warning signs had seemed to me even on my first trip through fifteen. A big one had been "loss of appetite". What was up with that? Maybe if you'd moved all the way through marijuana and had worked your way to a two hundred-dollar a day cocaine habit you would have a loss of appetite. But most teenagers simply smoked pot. Loss of appetite was most definitely not a symptom of marijuana use. They should have put "greatly increased appetite" instead. They should have put in "excessive use of Visine" as well.

I also remembered that the pamphlets had so called terminology for drugs. The theory was that parents would overhear their kids using these terms and would therefore know they were on drugs. Right, as if the kids would talk about drugs in front of their parents. I remembered having big laughs with my friends as we read these pamphlets, usually while we were stoned. Those that had used drugs in the previous generation had obviously transcribed the terminology. They said that common terms for marijuana were: Tea, Mary Jane, leaf, wonder green, and other such nonsense. None of the terms were current. In my age they called it pot, buds, herb, smoke, KGB, greenbud, and weed; none of which were listed in Nancy's pamphlets. I could imagine the laughter that would have resulted in the eighties if a kid had asked someone if they had any Mary Jane or tea for sale. I was forced to wonder if there had ever been a case of some kid being drawn off the path of drug abuse as a result of those "informational" pamphlets.

Dinner was consumed and another awkward moment occurred when Mom asked me a question just as we were about to start clearing the dishes from the table.

"Billy," She said, "Did you clean Anita Browling's windows yesterday like you told her you would?"

I looked up at her, searching my memory banks again. I came up with who Anita Browling was easily enough. She was a divorced neighbor in her late twenties that lived two houses over. She'd split with her husband sometime around the time I was twelve or so and I remembered Dad giving vague explanations about how Mr. Browling had 'found someone else' and left her (for some reason my parents had assumed that Tracy and I would be upset by their DIVORCE). My parents had, for whatever reason, kind of adopted Anita after her husband left her. She used to come over for dinner once a week. She had two small children that Tracy was volunteered to baby-sit frequently. I was always volunteered to mow her lawn for her since she professed not to know how to run a mower, or to do other small tasks such as cleaning her windows. Both of us were forbidden to take any money from her for our services, a point of resentment that had drawn my sister and I together a little in our teens.

The image in my mind of her was of a slightly chunky woman with large breasts. She was a brunette with short hair and long legs. She would meet another man at about the time of my high school graduation. About the time I moved away from home she would marry him and disappear from Mom and Dad's lives. I remembered thinking back then that I wouldn't mind doing her. But she wasn't so attractive that you could admit to your peers that you would do her, if you can dig that. I also remembered how she used to watch as I mowed the lawn, always dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. I remembered catching glimpses of her bra-clad tits when she'd bent over to pull a weed or something. My adult mind, which hadn't thought of her in years, suddenly realized that she'd been displaying herself for me. Had she been hoping for a little action from a teenaged boy?

Before I could follow that train of thought too far I came back to the original question. Had I cleaned her windows yesterday? I had no freaking idea if I had or hadn't. My mother was looking at me, awaiting a response.

"Uh… " I started, trying to think this through. Had I cleaned her windows?

"Bill?" Mom said, deepening her voice. "I told you the other day they were getting really dirty after the windstorm we had. You TOLD me you'd do it before it snowed again. "

"Uh," That gave me a little more information. I was a horrible procrastinator as a teen. Chances are I hadn't done it the first time I'd been asked. "Uh, no Mom. " I finally spat out. "Sorry. I forgot. "

"You forgot?" She asked.

"Sorry. " I squeaked.

"Billy, that is just so typical of you… " She began. Her lecture went on for nearly two minutes. I gave her uh huhs, and okays in all the right places, amazed that I still had the ability to do that after all these years. I sincerely promised that my first stop after school would be Anita Browling's house. Mom seemed satisfied. I found myself hoping that Anita would be home. I knew something that the other Billy didn't.

After dinner I went up to my room. I opened my backpack and pulled out my Algebra book. I found some blank paper and a pencil and then opened the book to the first chapter. I began studying.

Tracy had gone out somewhere after dinner and I heard her return about 8:30.

I continued to study as I heard her go to her room and slam the door. Downstairs the television was on as Mom and Dad watched whatever sitcom was on in the eighties. I could hear their sporadic laughter drifting up from time to time as well as muffled comments that I couldn't understand but were probably commentary on how TV wasn't the same as it had been a few years ago. I had managed to get a basic concept of the Algebra in the past few hours, working my way to the test questions of Chapter 2. The homework that had been assigned I'd finally figured out and completed.

With a headache behind my eyes I closed up my book and stowed it in my backpack. I still had assignments to complete in my other classes but I decided to catch them up tomorrow. I was studied out.

I changed into a pair of sweat pants from my dresser, wondrous at the fact that I was donning a piece of clothing that would not have even come above my thighs the day before my legs had\would get so much bigger. I put on the longest, baggiest T-shirt I could find and then walked downstairs, passing the living room without even drawing a glance from my parents. A moment of searching led me to a bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen cupboard. I grabbed three of them and then opened the refrigerator. I pulled out one of my father's bottles of Budweiser and stuffed it down the front of my sweats. The coolness chilled my skin but I ignored it. The T-shirt covered the large bulge the bottle made in my crotch. I dashed back upstairs and went to the door of Tracy's room.

Music was playing from inside. Rick Springfield this time. Jessie's Girl was the cut. Good old Rick. The former soap opera star turned singer who went after the easiest market to impress; teenaged girls, leading the way for Bon Jovi and other such musical travesties. Within two years, I was gratified to remember, he would fade into a land that was even beyond obscurity. The world would be better off for it I knew. I knocked on Tracy's door.

"What?" Came a voice from the other side.

Instead of answering I knocked again, not wanting to draw the attention of our parents.

The music turned down and the door creaked open about six inches, enough to allow me to see Tracy's impatient face. She was dressed in a long T-shirt that showed off her legs. Her auburn hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders. For the first time I marveled that my sister was very attractive. No wonder the college student had gone after her.

"What?" She hissed disgustedly at me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute. " I told her. "Can I come in?"

"About what?" She asked. "About that crap you were spouting today in school?"

"Yeah. " I nodded, seeing in her face that she was fearful about talking on that subject. "About that. "

She threw the door open. "Come in. " She said finally.

Her room was a pretty neat for a teenager. The bed was made, her books were all stowed in their proper places. Her dresser was cleaned off; all of her makeup in a little tray. The only clutter was the Rick Springfield album cover, which sat next to her stereo and her rumpled clothes that she'd recently removed. She shut the door behind me as I entered.

"Can I sit down?" I asked her as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She waved me impatiently to the chair next to her dresser. The same chair she'd been combing her hair at this morning. I pulled it out and planted myself in it. I pulled the beer out of my pants and set it on the desk. With an expert spin of the cap, it was opened. The three Tylenol went into my mouth and were washed down by the glorious taste of the cold beer. I sighed at the first swallow and quickly took another. Tracy watched all this without speaking, without even asking why I had one of Dad's beers.

"Say your piece and get out. " She told me. "I wanna listen to the rest of this album. "

For the second time that day I interrupted her music by unplugging the stereo. Rick managed "I wishh IIIII haaaaaaaad JJ… " And then stopped, his voice deepening to silence.

"You dick!" She proclaimed. "Why did you… "

"Tracy listen to me for a minute. " I interrupted. "I know you're expected to act a certain way in the presence of your younger brother. You're expected to treat me with contempt in order to show how superior you are. I concede your superiority, okay?"

"What?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Your friends are nowhere around and I won't tell them that you actually allowed me in your room, allowed me to shut off your precious Rick Springfield album. You can go back to treating me like shit as soon as I leave here but for now I need you to listen very carefully to me and to remember what I'm about to tell you. If you could drop the snotty attitude for a few minutes I'd appreciate it greatly. "

She stared. Finally she asked, "What's happened to you Bill? You've been acting strange all day. It's like you're a different person. "

"Never mind that. " I told her. "Tracy, do you remember when we were little kids?"

"Yes. " She answered carefully.

"We were very close back then. We were playmates. We used to conspire together. You used to call me 'little brother' and I used to call you 'big sister', do you remember?"

"No. " She shook her head, but casting her eyes aside in a way that told me she was lying.

"Well you did. " I told her. "We were best friends until about the time you started junior high school. From then on I was the object of your scorn. I understand that Tracy, I really do. You discovered boys, you discovered peer pressure. You grew out of me. It's a natural thing. And I developed interests of my own too. But the fact is, we're still brother and sister and some day we'll be close again. Can you understand that?"

She seemed about to say something snotty once more. Something like, 'as far as I'm concerned you'll be a piece of shit until you die'. But she paused at the last second and her eyes softened. "Yes Billy. " She answered. "I guess that some day we will be. "

A small triumph but a triumph in any case. "Good. " I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Now here's a harder one. Despite our fighting with each other do you realize that we actually love each other as brother and sister?"

She opened her mouth. This time I was sure she going to say something foul.

"Again," I said before she could. "No one else is here in the room and I'll never tell anyone what you say. We don't have to get into any deep philosophical discussions. I just want an acknowledgement that, as brother and sister, we love each other. We may not always LIKE each other, but we love each other. Right?"

She licked her lips nervously. "I suppose. " She finally allowed.

"Okay. " I nodded, taking another drink of my beer. "On that note I want you to listen to me very carefully for a minute. I'm going to tell you something very important. The most important thing you will ever hear in your life. Please don't ask me to explain. I can't do that right now. You probably will think I'm nuts but that doesn't matter as long as you REMEMBER what I'm about to say. Remember it well. "

"Okay. " She said carefully.

I took a deep breath, downing another large drink of beer. I passed the bottle to Tracy and she looked at it for a second and then took a swig. I took faith in the fact that she didn't pause to wipe off my saliva first.

"Now hopefully I'll be able to explain this thing further to you before the time comes. " I said. "But there's a chance I won't. There's a chance I'll be the same old Billy you're used to tomorrow. If that is the case I want you to remember this. "

"Billy, what are you… "

"Shhh. " I hushed her. "On the night you graduate from high school you will tell Mom and Dad that you are going to a party at Cindy's house. That will be a lie. What you will be doing instead will be going to a frat party at the university. "

"Billy, what?" She cried, her flesh breaking out in goose bumps.

"Listen. " I admonished. "I can't explain further right now. I don't even know what the best way of telling you this is. But you have to listen to me. A guy named David Mitchell will want to take you to this frat party. He will be driving a 77 Camero. He will be a football player at the college and very good looking. Now you will meet him about a month before graduation but it's graduation night you need to worry about. Do not, under any circumstances, get in that car with him that night. No matter what you have to do, no matter what lies you have to tell, do not do it. Your life depends upon this Tracy. Don't do it no matter what. "

"Billy, you're kinda scaring me. " She said.

"Good. " I answered. "That's my intent. Lisa Sanchez will be part of the group that gets in that car. Her boyfriend will be another college student named Rick Manchester. "

"Lisa Sanchez?" Tracy asked. "She's a cheerleader. I don't hang out with her. "

"You will. " I told her. "I'm giving you the names of all the people in the car so that you'll know when the time comes, that my information is accurate. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep you out of there. If you can keep Lisa out of there too, so much the better, but the important thing is that YOU do not get in that car on that night. "

I was gratified to see that she was scared shitless by what I was saying. Good. I figured she would obey me even a year and half later when all of the circumstances that I described came together. At least I hoped she would.

"What happens if I get in the car?" She asked me.

"Dave will be drunk that night. " I said. "He will drive the car into the Spokane River from the levee road near the falls and you and Lisa will drown before you can get out. " I took a deep breath, tears forming in my eyes as I remembered my mother coming to my bedroom at four o'clock in the morning in tears, waking me up to tell me that there'd been a horrible accident. Please, let me be successful here. There was more to the story of course. Dave would be charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. His sentence would be suspended and he would go on to play football in college, prompting my parents to become victim's rights activists; a pursuit they'd still been active in at the time of my recycling.

Tracy was looking pale as she tried to digest what I was telling her. "Bill, how can you know this? Where did you get this information? Did you have a psychic flash or something?"

"I can't tell you now. " I told her. "It's too early. I'll tell you later if I can. "

"But… "

"Tracy, just remember. " I said. "Just remember and don't get in that car that night. "

"I won't. " She promised.

I smiled and nodded. If I was only here for one day then I'd done the best I could do. If I woke up tomorrow back in 1999 then Tracy would probably still be alive. That would be the best purpose of the gift I'd been given.

Although getting laid had been nice too.

I made sure my alarm clock was set for the proper time and turned it on. I then lay down and turned out the lights. For the longest time I still couldn't sleep, fearful of what I'd find upon awakening. But at last my mind was able to shut down and I drifted off.

CLICK. "So if you're tired of the saaaaame old story. Ohhhhh, turn some pages. I'll be here when you are ready, to roll with the changes…" Came the voice of Kevin Cronin from my clock radio the next morning. REO Speedwagon. Another blast from the past. A song I hadn't heard in years. My eyes opened and I saw the now familiar confines of my teenaged bedroom. I was still here! I felt like shouting with joy. Still here!

Tracy was looking someone haggard as she combed her hair at her desk. Her face was pale and her eyes had bags beneath them. She looked up at me as I headed to the shower.

"Morning Trace. " I told her.

"Morning. " She said slowly, her eyes trying to read my face.

"Sleep well?" I asked her.

"No. " She told me. "I was awake most of the night. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares. "

I nodded. "I'm sorry about that. " I said. "They'll pass. Just remember what I said. "

"I will. " She told me. "I don't think I could ever forget it. "

"Good. " I muttered, walking to the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

Dad, as usual had the newspaper before him at the breakfast table. As I slurped down my cereal I asked him if I could see the business section.

"The business section?" He asked, raising his brow again.

"Yeah. " I told him. "I'm just curious about something. "

He shrugged and handed it over, going back to his perusal of the front page while I opened my section to the stock market report. I scanned through the list of publicly traded stocks for a few minutes, happening across several that seemed good prospects but, most importantly, not seeing the one that would be an absolute killer investment. I smiled to myself. So it wasn't on the stock market yet. Good.

"Find what you were looking for?" Dad asked as I sat the section back down in his pile.

"I think so. " I told him. "Have you ever considered investing in the stock market?"

He lowered his paper and looked at me, his eyes taking in my face, finally concluding that I wasn't joking. "Not really. " He answered. "I have my pension plan from the school district. The stock market seems like kind of a gamble. "

"In a way it is. " I agreed. "But if you could pick the right stocks and invest heavily in them, you could really make some money, couldn't you?"

"Ahh," He said. "But that's the trick. You have to pick the right stocks. If you pick the wrong ones, your money is down the toilet. It would take either someone with a lot more market savvy than I have or a genuine psychic to make a killing in the market. "

"A genuine psychic huh?" I smiled. Tracy, who had been silent during this exchange, gave me a sharp look.

"But as far as I know, such creatures are rare. " Dad said.

"I suppose. " I said. "But if someone DID have knowledge about which stocks were going to go sky-high in the future, that someone COULD make quite a bit of money. Couldn't they?"

"Well sure. " Dad answered. "It's a nice fantasy. Suppose you knew that say, oh, AT amp;T was going to go through the roof next year. If you knew that, you could invest every penny you had in it. When it skyrocketed, you could sell it off at enormous profit. But unfortunately, we don't know that information, do we?"

"I guess not. " I said, my mind whirring a mile a minute. "But it IS a nice fantasy. "

"So where were you yesterday dude?" Mike asked me as we walked to school that morning. The snow on the ground was almost completely melted and the sun was high in the sky. It was still a little cold but on the whole it was a beautiful Eastern Washington late winter day.

"Oh I met up with Raisin and Lonnie. " I said absently. "We went over to Raisin's house and smoked some buds. "

"Yeah?" He asked, obviously hurt that he hadn't been there.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Debbie was there too. I got to make out with her a little. "

"With Debbie?" He asked. "The cock-tease?"

"That's her. " I affirmed. "She cock-teased me damn near to death. "

He asked for details and I provided him with the story. I knew that would serve to reinforce the story that Lonnie and Raisin would pass around and therefore protect Debbie's reputation.

When I was finished he said, "It's too bad you didn't get to fuck her. " He put on a sophisticated look. "I fucked her once you know. "

"Oh really?" I asked, as if I believed him.

"Yep. At a party at Nick Costigan's one night. I had some weed and she wanted some. I told her she wasn't getting any until she gave up the puss. "

He then went on to describe his mythical session with her. Of course he'd made her come six or seven times until she'd begged him for more. He'd then fucked her up the ass, making her come an additional three or four times before he finally 'shot my wad' in her ass. After that she'd always wanted a repeat performance but he'd always turned her down. She was nice in a pinch he told me.

"How come you never told me about this BEFORE?" I asked, unable to help myself.

He blanched for a minute. I'd just asked a forbidden question. When you were told a pussy story you weren't supposed to question its validity. They might not listen to YOUR pussy stories if you did that.

"She asked me not to tell anyone. " He answered. "She didn't want anyone knowing she fucked. "

"I see. " I nodded. "So why did you tell me just now?"

"Well," He stammered. "It's been a while and I know you won't tell anyone. "

"Ahhh. " I nodded. "I get it. "

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Finally I asked, "Mike, do you ever think about what you're gonna do AFTER high school?"

"What?"

"After high school?" I repeated. "It's gonna end some day you know. What are you gonna do with your life?"

"You sound like a fuckin' school counselor. " He informed me, almost angrily.

"High school ain't ever gonna end man. It's a fuckin' prison. "

"In a way. " I allowed. "But some day you'll be freed from it. You ever think about what comes next?"

"No. " He said, his tone telling me to drop the subject. "I don't. "

Mr. Achmed was surprised to see me hand in homework to him that morning. He was even more surprised to find it was correct. He expressed his pleasure with my work and made a point of calling on me during class. Most of the time I managed to come up with the right answers to his questions. Instead of making me happy however, it kind of pissed me off.

Now that I was supplying the right answers to his questions he was paying attention to me. But before, when I was flunking all of his tests and getting an F or a D in his class, I was simply ignored. The same was true for my other teachers. Now I'm not a screaming liberal that likes to blame everyone but the person responsible, but there is a certain amount of responsibility instilled in a teacher isn't there? Why hadn't I been helped along before this? Why had I been allowed to simply sit in class and flunk without even a single pulling aside by a teacher? Cynicism was the answer of course.

It was the answer, but it wasn't an excuse. I had been a paramedic and, except for cops, you would be hard pressed to find a more cynical group of people. I had been called out for so much bullshit in the course of my career that I assumed everyone was full of shit until proven otherwise. People called us for hangnails, for colds, for ear infections that their kids had. And they reported these things as finger amputations, difficulty breathing, and head injuries. But never had I acted upon this cynicism. If someone said they were having chest pain, then they were having chest pain and I treated it appropriately even if they were twenty-five year olds only trying to get out of work for the day. If someone said they were short of breath than they were short of breath, even if they were speaking in complete paragraphs. If you acted on your cynicism you would be right probably ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But that one time you were wrong would bite you in the ass hard.

My teachers obviously assumed that trying to reach a disinterested student was a waste of time. Most of the time it probably would have been. But sometimes it wouldn't have been. Shouldn't they have been extending at least a little effort when someone like me simply sat in their classrooms and paid no attention? How many people that might have been turned around had just been allowed to sink into the abyss because the teachers assumed they were lost causes and directed their full attention to those that showed an interest in their subjects?

I was surprised by how strongly I felt about this subject and was quite pissed off by the time I left Algebra and headed for American History. My feelings were reinforced when I explained to the teacher that I didn't have my homework that day but that I would turn it in tomorrow.

"Fine Billy. " She said absently, moving onto the next student, obviously not believing that I was going to turn in anything the next day. Granted I did not make a habit of turning in the homework but had she ever talked to me about this? No. Had she ever called my parents and talked to them about it? No. To her I was a lost cause, unworthy of her attention. She would expend no efforts towards me unless I showed HER that I was interested in her subject. Why wasn't she trying to GET me interested in her subject? Why was she simply letting me sit there every day? What system was encouraging this?

Her lecture that day was on the role of Southern abolitionists in the beginnings of the drive towards the Civil War. She portrayed them as saintly people, dedicated to the cause of abolishing the evil institution of slavery. She implied to the class that they were right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in American History. About halfway through I could take no more. I raised my hand.

She ignored it for quite some time but finally was forced to call on me.

"Yes Billy?" She said. "Do you have a question?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I'm just curious about something. You just told us that the abolitionists used to use protests to influence those southern slaveholders. Exactly what kind of protests are you talking about?"

She gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said, "Well, they used a variety of methods. Boycotts of services and that sort of thing. "

"That sort of thing?" I said. "Isn't it true that they used to attack slave holders and their families in the middle of the night? Burning down their houses and hacking the men and even the women and children to death?"

She nearly choked but she composed herself quickly. "Well, there were some cases of the more fanatical elements doing things like that of course. But that was rare. Usually they used the other measures I talked about. You have to understand that these people felt very strongly about anti-slavery. About it's wrongness. It's only natural that some of them went off the deep end as it were. "

"Really?" I pressed further. "I actually read that grotesque violence was more the rule than the exception. I guess I must have read wrong. But to answer your other point about them feeling that it was wrong. Don't you think that these abolitionists were motivated more by economic factors than religious or moralistic ones?"

She was now speechless.

"I mean think about it. Who were the southern abolitionists? Poor whites for the most part, right?"

"Well yes," She nodded, "But… "

"Poor whites without jobs. How could they compete with slave labor? They couldn't. Isn't it true they also used to kill the slaves when they would attack a plantation? Hardly sounds like people that are just interested in freeing the slaves now, does it?"

"Well again Billy," She said firmly. "What you are talking about was the exception, not the rule. There were SOME incidents as you described but usually they used economic measures like boycotts to achieve their ends. And many of them were imprisoned or killed by the corrupt southern system for their efforts. "

"Well of course they were. " I snorted. "They were destroying valuable property and threatening a near-perfect economic system. The plantation owners ran the law after all. I imagine they came down rather hard on them when they caught them. "

She was actually flustered by what I'd said. "Well that's a very interesting point of view Billy. " She told me. "But I think we've discussed it enough now. If you don't mind, I'll get back to the lecture now. "

"Sure. " I smiled.

"Okay," She said, "Now back in 1858 there was a group called… "

Though I had no homework for Mrs. Crookshank either, she did not ignore me in class as she usually did. She remembered my dissertation on the blood cell the previous day and began probing at me to see if it was simply a well-studied joke on my part or not. Her lecture was on the major arteries of the body and she fired her first shot less than two minutes into it.

"Now can anyone tell me the name of the arteries that feed the kidneys?" She asked and then, without waiting for anyone to put up his or her hand, turned to me. "Billy, maybe you can tell us?"

She thought she had me I'm sure. I'd been doing what I usually did in her class; watching her alluring form move back and forth and not looking as if I was paying the least bit of attention to her words.

"Mesenteric. " I said in a bored voice, causing her to give me THE LOOK.

"Yes. " She nodded, obviously taken aback a bit, and then went on.

She called on me multiple other times during the lecture, making the questions harder and harder. We covered the carotids, the circle of Willis, and all of the coronary arteries. Some of the questions I knew were not even part of her lecture, were not even part of high school curriculum. I came up with the answers every time, spouting them out in a monotone voice with an expressionless face. It quickly became clear to the entire class that some sort of battle was going on between Mrs. Crookshank and I. Finally, bored, I conceded the battle, telling her I did not know the answer to a question she asked. The look on her face was of weak triumph and more than a little relief.

She wrapped up her lecture just before the bell rang and assigned us our homework for the next day. As the class filed out she called, "Billy?"

I turned to her questioningly.

"Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?"

"Sure. " I said, walking over.

Her eyes looked me up and down as I stood before her desk. "You seem to have quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy and physiology. " She almost accused.

I shrugged. "I like to read. " I said.

"Really?" She said. "What books have you read?"

"Oh the usual. " I told her. "Gray's Anatomy, A Physician's Guide to A amp;P, stuff like that. "

"You've read them?" She found this hard to believe.

"Yep. " I nodded. "Fascinating reading. I've even read your textbook a little. It's not bad but it oversimplifies things a little, wouldn't you say?"

She swallowed deeply, took a deep breathe, and then said, "Billy, I majored in Biology in college and I have an extensive background in A amp;P. I asked you questions today that are well beyond high school level knowledge and you answered every one correctly except one. "

"I only pretended I didn't know that one. " I told her. "I felt you were, shall we say, singling me out, and I wanted you to stop. " I smiled cynically. "Kind of unprofessional for a teacher wouldn't you say?"

She dismissed the subject of her professionalism, or lack thereof, with a shake of her head. "I see. So you're telling me that you've known the answers to my questions all of this time, but that you haven't answered any of them, either in class or on your tests or in your homework until yesterday?"

I shrugged again. "What can I say?"

"What can you say?" She asked, getting a little angry now. "This makes no sense. Why would you do such a thing?"

"Well Mrs. Crookshank," I told her. "I'm what's known as a classic underachiever. That means I have above average intelligence and good reasoning ability but that I am bored to death by high school because the curriculum is so scaled-down that the work is not challenging to me. This sets up a vicious cycle in which I stop listening and doing the work and therefore get far behind and fail many classes. It's mostly my fault of course, but the system itself is also partially to blame since it sets such absurdly low standards in the first place in an attempt to pad the statistics. I mean, when regional test scores are low, what do you people in the education business do? Do you beef up the learning or reevaluate your teaching methods? No. What you do is scale down the curriculum and lower the standards for passing, therefore making it easier for those "struggling" students to pass, but boring the crap out of those of us who would probably benefit from harder, more challenging classes. What then happens is that many of what could potentially be your best students simply don't give a damn while many of the less intelligent and less worthy ones have their good grades spoon fed to them by teaching them with Dick and Jane methods. "

She gaped at me. I knew I'd hit upon the very subject that line teachers like her had bitched about for years to their administration. In a few years, after several lawsuits about people graduating at a functionally illiterate level while promising students were actually dropping out, education reform would hit the State of Washington like a sledgehammer, improving things remarkably. I almost wished I could tell her that. She would still be teaching when it occurred. But I didn't.

"I read psychology too. " I told her instead, heading out the door.

I ran into Debbie at lunch. She giggled over to me and smiled. I greeted her, looking her up and down, remembering what her young body had felt like naked beneath mine.

"Word has it I'm the biggest cock-tease in the school. " She told me.

"Well what do you know about that?" I smiled. "Better than being the biggest slut, isn't it?"

She nodded, giggling again. "All the girls are asking me why I made out with you. "

"Yeah?" I grinned. "What you tell 'em?"

"That you were a totally awesome kisser. The best. "

"Thanks. " I said gratefully, wondering how long it would be until one of the other stoner girls decided to try for herself. "How are you today?"

She smiled shyly. "I could use another 'kiss' myself. " She said, blushing.

I chuckled. "I got something to do after school today, but why don't you give me your phone number? Maybe I'll give you a call on Saturday. "

She handed a piece of paper over to me. She'd already taken the time to write her number down. "Call me ANYTIME. " She said, walking away.

Period four, which I hadn't gone to yesterday, was Driver's Education. I was gratified to see that at least they took this subject very seriously. The information, though very familiar to me, was not the least bit scaled down. Period five was PE. It was spent learning the finer points of basketball. And though I enjoyed seeing all of the high school girls jumping around in their school sweats and T-shirts, I was no better at sports than I had ever been. I did enough to get by and let the rest ride.

As I dressed in the locker room some of Richie Fairview's cronies were in there. Usually they were the terror of the locker room. They eyed me nervously and came nowhere near me. When they started to approach some poor freshman slob, probably intending to make him cry just for the fun of it, I gave them a glare and they immediately found something else to do. I smiled to myself. Maybe I couldn't change the world, but I was doing a little bit at least.

Period six, the final period of the day was English. The subject was paragraph writing. I listened blandly and noted down my homework. I kept my mouth shut. When the bell rang I shouldered my backpack, found Mike, and headed for home.

Shortly after arriving home I gathered up a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Tracy had been lying on the couch flipping through a rock music magazine and had only grunted a reply to my greeting when I'd come in the house. However when she saw me heading out the door with the cleaning supplies she favored me with a pitying look.

"Going to clean Anita's windows?" She asked me.

I nodded, putting on a look of resigned disgust. "Yep. You know how it is. "

"Yeah," She nodded. "I know how it is. I gotta watch her little brats on Saturday night. " She shook her head in disgust. "Saturday fucking night! Can you believe the nerve of Mom and Dad? Volunteering me for that shit on Saturday night. And do you know why she needs a babysitter that night?"

"Why?" I asked, pausing in the doorway.

"Because she's going to a party. A party! Well what the hell do they think I was gonna do? I'm tired of them springing this crap on me at the last minute. I have a life too. "

I smiled. "Yes you do. " I told her. "Let me talk to her. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing anything Saturday, maybe she'll let me baby-sit instead. "

"You?" Tracy asked with horror. "You can't baby-sit. "

"Why not?" I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.

"Because you're a boy!"

"So? What's that got to do with anything? Why do girls automatically make good babysitters while boys are untrustworthy?"

"Well," She tried to come up with something and failed. "Just because. Boys aren't as responsible as girls are. "

"Oh we're not, are we? Why is that?"

"Because," She said, "If a boy was left alone in a house he'd do all kinds of things. "

I started laughing.

"What?" She asked.

"When you were babysitting her kids," I asked, "Did you ever drink her booze?"

"No. " Tracy said indignantly.

"Oh come on Tracy. " I chided.

"Well maybe once or twice. " She admitted.

"And did you ever have your boyfriend over to her house?"

"Well, yes. "

"And did you ever smoke weed over there and make out on the couch? Or maybe use her bedroom for a little… "

"All right!" She yelled, laughing. "You made your point. At least to me anyway. But Mom and Dad and Anita are never going to buy it. "

"I'm just offering. " I told her. "I'll float the idea by Anita while I'm over there. And Mom and Dad will go along if Anita does. Don't worry, I'm good at talking people into things. And if it doesn't work, you're no worse off are you?"

"I guess not. " She answered, her demeanor brightening. "Well thanks Bill. I hope you can talk her into it. " She chuckled. "It's kinda hard to picture you babysitting though. "

"Kids love me. " I assured her, "And I love them. I'll be fine. " I headed for the door and then paused, "By the way, what are her kids' names anyway?"

Anita Browling's house was a single story with a small lawn and small back yard. Like all the houses in the subdivision, it had been built about 1970 or so, during a major growth spurt for the Spokane area. Like many of the other houses on the block, the paint was peeling off due to the extremes of the weather. I knew that at some point in the near future I would be volunteered to paint the house for her. Was that this coming summer? I figured it would be. I knew, looking at the paint that it hadn't been done yet and I also knew that I'd done it before Tracy's death. It had\would take me nearly two weeks in the hot sun to complete.

Anita was home when I knocked. I remembered that she worked early in the morning, Tracy often had to get up at 5:00 AM to go baby-sit on vacation days, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was she did. She was wearing a pair of dark slacks that hid the form of her slightly large hips and a button-up blouse that showed off her large breasts nicely. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She smiled warmly as she saw me standing there with my cleaning supplies in hand.

"Billy. " She greeted, throwing open the door and allowing me entry. "Did you come to do the windows today? You're such a sweetie. "

"No problem. " I said, smiling back. "I'll have 'em squeaky clean in no time. "

Her two children (Ryan and Jennifer, Ryan and Jennifer, my mind repeated to me), were coloring in books at her coffee table. They both looked up at me for a moment and then went back to what they were doing. The living room was a little cluttered with toys and so forth but remarkably neat for a woman with two children. The television was turned off and the stereo was turned on. Barbara Striesand was singing about love, how it was ageless and evergreen, whatever the hell that meant.

"I really appreciate you doing this for me Billy," Anita was saying. "They get so dirty during the winter and I have such a hard time climbing on the ladder you know. "

"I'm happy to do it. " I assured her, "Where should I start?"

I got the ladder out of her garage and began doing the outsides first, moving from one to the other, scraping and wiping off the accumulation of dirt, grime, road salt, and all of the other shit that floats around in our air or is blown forcefully through it during the winter. Anita stayed in the house for this portion although I caught glimpses of her through the windows when she happened to be in a room that I was cleaning. I watched her whenever I saw her, checking out her form and imagining the possibilities. Though she was slightly chunky, there was nothing in the world wrong with that. Her skin looked soft, her face pretty, and she had beautiful breasts that bounced nicely when she walked. Sure, a teenager wouldn't admit he desired her, such were the commandments of peer pressure, but an adult would have no problem with her whatsoever. And I was most definitely an adult.

She waved at me whenever she happened to catch me looking in at her, or smiled at the very least, but there was no overt flirtation. I began to wonder if my mind was remembering things correctly. Was I confusing my previous masturbation fantasies with reality?

When I went in the house to do the inside of the windows it was only a minute or two before I got my first clue. I was up on the stepladder doing the living room window and she came up to offer me a soda to drink. As she handed it to me I was looking down at her. She had undone the top button of her blouse, allowing me to look straight down the front of it. I could see the mass of her white breasts contained in a flimsy, lacy bra. I was certain that the top button had not been undone earlier and I was also certain, as a fifteen year old would NOT have been, that she was well aware of the view she was giving me. She was showing herself to me. But for what purpose?

"Thank you. " I smiled, taking the soda and swigging out of it. I then handed it back to her. "Could you set it over there for me?" I asked, pointing at a coffee table next to the ladder.

"Sure," She replied, taking it from my hand. When she bent over to set it down gravity pulled her breasts away from her body, as well as pulling the blouse away from her tits. This allowed me a fine view indeed. She caught me looking as she stood back up and I turned my head away, as a teenager would do. There was no sense tipping my hand, was there?

As I moved from window to window I grew more and more certain that she was deliberately showing herself to me. Why was she doing this? I wondered. Was she just teasing a teenager? Or did she desire something more? I didn't know. Though my memories of her little shows were correct I also remembered that she had never made any attempt to actually seduce me. What should I do next? How could I find out safely?

As I cleaned I also chatted and talked to her two kids, remembering my promise to Tracy. Jennifer was four and Ryan was six. I truly do love children and they were cute ones. I applied all of the skills I'd picked up in my thirty-two years charming them. The responded to me well, obviously impressing Anita with my rapport.

"Your kids are really cute. " I told her at one point, and she beamed at me.

But the kids also prevented me from seeing how far she was willing to go with her little game. She was an attentive and responsible mother. I knew instinctively that she would do nothing while they were awake. That thought led to a plan.

"What time do you and Jenny have to go to bed?" I asked Ryan playfully.

He pouted. "Eight o'clock on school nights. " He said. "And we're not even tired then!"

"That's a bummer. " I told him, marking the time in my head. "Your mommy's a real meanie, isn't she?"

"Yeah!" They agreed together, giggling and making their mommy giggle too.

While I cleaned her bedroom windows she was folding her laundry on the bed and chatting with me about this and that. She asked about school and I had to search my mind for answers since I'd only spent two days in the place. As far as I know I said nothing inappropriate. When I finished the window I stepped down from the ladder and spied the doorway that led to the master bathroom. That would be HER bathroom.

"Do you mind if I use your restroom?" I said, nodding towards the door.

"Sure. " She said, waving me in that direction.

I went inside and closed the door. After emptying my bladder into her toilet I buttoned up my pants prior to flushing. When my pants were secure I pushed the handle and used the noise of the toilet to cover the sound of me opening up her medicine cabinet. I took a look inside, quickly flitting my eyes over the shelves full of Tylenol, old antibiotics, old codeine, and various over the counter remedies. I spotted what I was looking for on the bottom shelf. A square plastic case with little white pills and occasional rows of pink ones, which were sugar pills I knew, imbedded in it. Each of the pills was in a spot marked with the day of the week. I picked it up for a second, seeing both that she was current and that she was not due for her period for more than a week. I smiled. I would have had to come up with another plan if she had not been on some sort of birth control. And being able to predict her period was a bonus I hadn't counted on.

When I emerged from the bathroom she was putting her clothes in the dresser.

"Anita?" I asked her as I folded up the ladder.

"Yes. " She asked, turning towards me.

"You have Tracy coming over to baby-sit on Saturday, don't you?"

She creased her brow a little. "Yes," She nodded. "Your mother said she would. "

"Well," I said, carefully, "The fact is that Tracy had plans for that night and my mom kinda ruined them by volunteering her to baby-sit. "

Anita's face immediately turned to distress. "Oh my goodness. " She said. "I had no idea that Tracy had plans. If I'd of known that I never would have asked your mother. " She shook her head. "Your mother told me that she'd be happy to baby-sit. "

"Yeah," I agreed, "Mom's like that sometimes. "

"Well I'll just cancel my plans. " She announced. "I don't want to make Tracy miss her party. Especially after all she's done for me in the past. And you kids never accept any money for what you do. "

"Well, you don't have to cancel your plans. " I told her. "I talked to Tracy about it and I don't have anything to do on Saturday. I thought maybe I could take her place. That way both of you could go to your parties. "

"You?" She said doubtfully.

"Why not?" I said. "I like your kids a lot, and they like me. I can take care of them all right. We'll have fun. "

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced her. Shortly after that I went home. But I wouldn't be home for long.

When I walked in the door Mom and Dad were both home. Mom was cooking up something in the kitchen. It smelled like steak. Dad was watching the news on television. I gave him a quick hello and headed directly for mom. She would be the authority on the subject I was about to discuss.

It took ten minutes and a phone call to Anita but I secured her permission to baby-sit Anita's kids in Tracy's place. She was doubtful about the plan and I knew she would probably call every ten minutes while I was over there, but I was able to wear her down.

With a smile on my face, I headed upstairs. I paused at Tracy's room and gave a knock on the door. From behind it came the sound of Rick Springfield again. The music turned down and the door creaked open. She looked at me.

"Looks like you're gonna be partying on Saturday. " I told her.

"You convinced them?" She asked in disbelief.

"Putty in my hands. " I assured her.

"Oh thank you!" She squealed, pulling me to her and giving me a big hug. She drew back and looked at me. "You know Billy," She said. "Sometimes you're not such a little asshole after all. "

"I'll take that as a compliment Trace. " I told her, walking away.

I entered my room as happy as I'd been in a while.

After dinner I went upstairs and took a shower, cleansing my body and making sure to brush my teeth and use plenty of mouthwash. I put on the tightest pair of pants that I could find, a pair that hugged my lower body like a second skin. I put on a clean sweater and combed my hair. I checked my watch. 6:40. Almost an hour and a half to go. I pulled out my books and began studying.

At 8:30 I had completed all of my homework and stowed it neatly away in my backpack. I went to Tracy's room and knocked on the door. She opened it.

"Can I use your phone a minute Trace?" I asked.

"Sure. " She said, waving me inside.

She had been doing her homework I saw. Her Biology book and a spread of papers were scattered on her desk. She was dressed in her jeans and sweatshirt still. Her Rick Springfield album was still playing on the stereo.

Earlier I'd looked in my mom's phone book and found Mike's phone number which, of course, I did not remember. I picked up her phone and dialed it.

His mom answered and I asked for him. A moment later he came to the phone.

"Hey dude," I said, "I'm telling my parents I'm coming over to your house tonight for a while. So don't call me. "

"You got it dude. " He assured me. "What's up?"

"Oh, I'm just going out for a while. "

"Doing anything cool?" He asked, fishing for an invitation.

"Naw. " I assured him. "Just gonna fuck off a little. "

"Whatever. " He said, disappointed, sulking a little, but at least I was safe from being busted via a telephone call from him. "See ya tomorrow. "

When I hung up Tracy looked at me questioningly. "Where are you going?" She asked.

"Out. " I told her.

"Just out?"

"Just out. " I said, my tone telling her she should mind her own business. I headed downstairs.

"Mom, I'm going over to Mike's for a little bit. " I said as I passed through the living room.

"All right dear. " She said absently, her attention riveted to the television. "Be back by ten. "

"I will. " I told her.

Three minutes later I was in front of Anita's house. I could see the light was on in the living room and the faint blue glow of a television screen shining through. I found myself nervous as I contemplated what I was about to do. Was this really wise? If I had misread her I could get into a lot of trouble. I might even end up talking to a shrink or something. But my little head told me I was doing the right thing. Even at thirty-two I still listened to him probably more than I should. I walked up her driveway. After another brief, fearful pause at the front door, I knocked.

The sound of her voice came drifting through the door. "Who is it?" "It's Billy. " I said, speaking only as loud as I thought I needed to in order to be heard.

"Billy?" She said, confused. A moment later the door crept open about six inches, revealing her. She was wearing a robe I saw, pulled tight around her body. Her face was void of makeup and a towel was over her head, allowing a few damp strands to peek out.

"Hi. " I said, embarrassed, not even faking it. "I was wondering if I could uh… well, talk to you about something for a minute?" "What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned. "It's kind of personal. " I told her. "Could I uh… come in?"

"Uh… " She hesitated for a second, leading me to believe I'd made a terrible mistake. Then she said, "Sure. "She opened the door, allowing me entry. I stepped into her living room and she shut the door behind me. Her living room was now absolutely spotless. The television was on showing a news program. A half-full wineglass sat on the coffee table near the couch. A glance into the kitchen revealed a half-empty bottle of white wine. My hopes perked up. She'd been drinking. "Sit down. " She said, looking at me. "Can I get you anything to drink?" "Oh, no thank you. " I told her, heading for the couch and planting myself near where she would sit.

She came over and sat down next to me, her robe riding up a little in the process and allowing me a brief glance of her milky white thighs before she pulled the hem back down. She picked up her wineglass and had a sip before using the remote control to turn down the volume on the television.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" I asked her nervously.

"Not at all. " She said, shaking her head. "I was just watching the news before Dallas comes on. What's wrong?" "Well," I started, "It's kind of embarrassing you know, but… " "Billy, what is it?" "Well," I continued, "You've been a good friend to me and I feel like I can, you know, trust you. " "Of course you can trust me. " She said. "But you're also friends with my mother. " I said. "I really wouldn't want to have her find out about what I have to ask. " "If you don't want me to tell her, I won't tell her. " Anita assured me. "Think of me as a doctor. "I paused for a moment, as if I was thinking it over. Finally I said, "Okay, well, you're younger than my mother and you're a girl and all, so I thought maybe you'd understand. " "Understand what?" She asked. "I've got a girlfriend!" I blurted. She smiled. "Well good for you. " She said happily. "What's her name?"

"Debbie. " I said, pulling out the first name to come to mind. "We've been going out for a while and… " "And what?" She asked. "And well," I took a long pause, considering my words. "And it's getting to the point where she wants to, you know, do things with me. "She raised her eyebrows, blushing a little.

"Do things?" "You know," I said. "Like uh… sex. " I squeaked.

"Sex?" She said, blushing harder now. "Yes. " I nodded.

"Billy," She said sternly. "Don't you think you're a little young to be thinking about sex?"I looked at her confused. "Anita," I said honestly. "Sex is pretty much ALL I think about. How old were you when you first, you know, did it?"She licked her lips a little. "Okay," She said, smiling a bit. "I see your point. So you're saying she wants to have sex with you?" "Yes. " I nodded. "And do you want to have sex with her?" "More than anything. " I answered. "But you see, I uh, well, I've never had, uh, sex before. " "And has she?" Anita asked. "I think so. " I nodded. "That's the problem. I don't know how to do it. " "Well I'm sure if she loves you… " Anita started. "Love?" I interrupted. "Love doesn't have anything to do with it. I don't love her, she's just my girlfriend. She expects me to do it with her and I've told her I've done it before. " "You lied to her?" "Yes. " I said. "Do you have any idea what would happen if people found out I was a virgin? I'm in high school. You have to be a stud or people think you're a fag!"She took a moment to digest this, perhaps thinking back to her own high school days. When it was processed she nodded a little, licking her lips again. "I suppose you're right. " She told me. "So what is it you want from me?" "Can you tell me how to do it?" I asked, looking hopefully at her. "Please?" "Tell you how to do it. " She said to herself, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. "Yeah. " I said, nodding. "So I'll know how to make it seem like I've done it before. Like, you know, how do I treat her boobs and all? And how do I, you know, put it in? How are you supposed to move once you're in? They don't teach you this stuff anywhere! Debbie's a blabbermouth. If I don't do it right, the whole school will think I'm a virgin by the next day. You gotta help me!" I pleaded, seemingly near tears. "Billy," She said. "I appreciate your fears but you can't just TELL someone how to do it. The only way to learn is, well, to do it a few times.

It comes naturally, you'll see. " "But I told her I've done it before!" I said. "She'll know! Can't you at least tell me a little bit about how to do it? What about foreplay?" "Foreplay?" She asked. "Yeah. " I said. "I heard you're supposed to do foreplay. I don't even know what that is!"She looked at me in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing. I flushed as if deeply embarrassed.

"Forget it. " I said angrily, standing up. "I'll just go home. "

"No, no. " She said, stifling her outburst. "I'm not laughing at you, just at what you said. I'm sorry. "Slowly, I put myself back down in the chair, noting the gleam forming in her eye. For the first time I felt I was making some headway. I noticed she'd let the hem of her robe creep up a bit, showing me her flesh up to mid-thigh. She'd also let the top open a bit, revealing a bit of cleavage and confirming my suspicion that she had no bra on under the robe. Perhaps I hadn't made a mistake in coming here. "Listen. " She said. "There's a lot involved in making love. It takes a lifetime to learn it all. But you just want to seem like you've done it before, right?" "Yes!" I agreed. "Okay. " She said, downing the rest of her wine and setting the glass down. "Let me see what I can do. " "Thank you!" I blurted. She took a deep breath. "Tell me," She said. "How far have you gone before?"

"Well," I said, "We've kissed a lot and she's let me feel her boobs through her shirt a few times. " "Okay. " Anita nodded. "And one time she let me put my hand UNDER her shirt. But she wouldn't let me put it under her bra. " "And that's as far as you've gone?" "Yes. " I nodded. "But she's hinted that she'd like for you to do more soon?"

"Uh huh. " I said. "That's why I came to you. " "Okay," Anita said. "If I tell you this, it has to remain here, do you understand? You're mother, your friends, nobody can ever find out about what I've told you. Can you do that?" "Yes," I said, sensing the kill coming. "I promise. " "Okay. " She smiled, leaning back into the couch a little. "I'll teach you the basics on how to have sex with a girl. " "I knew you'd help me Anita. " I grinned, feeling an erection starting already as I saw the shine in her eyes increase. Her nipples were hard. I could see them poking through the fabric in her robe. And she kept shifting her legs back and forth while she sat there. She was showing unmistakable signs of arousal. Signs that a fifteen-year old wouldn't be able to pick up upon, but signs that were very familiar to a thirty-two year old. "I'm glad to help. " She told me. "Now the most important thing in the early stages is to be gentle. " She told me. "Girls don't like it when you maul them. If she lets you feel her breasts, don't squeeze them hard, caress them. " "Caress them?" I asked. "Yes. " She nodded. "You need to touch them gently, as if they were a delicate egg or something. Remember that. Don't break the egg. Just glide your hands over them and don't attack the nipples. Just run your fingers over them for a few minutes. Touch them lightly. That really gets girls hot. " "Wow. " I said. "Like this?" I held up my hands and roughly moved my thumb and index finger back and forth.

"No no. " She said, shaking her head. "You have to… " She paused, thinking.

"Well," She said softly. "I suppose it would be easier to show you instead of telling you. " "Show me?" I asked, feigning confusion but feeling my cock leap to full life. I'd done it! She was going to SHOW me. "Yes. " She said. "Again, you can never tell anyone, but in the interest of education, I suppose I could volunteer as a test subject. " "What do you mean?" I asked naively. Slowly she put her hands to her robe and opened it at the chest, revealing her silky skin and freeing her braless tits. They were glorious, sagging only a little, the size of softballs. The large nipples were standing out proudly, just begging to be touched and sucked. "Here. " She told me. "Give me your hands. "Slowly I reached out and put my hands in hers. She took them and placed them upon her tits, allowing me to feel the soft, springy flesh, the hard points of the nipples pressing into my palms.

"Now caress them. " She said softly, her eyes shining. "Pretend I'm Debbie. " "Okay. " I said, faking a stutter. I began to squeeze and caress them, running my fingertips over the soft flesh, twirling around her nipples, which were easily the diameter of dimes. I hefted their weight in my hands, testing them, before going back to caressing. Her eyes softened as I did this, her breathing quickening.

"Very good. " She said, pushing her chest forward into my hands. "You're a quick learner. " "Cool. " I muttered, continuing my actions. I looked below her tits as I did this, seeing her stomach. The skin was tanned and looked soft although there were a few creases and stretchmarks. Her belly button was large and had a faint fuzz of black hair leading downward from it. I could almost make out her crotch but her robe was still closed over that portion of her body. "Wouldn't she want me to, you know, suck on them?" I asked Anita. "Girls like that, don't they?" "They love it. " Anita breathed, twisting her shoulders into me now. "But it's another thing that you have to do carefully. " She explained. "You have to treat a nipple like a baby does. Pretend you're sucking on a bottle when you suck a tit. Don't go after it like a shop-vac. " "Can I try it?" I asked her. "Just to make sure I'm doing it right?" "I suppose. " She allowed, reaching up and putting her hand to the back of my head.

She pulled my face to her left breast and my lips contacted the soft skin just above the nipple. I kissed and sucked for a second and then moved down, taking her large nipple in my mouth. As I began to gently suck she moaned, her fingers twining through my hair. I put my hands on her stomach, sliding them around to her back and pulling her tighter to me. I lapped and slurped at her nipple, tasting every square millimeter of it before switching to the right one. I took that nipple in my mouth and gave it a similar treatment. I raised my head from her chest. "Is this what foreplay is?" I asked her.

"Yesss. " She hissed. "But if you really want to master foreplay, there's one thing you want to know how to do. " "What's that?" I asked, licking her nipple once more. "How to eat a woman, er, a girl. "

"You mean… "

"You need to know how to eat pussy. " She told me.

"Can you teach me?" I asked, looking up at her flushed face.

"Yes. " She nodded, putting her hands to the top of my head and pushing me downward. Her robe parted and her chunky legs spread before me, revealing her crotch. It was covered with a mat of thick, curly, black hair. Her pink lips, swollen with her excitement, protruded from the center of her bush. Her clit was peeking from its hood near the top. Her thick, clean smell rose up before me, driving my desire, making me long to bury my face between those soft legs. I gave up all pretenses and dove in to her, attacking her slit with my tongue.

"Ohhhh!" She squealed in surprise as I drove my tongue into her body, plunging it in and out, lapping up her juices. She tasted so good. There is nothing like eating a pussy that is attached to a woman that has just emerged from bathing. Nothing!I licked up and down, in and out, while her hands pulled me closer and her bare legs wrapped around my back. I felt her legs as I ate her, admiring the silky softness of them. When she started to buck back at me I went for her clit, licking it and then finally sucking it into my mouth. Her moans were so loud I feared that the neighbors would hear. Not that I stopped because of this though.

She came after only a few minutes, a loud screaming orgasm that splashed my face with her fragrant juices and made her rip several strands of my hair from my scalp. When she finally calmed down I looked up at her, my face wet, hairs sticking from between my teeth. Her expression was of total disbelief.

"Was that how you do it?" I asked her, sliding my finger through her slippery slit. She nodded, speechless.

"Can you tell me how to fuck now?" I asked, taking off my sweater and throwing it to the floor. A minute later I was completely naked and climbing between her thick thighs. I ran my fifteen-year old cock up and down her slimy slit for a moment and then she grabbed my ass with her hands and pulled. I slid inside of her easily, feeling her grip at me, feeling my pubis mash against hers. Though she was looser than Debbie, she was certainly more experienced. Her hips rose up to meet me and she clenched her vaginal muscles expertly. She had been married after all, and knew how to fuck. She did it well I quickly discovered as I began pounding in and out. Her soft stomach pressed against mine as my pelvis moved to her rhythm. Her soft thighs slid against mine, quickly building up a sheen of sweat upon which to glide. I leaned down, feeling those tits push against my chest. My mouth found hers and our tongues began a desperate duel as we pleasured each other with our nether regions.

"Oh fuck me!" She cried, squeezing my ass cheeks. "It's been so long. Fuck me!" "Yeah. " I said, slamming harder, feeling her rise up to meet each thrust.

She broke our kiss and stared directly into my eyes, taking in my features. Her hands left my ass and began gliding over my legs, my back, my arms, playing with my armpits. Her expression was of exhalted disbelief, leading me to believe I was fulfilling a fantasy of hers. She'd WANTED to fuck a fifteen-year old and now she was getting her fantasy.

"Harder!" She commanded. "Fuck me harder!"

I pounded her mercilessly and soon her hips and her fingernails on my back told me she was coming again. She screamed out her pleasure as it hit her. "Now come in me!" She commanded breathlessly. "Oh come in me! Let me feel your fresh come squirting in my body! Oh God, please? Come in me!" "You want it?" I asked her, holding back for the moment. "Yesss!" She answered, pounding her hips and grasping my cock with greater force. "Let me feel it. Let me feel your come!" "You like fifteen year old boys?" I asked her, slamming and slamming. "You like to feel their come shooting in you?" "Ohhhhh!" She moaned, sticking her finger in my ass and moving it in and out.

"Do you?" I asked. "Tell me. Tell me what you like and I'll come. " "Oh God," She moaned, adding another finger to my ass, nearly causing me pain, but causing me great pleasure at the same time. "I love it. I've always wanted a teenager! I've always wanted to fuck you! Now please, come innn meeeee!" "Here it comes baby. " I told her, increasing my thrusts. I felt the surge running up my spine. It was going to happen now, it was inevitable. My hips became a blur and waves of pure pleasure ran through my body as spurt after spurt shot from my cock into her grasping pussy.

"Yessssss!" She screamed, feeling me shooting. Even after my thrusts slowed to a stop, hers continued. Finally we both slowed to a stop.

We kissed each other for a few moments, swirling our tongues together in the afterglow of great sex and then she looked up at me, her eyes showing shame and confusion.

"You were great. " I told her, giving her left tit a friendly squeeze. "Absolutely great. " "What have I done?" She asked, more to herself than me. "Oh my god. "I leaned down and kissed her again, licking at her lips a little. "You've done nothing Anita. " I said. "Nothing at all but give your friend Billy a little friendly advice for his girlfriend. "She shook her head violently. "No. " She told me, pushing me off of her. I slid off with a wet slurp. Her legs were still wide and a big glob of my sperm drooled out of her slit. She closed them quickly. "God, what have I done?"I rolled over and sat up. "Had a good time?" I asked, stretching a little. "I can't believe this!" She said, near tears. "You're Margaret's son! And I've, I've, taken advantage of you!"

"You did no such thing Anita!" I told her.

"I did!" She insisted, tears running down her face now.

"No," I told her. "You didn't. I took advantage of YOU. "

She shook her head, pulling her robe around her. "That's nice of you to say Billy, but you're a fifteen year old kid and I'm an adult. You came to me for help and I… I took advantage of that because it's been so long since I've had sex. I let my horniness get the better of me and I've done something awful. I… "

"Anita. " I said, still sitting there naked, her juices and my sperm drying on my dick. "There is no Debbie. "

"What?" She asked.

"There is no Debbie. " I repeated. "I made that up as an excuse to come over here. I've also had sex before, several times. Couldn't you tell while I was making love to you?"

She looked confused. "I did think you were doing it rather well for a teenager. " She admitted. "But why would you do that?"

"Because I wanted you. " I told her. "Do you know that I lie in bed at night thinking about your body while I masturbate?"

"You do?"

"Yes," I said. "Constantly. I've wanted you for such a long time now. And I've thought that maybe you were attracted to me a little, that maybe if I, you know, set it up right, you would maybe do things with me. I came over here hoping that what we did would happen. I tried to engineer it. It's me you should be mad at. I lied to you. I was conniving. And I'm sorry you're upset by what we did. You were more than I ever hoped for. "

"I was?" She asked, her eyes shining.

"Yes. " I nodded. "Can you ever forgive me for tricking you like that?"

"Of course Billy. " She said. "But I still shouldn't have done that. Do you understand how serious this is? I can be arrested for what we did. "

"I'll never tell anyone. " I told her. "I swear. "

She smiled a little, wiping her face. "Fifteen year olds swear lots of things. " She told me. "And they very rarely understand the consequences of breaking those swears. "

"Anita," I said, "I'm not an ordinary fifteen year old. I DO think about consequences. I think about them obsessively. Would you like to hear an example of how I think about them?"

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"While I was over here earlier I was already planning this episode. But I was worried about the possibility of getting you pregnant. I did not want to do that. So I looked in your medicine cabinet to make sure you were on birth control of some type. I was looking for a diaphragm case or birth control pills. Only when I found your pills and assured myself that you were current on them did I decide to come over here tonight. "

"You did that?" She asked, staring at me. Giving me THE LOOK.

"You are currently eight days from your period. " I told her.

"My God. " She said, looking at me with confused respect.

"Does that sound like a typical teenager to you? I like to think things through before I do them, eliminate all of the possible dangers that I can. So what would I have to gain by telling anyone this? A few minutes of celebrity if I told the story, which my friends wouldn't believe anyway, they would only pretend to. That certainly does not balance out the loss of you as a friend. " I leered at her. "A very special friend. "

"Wow. " She whispered, staring at me. "I don't know what to say. This is the most confusing moment of my life. "

"I'm sure it is. " I told her. "But did you enjoy what we did?"

"Well… " She started.

"Did you?" I asked.

"Yes. " She admitted. "Immensely. " She blushed again. "I've laid awake at night masturbating while thinking about YOU. But I never thought for a minute that we'd actually, you know. " She shook her head. "You are a sneaky little bastard, you know that? You played right into one of my fantasies, almost word for word. "

"I'm pretty perceptive they say. " I agreed.

"I'll say. "

"So why don't we mark it down as a pleasant experience for all concerned?" I asked her. "I enjoyed making love to you, you enjoyed making love to me. Both of us had fantasies fulfilled. I will never tell anyone about it. Nobody even knows where I am tonight. What we did will remain secret forever. I promise. "

"Okay. " She nodded, smiling again now. "But we shouldn't do this anymore. " She qualified. "It's still wrong. "

"If you wish. " I agreed sadly.

"I think that would be for the best. "

"All right. " I paused. "But is it still okay for me to baby-sit on Saturday? I'd hate to disappoint Tracy. "

"Oh sure. " She said. "Perfectly all right. "

"Good. " I stood up. "Is it okay if I use your shower before I go home?"

"My shower?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I wouldn't want to go home smelling like sex. That leads to unwanted questions from parents. "

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head in amusement. "Very good thinking Billy. " She told me. "You know where it's at. "

"Thanks. " I told her, picking up my clothes.

I made it about ten steps towards her bedroom before her voice called me. I turned to look at her. She was standing up, her robe was flapping loosely, allowing me to see her breasts and her bush again. I felt my penis give a little twitch.

"Maybe I should go with you. " She offered, smiling sexily. "Just to make sure you get nice and clean. "

My dick took a bigger lurch. "By all means. " I answered.

Chapter 3

Take away my inhibitions

Take away my solitude

Fire me up with irresistance

Put me in the mood

Storm the walls around this prison

Leave the inmates, free the guards

Deal me up another future

From some brand new deck of cards

BOB SEGER

The next day at school, nothing terribly eventful happened. I turned in all of my completed homework to some very surprised teachers and, having done that, they began to truly notice me for the first time. They began to call on me in class, seemingly pleased when I supplied them with correct answers to their inquiries. In the classes where I'd already made my new self known, things mellowed out. Mrs. Crookshank asked me occasional questions on various anatomical topics but there was no longer a sense of challenge in them. She stayed confined to the current subject at hand and called on me no more than she did the other favorites in her class. The disinterested students like my former self, she continued to ignore. My history teacher on the other hand, seemed almost afraid of me. She didn't call on me a single time but eyed me nervously whenever she was discussing a controversial topic about the Civil War that was being scaled down into black and white, good and evil for the 'tender young minds' she was instructing. I know she was expecting me to pop up with another mini-lecture to counter hers. But I kept my peace, remaining in my seat quietly, mostly lost in my own thoughts, knowing that there was nothing that she was going to teach ME about history.

That night was Friday night; the night that Mike's parents allowed him to use the car. He told them that we were just going to drive around downtown; cruising he called it. It was, I remembered, the same thing he told them every weekend and every weekend they bought it. What we actually did was drive to a secluded park near the falls where a kegger was being held. For two bucks a head you could drink all the beer you wanted.

The night was brisk, as it always is in Eastern Washington in late February, but the good weather was holding. The stars were out and a full moon hung in the sky, providing scant illumination to the darkened family picnic area.

The atmosphere was festive as we arrived, paid our money, and filled our first plastic cups with Olympia from the tap. Kids ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen were everywhere, lounging near cars, sitting on the picnic tables in groups of three, four, eight. Music blared from at least ten different car stereos and at least five different boom boxes, most of it conflicting with each other.

I took a moment to stare at the falls, watching the white, foamy churning of God knew how many millions of gallons of water rushing over the cliff. I could hear the roar of them even over the car stereos. It wasn't very far from this spot where Tracy had an appointment with destiny. An appointment that I sincerely believed I'd cancelled. I took a drink of beer in her honor and then joined the party.

I drank beer after beer, getting pleasantly buzzed. I took a few hits off of joints or pipes that were passed my way, increasing the buzz to blissful intoxication. I listened to the conversations around me, which, admittedly, were not terribly stimulating. The talk was of rock bands, cars, drug experiences, fights, who was a bitch, who wasn't. It was peppered with unnecessary profanity, particularly the word 'fuck', which was the favored modifier among this age group.

It was less than an hour before a girl named Stephanie found me. She was skinny and bleached blonde, but attractive. She was also a junior and nearly two years older than I was. She chatted with me for few minutes and then brought up the subject that had led her to me.

"I heard you and Debbie got a thing goin'?" She asked, taking a drag off her cigarette. "Is that true?"

"No." I answered. "She's just a friend of mine."

"A friend?" She giggled. "I heard you were more than friends. I heard she threw herself at you over at Raisin's house the other day."

"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, sipping from my latest beer.

"Lonnie." She said. "He said you were pretty smooth about it too."

I smiled at her, staring into her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about." I said. "Debbie and I flirted a little but nothing more than that. You know how rumors are around here."

"Yeah." She nodded, tossing down her smoke and crushing it under the toe of her tennis shoe. "I do. Some people just can't keep their mouths shut about things."

"Yep." I agreed. "But some people CAN."

Less than an hour later we were 'taking a little walk' into the wooded area around the park. We sat against a tree, watching the falls, the sound of the party distant in our ears. We started kissing, which led to my hands beneath her jacket and sweater, which led to me taking off her pants and eating her pussy on the cold, damp ground. I pulled two orgasms from her and then extricated a condom from my pocket. A minute later my pants were off, my dick was capped, and I was thrusting within yet another tight, teenaged pussy. After, we returned to the party, walking together as friends out for a nature walk, the discarded condom marking the spot of our indiscretion.

"Where have you been?" Mike, who was quite fucked up, asked me when I rejoined him.

"Oh," I said casually, "I was bullshittin' with some of the guys over there."

"Oh." He nodded, and then went back to his graphic description of the time he'd bagged a girl AND her sister at a similar kegger party. The rest of the guys listened respectfully to his tale. They then tried to top it.

I took a moment to be nervous about driving home with Mike as we twisted and turned along the levy road at high speed. I had no seat belt on; it simply wasn't done back then; and I was thrown from side to side as he drunkenly hit 20mph curves at around forty-five or so. But I took comfort in the fact that I'd done this dozens of times in my previous life without a second thought and nothing had happened then. I already knew that I was scheduled to live to at least thirty-two. In a way I was kind of immortal, wasn't I? Well maybe not immortal, but at least invulnerable.

I was cheered by this thought as we went on our way at 11:30 that night (we were both required to be home by midnight). That made being tossed from side to side by centrifugal force kind of fun. Even when the back end of the car slid a little on a sharp curve, bringing us dangerously close to the edge, I didn't get an adrenaline rush. I simply cheered Mike's skill with the car and asked him if he had any more weed on him.

Saturday was a good day. I woke up only slightly hung over from the beer, knowing that if I'd drank as much as I had the previous night as an adult I would have been nearly incapacitated the next day. God youth was great.

It was shortly after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away (my parents had no dishwasher, an appliance they would not acquire until shortly before I moved out) when the telephone rang. Tracy answered it.

"It's for you Bill." She told me, being very polite for Tracy. A cynical part of me informed me it was simply because I was doing a favor for her tonight and she wanted to stay on my good side. But a more hopeful part wondered if she was simply calming her attitude towards me a little.

"Hello?" I said, expecting it to be Mike.

It wasn't. It was Debbie. "Hi Bill." She said. "How you doin'?"

"How'd you get my number?" I asked her, knowing that I hadn't given it to her.

"Oh, I've got my sources." She said mysteriously. She then got right to the point. "My parents and my sister are going out of town for the day." A brief pause. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to, you know, come over?"

"To your house?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." She said. "If you're not doing anything else that is."

"Nothing planned." I told her, a smile forming on my face. "What time should I be there?"

I used my charms on Mom to score a few bucks off of her, though I had to endure one of her lectures as the price. Soon I was heading out the door. I stopped at a convenience store and bought another package of condoms. Twenty minutes after that I was in Debbie's house.

We didn't bother much with preliminaries. Less than ten minutes after my arrival we were in her bedroom stripping off our clothes. She begged me to eat her again like I had at Raisin's house and I teased her a little, saying I didn't want to break the LAW or anything. Finally I buried my face between those thighs and went to town. I then fucked her, after donning a condom of course. I then taught her the finer points of giving a blowjob, stopping her before I actually came in her mouth because I wanted to fuck her again. I showed her the female superior position and she caught on quickly, finding that if she rubbed herself in a certain way, she could bring herself off.

"See," I told her, after I'd finally blown my second load into the condom. "You can do that with any guy and you don't have to rely on his skill in order to get yourself off. As long as you can keep him from coming for the length of time it takes you to rub yourself to orgasm on his cock, you can be satisfied."

Her naked, sweaty body was collapsed across mine, her ample tits pushing into my chest. My hand was idly stroking her firm ass. "But how," She asked. "Do I keep them from coming? I haven't done it with many people besides you, but every time I have, the guy comes in less than a minute or so."

"Suck him off first." I advised her, knowing that I was making some future lover very happy. "Use those tricks I taught you when you were sucking me. Take the load and then demand he eat your pussy. Tell him he gets nothing else if he doesn't return the favor."

"Wow." She whispered, her tongue licking at the sweat on my neck.

"While he eats you," I continued, feeling myself stirring again already. God the wonders of youth! "He'll get hard again, but it will take him longer to come since he'll have just done it. You should be able to keep him active long enough to give yourself a good come." I patted her ass, rolling her over and beginning to kiss her again. "Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She breathed, thrusting her tongue at me.

I went home mid-afternoon and fell fast asleep. My balls were aching in a very pleasant way; the way that tells you that they were happily overused. I'd taken a shower before leaving Debbie's house so I had little to do before my babysitting assignment that night. When I awoke I only had to put on fresh clothes, comb my hair and, of course, brush my teeth, expunging my mouth of the smell of teenaged pussy.

As I headed out the door Tracy was getting ready for her party. She was dressed in her tightest pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She smiled as I went by.

"Heading to Anita's?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "Have a good time tonight."

"I will." She said. "And thanks again."

"Anytime Trace." I replied, heading downstairs. "Anytime at all."

Anita was dressed in a red dress that showed off her natural attributes, her tits, nicely. Her chunky legs were covered with dark pantyhose. She saw me looking as I entered her house and blushed a little.

"You look VERY nice." I told her lecherously. "Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?"

She giggled like a teenager. "My presence is quite expected." She told me. "Besides, the kids are awake anyway."

I nodded. "Of course." I said, and turned to the kids, who were playing on the floor with a collection of Hot Wheels. They saw me and squealed, heading for me.

"But sometimes," Anita said thoughtfully. "A girl gets a little ill and has to come home early; say around nine o'clock."

"Really?" I asked, smiling, wondering if my dick could perform after my earlier session with Debbie.

"Really." She nodded and then turned to the kids. "Gimmee kisses." She told them. "Mommy's going bye-bye."

She returned at ten after nine, just after the kids had been put to bed. After brief inquiries about their health and well being, she walked over to me and took my hand. She traced her manicured nails over the back of it and then guided it under her dress, sliding it along over her nyloned thighs to the junction of her legs. I could feel dampness and musty heat emanating from her crotch.

"Do you feel how wet I am?" She asked, grinding her thighs together, pulling on my wrist to put pressure on her sensitive regions.

"Yeah." I nodded, my mouth drying a little.

"That's from thinking about you and all the things I'm gonna do to you tonight." She told me.

"Cool." I gasped.

"Why don't you take these pantyhose off of me?" She asked, kicking off her shoes. "I could use a little air."

I kneeled before her and pulled off her pantyhose, as requested, and, while she stood there before me, she threw the hem of her dress over my head. Her bare legs and crotch were directly before my face, the silky material of her dress billowing over my back. The smell under there was rich with musk; her pussy lips were oozing moisture. She widened her stance a little, spreading her legs and bringing her pussy near my mouth. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and pulled it forward, into her wetness.

I ate her to orgasm as she stood there, though her knees became quite wobbly as she came and she had to hold onto my shoulders for support. She then pushed me to my back on the floor and pulled my shoes from my feet and my pants and underwear from my body. She spread her dress around my hips and lowered herself onto my straining, very erect cock. Slowly she sank down upon me, engulfing me in her wet snatch and then pumping her hips up and down.

I must say that she gave me one of the best fucks I've ever had, before or after recycling. I wondered why her husband had divorced her. He couldn't have found someone better in bed. Better looking maybe, but not better in the sack.

I staggered home about ten-thirty that night and fell immediately into bed. My crotch was throbbing with the beat of my heart and my dick had a raw, used feeling to it. I had a smile on my face as I fell into sleep, thanking God for Mr. Li and for the fact that I hadn't been in a jovial mood that night and wished I was an Oscar Meyer wiener or something. Never in my life had I had so much sex in so short a period of time. And with three different girls too! My last thought was what tomorrow would bring.

It didn't bring much. My body was aching and sore. Since it was Sunday, the Lord's day after all, I spent the entire twenty-four hour period without leaving the house. It was a day of rest. There was school tomorrow.

The poor weather returned for Monday's walk to school. The temperature was in the thirties, the sky was cloudy and spat intermittent flurries of snow down upon Mike and I as we walked to school. Mike was telling me what a great kegger it had been on Friday and that I should have gone to the one on Saturday night as well.

"I'm tellin' you man, there was bitches everywhere." He proclaimed.

"Yeah?" I replied, brushing a snowflake out of my eye and pulling my hood tighter against the cutting wind.

"Fuck yeah." He said. "I met this bitch from Spokane High and we got all fucked up together. After a while we went off to the trees and she gave me a fuckin' blow job."

"A blow job huh?" I asked, as if interested, wondering if Mike had ever really been laid at all.

"Yeah," He leered. "She could suck start a Harley, I'm tellin' you. You shoulda come. I bet you coulda got laid too."

"I'm waiting for Miss Right." I told him.

He looked at me strangely for a moment and then, finally figuring it was a joke, started laughing.

I didn't laugh back and we walked on in silence. Mike bothered me. I knew the path that he was on but every attempt I made to even talk about steering him off of it had failed. I wanted to help him, to keep him from ending up a thirty-three year old loser living with his parents and never having held a job for more than a year in his life. Didn't he want to marry, have children, raise a family? Didn't he want what everyone else in the world did? Surely the life he would end up with was not what he desired, was it? But I had no idea how to even begin to steer him. His facade was of the tough, independent person, streetwise, never needing advice or help from anyone. How could you reach such a person? Especially when they'd spent their entire life as the superior member of the friendship. I was clueless and hoping that some answer would come to me. But the answer, for the moment, eluded me.

"Well look who's back." Mike said as we approached the school.

I looked where he was indicating and saw Richie Fairview standing with his cronies in their accustomed spot near the bike racks. The same spot where I'd engineered his downfall and his trip to the hospital. Even from this distance I could see he had a bandage on his nose. Though he had a heavy coat on I was reasonably sure that his chest was taped up beneath it. I'd felt a definite crunch when I'd kicked him the other day.

"Well well." I smiled, already turning that way.

"You gonna fuck him up again?" Mike asked, a little fear in his voice, but not as much as before.

"Only if he wants to go the hard way." I said, heading directly for him.

You have to understand that Richie was more than just Richie to me. He was the epitome of bullies, the sum of all large, stupid aggressors that had picked on me since grammar school. He encompassed bullies that would pick on me after Richie would eventually graduate or drop out or whatever. As a shy, easily malleable kid in school I'd been easy fodder for them throughout my school years. And they had left an impression that was deeper than I'd realized until I'd seen Richie on my first day back. Richie represented all bullies that had ever said an unkind word or had laid an unjust hand upon me. By besting him at his own game, I was besting demons that had helped shape my previous life. I intended to make him suffer, to bring him down as far as I could, to expose the lie that all bullies represented; that they were gods, unchallengable.

His friends tittered nervously as I approached, whispering some things to him, him nervously whispering some things back. The very fact that he was standing at the head of them despite his earlier defeat told me a lot. He'd undoubtedly told them that he was going to repay me for the sneak attack on him the first time. They were anxiously awaiting his revenge. I was pretty sure there would be no revenge. The Richies of the world don't generally think things through very carefully.

"Hey Dickwad!" I yelled directly at him when I was close enough. "How was the hospital?"

"Fuck you motherfucker!" He yelled, taking a few steps closer; again telling me volumes about his intentions. Had he been meaning to fight me, he would have waded right in. But he didn't. He took a few steps towards me, obviously hoping I'd cower and back down. When I didn't (and why he thought I would, after our last encounter is a mystery to me), he slowed down, his mind re-evaluating what his strategy was. In that moment I knew I'd won the confrontation.

"That's some pretty insulting shit you're talking." I told him conversationally, walking closer. "I suppose you think that your friends here are impressed by it." I shook my head sadly. "They're not. Talk is cheap faggot, action is where it's at. If you wanna impress your friends and restore your reputation as a badass you're simply gonna have to kick my ass. Isn't that what you told them you were gonna do?"

"I AM gonna kick your fuckin' ass!" He roared, taking a tentative step forward.

I laughed. "Are you now?" I asked. "Well go ahead and do it." I made a 'come-on' gesture with my fingers. "Kick my ass. Let's see you do it."

He stood still, his face fuming, infuriated with shame and anger. He wanted to, that was obvious, but he also remembered what had happened last time.

"I'm waiting." I said impatiently. "When are you gonna kick my ass? It's sitting here right in front of you. Start kicking."

He remained motionless, his body trembling with rage, rage I was oh so pleased to see. This was even more satisfying than besting him in the first place.

"Yeah." He finally said. "So you can rat me out and have me arrested or something."

"Oh please." I scoffed. "Having someone rat you out never bothered you before. Why don't you just admit it? You're scared of me. You wouldn't take a swing at me if I dropped my hands and closed my eyes, would you? It HURTS to get the shit kicked out of you, doesn't it? It's an experience you don't care to repeat, is it? You know that if you take a swing at me, or make any move at all towards me, you're gonna be riding in an ambulance again, don't you?"

"Fuck you!" He yelled, near tears now, on the brink of collapse.

I shook my head again. His friends were staring at him, nervous fear in their faces.

I spat, the wad landing on his shoe. "You fuckin' disgust me." I told him. "If you want to fight you come and find me." I said. "We'll have ourselves a fight. But keep in mind, that if you start any of your 'fuck you' and 'I'm gonna kick your ass' bullshit with me again, I'm not gonna be so generous. Like I said, talk is cheap. If you want some action, look me up.

If you don't want some action, keep your fuckin' mouth closed when you see me."

I turned my back to him and walked into the school, Mike in tow. I knew I had nothing to fear by turning my back to him. I knew it.

Lunchtime. In my previous life I'd always eaten pretty much alone since Mike had a different lunch schedule than I. But now I found myself the center of some attention. People kept coming up to me, just wanting to talk about this and that. I was becoming popular I realized, not sure I liked it. And again, I was thirty-two years old, not fifteen. The conversation I was offered was not terribly stimulating.

After only five minutes the combination of the cold and the endless litany of pussy stories, car stories, or drug stories drove me inside to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was the domain of the preppie students, those college bound overachievers. The air was warm and scented with the aroma of spaghetti. It was filled with the babble of conversations and the clanking of plastic trays on simulated wood grain tables.

I stood near the doorway surveying the scene, seeing the gathering of cliques at various tables, trying to find a place to sit down. Many of the students in there were those that were in my classes. They'd always ignored me since I wasn't quite one of them and I had no desire to strike up friendships with them now. With burrito and soda in hand I scanned around the room and finally locked onto a solitary figure sitting by herself near the back of the room.

It was Nina Blackmore, the future emergency room doctor. Like always, she was by herself, eating out of her tray and reading a book. Nina, in addition to being a high school classmate, had been a junior high and grammar school classmate as well. She'd appeared at our school when I was in the third grade, a new student from somewhere or other. That, in combination with a lisp that she'd had at that time had doomed her to the role of unpopularity. She'd been the butt of jokes since forever, although they'd been particularly bad in grammar school. Third, fourth, and fifth graders can be unusually cruel to kids who were somewhat different.

I myself was as guilty of this as everyone else. I'd done my time chanting teasing rhymes at her back then, deriding her, calling her ugly, making fun of her lisp in as cruel ways as fourth grade minds could conceive. Though she'd gone to speech therapy until well into junior high and lisped no more, the damage was done to her. She was an outsider, belonging to no clique, doomed to be by herself until probably college where she would show up the vast majority of her classmates by working her way into a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year job.

But even then the mark of her school years would be forever upon her. I would know her as a paramedic, would frequently transport patients to the emergency room where she was employed. She would have a reputation as a cold hearted, vindictive bitch among the paramedics and nurses that she dealt with. She was the kind of doctor that would question a paramedic or RN's every decision, no matter what the outcome of the patient. And she'd always reserved her most scathing comments for me. I'd always known that this was because I'd gone to school with her and had once, in grammar school, been one of her tormentors.

A typical example of her wrath is something that occurred nearly a year before my recycling, on a frigid January day. I'd been dispatched to a call for a child with seizures in a middle class section of the city. Child seizure calls are generally nothing that gets paramedics terribly excited. Usually the child either has a history of seizures or is having them because of a high fever. Seizures are not usually life threatening.

However, when I walked into the house that day with my partner and the crew from a Spokane Fire Department engine company, I took one look at the kid in question and knew that I was dealing with something more than a seizure call. The kid, who looked to be about ten years old, was lying on the carpet near the sofa. His skin was blue; as blue as a police uniform, and he was not breathing. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, bugging out. He was lying still.

There was a brief second of pause while we all clicked into 'this is really an emergency' mode. And then every eye in the room (except for the kid) turned to me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

"Start bagging him." I barked to one of the firefighters and she rushed into action, opening their bag and pulled out the equipment.

I kneeled down next to the kid and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but it was weak and very slow. What the hell was going on? I'd wondered, trying to think. Ten year olds did not just suddenly collapse and die from a seizure. There was something I was missing.

The mother was, understandably enough, absolutely hysterical but, while I opened up my airway bag and began setting up to put in a breathing tube, she was able to tell me that she'd heard a strange noise and had entered the room to find her son seizing on the couch. It had gone on for a considerable time and then he'd simply stopped just before we'd arrived. His breathing hadn't started again. She told me he had no known medical problems. He'd had no fever, had in fact been perfectly fine when she'd talked to him less than ten minutes before she found him seizing.

While I pulled out my breathing tube and a laryngoscope, a lighted instrument used to peer down someone's throat prior to placing the tube, the firefighter began bagging the child, forcing air down his throat and into his lungs. While she did this my partner had hooked the child up to our EKG machine. I took a quick glance at the reading. His heart was only beating thirty times a minute and was slowing further with each passing beat. What the hell?

The firefighter that was bagging seemed to be having trouble. "The air won't go in." She told me. "It just blows out the side."

Armed with that information I took another look around the room. The television was on, tuned to a cartoon show. A half-eaten hot-dog was sitting on a plate on the coffee table. The light bulb suddenly went off above my head.

"Was he eating?" I asked the mother.

"Yes." She sobbed, wringing her hands. "I'd just given him his lunch."

"Shit." I muttered, everything falling into place.

"Stop bagging him and let me in there." I told the firefighter. She stepped aside and I picked up my laryngoscope. Lying on the floor near his head I inserted the blade into his mouth and lifted the tongue out of the way. A lightbulb on the end of the blade illuminated his airway for me. It was blocked solid by a chunk of pink hot dog.

"Matt, give me the Magills." I told my partner.

He slapped a long set of forceps into my hand, an instrument designed specifically for removing foreign objects from airways. I'd never used them before, true choking calls are rare, but they worked just exactly as I'd been promised. I grabbed the chunk of meat and pulled it free, revealing his vocal cords and trachea behind it. I gave him a second to see if he would start breathing on his own. When he didn't, I picked up the breathing tube and slid it through his vocal cords. The firefighter attached her bag to the top of the tube and began forcing pure oxygen down into his lungs.

By the time I got the tube secured his skin had pinked up considerably and his heart rate had increased to more than a hundred. By the time we loaded him into the back of the ambulance his eyes were open and he was gagging violently, no doubt upset to wake up and find a large tube in his throat. By the time we got to the hospital I'd been forced to remove the tube and he was breathing well on his own. He was a little confused and dopey but awake and able to talk. When we brought him in to Nina's emergency room I was positively glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done, convinced that out of all the times I'd been needlessly called, for once I'd actually been NEEDED.

And what did Nina, the good doctor have to say to me after she heard the progression of the call?

"You're supposed to try abdominal thrusts on an unconscious choking victim before you resort to the Magills." She said icily. "Did you miss that part of the class back in ambulance driver school?"

She actually wrote me up for this, making me answer to our county emergency medical services authority. I was given a written reprimand in my file for failing to try a less invasive method of clearing the airway first. The medical director, to give him credit, was at least apologetic as I signed it. He mumbled something about how the ends don't justify the means and then explained that "certain doctors" seemed to have a problem with the whole world.

Though I'd been pissed at her, she'd after all turned one of the high points of my career into a disciplinary procedure, I'd understood even then that I was partially responsible for what had happened. I understood even better looking at her now in the cafeteria, sitting alone and reading a book while she picked at a plate of cafeteria spaghetti. After all, the experience with Richie was fresh on my mind. Had what she'd done been much different than what I'd done? We'd both attacked visible symbols of past torment. We'd both given in to basic human nature.

Was it too late for Nina? I wondered, looking at her. Was the damage to her already done?

I took a deep breath and headed her way.

"Okay if I sit here?" I asked her when I arrived.

She looked up at me with suspicion plain in her eyes, perhaps wondering if I'd come to renew the teasing she'd been so familiar with in grade school. While waiting for an answer I looked at her, marveling over the power of suggestion. Nina had been called ugly since the third grade. It was an accepted fact among everyone that she WAS ugly. But the funny thing is, that she really wasn't. She was skinny and had small breasts; a late bloomer as I've mentioned before. Her face was without any make-up but it was smooth and actually sort of pretty. Her brown hair was unstyled but looked just like everyone else's hair all the same. She was called ugly and probably felt ugly because we'd all agreed back in third grade that she WAS ugly.

It was also assumed that she was dumb, a natural conclusion based on the fact that she never said anything to anybody. It had been assumed of me on my first trip through school too. Obviously she was far from dumb. One did not make it through four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency if one lacked intelligence. Could there be meaningful conversation here perhaps? I saw the book she was reading, 1984 by Orwell, a very deep book.

"Please?" I asked again, "I won't bite you."

Her eyes softened a little, as if to say that she was reserving judgment for the moment. "Sure." She finally said.

I took the bench across from her, setting down my food, drink, and napkin. "That's a good book." I offered, nodding at the cover. "I've read it quite a few times. Very thought provoking."

She nodded, not saying anything, keeping her eyes firmly on the page. Suspicion was radiating off of her in waves. Maybe it was too late, I wondered.

"Its also," I went on, "The most depressing book I've ever read. Is this your first time reading it?"

"No." She said softly. "I've read it five or six times."

"Then you probably know what I mean." I said. "I mean the thought that everything is controlled. Everything. The entire war is just a production to keep the masses from bettering themselves. The entire writings of history are rearranged on a regular basis to control the way people think. Even the resistance doesn't really exist. When you get to the point that they are captured and you find out that they'd been known about the entire time." I shook my head. "It's just a depressing thought, a depressing book.

But also one of my favorites."

She was looking at me now, confusion and a little curiosity shaping her features. "It's one of my favorite books too." She said carefully, as if expecting me to start laughing at her or speaking in a fake lisp.

"Have you ever thought," I said, "That all of that stuff in 1984 could actually be happening now? That we, as proles, wouldn't even realize it? I mean, think about it, with today's technology how hard would it be to re-write history, or to control the media, or to keep track of everyone?"

"Not very hard at all." She said, putting the book down for the first time. Careful interest was visible now. "Sometimes I swear that it's really happening to some degree or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm sure most intelligent people know that you can't possibly know what's REALLY going on, how things REALLY work. I'm pretty certain that they don't really work the way we're taught in government class though."

She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth. Strange I'd never noticed that before. Probably because I'd never seen her smile before. I wondered if anyone else had.

We continued to talk about 1984 and other books by Orwell. The only other one that I'd read was Animal Farm but she'd read them all. She explained the basic plots of them and the underlying message with animated clarity. Once she started talking to me I found her conversation intelligent and her insights well thought out. I almost forgot that I was talking to a teenager. Before I realized it lunch was over and it was time to head for the next class.

"Nice talking to you Nina," I told her with frank honesty as I stood.

"Thank you." She squeaked, her face blushing, her eyes confused.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." I told her and smiled. "It's nice to talk to someone who thinks like you do, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'll be here tomorrow if you want to, you know, talk some more."

"I'd like that." I said, giving her a wave and heading for the door.

I was cheerful as I walked alone through the crowded halls, making my way through kids in groups, heading for driver's education. I was thinking that maybe Nina could be softened a little bit after all, and I'd truly enjoyed talking to her. What was that they said, still waters run deep? It seemed that was true in her case. If only I could figure out a way to reach Mike. If only meaningful conversation could be the key to derailing him from his path.

My thoughts were sidetracked as I found myself walking behind Richie Fairview. He was with two of his cronies and was trying, in his idiotic way, to strike up a conversation with a group of cheerleaders that were walking the same direction. The cheerleaders were trying there best to ignore the trio of thugs and Richie, deciding to up the ante a little, began reaching for their skirts, trying pull them up.

At the sight of this all of my anger at Richie and bullies in general came flooding back. He didn't know I was behind him but he was about to find out. I kicked out my foot, catching his back leg just as he was stepping forward. He stumbled forward and crashed to the hallway floor, scraping up his elbows and hands and sending up a chorus of delighted giggles and laughter from the cheerleaders.

Richie rolled over and jumped to his feet in an instant, his fists raised, an obscene epitaph on his lips. And then he saw who had tripped him. He stopped.

"You oughtta be more careful asshole." I told him conversationally, continuing to walk by. "You can get hurt falling down around here."

I didn't look back at him, just continued to walk down the hall towards my class. Behind me the cheerleaders were still chuckling. I wasn't attacked from behind. I knew I wouldn't be. A smile was on my face as I found the right classroom and went about the task of learning to drive a car.

The next day as Mike and I entered the school there was no Richie Fairview positioned out front, nor were there any of his goon squad. It seemed they'd finally learned the lesson. So I'd succeeded in clearing out a threat to helpless freshmen and sophomores everywhere. Richie would probably fade into joking obscurity, I figured, robbed of his most potent weapon, his reputation. In a way I was somewhat disappointed. I had actually been kind of looking forward to another confrontation with the dumb slob.

Oh well, there were plenty more bullying assholes I could deal with. I was actually starting to see myself as some sort of superhero, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, battling the forces of evil, my very name revered by all. I wondered if I could force Richie to start paying back the kids he'd ripped off. I could picture it, ordering him to give a dollar a day to every kid he'd ever robbed. And if he ever gave them any shit, they could come to the GREAT BILLY for help and justice.

I was standing at my locker, Mike beside me, running these amusing thoughts through my brain when my instinct alerted me to danger. Perhaps it was my peripheral vision, catching just a glimpse of a dark figure moving towards me, maybe it was my ears, hearing the advance of a footstep, perhaps it was some sort of sixth sense, but suddenly all of the instincts I'd developed from my years on the streets told me something was coming from behind me. I reacted quickly, but not quickly enough.

I turned, raising my hands into a defensive posture just as Richie Fairview swung at me. I raised my arm to protect my head, automatically assuming that's where he would strike me. Because of that the blow that was aimed at my body struck home, hitting on my left flank and driving the wind from me. My first thought upon being struck was that it hurt, but that it wasn't that bad. I was still standing and it was time to play some catch-up.

His right hand pulled away from my body and prepared to move forward for another blow. I stepped forward and grabbed at his wrist just as he started the second swing. I caught his wrist neatly in my hands and started to pull it forward, intending to spin him around and push him against the lockers where I could batter his vulnerable back and kidney region. Maybe I could put the fucker into renal failure. But as I started the maneuver that would have put this plan into motion I looked down for an instant at his hand, the one I was holding.

The hand wasn't empty. There was a buck knife in it. The blade, which was about five inches long, was stained with blood.

The implications of this hit me immediately. I'd been stabbed in the abdomen! How bad was it?

Mike, noticing at about the same time as I did that Richie was playing for keeps, stepped behind him and threw his arm around Richie's neck, choking him, pulling him off balance. His other arm pulled at the knife hand, keeping it well away from me. The priority of the battle had just changed. The goal was no longer to beat the crap out of Richie, it was to get the knife out of his hands and end the confrontation as quickly as possible. I'd been stabbed!

I saw the best way to do it right before me. Richie, off balance and struggling against Mike had his legs spread wide in an attempt to keep his feet beneath him. I let go of the wrist, trusting Mike to keep the knife away from me and stepped forward, bringing my knee up into his crotch with all the force I could muster. I kneed him so hard that pain went shooting up my leg from my kneecap.

Richie squealed so loud that I'm surprised nearby windows didn't break. He began choking and gagging, the knife dropping forgotten from his hand, clattering on the cement floor of the hall. Mike, seeing the knife drop, kicked it clear and then let go of Richie, who dropped to the ground in a most ungraceful manner, curling immediately up into a ball. He began vomiting.

I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.

"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.

"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.

"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?

"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.

"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!

"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.

"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.

"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"

"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"

"What are you… "

"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."

"But who… "

"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"

That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.

The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.

But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.

But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?

As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."

"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.

"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"

"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."

The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."

A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.

"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.

I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.

"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."

Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?

Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.

"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."

Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?

"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"

"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."

It took me a few minutes to come fully awake and they gave me some Demerol to take the edge off my various pains. A doctor filled me in. Apparently the knife had severed a couple of minor veins but other than that, had touched nothing important. My spleen, kidney, and lung were all fine. My large and small intestines were fine. I was, in short, very lucky, suffering little more than a flesh wound. I would be kept in the hospital overnight for observation and released the next morning. After a week or so of taking it easy, I could go back to school. He then suggested I stay away from knives.

"You're parents and your sister are outside." He told me. "But before they come in the police would like to speak with you for a few minutes."

"Okay." I told him, nodding, examining the catheter protruding from beneath the sheets with distaste. How long until they took it out?

The police officer was older. I didn't recognize him. Probably he'd retired before I made my debut on the streets of Spokane where I would, over time, get to know most of them on a first-name basis. He was wearing a uniform that would be changed in a few years and carrying a thirty-eight in his holster, a gun that would be exchanged for nine millimeters soon. He looked me up and down for a moment, his gaze telling me that he'd seen it all and heard it all. I was familiar with the gaze. I'd acquired it myself.

"So Billy," He said, opening a notebook. "Suppose you tell me what happened today?"

I knew what he was expecting. He was expecting me to say that I had no idea who had done this to me or why. That I hadn't so much as caught a glimpse of the person responsible. That I couldn't identify them in a line-up. In short, he expected me to act like a typical teenaged victim.

"Well officer Morgan," I said, reading his nametag. "I was stabbed by a kid named Richard Fairview."

"Really?" He said, looking at me.

"Really." I nodded. "He came up behind me at my locker and just as I turned around, he stuck a buck knife in my side. I fought back and managed to keep myself from getting stabbed twice. In fact, I kneed the motherfucker so hard in the balls that I think I dislocated my knee in the process."

Officer Morgan chuckled. "Well well." He said. "This is different. So tell me, why did Mr. Fairview stab you?"

"Because he's a piece of shit thug and I've been screwing with him for the last few days."

"Screwing with him?" He asked, making a notation on his pad.

"I'm sure you've got reports of his little trip to the hospital the other day." I said. "He's a shake-down artist at the high school, ripping off kids as they come in. Perhaps your department has had dealings with him before?"

"Oh yes." Morgan nodded, looking at me as if he was seeing an optical illusion. "We have quite a file on Mr. Fairview. Are you telling me you sent him to the hospital the other day? Because if you are, I think you might want to get your parents in here and have me advise you of your rights. What happened to the gentleman the other day was a felonious assault."

"He tried to rip me off." I said. "And when I refused to give him money he tried to assault me. I simply took defensive measures. Very stern defensive measures."

"I see." The cop nodded, looking at me now with something like respect. "Please go on."

"Well, after that I've been making a point to tease him every time I see him." I shrugged. "I guess I went a bit too far and he decided to take action."

"That's a delicate way of putting it." He said. "It's hard to believe a little guy like you did all of that damage to that big asshole."

"I know a little karate." I said. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." The cop said. "I ran your record and Fairview's record while I was waiting to interview you. Fairview has got multiple arrests for everything from assault to drugs to attempted rape. He's a pukebag in the making. You, on the other hand, come from a middle-class family, have no arrest record whatsoever, in fact you're not in our system at all. All of the witnesses, and there was a surprising amount willing to talk about this thing, say that Fairview came up from behind and struck you with the knife and that you were acting in complete self-defense. Your friend Mike confirms your story. Fairview's story is among the most ridiculous I've ever heard. He says that you attacked him with the knife as he walked by, he took it away from you and stabbed you in self-defense." The cop gave me a sly smile. "He's a couple of rooms over you know."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yep." Morgan nodded with satisfaction plainly visible on his face. "Don't tell anyone I told you but you seem trustworthy. The docs say he might lose those testicles, you got him THAT hard. Even if he don't lose 'em, it's doubtful that he'll ever have kids." The cop looked to the heavens. "Imagine that, that little shitbag won't get to breed more little assholes. Goddamit sometimes there IS justice in this fucked-up world." He gazed at me. "So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write up your story pretty much as you told it. But I would suggest highly that you profess ignorance to the little incident the other day. You're the only one that's told me about it. Even Fairview himself didn't mention it. So, to avoid complications, how about we just leave that little tidbit out of the story? Makes things much easier for everyone. You don't know WHY he attacked you by your locker, he just did. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed, fascinated by the way he was talking to me.

"Good." Morgan nodded. "I'm gonna charge him with assault with a deadly weapon. In light of his previous record he'll get a year or so in juvie. It goes without saying that he'll be expulsed from school. So congratulations hero. You got rid of one first class, A-number one dirtbag.

I might put you in for a goddam public service award."

He took another twenty minutes or so to interview me thoroughly about the incident. He thanked me again and then left the room. A few minutes later my parents came in with Tracy in tow. Mom looked as if she'd been crying. So did Tracy I saw. Even Dad looked as if he'd aged since I'd seen him that morning. I felt sorrow and shame for having put them through this ordeal.

"Billy?" Mom said, coming forward and stroking my hair.

"Yeah Mom?" I asked. "I'm all right, really."

She gulped. "This isn't because of, well, drugs is it?"

So that is how I spent the one-week anniversary of my recycling in a hospital bed. They kept me doped up throughout the night but I still found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to the fact that I'd been stabbed in this life but that I hadn't been stabbed in my previous life. The implications of that were starkly frightening. I was not invulnerable. All bets were off. I could just as easily be killed here as I could have in my own when. I could die before I turned thirty-two!

Since I'd come back and changed things from their natural order anything could now happen. Anything. The risks I'd taken so far now gave me the shivers. Riding in Raisin and later Mike's car without a seatbelt on with an intoxicated driver at the wheel. Playing games with dangerous bullies at school. Even playing mind games with my teachers. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have really thought that I was safe? Had I actually been thinking of myself as a superhero before Richie had struck me?

I made my second solemn vow since returning. I vowed that I would be careful. I was having too much fun to die.

"Are you SURE you'll be okay Billy?" Mom asked me for perhaps the fiftieth time. "We can still cancel our plans."

"No, no Mom." I insisted once more. "I'm healing up just fine. I get to go back to school on Monday. Really, I'll be fine."

It was Saturday night. I'd been home from the hospital for a week and a half, bored out of my mind, unable to leave the house or do much of anything besides lie in bed and let my wounds heal. Mom had taken off work to take care of me and had fawned over me for the past nine days. I had soup and sandwiches delivered to me in bed, I had sodas brought to me whenever I wished. I was surprised I was allowed to go to the bathroom by myself. I love my mother dearly, I really do, but after nine days she was starting to get on my nerves. Saturday night was the night of her company's annual awards banquet, an event that she and dad attended every year and would usually come home from in the wee hours of the morning in a cab they were so drunk. The last thing in the world I wanted was for them to stay home. I needed a little peace.

"Well," She said doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely Mom." I nodded from the couch. "Besides, Tracy's here." I nodded in my sister's direction. "If there are any problems, she can handle them."

"Yeah Mom." Tracy readily agreed, too readily some would say. "I can take care of him."

She seemed satisfied. She headed upstairs and began to get ready. Two hours later her and Dad were out the door.

"Thank God!" Tracy said once their car had disappeared from sight. "How the hell could you stand it having her home all the time?"

"Mom's all right." I said. "It's just parental authority that gets old."

She smiled, not bothering with THE LOOK. By now Tracy was used to my odd sayings. "Whatever." She said. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course." I told her, offended that she felt the need to even ask that.

"Cindy scored some killer buds." Tracy told me. "She's gonna bring 'em over and we're gonna get stoned while we watch Saturday Night Live. If you can keep your mouth shut, maybe she'll share with you."

I smiled, knowing that I'd made great progress with my sister since returning. I'd never even been aware that she smoked grass in my previous life. Now she was offering to get stoned with me. Sure, it wasn't exactly a blood oath of loyalty, but it was a start. "Suppose I told you I COULDN'T keep my mouth shut." I asked. "What would you do then?"

She gaped at me for a moment and then laughed. "You're an asshole Billy." She said, shaking her head. "Do you want to get stoned or not? I've never done it with you before, you should think of it as a privilege."

"It sounds like a plan Trace." I said. "And it is a privilege."

Cindy came over at nine o'clock. She was wearing the obligatory tight 501's and a sweater that accented her pert tits nicely. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled. My loins stirred at the first sight of her, my dick threatening to harden by visual stimulation alone. I'd found over the past week that, injuries aside, my libido was that of a fifteen-year old. I NEEDED to have an orgasm at least once a day. I seemed to go into physical withdrawal symptoms if I didn't. I'd jacked off so much there were actual abrasions on my dick. And Cindy had been a star player in many of the fantasies.

I was heartened by the fact that, after a quick greeting to Tracy, she rushed over to my spot on the couch and planted herself next to me. My dick stirred again as I smelled the scent of her perfume. It was heavy upon her skin but it was feminine and went right to my brain.

"You poor thing." She said with syrupy sympathy. "How are you doing?"

I smiled. "Everything that's important still works." I told her.

She giggled. "I guess Richie Fairview can't say the same." She replied. "Can I see where you got stabbed?"

"Sure." I told her, while Tracy stared in disbelief at her friend. I raised up my shirt, showing her the jagged wound. The stitches had been removed leaving only a healing line on my side. A similar wound, where they'd done the lavage, was just below my belly button.

"Ohhh." She crooned, looking at it. "You poor thing. Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad." I told her.

"Well here." She said, kissing her finger and then touching it to my bare skin, just atop the scar. "That'll make it better."

My flesh jumped at her touch, feeling the slight wetness of her saliva transferred from her fingertips to my side.

"You missed one." I told her, pointing at the surgical incision. She gave me another smile and then repeated the procedure for that one.

"Hope that makes them feel better." She said, eyeing the bulge in my sweat pants.

"It does." I assured her. "It really does."

Tracy seemed in shock as she watched her friend openly flirting with me. When they walked into the kitchen to fill the bong with water I saw a quick, whispered conversation that ended with Tracy glancing at me and then shaking her head in disbelief. I was in disbelief as well but fully prepared to take advantage of the situation. Why was Cindy acting this way with me when she'd treated me with quiet contempt before? I didn't really care but I was curious.

"You like to smoke buds?" Cindy asked me as she pulled a small baggie from her pocket.

"I LOVE it." I told her, staring into her eyes hard enough to make her blush.

Tracy looked at us uncomfortably.

She began loading up the bong, which I insisted, in the interests of safety, that we take out into the garage to smoke from. I knew that the smell of pot lingered in a room for hours and I'd recently learned very graphically that all bets were now off. I was being careful. The girls whined a little at my suggestion but finally agreed to it. So we got stoned amid my father's tools and boxes of motor oil, in the unheated garage where we could see our breath misting into the air.

"Now don't you feel safe?" I asked the two of them once we were back inside.

"If Mom and Dad come home unexpectedly now, all we have to worry about is pretending we're not stoned. We don't have to worry about them smelling it in the house."

"Mom and Dad never come home early." Tracy scoffed, taking a swig from a Coke. "You're just paranoid Billy."

"Tracy," I told her. "If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's to expect and plan for the unexpected. Sure, they probably won't come home early tonight, but it's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? If you work to eliminate all risks you'll usually be pretty safe. If you go through life assuming the worst will never happen, someday you're gonna get fucked." I stared directly at her as I said this and it was clear she got my message. Her arms broke out into visible gooseflesh and she trembled uneasily for a second.

"I guess you're right Bill." She allowed carefully, no doubt thinking about the conversation I'd had with her not too long ago.

"That's some pretty deep shit." Cindy said, scooting herself a little closer to me. "Is there anything to eat here?"

While Tracy was heating up some frozen burritos in the microwave, Cindy and I continued to sit on the couch.

"So where's your boyfriend tonight?" I asked her.

"You mean Jeff?" She shook her head and made a sour face. "I'm not going out with him anymore. He's an asshole."

"I could've told you that." I said.

"I made out with him a few times and he was telling everyone he was screwing me. Do guys really think that we won't hear about it when they say shit like that?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure what they think." I replied. "I think that 'think' is probably too strong a word for what they do. It seems to me that girls should stick to a general rule when deciding who they are going to, well, have fun with."

"Oh?" She asked perkily.

"The more a guy talks about having gotten pussy, the less pussy he's actually got. Now Jeff probably told you he'd screwed plenty of girls, right?"

"Oh yeah." She said. "As if that's going to impress us."

"Exactly. On the other hand, the guys that never tell pussy stories are usually the ones getting all the pussy. You see, they are smart enough to realize that discretion is the better part of valor. It's a pleasant cycle.

You don't talk about it, you get more of it, you get better at it. Your best lovers are gonna be those guys that have never told a pussy story in their life."

"Like you?" She asked, twirling a lock of her hair with her finger.

"Perhaps." I agreed. "But of course there's only one true way to find out how good someone is in bed."

"Really?" Cindy smiled. "And what is that?"

"Extensive personal research." I told her, letting my fingertip glide over the back of her hand. "Do you like to research?"

Tracy's return kept her from replying. She had plates of burritos and fresh cokes in her hands. Her eyes saw my fingertip caressing Cindy's hand and she shot another puzzled look at her friend. I could understand the source of her confusion. Cindy had always gone for the football player types. The good looking, rich boys from good families, and always older than her. Now she was shamelessly flirting with ME, her brother, who was not only not rich, not a football player, and not blessed with the rugged good looks of a Ken doll, but was two years younger than her as well. To Tracy it was probably as if the fabric of existence had suddenly developed a tear.

I got up to go take a leak (and to adjust my hard-on a little, it was bent at an uncomfortable angle). When I returned I could see that the two girls had been discussing something. Cindy was batting her eyes at me and Tracy was staring at me, as if she was seeing a completely different person.

When Cindy got up to go pee a few minutes later, Tracy waited until the bathroom door was closed and then turned to me almost angrily. "Do you know what Cindy told me?" She asked.

"What?" I said mildly.

"She heard that you screwed Steph Massie over by the falls last week. Is that true?"

"No." I shook my head. "We took a walk is all that happened. Talked a little. I was trying to get somewhere with her but she wouldn't go for it."

"That's not what Cindy heard." Tracy accused.

"Oh?" I asked. "And what did Cindy hear? And what does she care about Steph anyway? They don't exactly hang out together."

Tracy scowled at me. "Who do you think Cindy got the buds from you idiot? Everyone knows that Stephanie's brother is the biggest pot dealer in school."

"Oh," I paused, reaching back in my memory. Now that she mentioned it I DID remember that little piece of trivia. "Well, what did she hear?"

"Steph told her that you took her into the woods and gave her the best lay she's ever had." Tracy shook her head in disgust. "And believe me, that bitch has had quite a few lays. Did you really fuck her?"

"No." I said. "I didn't."

"Well why would she be telling people that you did?"

I shrugged. "She's just telling dick stories. You know how women are always doing that."

"Dick stories?" Tracy asked. "Girls do NOT tell dick stories!"

"Tracy," I finally asked. "What possible concern is this of yours?"

"What?"

"Why are you grilling me about this? What business is it of yours?"

"Because Cindy thinks you're some kind of great lover and she wants to, you know? That's why!"

"Wouldn't that be Cindy's business?" I asked.

"I just think she should know the truth." Tracy said indignantly.

"Okay. Tell her. Get her alone and tell her that I said I've never fucked Steph or anyone else. Tell her I'll deny fucking anyone, anywhere, at any time to my dying day. I'll go to my deathbed swearing that I'm a virgin." I smiled. "Maybe that will get her to back off."

Tracy opened her mouth to say something and then stopped, staring at me, her mind turning over what I'd just said. Her exasperation with me slowly turned into something else. It was the same change of expression I'd seen on the cop's face in the hospital. The expression became one of respect.

"You see Trace." I continued. "I might TRY to get somewhere with Cindy tonight. I might even get her to come to my room with me. But I won't get anywhere with her. Even if we're up there for an hour. Even if Cindy comes down and tells you I fucked the shit out of her, that I was the best lover she'd ever had, it would only be a lie. I will never get anywhere with anyone to hear me tell it. I guess I'm doomed to just keep trying forever and ever."

"Wow." Tracy whispered, in awe. "Do you know anyone else like you?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, no." I replied. "All of the guys I know get pussy all the time. I should know, they tell me about it."

"A shame." She commented as the bathroom door opened and Cindy emerged again.

"Have you guys been talking about me?" She giggled, seeing the serious expressions on our faces.

"No." We both answered together.

"We were just talking about brother/sister stuff." Tracy added.

We went out to the garage and smoked a few more bowls. When we resumed our places on the couch, Cindy proclaimed she was cold and asked if there was a blanket we could cover up with. Tracy retrieved a large blue comforter from the linen closet and threw it over us. Under the cover of the cover I went to work.

While we watched TV my hand found its way to the tight denim of Cindy's leg.

I caressed it for a few minutes and, when she didn't object, began to slide it upward. My fingers slowly traced over the material between her legs and continued to the waistband. I deftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of her jeans and slid my finger in the gap this created, the pad of my finger touching the soft skin of her lower stomach. She settled into the couch a little more, opening her legs for me.

I undid the rest of the buttons and slowly slid my hand into her jeans, my fingertips gliding over the silky material of her panties, staying on the outside of them. I probed further down while she spread her legs even wider. Beneath my hand I could feel the cushion of her pubic hair and, further down, the outline of her lips and dampness seeping through the cotton. I found the spot just below her clit and began to apply pressure, rocking my hand back and forth.

Though I kept my eyes on the television and my face expressionless, I heard definite change in Cindy's breathing pattern as I caressed her. I wondered if she'd ever been stimulated like this before. Probably not. The first instinct of a guy when getting his hands down a girls pants is to drive his finger into the pussy and thrust it back and forth. Now there's a time for doing that of course, but the beginning stages of foreplay are not it. Females like a slow build-up to passion, a gradual rise in excitement.

Cindy's hand came sliding across my lap. Her fingers closed around the bulge of my cock through my sweat pants, feeling the length. She gave a little coo as she felt me and I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. She was, to my pleasant surprise, pretty good at what she was doing. My dick was straining, eager for release and the touch of a female hand upon it felt heavenly.

Next to us, Tracy continued to stare at the television, either oblivious to what we were doing or pretending to be. It didn't really matter. I slid my hand upward a few inches and then let my fingers slide beneath the waist of Cindy's panties. My fingertips felt soft, feminine skin and then kinky, curly hair. I continued downward, having to push harder now, until my fingers were sliding across wetness and slippery warmth. My middle finger curled downward, sliding between an unseen set of lips that gripped eagerly back.

"Ahhh!" Cindy uttered, jumping a little at the contact.

Tracy glanced over at her, a knowing expression on her face. "You okay Cindy?" She asked sweetly.

"Yeah." Cindy answered, a little breathlessly. "Just a, Oooh," She shivered a little as I began to move my finger, "A hiccup."

"I should get those kind of hiccups." Tracy commented and then went back to the TV.

Soon her hand crept under the waist of my sweats and was digging through my underwear. Her cool, soft fingertips closed around my shaft and began to glide up and down. It felt great, to be gripped by a hand other than my own, but she was doing it with such enthusiasm that the comforter was noticeably rising up and down. Tracy couldn't have helped but see it, though she said nothing and pretended not to notice. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist and forced her to slow down a little.

I continued to finger her, feeling my hand get wet from her juices, feeling her jack my aching cock up and down. I was trying to think of a way to get her up to my room when I received help from an unexpected source.

"TV sucks." Tracy suddenly proclaimed. "It's more than an hour until Saturday Night Live comes on. Let's listen to some music."

"Uh, okay." I nodded, not caring if she wanted to put on a polka album at that point.

"You just bought the new Foreigner album a few weeks ago, didn't you?" She asked me.

I looked at her. Had I? I supposed I had if she'd brought it up. "Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Well why don't you go up and get it for us?" Tracy asked. "I've been dying to hear it."

"Uh, why don't you go get it?" I asked.

"I don't want to go in your room." Tracy explained, smiling. "How about you get it. Maybe Cindy can go help you look for it. She can pick out some of your other albums that she wants to listen to later." She turned to Cindy. "He's got a great collection."

"Okay." Cindy said immediately, her hand shooting out of my sweats so fast it was like it had never been there. She extricated my hand from her pants and buttoned back up, making no particular effort to hide what she was doing from Tracy. When her pants were fastened she stood up. "C'mon Billy, let's see your albums."

"And take your time." Tracy said. "Look at them all REAL carefully while you make your decision."

"You bet." Cindy said, heading for the stairs. She looked over at me, "You coming Billy?"

I looked at her seductive smile and started to rise, stopping when I realized that my sweats were probably poking out before me.

"Well Billy?" Tracy asked, looking at me. "Are you COMING?"

I looked in my sister's eyes and saw only amusement there. "Yeah." I said, throwing off the covers and standing up. Tracy's eyes dropped to the tent at my crotch.

"Looks like you dropped something in there." She smiled. She then gave me a meaningful look. "You owe me one." She whispered.

"I suppose I do." I agreed and then headed for the stairs. "Even though I won't get anywhere."

Cindy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She took my hand in hers and led me to my own bedroom. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean it up.

Had it been its former self, the encounter might have ended right there. We entered and she closed the door behind her, she then turned to me. Despite her aggression, her eyes were showing nervousness; her body trembling a little.

"You're very beautiful." I told her, my eyes roaming up and down her form, knowing that I'd be kissing it and tasting it soon.

"Thank you." She said softly. "I can't believe I'm up here with you."

"Do you want to leave?" I asked.

"No." She said, stepping forward, putting her arms around me. I returned her embrace, already giddy at the feel of her against me. She leaned her mouth towards me. "I want to stay."

Knowing I had a reputation to live up to now, I gave her my best. I was helped by the fact that she was a girl I'd often dreamed about, both in my first trip through school, and after my return. I stood near the door with her for more than five minutes, just kissing her, letting her taste my tongue, letting me taste hers. She was a good kisser, much better than I'd expected, although not quite as good as Anita. But she excited me more than Anita, aroused my hunger more. As I began kissing her neck and her ears and undoing the ponytail to let her blonde hair cascade free, she put her hands into the front of my sweats again, grasping my cock, fondling it urgently.

"Come on." She said eagerly. "Let's do it!"

I nipped at her nose and then planted a soft kiss on her eyelid. "Patience." I told her. "This is an experience to be savored." Little did she know that it was taking all of my willpower to keep from throwing her to the bed, stripping her pants off, and pounding away like an animal.

Instead I led her to the bed, or she led me I guess since she refused to remove her hands from my cock.

"Do you want me to blow you?" She asked, kissing on my face, squeezing my cock.

"Sure." I nodded, kicking off my shoes. Although I hadn't planned on that, I certainly wasn't going to refuse it. And if she could make me come it would give me more staying power for my later work.

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of the bed, dragging my sweats and underwear down as she went. My cock popped free, slapping her across the cheek as it was liberated. She giggled and then slowly ran her tongue up the shaft from the base to the head.

"Ahhh." I groaned, pleased at the sensation. I was even more pleased when she took me into her mouth and deep throated me, her lips slowly sliding down until they were nestled in my pubic hair. With exquisite slowness she pulled back up, applying suction as she went. "Goddd." I breathed. "Where did you learn that?"

"You like that?" She said, planting little kisses. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

She took me back in her mouth and began to bob up and down on me. Her hand locked around the shaft and began to jack with the rhythm of her head. Her tongue swirled round and round, wetting me and sending saliva dripping down into my hair, her mouth applying a pleasant amount of suction. My hips began to rise and fall immediately from the bed. My god it felt good. This seventeen-year old girl KNEW how to give a blowjob. I would put her up against a twenty-year whore in that department.

She slurped and sucked and made little grunting noises for only a short time before the first orgasm came straining up my spine.

"I'm gonna come Cindy." I warned her, in a voice that wasn't steady.

"Mmmmm." She moaned around my cock and picked up her pace.

I began to ejaculate a large, pent-up load into her mouth. Her hand continued to jack at me throughout it and her mouth sucked my come from the head. She gulped and gulped, swallowing every drop. When she pulled her face from my crotch, my dick was wet and shiny but clean as a whistle. She smiled up at me, licking her lips.

"You're not the only one who has some talent you know." She said, standing and pushing me back onto the bed. "Now what are you gonna do to repay me?"

"I'll think of something." I said, pulling her face to mine and putting my tongue back into her mouth.

I pulled off her sweater and then her bra, baring her gorgeous breasts. There is something sensuous and indescribable about a set of tits that belong to a seventeen-year old. They are so fresh, so firm, so visually stimulating. Could there be anything on earth more appealing? I had to taste them so I rolled her over on the bed and took one into my mouth, working the nipple, teasing it, making her sigh in pleasure. I worked on the other nipple for a while and then stood and reached for her waistband.

She watched me, her face flushed as I unsnapped her jeans and pulled them from her body. Her legs were long and lean, smooth to the touch, with just a few light hairs on the upper thighs. Her panties were dark red with white polka dots. The crotch of them was darker red, made so by the wetness that had soaked in there. I ran my index finger up and down her spread legs a few times, relishing the feel of that soft skin, that youthful skin. Finally I continued to her crotch and hooked the finger through the elastic of the panties. My knuckle was against her lips, feeling damp heat. I tugged and she lifted her hips, allowing me to drag them free and off of her body.

I couldn't have imagined a sexier looking vaginal area. Her pubic hair was blonde, only slightly darker than that on her head. It was sparse, revealing two very swollen lips and one very erect clit. I don't believe I've ever seen a finer one.

"You like what you see?" She asked me, opening her legs more, obviously knowing that her crotch was one that men dreamed of.

"Very much." I said, picking up her legs by the calf and placing them on my shoulders. "I think I'll eat it."

"Ohhh." She moaned as my head went forward.

Though she was a teenager, her smell was of a woman. Sharp and musky, dripping with pheromones. My dick sprang back to life as her odor hit me. Her taste was tart as I slid my tongue between those pouting lips and plunged it in. I drove it in and out, drinking from her, enjoying my feast, feeling those soft blonde hairs tickling my nose. When her crotch began to rise and fall and her fingers began to pull strands of hair from my head, I attacked her clit, taking it between my lips. She screamed as she came in my mouth.

When her gyrations stopped she hooked her hands into my armpits and pulled on me. "Fuck me!" She commanded.

"I want to eat you some more." I told her, trying to pull back.

"Fuck me!" She growled. "Fuck me now! And then, after you come, I want you to eat me again."

So she had fantasies. But I imagined it would not be as enjoyable as she imagined since I intended to wear a condom. "I need to get a rubber first." I told her, trying to get up.

Her strong arms pulled me back down. "I'm on the pill." She told me. "Now fuck me! And then eat me!"

"Are you REALLY on the pill?" I asked, hesitating.

"Yes Goddamit!" She whined, "I've been on it for a year now. Now fuck me Billy! Fuck me now! Get your ass up here!"

I figured, through my haze of lust, that she probably wouldn't lie about that. So I climbed aboard, sliding up her sweaty body and putting the head of my dick against her wet lips.

"Do it!" She yelled, putting her legs around my ass and pulling with them. "Fuck me!"

I thrust forward into her tight slit, going in in one smooth, gripping motion. We sighed together as our pubic bones met.

"Fuck me hard!" She panted, thrusting her hips up at me. "Come on!"

I fucked her hard, pounding into her body and establishing a rhythm that got my heartrate well into the aerobic exercise category. Sweat began to form on my face and drip onto hers. When the droplets landed near her mouth she would lick at them. She kept chanting "yes, yes, yes, fuck me" as my cock assaulted her tight pussy, making wet, squishing sounds and pouring her juices out onto the bedspread.

I angled upward with my thrusts, making the shaft rub forcefully against the top of her vagina, where the clitoral nerves were. I made sure my pubis ground into hers with each thrust, which served both to pleasure her, driving her towards orgasm and served to pleasure my cock. I squeezed her tits, tweaking the nipples, I felt her tight ass as it moved beneath me, I gave her my fingers, allowing her to suck on them. I felt vague pain both in my side and in my stomach as my wounds were stretched and pulled by my frantic action but it was unimportant, overridden by the pleasure her young body was giving mine.

She came again, screaming into my ear and then biting down on the lobe. I was right behind her, pumping out another load into her gasping chasm.

My thrusts had barely stopped before she pushed me downward. "Now eat me." She said. "Please? Eat my pussy now that you've come in it. Please?"

Obviously this was a long-held fantasy of hers. Though she had definite experience, I doubted she had ever gotten someone to do THIS act for her before. Teenagers and even college age men would be disgusted by the very thought. Hell, most fully-grown and matured men were. Though it wasn't one of my favorite activities, it wasn't repulsive either. It was something I'd done before (I'd found that many women shared Cindy's fantasy of having sperm licked from their vagina). My motto had always been do whatever it takes to insure future copulation. I gave her a smile and then slid down her body. I spread her sweaty legs wide and looked at her pussy. It was drooling juice and sperm, oozing it onto the bedspread. I hesitated just to make her ask again. I didn't have to wait long.

"Come on?" She begged. "Do it, please?"

I lowered my head and went to work.

It took her only a short time to come again but still I ate her until yet another orgasm came through. I then rolled over onto my back and pulled her on top of me. With a few adjustments her pussy was soon clamped down on my cock once more and I was thrusting up into her. She didn't want me to come in her pussy again though. Instead, she pulled herself off of me and took me into her mouth once again. She put her impressive blowjob abilities to work and soon I was blasting another load down her throat.

She crawled up onto my body and collapsed atop it, kissing my cheeks and my lips. "God o'mighty." She proclaimed. "That was the best sex I have ever had. Stephie was right about you."

"Stephie?" I asked. "Do you mean Stephanie Massie?"

"You know damn well who I mean Billy." She smiled, nuzzling me a little. "She told me you could eat a pussy like there was no fuckin' tomorrow. And goddam if you can't."

"I certainly wouldn't know how she would know that." I told Cindy.

"You're full of shit." Cindy told me affectionately. "She gave me every stinky detail. You fucked the shit out of her."

I shook my head, smiling a little. "Nope." I said. "I most certainly did not. She let me kiss her a little but she wouldn't let me do anything else."

Cindy stared into my eyes, trying to read what was behind them. "Are you for real?" She finally asked.

"As real as I can be." I said, sitting up. "But you know what? You and I didn't do anything either."

"We didn't?"

I shook my head again. "Nope. We looked at records, I tried to put a move on you, and you shot me down. Hell, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

She looked at me grinning. "I guess I can't."

"But if you're ever with groups of girls and you want to tell them some dick stories about how Tracy's little brother ate your pussy until you screamed, or about how he fucked you until you clawed marks in his back, or about how he licked his come out your still-twitching cunt afterwards," I licked my lips. "Well, there's not much I can do about that now, is there? I'll deny it of course, but you know how girls love to listen to those dick stories? Hell, people believe everything they hear, don't they?"

"I guess they do." She said teasingly. "But I'm not that kind of girl. Suppose I promised to keep my mouth shut about what happened here today?"

"Oh I don't expect you to." I said. "I guess I'll just have to live with the reputation your lies will give me, won't I?"

"I guess you will." She said, giggling now. "It's a tough life, isn't it?"

Chapter 4

Here, at last, is chapter four of my ongoing saga. This chapter is a bit different since it covers a much greater span of time than the previous chapters did. Again, comments are greatly appreciated and I will eventually answer all legitimate email. Sorry to all that it sometimes takes me a while. Send comments to al_steiner@hotmail.com

Working hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Paying anything to roll the dice

Just one more time

Some will win

Some will lose

Some are born to sing the blues

Oh the movie never ends

It goes on and on and on and on

JOURNEY

Time continued to go on, as it does. I was pleased to see that it passed at an adult's pace instead of a child's or a teenager's. I went to bed each day and I woke up each day still in my new life. Gradually I became convinced that I was there to stay, that I wouldn't suddenly wake up again back in 1999. This was an idea that, once I became used to being back in my teens, used to terrify me.

Of course there were things that I missed. Modern music for one. I longed painfully sometimes to hear a little alternative rock or modern heavy metal instead of what I considered to be golden oldies. I missed some of the conveniences that I'd become accustomed to in the nineties that weren't commonplace in the early eighties. Video recorders and rented movies were a prime example. My parents would not own a VCR until late in 1984. Even then video stores would not begin to crop up until early in 1985. But most of all I missed Becky. There were times I cried in my bed at night as I lay sleepless, feeling condemned to the knowledge that I would never see her again, never hold her again.

As I'd vowed after Richie Fairview put his buckknife into my side, I was careful what I did. I went to school each day but I did not torment any more bullies. Of course if they had decided to come looking for trouble with me I would have returned it to them in spades but none of them did. My encounters with Richie forever sealed my reputation as someone that you did not fuck with. The bullies had much easier targets than I to occupy their time.

I tormented no more teachers as I had my history and A amp;P instructors. I replied politely to their questions when I was asked with whatever answer they were looking for. I brought up no controversial subjects to them. I did my homework each day the moment I got home from school (except on those days that Anita had something for me to do; something that began to happen with increasing frequency). As the school year wound on and as winter became spring my grades improved greatly all across the board, dramatically some would even say, unbelievably a few uneasy teachers even noted. By the time the school year ended my grades were straight A's and my overall average had moved up considerably.

I similarly took no further chances with my skin. As a paramedic I used to shake my head sadly at how stupid teenagers were, assuming their own immortality. After Richie I realized that I'd been even worse than they were. At least normal teenagers will acknowledge the possibility that they CAN die, even if they think it won't happen to them. But I had assumed that I COULDN'T die, that I was safe until thirty-two. That, despite eight years of scraping up the broken remains of idiotic teenagers off the streets of Spokane. I still shudder when I think of how easily I'd climbed into the car with Mike that night of the kegger, of how easily he might have drunkenly driven over the edge of the levee, dumping us both into the Spokane River. How ironic that would have been, for me to come back and save Tracy from that fate only to suffer it myself, to put my parents through the same grief with a different child.

I avoided riding in cars with teenagers when I could. When I couldn't, I snapped on my seatbelt and pulled it tight. Most of the time it was the first time the seatbelt in question had ever been fastened. I could tell that the driver's and other passengers of these vehicles wanted to deride me, call me a pussy, and apply the other forms of peer pressure that teens use for their bizarre purposes. But they never did. Again, Richie Fairview kept them from speaking their minds. Occasionally someone would ask however, why I was doing it.

"Well suppose we crash?" I'd ask.

"We ain't gonna crash." Was the inevitable reply.

"Probably not." I'd say. "But it's possible, isn't it?"

"I guess." They'd shrug.

"Well," I'd theorize. "If we DO get into an accident, I won't get hurt as bad if I have this seatbelt on. It doesn't inconvenience me in any way to have it on. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't restrict my movement, so why shouldn't I have it on?"

They usually had no answer for that and would let the subject drop there. But they never put on their own seatbelts in response. They didn't want to be called a pussy when I'd gone.

One thing I absolutely refused to do was to get into a vehicle with someone who'd been drinking and/or getting stoned. And since I didn't enjoy walking home from places like the falls, I just avoided going with anyone where that was a possibility.

This policy led to problems between Mike and I, and we already had more than our share of problems. Our relationship had changed since my return and Mike didn't care too much for it. I was no longer his trusty sidekick, willing to go along with everything that he wanted to do. I no longer smoked pot with him on the way to school because I wanted my head clear for classes. He tried every form of peer pressure he could think of to get me to change my mind but when I continually refused he blew up at me one day and stormed off. He didn't speak to me or walk to school with me for three days and surprisingly, though it had been a childish outburst over a ridiculous subject, I was very upset by the episode.

I cared for Mike and I desperately wanted to pull him off of the path he was on. My conviction to do this became even stronger after the Richie Fairview incident. He had jumped in, without the slightest hesitation and grabbed hold of the hulking asshole, pulling him off of me. He had done that despite the fact that he'd been terrified of Fairview and that Fairview was holding a knife at the time. He had cast aside his self-protection instinct to come to my assistance and I could not forget that. Maybe if he hadn't done that, maybe if he'd simply stood there during the attack unable to move, I could have simply let the friendship die and let him go about his life. But he hadn't. He'd jumped in there without a second thought. Goddamit I owed him something. I had to try!

As was his nature, he offered me no apology for his outburst. He simply showed up at my door for the walk to school the following Monday and acted as if nothing had happened. He pulled out a joint as we went along but did not offer any to me. I suppose that was as close to saying sorry as he could come.

So I continued to walk to school with him each day even though I didn't really have to. Cindy, who had her own car and who took Tracy to school each day, had offered to give me a ride if I wanted. Her invitation did not include Mike, who she couldn't stand, and so I declined it.

After school I would go over to Mike's sometimes or he would come over to my house and then, if I'd finished my homework, I would smoke some pot with him. I learned to drop myself down to the level of a sixteen-year-old during these times and even managed to have a good time. I did not, however, go out on weekends with him anymore, always pleading other plans, which was usually true. I'd found some interesting ways to spend my weekends that did not involve putting my life at risk with intoxicated drivers. Anita figured heavily in these plans most of the time. So did Cindy.

Mike always seemed upset that I wouldn't go out with him on the weekends but didn't make a big deal of it. A status quo developed in our relationship, one that was due to break before long.

In April of that year Mike's Dad, a mechanic, fixed up a two hundred dollar Volkswagen Bug and gave it to Mike to drive full-time. I remembered the car well. It was a 68, the heater didn't work, the upholstery was ripped and shredded, and the engine would constantly require attention from his Dad. Mike and I had had some good times in that car during my first trip through.

We would go to keggers, to parties, just out cruising. We would use the car to cut school with, driving to the river to go fishing.

Though I had no plans to do most of the stuff we USED to do in the car, I figured that simply driving a few miles to school would be safe enough. I was wrong.

Mike's driving in that Bug used to scare me even before being recycled. It absolutely terrified me afterwards. It only took me one trip with him to realize that I was never going to set foot in it again. He picked me up for school the first day he had it and as soon as we were out of sight of my house, he pulled out a joint and lit it up.

"You sure you should be doing that while you're driving?" I asked nervously.

"Doing what?" He replied with genuine confusion.

I pulled my seatbelt tighter and braced myself.

In the course of the short drive to school he weaved recklessly in and out of the morning traffic. He rode up on the rear of vehicles when he had no room to weave, getting so close to them that, had they stopped, he would not have had time to even apply his brakes, let alone stop in time. He ran through one red light and three stop signs, giving only a careless glance as he did so. He smoked on his joint the entire time. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was trembling with fear.

"You okay dude?" He asked, looking at me with his stoned expression.

"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.

"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."

"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."

He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.

"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."

"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."

"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.

I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?

As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.

Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.

Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.

"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.

"Sure." I smiled back, following her.

Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.

Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.

"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."

"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"

"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"

"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"

"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."

"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"

"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.

I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.

The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.

Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.

I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.

By the time Mike abruptly ended our friendship Nina and I were quite close and able to confide pretty well in each other. As I entered the lunchroom the day after my telephone conversation she immediately noticed my upset expression.

"What's wrong?" She asked, giving me her shy smile.

"Oh," I said, sitting down and opening my lunch bag. "You know my friend Mike that I've told you about?"

"Yeah," She nodded. "The guy who likes to smoke pot all the time."

"Right." I agreed. "Well yesterday…"

I poured out the whole story to her, omitting of course the part about how I'd once been a thirty-two year old and couldn't relate to a sixteen year old very well anymore. She listened without interruption and then, when I was finished, looked at me thoughtfully.

"You seem like you're blaming yourself for this." She said.

I shrugged. "We've been friends for a long time. Maybe I'm being a little hard on him. Is it that much for him to ask for me to drive to school with him each day?"

"If you're putting your life at risk it is." She answered. "It sounds to me like HE is the one to blame for this, not you. He is the one willing to end a friendship over something so stupid as who you drive to school with and whether or not you smoke pot with him."

"Yeah, I know." I agreed. "But we've been friends a long time. I can't help but feel I've let him down or something."

"If you've been friends a long time," She said. "Don't you think he'll eventually grow up a little and realize how stupid he's been? He'll come around."

"It might be too late by then." I blurted.

She looked at me puzzled. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, just ignore me." I told her. "I can be awfully bleak sometimes."

I left the lunchroom that day feeling better about the situation. Though nothing had changed I always felt better after I'd talked to Nina.

I also got into the habit of checking the business section of the newspaper each day. I would look through the stock market report, memorizing and tracking various stocks. It became such a routine at the breakfast table each morning that Dad quickly stopped asking me why I was doing it. In my former life I'd followed stocks only as they related to my 401k plan. Now I was trying to get a grip on the market, to begin the process of understanding it and eventually mastering it. If I could master it I knew, I could master everything.

Summer break began. When I brought my report card to my mother I actually feared she was going to faint as she stared at it.

"Straight A's Billy?" She asked, looking at it in disbelief. "You?"

"I guess I just started to take all that stuff you're always sayin' about how education is the most important thing, seriously Mom." I told her.

An extended version of THE LOOK followed this.

"Do you think you can make your tacos tonight?" I asked next.

"Sure." She said numbly.

The summer went by quickly in a haze of hot days and sexual activity. Although Mike no longer hung out with me I found new companionship with Cindy and Tracy. My relationship with my sister had improved to the point where she was confiding secrets in me. She began telling me her hopes and dreams; that she wanted to go to law school, that she wanted to marry a nice man and have children, that she wanted a nice house and a nice car. These were things I'd never known about her since her life had been cut short before we'd gotten out of the teenage rivalry stage.

She also no longer seemed to have a problem being seen with me. Maybe something I'd said, something I'd done had given her a little kick in the head, but she treated me that summer as a friend and companion, taking me with her when she went to parties, either with Cindy or with one of her other friends.

She'd also developed a similar aversion to being in a car with an intoxicated driver; an aversion she'd managed to share with Cindy. Whenever we went out one of the girls would stay sober enough to pilot the car safely home. They developed a designated driver rule long before that buzzword caught on. I always suspected that my little speech to Tracy that one night had a lot to do with it.

It was from Cindy and Tracy's ranks of friends that I chose my sexual companions. They were both part of the popular crowd, members of the elite and in my previous life I would have been intimidated as hell to be at a party with them. But now things were different. I could not bring myself to be intimidated by teenagers, but oh how I lusted after them. I rarely left a party without using one or more of the condoms I carried with me at all times. I got to sleep with girl after girl from my fantasies and it was usually THEY who would approach me thanks to an underground reputation I had developed among the females.

The guys at these parties, who were for the most part older than I, either seniors or college freshmen, were oblivious to what I was doing. Despite my reputation with Fairview they considered me harmless, even as I was taking their girlfriends out for a little walk while they were playing a game of quarters or having someone pour beer down their throat with a beer bong. They wondered what I was doing there of course. I was inevitably the youngest male in attendance and none of them ever chose to converse with me.

That was fine with me. As long as they saw me as no threat when they spotted me talking amongst the girls or having a private conversation with one of their girlfriends.

Tracy told me once that many of them thought I was gay. They didn't tease me about it because of Richie Fairview but that seemed to explain why I chose to hang out with the girls instead of trying to come over and talk football or cars. I never tried to convince them otherwise although the queer logic of this amused me to no end. A guy wants to hang out with girls so he must be gay.

I had careful rules about my relationships during that summer. I generally didn't sleep with anyone more than once and I made it clear that I desired no sort of commitment or ongoing relationship. I was in it for the sex and the sex only. Most of them understood this. They were in it for the sex too and happy that I was happy to keep my mouth open while it was on their pussy and closed afterword. I had two exceptions to this rule however: Cindy and Anita. I continued to sleep with both of them on a regular basis.

It was nice. They both understood the rules, especially Anita who had no desire to have anyone find out she was boffing a teenaged boy. They were also both on birth control so I didn't have to wear a condom with them. It is nice to sink bare flesh into bare flesh for a change of pace.

Except for the rift with Mike and except for the absence of my discussions with Nina, which I missed, it was quite a pleasant summer. The best one I'd ever remembered to that point.

I got my learner's permit that August when I turned fifteen and a half. Dad then 'taught' me to drive.

"You've caught on to this remarkably quick." He said, looking at me with something close to suspicion the first day. "Tracy hasn't been letting you drive, has she?"

"No Dad." I assured him, expertly changing lanes, feeling ecstatic to be behind the wheel after, how long? More than six months? "I guess I just have a knack for it."

"Some knack." He said. "I guess we won't have to go out all that often, will we?"

September brought the start of my junior year and Tracy's senior year. I had a whole new slew of classes and subjects that I'd chosen a few weeks before. I was particularly pleased to find that I no longer had to take PE.

My first period class was Introduction to Molecular Biology. Mrs. Crookshank taught it and it was a subject I knew little about. I'd taken it so that I could relieve some of the boredom of school by learning something new. I walked into class the first day and Mrs. Crookshank greeted me stiffly.

"Billy," She nodded. "It's nice to see you again this year."

"Nice to see you too." I answered.

"Do you like to read about molecular biology too?" She asked me next.

There was a hint of teasing sarcasm in her face. "No Mrs. Crookshank." I said. "I'm an MB virgin."

Before she had a chance to reply I turned to find a seat. I saw that Nina was in the class. She was sitting in the front row and all of the desks around her were empty. She gave me a weak smile, perhaps wondering if I was going to speak to her or not after the summer.

"Hi Nina." I greeted, walking over and taking the seat next to hers. "How was your summer?"

It turned out Nina was also in my third period class; Geometry. I sat next to her there also. When the lunch bell rang we walked together to the cafeteria. We found our normal seats and began to talk as we ate. After only a few minutes it was if we'd only done this yesterday.

"So you still want to be a doctor?" I asked her as we waded through the cafeteria's version of stroganoff.

"Oh yes." She nodded. "That's why I'm taking molecular biology. You have to be heavy in the science classes to get in. Especially if you want to get a scholarship."

"Where is it you want to go?" I asked her.

"Anywhere they'll take me." She said. "But I'd prefer U of W at Seattle. It's a top rated school but close enough so that I could commute home on vacations. If I get a good car that is. My parents don't have that much money."

"Mine either." I agreed. "I keep trying to get my old man to invest in the stock market but he won't do it. I don't think he trusts my predictions of good stocks."

"Do you still want to study business?"

"I don't really WANT to." I said. "But I think that I should. I think that's where my fortune lies."

She giggled, an action she would have been incapable of a year before. "Still gonna make that fortune huh?"

"I think I'll have a good head for investment." I predicted.

We ate in silence for a moment and then I asked, "Do you follow all that molecular biology crap? I mean today was only the intro but it seemed pretty deep to me. Quite a change from A amp;P."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I've read up on it a little over the summer. Trying to get myself a little edge you know? But you know what confused me?"

"What?"

"The geometry. It sounded like he was talking in Latin."

"He was." I affirmed. "But I think I got that handled. It's mostly just memorizing formulas it looks like. The actual math part is the algebra that we learned last year. If you can memorize the formula, you got it nailed."

"You must have a head for numbers." She told me, taking another bite.

"I never did before." I muttered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing." I answered, an idea suddenly striking me. "Listen, maybe we can help each other out. Why don't we get together and study a couple times a week? You can help me with the biology and I can help you with the geometry?"

She looked up at me, speechless, her face reddening.

"You okay?" I asked, wondering what I'd said to embarrass her.

"You want to… study with me?" She asked.

"Sure." I said. "Why not? We can either do it at your house or mine. You don't live too far from me, do you?"

"No." She shook her head. She gulped. "Are you sure we should do that?"

"Study together?" I asked, confused. "Of course I do. What's wrong with that?"

She looked at me hard for the longest time, various expressions crossing her face; fear, doubt, elation, disappointment, determination. "Nothing." She said finally. "When can we start?"

"I don't know." I said, still confused. "How about whenever we get stuck on something. It's probably gonna be often the way I see it."

Her face cleared a little bit and she seemed more composed. She giggled a little and shook her head.

"What's wrong?" I asked, nearing exasperation.

"Nothing." She chuckled. "Just thinking weird thoughts."

"I get those a lot too." I told her, still wondering what had gone through her head.

I saw Mike in the halls of course but he didn't talk to me, didn't approach me. His locker was no longer next to mine. It seemed he had a new group of friends to hang out with; the freshmen kids from last year. They all looked as if they worshipped him. I sadly guessed that that was what he needed. I also knew that he would drop out by the end of this year and that I was powerless to stop it. I tried to approach him a few times and he simply walked away.

Nina and I started studying together on a regular basis and our friendly relationship deepened to the point that we became intimate friends; able to judge each other's moods with a glance, able to say nearly anything to each other. I became closer to her than I ever would have thought possible. I was closer to her than I'd ever been to Mike. After all, Nina didn't always try to top whatever story I told or try to convince me about all of the mythical dick she was getting. She didn't try to get me to smoke cigarettes or cut school or get stoned. There was also no underlying sexual tension with her as there was with most of the other girls I knew. We just enjoyed being together, talking together.

She met Tracy and my parents on her first day studying at my house. It was somewhat awkward since Nina was very shy before new people and my parents were very curious about this girl I chose to have meet them. Though I was boffing nearly everything I could get my dick into at that point, I'd never introduced anyone to them. I thought it kind of ironic that the one they were meeting was the one I had not had any sex with. Nina uttered monosyllable replies to Dad and Mom's inquiries about where she lived, what she planned to do, etc, and finally they left us alone. Tracy had only uttered a polite greeting and had retreated to her room.

After she'd left, and after I'd answered my parent's interrogation and explained that we were only STUDYING together, that we were only friends, and that they should not start compiling a wedding list, I went upstairs to put my books away.

Tracy was doing some studying of her own, this time to the accompaniment of Ozzy Osborne. She looked up as I passed and called me into the room.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"Have you no shame at all?" She asked me.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"It's bad enough that you're screwing all of my friends but isn't that enough? Have you gotten bored with that and decided to start knocking off the shy egghead girls too? You are serious scum."

"I'm not screwing Nina." I said, looking at my sister aghast. "We were just studying. She's my friend."

"You don't have any girl friends." She accused. "You have fuck partners. Are you seriously telling me that you invited that poor girl over here to study? You didn't take her upstairs for a little private session before we all got home?"

"No." I yelled, shaking my head. "My god, am I that bad?"

"Are you that bad?" She laughed. "Do you know how many relationships you've broken up in the last few months? Do you know that more than four of my friends have dumped their boyfriends after they fucked you?"

"No." I said, and then, "Really?"

"Really." She nodded. "It was kind of cute at first, how all these girls were trying to maneuver to you, to get you to notice them. But you're getting out of hand. I've got girls coming up to me and pretending to be my friend just so I'll introduce them to you. Of course I have to keep it quiet they all say. I just wanna meet him, talk to him a little. Did you know that they all talk about you in the locker room and in the bathroom? Do you know what they say about you?"

"What?" I asked.

"They talk about you the way your friends talk about chicks like Steph. You're a male slut Billy. They describe what you do to them and how well you do it using the most disgusting terms I've ever heard. They've even asked me if I've done you. Me! Your fucking sister!"

"I'm sorry Tracy, I never…"

"But you know what they never say about you?" She went on. "They never say how nice of a guy you are or how respectful you are. They never come up to me and say, 'Gee Tracy, your brother is such a sweetheart'. All they talk about is how you'll eat their pussy like a goddam vacuum cleaner or about how you'll fuck them until they scream. They never talk about how they'd like to take you home to meet their mom or about how they'd like to be your girlfriend. They talk about how they can manage to get over to your house again for another session."

"Wow." I said, unsure what to think. Though I'd known that I had a reputation among the girls I had no idea they talked the way Tracy was telling me. I was also disconcerted at my sister's anger about this. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was have her pissed off at me.

"Wow." Tracy mocked. "That's pretty goddam profound."

I sat down on the edge of her bed, setting my backpack full of books down. Tracy turned down the stereo a little.

"I'm sorry Tracy." I told her. "I didn't know that what I was doing was affecting you. I thought I was just having some harmless fun. And I assure you that Nina and I are just friends. I haven't slept with her and I have no intention of doing so."

She stared at me for a moment. "You know the damnedest thing?" She asked. "The damnedest thing is that you ARE a nice guy and you ARE a sweetheart when you want to be. If you were an asshole it wouldn't bother me for girls to talk about you that way but you aren't. It bugs the shit out of me to hear people talk about my little brother that way. You would probably feel the same way if you went into the locker room and the guys were saying how well Tracy sucked dick or how she'd fuck anyone who asked, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yeah." I nodded. Would it bother me? I would want to kill whomever I heard saying that.

"That's how I feel when I hear that." She said. "And I can't even defend you in front of them because it's true. You DO fuck anyone who asks."

"I'm sorry." I repeated. I couldn't think of a thing to say to her. I surely wasn't going to say that I wouldn't do it anymore because that would have been a lie.

"Look." She said. "I'm just your sister. I'm not gonna ask you to stop fucking girls. I know you wouldn't do it anyway. But can you maybe tone it down a little? Cut it down to one or two a week? Or maybe hit up some of the other ones more than once?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "I'll try Tracy. I'll try. But remember, I'm fifteen. I'm at my sexual peak you know."

"Fuck you dickhead." She laughed back. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you deserved it."

"I suppose I did." I agreed.

"You're really not fucking Nina?"

"I'm really not." I affirmed.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet." She said.

So for Tracy's sake I toned things down a little. Also for my own. I wasn't sure I liked being referred to as a male slut. I stopped pursuing women with the vigor I'd exhibited before, instead simply waiting for them to come to me. I also began giving more repeat performances. By the time the snow flew I had, in addition to a new best friend, a small circle of girls that I regularly had sex with instead of a constant stream. It was enough and when one of the girls got tired of the relationship or met someone they wanted to have for a boyfriend, I would covet someone else.

To my surprise Tracy and Nina actually became something like friends. Nina would come over to my house twice a week or so to study and my sister, curious about the type of girl I would choose as a friend, made a point to talk to her each time she was over. Nina was slow warming up to my sister. I knew that this was due to her past treatment by other girls, which was both crueler and longer lasting than the torment she'd suffered from boys. This was something I never would have suspected had she not told me and it disheartened me to think that the fairer sex could be even crueler to their own then boys were.

But gradually Nina lost her shyness before Tracy and even Cindy, who was also a frequent visitor to our house. The two older girls took Nina under their wing and taught her the finer points of fashion, talking her into replacing her plain clothes with more modern ones. They taught her how to put on make-up, accenting her facial features. They taught her how to fix her hair into something other than a ponytail. The change in her appearance was actually startling when you saw it. I was able to see the attractive doctor that she would one day be, although without the perpetually bitchy expression and mannerism.

And then came the day in early December when a cold winter storm was blowing across the Spokane area. Snow was being driven through the air by gusting winds that registered more than forty miles an hour. As I walked out to the school parking lot towards Cindy's car the snowflakes hit me in the face like little shards of steel, stinging me and making me pull my hood and my scarf tighter around me. Snowdrifts were already more than ten feet high against some of the buildings and the ground was covered in white. If it had been snowing like this in the morning they would have closed the school.

Unfortunately the storm hadn't geared up until late morning.

When I got to the place where Cindy's car had been parked I looked up to find nothing. I looked around the parking lot, wondering if I was mistaken about where she'd parked. The wind cut into my face like a knife as I tried to locate the Caprice. It was nowhere to be seen. Other kids were rushing to their cars in groups of two or more, some of them slipping and sliding on the slick pavement. I saw no Cindy or no Tracy though.

"What the fuck?" I muttered, wondering where in the hell they'd gone.

It took me only a minute to figure out that I was stuck here with no other prospect but to walk home. I wondered if I would freeze to death before I got there. And then I spotted Raisin heading for his Falcon. I ran after him.

When Raisin dropped me off in front of my house fifteen minutes later the sight of Cindy's car parked at our curb did not improve my mood. I thanked Raisin and bade him farewell, trudging through the thick snow on the driveway to the front door, uttering foul things under my breath about sisters and friends that left brothers abandoned in a freaking blizzard.

The door was locked so I used my key, stepping into the warmth of the living room, prepared to chew out the traitorous girls. But they weren't there. The television was off, and on the stereo turntable one of my Pink Floyd albums was spinning silently around at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute, the arm suspended above one of the tracks. A quick glance at the coffee table gave me a pretty good idea what had happened. An opened bag of Doritos was sitting there along with the remains of some sandwiches and a few candybar wrappers.

They were getting stoned! They'd left me to freeze to death in the snow so they could go home and get stoned. And they'd probably smoked all of the pot before my arrival. The bitches! Where were they now? I began stomping through the house, looking for them.

When I approached the door that led out to the garage I heard girlish giggles coming from the other side. Fumed, I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. What I saw on the other side made me freeze in my tracks.

Cindy and Tracy were out there all right. The smell of greenbud came wafting over me and there was an actual haze in the confined space. But the surprising thing was who was with them. Nina was there, her mouth applied to the neck of the bong, sucking a hit up through the water while Cindy held the lighter and cheered her.

"That's the way girl!" Cindy encouraged. "Hit that shit!"

Tracy looked up at me, her eyes half-lidded, a shit-eating grin on her face.

"Hey Billy." She haled. "Glad you got home okay. You want a hit?"

Nina, hearing my name broke off what she was doing, leaving smoke curling from the bong. She saw the dumbfounded look on my face as I stared at her. She held my stare for a moment and then burst out into hysterical laughter, expelling a large cloud of fragrant smoke from her mouth and nose. Tracy and Cindy instantly joined her in hysterics. They were pointing at me as they doubled over in laughter.

They laughed for nearly three minutes as I stood in the doorway and simply stared. I could not believe that they had actually gotten Nina stoned. I could not believe that she'd gone along with it. What were they thinking?

When their giggles and chortles dried up I walked over to them. Nina started to say something and then burst into laughter again. Cindy joined her.

"You got her stoned?" I asked Tracy, who was the only one not laughing. "And you had her cut school?"

"We didn't have her do anything." Tracy told me, picking up a baggie and loading another hit into the bong. "She asked us if we had any pot. She wanted to try it. It seems all those stories you told her about smoking out made her curious." She giggled, jerking a thumb towards Nina. "As you can see, she seems to like it. Why didn't you ever smoke any with her?"

"I didn't think she'd want to." I said, watching Nina's face. She would start to calm down a little and then would look at me and burst into fresh laughter.

"I guess you were wrong." Tracy said, handing me the bong and a lighter. "I think there's a lot of things about Nina that you don't know."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Later." She answered. "Have a hit."

Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I flicked the bic and put my mouth to the bong.

Cindy and Nina both left shortly before Dad arrived home from work. I worried about the two of them on the snowy roads with a stoned driver at the wheel. I wouldn't stop them from leaving but I made them promise to put on their seatbelts. I knew Nina would and I also knew the chances of them being in a fatal crash were slim. Most fatal accidents occurred during the summer months, when the weather was clear and when the drivers could barrel along at suicidal speed. During snowy weather everyone drove slow. While there were more accidents, they tended to be minor. You simply couldn't generate enough kinetic energy to kill during a snowstorm. If Cindy got in an accident it would probably be a fender-bender. But then nothing is absolute so I worried.

After dinner and dishes, while the household began to wind down for bed I found my way to Tracy's room once again. Outside the wind was still howling against the windows, making the storm-shutters rattle and bang. They would have cancelled school the next day except for the fact that it was Saturday.

Tracy was lying on her bed, reading the latest (for that time) Stephen King book. She was wearing her standard pajamas, a long T-shirt.

"What's up?" She asked as I tapped on the frame of her door.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"Sure." She nodded, setting the book down and sitting up.

"Earlier today," I started. "While we were smoking out."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Wasn't that some killer shit? I was droning all through dinner. Do you want to smoke some more? I still have a little left."

"No," I said, shaking my head. And then I amended. "Well, maybe tomorrow. But anyway, while we were smoking you said that there's a lot of things I didn't know about Nina."

"Yeah?" Tracy smiled a little.

"What did you mean by that?" I asked.

She gave me a very adult look. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked.

"Don't know what?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Nina's in love with you Billy."

"What?!"

"Not just infatuation, not just attraction, not just puppy-love, whatever the fuck that is, but love. L-O-V-E. The big one. The ultimate like. She's head over heels in love with you little brother."

I was stunned into silence for a moment. Finally I said, "Did she tell you this?"

"No." Tracy said. "She doesn't have to. It's pretty plain to everyone who talks to her. I've known it ever since I started getting her to talk to me.

She thinks you're the shit." She shrugged. "God knows why."

"Wait a minute." I said, trying to deny it. "I think you're mistaken. We're good friends, we like to talk to each other, I can see how you would think…"

"I'm not mistaken Billy." Tracy said firmly. "You can accept it or not accept it. I'm just supplying information for you. She is in love with you. No doubt about it. And she's terribly afraid that you don't love her, that you'll never be interested in her, that you'll break her heart someday."

"What? How…"

"Because I'm a girl." Tracy answered before I could finish asking. "We know these things. She knows you could hurt her bad and she also knows she is powerless to prevent that if you decided to do it. She loves being around you but she wants more. She's not getting more but she stays around because of the hope that someday she will. She'll stay as long as the slimmest hope remains of that. The only way you'll get her to stop loving you is to destroy her hope completely. She may or may not recover from that. She's kind of a fragile girl, as you may have noticed, and I tend to think that maybe she wouldn't.

"I'm not telling you all of this to scare you or anything. I just want you to know what you're dealing with here. She loves you. You are God to her. So you need to tread carefully with her because you're playin' with her fuckin' emotions. Do you understand?"

"No." I shook my head. "I do not." I became angry. Here I was a thirty-two, almost thirty-three year old and a seventeen-year-old girl was telling me about love? What the hell did she know about it? She was probably reading all kinds of things into Nina's conversations based on the romance novels that she obsessively read all the time. "Nina and I are friends. No more than that. That's all we'll ever be. She likes me, she enjoys my company, but she doesn't love me. I used to tease her in grammar school for Christ sake! You've got your signals crossed."

She picked up her book again. "Believe what you want Billy." She told me, dismissing me in a non-verbal way. "But I'm not wrong about this."

Winter went on. I got straight A's again in the first semester of school. Second semester began with Nina and I in three classes together. We continued to study together a few times a week. I always watched her carefully, listened to her words carefully when I was with her. She liked to be around me, that was for sure, as I liked to be around her. She valued my opinion as I valued hers. She joked with me, revealing a quick and witty sense of humor beneath her shyness, a sense of humor that I knew that no one but me ever saw. We enjoyed being together. We were friends, very good friends, best friends even. But love? I thought not.

On February 10 of that year, 1983, I went down to the department of motor vehicles with my Dad after school. I took the written test, passing with 100 percent. I then climbed in Dad's Dodge Diplomat with a crusty old driving tester and took my driver's license test. The instructor was impressed with my abilities, stating that she'd rarely seen a new driver that operated a motor vehicle so well. She gave me a ninety-six on the exam, marking me down a point because I hadn't parallel parked terribly well, something I'd never mastered. I returned to the DMV office and had my picture taken. I was now a licensed driver.

As I drove my Dad home that day he congratulated me and gave me a brief lecture on safe driving. Doing his fatherly duty you understand. When he was finished I turned to him.

"I'd like to get a job Dad." I told him.

"A job?" He asked, looking at me.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I want to start making my own money. You know, so I can buy my own car and start putting money away for college. Stuff like that."

"Well that's admirable Bill." He told me, taken aback a bit. "I certainly am not going to stop you."

"Could I use the car on weekdays after you get home? If I find a job that is?"

"I suppose." He told me. "As long as we don't need it for anything. Of course you realize our insurance rates are going to go up now that you AND Tracy are listed on the policy. Also the gas is going to go up. And then there's Tracy. She likes to use the car too."

"I'll pay for whatever the increase is." I promised. "And Tracy and I will work something out."

"Yes." He said thoughtfully. "I suppose you will." He told me. "You and your sister have been getting along pretty well this last year." He said.

I shrugged in the way of teenagers.

"Much better than you used to. In fact, there was a dramatic change in your relationship and even in your personality some time ago." His eyes bored into me. "It was shortly before you got stabbed that time."

What was he saying? I felt suddenly nervous under his gaze. Dad knew something had happened to me but he didn't know what. Did he? Was he simply probing for information? Or did he suspect the truth? The truth was nuts wasn't it? He couldn't be suspecting it. Could he?

"I guess I just got my shit together Dad." I answered nervously. "Tracy too."

He continued to stare for a moment and then gave a slight shake of his head.

"Don't say 'shit'." He finally responded. "If you want to get a job and if you and your sister can work out the car, then you've got my blessing."

"Thanks Dad." I told him.

I certainly did not want to work in one of the sweat shops that was a fast food joint so I didn't bother applying at any of them. I had nothing but time I knew so I bided it carefully, only putting in applications at places where I knew I would be able to stand the pace. You have to understand that I had spent eight years as a paramedic. For all the gore we have to put up with, for all the responsibility that we are instilled with, for all of the abuse that we have to take, the job was anything but fast paced. On a twelve-hour shift we would respond to an average of six calls, each one taking an hour or so to complete from the moment of dispatch until the paperwork was dropped off at the hospital. That left six hours of downtime on each shift. Sometimes, on slow shifts, it was even more. I knew I would not be able to handle working on a burger assembly line for hours at a time.

It was a pizza joint that eventually ended up hiring me in early March. The manager had granted me an interview and had started it by saying that he probably wouldn't hire me since he generally only offered jobs to those with previous experience.

"Well Sir." I'd told him. "I can respect that opinion. And I understand it completely."

"You do?" He asked, mildly amused, checking his watch for his next interview.

"I do." I said. "But I'll tell you something. If you hire me you will not be sorry. In fact, I'd venture to say that it would be the best hire you'll ever make. You know why?"

That got his attention. "Why?" He asked.

"Because my father has instilled in me a solid work ethic. He's taught me that employment is sacred in this life, a thing to be cherished above all but the family unit. If I am given the position you will receive complete loyalty from me. I will show up each of my scheduled days on time and ready to work. I will do whatever jobs you see fit in whatever manner you see fit to do them. I am not your typical teenager who will call in sick when he hears that a good kegger is going on at the falls. I will put aside my personal life in order to fulfill my responsibilities to this restaurant and hopefully you will move me up the ladder of advancement as reward." I gave him my sincere smile. "Hire me and you will not be sorry."

He hired me. I started the following week making pizzas in the back and washing up dishes on Friday through Monday night from 5:00 PM to 10:30 PM. I did my job well, showing up on time, as I'd promised, and completing all assignments given to me without complaint. After all, I had an adult's work ethic. The manager was quite impressed with me. He often commented how mature I seemed. The pay was a pittance, $3.25 an hour, which was minimum wage for that time, but it was income none-the-less and, as a kid, I had no real expenses to speak of. We were paid once a week, on Friday. My schedule entitled me to $71.50 each paycheck. Uncle Sam and Aunt Washington took $12.00 from this, leaving me with $59.50 in cold, hard cash.

In my previous life I'd been a horrible financial manager. I lived paycheck to paycheck, never maintaining a savings account except for my 401k, which was automatically deducted. I'd run up a considerable debt with credit cards and car payments, not to mention alimony and child support. I'd been in the rut familiar to many Americans, that being that you owe so much that you could only afford to pay the minimum payments on anything. This of course left you in exactly the same place each month, each year, since the interest on these things accumulated as fast as the minimum payments reduced them. Even before Mr. Li entered my life, even before the Spokane Fire Department began threatening to take my job from me, I'd always wished that I had my financial history to do over again. Well now I did. I made another solemn vow. I would manage any money I got wisely, utilizing the brutal lessons I'd learned before being recycled. I would not live beyond my means ever again. It was un-American of course, but I was going to do it.

I took $10.00 of each paycheck for personal enjoyment type things. $5.00 paid for the gas I used in my Dad's car and another $5.00 went to insurance rate compensation. That left me $39.50 each week that had nowhere to go. I opened up a savings account at a nearby bank. I was amused and slightly offended to find that I had to have my Dad's permission before the bank would open it for me. My God, what chaos would erupt if minors were allowed to open bank accounts without regulation. I began putting this money in there each paycheck. The interest on the account was a pittance, a mere two percent, but that was okay. The savings account was just a holding tank until I built up some capital. When I accumulated enough money, I had a better place in mind to store it.

My parents watched all this with interest, not surprised at my work ethic, which I'd learned from them after all and which they'd expected nothing less than, but with my frugelness. You see, my money management skills in my previous life I'd learned from them also. My parents, through my childhood and teenaged years had managed their money about as well as I did as an adult, which was not well at all. I'm certainly not blaming them for my later troubles just explaining the fact that they were wondering where I'd learned my money management. They watched my savings account grow each week (they had to co-sign my deposits) with respect and admiration and more than a little confusion. God forgive them, they even suggested I take some of that money out from time to time and enjoy myself a little.

"I'm saving for college." I would tell them. "And maybe a car sometime soon."

"I see." They would reply. "That's very wise Billy."

My work schedule put somewhat of a kink in my sex life since the weekends had been my traditional boffing time. But it was only a minor kink. The girls that really wanted to experience my skills would find the time to be with me on weekdays. I would generally have them come over immediately after school where I would take them to my room, show them the pleasure they were seeking, and send them on their way before Dad got home from work. On most of these days Nina would come over after the latest girl had departed and we would study together or just sit on the couch and talk, drinking soda and munching on chips or something, maybe watching some TV. Mom and Dad were under the impression that Nina was my girlfriend, which actually struck me as somewhat funny. They had no idea that I was screwing the brains out of various teenaged girls before they got home. They even expressed pride that I still went over to Anita's and mowed her lawn or cleaned her windows or babysat her kids or put her storm windows up or took them down. They had no idea that their dear friend was paying me for these services in something more valuable than mere money. I don't believe even Tracy knew what the score really was between Anita and I.

The months went by. The frigid chill of winter gave way to the spring of 1983. I heard through the grapevine that Mike was leaving school to go to independent study classes. This rumor filled me with dread and reminded me that I still had a piece of unfinished business. Independent study was one of those state-sponsored atrocities that accounted for more dropouts than anything else. I should actually say IS, since the thing still existed before my recycling. What happens is a poor student is encouraged to leave mainstream high school and go to a separate campus for study. They are required to be there only twelve hours a week and are given various assignments to complete at their own pace. They and their parents are told that they can graduate this way if they only complete the meager amount of work that is supplied. What inevitably happens is that the student in question finds that even twelve hours a week is too much and they eventually leave it for the abyss of drop-out status. The whole thing is nothing more than a false hope for parents and a dead-end for students. Mike was no exception. He would be in independent study for less than two months before leaving school behind forever. He would eventually pay money to be crammed for his GED so he could get into the Air Force where he would ultimately be dishonorably discharged for marijuana use.

I had to take a shot at preventing this. I simply had to.

That week I had my Dad deposit only $24.50 in my savings account, keeping an extra fifteen bucks for myself. Naturally, since this was a break in the routine, he questioned it.

"Swaying from your convictions a little?" He asked as I handed him the deposit slip.

I shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "I guess you guys are right." I told him. "I SHOULD enjoy myself once in a while. I thought I'd just blow fifteen bucks on something this time as a reward."

"Well good for you." Dad told me. "What are you going to spend it on?"

"No firm plans." I lied. "Maybe I'll just spend it all on video games down at the arcade. You know, Space Invaders and all that?"

"Well you deserve it." He told me, putting his signature next to mine.

The following Monday at school I found Steph wandering through the halls. She was glad to see me.

"Do you think maybe your brother can get me an eighth of some good greenbud?" I asked.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" She smiled. "You got the cash?"

I handed her fifteen bucks, a ten and a five. She took it from me and then peeled off the five and handed it back to me. "For you it's only ten." She smiled. "IF, you let me bring it over to your house today to deliver it personally."

I looked her up and down, remembering what her body had felt like beneath mine. And it was five bucks. I'd certainly made worse deals in my life. "You're on." I told her. "Just show up right after school. I have to work today."

"I'll be there." She promised, stuffing the ten into the pocket of her jeans.

She was there. She handed me a plastic baggie of pungent pot and then we retired to my bedroom. I enjoyed her body in as many different ways as I could imagine while she enjoyed mine. She left with a smile on her face.

I stuffed the pot she'd given me under the center of my mattress and headed for the shower. I had to be to work shortly after Dad got home.

The next day, Tuesday, I found Mike wandering through the halls between third and fourth period. I took a deep breath and then walked up to him, matching his pace when I was beside him.

"What's up Mike?" I asked carefully.

He looked over at me, his face registering instant hostility, obviously debating whether or not to speak to me. Finally he said, "Nothin'."

"Haven't seen you in a while." I commented.

He shrugged. "Been busy." He told me.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah." I replied. "Me too. Workin' and everything. Listen, I was thinking that maybe we could get together after school today. Bullshit a little you know. Just like old times."

"Naw." He said instantly. "Got things to do."

I nodded again. "Okay." I answered, knowing that I was resorting to dirty tricks but it was a desperate situation, wasn't it? "Too bad. I just scored an eighth of some killer greenbud."

His eyes lit up like pinball machines. "Really?" He asked, his disinterest dropping away instantly.

"Yeah." I said. "But it's cool. If you got things to do…"

"Well I can prob'ly come over for a while." He put in. "You know, we haven't hung out in a while."

"Cool." I said, suppressing a smile. "I'll see you after school then."

"Right."

On the way home from school I asked Tracy and Cindy if they maybe wanted to go to the mall for a few hours before Dad got home from work.

"The mall?" Cindy asked, lighting a cigarette. "I was hopin' you had some new albums to show me today."

Tracy gave her a look of annoyance and then turned to me. "What's the matter Billy, you getting' shy about your study sessions with our friends?"

"No." I answered. "Not at all. I have something important to do today. Mike's coming over."

"Mike!" Tracy said, disgusted now. "That fuckin' hoser! I thought you'd wised up and stopped hangin' out with him."

"Please?" I said, not offering any explanation. "This is important. If you guys go out for a while I'll smoke some of the bud I scored with you later."

That did the trick. I'd long since learned the barter power that the possession of a little marijuana held in a teenaged society. Cindy let me out at the curb and roared away shortly afterword, Tracy in the passenger seat, with a promise not to return until Dad got home.

Mike pulled his Beetle to the curb soon after.

Our conversation was cautious and casual as we went to the garage and smoked ourselves into oblivion with Tracy's bong that I liberated from the secret hiding place in her room. By the time we re-entered the house we were well into the stratosphere. I hoped I was coherent enough to speak my mind effectively through the drug haze. My own intoxication was countered by the fact that Mike, in his stoned state, would be extremely susceptible to suggestion. We watched some TV for a few minutes while we munched on some food we'd found in the fridge. By the time we went to the garage for our second set of bonghits, we were comfortable speaking to each other despite our months of separation.

"I hear you're going to go to independent study." I said as I dumped the bong water down the sink and rinsed the chamber.

"Yep." He nodded, obviously excited about it. "My parents put in the application the other day. The counselor says it'll be approved and I can prob'ly start next month. After only six months of it I'll graduate."

"Six months huh?" I said. "And you only have to go twelve hours a week?"

He nodded. "Isn't that fuckin' cool. And I get to schedule my own twelve hours. I can go six hours for two days and take the rest of the week off, or four hours for three days, or three hours for four days. Whatever I want."

I carried the bong upstairs and replaced it in Tracy's room. Mike took a seat on the couch while I was gone. When I returned I sat next to him and took a sip out of a soda.

"Mike," I asked. "Do you realize that you're being encouraged to drop out of school?"

"What?" He replied, looking at me with renewed hostility.

"The system is encouraging you to drop out of school. Independent study is nothing but a joke, a joke designed to allow people to drop out with some measure of self-respect intact. First they offer you something that sounds appealing: you only have to go to school twelve hours, you work at your own pace, you'll get to graduate early. It's an offer too good to be true."

"What the fuck you talking about?" He asked. "It's not too good to be true.

That's how it works."

"Really?" I continued. "How many people do we know that have gone through independent study? Let's see there's Rodney, Steve Kale, Michelle Beckenwood, Stacy Smith. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of them graduated, not a single one.

"Yeah, but they were stupid." He said defensively. "I'm different."

"No you're not." I told him. "You're being used by the system. I'm sure the counselor spouted a bunch of bullshit to you and your parents about how this will help you. They're lying. It doesn't help you, it helps them. They've marked you as a likely dropout in the near future so they're trying to get rid of you before that happens. They don't give a shit about you or your future, they WANT you to drop out. But they want you to do it this way because it doesn't go on the school's statistics as a dropout; you go down as a transfer to another school. That way they don't lose any of their budget money or have their teaching methods audited by the state board of education.

"So off you go to independent study where you're encouraged to fade politely away. Do you know how they get you to drop out with this program? Do you know what the kicker to it is? It's that flexible schedule you were talking about. Come whenever you can, you only have to be there twelve hours a week. But you see, if you offer a teenager a deal like that, they'll abuse it and those fuckers KNOW that. You get up on Monday and say to yourself, 'I don't have to go in today because I only have to go twelve hours. I can knock out some hours tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolls around and you say the same thing. After all, you don't HAVE to be there on Monday or Tuesday. Before long you'll find yourself at Thursday without any hours built up. By that time the thought of spending six hours is too much to take. So you cut for that week; after all, anyone they send to independent study is an accomplished school cutter, aren't they? Before two months go by it will be too much trouble to go at all. There will be no paperwork done, nothing that says you've officially dropped out, but you will in effect have dropped out. Just like they planned for you."

Mike had simply stared at me during this speech, absorbing what I was saying without expression.

"Where did you come up with all that shit?" He asked me finally.

"My Dad's a teacher." I told him. "He works for the damn school district. Believe me, that's the way it is."

"What the fuck are you tellin' me all this for?"

I took a deep breath. "Mike, you're my friend. We've been friends since we were kids, right?"

"Yeah," He nodded, "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Friends try to help each other. Remember when Fairview stabbed me? You grabbed him off of me. You helped me. That's what I'm trying to do for you.

Help you. You're about to make a big mistake, a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life."

"How do you know I'm makin' a mistake?" He shouted. "Even if I do drop out what makes you think it's gonna be a mistake? What do I need a fuckin' diploma for anyway?"

"What do you want to do with your life Mike?" I asked him.

"What?"

"What do you want to do?" I repeated. "What would like to do for a living? What would be a dream job for you?"

"Man," He said, dismissing me. "Fuck this shit. Let's talk about something else."

"Look Mike." I said carefully. "Like I said, we're friends and I'm trying to talk to you as a friend. Nobody else is here, nobody's gonna hear what you say. I'm not putting you down or anything, I'm just trying to help you because you need some help. You're on a path of destruction here and I'm trying to steer you off of it. So tell me, what would you like to do for a living? What would be a cool job?"

For a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He shrugged. "I never thought about it before. I can't picture myself in five years, I don't know."

"Maybe that's part of your problem." I said. "You don't have any goals." I looked him up and down for a minute, an idea occurring to me. "You'd probably like a job where you get a lot of days off each week, wouldn't you?"

"The more the better." He agreed.

"A job where even when you ARE at work, you get to spend a lot of time sitting around on your ass."

He scoffed. "Yeah, like there are jobs like that."

"There is Mike." I told him. "There is."

"Yeah?" He said cynically. "Name one."

There was only one that I could think of. It was one that was well within reach of Mike if he would only graduate from school. "A fireman."

"A fireman?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Firemen work twenty-four hour shifts ten days a month. That leaves twenty days off a month. When they're on shift they have beds, TVs, lounge chairs to sit in, all the amenities of home. They get to sleep while they're on the clock. And they make damn good money, much more than they deserve to."

He was turning the idea over in his mind. I could see him doing it and I felt the first ray of hope. Was I finally getting through to him a little?

"And you know what the best thing about being a fireman is?" I asked.

"What?"

"The public fuckin' worships you. You can do absolutely no wrong. And women dig firemen in a bad way. They'll practically drop down and give you head right there."

He was definitely interested now.

"The requirements are that you're eighteen and have a high school diploma. You also have to be able to pass a physical agility test, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. You're in good shape."

"Are you sure about this?" He asked.

"Dude." I told him. "If you can just graduate you'll be in."

"No shit." He said softly.

"Look Mike, if you just work through this year you'll have it made. The school has a work-study program for seniors and fire technology is one of the classes. If you can hang in until then and bring your grades up to a 2.0 average you can go to the ROP classes. That means you'll just have to take three classes each day and then you'll spend the rest of the day hanging out at a fire station somewhere. You'll get to go to calls with them and watch them work and it'll look damn good on your application after you graduate."

He soured a little. "There's no way I'll get my grades up to a 2.0. I'm workin' on straight F's now."

"I'll help you with your work." I promised. "Just come over after school," I paused and then amended, "Well, after my Dad gets home that is, and I'll help you with your work. You can do it if you just go to school each day."

He shook his head. "I haven't spent a whole day in school for the last year.

I'm not sure I can do it."

"You CAN." I insisted. "Dude you're only seventeen years old. You have the rest of your life in front of you. How hard will it be to spend six hours in school for another couple of months? If you work at it we can bring your grades up and you'll be almost free next semester. A year of ROP and only going to three classes and you'll graduate. You start applying at fire departments and one of them will take you. It's not that long and it's not that high of a price, is it?"

"I guess not." He said.

It was touch and go for a while. Mike told his parents his decision to stay in school and they accepted it dubiously. However when his parents told the school counselor to withdraw the application for independent study they met some resistance. According to Mike, she tried her damnedest to get him and his parents to change their minds. She nearly begged he told me. But in the end he stuck to his guns and his parents stuck to theirs. The application was withdrawn and Mike stayed in high school.

As I promised I helped him with his homework. There was some friction at first when he discovered that I wasn't planning to DO his homework for him but to help HIM do it. There was also some friction when he didn't show up a few times so he could go get stoned with someone. I talked to him plainly about this, explaining that I would only continue to help him if he showed up each day. He was morose about it but agreed. His attendance at my study sessions improved remarkably.

His attendance at school also improved. Though he whined about it to the point of genuine annoyance on my part, he faithfully showed up to classes each day, only occasionally cutting out for a session with a marijuana pipe or something.

By the end of the first month of our studying together, study sessions in which Nina was a frequent participant, he began to catch on to his work and actually began to complete more of his assignments in school. I felt I'd done well with him and my satisfaction was great.

As the end of the school year drew closer I worried incessantly about Tracy.

This was the point that she was scheduled to die. All of the signs told me I'd steered her away from that path. When Lisa Sanchez, the cheerleader, began making friendship overtures to Tracy, she'd been almost rude in her rejection of them. The friendship that eventually evolved into the foursome that was fated to drop into the river never flourished. As a result, Tracy never went to the party where she would meet the football player that would cause her death. Instead she stayed close friends with Cindy, another deviation from the previous path. When Tracy had begun hanging out with Lisa before, the relationship with Cindy had faded away. But despite all this I was worried. Again, I did not know the rules involved here. Was fate absolute? Would Tracy end up dying one way or another simply because she was scheduled to?

On the other hand I did have some indication that things were not pre-destined. Mike was a shining example. As May began winding down towards June and the end of the school year, he was still enrolled in school, was in fact working his grades upward to the C average. This was something that had not occurred before. Mike gave me hope that I'd succeeded in saving Tracy.

The end of the school year came. Mike got his report card and it showed his year's average to be 2.1. He was qualified to go into ROP the next year. He didn't give me much in the way of thanks but I understood. It wasn't in his nature. I received tremendous satisfaction from his accomplishment anyway.

Tracy graduated. I dressed in my suit and attended the ceremony with my parents. Though my sister and I had never talked about my prediction for her fate on that night since the first time, it was obvious she remembered what I'd said. She was perhaps the only member of her graduating class to go home with her parents after the ceremony. She took off her dress and went to bed early.

When I got up the next morning I staggered downstairs and found her sitting in her pajamas in the living room. The television was on, tuned to the local morning news program. Dad and Mom had already gone off to work so we were alone in the house. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to see her there. She was alive, still drawing breath a day AFTER she'd died in her previous life. Things could be changed!

My elation was dampened a little as I got a good look at her. I could see immediately that she was upset. Her face was pale and she was trembling.

"What's the matter Trace?" I asked carefully.

"I've been watching the news." She told me slowly, turning a pair of haunted eyes to my face.

"Yeah?"

"There was an accident last night." She said. "Near the falls."

I felt all the spit in my mouth suddenly dry up. My arms broke out in goose bumps. "Was there?"

She nodded. "A Camero with four people in it crashed into the river. Lisa Sanchez was killed. She drowned in the car."

I was speechless as I listened to her, numb with shock.

"There were other people in the car." Tracy went on. "A guy named David Mitchell was driving. He's a football player at the college. Another football player named Rick Manchester was also in the car. Rick was Lisa's boyfriend. And there was one other girl in there. Barbie Langston, she's David's girlfriend."

"What happened to her?" I asked unsteadily.

"She got out. Lisa was the only one killed."

"Wow." I whispered, trying to figure out what that meant. Barbie was a cute redhead who had found her way to my bedroom last summer during my 'male slut' period. She had been installed in Tracy's place when Tracy did not meet and begin dating David Mitchell. She had lived. Why? Was it because she had lived past graduation in the previous life? Was she simply a better swimmer? Was there any meaning to be found with her non-death?

"Billy," Tracy said softly. "All of those names were the ones you gave me that day except for Barbie. You described the car, the driver, the passengers, the accident location, everything. How did you know?"

"I can't tell you Tracy." I said. "I just can't."

"Billy, for Christ's sake! I would have died yesterday if I hadn't listened to you, wouldn't I have?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"You scared me that day when you started talking about all of that. You scared me bad. But I never really, you know believed it could be true. I didn't think it would really happen. Even when little things started to click into place. Lisa Sanchez trying to make friends with me, stuff like that, even then I never really believed it. But Jesus, you were right!"

"I know Tracy." I said. "And you're alive today instead of dead. I'm glad you listened to me."

"Christ." She said, shuddering and trembling. "I could have died."

"But you didn't." I told her. "You didn't."

Summer vacation began. Tracy sent off college applications and was accepted into the University of California at Berkeley on an academic scholarship. She spent a good portion of her vacation preparing for the move to California. My parents, who had no idea how close they'd come to losing a daughter, were preoccupied with helping her at this task. They took out a second mortgage on their house to help pay for some of the expenses until Tracy managed to get a job in the Bay Area. I could tell they were worried about money although they never mentioned it to either one of us.

I was able to increase my work schedule an extra hour a day and an extra day a week now that summer was upon us and there was no school to attend. By the beginning of August I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings account. It was time to make my first move.

"Dad," I said at the breakfast table one morning. "I need you to do something with my money."

He looked at me over his paper. "Your money?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I want you to pull it out of the savings account and take it to a stock broker."

"A stock broker?"

"Here." I said, handing him a slip of paper upon which I'd written careful instructions.

He looked at it for a moment, his eyes widening. "You want to buy stocks?"

"I do." I affirmed. "As you can see there, I'd like to invest six hundred dollars in Lytech Corporation and three hundred in Smith Manufacturing Corporation."

"Billy," He started slowly, as if he were speaking to a lunatic, or a teenager. "Do you understand what you're doing? Investing in stocks is a risky business. You have no guarantee that you're going to get any return. You could lose all of your money."

"I've studied up on it pretty well Dad." I assured him. "I'm pretty sure that these two corporations are going to go through the roof in the next year."

"What are they?" He asked. "I've never heard of either one of them."

"They make latex products." I told him. "Condoms and surgical gloves mostly."

"Condoms and surgical gloves?" He asked. "You think there's money to be made there?"

"It's a matter of timing Dad." I explained. "You know about AIDS, right?"

"Of course I know about AIDS." He told me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well," I said. "I've been following the news on AIDS as well as checking the business section. Right now AIDS is mostly confined to homosexual men and IV drug users. But that's slowly changing. As more and more heterosexuals become infected the fear of this disease is going to grow, probably into a paranoia."

"That's all very interesting Billy, but…"

"When I got stabbed." I told him. "I remember that the paramedic who was treating me was not wearing any gloves. I'd been cut open and I was bleeding and he was touching me with his bare hands. The nurses and the doctors in the hospital did the same thing. It wasn't just me, it was almost all of the patients that I saw there. Nobody was wearing gloves on their hands as a matter of routine. It just isn't done right now. Are you following me?"

"You're saying that is going to change?"

"In a big way I predict, and soon. As more heterosexuals get the disease and the epidemic grows, ambulance companies, fire departments, hospitals, nursing homes, every medical office is going to start ordering huge supplies of latex gloves. There might even be a shortage of them for a while. The price of them will go up according to the law of supply and demand and their sales figures will probably increase by at least four hundred percent, maybe more. This is the perfect time to invest in the latex business."

He was impressed with my reasoning of the subject but I could tell he still wasn't convinced.

"It's still pretty risky Bill." He told me. "Are you sure you want to invest ALL of your money in this?"

"All of it." I nodded. "Can you do that today?"

He gave me one last glance and then said, "Sure. I'll do it during lunch hour."

The summer rolled on. I continued to have plenty of sex on a fairly regular basis but my heavy work schedule put something of a ding in the variety I was getting. I was down to three females that I enjoyed, rarely getting anything new. Anita would still have me over to do some work for her a few times a week, after which, or sometimes before which, we would go to her bedroom and enjoy a long sex session. She always had me over in the evenings when her kids had gone to bed. Cindy still came over to check out albums with me during the day when my parents were not home. If fact, with Tracy gone a lot of the time on various missions to prepare for college, Cindy's visits became more frequent. It seemed she felt a little guilty about screwing me while my sister was there. With Tracy gone we enjoyed the best sex we'd ever had, with no worries about being too loud or too obscene.

The third girl was Maggie Bartlett, a friend of Cindy's. She would come over on the days when Cindy did not. I tried to talk them into a threesome a couple of times but they just giggled and told me they weren't into that. A pity.

Nina and I remained in contact with each other even though we no longer had to study for anything. We would meet a few times a week at my house or hers, just enjoying each other's company. A few times we drove into nearby Idaho to spend the day at one of the resort lakes. One such day I found myself looking at her in her bathing suit while we soaked up rays on the hot sand. She was starting to fill out nicely. Her breasts, which the previous summer had been almost non-existent, were now pushing at the cups of her one-piece. Again I remembered her classy good looks as the bitchy emergency room doctor. Now that I'd removed the bitchiness I figured she would make some guy very happy someday.

"What are you looking at?" She'd asked, blushing a little as she found my eyes upon her.

I smiled. "Just seeing how your tan is coming along." I told her.

"Well?" She asked. "How is it?"

"It's lookin' good." I answered. I picked up a bottle of sun lotion. "Can you put a little of this on my back? I don't want to burn." That was the advantage of having a girl for a best friend. You could have them put oil on your back. You certainly wouldn't ask a guy friend to do something like that.

"Sure." She said softly, taking it from me. I noticed a slight tremble in her hands as she squirted some into her palm.

Dismissing this, I laid on my stomach on the towel. Her hand began smearing the slippery lotion across my back. Her hands on my skin felt good I realized. They were soft yet eager, gliding over my shoulders and through the small of my back. Her touch was almost sensuous and I felt myself, to my surprise, getting a hard-on beneath my suit.

What a mind-blower, I thought. Nina is giving me a boner. What a strange world.

On September 2 Tracy left the house for California and UC Berkeley where she would begin her first semester as a college student. She planned to get her graduate degree in Business Administration and then move from there to law school. Her hopes were to one day be a rich corporate lawyer. At least she was honest about it.

I gave her a big hug before she climbed into Dad's car for the trip to the airport.

"Take care of yourself." I told her, "And be careful."

"You too." She answered.

She climbed into the car and a minute later it backed out into the street. As I watched it go I felt a tear running down my face. Tracy was still alive.

My senior year began. Because Cindy had graduated and enrolled in college that meant that I was without a ride to school. Though Mike had improved in many areas over the last few months his driving was not one of them. I attempted to mellow him out a bit by letting him know that the fire department would not hire him if he had too many points on his driving record. I suppose this did some good, he never got any points put on, but I still was not going to get into that Volkswagen with him. Strangely enough, though this subject had prompted our long estrangement, he seemed to understand. The subject was never brought up. But this still left me without a lift to school and I'd been driven so long that I'd lost my taste for walking. Nina came to the rescue here. Her Mom, who was a housewife and who thought I walked on water, had always been in the habit of driving Nina to school all through high school. It didn't take much convincing on Nina's part to persuade her Mom to run by my house in the morning and again in the afternoon. Her Mom, who was considerably older for a parent, Nina had been a late child, drove like an eighty-year-old grandmother in her Lincoln. But that was just fine with me. I felt there was little chance of getting killed with Mrs. Blackmore at the wheel.

The reason I'd known so much about our school's ROP program was that I'd taken it as a senior my first trip through. I hadn't taken fire technology but health careers where I'd been assigned to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals as an ER tech. It was this part of my life that had seduced me into my eventual job as a paramedic. I took the health careers once again, as did Nina. I tried to remember if she'd been in it with me before and I couldn't. She had been such a forgettable person back then. Nina planned to sign up for emergency room assignment since she figured, as I had all those years ago, that would be the most exciting. Though I was tempted to do the same, I missed the thrill of the unknown that came with working in emergency situations; I chose central supply instead. Those that chose central supply were sometimes hired by mid-semester if they showed some responsibility. I planned to show lots of it. Central supply techs were paid six dollars an hour.

Mike was accepted into the fire tech ROP program. Like with our health careers program, it was required that you spend the first two months in a classroom learning the finer points of your career assignment. He grumbled about having to spend three hours a day in a class instead of in a fire station like he'd thought but he stuck with it. I knew his grumbling was good-natured and offered only because it was expected of him. He was actually finding the classroom lectures on the basics of firefighting interesting, perhaps the first thing besides marijuana and pussy stories that had ever interested him. I began to feel that Mike was going to be okay.

I perhaps suffered the worst through the classroom portion of ROP. They were teaching us how to take blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and how to respond to various hospital emergency situations like fires or floods. This was all stuff I knew not just intimately but genetically it seemed. There was however some interesting perks to the classroom. It was made up of mostly girls. I had a fresh hunting ground to pick from and an additional challenge thrown in since most of the girls did not know who I was because ROP classes were made up of students from all the regional high schools.

As I went to work on a few of the more attractive students I noticed that Nina, who was in the same class, would become morose and even throw some dirty looks my way. What was up with her? I wondered. Was Tracy right? Was Nina in love with me? I hoped not. She was my best friend and I was her best friend but I'd never done anything to encourage her to love me. If it was true, how could it have happened?

In deference to her feelings I tried to keep my flirtations discreet when she was around. There was no since hurting her. And if she did have some love-like feelings for me they would eventually fade, wouldn't they?

I was troubled by these thoughts but not too troubled. By my second week there I enticed a girl named Susan Kelly, a breasty brunette whose ambition was to someday work as a registration clerk, to my house after school. I was glad to find that I still had the touch after the long summer.

In September of that year the United States sent a force of Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force. I knew that tragedy would befall 240 of them at the hands of Muslim extremists. With their deployment came the opportunity for some experimentation on my part. I knew what was going to happen. Could I, in good conscience, simply let it occur without trying to stop it? I could not.

The question was, how could I stop it? I put some thought into the matter while I read as much on the peacekeeping force as I could. A plan developed in my mind by the end of September.

Using plain paper and pen I drafted a letter to the commanding general of the American forces there. I stated that I was an American Muslim and that I'd received information about an impending attack upon the forces there by way of relatives in Lebanon that were part of the extremists but not as radical as their friends. I explained exactly what was to take place and on which day. I made twenty-five copies of the letter and dropped each copy into a separate envelope, all of which I addressed and labeled CONFIDENTIAL.

I put stamps on all of the letters and then borrowed my father's car one Saturday morning, telling him that I was going to an all-day party. I promised him I wouldn't drink and he gave me the keys.

I left the house at 9:00 that morning, getting onto Interstate 90 and heading west. Four hours later I was in Seattle; a large, anonymous city that I'd never lived in. Careful was my watchword and if any feds tried to find the deliverer of the message, as I was sure they would, I wanted no trail leading them to Spokane. I dropped the letters into a mailbox in one of the suburbs. I had a quick lunch and then headed home. I'd taken my shot. My conscience was assuaged.

Of course I had no way of knowing if my letters had reached their destination and, if they had, if they would be taken seriously. I hoped that they were enough to at least take simple precautions. I listened to a news station on the radio all day on October 15, the day the attack was to take place. Nothing came across about a tragedy in Beirut. But towards the end of the day something else came across.

"U.S. Marines," Said the ABC announcer, "Have captured a group of Muslim extremists that were setting up heavy caliber mortars near the Marine Barracks, apparently with the intention of shelling the soldiers inside. A source tells us that the Marines were acting on information they received via an anonymous tip that the attack was to take place. General…"

I'd done it! I had prevented a tragedy! The Muslims that had been about to shell the barracks, destroying it and killing 240 Marines had been captured before they could do it. I had changed history!

I walked around in a state of elation for the next seven days, beaming with pride at what I'd done. What else could I change? The Challenger disaster was coming up in a few years. I could probably stop that also. In the course of that week I had myself believing that I could prevent the Persian Gulf War.

And then came October 23. I awoke to the news that a suicide bomber with a truck full of explosives had rammed into the Marine Barracks, killing many inside. My elation died the instant I heard that.

It was two days before the final death toll was announced. 240 Marines had been killed. 240! That number put an icy finger of dread upon my heart.

In my previous life the Marine Barracks had been shelled from outside the base by Muslims armed with Russian made eighty-millimeter mortars. 240 had been killed by the attack. In this life I'd prevented that from happening but a week later a suicide bomber had hit instead. 240 had been killed by that attack. I wondered if the death list of those 240 was the same in both lives. Instinctively I knew that it probably was. I had prevented nothing.

240 Marines had been killed, as if they were fated to die. As if they were fated!

I had prevented Tracy's death in this life. Was she too fated to die? Was she just going to be killed in some other manner now that I'd changed her original destiny? Was there anything I could do? Could I really change anything here? Was I fated to end up a paramedic in debt again? Was Mike fated to end up an unemployed loser? Was Nina fated to end up a bitchy emergency room doctor? If so, what had been the point of coming back? What had been the point?

I was depressed and edgy for the next week as news of the bombing in Beirut was swallowed up by news of the successful invasion of Grenada a few days later. Nina, who knew me better than anyone, picked up on my mood and tried to discover the source of it in her gentle, probing way. I told her nothing, claiming that everything was just fine. What else could I say? How could I possibly tell her what was bothering me? That I feared my sister had a death sentence hanging over her head. That I feared that everything I'd done over the last eighteen months had been meaningless.

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her as we rode the bus to our ROP classroom one day.

"Fate?" She asked, looking at me. "What do you mean?"

"You know, that everything is pre-destined. That we have a schedule that we follow in life and that we're powerless to change anything?"

"No." She said. "You don't believe that do you?"

"I didn't used to." I said. "But lately I've been wondering."

"Are you okay Bill?" She asked tenderly. "You've been kind of, well tense the last few days. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing I can put into words." I told her. "I guess I'll get over it."

I turned my head to look out the window and as I watched the traffic pass by outside the bus I felt her hands on my shoulders. They began squeezing and kneading the muscles there, forcing them to relax. It felt wonderful and I leaned my head back and sighed.

"That feels good." I told her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I've been reading on massage techniques." She told me. "Am I doing it right?"

"Perfect." I said, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take me away.

As I felt her squeezing and caressing me a thought occurred. Nina had put her hands upon me completely uninvited. She had simply reached over and done it. Nina, who'd been so shy once that she wasn't even capable of smiling in front of someone, who couldn't even bring herself to answer questions in class, who wouldn't have dreamed of touching someone with or without permission the day I'd first approached her in the cafeteria.

Nina had changed. She was no longer the mousy butt of everyone's jokes. She had friends now. Me, Tracy, Cindy, even Mike. She had learned to socialize with people even to the point of taking some bonghits at a party. I didn't think it possible that she would evolve into the Dr. Blackmore that I would one day know. She would become Dr. Blackmore but she wouldn't be the same person. She couldn't become that person at this point, the psychology that had formed her future personality had been altered. Was it possible that maybe things COULD be changed? That maybe they tended to fall into pre-destined patterns but that rule was not absolute?

In Nina's comforting hands I found some hope.

We graduated from the classroom portion of ROP and were given our assignments. Nina went to the emergency room at one of the smaller hospitals as an ER tech. I went to the supply room in the basement of the regional trauma center and was put to work sterilizing and packaging medical supplies and instruments. Mike was assigned to Spokane Fire Station #3 near downtown.

It took me only a few days to be trained in the routine that I would be following. Central supply was a little more challenging than making pizzas, but not by much. My work mate was Julie Salinas, a cute Mexican girl that had been in my training class. I'd tried once to initiate some intimate conversation with her but she'd shot me down without a second glance, stating in no uncertain terms, that she was engaged to be married after graduation. I'd shrugged her off. That kind of thing happened from time to time and there were plenty of other targets in the class.

When I walked in and saw her there the first day I assumed it was not going to be pleasant. She had been a little snotty in her rejection of my advances. But I was surprised to find that she was friendly to me as we spent three hours together each day. With our bodies covered by baggie scrubs, our shoes covered by paper coverings, our hair covered by paper nets, we would chat easily as we went about the tasks of putting forceps and scalpels and syringes and little bottles of medicine into sterile packaging and then labeling them for the appropriate departments within the hospital. It was a fun relationship. She was pleasant to talk to and since I already knew that she wasn't interested in me I was releived of the sexual tension that usually went along with being next to someone like her. Or so I thought.

As the first few weeks went by I couldn't help but notice that Julie was always there when I got there. I knew she had her own car which allowed her to drive to the hospital instead of taking the bus but why in the name of God would she show up earlier than she had to? Finally, when our relationship matured to the point that I could ask such things, I asked her.

"Because." She told me. "I intend to get hired here at mid-semester. Can you imagine? It's a dream job. If they hire you, you get paid for your time here and still get the school credits. You also get another three hours on the clock at $6.00 an hour. So if I get noticed by showing up a half an hour earlier than everyone else, so much the better. They only hire three or four of us each year you know and there's more than twelve of us working down here."

"That's a pretty good idea." I said with complete honesty. After all, I was counting on getting hired also. To do so would nearly double my current income. "I wish I had a car so I could do it too."

I meant nothing by this statement. I was merely speculating out loud, wondering in my mind if I could break loose some of my portfolio to purchase a cheap car. If it helped me get a job it would be a sound investment, wouldn't it?

"If you want," Julie said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I could give you a ride. I have to drive right by your school to get here and right by it to get home. I'd rather work with you then some of the other losers they got around here."

"Really?" I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her intentions. Usually when girls asked me something like that what they wanted was sex. I wasn't so sure about that with Julie though. After all, she'd already told me she was engaged. She in fact talked quite a bit about her fiance, who was in his second year of junior college where he was learning the finer points of drafting. She was also a practicing Catholic; a religion which most definitely frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex.

Finally I decided it was a genuinely innocent offer that a friend makes to another friend. "I'll take you up on that." I told her. "Thanks."

"No problem." She assured me.

Nina and I had arranged our school schedules that year so that we shared the last two classes before lunch and ROP. We always sat together in the classroom during those classes and then walked together to the lunchroom where usually we would sit with Mike and eat lunch prior to heading off to our job sites. Mike had had the same idea as Julie. He drove his Bug to the fire station, getting there earlier than he was required. He also tended to stay a little later than was required. He talked repeatedly of his experience at the firehouse, continually and obviously inflating his stories of what they allowed him to do. For instance he told me once that they'd allowed him to don breathing gear and go into a burning building to help fight a fire, something that they would NEVER do. But I was gladdened by his exaggerations. It meant that I'd hit upon just the right thing when I'd suggested firefighting as a career.

After he took off from lunch break to head downtown Nina and I walked out to the bus area where the ROP buses picked up the students. As we walked I explained my new riding arrangements to her along with the theory that it would help me get hired at mid-semester.

"Julie?" Nina said, frowning. "You're going to be riding with her?"

"Yeah." I said. "That way I'll be able to…"

"But she's engaged!" Nina nearly yelled. A very un-Nina-like display of emotion.

"So?" I asked, looking at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're gonna…" A pause as she tried to formulate her words. "Get a RIDE from an engaged girl?"

"Well yes." I affirmed. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Her face was actually turning red as her eyes, once so soft and mellow, burned into me. What the hell was the matter with her?

"No." She said stiffly. She turned away from me and started heading for the bus stop.

I followed after her, grabbing her by the arm. "Nina?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She said. "Nothing at all. I'll see you later."

Right then Julie, driving her Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb in the red zone. She saw me and smiled. "You ready?" She called.

"Just a sec." I told her, turning back to Nina. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm fine." She said sadly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Do you still want to ride with me to school?"

"Of course." I said, "But aren't we going to get together and study today after school? We have to go over that calculus."

"Not today." She said coldly. "I've got things to do." She turned away from me once again and disappeared into the crowd of students waiting for the bus.

With a troubled mind, more troubled than I cared to admit, I went to Julie's car and got in.

By the time we arrived at the hospital I was suspicious about Julie's intentions. She was overly friendly and openly flirty with me; signs I'd learned long before to both recognize and take advantage of. Despite my troubling conversation with Nina I found myself responding to her banter.

All through our workday it went on. She stood closer to me than was really needed, always taking the opportunity to touch my hand or bump her hip against mine. A few times she even turned so that the swell of her breast rubbed across my shoulder. It happened a little too frequently to be accidental. By two o'clock thoughts of Nina were forgotten as I pondered the prospect of bagging Julie and started working the problem of how to get her back to my place through my mind.

That turned out to be much easier than I'd thought it would.

As she drove me towards home she asked, "So, are your parents home right now?"

"No." I told her. "My old man doesn't get home until a little after four."

"Really?" She said, a smile blooming on her face. "You know, some of the other girls said they went over to your house and studied with you."

"Did they?" I asked, familiar with this opening line.

"Uh huh. Susie, Lori, and Stacy all said you're a GREAT study partner." She looked over at me. "I need to study you know."

I chuckled. "I don't think your fiance would like you coming over my house to 'study'." I told her. My own personal form of legal disclaimer. "There are those who say my study techniques are somewhat radical."

"Well I sure ain't gonna tell him." She informed me, as I'd known she would. "I'm not married yet you know."

"No." I nodded. "I guess you're not."

There is of course a certain amount of subtle nuances and so forth that must take place in such encounters before the real action begins. You can't just go inside, tear of your clothes and start rutting like an animal on the carpet. Well at least not for a first encounter. Thankfully with Julie, this period was brief. We started on the couch, were coy with each other for a few minutes, and then we began kissing.

I pulled her sexy body to mine and probed between her large lips with my tongue, licking and sucking each lip while my hands ran up and down her back, feeling her hard body beneath the T-shirt she wore, tracing the outline of her bra strap. She returned my kisses eagerly, showing some skill of her own with her tongue in the way she caressed the inside of my lips with it, the way she probed teasingly in and out, sliding it with mine on a film of saliva. Her breath was sweet and scented with the bubble gum she'd recently been chewing, it's ebb and flow increasing as she became excited by my actions.

I moved from her lips and kissed my way down across her puffy cheek to her neck, licking the salty taste on her dark flesh, nipping with my teeth and sucking lightly. She threw her head back and cooed softly, her hands sliding down to my butt and then up under the back of my shirt where she ran them up and down my bare back. Her hands were soft as they glided across my skin, punctuated by the occasional scratch of her painted nails when I gave her skin a little suck or bite.

I dropped my own hands to the hem of her shirt and slid them underneath, running my fingers up her smooth flanks on each side, feeling her soft skin and the harsh roughness of her bra when I reached her chest. I brought my hands together in the front, moving them along her bra, cupping her firm tits through the cotton and wire, squeezing them together. I could feel her nipples protruding against my palms.

I went back to kissing her, more gently this time as I ran my hands around to her back and began toying with the clasp that held her bra together. She returned my kisses while her own hands slid down my back and into the back of my pants, worming their way through my underwear until her fingers were squeezing my ass cheeks, kneading them. She pulled me tighter against her, so that the bulge of my cock was pressing against the crotch of her pants.

She broke her mouth from mine for an instant. "You have a nice ass." She breathed, nipping at my earlobe with her teeth.

"Thank you." I breathed back, pulling her face back to mine and continuing our dance of tongues.

I undid the bra clasp with a quick, expert twist of the fingers and then lifted my arms, pulling her shirt and the bra off in one quick motion. She raised her hands in the air to assist me, breaking the kiss only long enough for the shirt to clear her head.

I slid my hands around to the front again, taking her tits in them, feeling the yielding but firm flesh, the hard nipples. I stoked them up and down, gliding my fingertips around the perimeter of each nipple, finally tweaking them a little. They were as rigid as stone it seemed. I broke the kiss and pulled away from her, looking at her chest, drinking in the sight of those beautiful mammaries. As I've mentioned before, teenagers have the nicest tits; they can truly be taken as a sign that there IS a God. Julie's were no exception. They were perhaps a little larger than was considered average but they had no sag to them. They were pale in contrast to the darkness of her skin except for the nipples, which were the color of ripe cherries. I hefted them a little in my hands, stroking the sides and bottoms of them, running my fingers beneath them.

"You like them?" She asked sweetly. She knew that I liked them.

"They're all right." I shrugged and then smiled.

"You asshole." She giggled. "You want to taste them?"

"If I must." I said, feigning a sigh of a laborer contemplating an unpleasant job.

"You must." She told me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me towards her.

I sucked and licked her nipples for several minutes, tasting their texture, making her squirm on the couch beneath me.

"You know," She panted, running her fingers through my hair and sliding her denim-clad leg up and down in my crotch. "I heard that you have some really COOL study methods."

"Yeah?" I answered between tongues on her right nipple, which was dripping with my saliva. "What might those be?"

"You know?" She groaned. "Like doing things with your mouth."

I switched to the other nipple, cupping the bulk of the breast with my hand.

"I'm doing things with my mouth right now." I told her, sucking the flesh on the side of the tit.

"Other things!" She insisted. "Things a little lower."

I looked up at her. "Your toes?"

"Higher." She giggled.

"Your belly button." I guessed, sliding down and sticking my tongue into it, making her squeal.

"That tickled." She said, delighted. "But you're getting warmer."

"Well," I finally said. "Maybe you should just come upstairs to my room and show me what you mean."

"Maybe I should." She said, getting up.

Upstairs, standing near the foot of my bed while I watched her, she kicked off her shoes and socks and then unbuttoned her jeans. They were tight on her and it was with some effort that she pushed them off her body to the floor, revealing the dark elegance of her legs to me. Her panties were blue and cut high. They did not leave her body with the jeans, but remained behind after being dragged down just far enough for me to see a few tufts of her black pubic hair peeking out the top of the waistband.

Julie was certainly not shy about displaying her body. She even teased me a little, sliding the panties up and down a few notches, revealing more and more of the top of her bush before she finally slid them down and off her body. Her bush was thick and black, the lips of her pussy all but hidden in it. I stepped forward and ran my hand of her thigh, feeling the skin, finally probing lightly through the kinky hair until I felt warm wetness against my fingertip. I withdrew my finger and brought it to my nose, inhaling her scent, letting the pheromones do their work on me.

She reached forward and undid the snap on my jeans, pushing them down. Mine were not as tight as hers were and they slid easily to the floor where I kicked them and my shoes off. I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the ground while Julie slid her hand into my underwear, grasping my cock.

"Nice." She said, feeling it up and down. With her other hand she tugged at the elastic, pulling them down my legs, her head traveling downwards as her hands pushed them to my feet. As she reached my dick her tongue slid out and circled the head for a brief second, just enough to make my whole body twitch.

"How about you show me how to study now?" She asked.

I nodded, stepping around her and lying on my back on the bed. "Come here." I told her, patting the mattress next to me.

She lay down and I pulled her body against mine, sliding her on top of me, chest to chest, face to face. I kissed her again while I felt the glory of her form pressing against mine. Remaining on my back I put my hands into her armpits and tugged a little, forcing her to move upward on me. I pushed upwards at the same time, bending her back a little and those tits were dangling in my face. I reached out for them with my tongue and worked them for a minute, getting her back into the swing of things and then I let go of her.

"What's wrong?" She asked me, looking at my intense stare.

"Do you want me to eat you?" I asked her.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Bring it up here." I commanded, touching my lips with my fingers. "Put your pussy on my mouth."

"You mean, sit on you?" She asked, her eyes sparkling.

I nodded. "Come on."

She didn't have to be told twice. She slid her crotch along the length of my stomach and chest, inching forward until her soft thighs were pushing against my ears and her hairy pussy was hanging only inches from my mouth. Using my fingers I probed through her thick nest until her pink, juicy lips were visible. They were swollen and ready, gleaming with moisture, thick with the aroma of arousal. I brought my head forward and began to lick at her, driving my tongue into her passage.

My reputation among the girls was based almost entirely upon my skills at cunnilingus. For that reason, whenever I got my mouth on a pussy I gave it my very best. You had to leave the customer satisfied after all. I ate Julie until she battered my face beneath her and dented my wall by slamming the headboard of the bed into it. Her juices poured over my face and I lapped them up. When her first orgasm faded away I put her on her back and ate her again in the traditional method, starting slower this time, working my way from the bottom of her slit upwards so that by the time I reached her clit it was once again swollen and ready for a fresh assault. Her second come was even more powerful.

When that one was done I crawled up her body, which was now slick with her aroused sweat, and positioned myself atop her. She spread her legs wide for my coming penetration. With my mouth kissing hers, with my hard cock nestled in her pubic hair, feeling the waiting wetness, I reached over and opened the nightstand drawer next to the bed. Inside of that drawer, among other things, was a bible that my Mom's sister, a religious fanatic, had given me long ago. What I was doing was a practiced and perfected maneuver.

Without needing to look, or even take my mouth off her, I flipped open the bible to the middle where I'd cut a hiding hole in some of the pages. Inside this hiding hole were my condoms. I pulled one out and then flipped the book shut again. Less than a minute later the condom was firmly on my cock and the wrapper was resting on the nightstand.

"C'mon." Julie panted. "Do it."

I slid my dick through her swollen lips for a bit, wetting the condom. When it was ready I positioned the head between her lips.

"You ready to get fucked?" I asked her, looking in her brown eyes.

"Yes!" She cried, kissing my neck and squeezing my ass. "Do it! Fuck me!"

I drove forward, feeling my dick slide between those lips and into her tightness. She moaned as I penetrated her and my own voice joined hers as I felt her chamber squeezing at me. I began to move in and out, slowly at first but quickly increasing to a full-blown grind. She slid her legs up and down mine, her hands up and down my back while her hips rose up to meet me.

She came again after about five minutes, clawing my back as she did so. I continued to pound away at her until she came again. Now it was my turn to come. I picked up the pace, angling my thrusts for the maximum sensation, anticipating the feeling of blasting inside of her hot body.

But I couldn't come. My mind simply would not make the vital connection that allowed the process of orgasm to begin. It was not the first time this had happened. I'd noticed it happening over the last few months, though it was usually when I was fucking Anita or Cindy or Maggie. It was something that had happened to me in my previous life when I'd been married for a while. The mind was no longer able to generate orgasm through sensation alone, it needed a little something else. That something was usually a fantasy and I'd always figured that it was required because I'd grown a little bored by screwing the same person over and over. But I'd never screwed Julie before. Why should I require a fantasy now? Julie was something new, something fresh. Wasn't she fantasy in and of herself?

I continued to fuck her, moving in and out, feeling her tits with my hands, stroking her legs, kissing her mouth, her neck. I tried to will myself to come. I'm fucking a beautiful teenager, I told myself. But I still couldn't come.

I began to run various fantasies through my head as I screwed her. Those that have been married for any length of time will probably be familiar with this method. I thought of the first time I'd fucked Cindy. That brought a little stir in my nether regions but no orgasm. I thought of what it would be like to fuck Darla Watson, a cute blonde at school that had always rejected my advances. I imagined it was Darla's body beneath mine, Darla's mouth kissing me. No good.

Sweat was now pouring off of my face and I was starting to get tired. Though Julie was still enjoying herself beneath me I knew that if I didn't come soon I was going to have to call a halt on the grounds of fatigue. I couldn't keep up this pace indefinitely. I was loath to do that since I NEEDED to come and since it's damn near impossible to take a condom off your cock if you haven't blasted into it.

I raised my hand to my forehead to wipe the sweat out of my eyes while my hips continued to rise and fall and Julie continued to buck and moan against me. Suddenly I was thinking of Nina. I don't know what brought her image into my mind but I wasn't thinking of her as the friend I knew. I was thinking of her naked and sweating beneath me.

I felt a tingle run up my back at that very thought. The fantasy expanded. I closed my eyes and pressed my body tighter into Julie, my hips picking up speed. I imagined that instead of Julie it was Nina beneath me, her flesh pressing mine, her breasts against my chest, her sex grasping and squeezing my cock.

"Ahhhhh!" I groaned as my mind blew a circuit breaker of some sort and a powerful orgasm went slamming through my body almost without warning.

"Yess!" Julie screamed, feeling the change in my rhythm.

I bucked up and down atop her like I was in seizure, shooting blast after blast into the condom until I feared I was going to overfill it. Finally, drenched in sweat, I collapsed atop her.

She kissed and licked on me, telling me how great I'd been but I barely heard her.

Had I really been fantasizing about Nina? Had that fantasy really given me one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had?

I rolled off of Julie and removed the condom, tying a knot in the top and dropping it into the wastebasket next to the bed (which I would of course empty before Mom and Dad got home). I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and she curled up next to me, resting her head on my chest.

We made some small talk with each other for a few minutes and all the while my mind was spinning. I'd gotten off thinking about Nina. What did that mean?

When Julie finally got out of bed and went to use the bathroom I started to run the fantasy through my head once again. I started to really imagine what it would feel like to kiss Nina, to feel her body against mine, to make love to her. These thoughts were not, I found, the least bit unpleasant to contemplate.

Chapter 5

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

But I love you

Oh how I love you

THE MOODY BLUES

Julie left the house, giving me a quick kiss on the lips and walking out to her car. She told me she would see me tomorrow and then a moment later she was roaring away. I closed the door after she'd gone and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, glancing at the clock as I did so. A half an hour until Dad got home. Just enough time for a shower.

Though I didn't have to work that day a bathing session was necessary none-the-less. I was wearing only a pair of sweatpants on my body and I knew I had to reek of Julie's musk both from my skin and on my breath. There was no sense giving my Dad anything to raise his eyebrows about.

As I put ice in a glass and filled it with water from the tap, preparing to slake my considerable thirst, my mind was still reeling with the new images of Nina it had produced at the moment of truth earlier. The memory of the powerful orgasm those images had generated was still fresh and in fact the images themselves were still flitting at the forefront of my thoughts, keeping my dick in a semi-erect state.

It was Nina I was thinking about! Nina! What a mind-blower. I felt very weird about this. Nina was my best friend, my companion, my confidant for nearly two years now. Why was I suddenly having sexual thoughts about her? Was it just my teenaged libido in overdrive or was it something else entirely? As I struggled to understand the meaning of these thoughts I found myself thinking of her in more than the sexual way. I thought of all the time we'd spent together, of all the things we'd done. I liked being around her. There really wasn't anything else I'd rather do in fact. Not even sex, my greatest obsession, compared to simply being in the company of her, talking to her, listening to her.

My God, I thought. I wasn't talking about love was I? Though I looked like a teenager and though I'd learned to act like a teenager I was still, under all of that, a thirty-three year old man. Nina was seventeen. And while I'd reluctantly acknowledged the possibility that she might be in love with me, through no fault of my own of course, I'd never even considered, even for an instant, the possibility that I might be in love with her. Sure I loved her as a friend. Sure, even though she was sixteen years younger than I was (although in reality she was nearly a year older than I was) I'd always found her a mature and easy to talk to companion, much easier than my ex-wife had ever dreamed of being, easier in fact than even Tracy. But none of that meant love did it, not romantic love anyway.

I thought of how upset she'd been earlier that day because I'd chosen to accept a ride from Julie. I remembered being baffled by her anger. Why should she be upset because of that, I'd wondered? It had been in all innocence, or so I'd thought then, and we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend anyway, so what right had she to be mad at me? And then I imagined how I would feel if Nina had told me that she was going to be riding to ROP each day with someone like Rick Felone, one of the few other guys that had been in our ROP classroom. I was surprised at the sudden surge of anger and jealously that hit me at the very thought of this.

Jesus, what was happening to me? What was I going to do about it?

Before I had a chance to think too heavily on those questions the doorbell rang. Muttering a curse under my breath at being interrupted while I'd been thinking some deep thoughts, I set down my glass and headed into the living room.

Figuring it was a door to door salesman selling some worthless product or religious fanatics selling something even more worthless I threw open the door prepared to send them away post-haste so I could go up to take my shower and continue my thoughts of Nina to their conclusion. However it was neither on the other side of door. It was Nina.

Her expression was very cool upon her face, very unreadable as she stood on the porch. Her eyes took in my attire and I realized that she couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. What was she doing here anyway? She'd told me that she wasn't coming over.

"Hi Nina." I greeted her with false cheeriness, stepping back a bit to keep her from catching any sort of scent from me. I did this instinctively without even realizing why I was doing it. "Come on in. What are you doing here?"

She made no move to come through the door, she simply stood there. "I came over to apologize for acting so weird today at school." She said. "I thought I'd been out of line, getting upset just because you wanted a ride with Julie."

"That's okay." I told her. "I understand completely. Why don't you come in?"

"I was so upset by what I'd said," She continued, still making no move to come through the door. "That I decided to head over as soon as I got home from school."

My mouth dropped open and a burst of adrenaline flooded me as I realized what she was saying.

"When I got here," She told me. "I saw that you already had company. Julie's car was out front."

"Listen Nina," I started and then immediately faded away. I had no idea what I should say to her. Should I lie and say nothing had happened? I rejected that thought even as it formed. I could hardly deny it. Nina, as I may have mentioned earlier, was not stupid. Julie's car had been out front and I'd answered the door wearing nothing but sweats and smelling like I'd just fucked someone.

"What you do is your business." She told me and I saw that a tear was now running from her left eye. "It's never been any of mine and I've never pretended that it was. You've been screwing everything with a vagina for the last two years and I've never tried to convince myself that you have any feelings for me. To you I'm just Nina."

"No Nina." I protested. "That's not true at all."

"It is." She said. "But do you know what? I've always had feelings for you. Ever since you first started talking to me in the lunchroom I've had strong feelings for you. Over the past two years they've never been returned but I've always had them and I've always hoped that some day…" She sniffed a little, more tears coming down now. "Time and time again I've started to feel like maybe there was some hope. Even though I've heard all of the stories about you, about how you'll screw anyone. Even though girls are always coming up to me and asking about you, trying to get me to introduce them to you, I still had some hope. I kept deluding myself, telling myself that you really were a nice guy. That you really weren't doing all of these things that I was hearing."

"I am a nice guy." I protested. "It's just…"

"Time and time again I would see what you were doing and try to tell myself I wasn't really seeing it. I would try to tell myself that someday…" She took a deep breath. "Anyway, when you told me that Julie and you were just going to ride together I felt, well, jealous, threatened at first. I know we're not going together or anything but still, I feel these things Bill. I can't help it. I've got these fucking feelings for you. But then I thought about it and decided I'd overreacted a little. I told myself that there was no way Bill would ever do anything with an engaged girl. I convinced myself that I'd let my feelings come out a little too much this time." She snorted in disgust. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me. So I came over here to tell you I was sorry about that.

"When I got here and saw Julie's car out front it suddenly came home to me. Everything that I'd always heard about you was true. All of the times I'd convinced myself that people were just talking about you, all of the times I saw with my own eyes what you were doing and convinced myself it was something else, all of that just fell apart when I saw her car. You really are an asshole Bill, and the worst kind. You're an asshole that can pretend not to be one."

"Nina," I said, "Let me explain…"

"There's nothing to explain." She said. "I've got to get away from you. I've got to stay away from you, do you understand? You're not good for me and you give me too many bad feelings. I just came up here to let you know that you're going to have to find another way to get to school." Tears were now running freely down her cheeks and her voice was breaking as she held off sobs.

"Nina, let's talk about this." I said.

"No." She cried, turning away from me. "Goodbye Bill." She started down the walk.

"Nina!" I yelled, starting after her.

"Leave me alone." She sobbed. "Just stay away from me here, now, and forever. Don't call me anymore, don't talk to me anymore. Please."

She continued down the walkway and turned left at the sidewalk, heading for home. Less than ten seconds later she was out of my sight. But she wasn't out of my mind.

Despite what she'd said to me I tried to call her several times that day. I needed to talk to her, to tell her that I wasn't really an asshole. I needed to try to get her to change her mind. Each time her mother answered the phone and told me that Nina was not there. Her mother's voice, which usually lit up when she was talking to me, was emotionless and flat, with no hint of the previous warmth that had been in it. Finally she told me that her daughter did not wish to speak to me and asked that I refrain from calling anymore. I put down the phone feeling defeated.

The next morning Dad saw me bundling up and preparing to walk to school. He gave me a puzzled look.

"Isn't Nina coming to pick you up today?" He asked.

"No." I told him. "She's kind of, well, mad at me. She's not going to give me a ride anymore."

"You guys broke up?" He asked, his voice soft with sympathy.

"She was never my girlfriend Dad." I told him, irritated. "She's just mad at me and doesn't want to give me a ride anymore."

He stared levelly at me. "Bill." He told me. "I hate to tell you this but Nina WAS your girlfriend, whether you realized it or not."

I shook my head. "No Dad." I said. "We were just friends. We never…, well you know?"

"Is that what you think a girlfriend is?" He asked. "Someone to, 'you know' with? You and Nina might not have ever done that with each other but you were boyfriend and girlfriend all the same. You liked being around each other, you liked to talk together. You were friends. You loved each other.

Isn't friendship the most important part of a relationship, any relationship? Why do people disregard such things?"

Had it been so obvious that even my Dad had seen it? How could I have not seen it all this time? And how could fate have been so cruel to allow me to realize it on the very day, at the very minute that it's destruction was being engineered.

"I don't know Dad." I said with complete honesty. "Maybe they're just assholes."

He gave me a meaningful look. "Maybe they are." He replied. "And maybe they need to take a good look at what is making them an asshole, don't you think? Maybe they can change that little something?"

I gave him a sharp look. What was he saying? What did he know? Was he talking about my social activities? Surely he didn't know about that did he? But then I'd assumed Nina hadn't known about that either, an assumption that, now that it had been proven wrong, seemed painfully naive. Was my assumption that Dad or even, I shuddered, Mom, didn't know as flawed as that about Nina?

Dad had hidden his face back behind the paper, offering me no more insights into what he was thinking. Troubled, I picked up my backpack and headed out the door. I wasn't surprised to find that it was raining as I headed, on foot, to school. It was that kind of day.

My attempts to talk to Nina at school were met with stony silence. By the time lunch came around I knew better than to even try anymore. As I ate my lunch in the lunchroom I looked over to where Nina sat and dread covered me like a blanket. She was sitting alone at a table, eating from her tray, a book open before her. Just like she'd been doing the first day I'd approached her. Just like it.

Julie picked me up once more for ROP. As we drove to the hospital together I was disquieted by the freeness of her affection towards me. She would put her hand on my leg as we talked, or brush my hair from my eyes for me. Once she even kissed her finger and put it to my lips gently. She told me how great of a time she'd had yesterday.

"Do you think maybe we could study together again after school?" She asked brightly.

"Uh…, not today." I told her. "I have to work." In truth I could have easily arranged a little meeting before work but I simply wasn't up to it. I'd never felt less like having sex in my life.

She pouted a little. "Well maybe next week." She said. "I really need to bone up on certain things."

As we worked side by side I noticed again how much she went out of her way to bump into me or to rub her breasts against my shoulder. Since I was quieter than usual she decided to talk more than usual. I winced when she mentioned her fiance.

"Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision when I said I'd marry him." She told me.

I looked over at her, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended to. "What do you mean?"

"Well," She beamed, her eyes shining. "I'm still young, ain't I? Maybe he's not the right one. Maybe I just jumped because he was the first one to ask.

There's lots of other guys out there that might be, uh, better, isn't there?"

I quite simply didn't know what to say to her.

When I came home from work that night my Mom was sitting on the couch watching television and working on some sort of project for work. I gave her a perfunctory greeting and started to head for my room.

"Bill?" She asked, "Are you doing okay?"

I stopped, turning towards her. "Sure Mom." I answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Dad told me about you and Nina breaking up." She said. "I just wanted to know how you were handling it."

I didn't even bother explaining to her that Nina and I hadn't had a relationship to break up from. By now it was starting to sound like a lie even to me. "I'm okay Mom." I assured her. "It'll work out."

"I certainly hope so." She told me sympathetically. "I really like her a lot you know. I thought you two made a cute couple."

I smiled weakly.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your life or anything Bill." She said. "But I think you had a good thing with her. If I were you, I'd do whatever I had to to get her back. Sincerely."

"Thanks Mom." I muttered, unsure what I was thanking her for. Why in the hell hadn't anyone told me this stuff a month ago, or a year ago, or even twenty-four hours ago?

Of course I was deluding myself because they had. Tracy in the most direct way, although I'd refused to hear her, Mom and Dad in more indirect ways. How many times had they referred to Nina as my girlfriend, either to me or when talking about her to someone else? And how many times had I reproached them for this, angrily even on occasion? Too many to count.

"Well that's my motherly advice for the day." She said. "If you're feeling down maybe this will help." She picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to me. On the front I recognized my sister's handwriting.

"From Tracy?" I asked. Since leaving for California Tracy had not exactly been an open line of communication. Two phone calls, one of which had just been to tell us she'd arrived safely, and this one letter. Since she lived in the dorms it was almost impossible to get hold of her.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "And about time too. I swear, you send them to college and they forget you exist."

I opened the envelope and sat down on the couch, pulling the single handwritten sheet of paper out and unfolding it.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Bill, it started. It was mostly to let us know she was alive and well and doing fine. She chattered on about how much she was enjoying her classes and the California weather, how much she liked living in the dorms, about her job at the campus book store which would help supplement her living expenses. And then towards the end she told us that she'd met a boy and had been dating him fairly frequently. His name was Darren Maxwell.

Darren Maxwell. I'd never heard that name before in my life, before or after recycling. But for some reason that name gave me a twinge of fear. I continued to read her decidedly unfeminine handwriting, becoming more nervous in a much more identifiable way. He was a junior at the school attending on a baseball scholarship. A baseball player. He was a sports figure, just like the guy who had been scheduled to cause her death. It should have felt stupid that I was worrying about her just because she was dating a baseball player but it didn't. It made me very uncomfortable. I found myself wondering what kind of car he drove and if he liked to drink at parties.

Troubled, I put the letter back into the envelope and put it back on the table.

"What's the matter Bill?" Mom asked me. "You look kind of pale."

"Nothing Mom." I said, standing up. "I think I'm gonna hit the rack."

I was halfway up the stairs when it hit me. I realized why Darren Maxwell's name bothered me so much. He had the same initials as David Mitchell. The same amount of syllables in his name. I wondered if they looked alike. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, if the initials and the sports history were just a meaningless coincidence. Every time I started to convince myself that paranoia was all it was I would think about Beirut and about Nina sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book before she went off, alone, to medical school.

"Jesus, this is creepy." I muttered.

I lay in bed but it was a long time before I got to sleep.

I tried to call Nina twice over the weekend. The first time her mother not so politely told me that Nina did not wish to speak to me. The second time her Dad told me he would call the cops if I called there again. On Monday at school I tried to talk to her in class.

"I told you to leave me alone." She said quietly but coldly, in a voice that did not promise the opening of negotiations.

I left her alone.

Julie picked me up once again, for what I planned to be the last time. Though I wanted a job at central supply as much as anyone, I could not ride to work with her anymore. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to bring Nina around again but it certainly wouldn't help for her to see me driving off every afternoon with Julie. I planned to tell her on the way to the hospital that this would be the last ride. But before I could, she blindsided me.

She was bubbly and exuberant as I climbed into the car and she roared off with much more enthusiasm than she usually displayed.

"You're in a happy mood today." I commented, trying to think of an opening, or closing line.

"Yep." She bubbled happily. "I sure am. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Look." She said, and waggled her left hand before my face.

I blinked in confusion, not following her. "Your hand." I said dryly. "What about it?"

"Notice anything missing?" She smiled, waggling her fingers.

And suddenly I did. The diamond engagement ring that she'd been so proud of, that she'd annoyed the living shit out of every member of the class with, was no longer on her ring finger. "Your ring." I said hollowly, knowing what the significance of it's absence had to be.

"Yep." She nodded, dropping the hand into my lap, very near my crotch. "I'm free. Absolutely free. I gave it back to him on Saturday night and told him I didn't want to marry him or see him anymore."

I took a deep breath. "Why did you do that?" I asked slowly.

"Because I don't want to see him anymore." She told me. She gave my leg a squeeze. "I've found someone else."

She'd found someone else? Oh shit. "And who might that be?" I braced myself.

She gave me a look that conveyed the message that she thought I was teasing her. "You, you hoser." She smiled. "What we experienced the other night was just, just incredible, wasn't it? I knew right then we had something special going. Didn't you just feel the electricity?"

"Oh God." I couldn't help but mutter. Could this week get any worse?

"Hey," She said, "Are your parents gone? I was thinking maybe we could cut ROP today and go over to your place." Her hand trailed upward until it was firmly in my crotch. "Spend the afternoon together?"

Slowly, patiently, I picked up her hand from my lap and put it back in hers.

"Julie." I started, and then was unable to think of anything to say.

"What?" She said, confused by my rejection of her hand and the serious tone of my voice.

I looked at the ceiling of the car for a moment, trying to think. Why the hell was she doing this to me? Didn't she understand THE RULES? She was supposed to enjoy our session and leave it at that. She wasn't supposed to break up with her fucking fiance because of it. She wasn't supposed to be feeling electricity or any of that romance novel crap. I had no experience with this sort of thing.

"Sweetie," She said, concerned. "What's wrong?"

Sweetie? Oh Christ. This was getting way out of hand.

"Look Julie." I said patiently. "I'm not your sweetie. I'm just Bill. Bill from class. We had a little fun together the other day, something we probably shouldn't have done, but I never meant for it to go any further than that. I never meant for you to break up with your fiance over it."

Her face turned deadly serious. "What are you saying?" She asked.

What was I saying? Hadn't I just said it? "What I'm saying," I told her carefully. "Is that I am not looking for a relationship with you. We just had a day of fun together."

"You don't want to go out with me?" She whispered, her tone conveying danger just under the surface.

"No." I said. "What happened between us just kind of happened. I didn't intend for it to go any further than that. Can't we just be friends?"

"Friends?" She nearly spat. "It sounds to me like you think I'm some sort of slut."

"No, no!" I protested. "That's not…"

"You take me over to your place and fuck me and you just want to end it like that? That's how guys treat sluts!"

"But…"

"I'm not no fuckin slut!" She screamed at me. "Did you think I was one? Did you think you were just gonna fuck me and then we'd forget about it the next day? How could you think that? I'm a Catholic Goddamit. I go to fucking church! Nobody treats me like a fuckin slut!"

"You're not a slut Julie." I protested. "All I was trying to say…"

She suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing her car to a screeching, smoking halt in the middle of one of Spokane's major arteries. I heard the screech of other brakes behind us as several cars nearly rear-ended her.

"Julie, Jesus, what are…"

"Get the fuck out of my car you asshole!" She screamed at me. "Get your fuckin ass out NOW! I don't ever want to see your fucked-up, lying face again!"

"Let's talk about…"

"GET OUT!" She screamed and I saw murder in her eyes.

I unsnapped my seatbelt, opened the door, and got out. Before I could close the door she peeled away, ripping it out of my hand, leaving me standing in the middle of the street in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. I looked around uncomfortably at the angry faces of the motorists whose progress I was impeding and I hurried to the curb.

"I think I could have handled that better." I muttered to myself.

I took a quick look around me, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was in front of a liquor store and three blacks were hanging out in front of it. They were in their early twenties or late teens and looked like gang members based on their garb. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking from forty-ounce cans of beer. They eyed me with amusement.

"Homey," One of them said to me sympathetically. "That was one pissed off bitch."

"Yep." Another agreed. "I heard her rap all the way over here. I was you Homey, I'd stay away from that shit."

"Sure thing." The other one put in. "Bitch done dropped your ass off in the hood. You'd a been good as dead she'd a done that shit at night. Lucky for you it's day, you only half as good as dead 'round here now."

They all laughed at that, shaking their heads at my predicament. I felt no fear from them. I'd worked for years in 'the hood' and had gotten good at reading the intentions of the inhabitants of it. Their jostling of me was for their own amusement. They meant me no harm. However, there were others around that would mean me some harm if I encountered them. I was no longer in possession of the safety my uniform provided or the portable radio that I'd once carried here that could summon every cop within five square miles in less than two minutes. I was in a delicate situation.

"Yeah." I said to them. "I do seem to be out of my element here, don't I?"

This cracked them up again. "You ain't shittin." One of them said.

"The bus stop around here somewhere?" I asked.

"Right here Homey." One answered. "Should be comin round in about twenty minutes."

"Hope you can make it that long." The one that had made the crack about the hood commented.

I looked around again, not seeing anything that offered comfort to me. The street was lined with liquor stores, cheap motels, and the occasional sub-human apartment complex. There were alleys between each of the buildings that undoubtedly contained all manner of thug of all races and creeds. This was not a place to take a little stroll. I turned back to the three-man comedy team.

"Gentlemen," I said. "I propose a business deal."

"Say what?" The apparent leader of the trio asked me.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, my weekly ration from my paycheck. I silently gave thanks that I'd increased it to ten after starting work in the hospital. "Take this ten." I said, "And take it into the liquor store there. Buy me one of those forties you're drinking, since I can use a drink about now, and give me back a buck for the bus. You guys keep the rest for yourself in exchange for keeping me from getting killed before the bus gets here."

They all stared at me for a moment, a trio of THE LOOK. Finally the leader spoke.

"And what's to stop us," He asked. "From just takin the dime and sendin your ass the fuck out of here?"

I shrugged. "Absolutely nothing." I answered.

It took them a moment but they finally started laughing. The leader, shaking his head and grinning, plucked the ten out of my fingers and headed into the store. He returned a minute later handing me a frosty, forty-ounce can of King Cobra and a dollar bill.

"You know somethin Homey?" He asked me as I cracked open the beer and took a huge swallow. "You're all right. You the most fun we had around here in a fuckin week."

And so I made it safely out of the worst area that Spokane had to offer. I boarded the bus, buzzing pleasantly from the beer that I'd just slammed into my system, gave my business partners a wave goodbye, and found myself a seat. I thought it prudent to avoid going to the hospital that day, giving Julie twenty-four hours to cool down. Since I was not accustomed to riding the bus and since I did not have any more money to spare I simply sat in my seat until the bus I was on passed near my home. It took nearly two hours and by the time I got off my bladder felt as if it was going to burst. I ran the five blocks to my house, fumbled with the key, and dashed full speed to the bathroom.

It was a fitting end to the school day I supposed.

When I came home from work that night Mom was once again sitting on the couch and watching television.

"Hi Bill." She greeted. "Feeling better today?"

"Much." I lied, putting on a cheery face.

"Have you talked to Nina?" She asked delicately.

"She won't talk to me." I answered. "But life goes on, doesn't it?"

"What did you guys fight about anyway?" She asked.

"It's kinda personal Mom." I explained. "But don't worry. I'm coping."

She gave me a sideways smile. As I started up the stairs she suddenly called me back.

"I almost forgot." She told me. "Anita called and asked if you could put up her storm windows this week sometime when she gets home. Winter's coming soon you know."

"Sure." I answered. There had been a time, about a week ago, when the news that Anita had called, asking me to do something for her would have caused a stir in my nether regions. But now, nothing. Sex was still the furthest thing from my mind. "I'll do it tomorrow afternoon."

She beamed at me. "It so sweet of you Bill." She commented. "Helping Anita out even with your busy schedule. You're turning out all right."

"I hope so." I said as I headed upstairs, realizing that for the first time in forever I was looking at a trip to Anita's as a chore.

I sensed no thawing of feelings from Nina the next day so I did not attempt to talk to her. At lunch she sat alone again at her table. Mike joined me at mine, pointing at her.

"Why's she sitting over there?" He asked, not bothering to finish chewing his food first.

"She's pissed off at me." I told him.

"How come?"

"It's personal." I answered.

He stared at me for a moment and then, in the way of Mike, dismissed the subject. "You ridin' the bus today?"

"Yep." I answered, wondering if he was going to start questioning me about Julie now.

Instead he gave me a sour look. "I'll be with you." He said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "How come?"

"Bug's broke." He told me. "The fuckin oil pump took a shit on me. Have to wait till my dad gets paid again before I can get it fixed."

I commiserated with him for a minute and then our talk turned to other subjects. After lunch we boarded the bus and found seats together. Nina, not even looking at us, found a seat by herself near the front.

My stop came before his so I bid him farewell and exited through the door along with the other ROP members assigned to the trauma center. As I headed for the main doors I saw Julie's car parked in the parking lot. I felt my nerves tense up as I anticipated having to work with her. After all, we worked with scalpels and other sharp instruments.

But as it turned out my fears were groundless. She had already talked to the supervisor apparently and had requested a change of work partner for personal reasons. My new partner was Brett Jackson, one of the other guys in the class. Julie was working with another girl in a section across the room from me. Brett asked a few questions regarding the transfer but I gave him no answers. Eventually he gave up. Julie and I stayed far apart and she did not try to cut my heart out with an unsterile scalpel. It seemed that particular crisis was passed.

When I rode home that day Nina sat away from me once more. But I also noticed the fact that Mike was not on the bus. He should have been picked up before me. Where was he? Had he found another ride home? For some reason his absence filled me with the same sense of dread I'd felt when I read Tracy's letter. When the bus dropped me off at school and Nina hopped into her Mom's car and I started home, the sensation was still with me. What had happened to Mike?

In the old days, before I'd become Anita's lover, she'd always had me over to do whatever work she required done in the afternoon shortly after I came home from school. Since the first time we were intimate with each other however it became a rule that we planned my work in the late afternoon, timed so that she could feed me dinner and then put her kids to bed in time for us to retire to her bedroom, the confines of which I knew as well as my own. As I headed over at five o'clock that day I still felt like sex was the last thing in the world I wanted to participate in. I also knew that Anita would be expecting it. Beyond that my mind refused to consider anything.

She gave me a saucy smile for greeting, a smile I knew meant that she was exceedingly horny and in need of my talents. I sighed and went to work.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon I had all of her storm windows up (knowing in the back of my mind that I would soon be required to put up Mom and Dad's storm windows too). I entered the house to let her know I was done, intending to tell her that I was going to skip dinner that night and just head home. But as I made my way to the kitchen I smelled the familiar aroma of her burgundy beef stroganoff, a dish that she knew was one of my favorites and that she often prepared for me. I also knew that quite a bit of preparation time went into the construction of this meal and I found myself without the heart to turn it down. Besides, I rationalized, Mom, knowing I would be eating at Anita's would have prepared only enough dinner for Dad and herself.

"Do you want to take a shower before dinner?" She asked me as she started the finishing touches on her meal.

"Sure." I nodded, without enthusiasm.

As I scrubbed myself in her shower, washing the sweat of my exertions down her drain I heard the click of the shower door behind me followed by a rush of cold air against my wet skin. Startled, I turned around to see Anita, completely naked, stepping into the shower with me.

"Anita?" I said, alarmed as she shut the door and pushed her body into mine.

"What are you doing?"

She grinned. "I'm feeling a little dirty tonight." She told me, running her hands over my soapy chest.

"But the kids." I protested. "They're still awake."

"They're watching TV." She said, grabbing the bar of soap from my hand. "Don't worry about them."

She began sliding the bar of soap over my wet skin, running it up and down between my lower abdomen and my shoulders, leaving white, foamy streaks on my flesh. Her large breasts were touching my arm as she did this, pushing their weight into me.

"Anita." I started again. "This is a bad idea."

"A bad idea?" She asked, letting the bar slide down onto my thighs and across my balls.

"Yes." I nodded. "We shouldn't…"

"Why don't you let me," She said, dropping the soap to the ground. "Decide what is and isn't a bad idea."

"But…"

"Oh dear." She said with mock concern. "I've dropped the soap. Perhaps I should go retrieve it."

"Anita…" I began again but she wasn't listening. She slowly dropped to her knees on the floor of the shower and took my wilted cock into her mouth.

"Anitaaaaa…" I pleaded, trying to resist her.

It was useless. Anita knew how to suck a cock. Though I'd sworn only minutes before that sex was the last thing on my mind it took only a moment of her teasing, sucking mouth slurping at my meat before I started to stiffen.

"Mmmmmm." She moaned, pulling her mouth free for an instant. "I LOVE to feel it get hard in my mouth." She dove back down on me.

She sucked me until I was as hard as a diamond and resting my arm on the top of the shower to keep from falling down. She then began to move her head up and down, sucking and licking and jacking with her hands. Water ran across her face as she sucked, adding it's own tickles to the experience. Just as my hips started to gyrate back and forth, she pulled her mouth from me and stood up, trailing her tongue up my body as she went. She licked across my nipples, onto my neck, and finally to my mouth where she plunged her tongue inside.

Libido is both the gift and the curse of the young. She had succeeded in driving thoughts of Nina and Beirut and Tracy and Mike from my head. She'd succeeded in transferring control of me to the other head. I put my arms around her and pulled her soft body to mine, letting my hands drop down to her ass cheeks which I began squeezing.

She broke the kiss and stood back a little, out of the spray of the warm water. She reached into her shower caddy and removed a bottle of baby oil. It was the baby oil I knew, that was responsible for the silky, sensuous softness of her skin. She put it on herself every time she bathed. I'd watched her do it plenty of times.

"Here." She said throatily, handing me the bottle. "Put it on me."

"Okay." I agreed, popping open the cap.

"Be sure to rub it in good."

I turned the bottle upside down and dumped a large quantity over the top of her breasts. The clear oil ran over them, between them, and around the sides of them, spilling onto her belly. I set the bottle down and put my hands on her, starting at the top and rubbing the oil into her skin. My hands and fingers glided over her breasts, squishing them in and out of my grasp, making them slippery and almost frictionless. Her nipples stood out proudly and I took a moment to give each one a quick suck, tasting the bitterness of the oil on my tongue as my hands continued to her stomach.

When her entire belly and flank were slippery I grabbed the bottle once more and then went to my knees before her. Her swollen, dripping pussy was right before my eyes but I ignored it for the time being dumping some oil on each of her upper thighs. I began to massage her legs, starting at the top and working my way down to her feet, rubbing and caressing them until they were as slippery as her torso.

I then dumped some oil into the palm of my hand and cupped her pussy, squishing the oil into her lips. She sighed as I touched her there and I began to rub the oil in, feeling her lips swell further, feeling her slick clit rubbing against me. I slid two fingers into her body. They penetrated the slick passage with ease. Her experienced muscles gripped at me. I began to plunge the fingers in and out while I leaned forward and took her slippery, rigid clit into my mouth and began sucking it.

"Ohhhhh." Anita moaned, her hands coming to the back of my head.

When she came, her legs trembled so badly that I feared she was going to fall on me. Somehow she kept her balance, riding through the tremors I gave her.

I stood up, my dick straining out before me, with the intention of sinking into that slippery channel and taking her standing up while her oil slickened body slid against mine. But Anita had other plans.

"I still need oil on my back." She told me.

Dutifully I picked up the bottle while she turned herself around. I poured a quantity onto her shoulder blades and it tracked a course down towards her ass. I massaged the oil into her skin, working my way lower once more until my hand was probing between the cheeks of her ass. I dumped more oil, getting her good and slippery in the valley, running my hand in and out. Anita really liked it when her ass was played with and I could hear her heavy breathing as I paid her attention there.

She stepped backward a step and bent over, exposing her crotch and ass to me.

"You know what I want." She breathed, her hand going up to her pussy where it began to rub.

"I think I do." I told her, pouring a little more oil into my hands and then dropping the bottle to the floor.

I put my oily hands back between her ass cheeks and touched the bud of her anus with my index finger. I pushed forward and the digit slid into her back passage, lubing the way as her hot tunnel squeezed me. I probed in and out for a minute and then added a second finger. Anita moaned her approval.

"C'mon!" She commanded. "Do it!"

I pulled my fingers from her and grasped my cock in one hand. With the other hand I spread her slippery cheeks apart. I moved forward, putting the head against her slick asshole. I probed forward once, feeling the orifice grip at me and then I pushed into her, sliding deep into her ass in one fluid motion.

"Yessssss!" Anita groaned and I had to agree with her. Her passage was tight and slick.

I dropped my hands to her hips and began to move in and out of her, feeling her gripping and releasing, hearing her excited moans over the patter of the water. Her hand began to move faster between her legs and her hips began to move backward against me as I moved forward.

She came again and the erratic spasming of her ass around my cock brought my own orgasm forward. With Anita giving me obscene encouragement, I blasted my load deep into her bowels.

After coming she quickly rinsed herself off and got out of the shower, leaving me to give myself another once-over with the soap, particularly in my crotch. As I cleaned my body I gave silent thanks for Anita. She'd given me just what I needed and I felt better, calmer than I had before coming over. I was pleased to find that I had come quite nicely without having to think of Nina at all. In fact she'd hardly entered my mind.

Dinner was up to it's usual standards, which was excellent, and by the time it was over and the kids were in bed I was ready for another session. So was Anita. We went to her bedroom and spent about an hour pleasuring each other in the conventional fashion.

After this, as we were lying together on her bed, sweat drying on our bodies, my seed dribbling from between her thighs and puddling on her comforter I stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts flow. Beside me, Anita was in a semi-stupor, drifting towards a full-fledged sleep. She often drifted off after we were done, leaving me to shower and find my way out alone. I'd always taken this as a sign that I'd done a good job.

I thought of Anita, thinking back on our relationship together since that first time I'd come over pleading for her help with a girlfriend problem, engineering her seduction of me. Since then we'd never gone a week without finding ourselves in each other's arms, in each other's body. As far as physical pleasure went she still remained the best. I wondered if, when she met the man she would marry, she would constantly compare him to me? Or would she maybe teach him some of my techniques? This thought actually amused me, making me chuckle for perhaps the first time during that miserable week. Anita teaching her new boyfriend and future husband some of the things she'd learned from a teenager.

I yawned and stretched, preparing to hop out of her bed and head for the shower when a thought from left field suddenly struck me. I froze in mid-stretch, coming fully awake, turning me head and looking at my bed-partner that was just about to give in to the final submersion of sleep.

Anita was already supposed to be dating the man that would marry her! She was supposed to have met him before Tracy graduated from high school. I remembered that clearly from my previous life. He'd been at her side at Tracy's funeral! By the time I went off to college she was supposed to have married him and moved away. But she was doing none of that. She had no boyfriend. The closest thing she had was… me.

What had happened? Why hadn't she started dating him? Why wasn't she falling into her previous pattern as Beirut and Nina were doing? I tried as hard as I could to rationalize a reason for the absence of the boyfriend but only one explanation held water. I had interfered with that by starting a relationship of my own with her.

What had been his name? I thought, trying to remember back over a considerable span of years. Something with a J in it was all I could come up with at first. The name danced for a while on the tip of my tongue until finally I was able to snag it. The last name continued to elude me but a first name was all I needed.

"Anita?" I said, shaking her gently until her eyes opened a little. She stared up at me blearily.

"Whu?" She grumbled.

"Do you know anybody named Jack?" I asked her.

"Huh?" She said, waking up a little more now.

"Jack." I repeated. "Do you know anyone named Jack?"

"My ex-father-in-law's name is Jack." She said. "Do you mean him?"

"No." I shook my head. "Any other ones?"

She thought for a second. "Well there's Jack Valentine at work." She said.

Bingo! Once she told me the last name it came back to me. Her future married name was supposed to be Anita Valentine.

"Why would you ask that?" She wanted to know.

"Tell me about Jack Valentine." I prodded her.

She gave me a puzzled look for a second but, like Tracy and Nina, she was well used to the occasional strange question or statement from me. "He transferred to my department about a year ago." She finally said. "He's divorced and kind of good looking. He asked me out a few times last year but finally he gave up when I kept turning him down. He's dating some tramp from accounting now. Word has it their relationship isn't going so well."

"Why," I asked cautiously, "Did you turn him down when he asked you out?"

She looked at me strangely and then smiled. "Why would I want to go out with some pinhead when I got you?" She asked. "You take care of ALL my needs. Well, most of them anyway."

"Anita," I said, thinking as quickly as I could about how I was going to phrase this. If I'd learned nothing else from my experience with Julie it was to treat a woman during a conversation like this as you would an unexploded bomb. "Don't you think that, well, maybe you should occasionally go out with guys your own age?"

"Why?" She asked softly.

Why? "Uh…, well, you know, because you might want to uh, develop a relationship with a man and maybe, you know, get married again someday."

"I would like to get married again someday." She told me, scooting a little closer to me. "And I DO have a relationship with a guy going. You."

"But Anita." I said. "I'm only seventeen years old. I'm in high school. I'll be going off to college next year."

"I know." She nodded, slapping playfully at me with her hand. "And once you're eighteen years old we won't have to keep our relationship a secret anymore. We'll be free."

"Free?" I said, looking at her like a rabbit in a set of headlights.

"Yes." She nodded. "I figure I can go with you wherever you go to college. I can get a job practically anywhere with my skills. We can rent a house while you get your degree. The only hard thing is going to be telling your parents about us." She shook her head sadly while I stared with my mouth agape. "That's certainly not going to be fun."

"No," I muttered slowly, numbly. "It wouldn't be fun at all, would it?"

She leaned over and kissed my nose with a quick peck. "But don't worry." She assured me. "It'll work out. Love will find a way. Why don't you go take your shower now? You don't want to make your parents suspicious do you?"

"No." I said. "That wouldn't do at all."

I was deeply troubled once again as I walked home and headed upstairs that evening. I brushed by my mother before she had a chance to get a good look at my face and see my emotions there. As I crawled under my covers and shut off my light I found myself actually grateful for my fight with Julie. It was thoughts of her that had kept me from telling Anita then and there that I had no intention of marrying her or having her follow me to college. In fact I never intended to sleep with her again. But I had to think carefully first about how I was going to break that news to her. It was clear that I was in the process of screwing up her life but good. Instinctive moves to correct this action might not necessarily be the best ones. The situation would need to be reflected upon first.

As I was reflecting I fell asleep. When I woke up a whole new day was beginning.

I half expected Mike to show up at my house in order to walk to school with me since his car was broken. When he didn't, I figured that one of his parents must have given him a ride. I didn't see him during the classroom portion of the day at all but that was hardly unusual. During lunch period, when I still didn't see him I was forced to conclude that he wasn't there. The conclusion was confirmed when I boarded the bus for ROP and he wasn't there either.

Where was he? I wondered worriedly. Was he sick? Had he maybe taken ill during his shift the previous day? Although that nicely explained why he hadn't been on the bus yesterday or today it didn't ring true. I had a premonition of more disaster brewing. A premonition that turned out to be correct.

Mike was supposed to come over to my house for a study session after school and when he didn't show up I called his house, noting that my hands were trembling a little as I dialed. He answered the phone on the second ring.

"Mike?" I asked. "What's up?"

"Nothin'." He told me sourly.

"Where were you today?" I asked him. "Didn't see you in school or at ROP."

There was a long pause. Finally he said, "I got in trouble yesterday dude."

My heart started hammering in my chest as I heard his words. I forced myself to ask, "What kind of trouble?"

"The captain at the station caught me smoking a joint out behind the apparatus bay."

"What?" I asked slowly. "You were smoking a joint there?"

"Yeah." He answered. "I usually smoked them in the car on the way to the station but I didn't have my car. Figures he'd come out to have a smoke just when I was trying to take a few hits."

"And what happened?" I asked next.

"I got suspended for a week." He told me. "I also got kicked out of ROP. They're gonna give me three classes to replace it."

"Mike, Jesus." I said, unable to think of anything else.

"It's cool." He told me. "I didn't really like hangin out at the fuckin fire station anyway. And the captain was an asshole. Anyway I had a meeting with the counselor and my parents today and she said I should give the independent study a try."

"You're not gonna do it are you?" I asked quickly.

"Yeah." He told me. "I am. Fuck going to class for six hours every day."

"Mike." I told him. "This isn't the end. You can still stay in school and graduate next year. You can still get on with the fire department after you graduate. You just have to tell them in the interview that you were a dumb kid and that…"

"Fuck that." Mike said angrily. "I'm going into independent study. We sent in the application today. Should be approved by next week."

"Mike," I pleaded, "We're almost halfway through the school year! You'll be done before you know it! Just hang in there for another few…"

"Fuck it!" He repeated. "I'm staying in that fuckin shithole any longer than I have to. I shoulda gone into independent study in the first place. I'd a been done by now.

"But…"

"I gotta go." He said. "I'll see you around."

With a click he hung up the phone. Slowly I replaced mine in the holder.

I sat for the longest time, trying to think my way through all of the crap that had suddenly come down in the last week but I couldn't. There was too much of it and it was cluttering up my mind. I would no sooner start to think about one aspect when another would push it's way forward, demanding my attention.

I went upstairs to my room and opened up my nightstand drawer. I looked in the cutout section of my bible and found what I needed. I took it out and pocketed it carefully. When Dad got home I asked him if I could use his car for a few hours. He handed me the keys and asked if I would be home for dinner.

"Probably not." I told him, heading out the door.

I drove to the park near the falls; the location of many a kegger. No keggers were going on at the moment since it was daytime and no families were picnicking at the moment since it was October and the weather wasn't quite up for such things. I locked up Dad's car and walked to a trail that led down to the river near the top of the falls. I began hiking.

Twenty minutes later I was standing less than a hundred yards from where the water arced over the cliff. The roar of the falls was very loud and a fine mist from below drifted through the air, blown by the prevailing winds. I found myself a comfortable spot and sat down. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out the half joint that I'd extricated from my bible.

I'd noticed long before I'd been recycled that a little marijuana helped me think deeply about things. It helped keep my thoughts from being sidetracked into something else. Though I was aware of the irony of what I was doing, using the very substance that had brought Mike down in order to help come up with a solution to his problem, as well as the many others that I'd set in motion, I took out a lighter and lit the joint. As I smoked I stared at the falls, watching the water cascade over the edge to its collision with the lower river. The sight was mesmerizing, the sound nothing but white noise. By the time I'd finished the roach my mind was clear and I began trying to think things through.

Patterns. That was what it came down to. There were two separate time lines I was dealing with. What had happened in my first trip from 1982 to 1999 and what was happening in my second trip. When I'd first come over it had seemed so simple. Everything was new, everything was fresh. I had not really believed at all that I would have to worry about the way things had turned out in my first life. But now, after all the things that had happened, I was seeing definite patterns between the two time lines. Though some things had changed I was seeing a definite tendency for things, people especially, to drift into the patterns that had apparently been set for them. As for who or what had set those patterns, I knew not and I cared not. I was only concerned with the question of whether or not the patterns were tendencies or absolute.

Mike. In my previous life he'd gone to independent study and dropped out of school. He'd joined the Air Force a few years later and the few times I heard from him after that he'd seemed to like his job as missile technician in Wyoming. However he was discovered to have marijuana in his system after a random drug test and given a choice between an Article 15 or a dishonorable discharge without criminal complaint, he chose the discharge. In this time line I'd successfully steered him off of that path at it's beginning and onto a different one, that of a firefighter. I'd kept him in high school longer than he had been previously and I'd honestly thought that I'd changed his destiny. But then he was caught using marijuana at the fire station. He was thrown out of ROP and was now planning to re-enter independent study. He'd steered himself right back into the other path with only two days worth of effort. Was he now committed to that path? Was there no way for me to steer him back again? Was it pointless to even try?

Nina. In her previous life she'd been taunted and ignored throughout her school years, eventually turning into a bitter, though highly educated person. It would be readily apparent to every person that dealt with her on a regular basis in my first life that she suffered from a raging inferiority complex. She was driven by the desire to appear smarter, better, faster, more competent, more everything, than everyone else around her. She was driven by this desire because deep inside she would always be the butt of everyone's jokes and would always feel she was inferior to everyone. The facade she would put up to convince herself and others to the contrary would often be brutal to those it touched. But in this timeline I'd steered her off of that path. I'd befriended her and, with the help of others, showed her that she really was a good person. For the longest time it seemed she could not fall into her original pattern. And then yours truly, in my idiocy, jerked her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now she was back to eating alone in the cafeteria, back to being uncommunicative with everyone. She was on her way to college and medical school next year. In the nineties would she show up in the emergency room in Spokane once again with the same chip on her shoulder, the same attitude? Although the trip took a different pathway than before it sure seemed to me she was heading for the same place.

Tracy. This was the problem that concerned me more than anything else. In the previous time line a football player named David Mitchell had gotten drunk one night and driven my sister into the Spokane River, killing her. I'd prevented that from occurring, true enough, but it was disquieting to me that the Camero had STILL crashed into the river, that Lisa Sanchez had STILL been killed in the accident, and that Barbie Langston, who had taken Tracy's place in the car, had NOT been killed. And now Tracy was dating a baseball player named Darren Maxwell. Was it coincidence that he had the same initials? Was fate simply waiting for another chance to claim Tracy, who's demise was already written in some celestial book somewhere? If so, was there anything I could do about it? Was there anything she could do about it?

And that brought me to the troubling problem of Anita. She, for a change of pace, had deviated way off of the path that she'd taken before. She had not gone out with the man that she was going to marry in the previous time line and had instead fallen in love with me after I'd initiated an affair with her. She called her intended a pinhead in fact. Why was Anita different? Or was she?

I stared at the falls and ran all these things through my mind, one by one. Mike, Anita, Tracy, Myself, Beirut, trying to determine if there were any absolutes, any hard, fast rules to this thing. I stayed there for a long time, staring and thinking, thinking and staring, watching the water rush by in the river.

Was fate, I wondered, like that river? A liquid stream rushing along towards a fixed destination. All of the billions of drops of water in that river were destined to end up, eventually, in the ocean. You could take a few drops out and move them back upstream a few feet or a few miles but they would still end up passing by the same point again, they would still end up in the ocean. A few drops would occasionally splash out of the stream for a while, seeming to free themselves of the current but they would eventually be brought right back into the flow. That was their destiny. That was their fate.

But was it possible for a few drops to occasionally escape that river, to find a new path? Sometimes it was. They could be taken away clinging to the bathing suit of a child or scooped up by a motorist whose vehicle had overheated and deposited into a radiator. They could be lapped away from the river by a deer or a coyote or a bear or even a stray dog. Though most of the drops were fated to continue on their way to the Pacific Ocean; it was possible for some to escape, wasn't it?

When I finally left I was soaked from the mist, shivering, probably on the verge of hypothermia, and I had a bitch of a headache.

But I felt better all the same.

Chapter 6

Once I rose above the noise and confusion

Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion

I was soaring ever higher

But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man

Though my mind could think I still was a madman

I hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I can hear them say:

Carry on my wayward son

There'll be peace when you are done

Lay your weary head to rest

Don't you cry no more

KANSAS

I awoke in a better mood the next morning even though nothing had really changed. Everything was falling or had fallen down around me and it was time to start picking up the pieces. I was determined to take action; to strike back at FATE. During my mind session the day before I'd realized that both Anita and myself were walking examples that fate could be changed.

It may not be easy to do, but it was possible. If things did not improve, or if they got worse from my interference, at least I'd be able to say that I'd tried.

After breakfast I went to our den and dug through my Dad's filing cabinet. After a minute of rummaging I came up with the letter that Tracy had sent us. I opened it up and scanned through it until I found the section I wanted.

"I have a job now," I read, "working at the campus book store as a clerk. I have to…" I scanned further, skipping over the brief description of her job duties. "I work 5:00 to closing at 8:00, Monday through Friday. It's fun I suppose. At least the money will help…"

5:00 to 8:00 Tracy would be in the UC Berkeley bookstore. I memorized that information and then put the letter back.

A few minutes later I was bundling up and preparing for the long walk to school. As I stepped outside the house I was grateful to see it was not raining. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it. It was a beautiful fall morning it appeared.

My happiness at the appearance of the sun quickly deflated when I felt the wind. It was blowing about twenty miles an hour, sending leaves and other debris parading down the street. The moving air was icy and cold, feeling as if it had just came off a glacier. My exposed cheeks immediately reddened and my eyes began to tear. With a sigh I pulled my hood tight, lowered my face, and moved out. This walking to school shit was getting old fast. One way or another, I swore to myself, I was not going to do it much longer.

My first stop upon arriving at school was the administration building. I walked into the main lobby area where two secretaries were working behind a counter. Both were banging away on IBM typewriters. Two student volunteers, both girls, one of whom had once been to my room to 'study', were doing some filing. The one I'd had relations with in the past was the only person in the room to pay my entrance any attention. She gave me a sly smile and then went back to what she was doing.

I walked up to the counter and stood politely for a few seconds. The nearest secretary continued to type, not even glancing my way, although there was no way she could have failed to notice my presence.

"Excuse me?" I finally said.

"You can't use the phone in here." She said impatiently, without even looking up or moving her hands from the typewriter keys. "There's a payphone outside. If you don't have a dime, you're gonna have to borrow one from somewhere else. We're not a bank."

"I'm not here to use the phone." I said.

"Then what do you want?" She asked, continuing to type away.

"I need to see Mrs. Compleigh." I told her, referring to one of the school counselors, the one who had pushed Mike into independent study.

Her hands still blurring across her IBM, she asked, "Do you have an appointment?"

"No." I replied. "But it's kind of an emergency. I need to…"

"You'll have to schedule an appointment with her if you want to talk to her." She replied tersely. She returned her full attention to her work.

"This is an emergency." I tried again. "I need to see her now."

She gave a hiss of disgust and pushed herself away from her desk. She turned to me, her eyes full of contempt. "Look young man," She said, projecting all of the petty authority she possessed towards me. "Our counselors are busy people and I can't just go sending kids in to them any time some student asks. Now if you could just…"

"Now wait a minute." I interrupted, using my adult voice, a voice I rarely employed anymore. It worked it's magic. She, as well as the other secretary and the two volunteers all stopped and stared at me. Concentrating my attention on the one I'd been speaking to I asked, "What is your name?"

"My name?" She asked, the first tinges of actual anger appearing in her tone.

"Yes." I nodded. "You know, what they call you?"

"Now you listen to me young man…" She started, but weakly. She seemed cowed by the bold way I was speaking to her. Her expression reminded me a little of how Richie had looked when he'd realized he'd bitten off a little more than he could chew.

"Your name?" I demanded, sharpening my tone a little.

"Mrs. Wilks." She finally said. "Now I really…"

"Well, Mrs. Wilks," I said, "When I went through orientation for this school it was explained to me that the school counselors existed to assist me in times of need. That they were student advocates. I was told I could talk to them at any time during the school day. Any time. Are you telling me now that that was a lie?"

"Well no." She stammered, "You can talk to them any time if there is some sort of, well, problem. It's just that for routine matters like what you're…"

"Routine matters?" I asked, exasperated. "I believe I told you twice that this was an emergency. Emergency is not a synonym for routine. Emergency means a pressing matter, a problem, something that requires immediate address by qualified people. I would like to see Mrs. Compleigh for this problem that I have. Is she here?"

"Well, yes she is." Mrs. Wilks said, looking quite dazed now.

"Good." I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Would you please tell her that a student has a problem and would like to see her?"

"Uh…, well, what is your name?" She asked.

I told her.

"Okay." She nodded, jotting it down. "And what do you need to talk to her about?"

I looked around, seeing that our audience was raptly awaiting my answer for that one.

"That is most definitely none of your business." I told her.

She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, and then perhaps thought better of it. She stood up and headed through a door, closing it behind her. The other three occupants of the room continued to stare at me for a moment. The two student volunteers were hiding smirks of amusement at the exchange they'd just witnessed. Finally they reluctantly went back to work.

Mrs. Wilks returned a few minutes later. She gave me a nervous look and said, "Mrs. Compleigh will see you in just a minute."

"Thank you." I said.

She didn't answer my thanks. She walked over to a large filing cabinet and, using a key from a ring, opened up one of the drawers. She fingered through it for a few seconds and finally pulled a manila file from it. My eyes are pretty sharp, always would be, and I had no trouble seeing my name printed on the tab. She carried the file back through the door from which she'd come. She returned a minute later and sat back at her desk.

Another five minutes went by and the same door opened revealing Mrs. Compleigh. She was about forty or so, with long brown hair that was tied into a bun. She wore a plain brown dress and nylons. Her eyes held a cynical gaze as she appraised me.

"Billy?" She asked. "If you would come with me?"

I stood and pushed my way through the little barrier door and then followed her through the back door. We moved down a hallway past the principal's and assistant principal's office, both of which were empty, a copy machine, a coffee maker, and finally to a door with the counselor's name printed on it.

She opened the door and led me into her office.

Her office was small and cramped with a cheap metal desk taking up a large portion of the room. Two small chairs sat before the desk. Her work area was cluttered with various papers and forms although my file was nowhere to be seen there. Framed pictures of two children, one a boy of about ten, the other a girl of about fourteen or so, sat on the desk flanking her penholder. On the wall behind the desk were two framed degrees from the University of Idaho at Boise. She had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in public education with a minor in Psychology. The air in the room smelled as if she regularly violated the school no smoking policy.

She worked her way behind her desk and waved me to a seat in one of the chairs. I sat.

"Well Billy," She started. "Mrs. Wilks is a little upset by the way in which you talked to her." She started. "She says you were getting smart with her. Is that true?"

"Getting smart?" I asked contemplatively. "Why do teachers, counselors, and secretaries tell kids not to get smart? Isn't that what we are in school for?"

This produced a few stunned seconds of THE LOOK. Finally she kind of shook her head, as if clearing her mind of my words. "We'll discuss Mrs. Wilks later perhaps." She said finally. "I understand you have some sort of emergency?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"I hope it's nothing serious." She told me. "You're one of our better students here. In fact, if not for some poor grades your first year, you'd probably be in the running for valedictorian. So what kind of emergency does a bright young man like yourself have?"

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment. She had rattled off my school record with the intention of making me believe that she knew who I was and how I was doing in school off the top of her head. She was trying to give me the impression that she knew all of her students by name and could instantly recall their respective records. Her psychology or education classes had probably assured her that this was a good trick to instill trust. I dismissed this without comment only reluctantly.

"Well actually." I said. "I am not the one having the problem. I came here on behalf of Mike Meachen."

Her face clouded a bit. "Mike Meachen?" She asked me. "I don't understand."

"Mike Meachen." I repeated. "Surely you remember him? You talked him and his parents into independent study?"

"I'm afraid," She told me firmly, "That what Mike Meachen and his parents discussed with me or decided to do is none of your business."

"Is that a fact?" I asked pointedly.

"YES, it is." She replied, annoyed. "Now if that's all you wanted to discuss, I have a lot of work to do."

"If that's ALL?" I asked, switching to the adult voice again. "You encourage a student to drop out of school, to destroy his life, and you wonder if that's ALL I want to discuss? What kind of counselor are you anyway?"

"Now wait just a minute!" She said sharply, sitting up straighter and leaning over the desk towards me. "Mike is going to independent study. He is NOT dropping out. He is NOT destroying his life."

"Don't give me that crap." I told her, holding her hostile gaze. "You know as well as I do that no one graduates from independent study. It's a holding tank where you put kids that you think are going to drop out anyway so that when they do, it doesn't go on your statistics."

She actually paled a little as I said this, her eyes telling me she knew that what I was saying was true and that she was shocked that I'd come up with this information. She quickly composed herself however and began spouting the company line. "Billy, that is simply not true." She said. "Independent study is a program designed to help students like Mike when they are struggling…"

"You're quoting directly from the pamphlets, aren't you?" I interrupted. "The ones that the school district administration gave you when they instructed you to seek out likely drop-outs and steer them into this program. I'm sure they told you all kinds of things about how it was for the protection of the school, the protection of the students, the protection of the goddam American way of life. But I can see in your eyes that you don't really believe all the bullshit you're spouting at me. You KNOW what I'm saying is true. You probably wouldn't admit it under torture, but you KNOW. Don't you?"

"I would appreciate you watching your language in here." She snapped, continuing to stare at me. "I refuse to have a discussion with a foul-mouthed child who comes into my office and…"

"Yes," I continued, "You know. And part of you probably hates it, don't you? Or at least maybe you did once. How long have you been doing this? Are you numb to it now? Do you sleep well at night after you send someone to oblivion? How many kids have you steered into this program, talking to their parents like you were a used-car salesman offering a Cadillac for a hundred bucks? How many kids that you steered into this thing might have been saved if you'd have done what your job was SUPPOSED to be and helped them?"

"I think I've heard just about enough from you." She told me. "Please ask Mrs. Wilks to supply you with an office pass since you're now late for first period."

I shook my head sadly at her. "No." I said softly but firmly. "I will not leave until I've had my say."

Her face reddened this time. "Young man!" She barked. "You will leave this office right this…"

"Are you afraid of me Mrs. Compleigh?" I asked.

"NO!" She lied. "I am simply tired of having my time wasted by listening to your paranoid delusions. You are a sixteen year old CHILD. You've come to some strange conclusion in your mind and you think it's the truth. Well I'm nearly forty years old and I can tell you with authority that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I struck a few of your chords, didn't I?" I asked, smiling. "I told you a few things about yourself that you didn't really want to hear, didn't I? If you were wise, you would sit down and listen to me for a few minutes. As you pointed out, I'm much younger than you are and you probably don't think I have anything of value to tell you, right? Well someone much younger than me, in a manner of speaking anyway, once tried to tell ME something. And I figured that since I was so much more "mature", that she couldn't possibly be right. Well, I was wrong and I ignored what she had to say, and the consequences of that are something that still haunts me, maybe always will. Do me and yourself a favor and hear me out?"

She looked downright nervous now but finally said, "Say what you need to say."

"Thank you." I replied. "You told me a minute ago that independent study was for students that are 'struggling' in school. Correct?"

"Yes." She said carefully.

"I don't agree with independent study." I said. "I think it's an atrocity. I think you counselors and administrators spend far too much time trying to cover up for poor students instead of trying to help them. Sure, you'd lose a bunch anyway but even if you could save just one, just a single one, wouldn't it be worth it?"

Before she could answer I continued. "But I've learned that you can't change the world. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to change a little part of it. Sometimes I think you CAN do that. You told me that Mike Meachen was a struggling student. Did you even bother to check his record before you had him and his parents in here? Did you even bother to note that he is NOT struggling anymore before you cut him off at the knees? His grades have come way up since last year. He was on his way to an upper 3 average for the first time in his life. He might have even made a 4.0 for the year until you kicked him out of school."

"I didn't FORCE anybody anywhere." She protested. "Mike and his parents WANTED him to go to independent study."

"No, you didn't force them." I said. "You just brought them in here and waved it in front of their faces. 'Look Mike, you only have to go to school twelve hours a week.' 'Look Mrs. and Mr. Meachen, your child can graduate in only a few months this way. If you don't do this, he might not graduate at all.' Isn't that pretty much the line you handed them? Did I hit upon any exact quotes there?"

She was staring at me with her mouth agape, her face telling me that was exactly what she'd said.

"But since you didn't bother checking his record first, you never noticed that he WAS going to graduate. Not through any efforts on YOUR part I might add, but on mine. The first time you waved this crap in front of him I talked him out of it. I got him to study, I got him to bring his grades up and focus on a goal. Things that YOU are charged with doing. I did them for you. He was on his way to his goals and you steered him right into oblivion. Instead of helping him, you destroyed him."

"He was smoking grass." She said defensively. "At his ROP site. You can't expect me to overlook something like that can you?"

"No." I said, "I can't. He did something stupid, I'm not saying he didn't. He did something that he needs to be punished for so that he learns not to do it again. But is this the answer? Sending him out of school? Destroying his life? He didn't kill anybody for God's sake, he smoked some pot. Jesus, haven't you ever smoked pot."

"Certainly NOT!" She said, much too quickly.

"Right." I said, letting that drop. "And granted, he should not be doing it on his job site. But he's a seventeen-year-old kid. Seventeen year olds do stupid things. Maybe he's got a problem with pot, maybe not. But did you even bother trying to figure that out? To counsel him, counselor? No, you just steered him off into independent study because you've been told to do that with people like Mike.

"Try to think back to when you were in school, to when you decided that being a school counselor or an educator was what you wanted to do. Back before the realities of life shit all over your viewpoint. Didn't you, at one time, want to do this so you could help kids? Wasn't that a goal at some point in your past?"

She was looking me up and down in a manner I'd seen a few times before. My history teacher had looked at me this way when I'd asked her sensitive questions. Mrs. Crookshank had looked at me this way when I'd explained about underachievers to her. Dad had looked at me this way when I'd explained why I wanted to invest in latex. The cop who had taken the assault report had looked at me this way when I'd explained what I'd done. It was the look of a person who had thought they'd been speaking to a child but who'd suddenly realized that they were, for whatever reason, talking to an intelligent and insightful adult. It was a look of confusion and growing respect and fear mixed with awe. It was an extended version of THE LOOK.

"Yes." She finally said. "It was."

"Have you abandoned that goal completely?" I asked next.

She licked her lips for a moment. "I hope not." She shook her head.

"Who wanted Mike out of ROP?" I asked her next. "Was it the fire department's idea or yours?"

"Mine." She admitted. "The fire department expressed concern about the incident and requested we have a talk with him. I was the one who recommended removal from ROP."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was…" She paused.

"Was what?"

"Easier." She said shamefully. "Our contract with them is delicate. It seemed the best solution to the problem was to remove Mike from the program so we didn't risk future enrollees."

I stared at her for a minute. "Easier." I finally said, snorting in disgust. "Has it ever occurred to you that you people are educating the people that are going to be running the damn country in twenty or thirty years. The people that are going to be controlling your Medi-Care and Social Security payments? Do you really want them always choosing the path that is easier on them?"

She had no answer for that.

"Mrs. Compleigh," I pleaded. "Can't you do something about this? Mike was trying to become a productive member of society. He was trying. He did something stupid that needs to be addressed. So address it. Talk to him about it. Let him know he did something stupid. Talk to the fire department and see if there's any way they can give him a second chance. If you do that, let me talk to Mike too. I believe I have some influence with him."

She smiled for the first time. "Billy, I believe you about that."

"If he screws up again than you can write him off as a loser and send him to independent study. But please, give him a second chance. Get his file out of the cabinet instead of mine this time. Read it. See how hard he's worked for this goal in the past year. He's trying. How about you do what your job title says and help him. Meet him half way. Please?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes softening. "You're a remarkable young man Billy." She told me.

I shrugged, switching back to my teenager persona. "I try." I said.

"I'll do as you ask." She assured me.

Though she was no longer talking to me and though she no longer sat with me at lunchtime, Nina was still forced to sit next to me in the two classes we shared prior to ROP. We had picked our seats at the beginning of the semester and now we were committed to them; for better or for worse. She would typically spend each class period looking straight ahead as the teacher lectured, occasionally jotting down a note in her binder. She never looked at me or acknowledged my presence in any way.

That day was no different as I sat down for my second class of the day, and the first with her. While awaiting the rest of the class to file in and find their seats she simply stared at her notebook, ignoring the activity around her, ignoring me most of all. Had it only been a week before that we used to chat happily together during this portion of the class, discussing how our day had been until that point, what we were going to do later? It seemed like an eternity had passed since I'd last heard a kind word from her, had seen her smile.

At some point I'd stopped telling myself that I wanted our relationship to mend so that Nina would not turn out to be a bitch later and started telling myself the truth; that I wanted our relationship to mend because I liked our relationship, because I enjoyed being with her. I'd never noticed before how eager I'd been for Nina to come over each day to study with me until she was no longer doing it. All of my brainstorming of the previous day had failed to produce a plan to make-up with her. I simply did not know what to do.

"Nina?" I chanced, leaning towards her a little and whispering.

She hesitated for a second, long enough to make me think that she was not even going to acknowledge my words, but finally she turned her face towards me. Her eyes were blank, revealing nothing of what was going on behind them.

"You heard what happened to Mike?" I asked her.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's too bad."

"I went and saw Mrs. Compleigh today." I told her, thrilled to be even speaking to her. "I think I convinced her to let him back into ROP. He's getting another chance."

She nodded softly. "Good." She said. "I like Mike."

There was a long silence. Just as she started to turn her head back to her notebook I whispered, "I miss you."

She looked at my face for a second, her eyes still blank. Without saying anything she turned her attention back to her notebook. She said nothing.

"Nina?" I said.

She ignored me. Before I could try again the bell rang and the teacher called the class to order. He then began the day's lecture on the Principals of Chemistry.

All day I dreaded what I had to do when I got from school. When I finally arrived home my mind tried to find excuses to delay or even postpone the task at hand. There was homework to be done, housework to be done, deep thoughts to think, bodily functions to take care of. The rational part of me rejected these excuses one by one and finally I put my coat back on and headed out the door.

A short walk brought me to Anita's house. I made my way to her front door, almost left again, and finally, employing my willpower, I pushed her doorbell.

She was very pleased at my unexpected arrival. It showed in her face as she swung open the door. She was dressed in a pair of baggy sweat pants and a T-shirt. It was obvious that she had no bra on beneath.

"Hi Billy." She beamed, standing aside to allow me entry. "Come on in. What a pleasant surprise."

Her children were sitting at the dining room table working on some learning books. An array of crayons and construction paper was spread out before them. They looked up, greeted me briefly, and then went back to what they were doing. Anita, once the door was closed, leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the mouth, probing outward with her tongue for just the briefest instant. She made a point to rub her unencumbered breasts against my chest.

"Anita." I hissed. "Your kids are right here!"

"Oh you." She slapped at me playfully, breaking the embrace. "They're going to have to get used to us eventually anyway aren't they?"

"Uh…" I started.

"So what brings you over here today?" She asked me teasingly. "Need another shower?"

"No." I shook my head quickly, banishing the image of dumping oil all over her before it could give me an erection. As I mentioned before, my mind may have been in my thirties but my body was firmly entrenched in my teens. Testosterone was surging through my veins and calmly assuring another part of my body that it wouldn't really hurt to just take a quick shower with her before we had our talk. Just to mellow everyone out a little.

"Oh," Anita nodded knowingly. "You want to get dirty first. Give me a minute to set up a movie for the kids. That'll keep them distracted longer."

"Anita," I said, "That's not why I came over here. I need to talk to you about something."

Perhaps catching the tone of my voice, she gave me a wary look. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked carefully.

"Can we sit down somewhere?" I asked her. "Somewhere private?" And somewhere without a lot of sharp objects, I did not add.

"Sure." She said. "Let's go to the bedroom."

I nodded. "Okay."

We went into her room and I grabbed a chair near her dresser. She gave me another concerned look as I did this. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong Billy?" She asked me.

I breathed deeply and slowly let it out. "Anita," I told her. "I don't know how to tell you this but it needs to be said."

"Tell me what?"

"I suppose the best way is to just come out and say it." I said, looking at her face. "We need to end our relationship with each other."

"End…" She whispered, staring at me. Finally she gave a nervous giggle. "Billy, don't joke about things like that. It's not very…"

"Anita, I'm not joking." I told her. "We have to stop seeing each other."

"You're not joking?" She asked softly.

"No." I shook my head. "I'm not."

She began to wring her hands together. "I don't understand Billy." She told me. "Why would you say something like that? We're perfect together. We have a good thing going."

"That's just it Anita." I explained. "We DON'T have a good thing going and we're NOT perfect together. I'm sixteen years old and you're twenty-eight. I'm a teenager in high school and you're a full-grown woman with kids."

"That doesn't matter!" She protested. "As long as two people love each other…"

"Anita." I interrupted gently. "I don't love you that way."

She stared at me for a second, the wounded expression on her face striking directly at my heart. God, how I hated doing this. "But you do." She told me. "You do love me."

"No." I said, shaking my head. "I don't. And I don't think you love me that way either."

"How can you say that?" She asked, raising her voice for the first time. Her eyes were now beginning to leak a little moisture down her cheeks. "After all we've done together, after all we've shared? How can you say that?"

"I'm sorry Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for what I'm telling you now and I'm sorry that I ever initiated our relationship in the first place. I shouldn't have done that."

"Yes!" She yelled. "You should have! What we have together is beautiful! You're not going to let a little age difference keep us apart are you? Billy, we're meant for each other!"

"No." I said firmly, raising my voice a little. "That's just it. We're NOT meant for each other. I'm a kid in high school Anita. I should be dating girls my own age. You should be dating men your own age. While I've been having a relationship with you, you haven't been dating anyone or gone out anywhere. I'm screwing up your life Anita. And it has to stop. Both of us need to move on."

"You're not screwing up my life!" She protested. "Is that what you're worried about? You've improved my life. I used be so lonely Bill and then I found you. You're everything I want. Just because you're younger than me…"

"Anita," I interrupted. "I AM screwing up your life. I never intended for what we had to be a permanent relationship. I was stupid and thought that there were no consequences to what you and I were doing. I figured, hey, here's a cool older woman for me to screw and she's willing to do it again and again. But there are consequences Anita, there are. More than I imagined, more than you can imagine. We have to move on now, get back on track, don't you see that?"

"No." She told me. "You ARE the track that I want to be on. I DO want a permanent relationship with you."

I sighed, not relishing what I had to say next. "But I don't want a permanent relationship with you." I said.

More tears came down. "How can you say that?" She repeated.

"Because it's true." I said. "I don't love you. I'm sorry to have to say that and I know I'm an asshole. I entered into this thing without considering there might be emotional involvement. If I would have known that I never would have started anything. I'm ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed that I took advantage of your loneliness, ashamed that I didn't see this sooner. I'm an asshole Anita and I admit that freely. I'm trying to get better, trying not to be an asshole anymore. I don't like being an asshole. But before I can do that I have to be even more of an asshole and put an end to our relationship. Now, today."

She stood up and began to pace nervously, continuing to wring her hands. She chewed on her lip for a moment. "So you're saying that you want to see other people?" She asked. "To date others for a while to help strengthen the relationship?"

"No Anita." I said. "That is not what I'm saying. I have been dating other people the entire time we've been seeing each other. There is nothing in this relationship to strengthen. I started it only for sex, don't you see that? And sex was all I ever wanted. I'm sorry. My behavior was horrid, worse than horrid. I had no right to do any of that, but unfortunately I did. I'm trying to change now and I can no longer continue to take advantage of you. We have to stop."

"I don't want to stop." She told me quietly, stopping her pacing and turning towards me.

"We have to Anita." I said.

"Maybe I don't mind being taken advantage of." She said, desperation in her voice. "Did you ever consider that? Maybe I want you to continue to take advantage of me if that's what you were doing. I can live with that Billy."

"No." I said firmly, wondering how, in my supposed maturity, I'd managed to miss how deeply she'd felt about me all this time. God I was an idiot. "That won't work. I couldn't live with that. I couldn't keep doing that to you. Despite the way I've acted, I have a conscience. My conscience will not allow me to do that."

She let loose a sob. "Billy, we can't just stop!"

"We have to." I insisted.

She began crying freely now, her chest hitching up and down, tears coursing down, sobs pouring out of her mouth. I stood and put my arms around her, letting her put her head to my chest and cry on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Anita." I whispered to her. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

Her tears slowed down a little and suddenly her hand was around mine. Before I knew what was happening she'd pulled it under her shirt and placed it on her bare breast, allowing me to feel the familiar flesh. I tried to pull it out but she held it firmly with her hand.

"Anita." I said sharply, "Let me go."

"Just one more time Billy?" She pleaded, her free hand sliding down and tugging at the buttons on my jeans. "Just one more time?"

Again my teenaged body had ideas of its own. My teenaged body thought that one more time was a fine idea. Despite all that had just happened and had just been said, my dick stiffened up at the thought. My adult mind was appalled by this.

"No!" I yelled, slapping her hand away from my crotch a little sharper than I'd intended. I jerked my other hand free of her tit and stepped away from her.

The look in her eyes would haunt me. It was anger, hurt, and desperation. "Please?" She pleaded.

"I have to go Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for everything."

I opened her bedroom door and headed for the living room. As I left she called my name again. I looked back at her.

"I'll be here for you when you want to come back." She said. "I'll always be here for you."

I swallowed nervously. "Goodbye Anita." I finally said. "And I'm sorry."

She remained in her bedroom as I made my way out of her house. The children gave me worried looks as I left. As I closed the door behind me I could hear the sound of her sobs coming from the bedroom.

I only picked at my dinner that night, scraping much of it down the garbage disposal when I did the dishes. My mother expressed concern but I explained my loss of appetite away by proclaiming I felt like I was coming down with something. She felt my forehead, in the way of mothers, and told me she hoped I felt better soon.

"Me too." I said sincerely.

After the last dish was done I went upstairs to my room. I opened my closet and removed a copy of the World Almanac, that great repository of usually useless but occasionally helpful factoids. I paged through the index until I found the page for the section I wanted. I turned to the page.

UNITED STATES AREA CODES read the heading. They were arranged alphabetically by state. I flipped to California and scanned down the column until I saw Berkeley. 415 was the code. I memorized this information, carefully put the book away, and then headed downstairs.

Mom and Dad were both watching television, or at least sitting in front of it. Dad was correcting some papers for his classes at school. Mom was working on some paperwork for her job. I figured they were well occupied so I headed for Dad's den. I called information for the 415 area code and asked for the phone number for the UC Berkeley bookstore. This was the first time I'd called information after being recycled and it startled me a little when the operator actually read off the number to me instead of having a computer do it.

"Did you get that Sir?" She asked.

"Uh, yes." I said, "Thank you very much."

"Your welcome." She said cheerily. "Is there anything else I can help you with."

"No thank you."

She hung up and I dialed the number she'd given me. A man with a decidedly feminine voice and trouble pronouncing the letter S answered the phone. Ah, California.

"Bookstore, can I help you?" He chirped.

I asked for Tracy.

"Just a minute."

The phone clunked down and, instead of being placed on hold, I heard the low murmur of conversations drifting into my ear and the sound of the man who'd answered yelling for Tracy. A few moments later I heard the phone being picked back up.

"Hello?" Came my sister's voice, a tinge of nervousness in it. She was probably not accustomed to receiving phone calls at work.

"Tracy, its Bill." I said.

"Bill?" More worry now. "What's wrong? Are Mom and Dad okay?"

"They're fine." I assured her. "It's you I need to talk to."

"Me?" She said, "How come? And how did you get this number? I'm not supposed to be getting phone calls at work unless it's an emergency."

"The number's a matter of public record Tracy." I told her. "And it's the only way I could think of to get hold of you. Sorry I had to bother you at work."

"That's okay." She said. "But what's wrong?"

"It's nothing immediate." I said. "But I think that there's a chance you might be in, well, in some danger."

"Danger?" She asked, alarmed. "What do you mean?"

"It's probably not a good idea to talk about this while you're at work." I replied. "And like I said, it's nothing immediate. But can you call me tonight when you get off work? Give me a time and I'll stay by the phone."

"Bill?" She asked. "I don't understand. What do you mean I'm in danger? You're in Washington and I'm in California. How could you know anything from there?"

"Tracy, I'll explain everything when you call. Or at least as much as I can. Will you please do it?"

A sigh. "Yes Bill." She answered. "Be by the phone at nine tonight."

"I will." I told her. "Thanks Tracy."

At nine o'clock sharp I was positioned by the phone in the den. When it rang I picked it up before it had a chance to get half a second into the first ring.

"Hello?" I said.

The operator told me I had a collect call from Tracy and asked if I would accept the charges. I told her I would.

"Okay Bill." Tracy said to me. In the background I could hear music and the squeal and giggles of many girls. I concluded she must be on the payphone in the dorm. "Tell me what this is all about."

"Well." I said. "Do you remember when I told you before that you should not get into a car with a certain person on a certain day?"

"Yes." She answered quietly. I could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

"Some disturbing things have happened lately." I went on. "Some things that lead me to believe that you are not exactly out of danger from that."

"What do you mean?" She asked. "I didn't get in that car that night and what you said was going to happen, happened without me. How could I still be in danger from that? Believe me, I'm still not going to get into a car with David Mitchell."

"That's the thing Tracy." I told her. "You didn't get into the car that night and Barbie Langston DID. But Barbie didn't die in the accident. She's still alive."

"So?" Tracy, obviously uncomfortable with the discussion, asked.

"So," I told her. "Some other things have happened that make me think, well this is going to sound crazy, that you were SUPPOSED to die in that car and that since you didn't, things are trying to re-align themselves the way they are SUPPOSED to be."

"Billy," She said angrily. "That is nuts. That's absolutely crazy! What do you mean I was SUPPOSED to die? I didn't. And I'm not going to die."

"Just promise me something Tracy." I asked her.

"What?" She asked.

"Promise me you will never get into any car, with anyone who's been drinking. Especially not your boyfriend's. Are you still seeing him?"

"Yes I'm still seeing him!" She barked at me. "What does that have to do with anything? And I never get into a car with someone who's been drinking.

You should know that."

"I know Tracy." I said. "And that's what worries me. I don't know if the drinking part is a pre-determined factor in this. I don't know much of anything about the rules. I'm not even sure there ARE any rules."

"Rules to what?" She asked. "Where do you come up with these things Bill? You scare me sometimes."

"It's a long story." I answered. "A very long one. Does your boyfriend drink?"

"What?"

"Does he drink?"

"Yes." She said. "He's a college student. We all drink."

"What kind of car does he drive?" I asked next.

"A Corvette." She answered. This should have made me feel better. But it didn't. "Why are you worried about Darren? What does his car and whether or not he drinks have to do with anything? I didn't die that day Bill. Somehow, some way you knew about that. I don't know how. But it's over now. I'm still alive and nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing!"

"Tracy," I pleaded. "Just promise me you won't ever get in the car with him after he's been drinking. Promise me."

"Yes Bill," She recited. "I promise. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

Actually there was. I wanted to talk about Nina to her, get her feelings on the matter, get advice from her, tell her that she was right and I was wrong. But she didn't seem in the mood for it just then. It would have to wait.

"No Tracy." I answered. "I just want you to be careful. I worry about you."

"I can take care of myself Bill." She said shortly. "I've gotta go."

"Goodbye Tracy." I said. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Goodbye Bill." She answered. A second later there was a click in the earpiece.

I hung up Dad's phone and sat there for a few moments. I could only hope that I'd done some good. Because there was nothing else I could do.

The next day at school I was met first thing in the morning my some of Mike's fabrications and exaggerations. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to hear them.

"Dude," He said excitedly to me. "Guess what?"

"Hey Mike." I greeted. "Suspension's over?"

"Yeah," He nodded. "But that's not all. I'm back in ROP."

I breathed a silent sigh of thanks to Mrs. Compleigh. "Really?" I asked. "That's cool. How'd that happen?" I was actually sort of curious to see how it had transpired.

"Well, I guess the battalion chief over at the fire department really racked that asshole captain's ass for yelling at me and kicking me out of there. The BC told the counselor that he wanted me back like yesterday." He gave a self-satisfied grin. "At least HE knows what he's got going with me on the department."

"I guess so." I agreed.

"So anyway, they want me to go talk to the BC today and they're going to reassign me to a different station. Station 2 this time. They got a truck and an engine running out of there."

"No shit?" I said, gaining a lot of information from what he was saying despite his embellishments. Station 2, another downtown station, did indeed deploy a truck and an engine. It also was the home, at least in my when, of the battalion chief for that battalion. I figured they had probably decided to move Mike there so that more people, including the boss, could keep an eye on him. He wouldn't be trusted for a while, would in fact face a long, hard road in that endeavor. But at least he was back in.

"Yeah," He strutted. "I hear they're gonna bust that captain back down to engineer for all of this."

"Well," I answered. "That may be so Mike, but if I was you, I'd lay off the buds while I was at the work site. I don't think they'll let you back in if they catch you doing that again. Or even if they THINK you're doing it again."

"Yeah, I know." He said dismissively. "That's what the counselor told me too. I guess I can wait until I get home. So anyway, they tossed out the application for independent study. So I guess I'll hang out for the rest of the year after all."

"Glad it worked out Mike." I told him. "And if you want to keep coming over to have me help with your homework, I'm home the same hours."

"I'll be there." He said.

As I headed to my first class of the day I had a careful smile on my face. At least I'd steered Mike back to where he'd been. The rest would be up to him and if he blew it again I would be forced to concede the inevitability of his loser status. But for now he was back on track. Or back off track if you prefer.

When my alarm clock woke me up the next morning the first sound I heard upon shutting it off was the patter of rain against my window. I sighed as I pondered walking to school in a downpour again. As I listened to the precipitation against the glass I came to a decision on a matter I'd been mulling over for some time.

After showering I went down to breakfast and picked up the business section as usual.

"How are the stocks doing today?" Dad asked from behind the sports page.

"Up a little again." I told him, doing some quick calculations in my head based on some figures I'd added up a few days before. The latex industry was slowly climbing at this point but had yet to do anything dramatic. It would before too much longer went by. But in the meantime I was funneling all of my spare income into those stocks. The added capital plus the gains in the price added up to more than two thousand dollars of available income.

Not a fortune, but not bad either.

I flipped through the business section and found the classified ads. After five minutes of perusal I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

"Dad," I said. "Can you cash out six hundred dollars worth of my stocks today? Three hundred from each company?"

He slid his paper down and looked at me. "What for?" He asked.

"I need to buy a car." I told him. "I refuse to walk to school in the rain anymore."

We talked that matter over for a few minutes, as fathers like to do with their sons. He agreed to cash out the stock but made me promise to take him with me when I went out looking. He would keep me from being screwed he told me. Knowing that I didn't really need his help to keep from getting screwed but also knowing that buying the first car was one of those things that father's lived for, I agreed.

I was very excited about the prospect of going out car shopping on Saturday.

Excited enough to dampen the depression the rain had brought. But my mood was changed in an instant when Mom came into the living room.

Casually, she said to me, "Oh Billy, Anita called last night."

"Anita?" I said as tonelessly as I could manage.

"Yes." She nodded. "She wanted to know if you could swing by after school today and help her change the oil on her car before you go to work. I told her you probably wouldn't mind doing that."

"You did?" I said.

Mom gave me a strange look. "That's okay, isn't it?" She asked. "You're usually able to help her out when she asks."

"Uh…" I stammered, my mind whirring. "Well actually I have a lot of homework to catch up on today."

"Bill, its Friday." She told me. "Can't it wait?"

"No." I shook my head. "It's chemistry. If I don't do it right after school I, uh, forget all of the formulas and stuff."

Mom looked at me for a minute, her mother instinct probably being jigged by my words. But finally she shrugged. "Okay." She said. "But will you try to do it this weekend sometime?"

"I'll uh, see what I can do Mom." I said carefully.

"Thank you Billy." She answered, looking at me with a troubled expression.

Had I really believed that Anita was going to fade away that easily? I guess I had.

That night when I went to bed my testosterone got the better of me. There was only one way to relieve it and manage some sleep. I took myself in hand and began stroking, an action I'd performed thousands upon thousands of times before in my two lives. I thought of Nina as I did it, almost against my will. Never had a fantasy been so vivid, so real to me. It only took a minute or so before my fantasy Nina's job was complete and I was drifting off into a troubled slumber.

The next day, Saturday, Dad and I spent the late morning and early afternoon driving from place to place and looking at used cars. Dad showed me how to negotiate and how to check out a vehicle that you might buy. To my surprise he actually taught me a few things that I didn't already know. I was pleased with the vehicle we eventually settled upon. It was a 1976 Datsun B-210 with seventy thousand miles on it. The engine was in reasonably good shape although the paint job and the interior were in bad need of an overhaul. I paid five hundred cash for it and drove it home that day. That evening I took it to work with me. No matter what else happened, there would be no more walking to school in the rain or the snow.

A week went by and then another. Nothing changed between Nina and I. She continued to ignore me in class and to eat lunch by herself. I tried to talk to her a few times without any measure of success. I tried to tell her I missed her but she didn't listen. My hope for any future relationship began to dwindle. During this period I maintained my habit of jacking off once a day on average. I simply couldn't help it. Nina was always featured in these fantasies and most of them were not even about sex. Most of them just involved being in an intimate place with her, being together with her.

Anita continued to be a problem. She continually called my mother asking if I could come over to do little chores for her. I was fast running out of excuses for why I couldn't do what she asked and my mother, now quite plainly sensing that something was wrong, was running out of look-the-other-way-so-you-don't-have-to-address-an-unpleasant-truth. I knew that I was going to have to have another talk with Anita but I wasn't up for it yet. The memory of our first talk was still too fresh in my mind. I'd experienced emotions during that talk that I'd never felt before, not even during the divorce with my wife in my previous life.

On the following Friday night, while I was adding up my stock holdings after receiving my latest paycheck from the pizza joint, the phone rang. Dad answered it, listened for a minute, and then yelled my name. I walked into the kitchen and took it from him, figuring it was probably Mike.

"Hey Billy-Boy!" A familiar female voice haled. "How you been?"

Cindy! In all of the turmoil of the recent past Cindy had completely slipped my mind. Our album sessions had dwindled once she'd started college and had all but disappeared in the last two months. I hadn't seen or heard from her since then.

"Hi Cindy." I said carefully. If I'd learned nothing else over the past few weeks I'd learned that females that you thought you were having a casual relationship with were often not under the same impression. Was another bomb about to drop on me? Had I screwed up Cindy's life as I had Anita's? I honestly didn't know. In my previous life I'd lost track of Cindy after her and Tracy had stopped hanging out together. The last time I'd seen her had been at Tracy's funeral where she'd given me a sympathetic hug and had disappeared from my life forever.

"What's up?" She asked me.

We chatted for a few minutes. She apologized for not having contacted me lately and I assured her it was okay. She told me she had a new love interest and I was very glad to hear that. Even when she mentioned that he was a professor at her college who was 'kind of married', I maintained my delight.

"That's just great Cindy." I told her. "I hope things work out for you."

"Oh they will." She assured me. "They will. I'll see to it."

"I'm sure you will."

"Listen," She said. "The reason I called is that Maggie and I are moving into an apartment together. You remember Maggie, don't you?"

How could I forget her? She was Cindy's brunette friend that used to come over to 'study' with me on days that Cindy could not. Like with Cindy, I hadn't seen Maggie in quite a while. Was Maggie going to be the latest bomb?

"Yes." I said. "I'm familiar with Maggie."

Cindy giggled. "I'm sure you are." She said. "Maggie knows your album collection almost as good as I do. Anyway, we really need someone to help us move tomorrow. We have a truck but we need help getting our shit out of our parent's house and into ours. Could you be a sweetheart and give us a hand?"

"Is anybody else going to be there?" I asked.

"Just me and Maggie." She told me. "Everyone else is busy on short notice. And if you help us out, we might give you a real special reward."

"Special reward?" I said quietly.

"REAL special." She said. "So what do you say?"

I'd told myself that I was past my previous ways, that my days of fucking anything with a pussy were gone. I knew I should offer a sincere apology to Cindy and tell her I was busy. But I hadn't released my daily load for the day and I was feeling quite horny. The thought of Maggie and Cindy, of their tight, youthful bodies wormed its way into my mind and stuck there. I found my mouth opening and the words: "What time should I be there?" leaving my lips.

"My house." Cindy said. "Ten o'clock sharp."

"You got it." I told her.

"I'll be looking forward to it." She told me.

I hung up the phone feeling guilty about my actions. But I also did not have the willpower to call Cindy back and tell her I couldn't make it. I told myself that I would just help them move and that nothing else would happen. And I knew that I was lying to myself.

It was overcast the next day but not raining. I drove to Cindy's house, arriving promptly at ten, and met the two girls standing next to a medium sized U-Haul truck. They both gave me hugs for greeting and both gave my ass a discreet squeeze, making my dick, which I'd just releived only twelve hours before, pulsate in my pants. My morals wavered.

We spent about an hour moving boxes from Cindy's bedroom in her parent's house into the U-haul. We then caravanned to Maggie's house, where I'd never been before. It took an hour and a half to move Maggie's boxes from her room. Once the U-Haul was full we drove to a large apartment complex near the college.

Like Raisin's apartment complex, I knew this one from my previous life as a paramedic. We used to go to calls to it frequently, not because it was scummy, although there was a little bit of that, but because it was huge and because it was filled with college students. College students like to drink and take strange drugs and get into fights over things like parking space ownership and who drank the last beer. I'd been here for overdoses, for life-threatening alcohol ingestion, for countless assaults, for people on acid who'd convinced themselves that they'd forgotten how to breathe, and for the occasional stabbing or shooting. I remembered it mostly because each trip into its bowels was an exercise in celestial navigation. There were no maps in the front. The buildings had no numbers on them. Even the apartment numbers themselves were marked only with a four-inch set of black numbers on the brown background of the doors. I remembered driving around in the place for fifteen or twenty minutes looking for the right apartment every time I came, and receiving angry rebuffs from the drunken college students when I finally stumbled across the right one, as to why it had taken me so long to get there. I remembered thinking that there should be a law against places such as this.

Thankfully Cindy and Maggie had been to their apartment before. They found it after only ten minutes of driving around. The U-Haul was parked illegally in a red zone and the ramp was extended. The apartment was opened up and we began picking up boxes, each of which was marked either with a C or an M or an LR or a K, into the two-bedroom living quarters. Forty minutes later the U-Haul was empty.

We sat down on boxes in the cluttered living room and Cindy opened up an ice chest, distributing wine coolers to all of us. I popped mine open and took a long swallow, feeling the fruity, sweet beverage pass my gullet. Cindy then produced a joint that we all smoked from, getting us pleasantly stoned.

With each sip of wine cooler, with each toke from the joint, thoughts of Nina and fate and Julie and Anita went further and further to the back of my mind. By the time the roach was nestled safely in an ashtray and Maggie was plugging in a boom box and putting on some Sammy Hagar, my dick was stiff from looking at the two girls.

Cindy made the first move. She came over and sat next to me, her left hand dropping down to the crotch of my jeans where her fingers began making sensual patterns across the bulge of my cock.

"I've missed this." She said, looking down at the unnatural tightness of the denim. "That's one thing about the professor, he may be a nice guy and he sure knows how to treat me, but he doesn't know how to operate his piston very well."

"Maybe you should teach him." I said, with a voice that wasn't quite steady.

She popped the top button slowly and then gave a sharp yank, opening all the others. "Maybe I should." She said. "If he wants to keep me around he's going to have to learn a few basic skills anyway." She smiled. A smile I was very familiar with. "Maybe I should refine my teaching techniques a little."

"I'm happy," I said, watching her fingers fish through my BVDs, seeking my cock, "To offer my services as a learning tool."

"Good." She said, sliding off the box and sinking to her knees before me.

She tugged at my waistline and my jeans came down, allowing my hard cock to pop out into the light. With a quick glance at Maggie, who was sitting ten feet away and watching the developments, she lowered her head and took me into her mouth. Cindy hadn't forgotten a thing about cock sucking. She bobbed up and down, teasing and sucking at the same time. I sighed as I felt her talented mouth go to work on me.

Across the room Maggie watched us and I saw a familiar shine in her eyes. Her nipples began to poke out through her sweater and she began to rub her legs together. Finally she stood up and walked over to us.

"I must say," She said, grabbing the hem of her sweater. "This is very arousing. I never thought I'd get turned on watching Cindy suck someone's cock but it's strangely alluring all the same."

"Yeah?" I said, looking at her. She was a little chunkier than Cindy was but still very attractive. She looked like a future librarian, glasses and all. She was also, I knew from previous dealings, very well read and possessed a large vocabulary that she liked to show off. Maybe she would be a writer some day. Maybe she would write about his.

"Yeah." She nodded, lifting her sweater up and off, revealing her bra-clad tits.

While Cindy continued to work on my cock I pulled her to me, reaching up for the clasp on her bra. In a half second it was released and the bra dropped to the floor. She stepped forward, sticking her left tit into my mouth. I began to suckle the nipple while my hand stroked up and down the smooth flesh of her stomach. My other hand was in Cindy's blonde hair while Cindy's head continued to work my dick.

After a moment Cindy pulled herself free from me and stood up. "Switch!" She told Maggie.

Maggie slipped her tit out of my mouth and dropped down between my spread knees. A second later my cock disappeared into her mouth. Cindy pulled off her own sweater and then quickly dropped her bra. While I reached out and took a tit into each hand, feeling the flesh and the nipples, she kicked her shoes across the room and unbuttoned her pants. With a quick push of her hands she was naked, her blonde bush open for my perusal.

"Did you miss this?" Cindy asked, spreading herself open and gyrating her hips.

"Yes." I lied.

"I want to sit on your face." She told me. "Maggie, let the man up."

"Mmmmm. He IS up." Maggie said from around my cock.

The two girls giggled. While I shucked my pants the rest of the way and tossed off my shirt, Maggie did the same with her pants. A minute later I was naked and looking at four tits and two bushes, one blonde, one black as night. My dick was twitching with arousal. In all of the encounters I'd had since recycling and in all of the encounters I'd had before recycling I'd never had two girls at one time. I don't believe I could have resisted this is Nina had walked through the door at that very moment.

I lay on my back on the floor and Maggie dropped down again, taking my cock into her mouth. Her sucking continued while her hands fondled my balls. Her tits rubbed against my upper thighs. Cindy, her back to Maggie, eased herself down over my face, allowing her wet, juicy pussy to descend upon my mouth. I stuck out my tongue to meet it, tasting her tangy secretions and plunging in. Her pubic hair pushed into my nose as I lapped away at her, first plunging in and then going for the clit.

Meanwhile Maggie was trying her damnedest to suck a load from my cock. She drove her head up and down, sucking all the while, her hands frantically jacking. Maggie I knew, loved the taste of come in her mouth. She'd been known to come over just to give me a head job. Not that I ever complained about this of course.

About the time that Cindy began gyrating uncontrollably upon my face, drenching me with her secretions, I felt my own orgasm approaching quickly.

"Yesss!" Cindy moaned above me.

"Mmmmm!" Maggie moaned from between my legs as I began to shoot my come into her throat.

"Ahhhh!" I moaned, on sensory overload from all of the female fresh pressing into me.

Maggie licked my dick and balls clean, giving me the beginnings of a new hard-on. Cindy climbed off of my face and tapped her naked friend on the shoulder.

"I'll take over here." Cindy said. "Get yourself up there and get some tongue."

Maggie smiled. "If you insist." She answered, raising her head from my crotch.

She positioned herself as Cindy had, lowering her black bush and wet lips onto my face. I began eating her, both tasting and smelling the contrast between the two girls' juices. Maggie's clit was already hard so after only a brief period of licking and sucking her lips, I attacked it. Meanwhile Cindy continued to suck and slurp on my cock, bringing it back to full hardness.

Of course I couldn't see anything with Maggie's body perched on my face but soon I felt Cindy's mouth pull itself off of my cock. This was followed a moment later by the feel of her inner thighs straddling my outer thighs and the head of my dick being tickled by a nest of hair. Her hand grasped me and I felt myself moved through wet hair and into a warm set of lips. She rubbed me against her clit for a minute and then suddenly, without warning, I was engulfed in her tight body as she sank down on me.

"Ahhhhh!" I moaned into Maggie's cunt.

"Keep eating me!" Maggie panted from above. "I'm almost there!"

I dove back into her pussy, sucking her clit into my mouth once again and savaging it with my tongue. Maggie verbally registered her approval while Cindy began moving up and down on my cock, gripping it in that way of hers.

Maggie was both more violent when she came and more verbal. She screamed her orgasm out to the room using gutter profanity while her pubis battered my face until I was dazed. Cindy came again at the same time, dripping a stream of juices down to my balls.

Maggie got off my face and turned around to face Cindy, who was still bouncing away, her pretty tits jiggling up and down.

"My turn with the cock." Maggie proclaimed.

"Ohhh." Cindy whined, but she pulled herself off anyway.

Maggie lay down on the carpet next to me on her back, spreading her legs wide. "I like it this way." She told me. "Climb aboard."

I rolled over on top of her and sank into her flesh. While I fucked her Cindy sat in front of us, watching with a shine in her eyes and idly stroking her pussy with one hand. In all of my fantasies that involved two women at the same time, the two women always decided to try a little girl on girl action during the event. Apparently reality wasn't the same as fantasy. The two girls seemed to go to great lengths to avoid actually touching each other. But that was fine with me. It would have been nice to watch them go at each other but what I was doing now was nice enough even without it. Who was I to complain?

Maggie had another orgasm, again announcing it to the world in a much more violent manner than Cindy with screams of profanity and claws to my back. Figuring it was now safe to come again I began driving forward towards this goal. Cindy, still stroking herself, saw what I was doing and lodged a protest.

"No!" She yelled at Maggie. "You got to take the first load. I get the second one." She dropped down to the floor next to us, presenting herself in the doggy-style position. "Switch!"

Maggie, dripping with perspiration, panting, looked at me and said, "Fair is fair."

I shrugged, not really caring whose body I came into. I pulled myself out of her with a wet squish and raised up to my knees. I eased over behind Cindy and lined up. When my cock was in the right place I drove forward into her, immediately re-establishing the frantic rhythm I'd been using with Maggie.

As I fucked in and out of Cindy, using her hips for leverage, Maggie raised up to her knees and turned towards me. She leaned over and began kissing and licking the back of my neck and near my ears.

"Come in her." She whispered over and over again. "Come in her."

It didn't take long. With a cry of satisfaction I blasted my load into Cindy's hungry pussy, triggering an orgasm from her at the same time.

Satiated, I pulled my cock out of her pussy and let myself fall backward to the floor. Maggie curled up on my left side while Cindy flipped over and curled up on my right side. I put my arms around the two girls, feeling their wet, sticky skin.

"That was fun." Cindy commented, giving me a peck on the cheek. "We double-teamed you."

"I guess you did." I nodded, basking in the afterglow.

"But you got to come three times." Maggie protested lightly, aiming her comment at Cindy. "I only got to come twice."

"Not my fault." Cindy told her new roomate.

"Maybe," I suggested. "Cindy owes you an orgasm. What do you think Cindy, want to pay up?"

They both looked at me for a moment and then shook their heads.

"Don't be a pervert Bill." Maggie said. "You've been reading too many porno mags."

I shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

When I returned home that day I was sore and free of excessive testosterone but surprisingly and pleasantly guilt-free about my encounter with the two girls. Conversation with them afterword had assured me that neither one of them were following the path of Julie or Anita. Though I didn't know what path either of them had taken in my previous life since I'd lost track of Cindy and hadn't known Maggie at all, I received no ominous instinct that would lead me to believe I was pulling them away from their destinies. Chances are that Cindy had had an affair with her college professor before and that Maggie had moved in with her and had followed whatever path she was currently embarked upon. I was changing nothing with these two except for the occasional merger of my path with theirs.

And though I knew that Nina probably would not approve of what I'd done, would probably see it as further evidence of my assholery if she knew about it, I could not bring myself to feel guilt about this either. I wasn't supposed to be a freaking monk was I? Nina and I had no relationship at the moment to endanger. If I ever did manage to bring her around I hoped to have a more intimate relationship with her and of course I would have to refrain from having threesomes with attractive college students, but until then there was no harm being done as far as I could see.

I took a quick shower and then went to work. I sang happily along with the radio in my new car as I drove there.

I was awakened at 7:30 the next morning by Dad's pounding on my bedroom door.

"Bill?" He asked, opening the door and pushing his head through just as I was coming fully awake.

"Yeah Dad," I said blearily. "What is it?"

"There's a girl on the phone for you." He told me, "She says she needs to talk to you right now, in private, and that it's an emergency."

That was strange enough to bring me fully awake in an instant. I had a sudden bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked up at Dad and saw that he was worried about this also. He was probably figuring that some girl was calling to tell me that I'd knocked her up.

"Who's the girl?" I asked Dad.

"She didn't give her name." He said. "And I've never heard her voice before."

"All right." I answered, pulling myself out of bed. I threw on a pair of sweat pants and followed Dad downstairs. "Do you mind if I use your den phone?" I asked him.

"Sure." He nodded, waving me towards the room.

I went in and picked up the phone. "I got it!" I yelled through the closed door. A second later I heard the click of the other extension being placed back in its cradle.

I took a deep breath and said into the mouthpiece, "This is Bill."

"Hi Bill." A completely unfamiliar voice said to me. "My name is Linda. Your sister wants to talk to you."

"Tracy?" I said, confused. "What…"

"Hang on a sec." Linda said. A second later I heard her voice say faintly, "It's him."

"Thanks." My sister's faint voice replied.

There was a long pause and I heard the sound of a door shutting somewhere in the room where Tracy was. I figured that was Linda leaving the room to give Tracy some privacy.

At last Tracy's loud voice said, "Bill?" Her voice sounded haunted, scared.

What had happened?

"Yeah." I answered. "What's going on Trace?"

"I had Linda call for me so that Mom or Dad wouldn't know it was me." She explained.

"That's fine." I replied quickly. "What's wrong Trace? Are you all right?"

"How did you know Bill?" She asked, demanded. "How do you know the things you know?"

"What happened Tracy?" I asked. "Tell me why you called."

"Last night." She said, "I went to a party with Darren in the city. A frat party. There was a keg of beer there and everyone, me included, got pretty drunk."

My mouth suddenly dried up as I heard this. "Go on." I said numbly.

"When it came time to leave Darren insisted he was okay to drive. He told me he wasn't really drunk and that he was okay. My judgement was pretty screwed up by the alcohol I guess and I believed him. I believed him! We walked out to the car and I had every intention of getting into it with him.

I mean he seemed fine! He was walking okay, talking okay, everything!"

"Tracy, what happened?" I asked.

"When he went to unlock the car he had trouble getting the key into the lock. Just a little bit of trouble but he couldn't quite get it to fit in there." Her voice started to break a little. "Part of me tried to ignore this. I tried to tell myself that it didn't mean anything. But I remembered what you had said to me, how you'd warned me, and at the last second I told Darren that I didn't think he should be driving."

"And then what happened?"

"We had a fight. We yelled at each other out in the parking lot and he sounded so damn reasonable that I almost got in again. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't! So anyway he eventually got totally pissed off and drove off without me. I caught a cab home, bitching the whole time about you and your stupid warnings, about how I was going to have to pay twenty bucks to get home when a perfectly good ride had driven off without me, shit like that."

"And?" I asked, knowing there was more or she wouldn't have called.

"I got back to the dorm safely and passed out in my bed. When I woke up this morning I was told that Darren drove his car into San Francisco Bay on his way home last night."

There was silence on the line as I digested this, as shivers went up and down my body. "Tracy, Jesus." I said. "Thank God I talked to you. What happened to Darren?"

She sniffed a little. "He's fine." She told me. "He pulled himself out of the car without any problems. Of course he got arrested for drunk driving but other than that he's fine." She paused. "But I wouldn't have been, would I?" She asked me, almost accused me.

"I don't think so Tracy." I told her.

"What is going on here Bill?" She demanded. "I think I deserve an explanation! Is this going to keep happening over and over until finally I die?"

"Tracy, I just don't know." I said. "All I know is that you need to be as careful as you can."

"Christ!" She told me. "You're telling me that fate has got a hard-on for me, that I'm supposed to drown in a traffic accident! How can I live a normal life if I have to worry about this all of the time? Is there any way to stop this?"

"I don't know." I said in answer to both of her questions. "I just don't know."

"Tell me what you DO know!" She yelled. "I have a goddam right to this information! Tell me!"

"Tracy, I can't."

"Why not?" She asked. "You come up with all this mystical shit, mystical shit that just happens to be true. Shit you have no business knowing and you won't tell me how you're getting this information?"

She had a point there. "Are you coming home for Thanksgiving Tracy?" I asked her.

"I don't know." She said, semi-hysterically. "Is it safe for me to fly on an airplane?"

A legitimate question. "I think so." I told her, figuring that fate wouldn't kill several hundred people just to get at my sister. "Why don't you come home then. We'll have a nice family get-together and you and I will sit down and have a talk."

"And you'll tell me what you know?"

"As much as I can." I promised, although I wasn't sure just how much 'as much as I can' encompassed.

"And in the meantime?" She asked.

"And in the meantime stay out of cars with people who have been drinking. Stay out of cars completely if you can avoid it. Fate does seem to have a hard-on for you Tracy. So don't give it an easy mark. In a way the accident that your boyfriend had…"

"He's not my boyfriend any more." She spat. "You can bet your sweet ass on that."

"Right," I said, and then continued. "As I was saying, the accident that he had leads me to believe that certain pre-conditions have to be met. I don't know this for sure so be careful with everything you do, but it seems that the factors of a car, a drunk, and water all have to be met. Just to be safe, stay away from water too. Don't go swimming."

"And if you're wrong about these pre-conditions?" She asked.

How to answer that one. If I was wrong then Tracy was probably fucked. Fate would take her at its leisure. "Let's just hope I'm not wrong Tracy." I finally said. "Come home for Thanksgiving and we'll see what we can figure out."

"All right Bill." She said. "What else can I do?"

Chapter 7

Now I've gained some understanding

Of the only world that we see

Things that I once dreamed of

Have become reality

These walls that still surround me

Still contain the same old me

Just one more who is searching for

The world that ought to be

All the same we take our chances

Laughed at by time

Tricked by circumstances

RUSH

Okay, I'm going out on a limb with this chapter. Due to the specifics of the plot at this particular junction in the story, I am not able to provide a sex scene in this installment. It simply would not work and would run counter to the characterization. I thought I would put that right out front since this is, after all, a sex-stories newsgroup. If anyone does not wish to read this chapter because of this I will understand, but be advised that if you skip this chapter you most likely will not have any idea what is going on in the next chapter if you choose to read that one. My thanks in advance to all whom will bear with me for this chapter in which much is resolved but in which nobody gets laid. I would also like to thank Tony Tiger, a frequent corespondent of mine, for providing me with the nodal and cascading theories that appear here. Putting names to what I was thinking helped me immensely.

I went with Mom and Dad to pick up Tracy at the airport on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. For any of you that have ever been to a large metropolitan area's air terminal on such a date you can appreciate the chaos that results from having five times as many people in the building as the fire code probably allows. It was wall to wall people pushing from one place to the next, all of them dressed in winter clothing since an early snowstorm had decided to descend upon our fair city. The noise and the crowding were suffocating and Tracy's plane arrived nearly thirty minutes late.

But when we saw her walking out of the skyway towards us it made it all worthwhile. Unlike Mom and Dad, I had not realized how much I'd missed my sister until I saw her. Being younger I beat them to her and got the first hug of greeting.

Before Mom and Dad could reach us Tracy whispered in my ear. "You promised me a talk."

"Soon." I told her. "Soon."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we got home that night and all of us went straight to bed. There would be no talk that night. The next day relatives began to pour in from other parts of Spokane and from as far away as Sandpoint, Idaho and Moses Lake in the southern part of Washington. Mom made a huge turkey dinner that we all demolished and Tracy and I took our turns in the barrel having our cheeks pinched and being told how much we'd grown. By the time all of the relatives cleared out it was nine o'clock and we were all exhausted once more.

Mom and Dad had a long-standing tradition that they shared with another couple, the male half of which was a private pilot. Each day after Thanksgiving they would pile into a rented airplane and fly to Seattle to have lunch at the space needle. It was an annual event that they'd participated in for as long as I could remember. They'd even continued to do it in my previous life after Tracy's death. They'd offered, halfheartedly I might add, to cancel it this year since Tracy only had a few days with us before she returned to Berkeley, but both Tracy and myself insisted they go.

"Bill and I can find something to do." Tracy told them, looking sharply at me.

"Yeah." I agreed. "We'll keep ourselves busy."

So it came to pass that Mom and Dad piled into their car at eight o'clock on Friday morning for the trip to the small municipal airport from which they would depart. Experience had taught both my sister and I that they would not return until at least six o'clock that evening.

Their car couldn't have been more than a mile from our suburban house before Tracy got off the couch and headed up to her old room. I gave her a puzzled look that grew more puzzled when she returned carrying a twelve pack of beer in her hands.

"Okay," She told me, slapping the beer down on the coffee table. "I scored us a twelver of this imported shit back in California and brought it all the way here for this talk." She ripped open the package, which was green and contained a brand of beer I'd never heard of; something called Steinlager. She pulled out two bottles and popped the tops with a bottle opener.

"Tracy, it's only eight in the morning." I protested. "I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She smiled. "Little brother," She said. "If you want to be successful when you go to college you'd better learn to drink beer first thing in the morning. It's a requirement." She handed one to me.

I took it, surprised to find that it was icy cold.

"Something else you learn in college." She told me, taking a huge swallow. "If you want to keep your beer cold in the absence of a refrigerator, store it outside in the cold. I put this on the roof outside my window last night. Thank God it didn't get below freezing."

I took a swallow, finding the beer very tasty despite the early hour. "Not bad." I told her, drinking some more.

"Okay," She said. "Enough preliminaries. Let's talk."

I set my bottle down on the coffee table, struck by the strangeness of drinking a beer while still dressed in the clothes I'd slept in, my baggy sweats and a T-shirt. Tracy too was still dressed in her customary long T-shirt, this one with the University's logo on the front. Her legs were crossed Indian style on the couch, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I still had no idea what I was going to tell her, how much I should tell her.

"Why don't we start," I told her. "With what you DO know and what you think is going on here. Tell me that."

"Why do you want to hear that?" She asked.

"I just want to see how this whole thing looks to someone close to me."

She thought for a second and then nodded, taking another sip of beer. "Fair enough." She told me. "Here's what I know. I know that the day you told me about the accident I was scheduled to be in the first time, your personality underwent a radical change. One day you were immature little Billy, the next day you were hugging on me, telling me you loved me, and you weren't sure of the exact date. You got into a fight with a huge bully at school, something completely out of character for you, and you put him in the hospital. You came home that day and caught us smoking pot in the living room and you reamed us for it, the same way an adult would, but also different somehow. You also made Cindy's asshole boyfriend back down, and let me tell you, he doesn't back down too often.

"So I'm forced to conclude that whatever happened to you, happened on that day. Am I right?"

I nodded. "Yes. That was the first day."

"That night you came to my room and told me that creepy-ass story about the car accident. You gave me exact details, exact, about what would happen, who would be in the car, etc. You told me things you had absolutely no right knowing and they turned out to be true.

"About the same time you completely lost all of your shyness. One day I was wondering if my little brother was EVER going to get himself laid and the next day you're suddenly a male slut, bagging everything left and right and apparently, if my information was correct, doing a very good job of it.

"You also developed a sudden interest in the stock market and in finding a job. Your grades improved overnight. And I even heard that you put a few teachers in their places."

"Okay." I nodded, surprised at the amount of information Tracy possessed. Again I was forced to wonder just how much my parents knew or suspected. "So tell me, what do you think all of this means?"

"Well obviously something very strange happened to you on that first day." She offered.

"Such as?"

"I think you had some sort of well, psychic flash. I think you had some sort of Scrooge type experience while you slept that night. Something that showed you what the future was going to be like and was realistic enough that you were unable to simply discount it as a dream. That doesn't explain everything of course, but I think that's something like what happened to you. I don't know how such a thing is possible, or why you were chosen to have this knowledge, but somehow, you were shown the future, including my death, and you were able to stop certain things and start others. Am I close?"

"Kind of." I said, taking another sip, surprised to find that the bottle was now empty. I leaned forward and grabbed another one, opening it up with the bottle opener. "You are somewhat on track here but the truth is actually a little stranger than that."

"So what IS the truth?" She asked, grabbing a fresh beer of her own. "Like I said before Bill, I think I have a right to this information."

"And you do Tracy," I agreed. "You really do and I think that maybe with both of our minds working on some of the problems that have cropped up here, maybe something can be done. But there is one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I tell you what I know, what happened to me, you can never tell anyone else. NEVER. If you were to do that and word about what happened got to the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Mostly for me, but also for our family. There are people in the world that would literally kill in order to possess the information that I have. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"

"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."

She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"

"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."

She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.

"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"

"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.

I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."

"1999?" She said, with disbelief.

"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.

That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."

"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."

She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."

"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."

She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."

I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.

"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."

"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.

"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."

"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.

"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."

"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.

"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."

"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.

"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."

"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."

"No." I said. "I couldn't."

She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"

"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.

"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.

"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"Wow." She said.

"Do you believe me?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."

"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.

"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Yep." I agreed.

Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."

"I agree." I told her.

"You do?" She asked.

"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."

"Are you saying that you are not doing that anymore?" She asked.

"I'm trying not to." I said. "It's cost me a lot. I told you that Nina and I were no longer talking to each other."

"You did." She nodded. "I figured it had something to do with your extracurricular activities. I tried to tell you once that she loved you. And I was pretty sure that you loved her too. You didn't listen."

"I know. And you were right on both counts." I said. "Unfortunately I waited too long to realize it. I screwed around until Nina had her eyes opened to what I was like. She basically told me to fuck off and stay away from her. She won't even talk to me now."

"I'm sorry." Tracy said honestly. "I like Nina. I thought you two were perfect together. I still think that even though I now know you're actually seventeen years older than she is. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe." I said. "Or maybe not. In any case, Nina is part of why I called you at the bookstore with that warning. Nina and Mike and some other things have made me realize that fate has a pattern to it. A pattern that it keeps trying to put things and people into. You are part of what has fallen out of pattern."

"Because I didn't die on graduation night?" She asked slowly.

"Exactly." I nodded. "In a way I'm glad that these other things have happened. They allowed me to see what was going on, that fate was attempting to re-align things. When I saw that, I was able to give you that second warning and you were able to heed it when fate took a second shot at you."

She shuddered. "I still get the creeps when I think about how close I was to getting in that car with Darren that night. Jesus. What other things have you seen as far as these patterns go? Maybe if I know how strong this thing is…"

"Okay." I said. "There's you first of all. As you know, in my previous life you died on graduation night. In this life I prevented that. But I also knew Nina in my previous life, in school of course but also years later, and that Nina was not a pleasant person at all."

"What do you mean?" Tracy asked.

"In my first life Nina was a doctor in one of the emergency rooms. And she was a total bitch. She was the shining example of a big-time inferiority complex. If anybody did anything good in front of her, she would find a way to criticize it. If anyone did anything wrong, she would jump down their throats. She was a miserable person and it was quite plain to me why she was a miserable person."

"Because of the way she was treated in school." Tracy said.

I looked at her, smiling. "You know Tracy, you're pretty smart for a youngster."

She giggled nervously. "This is so weird." She commented. "Trying to adjust myself from thinking about you as my 'little' brother. You've got seventeen years on me now."

I snorted. "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser Tracy. Believe me. Anyway, when I came back I decided to eat in the cafeteria one day and I saw Nina sitting in there alone. That brought back memories of how bitchy she was as a doctor and led to the speculation as to its cause. So I, thinking I was the great superhero, the fixer of oppressed people everywhere, decided to befriend her and maybe change her personality a little."

"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.

"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."

"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"

"An asshole?" I suggested.

"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."

"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."

I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.

"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.

"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."

"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."

"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."

"You did?"

"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."

"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"

"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."

"What's that?" She asked.

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.

"Anita." I said softly.

Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"

I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."

"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"

"Because of me." I said.

"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"

I nodded shamefully.

"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"

"Yes." I said.

"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."

"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"

"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."

"God." Tracy muttered.

"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."

"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"

"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."

"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"

"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."

"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"

"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"

"But she hasn't?"

I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.

"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."

Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.

"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."

"It does?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"

"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."

"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."

"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.

"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."

"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."

"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.

"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."

"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.

"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"

"Yes." I said, "I do."

"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"

"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."

"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.

"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."

"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.

"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."

"And Nina?" I asked.

"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.

"The exception to the rule." I agreed.

"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.

"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."

"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.

"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.

I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."

"Very quickly." She affirmed.

"And you?"

She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."

"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"

She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."

Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.

Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.

Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.

Resolved to my task, I raised my fist and knocked on her door firmly.

It was less than ten seconds before it swung open and Anita herself, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt appeared to me on the other side.

"Billy!" She said, her face beaming. "Come in! I knew you'd come back."

"I'll stay out on the porch Anita." I told her firmly. "What I have to say won't take but a minute."

Her face clouded, trying to retain some of the hope it showed when she first saw me. "What do you mean?"

"Anita," I said. "I'll make this short and to the point. Our relationship is over. Over and done. I'm sorry I ended it so abruptly and I'm sorry I hurt you, but it is over. You need to stop calling my house and asking for me to come over and do chores for you."

"Billy, I was just trying to stay friends with you." She told me, fresh hurt marring her features. "Don't you want to still be friends?"

"You know that being friends after a sexual relationship is not possible." I told her. "That is not why you're calling. You're hoping I'll come over and resume where we left off. I will not do that. You need to stop it. You're making my mother very suspicious and if you push much harder the consequences are going to unpleasant."

She became indignant. "Well maybe your mother SHOULD know about what happened between us. Maybe I should just tell her."

I shook my head, disgusted with both her and with myself for bringing her to this point, this desperation. "Think about that for a second Anita." I told her. "Do you think that if you tell my mother about our relationship she's going to order me to come over here and marry you? Is that what you really think? Well I'm here to tell you that if you tell my mother anything it will be the worst mistake you'll ever make in your life. Mom will be very offended by it and she will not be directing her offense at me. You are the adult in this situation and in case you forgot, I am a minor.

"I imagine Mom would probably call the cops about this and you would end up with a criminal charge of some sort. You may not be convicted of anything but you would almost certainly have your children taken away from you. Is that what you want?"

Though the shock that overcame her expression was painful to watch, it was also a relief. I had managed to break through to her, to get a point across.

"Your mother wouldn't do that." She protested, but weakly.

"To tell you the truth Anita, I don't really want to find out. I didn't come over here to torment you and despite what you probably think, I don't hate you. I just need you to acknowledge that our relationship is at an end. That it's over. I don't want you to get into trouble Anita, I just want you to leave me alone."

She gulped, tears running down her face. "I'll leave you alone." She whispered, barely audibly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said I'll leave you alone." She nearly shouted. "Are you happy?"

"No Anita." I answered. "I'm not. But I'm glad you agreed with me."

This time I was able to get away before the sound of her sobs reached my ears.

Before she left Tracy was royally chewed out by my mother for not calling or writing more often. She left us with a promise to phone at least once a week. It had been three weeks since she'd left and so far she'd kept up with her promise well. As to how long that would last was anyone's guess.

I was home alone when she called on Wednesday evening, a week prior to Christmas vacation.

"Hey Bill." She said cheerfully. As before I could hear girlish revelry going on in the background. "Just making my obligatory weekly call so that Mom doesn't cut off my funding."

"Well, you wasted a call." I told her. "There out at Dad's school's Christmas party. They probably won't be home until midnight or so."

Tracy giggled. "And when they do get home, Dad will be drunk and Mom will be ragging on him about having too much to drink and swearing that she's not going to take him to next year's party."

"Gee," I mocked, knowing that Tracy was correct. "You sound like you've lived through this before."

"Oh, I might've witnessed something like that a time or two." She agreed. "So how's things with you?"

"Well," I said. "I think I have the Anita problem stabilized. She's not calling here anymore, hasn't since I had that little talk with her."

"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"

"But it wasn't terribly fun."

"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."

"Maybe." I agreed.

"How about Nina? Any developments there?"

"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."

"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."

"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.

"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"

"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"

"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.

I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."

"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."

"I do what I can." She said.

"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"

"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"

"I'll try Trace. I'll try."

They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.

It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.

"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."

I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.

"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.

"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.

I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.

"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."

"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.

To each their own I figured, dismissing this.

"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"

"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."

"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.

"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.

I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.

"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.

"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.

Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"

"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.

"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.

"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.

"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.

I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."

Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.

"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"

"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.

"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"

He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.

"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."

"Okay."

Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.

Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.

"Give me half of them." I told Brett.

With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.

"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.

He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.

"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.

Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.

I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.

"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."

She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.

"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."

She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"

"Well…" I shrugged.

"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"

I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."

I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.

"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.

"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."

"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.

When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.

"You're covered under the hospital's work comp." She told me. "They'll cover the hospital bill but, unfortunately, since you don't make any salary, there's nothing to compensate you for time off work. You should've dragged yourself to your paid job and pretended you did it there."

"I'll do that next time." I said.

"Anyway," She continued. "Why don't you head up to the ER so they can stitch you up? I'll call your parents for permission to treat and send up the authorization. Then I'll start the reams of paperwork you've just dumped on me."

"Right." I said morosely, thinking about the ER. This was the busiest hospital in the Spokane metropolitan area. It's ER alone dealt with over eighty thousand patients every year. Great. When I'd come here with the stab wound to the abdomen they'd treated me right away of course. But this was not a life-threatening problem. I would not be high on their list of priorities. If I was lucky, they might get around to stitching me up before the ten-hour deadline for suturing a wound expired. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day and part of the night sitting in the waiting room among the scrotes that this hospital attracted. It was too bad I couldn't go somewhere else to get my stitches. Any of the other hospitals could…

I stopped suddenly at that thought.

"Uh, Mindy?" I said.

"Yeah?" She asked, rummaging through her desk drawer now.

"Do I HAVE to get my stitches here?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Why would you go somewhere else?" She asked.

I explained about the eighty thousand patients, and the wait, and the deadline. "I think if I went to another hospital, say Holy Family, I would get treated a lot quicker."

"Holy Family?" She asked. "That's clear out in North Spokane. How were you planning to get there?"

"My car." I said. "I can drive myself there."

"Is it a stick-shift?" She asked.

"Oh no." I lied. "Automatic, all the way."

She thought for a minute. "Comp will still cover it." She said. "But I don't know if your parents are gonna go for that. Since you're a minor we have to do whatever your parents say."

"Let me talk to them." I said.

She shrugged and spun her phone around, offering it to me. "Dial nine before the number." She said. "And let me talk to them when you're done."

I called Mom since she was the easiest to get hold of during the workday. I assured her I was all right but that I'd had a little accident at work that was going to require some stitches. After the obligatory mother interrogation as to my health and well being, I told her that, although I was located downtown in the trauma center, I wished to drive to North Spokane to get my stitches.

"Why Billy?" She asked. "What's wrong with getting them where you're at? After all, they treated you pretty good when you had, well, your little fight that time."

"Yeah Mom." I said. "But they're pretty busy here. I could end up waiting for hours."

"Okay." She said. "But why Holy Family? There are other hospitals that aren't so far away."

"Well Mom, I thought maybe it would be nice to go to, uh, well, the hospital where Nina works."

There was a long pause, almost long enough for me to think I'd been disconnected. Finally Mom said, "I think that's a fine idea Billy. Sometimes Fate works in mysterious ways."

"You ain't kidding." I told her.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said. "My supervisor wants to talk to you. I'll head over to Holy Family and hopefully I'll be home before dark."

I quickly realized why Mindy had been concerned about the layout of my transmission. I hadn't even made it to the freeway before the gauze on my hand began spouting flowers of red from the action of operating the gearshift. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the suburban hospital my hand was throbbing and the gauze was stained with my blood.

I locked up my car and, authorization form in good hand, walked up to the emergency room entrance. The automatic doors led me into the emergency waiting area which, I was gratified to see, was not even a quarter full of people. I signed in somewhat clumsily since my right hand was my good hand and was shortly called up to a little room to be triaged. The nurse listened to my story impassively, took my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate. She examined my wound and then re-wrapped it in fresh bandages. I was then sent me to the waiting room.

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a look at the magazines lying around. They were outdated even for this when. I ignored them and began to wait.

It was less than five minutes before the door that led from the emergency room to the waiting room creaked open. My heart quivered in my chest as I saw who poked their head out. It was Nina. She was dressed in a pair of surgical scrubs that hid all the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. And she looked very pretty, very Nina as I looked at her. I knew then that I'd made the right decision by coming here. I only hoped Nina would too.

She had a chart in her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and then said to the room at large, "Matthew Miller?"

Across the waiting room from me a large blonde woman holding a crying baby with a runny nose stood up. The baby, who I figured was the Matthew Miller of whom she spoke, was tugging on his right ear obsessively. Matthew's mom carried him to where Nina stood and they all three disappeared, closing the door behind them. Nina had not seen me sitting there.

Twenty minutes passed. I sat there with my hand throbbing and my brain working on overdrive, trying to figure out what I should say to her, how I should say it, and how I could keep from saying the wrong thing. I passed a thousand scenarios through my mind, laying out a thousand scripts and rejecting them all. Finally I concluded that I would just have to take things as they came. That was one of my shining abilities.

When the door opened again Nina had a fresh chart in her hand. Her mouth opened to shout out a name as her eyes locked onto the paperwork before her, her lips beginning to form together to say the first name; William. Then she stopped. Recognition filled her face. Slowly her eyes left the chart and began to examine the waiting room. It was less than a second before they locked onto me sitting there.

I offered her a smile as she studied me, as she fought to compose herself. Finally, keeping her face neutral, her voice toneless, she said, "William, if you would follow me please?"

I stood up and walked over to her. She turned her back to me and led me into the emergency room.

The ER was almost exactly as I remembered it being on my many trips here as a paramedic. There were a few additions and coats of paint that they had yet to do, but otherwise I knew its layout fairly well. I even recognized a much younger version of one of the old biddy nurses that worked in there. Despite the relative emptiness of the waiting room, the treatment area, which only contained ten beds, was full. Several elderly people were being treated for breathing or cardiac type problems. Two children were waiting to be stitched up like I was, and of course there was Matthew Miller, who seemed to have an ear infection. Nina led me to an empty room, which was actually a hospital gurney surrounded by a yellow curtain.

"If you'll have a seat here." She said, waving me to the gurney. "The nurse will be in to see you shortly."

"Thank you Nina." I told her.

She looked at me for a moment. "Why did you come here?" She asked.

"Because YOU work here." I told her. "I wanted to see you, to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say to you." She informed me. "And we won't be speaking any further. Sorry you wasted your time."

As she turned to go I said, "I'm not giving up that easily."

She gave me one more glance and then marched out of the room. She made a point of staying out of my line of sight. But, as I told her, I wasn't giving up that easily. This might be my only chance. Though it had been more than eighteen years, I had once been an ROP ER tech too and I knew well what their duties were.

A nurse came in a few minutes later, gave my wound a cursory examination, and then told me what I already knew; that I was going to need some stitches. She told me the doctor would be in as soon as he could to do that. "Anything we can get you?" She then asked, "Some water or a blanket or something."

"I'm fine for NOW." I told her.

She left the room, slipping between the flaps of the yellow curtain. I knew that she would be telling Nina, the ER tech, to set up a suture kit in my room. It was part of Nina's job and she certainly would not be able to refuse to do it.

Sure enough, Nina pushed back through the curtain less than five minutes later, carrying one of the sterile suture kits, the sort of kits I assembled all the time in central supply at the trauma center, in her hands. She kept her eyes off of me as she walked over to the stainless steel wheeled stand next to my bed and set the kit down.

"Nina." I told her as she opened the un-sterile outer seal and folded it back. "I'm miserable without you. I miss you terribly. More than I ever imagined I would. I was an asshole before but I'm trying to change, I really am."

She looked at me impassively. "Don't touch any of this stuff." She told me.

"It's sterile and if you put your hands on it you might get an infection."

She smiled. "We wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?"

"Nina," I started again. "Do you remember when you told me…"

"I have work to do Sir." She said shortly. "You won't be seeing me again." She turned and headed out the door.

I sighed. How much time did I have before the doctor came in to stitch me up? Not much I figured. I sat quietly at my bed until I saw a nurse pass by outside.

"Nurse?" I asked, making her stop in her tracks and peer questioningly in at me.

"Could I possibly have some water? I'm awfully thirsty."

"Sure." The nurse nodded. "Just a second." She disappeared again.

Sure enough, a minute or so passed and then Nina reappeared in my cubicle, this time carrying a plastic cup of water in her hands. She walked quickly over and held it out to me.

"Your water." She said.

I didn't take it. "Nina," I said. "You told me once you had feelings for me. Do you remember?"

"Do you want the water or not?" She said testily. "I have lots of work to do."

"Tracy tried to tell me that once." I said. "Remember the time she and Cindy got you high? She tried to tell me that night but I didn't listen. I should have listened. I should have told you the things I'm trying to tell you right now at that moment. But I didn't. I was an asshole, I was stupid, and I regret that with all of my heart now."

She stared at me for a moment as I recited this to her. She then set the water down on another tray and left the room again.

Was this doing any good? It seemed it wasn't. But I was committed. All I could do was keep trying.

"Nurse?" I asked the next time one passed by.

"Yes?"

"I'm kind of cold in here. Do you suppose I could have a blanket?"

"Why sure." She said, disappearing.

A minute later Nina entered the room yet again. This time she carried a blanket in her hands. Her eyes bored into me. "Your blanket." She said.

"Nina, what I'm trying to say," I said. "Was that I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Since you've had your talk with me I haven't gone a day without thinking about what I screwed up with you. I miss our talks about books, about life, about everything. I miss being with you. I didn't realize how happy I was when I was with you; how good you made me feel, until it was gone. I NEED you Nina and I want you to come back to me. I'll accept any terms you want to offer. Anything. But please, come back to me.

Be with me again? You told me that you had feelings for me once. Are they completely gone? I realize now how deep my feelings are for you."

She was now chewing on her lip as she listened, the first break in her professional, neutral face. She still held the blanket in her hands. I sensed that she was about to throw the blanket at me and flee. It was time to lay down all the cards.

"Jesus Nina." I said. "I'm sitting here talking about 'feelings', just like you did that day. Why don't we cut the shit? You were right about me and you have absolutely no reason to believe what I say based on my past behavior, but I'm going to say it anyway. " I swallowed. "I love you Nina.

I love you deeply, intimately. You're all I can think about, you're all I want in this life. I waited too long to realize it, to say it, but it's the God's truth. I love you and I want you to be with me forever. I'll do anything you want me to in order to prove this to you but I love you. I LOVE you."

She stared at me, her lip quivering now. Suddenly she shook her head almost violently. "No." She said. "This has to stop. If you have feelings for me as you say then you'll leave me alone like I asked. Just leave me alone. Stop talking to me, stop thinking about me. I need to get you out of my life and keep you out of it."

"I'll do that if you do one thing for me." I said. "Just one little thing."

"What's that?"

"Look in my eyes and tell me you don't love me. If you can truly say that you don't love me, that you don't miss me, then I'll leave you alone forever."

She sighed, tossing the blanket on the foot of my gurney and wiping a tear that was forming in her eye. "I do love you Bill." She said. "If I didn't this would be a whole lot easier. I've loved you almost since the first time we started talking together. Don't you see that that is the problem? Love like that doesn't just die. You hurt me badly. You devastated me. You showed me how blind I could be about seeing certain things because of love. You showed me how much love could hurt me and how it could keep on hurting me long after I stopped talking to you.

"Don't you understand? I'm just now getting to the point where I can go for an hour or so without thinking about you. I'm just now starting to get you out of my system. And here you are telling me everything is all right and we should just go back to the way we were. I can't do that! I will not live through that hurt anymore."

"You won't have to Nina." I told her. "You won't have to. I'm not saying we should go back to the way things were. I want more with you now. I want to be with you always, don't you see? I am not the same person I was last month. I've changed. I will never hurt you that way again."

"Bill, if there's one thing I learned through all of this," She said, really crying now. "It's that love sucks. We weren't even going together, we never even kissed each other, and you were able to hurt me. How much more could you hurt me if we did start going together? How much more, Bill?"

"A lot more." I said honestly. "But I won't. I promise you that. I won't."

"How could I believe you? After all the girls you had, after all the girls you used and then tossed over your shoulders like a beer can, how could I ever trust you not to do that with me? What's going to happen when you get tired of me? How long will that take?"

"It'll take forever Nina." I said. "I will never get tired of you and I will never treat you the way I've treated other girls. When I was doing that I was being stupid and immature. I was being self-centered. But I've learned a few things. Getting your teeth kicked in by consequences does that for you. The most important thing I learned was how much you meant to me and how stupid I'd been to not see what you and I had together, to not seize it while I had the chance.

"I want one more chance Nina. Just one more. I've given you all the promises I can and you can take them for what they're worth. I can give you all the assurances I can and you can take them the same way. But what it comes down to is your choice. If you want me to, I'll walk away from you now and never enter your life again without permission. If you ask me to do that I will, and I'll be feeling the same hurt, the same guilt, the same feelings that you've felt, that you're feeling now.

"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."

She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."

"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."

"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."

"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.

"Nina," I said.

She turned to look at me.

"Thanks for listening to me."

She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.

The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.

It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.

"You know something?" She asked me quietly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."

"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.

She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."

"Nina I told you…"

"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.

"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."

I swallowed, blushing.

"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."

"Did it?"

She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."

I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"

Chapter 8

The best of times

Are when I'm alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We'll make this a world for two

All memories of yesterday

Will last a lifetime

We'll take the best, forget the rest

And someday we'll find

These are the best of times

STYX

I don't believe I ever looked forward to a simple lunch session in the school cafeteria as much as I did that Tuesday afternoon, the day after Nina invited me to join her. I hardly slept at all that night, tossing and turning restlessly as my mind kept screaming at me: Nina is back! Nina is talking to me again! Bleary eyed I drug myself off to school and experienced a near crawl of the time continuum through first period. When the bell rang I nearly sprinted to my second class, feeling like the teenager I was charading as for perhaps the first time since returning.

I took my seat and waited nervously while other students filed in, my eyes drawn to the seat next to mine, the seat that had been so recently occupied by a silent and reproachful Nina. That would be different today, wouldn't it? She hadn't changed her mind, had she? She was talking to me again, wasn't she?

When she entered the room her face was blank, expressionless. She walked to her chair and methodically removed her book and notepaper from her backpack before stowing it in under her seat. She arranged her supplies on her desk and sat down.

"Good morning Nina." I told her nervously.

For a horrible instant I thought that she was going to simply ignore me as she had in the past. Just keep her eyes facing forward, her psyche radiating a stern signal that communication was not desired. Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to wash her hands of me after all?

Finally she looked over at me, her expression remaining blank. "Good morning." She told me.

"Are we still on for lunch?" I asked her, dreading her answer but needing to hear it all the same.

A slight smile gave me hope. "Sure." She nodded. "If you still want to."

Relief and renewed hope washed over me. I returned her smile. "More than anything." I said.

Her smile widened, warming her face and making me feel giddy. She was smiling! At me no less! In that instant I blessed that idiot Brett and his carelessness at leaving the scalpel blade up in the tray. In fact I wanted to buy him a beer for doing that.

The entrance of the instructor and the initiation of that day's lecture brought our conversation to an abrupt end. I hardly heard a word that was said.

Third period offered us little chance to talk. By the time we found our seats in the classroom it was time for class to start. I barely heard that lecture too, so intent was I on the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock as it marched its way towards lunch.

Finally, lunchtime came. We walked in silence together to the cafeteria, unsure of what to say to each other, unsure how to begin. We got our food and then found seats at an empty table. I wasn't sure what I'd expected from this reconciliation but the awkward silence we were experiencing was certainly not it. We picked at our food, neither one of us able to make the first statement, both of us secreting nervousness as we secreted perspiration when hot. What was happening here? I'd never had trouble talking to Nina before. Why couldn't I say anything now? Was it because, for the first time, we were both aware of our naked feelings for each other?

Because we'd both used the word love in conversation? Because we both knew that our relationship depended absolutely on what transpired? Were we both deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing?

I wanted to reassure her that I loved her. I wanted to promise once more that I'd never hurt her again. I wanted to hear her say she loved me, only this time not in a break-up conversation or in anger. But none of that seemed right. I'd said my piece the day before and she knew how I felt. I knew I was on probation here, an extremely rigid probation. If I said or did one wrong thing, Nina would possibly disappear from my life, moving back to the fate which was still trying to claim her.

I looked at her, at the features of her plain face that were so beautiful to me now. I knew that SOMETHING needed to be said. She looked back at me, probably thinking the same, probably wondering what was going to come out of my mouth, probably wondering if she'd made a mistake in giving me a second chance. What had brought us together in the first place? What had made us love each other before? Could that be recaptured?

"What was the book?" I finally asked, speaking softly.

She continued to stare at me for a moment, her face taking on the expression of one that doesn't believe she's heard correctly. "The book?" She asked.

I nodded. "You said you read a book you were dying to discuss. What was the book?"

Her face warmed almost inperceptively and I knew I'd said exactly the right thing.

"It was called 'The Cider House Rules'." She said.

"By John Irving." I nodded, thanking whatever gods there may be that it was a book I was familiar with. This was not entirely a coincidence. Nina and I, we'd discovered earlier in our relationship, shared the same tastes in literature.

"You've read it?"

"Yes I have." I nodded. "A very astute analysis on the issue of abortion. Very good book, one of Irving's best I think. I particularly liked how well the characterization was done."

She sat up straighter. "So did I. My favorite character was Candy. I really liked the way she…"

We discussed the book together, hitting upon our favorite parts and characters and then opinionating on what the meaning of the story was. This then led to a discussion about abortion in general. Though we were talking together as we used to it was clear to both of us that there was a strain that had never existed before. Nina was very guarded, her smiles not as broad or genuine as they'd once been. It was as if she did not want to enjoy our conversation, did not want to allow herself to get too close to me too quickly.

By the end of the lunch period it was plain what the rules were going to be.

We would be moving slow and I was going to have to regain the trust I had lost. It wasn't going to be awarded to me by default. Those were my terms, firm though unspoken, and I was going to have to accept them.

I had put considerable thought into the problem of Anita. Though I had ended my relationship with her and though my second talk with her seemed to have brought this fact home to her, I still felt a considerable amount of guilt. Things were not right with Anita. She had been pulled from her destiny because of me. And because she had been pulled from her destiny, her children had been pulled from theirs. They were growing up without a father figure in the house, something they were not meant to do. The ramifications of this could only be guessed at. Maybe there would be no change in their future. But maybe there would be a catastrophic one. Anita, for many reasons, needed to be steered back to her destiny. The responsibility for doing this was mine alone.

My talk with Tracy and the run of my own thoughts convinced me that putting Anita back on her track was not only possible but should be reasonably easy at this point in time. Fate was, for once, on my side, my ally in this endeavor. All she needed, I theorized, was a little nudge. But the more time that went by, the harder that nudge would have to be. Since I was under a doctor's orders not to return to either ROP or my normal job, I took it upon myself to fill this idle time giving that nudge. Her and her intended needed to be put together. The question was how to do it?

I knew from my long relationship with her that Anita was a real estate agent specializing in single-family houses in the North Spokane area. Though I had never been there, I knew where she worked. I also knew that Jack Valentine, her destined husband, worked at the same office. What I did not know was what Jack Valentine DID at that office and I only had the vaguest impression of what he looked like. My only memory of his features came from my previous life. I needed to gather some information.

Being free from ROP after my first lunch with Nina, I climbed into my car and drove to North Spokane, parking three blocks down from Anita's office. It was located on a major street that fed to the freeway system. The street was lined with gas stations, mini-marts, and strip malls. The office itself was located between a dentist's office and a pizza parlor. A light snow was falling as I entered the side parking lot of the complex, moving with all the caution of an infantry soldier in enemy territory.

I had purposely dressed warmly and was fully prepared to wait in the parking lot until she went out on a showing of some suburban house. I was aware that it might take several days of observation before such an event happened. After all, winter was not the prime time for real estate sales. But, to my surprise and delight, my luck was in. Anita's car was nowhere to be seen after three circuits of the parking lot.

Gambling that she would not return in the short time that I needed to be in there, I walked quickly to the door of the office and stepped inside, blessing the orgasmic warmth that rushed over me from the building's heater.

There was a waiting area with several chairs and the inevitable outdated magazines. These faced a receptionist's desk where a pretty young woman was typing with machine-gun bursts. Behind her were ten or so desks, about half of which were occupied. One of the occupants I recognized as Jack Valentine, the only male present in the room beside myself. None of the desk workers paid me any attention as I entered but the receptionist gave me a suspicious look.

"Can I help you?" She asked, her voice not nearly as friendly as it would have been had an adult walked in. She probably figured I was going to ask to use the bathroom or something.

"Yes Ma'am." I said shyly. "My Dad asked me if I would stop by here and pick up something called a…" I paused as if trying to recall information, "A listing paper?"

"You mean a listing sheet?" She corrected, becoming instantly more friendly.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's it."

"Did your Dad tell you what range he wanted that for?" She asked patiently.

"Oh," I said, shaking my head as if disgusted with myself for not remembering. "I'm sorry. Seventy-five to eighty-five thousand."

"Why sure." She said, brightening even more when she heard that. She stood up and headed over to one of the desk people.

I took a moment to admire her legs, which were truly magnificent encased in dark nylons as they were. I then cast a nervous look outside, making sure Anita hadn't pulled up and was heading in. I could only imagine what would happen if she found me in there.

It took a minute but the receptionist returned with a sheaf of copied computer print-outs upon which all of the current houses for sale in the price range I'd specified, the upper end for that time period in that city, were listed. The existence of such a document was not something the average sixteen year-old would have known about since most sixteen year-olds have not purchased a house in their past.

"Here you go young man." She told me, smiling professionally.

"Thank you." I said, taking the papers and returning the smile. "And he also asked if I could have one of your brochures too?"

She picked one up from a stack on her desk. It was a full color pamphlet that listed the real estate agents employed by that office, their mission statement, and phone numbers. She handed it to me. "One brochure." She said. "Anything else?"

"That should do it Ma'am." I told her. "Thank you."

A moment later I was out the door. Five minutes after that I was sitting in my car, letting the heater run while I looked at the paperwork I'd acquired.

According to the brochure, Jack Valentine was indeed another agent, not a supervisor or a lawyer or something else, as I'd feared. Perfect. He was one of four males in an office staffed by eighteen.

I looked at the printout next, looking mostly at the addresses of the houses for sale. Eight years as a paramedic had made me more than passingly familiar with the layout of the streets in this, or indeed any Spokane County neighborhood. There were four listings in close proximity to the office. I started up my car and drove to the first of them, my eyes looking for the right combination of details. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all four of the houses as a matter of course but the moment I saw the second one I knew it was as close to perfect as I was going to get. A small city park was directly across the street, complete with rows of bushes and thick foliage. The house itself had two large trees in the front yard, trees which would serve to cut the view from inside the house. The driveway, which I looked at most carefully, was completely unobservable from the interior of the house due to it's positioning. Truly, for what I had in mind, it could not be much better.

After dismissing the last house and firmly settling my mind on the second, I drove to the freeway, heading for downtown Spokane, my mind full of shaky confidence that my crazy scheme could be pulled off.

The hall of records was located in the Spokane County Courthouse, a dilapitated building in the unfashionable part of downtown. After battling for a parking spot, fighting my way through three clerks who wanted detailed explanations of why I, a teenager, wanted to take a look at these supposedly open public records, and then pouring through tons of paperwork in the largest filing cabinets I've ever personally seen, I was forced to admit there was something I missed terribly from my old life. The Internet. In 1999 I would have been able to pull up this information, information that took me more than two hours to retrieve in the courthouse, in less than five minutes. God bless technology, despite the Unabomber's ravings to the contrary.

I finally found what I was looking for in an obscure file marked "Real Estate Transactions--1983", a file which was not, I might add, stored with Real Estate Transactions 1900 to 1982 as you would have thought it would be.

The file was more than an inch thick. I paged forward until I found the months of October and November. I began scanning through the columns of text and legalese, looking for two names in particular: Anita Browling and Jack Valentine. I found them eventually and copied down the names that were listed with them as clients.

Satisfied with my work, I returned the file to its proper place, signed out, and went home. I hoped this was all going to work. I'd been to a lot of trouble if it didn't.

That night I gave Mike a call.

"What's up?" He asked me, pleasantly enough.

"Not much." I told him. "You still coming over to study tomorrow?"

"Fuckin' aye." He agreed. "Got a test coming up in English and I need you to go over this modifier crap with me."

"You got it." I told him. "How's ROP going?"

"Bitchin." He said. "I'm diggin the new station. The BC has been hangin out with me a lot, you know, talkin to me and all. I think he likes me. He told me they'd probably be testing for hire in August this year. Looks like I might be getting paid to work there then."

"Cool Mike." I told him. "You'd better quit smoking and start running." I advised him. "I hear that physical agility test is a bitch."

"Yeah, that's what the BC told me too." He answered. "I thought maybe I'd start jogging at night before I go to bed. That'll probably help."

"Probably." I agreed, inwardly feeling very pleased to hear his words. It sounded like Mike was growing up a little. Strange but true. "Listen," I told him. "I was wondering if maybe you could do me a little favor before you head to the fire station tomorrow."

"It'd have to be a quick favor." He told me. "I don't want to be late."

"It'll only take a minute." I explained. "Just meet me at the payphone by the office after lunch."

"What for?" He asked.

"I need to borrow your voice for something."

"How is your hand healing up?" Nina asked me the next day at lunch, her voice still careful and guarded.

"I think I'll live." I answered, holding it up for her inspection. The stitches were still quite prominent but the skin itself was starting to knit back together. It didn't actually hurt anymore but it itched like mad most of the time.

She nodded quietly. "You ought to be more careful what you do." She commented.

"I'm trying to be Nina." I told her seriously. "I'm really trying to be."

This won me a smile. Not the best I'd ever seen from her, but it was getting there.

By the end of that lunch period she'd thawed a little more. Not completely, but a little more. She laughed a little. She offered looser comments. She even slapped at my shoulder playfully once, sending thrills racing through me at her touch. I began to suspect that things between Nina and I might just work out. Maybe even sooner than I'd expected.

I left the lunchroom happier than I'd been in quite some time.

Mike met me at the payphone just as I'd asked him to. The light snow of the day before had turned into heavier snow accompanied by an icy North wind. He was shivering when I found him there.

"God damn dude." He told me, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. "I was about to leave. I'm freezing my ass off out here. What took you so long?"

"Sorry." I apologized. "I was talking to Nina and time kind of slipped away from me."

"Nina's talking to you again?" He asked, feigning disinterest.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I guess you could say we made up."

"Cool deal." He told me wisely, speaking with his voice of experience. "I think she's got the hots for you man. You play your cards right, you might even get some off her like I did with Kathy the other night. Let me tell you, that bitch knows how to suck a…" He continued for more than five minutes, graphically detailing an encounter with this girl; someone I'd never heard of.

When he finished, I said, "Well that's cool. But anyway, can you make this call for me?"

"Sure." He said. "What do you want me to say?"

I explained what I wanted to him and we went over it a few times. "And be sure to deepen your voice a little, just a little, so you sound like an adult."

"And why are we doing this again?" He asked.

"It's a long story." I told him. "But you can rest assured it's for the betterment of all mankind."

He looked at me for a moment and then laughed. "Jesus Bill, you sure know how to come up with 'em."

I handed him a dime and he picked up the phone. As he plugged the coin into the slot he took a sheet of paper from me, scanned it for a second, and then punched in the number that I'd instructed him to dial. He held on to the paper after dialing so he could refer to the names and addresses I'd printed there.

I was worried that he would over-act but, to give him credit, he performed perfectly. He listened for a few seconds and then I could see by his face that the phone had been picked up. With just the right amount of deepening to his voice, he said into the phone. "Good afternoon Mrs. Browling. My name is Bob Hartley. I was referred to you by a friend of mine who purchased a house on Sallyport Way last month; Rick Whaling?"

He paused for a second and then gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know she was buying it so far.

"Yes," He nodded. "Rick loves the house and he recommended you if I should ever find myself in need of a good real estate agent. Well, as it turns out, my wife and I have been planning to buy a house for quite some time. After five years of saving we've managed to put aside eight thousand for a down payment." A pause. "Yes, that's right. Eight thousand. Anyway, we've been kind of looking on our own and we found a house that is listed with your agency out in North Spokane." Another pause. "Well it's at…" He read from the sheet. "Twenty-one nineteen Westbrook Lane." A pause. "Yes, Westbrook Lane." He rolled his eyes upward for a moment. "Why sure, I'll hold."

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "She's going to get the file on that house." He told me. "Who is this bitch anyway?"

"Maybe I'll tell you someday." I said cryptically.

He shrugged and went back to waiting. A minute or so passed. Finally he began to listen again. "Yes, that's right." He told Anita. "My wife and I would like to take a look at that house as soon as possible. Is there any chance you could show it to us, say today about one o'clock?"

He nodded, completely into the drama he was participating in. "Very good." He said and then listened some more. "No no, we know where it's at. How about we meet you there?" He listened some more. "That's right, one o'clock. See you there. Thank you very much Mrs. Browling."

He hung up the phone and looked at me. "Whatever you're planning." He told me. "You're dialed in."

"Thanks Mike." I told him. "I owe you one. You've been a benefit to oppressed people everywhere."

"Yeah right." He said. "Well I gotta go dude. Catch you this afternoon."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Hey Mike?"

"Yeah?" He said, in the middle of turning to leave.

"You got any buds? I've been itching to get stoned."

He looked at me strangely for a second. "I got some at home." He told me. "About enough for a joint, but I don't have any on me. You want to get stoned later?"

"Yeah." I said, hiding the grin that wanted to break out on my face. Mike had pot but he wasn't bringing it to school with him! For Mike, that was an accomplishment. "After we study today. I think we deserve it."

"Cool." He said, nodding. "Well, gotta jet."

"See ya." I replied, watching him go. He really was growing up.

Finally I turned back to business. I picked up the phone and put in another dime. Consulting my list I dialed a number. It rang three times and then a male voice responded.

"North Spoke Reality. This is Jack Valentine, can I help you?"

"Why yes, Mr. Valentine." I said, deepening my own voice. "You certainly can. You see, a friend of mine, Mark Vincent, recently purchased a house on…"

By twelve-thirty I was sequestered in the row of bushes in the park across the street from 2119 Westbrook Lane. Despite my overabundance of clothing I was shivering as the wind cut through my down jacket and snowflakes stuck to my cap. I was reasonably sure that I could not be spotted by anyone from the house even if they WERE looking for me, which they wouldn't be. The snow that was rapidly accumulating on me would do nothing but help with my camoflaugh.

I'd enticed the two real estate agents to this house by offering them dream clients, making my fictional customers almost too good to be true. It was something no agent would ever turn down; people that had apparently already decided upon a house and had large down payments in reserve in order to help finance it. They would show up, visions of large, quick commissions dancing in their heads. I only hoped that one of my suppositions was correct. If I remembered my real estate agents correctly, they always parked in the driveway if they could when meeting someone at the house. This allowed the customer to get the whole view of the house as they stepped out of their vehicle. The driveway was big enough for both Anita and Jack's cars to fit.

It would certainly make things easier and less dangerous to me if they did NOT park in front of the house. If I was wrong, and they did, there were at least the trees to give partial cover.

As it turned out my supposition was a correct one. Anita arrived first at twelve-fifty, fully ten minutes early. She pulled her car into the empty driveway, bringing it to a halt. Before she could even step out of her vehicle Jack pulled in, driving a late model (for that when) Buick. He parked it right next to hers.

They got out of their vehicles and looked at each other in surprise for a moment, holding a quick conversation. I couldn't hear them but I could guess what they were saying. What are you doing here? A client for this house? Oh really? One o'clock? What a coincidence. What's your client's name? Really? Well, I'll try not to step on you. Pretty weird, huh?

They spoke to each other as acquaintances, with no hostility that I could detect. I saw them shake their heads a few times as if wondering at the quirks of fate which brought both of them here at exactly the same time. Finally a comment was passed that had to have amounted to, 'why are we standing out here in the snow?'. They both headed for the front door.

Anita knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell a few times. In my planning stage of this I'd worried obsessively about whether or not the owners of the house would be home before I finally figured out that it really didn't matter. Ideally, they would be gone but if they weren't, the plan would still work. As it turned out, they were gone. Giving up on the doorbell, Anita walked over to the brass lockbox that was attached to the water pipe. She dialed in a combination and opened the box, pulling out a key. With the key, she opened the door. A moment later the both of them stepped inside, closing the door behind them.

My first thoughts that had led to this plan had told me that simply getting Anita and Jack into a house together for twenty to thirty minutes would be enough to push them together. Further reflection upon this, and the consideration that the occupants would be home, therefore breaking the mood, led me to modify that plan somewhat. Just putting them together might not be enough. I had to emmerse them into a situation together. Even that, I reluctantly admitted, might not be enough, but it was better than just throwing them together. An extension to the plan developed. An extension that now needed to be put into effect.

I acted quickly, extricating myself from the bushes and moving west along the perimeter of the park until I was out of view of the house. I crossed the street and began walking along the sidewalk, strolling casually towards the house, doing my best impression of a neighborhood kid out for a walk in the snow. When I reached the driveway, where the two cars were parked, I took a good look around me, searching for any neighbors that happened to be out and paying attention. There were none. It was time.

I dashed between the two cars, both of which were ticking as their engines cooled down, quickly putting myself between the garage door and the front of Anita's Chrysler. A quick look assured me that from here I was unobservable from any angle. I had changed the oil in Anita's car more than ten times, usually as a prelude to sexual activity, and I knew the engine compartment of it well. I knew, for instance, that you did not need to be inside the car in order to open the hood. My hand found the hood release, which was warm, and slowly pulled it until I felt a click.

Carefully, taking another quick glance for unwanted observers, I lifted it, wincing at the squeaking noise it made. When it was about a foot above the engine compartment I peered inside. Though, as I've mentioned before, I am not a mechanical genius, my thirty-four years on two different Earth's had taught me enough to know that an internal combustion engine could be quickly disabled by removing one particular piece of it. I reached in and grasped the coil wire, which led to the distributor cap. Without this wire, electricity could not get to the spark plugs and the cylinders could not fire. I gave a sharp yank and the wire was in my hand. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket and then eased the hood back down, giving it a firm push to latch it and wincing again at the sharp noise that resulted.

One more quick glance around for danger and I dashed back to the sidewalk. I headed back the way I came, crossed the street once again, and moved back into the park. A few minutes after that I was back in the bushes, observing the house. I began to wait.

It was twelve forty-five before they both emerged from the house. In the ensuing fifty minutes I'd seen both of them peer out multiple times, looking for their clients pulling up out front, clients that were figments of my imagination. When they left the house, carefully locking it up and putting the key back in the lock box, they were talking to each other and shrugging.

I wasn't close enough to read their expressions so I could not tell how cozy they'd gotten during the waiting period.

They conversed a moment more and then headed for their respective automobiles. Jack jumped in his first and fired up the engine before Anita was even settled. I had a moment's horror when it looked like he was going to back out and drive away before Anita even had a chance to crank her now-worthless engine. But thankfully, his mother had taught him some manners and he stood by, waiting for her to leave.

From across the street I could hear the grinding of her engine turning over without catching. She would grind it for about ten seconds, let it rest for five, and then grind it again. This went on for about four cycles before the abrupt cut-off of exhaust vapor from Jack's tailpipe signaled that he'd shut down his engine.

He stepped out and walked over to her door. She rolled down the window and a brief conversation ensued. She then opened her door and stepped out, allowing him to sit down in her seat. He cranked the engine a few times himself, as if the mere presence of A MAN behind the key would make it fire up. Finally, when it didn't, he walked around to the front and popped the hood.

The hood obstructed my view of the two of them while they peered inside but it was readily apparent that Jack knew his way around an engine compartment.

It wasn't sixty seconds before he stepped out from behind it, looking nervously around the street, peering up and down it, looking for the culprit that had taken Anita's coil wire. He spoke to her for a moment, pointed into the hood compartment, and then she too began to look around.

They quickly gave up looking for the culprit and turned their attention to looking under and around the vehicle, as if the coil wire could have just fallen off the distributor. When they didn't find it on the ground they searched the hood compartment. When they didn't find it there they began to converse again, this time with much shaking of heads and puzzled glances up and down the street. The conversation continued for a few moments and then Anita smiled at him, obviously thanking him. They walked to his car and he opened the passenger door for her (way to go Jack, I thought happily). She sat down and he walked across to the driver's side. A moment later his car started and they drove off.

Though I didn't know Jack at all, I know what I would have done in such a circumstance. I would have driven her to the nearest auto parts store and bought her a new coil wire, taking it back to the car and making a big show of installing it for her, making it look, of course, more difficult a job than it really was. I would then dramatically sit behind the wheel and fire up the engine, grinning sheepishly at the accomplishment of fixing the car for her. Hell Ma'am, it weren't no trouble at all. Of course she would be grateful to her knight in shining armor. Perhaps they would decide to go to dinner?

As they disappeared from my sight I extricated myself from the bushes and stretched, popping my stiff joints. I shook the accumulation of snow from my clothing and then headed for my car.

"The rest is up to you Jack." I mumbled to myself, smiling as I walked. "Take advantage of Fate."

Overnight the snowstorm we'd been experiencing developed into a full-scale blizzard. The wind tore through the Eastern Washington area, driving the snow before it. When I awoke Thursday morning it was still going strong. A look out my window, at the icy, covered streets, at the snowdrifts more than eight feet high in some places, told me that I would not be going to school that day.

My confirmation of this came when I went downstairs to breakfast and found Dad still in his pajamas and robe, his face unshaven. As a teacher Dad was probably even happier than the students were when they closed school for the day. After all, he still got paid for it. Mom too was lounging around in her pajamas, her work had apparently decided to make it a holiday as well. I was not as happy. That meant there would be no lunch with Nina that day.

"There's lots of good news today." Dad told me as I sat down at the table.

"How's that?" I asked him, digging into the bacon and eggs Mom had prepared in honor of the non-work day.

"Looks like you were right on the mark about the latex thing." He said, sliding a section of the newspaper over to me. "Take a look at this."

I picked up the section and looked where he was pointing.

FEAR OF AIDS LEADS TO NATIONWIDE GLOVE SHORTAGE read the headline. It was an Associated Press story, which meant that it had been printed in newspapers all over the country. The text of the story told of hospitals, fire departments, and ambulance companies all ordering large amounts of latex gloves in response to fear of disease and a federal OSHA mandate that all health care providers wear gloves on every patient contact. Every patient contact! This was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

"Out of sight." I said, grinning.

"So this is going to make you some money on those stocks, right?" Dad asked.

"This is going to be like hitting the lottery." I told him happily. "Actually like hitting it twice."

"Twice?" He enquired, putting his paper down.

I nodded. "There's two aspects of stock ownership in a case like this." I explained. "First of all there's profit. Selling all of those gloves is making a lot of money for the companies I've invested in. That allows me dividends because as a partial owner of the company, I'm entitled to a cut of the profits. The second aspect is the price of the stock itself. Now it's gone steadily upward since I first invested in it but not dramatically by any means. The increase merely reflects those wise investors who have taken the time to research the company and note the recent increase in profits. But now that this story has appeared in the paper, all that will change. Everybody and their mother will know that latex is going to go through the roof and they will all rush to buy stock in it. That is going to drive the price of the stocks through the roof, therefore making my holdings much more valuable."

Dad had long since learned not to question my wisdom on the workings of the stock market. After all he saw me researching it and studying it every day.

"So how much are we talking about here?" He asked.

"It would not surprise me," I said, "If the value of my stock doubled by the end of the year and tripled by the end of the following quarter. Plus I stand to receive a healthy dividend check."

"Amazing." He whispered. "And I thought you were throwing your money away."

"This also means that I need to start putting my income somewhere else, to find another trend that's about to take off."

He looked confused. "Why is that? Shouldn't you continue to invest in latex?"

"No." I told him. "As the stock goes up, putting further money in it will be futile. Remember that I now have to pay the inflated price for more of the stock. What I need to do is keep my assets in latex right where they are and let them go up. But my future income needs to be put into other places; places that are cheap now but that are likely to rise in the future.

That's what investing in the market is all about."

"So what are you going to do now?" He asked.

I smiled. "I've been planning this for quite a while now." I told him. "The money from the latex investment will probably peak about the time I'm ready for college. It should be enough to get me enrolled and carry me through the first year. From now on my paychecks will be invested in something with slower, but steady medium-term growth. Something that will rise considerably over the next few years instead of months. I'll continue to dump money into those until they rise to a point where they've reached their peak of growth. It'll build me up capital for the big move I'm planning to make in a few years."

He shook his head. "What do you mean? What are you going to invest in now?

And what big move are you talking about?"

"Right now I'm going to begin investing in the computer industry. Apple, IBM, and a chipmaker called Intel. Over the next few years I believe that computers are going to start appearing everywhere and they're all going to be made by a few companies."

Dad looked at me in amazement. "You think those three are going to make all of these computers and the chips? What about Atari and Commodore?"

"I think they'll be outmarketed." I said. "Just a prediction you understand, but they probably won't be able to hold their own when the computer revolution swings into full gear."

"I see." He nodded, looking at me strangely. "And this big move you're planning to make?"

"It's kind of complicated." I told him. "I'll know it when I see it though.

You see, every computer has to have something called an operating system; software that tells it what to do."

"Okay." He said, semi-following me so far.

"The company that gets in on that market will make billions, trillions even.

They'll quickly be able to dominate the software market if they make their move at the right time and in the right way." I grinned. "I imagine that there's someone out there who sees this as well as I do. I imagine that someone has probably got a company that makes software going right now, as we speak. And I imagine that someone is just waiting for the time to be right to introduce an operating system that will set the standard for all computers and make it damn near impossible to operate one without it."

"Bill, how do you know so much about this?" Dad asked me slowly.

I shrugged. "I read a lot Dad. And I'm blessed with above average reasoning ability."

He shook his head a little. "Right." He said. He considered for a few more minutes. "You know," He finally said. "I have some money from each paycheck that is just going into the credit union savings account."

I looked up at him. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Maybe I should put some of that in the stock market."

"Maybe you should." I told him.

By late afternoon the worst of the blizzard was past, leaving only flurries drifting through the air. The snowplows caught up with their work, clearing the roads of the city to something approaching passable. About six o'clock, after being cooped up in the house all day I was getting restless. I needed to get out and do something. An idea occurred to me. An idea that I couldn't get out of my head once it was in there.

Maybe Nina would like to go out and catch a movie with me.

It was probably too early in our reconciliation for this. It might seem I was being too forceful, pushing too hard. I might lose some of the ground that I'd gained. I probably shouldn't chance it, I finally decided.

And so thinking I went to the living room and dug out the newspaper, flipping through to the movie section. Maybe I would just go by myself. Yes, that's what I would do. I frowned as I read through what was currently playing. One of the problems of traveling back in time was that you inevitably had seen all of the movies before. I had another fifteen years to wait before something new, from my perspective, came out. I sighed.

I put the newspaper down and then picked it up again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ASK her. She wouldn't abandon me for that would she? But then again…

With a start I realized that I was acting like what I was; a teenager trying to work up the courage to ask a girl out on a date. I'd asked girls out on date a thousand times in my life. Chastising myself for being immature, I picked up the phone.

Thought I hadn't called it in a while, I knew Nina's number from memory. The phone rang more than eight times and I was about to hang up in frustration when it was finally picked up.

"Hello?" It was Nina. The very sound of her voice thrilled me inside.

"Hi Nina." I said. "It's Bill."

There was a very long pause. "Oh, hi." She said finally, in a voice that sounded decidedly weird.

"Nina?" I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Uh, sure." She told me. "Listen, can I call you back in a few minutes? I'm eating dinner right now."

"Sure." I said. "But…"

"Thanks." She said quickly and the phone clicked in my ear.

Slowly I put the receiver back in its cradle. What was that all about? Why had she sounded so weird?

With a worried mind I went back to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator.

It was another twenty minutes before the phone rang. My dad picked it up and yelled for me. I told him I'd take it in the den and locked myself in there.

"Hi Bill." Said Nina, her voice sounding much more normal now.

"Hi." I answered, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No." She said. "Why would you ask that?"

"You just sounded kind of funny on the phone."

"Oh." She said, and then, "Well, the fact of the matter is that it's probably not a good idea to call me here just now. I haven't told my parents that you and I are, uh, talking again."

"I don't understand." I told her. "Your parents liked me before. Just because we had a… well a fight and stopped seeing each other for a while, why shouldn't they like me? All teenagers do that from time to time."

"It's a little more complicated than that." She replied. "I don't really want to go into it right now. But please, don't call me at home just yet?"

"Okay." I answered, very troubled by this.

"So what did you want?" She asked brightly.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to think quickly. The don't-call-here speech had just taken the wind out of my sails, making asking her out seem a bad idea after all.

"Bill?" She asked. "Are you there?"

"Yes." I said, throwing caution to the wind. After all, I had to say SOMETHING. "I was wondering if maybe you'd, uh, well, like to go out to a movie with me tonight?"

"A movie?" She asked, her voice unreadable.

"Yes." I confirmed. "If you're not doing anything else, that is."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" She asked next, seemingly puzzled.

"Well, yes. I am."

She was silent as she digested my request. Finally she said, "It's a bad idea to do this so soon Bill."

I cringed, feeling stupid for asking, feeling ashamed of myself for pushing things. "Oh." I said. "Well maybe some…"

"But what the hell?" She interrupted cheerily. "I could stand to see a good movie tonight."

I was so overcome by the rejection that it took me a moment to process that I hadn't been rejected after all. "Really?" I finally said.

"Really." She told me and I could hear that she was smiling, I could see it.

"What did you want to see?"

"Anything you want Nina." I answered happily. "Anything at all."

"I'll borrow Mom's car and be over in a little bit." She said.

We hung up our phones and I sat there for a moment, basking in the glow of success. She was going to go out with me. On a date no less. Things really were looking up.

Finally I stood up and headed upstairs to take a shower and get dressed.

The movie we decided on was one that I really had no desire to see, Flashdance. But I didn't let this bother me. I would have gone to see a four-hour documentary on the history of the ice cube tray with her if that was what she'd wanted. We took my car, leaving her Mom's parked at the curb in front of my house.

We talked of inconsequential things on the way; the storm we'd experienced, our hopes for college scholarships, how our ROP jobs were going. It was the first time since we'd come back together that there was no strain in the conversation. Our words flowed easily out of our mouths, the friendship that we'd developed in the past finally manifesting itself once more. Nina giggled frequently as we chatted, even blushing a time or two at my remarks.

She seemed like she was regaining her old personality. It made me warm inside to look at her, to see her smile, to hear her laugh.

We took seats near the back of the nearly empty theater, setting down our popcorn and stowing our drinks. We reclined and munched and drank and waited for the movie to start. We talked of some of the things we'd done in the past. Going to the lake in the summer, studying during the school year, going skiing in the winter. The remember game. Just as the lights started to dim down in preparation for the ten minutes of previews that proceeded every movie, I turned to her.

"I'm glad you came tonight." I told her. "And I'm glad you gave me a second chance."

Her blue eyes stared at mine, her face forming a serious smile. "Me too." She told me.

About twenty minutes into the movie, while the dancers were dancing and the music was pounding from the Dolby system, I reached slowly out with my left hand, putting the palm over the back of Nina's hand. She looked at me for the briefest second, hesitation marring her face, and then she turned her hand over, grasping mine, hesitation turning to contentment. Her hand was soft and dainty, fragile in mine. After all I'd experienced since my return, after all the girls and women's bodies I'd enjoyed in every possible way, you wouldn't have thought I'd get excited over the simple holding of a hand in a movie theater. You wouldn't think so, but it was thrilling me to the core.

Later on she edged slightly closer to me, squeezing my hand a little. I was fumbling and unsure of myself, of how far to take this, but in the end I couldn't resist. I unclasped my hand from hers and put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened momentarily, probably in nervousness as opposed to hostility, and then she relaxed, allowing me to pull her against me. She gazed up at me dreamily for a second.

"I really love being with you Nina." I whispered to her.

"Thank you." She whispered back, nestling up against me, resting her head on my shoulder, making me happier than I'd ever been with any other person.

When the movie was over we walked hand in hand out of the theater into the frigid night. The sky had cleared of clouds, allowing the stars to shine in all their glory. The half moon drifted directly above us. Our breath puffed out before us and our cheeks turned red on contact with the air.

"Do you want to take a walk before we go back?" I asked her.

"Bill," She giggled. "It's freezing out here."

"Yep." I agreed. "So what do you say?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The theater was located in the downtown mall, near the river. We strolled off the grounds and towards the scenic bridge and the levee. Soon we were staring down at the running water, watching the moonlight shimmer off of it.

"Did you like the movie?" She asked me, nestling against me as we stood there, allowing me to feel her weight pushing at me through her heavy down jacket. I put my arm around her once again, drawing her closer. She came willingly.

Though I'd promised myself that I would always be honest with Nina, there were times when that promise could be broken. This was one of those times. "Oh yes." I told her. "It was a very good movie. That was a good choice."

She looked up at me, staring in my eyes. "Really?"

"Really." I assured her.

"I thought it sucked rocks." She informed me huffily. "We should've gone with 'All the Right Stuff'."

My jaw dropped for a second as I heard this and then I burst out laughing.

"What?" Nina asked, looking at me with amusement.

"I thought it sucked too." I told her. "I was just being polite because you picked it."

"I didn't pick it!" She said, laughing with me. "You did!"

"Only because I thought that was what you wanted to see."

"Why would you think I wanted to see that crap?" She asked, shaking her head in exasperation.

"Because every woman wants to see that crap." I told her. "It's a movie made for women."

She turned towards me, not drawing her body away, but pushing it against mine. We were zipper to zipper with our down jackets, eye to eye. She let her hands slide down until they were nestled in the large pockets on my jacket. "I'm not most women Bill." She said softly, pulling me tighter. "You should know that by now."

"I guess I should." I answered, with a voice that was no longer steady.

Our eyes were only inches apart, our faces close enough so that I could feel her breath against me. The vapor from our exhalations combined, swirling together before drifting off into the night. I put my arms around her, feeling the curves of her body somewhere beneath all of the fabric and duck feathers she was adorned with. Our legs were pushing together. My body was tingling with anticipation and nervous desire. I was almost giddy with it.

Finally I leaned forward, moving slowly but deliberately, and touched my lips to hers. She did not resist, in fact she leaned into me, meeting me halfway. Her lips were cold and dry from the icy wind, but never had a pair felt so good against mine, never had my body reacted as it was reacting to hers. We slid our lips together softly, the kiss lasting less than ten seconds before we broke apart. But worlds suddenly changed in that ten seconds.

We continued to stare at each other for a long time after our lips parted.

"That was nice." Nina finally said, barely above a whisper.

"Very nice." I agreed.

"We've crossed a line." She told me. "I told myself that going out with you was a bad idea. That if I did, I would fall right back in love with you the way I was before. You haven't proved yourself to me yet Bill. You haven't proved that you're any different. You could be just putting on an act. After all, you must have a lot of charm to do the things you've done."

"Nina, I…"

"Shhh." She hushed. "Let me finish."

"Okay." I said.

"In the end I simply couldn't stay away from you. Except for a few rumors from school, I have no proof that you're any different. I have no proof that you've given up your old ways. Your shining ability among the girls at school was your discretion. Your downfall was that it was they who were indiscreet.

"And I was right Bill."

"Right?" I asked.

"I fell right back in love with you. When you held my hand in the theater I almost melted. When you put your arm around me I did. And when you kissed me just now." He she took a deep breath, blowing a large plume of vapor into the night. "I love you Bill. I was starting to get over you but now I'm head over heels again. You tell me you're different now, that you've changed. I certainly hope so Bill. I certainly hope I'm not being played for a fool."

"You're not Nina." I answered her. "I swear you're not. I love you. I really do."

"You hold my heart in your hand now Bill."

I nodded. "Yes I do. And I promise you won't regret giving it to me."

"I'll hold you to that." She said, leaning forward for another kiss.

Al Steiner--July 16, 1999 Chapter 9 ->

Chapter 9

Tender is the night

When you hold your baby tight

Tender is the moment

Tender is the night

JACKSON BROWNE

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, to 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 Datsun's heater tackle the task of warming up the interior of the car. 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 told her.

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 answered.

"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 thirty-eight when she had me, my Dad was forty. 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 nodded. "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 that 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 told her, 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 that 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 told me. "And it's good to see snow on the ground. I'm so sick of rain all the goddam 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 told her. "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." I said. "Actually I am in a very good mood."

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

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

"Stitches." She nodded. "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?" She asked.

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." I replied.

"Do you think it worked?" She asked.

"Time will tell." I shrugged. "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 motherfucking 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 told me. "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?" She asked.

"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." Tracy 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 that was 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 nodded. "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."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob that 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 that 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 that we'd 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 the Raley's 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 that often led to arguments.

We had trouble talking together at times. She had no understanding for the bizarre hours that 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 that 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 that 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, that 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 that 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.

It was plain that she wished more also. I could feel desire radiating off of her in waves when we hugged or kissed each other. I could see the unmistakable shine in her eyes, feel the trembling of her body. But I could also feel her fear. Fear of emotions and feelings that she had never felt before, perhaps had never even suspected before.

Our slow pace meant that when we DID progress, the weight that each new act carried was doubled or even tripled when it was allowed to take place. That made each one special and allowed it to be burned forever into my memory as well as hers.

On Christmas Eve she came over in the early afternoon, wheeling her Mom's car to the curb in front of the house. Tracy was out visiting some old friends and my parents were out doing some last minute shopping (something that was somewhat of a tradition for my parents). Nina carried a small, wrapped package into the house with her.

"I figured that since we won't get to see each other tomorrow," She told me as we walked to the couch and sat down. "That I should give you this today."

I took the package from her. "You didn't have to get me anything." I told her.

"Now what kind of girlfriend would I be," She asked, "If I didn't buy you a Christmas present?"

I looked up at her, seeing that she was blushing strongly. That was the first time that she'd referred to herself in such a manner.

"Thank you." I said gently. "Can I open it?"

"What ELSE would you do with it?" She wanted to know.

I grinned. "My we're getting mouthy." I said, sliding my finger under the seam of the neatly wrapped package.

"Who do you think I learned it from?" She shot back.

I opened the package. It was a new leather wallet with my initials engraved upon it. A gift that had probably cost her thirty dollars at least; a small fortune for a teenager in that time period.

"Nina, you can't afford this." I admonished, unfolding it, inhaling the scent of fresh leather.

"I know." She said conspiratorially. "That's why I shoplifted it."

I laughed, reflecting again that there had once been a Nina completely incapable of telling a joke. "Thank you." I told her, "It's very nice, much nicer than the Velcro job I have now." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the corner of the mouth.

"Mmmm." She said, her eyes sparkling. "Maybe I'll go shoplift some more if this is what I get."

"Maybe you should." I answered, kissing her more firmly on the lips.

She kissed me back enthusiastically at first and then her circuit breaker kicked in. She pulled away, flushed. A brief moment of awkward silence ensued.

"Wait here." I finally told her.

I went upstairs to my room and opened my closet door. I rummaged around for a moment until I retrieved what I was after. When I returned, I handed a wrapped package to her.

"For me?" She asked with mock innocence.

"For you." I confirmed.

She took the package, which was the size of a paperback book, and hefted it a few times, testing the weight.

"Kind of light." She remarked, jokingly.

"But it's straight from the heart." I assured her.

She began to tear into the clumsy wrap job (wrapping presents is something I've never been able to do well, in either life), revealing the plain white box beneath. When the wrapping paper was a balled up mess on the coffee table she began working on the tape that I'd placed heavily over the lid. When, after considerable effort, the lid came loose, she began pawing through the tissue paper in the box.

At last she pulled a small object encased in clear plastic from the pile. It was a glass cylinder, slightly larger in diameter than a quarter, with metal threads on the bottom. She held it up to her eyes.

"It's…" She started doubtfully, her face scrunching in confusion. "It's…," A pause as she gathered her thoughts. "What is it Bill?"

"It's a forty amp fuse." I said proudly.

"A forty amp fuse?"

"Right." I told her, nodding enthusiastically. "With that baby in your household fuse box, you'll damn near have to burn down the house before it blows. You can hook up Christmas lights, a toaster, and a dryer all to the same circuit if you want."

She looked at me for a moment and then back at the fuse. "A forty amp fuse." She said slowly. "Well it's… uh…"

I was going to keep up the charade a little bit longer but I couldn't contain myself. I burst out laughing. Nina looked at me and finally realized I was putting one over on her.

"You asshole." She giggled, throwing the fuse at me. It bounced off my shoulder and clattered to the coffee table.

"I'm sorry." I said, still chuckling. "But you should have seen your face."

"How would you like it if I gave you a box of tampons?" She asked. "I could tell you that 'these babies will keep your flow contained for damn near six hours in an emergency'."

I looked up at her in stunned disbelief for a moment. That was, without a doubt, the raunchiest joke I'd ever heard her crack. My laughter bubbled up again, spewing from my mouth. She joined me, slapping playfully at my arm once. Finally I took her in my arms and gave her another kiss. The seriousness of the kiss cut our laughter off like a valve.

When we broke apart once again, both of us tingling, I reached into the pocket of my sweater and pulled out another clumsily wrapped package, this one only three inches square. This one was the REAL gift. As I'd predicted, my stocks had risen considerably after the news article about the glove shortage. They'd inflated enough for me to cash out a few and do some reckless spending.

"Here." I said, handing it to her. "This one might be a little more pleasing."

She took it, continuing to eye me for a moment. Finally she began to pull the wrapping paper off. The package beneath was a velvet covered, hinged box from a jewelry store. She lifted the lid and stared at what was inside.

"Oh Bill." She said softly. "It's beautiful."

Inside the box was a gold pendant in the shape of a heart. Its surface was studded with small diamonds. A gold chain was attached to it and stowed under the display partition in the box.

"I'm glad you like it." I told her seriously.

"Bill, this looks very expensive." She said, fingering it lightly.

"It wasn't too bad." I said dismissively. "I was glad to get it for you. Do you know why?"

"Why?" She asked.

"Because I love you Nina." I said.

She looked at me, her face melting, a tear forming in her eye. "I love you too Bill." She said softly. "More than anything."

We continued to stare at each other for a moment, neither of us sure what to do, both of us feeling the tingling of electricity that was building between us. I finally broke the spell by asking, "Why don't you put it on? See how it looks."

"Sure." She said, taking her eyes from me and concentrating on the gift in the box.

She extricated the necklace and pendant, gave them a quick look, and then handed them to me. "Can you put it on me?" She asked.

I took it from her and undid the clasp. She leaned forward towards me, grabbing her hair and holding it away from her neck. Our faces were less than six inches apart. Taking the ends of the chain in each of my hands I put my arms around her neck, resting my forearms on her shoulders. She gazed up at me lovingly as my trembling hands attempted to put the little clasp into the little loop. It was not as easy as it looked.

"Take your time." Nina said breathlessly, pushing herself closer to me.

I nodded, finally getting the two ends to fit together.

"There." I said, trying to pull away. But she dropped her hands from her hair and put them around my back, holding me firmly to her, refusing to let go.

"I'll look later." She said, pulling me against her.

Our lips met in a soft kiss and her arms squeezed me tight, allowing me to feel her chest pushing against mine. Instead of touching her lips to mine and then withdrawing as she usually did, she kept them there, pressing them, letting them taste me. For the first time since our first embrace by the river I felt the tip of her tongue reach out hesitantly, touching the underside of my upper lip. Her tongue was warm and soft, wet with her saliva as it touched briefly and pulled back into her mouth.

Emboldened by her first tentative move, she did it again, letting her tongue slide completely between my lips. I touched the tip of it with my own and our taste buds connected. At the touch she trembled in my arms, compelling me to pull her tighter. She pulled her tongue back again and then slid it in a little deeper, seeking and meeting mine, allowing them to swirl together for an instant. I gave her tongue a little suck with my mouth and she hummed against me, driving it further into my mouth.

We broke apart for a second and looked into each other's eyes. I saw wanting in hers, excitement, the excitement of new discovery.

"I always thought it would be gross." She said softly, her breath tickling the wetness of my lips.

"Gross?" I asked, leaning in and kissing her lightly, dabbing at her lip with my tongue, before withdrawing.

"Yes." She nodded. "French kissing. I always thought it would be gross. Touching someone else's tongue with yours. But it's not."

"I guess it depends on who the someone is." I said.

She leaned forward again. "Maybe that's it."

We resumed our kiss, letting our tongues glide together, holding each other tightly. Her hands came up to the back of my neck and began caressing me there, lightly rubbing with the fingertips, lightly scratching with the fingernails. The sensation sent chills down my spine and I felt myself becoming erect with frightening speed. I let my own hands drop down to her lower back, my fingers feeling the muscle and skin, the softness that existed beneath the material of her sweater.

We continued to do this for more than ten minutes, our tongues probing each other's mouths, our hands caressing. Nina seemed to relish it, to draw strength from it. She quickly learned what I liked and what I did not like and adapted her technique. She learned not to cram her tongue down my throat but to teasingly swirl the tip, gradually increasing the depth. I sucked gently on her lips for a moment, making them swell and then she did the same to mine.

My dick, which had been releived by nothing but my own hand since my afternoon with Cindy and Maggie, was straining in my jeans, begging to be released. It was accustomed to playing a more active role in the festivities once things reached this point. It ached to be ground into her body, to have her hand upon it. But this was not Cindy or Maggie, this was not Debbie or Steph or Anita or any of the other girls I'd bedded. This was Nina, who I loved and who I was not going to push anything upon. My pants would be kept firmly buttoned, at least until after she'd left.

When we finally broke apart a few minutes later I could feel the dull ache of blue balls in my groin. Nina looked up at me, her face still flushed, her eyes shining.

"Wow." She commented, straightening herself on the couch.

I nodded, trying to adjust myself in my pants by shifting my body back and forth. It was a poor job at best.

"So that was 'making out', right?" She asked me.

I chuckled. "Yes." I told her. "That was making out."

"Mmmm." She said clinically. "I can see why people like to do it."

"Yes." I nodded. "It is rather enjoyable, isn't it?"

"And now that we're, uh, together, we can do that whenever we want to?"

"We should probably wait until we're alone," I said. "But yes. Anytime."

She smiled. "Having a boyfriend is pretty cool." She said.

Nina left early the next morning to visit some relatives in Idaho with her parents. I would not see her for the next three days. When she returned we were only able to get together for a few hours on two different days. On one of those days we found the time and the privacy to 'make out' for a while but it did not match the passion of that first time. Not that it was disappointing you understand.

We made plans to get together on New Year's Eve, to see in the beginning of 1984 together. Tracy would be going to a party with some friends (and borrowing my car to do it so she wouldn't risk riding with a drunk driver) and my parents would be at a New Year's Eve party of their own. I had a twelve pack of beer that Tracy had scored for me and a joint of some good greenbud that Mike had scored for me. We planned to sit and watch all of the stupid shows that were on, smoke grass, drink beer, and maybe make out a little. Though it may sound unimaginably dull to some, I was looking forward to it greatly.

About six o'clock that evening, as Tracy and my parents were frantically scrambling around the house trying to get ready to go, Nina called me.

"Bill," She told me sadly, getting right to the point. "I can't come over tonight."

"You can't?" I asked, disappointed, feeling almost betrayed in fact.

"I'm sorry." She said. "My parents told me I couldn't go out tonight. They were very firm about it too." She sighed. "I don't know what's gotten into them. They've never treated me like this before. Never!"

I was silent for a moment. I knew what was happening and I had known that it was coming eventually. As I said before, you simply cannot hide your activities from those that you lived with. Especially not when you had been in the habit of staying home all of the time and then you suddenly developed the urge to go out for hours at a time every day. I'd tried to bring this up to her on a few occasions but her reaction each time quickly taught me that it was a taboo subject. I knew I was simply going to have to wait until the subject came to a head. Well now it seemed as if that had happened.

"Nina." I told her. "Did your parents ask you where you wanted to go tonight before they said no?"

"Yes." She told me.

"And what did you tell them?"

"That some friends from school were having a party that I wanted to go to. I told them I wouldn't drink and everything and they still said no. No matter how much I…"

"Nina." I interrupted.

"What?"

"They know about us." I told her.

There was silence on the line for a moment. Finally, "No Bill, they can't. How could they know? I never tell them where I'm REALLY going when I come over to your house."

"Do you think your parents are stupid Nina?" I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle, but wanting to get this point across.

"No!" She said sharply, "But I don't see how…"

"Think about it." I told her. "You're a shy girl all of your life until you meet me. Suddenly you start going out and doing thing all of the time. They like me at first so they allow it. But then we have a falling out because of, well, you know. Anyway, you stop seeing me and go back to staying in the house all of the time. They tell you that you are never to see me again. For a while you don't. And then all of a sudden you start having things to do once more. You want to borrow their car all the time so you can go visit someone. No matter what you are telling them when you come over here, I doubt if they bought it more than twice. They have common sense Nina. They know about us."

"They DO NOT!" She yelled angrily. "They're just afraid of me being out on a night when everyone's drinking. I was careful Bill. They don't know about us and they won't find out!"

"Nina…"

"I'm sorry I can't come over." She said shortly. "If you'd like me too, I'll try and come over tomorrow."

"Of course I do Nina," I said. "But you're going to have to face…"

"There's nothing to face!" She insisted. "Do you want me to come over tomorrow or not?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Yes Nina," I said, more gently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll give you a call." She said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear. Before I'd even had a chance to tell her I loved her.

And so it came to pass that I spent New Year's Eve alone in my parent's house. The beer did not get drank, the pot did not get smoked. I went to bed around ten o'clock. I was too miserable to even masturbate.

When I woke up the next morning I was not surprised to find my parent's car missing from the garage. It was a New Year's eve tradition with them. They would get totally trashed at the school faculty party and take a cab home. The next morning they would not get out of bed until at least noon, at which point they would spend the rest of the afternoon bitching about their hangovers and swearing they were never going to drink again. In the early evening they would pile into Mom's car and drive to wherever Dad's car had been left the night before to retrieve it. Let me tell you, anyone who thinks of teachers as stoic, sober, square people never grew up with one in the house. In my experience Dad was more the rule than the exception. He was by no means an alcoholic but he sure liked to party on special occasions.

Tracy was already up when I went down to the kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper. She was not hung over since she had not had anything to drink the night before. Nothing like having a death sentence from fate hanging over you to keep you from driving a car while intoxicated. Too bad there wasn't some way we could do that to those that were arrested for drunk driving. It would probably drastically cut down on the repeat offender rate.

She asked how my night had gone and I told her about my conversation with Nina. She listened with concern.

"A classic case of denial." She told me when I'd finished. "But understandable. Remember Bill, she's still, for all of her maturity and sophistication, a seventeen-year-old. Seventeen year olds are always right."

"I know." I said. "I'm sure that deep down she knows that I'm right. She just doesn't want to face it, doesn't want to confront it because she'll then be forced into a confrontation with her parents. She's very untypical of a seventeen-year-old in that regard. She worships her parents and she still thinks they're smarter than she is."

"In all except for this." Tracy agreed. "If I was you I'd brace myself. I think this thing might be about to explode."

"I think you're probably right." I agreed.

Tracy then turned the conversation around to her REAL goal of the morning. She wanted to borrow my car again to go to a football party. I had nowhere to go so I told her she knew where the keys were. Less than twenty minutes later she was out the door.

Nina called a few minutes later and told me happily that her parents had raised no objections to her going out today. She almost gloated as she told me this. When I hung up from her my mood was improved greatly. I would get to see her today. That always made me happy. And maybe I was the one who was wrong about her parents. Maybe they really HAD been concerned about her being out on New Year's Eve. After all, Nina knew her parents better than I did, didn't she?

I was about to head upstairs to shower when Dad came staggering into the kitchen. He was wearing his robe tied loosely around him. His hair was a tangled mess and his face was unshaven with eyes that looked downright painful.

"Ohhh God." He moaned, heading for the cabinet. As he passed I could smell the odor of stale booze around him; a smell my paramedicine career had made me intimately familiar with. "Never again."

"Little too much to drink last night?" I asked him as he fumbled a large tumbler out of the cabinet and almost dropped it.

"Uhhh!" He groaned, turning on the sink and filling the glass. "Don't ever drink Bill." He advised me. "Ever."

"I'll take that under consideration." I told him, watching as he downed the glass of water in three gulps. He refilled it and then went to another cabinet for some aspirin.

When I finished my shower and came back downstairs he was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around him, watching the first of many football games. He seemed semi-catatonic and I could not imagine that he was actually seeing anything on the screen. I smiled in amusement, reflecting that if I'd been a normal teenager I would have been struck with the screaming horrors at the idea of my girlfriend coming over while my Dad was in his bathrobe on the couch.

"Nina's coming over in a little bit." I told him, just to give him fair warning.

"Uh." He grunted, his head never turning.

When Nina arrived we went up to my room. This was not out of desire to make out or out of embarrassment at the state of my father but simply to keep the noise level downstairs, where both my parents were, to a minimum. They probably weren't in the mood for excessive chatter.

We sat on my bed talking while a Simon and Garfunkle album played on the turntable at low volume. Since my return I'd re-discovered the fact that most music from the eighties really sucked. This was probably due to the advent of MTV, which had made it necessary for a band to LOOK good on camera instead of to produce good music. Since I could not hear music from the nineties, when this fad had balanced out a bit, I had turned, in desperation, to listening to music from the seventies and sixties. To my surprise and delight much of it was actually pretty good and even deep. I'd even managed to get Nina interested in some of it.

We were discussing the track called "The Boxer" when the sound of the doorbell ringing from downstairs registered on my consciousness.

"So you see," I explained. "He's a musician that tried to make it in New York and failed the first time. That's what the lyrics basically say. It's the last verse that really sums it up, tells you that he was defeated but that he remains a fighter from the experience."

"It's actually like poetry." Nina, an aficionado of poetry told me.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's what any really good song lyric is like. That's what they should strive for. That's what a lot of the crap they're putting out these days is lacking in. They simply try to repeat the same phrase over and over while they dance and come up with a bitchin beat from their synthesized drums. That's not music, that just…"

I stopped suddenly, hearing the sound of raised voices drifting up from below. My Dad's was one of them. He was trying to patiently explain something to someone but the someone in question kept overriding his words. When the words 'where is she' drifted up from the owner of the other voice, Nina's ears perked up.

"Dad!" She said suddenly. "That's Dad!"

"Oh shit." I mumbled, hearing MY dad start to raise his own voice.

"What do we do?" Nina asked me. "What is my dad doing here?"

"I guess we'd better go find out." I said, already knowing. "Before our dads start exchanging punches with each other."

"Bill?" She asked, looking really scared now.

"C'mon." I said, standing up. "My dad is younger but your dad was in the war. I don't want MY dad to get hurt."

"Bill!" Came Dad's voice from downstairs. "Would you and Nina come down here for a minute?"

"C'mon." I told her. "The jig is apparently up."

"Oh God Bill." She said, shaking her head.

When we got downstairs we found my dad, still dressed in his robe, still unshaven and looking like shit, facing off against Nina's Dad, who was clean shaven and dressed in slacks and a sweater, over the threshold of the front door. When he saw Nina he took an angry step forward.

"Get your butt down here girl!" He yelled. "How dare you tell me you were going to visit a friend and then take our car over here to this slimy scumbag's house!"

"Dad!" Nina yelled back, not moving forward.

"Now just a minute!" Dad put in angrily. I could tell he was reaching the end of his fuse. "Where do you get off coming to my house and calling my son…"

"Your son is the scum of the earth!" Mr. Blackmore put in. "And you Sir, are the man who raised him with the values of a rutting pig. That makes you a rutting pig in my book and I have no further words to pass with the likes of you. I have come for my daughter before your son violates her in some god-forsaken way. I only hope and pray it hasn't happened yet. Nina, get over here now!"

"Dad!" Nina cried, tears on her cheeks now. "What are you doing? I love Bill!"

"Love?!" He screamed, turning to me. "You are the lowest form of life on this earth young man. Nina, NOW!" He commanded.

She opened her mouth to say something else but I spoke first.

"You'd better go with him." I told her.

"What?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd betrayed her.

"Nothing can be accomplished right now." I said. "This situation can only get worse. Go with him and try to talk to him. Tell him what I'm like."

"I KNOW what you're like." Mr. Blackmore told me. "I know exactly what you're like."

"Now you listen here!" Dad yelled, taking a step forward. "My son…"

"Dad." I said sharply, using my adult voice. "Let it go. It'll be all right."

Dad paused with his mouth open. He didn't look like he wanted to let it go and I was absurdly touched by this. My Dad, one of the mildest mannered people I knew, seemed on the verge of violence because someone was slandering his son's reputation.

"It's okay Dad." I told him again. "Let it go."

"Get out here Nina!" Mr. Blackmore said again. "Now!"

"Bill?" Nina asked again, looking miserable.

"Go Nina." I told her. "Talk to him. It's for the best. But wait until he's cooled down a little. And remember that I love you."

"Love?" He repeated. "You truly are…"

"Hey!" I barked, taking a step towards him, my eyes boring into his. It had the desired effect, he stopped talking and looked at me. "You have what you came for." I told him. "Nina is leaving with you, right Nina?"

"Yes." She cried.

"You don't need to stand here and continue to throw insults at me. Just go."

We stared at each other for a moment and I could see in his eyes that he was starting to glimmer that he wasn't dealing with an ordinary teenager. Finally he nodded. "C'mon Nina." He told her. "Let's go."

She gave me one last look and then followed her father out the door. She climbed into her mother's car while Mr. Blackmore climbed into his. A second later they were gone, leaving Dad and I standing in the doorway.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"Apparently Mr. Blackmore doesn't care too much for you?" He asked mildly.

I suppressed a smile. "Apparently not." I agreed.

He shut the door and looked at me for a moment. He rubbed his temples. "What are you going to do now?" He asked.

"Give it a few days." I said. "That's what I'm going to do. Hopefully Nina will be able to bring him around to at least tolerating me."

"And if she doesn't?"

I shrugged. "I love her Dad." I said. "I plan to marry her some day. I don't think her Dad is strong enough to keep us apart. One way or another we'll be together. Although I'd prefer to be with her with her Dad's consent. If she can't bring him around I guess I'll go over and have a talk with him. Maybe that will help."

"Or maybe he'll shoot you dead on his porch." Dad suggested half-seriously.

"Ahh Dad," I said. "At least that way I'd die poetically. In the name of love. Wouldn't that be glorious?"

Dad continued to stare at me, not even cracking a smile at my glory of love line. Finally he said, "Bill, don't you think it's about time you had a little talk with ME?"

"A talk?" I asked.

"A talk." He confirmed. "I should have brought this up before now and I really wish that the straw that broke the camel's back hadn't happened on a day that I was hung over, but I really think it's time."

"What are you talking about Dad?" I asked weakly.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." He told me. "It happened nearly two years ago now. One day you were Bill the underachiever. A nasty, typical teenager that didn't want anything to do with his parents, that hated his sister, that wouldn't listen to a word anyone told him. The very next day you were cleaning your room, improving your grades, making great strides to improve your relationship with Tracy, and…" He paused, "And you became somewhat of a hit with the girls. Much more of a hit than I've ever seen anyone be, adult or teenager. Something happened to you, something big, and it changed you completely. Sometimes you seem very adult in manner. VERY adult. In fact you almost seem like someone who has seen a little bit of everything. At the same time you've made frighteningly accurate predictions about the stock market and events in the news. So how about we start to talk about it?"

"Dad," I started, not sure what I was going to say.

"Bill." He told me. "It's time. I can't go on like this any longer. Tell me what happened to you."

I frowned, looking at him. What to do?

Finally I came to a decision. "Dad," I asked. "You ever smoke grass?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Don't give me the standard Dad answer." I told him. "Tell me the truth. You grew up in the sixties. You went to college during the summer of love. You used to attend anti-war protests. Mom told me you burned your draft card and got arrested for it. I've seen pictures of you when you were in college. You looked like a hippie. So tell me, have you ever smoked grass?"

"Of course." He told me. "I used to smoke it quite a bit in college. But what does that…"

"Meet me in your den." I told him. "And I'll tell you everything."

"But…"

"Just do it Dad. I have a joint upstairs. We need to smoke it together."

"You have a JOINT?" He asked sternly. "Bill, how dare you…"

"Dad." I said mildly. "As you pointed out, I'm not a typical teenager. If you want to hear what I have to say I think you're going to want to smoke some pot first. It's quite a story."

"I can hear your story just fine without smoking any pot, thank you." He told me. "And I want you to march right upstairs and throw away whatever marijuana you have in this house and never bring it in here again. What did you think…"

"Dad," I interrupted. "What I have to tell you is pretty mind-blowing, okay? You're going to need to put aside your parental attitude for a while.

You've mentioned that I act like an adult at times. Well this is one of those times. If I'm going to tell you this story you're going to need to speak with me as an equal, not a teenager. In order to speak with me as an equal we need to BE equal. Smoking pot with me will serve that purpose." I smiled. "Besides, it'll probably get rid of your hangover."

He stared at me for a moment, giving the extended version of THE LOOK. Finally he nodded. "I guess I'll do about anything to get rid of this hangover." He said. "Meet me in there quick before my better judgement makes me beat your ass and ground you."

"Right." I said, heading upstairs.

We closed ourselves in to Dad's den, locked the door, and I produced the joint. I lit it with a lighter, took a good hit, and then passed it over to Dad. He took it from my fingers and looked at it for a minute.

"Bill, this is nuts." He said. "I haven't done this in fifteen years. You're my son for God's sake. Fathers are not supposed to smoke Mary Jane with their sons."

"Buds Dad." I told him, exhaling my hit. "We call it buds these days. Take a hit."

He gave me one more doubtful look, sniffed a little at the joint, and finally put it to his lips. He inhaled, making the tip glow and then coughed a pungent cloud of smoke out.

"It tastes like a skunk." He complained. "Bill, I don't think…"

"It's supposed to taste like that." I told him. "That means its good shit. Hit it again. Slower this time."

He tried again. This time he managed to hold the hit for about fifteen seconds before he coughed it out. He passed the joint back to me and I quickly took another hit. When I gave it back to him he tried to refuse it.

"Hit it Dad." I insisted. "If you want to hear this story you gotta be stoned. That's the rules."

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He muttered but took the joint anyway.

By the fourth hit Dad was starting to mellow. He stopped trying to refuse the joint when I passed it to him. In fact he even began making jokes.

"Don't Bogart that joint my friend." He told me when I took an especially long hit. He then began chuckling.

"Wouldn't dream of it Dad." I told him, feeling the drug going straight to my head.

"Wow." He said after exhaling another hit. "They've certainly made some improvements in grass since I used to smoke it. It used to take us four or five joints to get to where I am now."

"The miracles of modern horticulture." I told him and he started cracking up hysterically. I joined him, marveling that he was right, it was pretty freaking weird to get stoned with your Dad.

When the joint was burned down to a roach and both of us were flying high, I turned to my father.

"Okay." I told him. "Are you sure that you want to hear this? What I'm about to tell you will change your entire opinion of me. You will no longer be able to see me as the son you've known."

He took a deep breath. "I don't see you that way now Bill." He told me seriously. "Like I said, you changed suddenly one day. I have to say it's been for the better, but you haven't been the son I knew in quite some time.

I still love you of course, don't get me wrong, but you weren't the same after that day. So give. Tell me what happened to you."

"If I tell you," I said. "You can never tell anyone else this story. No one, never! I would prefer you not even tell Mom although I would understand if you did. The consequences of anyone finding out what happened to me are potentially severe."

"The consequences?" He asked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I said, telling him the same thing I'd told Tracy, "That I possess knowledge that people would literally kill for. That they would stop at nothing to possess."

He raised his eyebrows a bit at that one.

"You're thinking I'm having delusions of grandeur, right?"

"It had occurred to me." Dad admitted.

"I'm not." I told him. "Remember the stocks Dad? Remember how I knew a particular stock that was going to skyrocket at a particular time?"

"Yes." He nodded. "Are you trying to tell me that you can see the future Bill? Because I'm not sure that I can really accept that."

"I'm not seeing the future Dad." I told him. "I have lived through the future."

He looked at me for a moment, blinking. "Lived through the future?"

I began to talk.

Chapter 10

Momma loves her baby

Daddy loves you too

And the sea may look warm to you baby

And the sky may look blue

But ooooh Baby…

PINK FLOYD

Our conversation lasted for nearly an hour. Dad listened to me with rapt attention, interrupting me only to ask questions when something I'd said required qualification. He didn't seem to have any problem believing my tale, leading me to believe that he'd suspected some vague version of the truth the whole time. When I got to the part about Tracy dying in the car accident and fate continually trying to reclaim her his face paled. He picked up the roach and held out his hand for the lighter. I handed it to him and he took a mighty hit.

Dad was strangely un-offended by the fact that I'd gone on a minor rampage among the high school girls.

"I can see how the temptation to do that would be overwhelming." He told me knowingly. "You're over that phase now? Except for Nina?"

"Yes." I told him. "Believe me, I've learned my lesson. Being dropped off in the middle of the hood will do that for you. And Nina's different. I love her. She may be seventeen but she's got the maturity of someone much older. Like I told you, I plan to marry her someday."

He was however, like Tracy, strangely offended by my affair with Anita.

"I can't believe you would do something like that." He told me, shaking his head. "And I can't believe SHE would do something like that."

"Dad," I said, "At the time I started the relationship with her I was thirty-two. Who else should I be sleeping with? And don't blame Anita for anything. I found her weakness and exploited it in order to seduce her. Remember, in my first life she never tried anything with me. Only when I pushed her buttons in the right way did she act."

"And she fell in love with you." He said. "So much in love that she didn't meet and marry her intended husband."

"Like I said Dad," I told him. "I've learned a lot since I came back. One of the things I learned was that I was not quite as mature as I thought I was. And that I didn't know nearly as much about love as I thought. But I'm learning."

"And Anita?" He asked. "What of her?"

"Hopefully," I said, "My little commando raid on her car did the trick. If not, I'll just have to come up with something else. Like I said, fate WANTS Anita and Jack to be together so my little nudge probably worked."

He nodded, looking at me. "And you told Tracy all of this?" He asked.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Do you think that was wise?" He asked me cautiously. "Tracy is only eighteen. Are you sure she fully understands the consequences of not keeping her mouth shut about this?"

"I think so." I told him. "Tracy is pretty smart in case you haven't noticed."

"Oh I have." He nodded.

"And like she pointed out, she had a right to the information. My most important goal from the very start was Tracy's survival. That remains my most important goal. I thought that she would probably heed my warnings a little better if she knew exactly what she was dealing with. That meant telling her. I still shudder when I think of her almost getting into a car with her boyfriend that night. She almost did that because she didn't know the source of the information I was giving her. I couldn't take the chance that would happen again. She needed to be told for her own protection."

Dad nodded soberly. "I guess you're right." He said, rubbing his temples again. "This is all pretty "mind-blowing", as you promised. It's hard to imagine that in some alternate time-line I've lost my daughter and I'm a victim's rights advocate. And what about that Bill?" He suddenly asked. "Is anybody going to suffer because I'm not doing that? Is any good that I did in the other life going to be left undone?"

I looked at him, knowing what he was going through. It was the same thing I went through when I first got back to 1982. Your mind tried to deal with all of the possible ramifications for your actions. Sometimes you had to make unpleasant decisions or conclusions. The loss of my daughter Becky was one such thing.

"I don't really know Dad." I answered. "After Tracy died and after the asshole that killed her was given a suspended sentence so he could play football, you and Mom turned your grief and anger into a full scale assault.

The group you joined helped increase the penalty for first time drunk driving, it helped raise the drinking age to twenty-one nationwide, and it helped pass mandatory sentencing laws in cases of vehicular manslaughter. Will all of that still get done without you?" I shrugged. "Probably. Like I told you, fate seems to try to keep things in line based on whatever pattern has been determined."

"But what if doesn't Bill?" He asked. "What if somewhere down the line someone dies because I haven't been a part of something that I was supposed to be part of? What if those laws don't get passed or they don't get passed at the same time and some drunk driver who otherwise would have chosen a different path or would have been in jail goes out and kills someone?"

"That might happen Dad." I told him. "And if it does there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. Nor should you blame yourself or me for it. If it's any comfort to you, you will probably never even know if such a thing does happen."

"But maybe I should join this group anyway." He said. "Maybe since I'm meant to do that I should go ahead and do it."

"Maybe." I agreed. "But it won't be the same. Being an advocate was a frustrating, agonizing process for you and Mom. Trying to get anything done was like trying to erode a rock by spitting on it. The only thing that kept you going year after year was your grief and anger over Tracy's death. Tracy is not dead Dad, and hopefully she won't be dead anytime soon. I doubt you can duplicate the drive you had without that factor thrown in."

"But…"

"Dad." I said. "I've learned that you can't change the world with this gift. All you can do is try to change a few things around you and even that is difficult and sometimes impossible. Our destiny has been altered because of my interference and we have Tracy when she should be dead. Fate will hopefully accept the consequences of that and adjust itself accordingly. I'm confident that that will happen, okay? If there are some minor changes from this interference there's nothing that you or I could do about them. I couldn't very well have let Tracy die just because there was a possibility that someone else down the road would get hurt or killed.

"I told Tracy not too long ago that I was not the type of person to carelessly hurt someone in my own self-interest just because I didn't know the person getting hurt. I stand by that statement but, unfortunately you sometimes have to take that risk anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, do you understand?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I think so."

"Look at it this way." I told him. "Remember the story I told you about the kid that was choking on the hot dog?"

He nodded. "The one that Nina wrote you up for saving."

"Right." I said. "I saved that kid's life in that timeline. He hasn't even been born yet but I'm scheduled to save his life. What is going to happen when that kid chokes on that hot dog and Bill, paramedic extradonaire, is not there to save him because Bill never became a paramedic in the first place?"

"I suppose some other paramedic will show up at the call." He said.

"Right." I nodded. "Now modesty aside, I was a pretty damn good paramedic. There were others at the company that were not as good at it. There were some that were damn incompetent in fact. Suppose one of them shows up. Suppose they do not clue in to the fact that the kid is choking and don't clear his airway in time?"

"Then he'll die." Dad answered.

"Maybe." I nodded. "But you see, I'm inclined to believe that this kid will live. No matter how incompetent the medic that shows up is, he or she will attempt to put in a breathing tube. When someone is not breathing, that is what you do. So even if the rest of the clues don't inform him or her that they are dealing with an airway obstruction they will still put a laryngoscope into the kid's mouth at some point and try to put a tube down. At that point they will not be able to help but see that there is a large piece of hot dog in his trachea and they will remove it.

"Now it is possible that the extra minute or so that this might take will mean the difference between life and death for the kid, but I doubt it. This kid is meant to live and he probably will. Those drunk driving laws were meant to get passed and they probably will. And if either of those things don't work out this way, all I can say is that I was acting as I thought was best. And that's what you should say too."

We sat quietly for a few minutes while Dad digested all of this. Finally he looked up at me.

"You were right about my opinion of you changing." He told me. "I'll be forced to think of you as an adult now. An adult with opinions and ethics based on years of learning. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm going to have to stop thinking of you as a son and start thinking of you as an equal. I don't have anything else to teach you."

"Dad," I said, "I still am your son. Everything that I am, everything that I was is based on the way you raised me. My moral code, my ethics, all of that is from you and Mom. Sure, some of it took place in an alternate time-line but it was still you and Mom and the part that really counted was the part I learned long before I was even a teenager. You're still my Dad and you always will be."

"I never thought I'd have a son," He told me, "Who was only six years younger than me."

I laughed. "And I never thought I'd sit down and smoke a joint with my Dad either. But there you have it."

"There you have it." He repeated.

"What about Mom?" I asked next.

"What about her?" He said.

"Are you going to tell her all of this? Or would you like me to tell her?"

He took a deep breath. "What do you think?" He asked.

"To be honest Dad, I really don't know. I'm not sure Mom would care too much for the knowledge that her son is only three years younger than she is.

She especially wouldn't care for the part about the teenaged girls or Anita."

"Oh she knows about the teenaged girls." Dad assured me. "You didn't really think you were putting one over on anybody, did you?"

"No." I said. "I gradually came to the realization that my actions were not as secret as I thought they were. What I meant was that she wouldn't care for the knowledge that her thirty-two year old son was doing those things."

"You're probably right." He said. "And I imagine she had more than just a simple suspicion about Anita and you. She probably didn't want to face up to it, but I'm sure she had her suspicions."

I nodded, feeling shame and embarrassment at the thought that my mother knew about my sexual exploits.

"How about this?" Dad said. "Why don't we keep your secret between us for the time being. I don't see any good that could come of telling her and I can think of several bads that could come of it. If, at some point in the future, a reason to tell her develops then we'll sit down and have a talk with her."

"Sounds good Dad." I told him and then smiled. "Did Mom used to smoke pot with you back in college?"

He chuckled. "You know your Uncle Dave, Mom's brother?"

"Of course." I said.

"The Uncle Dave that is the conservative republican lobbyist for the insurance industry?"

"Yes."

Dad smiled. "He used to sell us the pot back in college. Pretty good shit for that time too."

I did not hear from Nina over the next two days. She didn't call me, come over, send a carrier pigeon, or send up smoke signals. I had no way of knowing if she was making any headway with her parents.

The Saturday afternoon before the start of school Tracy flew back to California. We all gave her hugs and she was admonished by my Mother to keep in touch. Dad and I had discussed Tracy and had seen no real reason to tell her that Dad was in on my secret. As her plane climbed into the sky she still thought she was alone in her knowledge of her brother's special difference.

First thing Monday morning, the first day of school of 1984, I took up position near the front of the school where Nina's mother dropped her off. It was snowing once again, a light flurry with little wind, and I stood unobtrusively near some parked cars, my hood pulled tightly over my head. Kids, dejected to be back at school so soon, walked to and fro providing me with camoflaugh. Ten minutes before class started Mrs. Blackmore pulled her car to the curb and Nina, dressed in the same down jacket she wore on the night of our first kiss, hopped out. She gave a half-hearted wave to her mother and began heading up the walkway where Richie Fairview and I had met so long ago.

When Mrs. Blackmore pulled away from the curb I broke into a run, catching up with Nina in less than ten seconds, just as she entered the quad.

"Nina." I called, feeling nervous at the reception I was going to receive. Was she mad at me? Had her parents talked her into abandoning me?

She turned at the sound of her name and I slowed to a walk, my eyes searching her face.

"Bill!" She said happily, rushing to me. She threw her arms around me and we embraced tightly, right there on the quad, right in front of hundreds of students. More than a few of them gave us some strange looks but I didn't care.

"Oh God Bill." She told me, kissing my cheek and hugging me tighter. "I missed you so much. I'm so sorry for what happened. I'm so embarrassed that my dad came over there."

"It's okay Nina." I told her. "I'm just glad you still like me."

"Of course I like you Bill. I love you. Nothing is going to change that."

"I thought your parents might have, you know, soured you against me."

She snorted. "They tried Bill, believe me. I got even more speeches and lectures about 'guys like you'. To tell you the truth, I've been fighting with both of them since that day. Things aren't cheery in the Blackmore house, let me tell you."

We finally broke our embrace and began walking towards the lockers. "So am I to assume," I asked, "That you weren't able to make much headway with them?"

"Not an inch." She told me. "I talked to them until I was blue in the face.

I told them that you're different now, that you've changed, that I'm in love with you, that you're in love with me, but they are completely irrational on the subject. They think you're Lucifer Himself. " She shook her head in puzzlement and frustration. "And I have no idea why they're acting like that. It is SO unlike them. They're usually the calmest, most understanding people."

"So what happens now?" I asked her. "Will we be able to see each other at all? Except for school that is?"

"They've grounded me Bill." She told me. "Grounded. Me! I've never been grounded in my life. I didn't even know they knew how to ground someone! But I'm not allowed to leave the house after school at all. For anything!"

"Hmm." I nodded. "That does present a problem."

"During one of our arguments," She went on. "I told them that they could keep me in the house until I graduated if they wanted but that wouldn't matter. I told them I'd be eighteen soon and heading off to college. Then I could see anybody I wanted!"

"And they said?"

"They said you'd lose interest in me by then so it didn't matter." She replied. "But if you hadn't, if I still tried to see you that they would not pay for any college outside of Spokane! And that they would only pay for that if I came home promptly each day." She shook her head. "Bill, that's absolutely nuts! I can't believe they'd say something like that. I can't go to college in Spokane! There's no medical school here!"

This last statement brought home just how strongly Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore felt about this subject. Like Nina had said, it was nuts. It was not the outpouring of a mind that was working a problem through rationally. Nina was their pride and joy, all that they lived for. To threaten to take away all that she hoped for just to keep her away from a certain boy, a certain boy that they'd once liked immensely, was mad.

"Nina?" I asked. "You said they developed this, uh, strong attitude about me right after you told them about my, uh, transgressions, right?"

"Right." She nodded.

"And they've never acted this strongly about anything before?"

"Never." She assured me. "This is completely wacko behavior for them."

We had reached Nina's locker and I stood behind her as she opened it and stowed some of her books inside. My mind was reeling with something that was right on the tip of it. Some explanation for this problem that was simply eluding me.

"What year did your parents get married?" I asked Nina as some vestige of it finally broke free.

"What year?" She asked.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"1951." She told me. "Why do you ask?"

"Your Dad told me once, back before he hated me anyway, that he and your mom were high school sweethearts."

"They were." She said. "They dated all through high school. And then Dad dropped out to go to the war. They got married when he got back."

"But the war ended in 1945 Nina." I reminded her. "What happened in the six years after?"

She shrugged. "They told me that they kind of broke apart for a while and then found each other again. They never really explained it any further than that. I never really asked. Why?"

"But your Dad did come home right away after the war, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did." She searched her memory banks for a moment and then nodded more firmly. "Yes." She told me. "He did. I remember him saying that he worked construction for a while right after the war. He told me that once when we were driving by some of those ghetto houses on the south side. He told me he'd helped build them in '47 and that they were nice back then." She looked over at me. "What does all of this have to do with anything?"

"I don't think your parents really hate ME." I told her. "They hate people LIKE me. More than hate, they detest, they're disgusted by."

"What are you saying Bill?" She asked uncomfortably.

"There's something in their past." I said. "Something in those six years after the war. I'll bet anything that's it."

"I'm not sure what you mean." She told me.

"Neither am I." I said. "Neither am I. Your old man's a mailman now, right?"

"Yes." She said. "He's been doing that since just after he and mom got married. He's getting ready to retire soon."

"So he's probably got a pretty cushy route, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He does those nice houses out by the river."

"What time does he usually get home?"

"Why?" She asked suspiciously. "You're not thinking of talking to him are you? That would be a very bad idea Bill."

"What time Nina?" I asked.

"Bill." She shook her head. "Don't do it. Daddy will kill you if he sees your face. He won't listen to a thing you say."

"Nina." I told her. "I intend to marry you some day."

She froze in her tracks, staring at me. "Marry?"

"Yes." I said. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I think you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Am I wrong?"

She swallowed nervously. "No." She said simply.

"I'd rather do it with your dad's blessing. I NEED to talk to him. Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself. And don't worry about your dad, I won't hit him." I chuckled. "He'd probably kick my ass anyway. But we need to talk."

"Bill," She shook her head vehemently. "You don't know…"

"No I don't." I said. "But all the same, this is something that is going to need to be addressed. I need to talk to him. What office does he work from and what time does he get off work?"

She saw the determination in my eyes. To this day I don't know if she gave in because she had faith in me or simply because of blind hope. But finally she said, "The office on North Grant Avenue in River View. He's usually done around two o'clock and home by two-thirty."

"Thank you Nina." I said. "I'd better get to class before I'm late."

"Bill?" She said as I turned from her.

I paused. "Yeah?"

"Good luck."

"I'll need it." I assured her. "And I love you."

"I love you too."

My hand was now completely healed up and I was cleared to return to full work duties. That included ROP. On the way to the trauma center I made a brief stop at home. I pulled something from my closet and took it downstairs, depositing it in a closed, cool place. I then drove to the hospital.

"Hi Mindy." I told my supervisor when I walked through the door.

"Bill!" She greeted me happily, even going so far as to give me a brief hug.

"I'm glad you're back." She lowered her voice and whispered. "Now maybe we can get some damn work done around here."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her.

"How's the hand? All better?"

I held it up for her perusal. It bore a clean, sharp scar that is still with me to this day.

"Poor baby." She cooed. "I've reassigned you with Kelly. Hope you don't mind. I had a little talk with your instructor about the incident with Brett, as well as some others, and she agreed that maybe he would be happier in shipping."

"I see." I said, feeling a minor pang of sorrow for Brett. He'd really wanted to get hired. "Listen Mindy," I started.

"Oh," She said, smiling. "By the way."

"Yeah?"

"I've put your name at the top of the list for students I recommend for hiring at semester break." She told me. "And my recommendations are always followed. Congratulations."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her happily. "I don't know what to say."

"You already said it." She said. "And it's not in your interest, it's in mine. You're a damn good worker."

"That's nice to hear." I told her. "But…"

"But?" She asked, glaring at me. "I don't like to hear buts."

"Well," I said. "I do need to ask a brief favor."

"And what might that be?"

"I need to cut out at one-thirty today. Today only. I hate to ask on my first day back but…"

She scoffed. "Is that all? You've got it Bill. Cut out whenever you want."

"Thanks again Mindy." I told her.

"Welcome aboard Bill." She said as I headed off to the sterilization area.

I decided to take my hiring as a good omen for my later task.

The River View area of Spokane was and is one of the more exclusive parts of town. The streets here were lined with trees and had center dividers that had grass growing on them; grass that was lovingly maintained by an army of City-paid gardeners. Streets that did not have any liquor stores, pawn shops, K-Marts, or, God forbid, apartment complexes. It was where the elite of Spokane lived; the lawyers, the real estate developers, the movers and shakers. It was a part of town where I had to be genuinely worried that I would be pulled over by a Spokane police officer, a high seniority officer of course, on general principals when my Datsun was spotted cruising the streets. It was a part of town that I'd rarely responded into as a paramedic. Rich people simply didn't call for ambulances very often.

Even the post office was a miracle of modern architecture. It was a single story building with Spanish tile on the roof, tucked unobtrusively away behind a commercial complex. The snow was still drifting down as I pulled in at twenty minutes to two that afternoon and found a parking spot in view of Mr. Blackmore's car.

I waited, chewing on my fingernails in anticipation.

At five minutes to two I spotted Mr. Blackmore heading from the main building out into the parking lot. He was walking hunched over against the wind, his postal uniform upon his body. I opened my car door and stepped out, taking a final deep breath to gather my courage. I headed towards him on an intercept course.

"Mr. Blackmore." I hailed when he was less than ten feet from me.

He looked up, his face showing his age, his gray hair tucked beneath his cap. I was struck by the strong resemblance between him and Nina. It took him a moment to recognize me. When he did his eyes burned.

"You." He spat, glaring.

"Me." I agreed.

"Get away from me you slime." He told me. "How dare you come here."

"We need to talk Sir." I told him firmly.

"I have nothing to talk to YOU about." He said. "Get away from me right now or I'll call the cops."

"I don't think we need to involve the police in this." I said. "I don't think they'd be very interested. I just want to talk to you about your daughter."

"My daughter has been forbidden to see you."

"I know." I answered. "She told me that when I talked to her this morning."

"You stay away from her!" He yelled. "Do I need to call the school and talk to the principal about keeping you apart?"

"You could." I allowed. "And he might go so far as to separate our classes.

But that won't help. Your daughter and I are in love Mr. Blackmore. No matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, we will find some way to see each other."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." He proclaimed, heading for his car once more. "Stay away from her!"

"I can't Mr. Blackmore." I told him simply.

He turned back towards me, his face red, his hands balled into fists. I was forced to wonder if the flippant comment I'd made to Nina about him kicking my ass hadn't been so flippant after all. "You WILL!" He ordered.

"Come over to my house." I said, holding my ground, using my adult voice.

"What?"

"Talk with me." I offered. "Sit down with me and tell me why you think I should stay away from your daughter. Why you think you know better than she does what's good for her. There has to be a reason. You can tell me what it is."

"I can tell you the reason right now." He said. "It's because you are a lowlife scumbag who is only after one thing."

I held his gaze. "No." I said. "I'm not."

"You are." He insisted. "She told us how you were. About the girls at school. Well you are not going to add her to your list. You are not going to destroy her life."

"So you thought you would do it for her?" I asked.

"How dare you…"

"Did you tell her that you would only pay for college if she stays in Spokane?" I asked him.

"If that's what it takes to keep her away from you." He said.

"Think about that Mr. Blackmore." I said. "Step outside yourself and think about what you're saying. Nina wants to be a doctor. She's geared her entire high school curriculum towards getting into college and med school. There is no med school in Spokane. You are talking about taking away her dream just to keep her away from me. Does that sound like a person who is acting in his daughter's best interests? Does that sound like the workings of a rational mind?"

"You will lose interest in her by then." He said. "Once you don't get what you want from her…"

"I already have what I want from her." I said. "I have her love. And I will not lose interest in her."

"You don't have the slightest idea what love is." He spat. "And neither does she. You're just trying to make her think you love her so she'll give in to you."

"Believe me Mr. Blackmore." I assured him. "I know what love is. Your daughter has shown me. We're not ordinary teenagers and I am not the way you think I am. Look at me." I told him. "Do I seem like a typical teenager to you?"

He stared for a moment, his face showing the first signs of confusion, his mouth open to make a reply. Finally he said, "No. You don't."

"Come over to my house." I offered again. "Talk to me like one adult talks to another. You're not afraid to do that, are you? You're not afraid that you might be wrong?"

"Afraid?" He asked. "Boy, there is absolutely nothing about YOU that can scare me."

"Then prove it." I challenged. "Come over to my house. We'll have ourselves a little talk, like men, and if you can convince me that I'm hurting Nina in any way, then I'll leave her alone."

"And why should I believe you about that?" He wanted to know.

I shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"

He continued to look at me for a long time as his mind worked over what I'd said. Finally he nodded. "Okay Son." He said. "I'll meet you at your house and we'll talk. And when we're done talking I expect you to keep your slimy self away from my family."

I smiled. "Well that's a start Mr. Blackmore. I trust you know where my house is?"

When we arrived at my house it was of course empty. I sat Mr. Blackmore down on the couch and excused myself for a moment, going into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two of the beers from the twelve-pack that Tracy had bought for me. They had been in just long enough to be of the proper drinking temperature.

I carried them into the living room and handed one to Nina's Dad. He looked at me strangely.

"As I recall from the days when you liked me," I told him, "You're partial to a cold brew when you get home from work."

"You think I'm going to be impressed by your possession of beer?" He asked.

"I'm not trying to impress you." I told him. "Just talk to you, one adult to another. I've found that adults talk better, looser, over a few beers. Don't you agree?"

He looked at me, a full-blown version of THE LOOK. "You don't seem like a teenager at all." He whispered.

"Let's pretend there's no age here Mr. Blackmore." I said. "We're having a serious discussion with long-term ramifications." I popped open my beer and sat down in my Dad's favorite chair. "So for now, let's just be Bill and Jack, two adults talking over an important subject."

Mr. Blackmore seemed confused by my words. I sensed a softening of the barrier he'd thrown up and felt I'd finally broken through. And then his expression returned to one of angry determination. He shook his head violently. "You're good Son." He told me, accused me, "That's what I need to keep reminding myself about people like you. You can seem so damn nice, so damn reasonable, so damn adult." He stood back up, setting the beer down on the coffee table. "You took me in once when you first started hanging around my daughter. Shame on you. But you almost took me in twice just now. That's shame on me." He began heading for the door.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said reasonably.

"You're not going to nice your way back into our house." He said. "Stay away from Nina."

"There's someone like me in your past, isn't there?" I asked him.

He stopped suddenly, jerking his head towards me. "What?"

"Tell me what happened." I said. "Why do you feel so strongly about me? It has something to do with the reason you came home right after the war but didn't marry your wife, who was your high school sweetheart, until 1951, doesn't it?"

He was now staring at me, agape.

"Doesn't it?" I prodded.

"Who have you been talking to?" He asked me, horrified.

"Just my own common sense." I assured him. "Nina supplied me with the dates and I was able to draw conclusions on my own. Your reaction to me is irrational Mr. Blackmore. You've focused on an aspect of my personality, my success with girls, and you won't hear anything else, won't listen to your own daughter even. Something happened to you and your wife after the war but before you got married, didn't it? Something to do with a womanizer who talked sweet?"

He continued to stare in disbelief.

"Tell me about it." I repeated. "Like I said, if you can convince me that I'm hurting your daughter, I'll leave her alone."

"You want to hear about it?" He asked me, glaring.

"Yes." I told him. "Sit down, open your beer and tell me about it. I'm a good listener."

"All right Son." He said. "You want to hear why I don't like you, why I won't let you near my daughter, I'll tell you." He sat down on the couch again, making no move to pick up the beer.

"Mary and I WERE high school sweethearts, as you said. We met when I was a junior and she was a freshman. That was in 1942 right here in Spokane. Mary was the most beautiful, sweetest, most desirable girl I'd ever met in my life. I could talk to her about things I couldn't talk to anyone else about. I fell in love with her right away, maybe even before our first date. And she fell in love with me too."

I nodded, not speaking, picturing Mary, a.k.a. Mrs. Blackmore, as she must have been back then. She'd probably looked and acted a lot like Nina.

"By the time I started my senior year we were an "item" as we said back then. Oh, how I loved her, young man. I couldn't wait until the day when we were finally married. We were going to have a church wedding with hundreds of guests and then buy a house near the falls." He shook his head sadly. "Things didn't quite work out that way."

"I have my share of blame to take for the way things turned out. If not for me going off to fight in that stupid war…" He trailed off.

"Something happened why you were at war?" I asked.

He glanced up at me for a second, not answering my question. He sighed and finally picked up the beer bottle. He twisted the top off and took an enormous drink.

"Everyone wanted to go to war back then." He told me. "The soldiers were gods. They were fighting for this great arsenal of democracy we live in. Whenever you went to the movies and saw the newsreels you saw our fabled soldiers fighting those godless Krauts and Japs. You can't imagine how glorious they made war look."

I nodded. I could well remember how it had been during the Gulf War (or how it was going to be). You tell people enough that this war is worth fighting and that the soldiers are gods, they start to believe it. If it worked in the cynical nineties I could imagine how well it worked in the comparatively naive forties.

"Even when people I knew," Mr. Blackmore went on, "Started coming back crippled or burned, with arms or legs missing, even when I'd hear they had been killed and buried over there, it still didn't dissuade me. I wanted to go. I thought I wanted to go more than I wanted to stay and start my life with Mary. After all, Mary would still be waiting for me when I got back, wouldn't she?

"When I was a senior all of my buddies started enlisting. You could do that at seventeen if you had your parent's permission. So I asked my Dad if I could go and he let me." He shook his head. "To this day I still don't understand it. He let me drop out of school and go to war. I'd never seen him as proud of me as he was the day I asked him if I could. We went down to the recruiting office together and we signed the papers. I went through all of the induction physicals and testing and finally they gave me my ship off date. I raised my hand and swore an oath and I was a soldier.

"I wanted to get married before I left but Mary's parents wouldn't let her. They gave me all kinds of reasons why she couldn't. All kinds of reasons but the real one. Mary's Dad had been in World War I, a combat soldier. He knew what I was in for. He didn't want his daughter being a war widow at fifteen or sixteen.

"So we promised we'd marry as soon as I got back home. We promised we'd write to each other. We promised." He sighed. "And off I went. Of course merely being in the war wasn't enough for me. Oh no, I had to volunteer for the most dangerous job I could think of; the airborne infantry. Here was a division that had been known to lose more people in routine training than some regular infantry divisions lost in combat. That was for me. After all, when you're seventeen, you don't think you can die, right?"

I nodded solemnly at his words, remembering my own youth the first time around and remembering my feelings of immortality when I'd returned. Feelings that Richard Fairview had ended with a sweep of his knife.

"They took me of course." He went on. "I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. By my eighteenth birthday in late April of 1944, I was at a base in Southern England, training for the invasion of France."

"D-Day." I said, looking at him. I knew that the 82nd had been pummeled on D-Day and on many operations after it. This man had lived through all of that somehow.

He nodded. "Yeah, I was there. I'm coming to that."

"All the time I was in basic and in airborne training, Mary and I wrote letters back and forth. We told each other we loved one another. We promised to be true. I even wrote her love poems and put them at the bottom of each letter. I told her that I missed her and that I couldn't wait to get back so we could have that church wedding. Her letters said the same; she even used to tell me whom she was going to invite to the wedding and who she wasn't. You know how women are?"

Before I could answer that he looked at me sharply. "Oh yeah. You do."

I decided silence was the best answer to that comment. After a moment he went on.

"The rumors about losses in training turned out to be true." He said. "We lost a lot of people before I ever left United States soil. Parachute technology wasn't quite what it is today back then. People would go down and splat when their chutes didn't open for whatever reason. That's what we called it: a splat. Once an entire plane crashed on take-off during a training exercise killing the whole damn platoon inside. Forty airborne troops killed in an instant before they ever got near the war. Gradually I began to realize that I wasn't immortal. If Joe Hecklemeyer, another seventeen year old in my company and a good friend of mine, could die in something so stupid as a training accident, then so could I. I guess I was lucky in a way. I came to the realization that I was in a dangerous business long before D-Day. Those poor slobs in the regular infantry didn't come to that conclusion until the ramps of their landing craft dropped down on the beach.

"The letters from Mary made my day every time I got them. I would read them and they would make me feel better about what I was in for. I was fighting for Mary, for Mary's parents, for the children that Mary and I would someday have. It gave me something to live for, something to hope for. Mary was my reason for coming home, do you understand?"

"Yes." I said. "I do."

He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, not wanting to believe me. But he could see in my eyes that I was not putting him on. "Somehow I think you do." He said.

"The letters from Mary followed me to England when I went, although they'd sometimes take a little longer to reach me. But when late May rolled around I suddenly stopped hearing from her. I didn't know why. I thought at first that it was a screw-up with the mail but other guys were getting letters from home. Some of them were even from Eastern Washington. If they were getting their letters, why wasn't I?

"Before I had a chance to become seriously concerned about this the rumors began to fly through the division. We would be invading France soon and the 82nd and the 101st were slated to be the first in. I began to sense that the time to earn my money was coming soon.

"In the late hours of June 5, we were ordered to assemble. We were told that Eisenhower had given the order and the invasion was on for the next morning. We were a little surprised by this since it had been raining and windy for the past three days and was raining even then, but we were assured that a brief break in the weather would give us a window. My platoon, the forty men I'd trained with since my assignment, a mixed group of combat veterans and green soldiers like me, were assigned as part of a battalion tasked to take a bridge and hold it until the regular infantry, invading from the Normandy coast, could advance to us.

"At 12:30 AM, the morning of June 6th, we were loaded into the C-47s and off we went. I was in the front of the plane, near the pilots, and therefore would be one of the last to jump. I was loaded down with my pack, my rifle, my parachute and a picture of Mary I carried with me for good luck. I simply stood there with the rest of them, waiting for the signal. Finally it came. One by one we walked to the rear of the plane and jumped out, our static lines pulling open our chutes for us. Just before I went I took one last look at Mary's face, gave the picture a kiss, and then stowed it in my pack. Out I went into the night.

"There were five planes in our group and we were supposed to be dropped five miles from our objective. Our rally point was a clearing along the river. From there we were supposed to march in and assault the bridge, taking it by surprise." He snorted in disgust. "Apparently the lead pilot of our group was a little TOO good at his job. He dropped us right over the bridge itself. A bridge that was guarded by anti-aircraft guns and spotlights, a couple of tanks, and a company of German infantry with heavy and light machine guns."

"Jesus." I whispered.

"Jesus is right." He answered, drinking from his beer again. "They slaughtered most of us before we even hit the ground. People I knew intimately, people I'd trained with, my commanding officers, other greenies like me, were shot out of the air by flak shells and machine guns as we floated down. The spotlights would hit a group as they descended and tracers would arc up, blowing them to pieces. As I came down, near the rear of the group, I was forced to watch this in horror, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I saw hundreds of flashes from the ground as they shot us out of the sky like clay pigeons at a skeet range. Well over half of us were dead by the time our feet hit the earth. Most of our company that lived through this came down around the bridge. They were shot as soon as they landed, most of them before they could even get a shot off. Some of them drowned when they landed in the river. Some got hung up in the trestles of the bridge and were picked off there.

"I landed in a swampy area about three hundred yards from the bridge. It was dark where I came down and I got out of my parachute as quick as I could. Five other soldiers, others that had jumped with me from the fronts of the planes, joined me. Only one of us had combat experience, a sergeant from one of the other planes. He ordered us towards the bridge although even then he must have known it was hopeless. The machine gun fire had died down and had been replaced by the sound of rifles firing single shots. German rifles.

"By the time we got there the Germans had already killed everybody who'd landed near them. There were bodies everywhere, nearly all of them connected to the black parachute harness. German soldiers were walking around putting bullets in the bodies of those that were still moving. As I watched, a German soldier, obviously an officer, gave an order and a platoon of them began moving towards us.

"We bugged out as fast as we could, heading for our rally point since there was nowhere else to go. When we got there we found that well over half of our battalion had met a similar fate. Some were dropped in a swamp and drowned, some had been dropped in the middle of a town near the bridge and had been massacred as my company had. We had a mixed group of people from six or seven different companies with the task of taking a bridge that had already been alerted to our presence.

"The new commander of the battalion, a Captain who was the most senior officer there, ordered us to begin marching. We did.

"On the march to it all I could think about was Mary. I had love waiting for me when I got home. All I had to do was live through this war and I could claim what was mine. We hit the bridge at about 3:00 AM, going up against soldiers that were waiting for us. It was a vicious fight that lasted nearly an hour. The machine guns and the tanks cut down scores of us. Finally we pushed them away from the bridge and destroyed the tanks. When we finally stood on that bridge and started to dig in we were less than a quarter of what was originally tasked to take it. Somehow through all of that I'd lived. I didn't even have a scratch on me. I was years older than I'd been a few hours before, but I was alive.

"We were counter-attacked twice that night by German reinforcements. We fought them off each time but lost more and more people each time. We held that bridge for three days, all the time not knowing if we were fighting a hopeless battle, not knowing if the invasion had gone forward as planned or if it had been thrown back into the sea by Rommel's beach defenses. We held on and I thought of Mary and what was waiting for me when I got home; love and marriage and a family. I had to live, I simply had to.

"Finally, on June 9th at about three o'clock, our relief came. Regular infantry pushed forward from the beach and I'm ashamed to say that we actually fought a ten-minute battle with them before the both of us figured out what was going on. Ten people were killed in that friendly battle. But we were relieved. They took charge of the bridge and we, those of us that were left, were escorted back to safety. I was alive, for the time being anyway.

"The beachhead expanded and our troops finally broke out of Normandy. Understandably the mail was a little slow getting to us but as I waited at base camp day after day I figured that when the mail finally DID get through, there would have to be a letter from Mary in it. She'd never gone this long without writing before.

"When it finally got there I was handed three letters. Two of them were from my parents but one had Mary's handwriting on the front. I ripped it open before I even left the mail line. It was dated May 28th, 1944."

He gazed meaningfully at me. "To this day I still have the entire text of that letter memorized."

"A dear John letter?" I asked.

He sighed. "Dear Jack." He recited. "This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write in my life but I feel that I owe you an explanation. I know that we said we would love each other forever and that we would be married when you returned from the war. But we've been apart for a long time and I have grown up since you've left. I've grown up enough to realize that what I thought I wanted when I was fifteen is not really what I wanted. You're one of the sweetest, most understanding men I've ever met in my life but, unfortunately I've found true love in another while you've been gone. Bob Simpson and I have been spending a lot of time together lately and I've realized that it is he that I am in love with. I hate to give you this news while you are away at the war and it seems so impersonal to write it in a letter instead of telling you face to face but the fact is that I must tell you. Bob and I are in love and I feel that we will be getting married soon.

When you return from wherever you are Bob and I will most likely be married. I felt that I owed you this letter and I am truly sorry that I led you on before you left. Hoping you understand and with sincerest apologies, Mary."

He stared at me angrily. "YOU," He said, "Are Bob Simpson. And this time you're after my daughter instead of my wife. But this time you won't have her."

I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "Tell me about Bob Simpson." I said.

"What's to tell?" He asked. "He's you. Why should I have to tell you about the kind of person you are?"

"Obviously," I said, ignoring his categorization of me, "Mr. Simpson didn't marry your wife."

"Of course he didn't!" Mr. Blackmore yelled. "Mary was a good-looking, confused girl who's intended was away fighting the war. He wasn't interested in Mary's love. He was interested in her body!"

"Tell me about him." I repeated.

He swallowed the last of his beer and set the empty down on the table. "Do you have another?" He asked.

Wordlessly I got up, retrieved the empties and carried them to the kitchen. I tossed them into the garbage can and retrieved two more from the refrigerator. I carried them back to the living room and handed one to Mr. Blackmore. He popped it open and took a drink.

"Tell me about him." I said again, opening my own beer.

He sighed. "Bob Simpson was one of those kids that was real popular in school. He always said the right thing to whoever was talking to him, always said whatever that person wanted to hear. He was like a commission salesman, in fact that's what he became later on in life, selling used cars down at Zed Viermore's car lot. Did real well at it too.

"He was two years ahead of me in school. He graduated in 1942, when the war was really gearing up but he didn't enlist in the service. Oh no, not Bob. He stayed at home and took over the jobs that those who left to fight had vacated. He seemed to have no interest in going off to fight and the men in the town used to make fun of him, call him names about this but Bob paid them no heed. Bob had a high lottery number in the draft and just counted on the fact that the war would probably be over before they ever got around to sending him off.

"Bob you see, had discovered a situation that he could take to his advantage. He'd found that with the war going on there was a distinct shortage of men his age around while there was a distinct advantage to the amount of women that were lonely and scared. He used to make friends with them and eventually seduce them, leaving them like yesterday's trash once he got what he wanted from them. The same thing that YOU apparently discovered."

I had nothing to say to him. I couldn't deny what he was accusing me of.

"To tell you the truth, I used to envy Bob before I shipped off. It never occurred to me that he would one day be after MY girl and you couldn't help but be impressed by someone who could have the experiences that he was having. He never told anyone what he was doing, mind you, he was very discreet about it, but we all knew all the same. He did it with married women twice his age whose husbands were off in Europe or Japan. He did it with the fiances of younger men or even their wives after their husband's had shipped out. God knows how many he did but it was a lot. Some of them, usually the older ones, knew it was just a physical thing, a replacement until their husbands came home, but the younger ones sometimes fell in love with him. And he never tried to convince them that was a bad thing either. He broke more hearts than can probably be counted during World War II, marking off those he'd conquered on a little list somewhere."

"While I was off in England preparing to drop into France and witness the majority of my company getting slaughtered, Bob turned his attention to Mary. And why not? She was a beautiful, auburn-haired girl in the prime of her life. He worked on her for nearly a month, at first befriending her and then finally making her fall in love with him, all the time pretending he was in love with her. That was the thing back then you see. A girl would never consent to sex before marriage if she didn't think the guy was in love with her. There was no casual sex like there is these days. If you did the unthinkable and had sex before marriage, it damn sure meant you were going to get married soon. So that was Bob's scheme, he would turn on the charm and make them think he intended to marry him, he would make them think they were so in love that sex wouldn't seem like a big deal since they were going to get married eventually anyway.

"That's what he did to Mary. He seduced her over the space of about a month and finally got what he wanted from her. He took her virginity from her one night in his apartment building after telling her he loved her and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

"The next day, thinking that she was in love, thinking that she'd found what she wanted from him, she wrote me that letter.

"Bob continued to have sex with her for about a month, as much as he could get away with. When she finally started trying to pin down a date for the wedding, when she started asking too much about when she could tell her parents about the announcement, he dumped her. Of course being the person he was he had a speech already pre-planned. He gave it to her, telling her that he'd THOUGHT he'd been in love with her but that it had been simple youthful exuberance. She left his apartment that day knowing she'd been destroyed, knowing that she'd lost everything. She never even wrote me again after that. We never even communicated through the rest of the war.

"I jumped out of airplanes time and time again before Germany finally surrendered in April of 1945. I helped take bridgeheads, railheads, and every other kind of head in advance of the infantry troops. Friends were shot down left and right until I stopped making friends. I even jumped across the Rhine itself just before the end of the war. I didn't care whether I lived or died anymore. Mary was gone. What more did I have to live for?

"Somehow I made it to the end. A bullet or an artillery fragment never had my name on it. I came home in October of 1945 to Spokane to find my life destroyed, my hopes shattered by Bob Simpson."

He grinned a little. "Sometimes there is justice in the world. When I got home I found that someone like me had been there before me. A young man my age by the name of Jeff Zand had received a similar letter while he was fighting the Japanese. Jeff got himself a million dollar wound on Okinawa, shot in the knee, and they sent him home. His first act upon getting back was to find himself a pistol and shoot Bob Simpson to death in his apartment. He shot him twelve times, having to reload his pistol once in order to do it. Jeff was given the electric chair of course and he sat in it less than a year later. His last words were to the effect that it had been worth it."

"Not too many people turned out for Bob's funeral I heard, but there was damn near a thousand at Jeff's. I was one of 'em. I gave his coffin a sharp salute before they lowered it into the ground."

"But you and your wife did eventually marry." I said.

"Eventually." He told me, nodding. "I knew what Bob was like you see so I knew long before I got back that she wasn't gonna be Mrs. Simpson. But she was tainted you see, I couldn't take her back and she couldn't ask. Both of our lives were destroyed by what Bob had done to her. You see, despite his discretion, everyone knew what he was doing and everyone knew whom he was doing it to. It amazed me how so many women fell for him with the reputation he had; hell, even Mary had to have heard the rumors before she started up with him. He must've been one smooth talker indeed.

"Back then it was unthinkable for a woman to get caught having sex without benefit of the clergy. Once people knew she'd done such a thing, Mary was little more than a slut in everyone's eyes." He swallowed. "Mine included. An unfair way to think I agree, but that's the way it was. I couldn't have anything to do with her after that. I still loved her and I still thought about her, especially late at night when my hand found my organ, but I couldn't be with her because of what she'd done.

"The same applied to everyone else. Oh, men approached her all of the time but not with marriage in their minds. Mary learned her lesson from the first time and always sent them away but the damage, as they say, had been done. She got older and older and remained a maiden; a miserable maiden, living with her Mom and Dad.

"Myself, I tried to date some other girls and more than one of them hinted that marriage might be in the cards if I played them right, but none of them ever made me feel the way Mary had. None of them could compare to the way I'd felt when I was with Mary.

"The solution to the problem was so simple. It was staring me in the face the whole time but the thinking I'd been raised with kept me from seeing it.

Instead of finding a replacement for Mary, I needed Mary. In late 1950 I finally came to my senses. I decided to throw all of the unkind words, all of the nasty talk about her to the side. I went and found her and asked her if she would go out with me.

"She did and it was less than two weeks before we were talking about marriage. Of course everyone I knew told me I was making a mistake. My own parents told me to stay away from that slut. But for the first time in my life I stopped listening to what other people said and listened to what my heart said. The happiest day of my life was the day that Mary and I went down to the courthouse and said our vows to each other."

"As it turned out, I made the right decision back then. Mary and I have been happy together ever since. Many of the same friends who shunned me for marrying "a slut" ended up divorced from the "respectable women" that they married. To this day I still love her deeply and she still loves me and I sometimes still curse myself for wasting all those years.

"The only sour spot in our marriage was our inability to have children. We tried and tried and nothing happened. When we finally went to see the doctor he found that I had an unnaturally low sperm count. We were told that conception was damn near impossible and that we might want to consider adoption.

"Well, we decided against adoption for various reasons and just went about our lives. And then in 1966, long after we'd given up any hope for kids, Mary got pregnant." He snorted. "That brought back all of the slut talk of course. If there's one thing people love to do more than have sex it's talk about where everyone else is getting theirs. They figured Mary's "true colors" had come out once again. How else could she be pregnant? There was never any doubt in my mind about Nina's paternity. I live with Mary and I know her better than anyone on Earth. She could no more cheat on me than she could sprout a set of wings and fly.

"So you can see two things from this conversation young man," He told me. "One, why I dislike you so much and why I won't let you around my daughter. Two, why I care so much for my daughter and what happens to her. Nina's led a sheltered life with us, I'll be the first to admit it. It wasn't helped that she had a lisp as a child. Kids used to make fun of her, call her ugly, treat her like dirt because she was a little different." He shook his head sadly. "Kids can be mighty cruel you know. We sent her to speech therapy and got rid of the lisp but, like with her mother, the damage had been done.

"That's why we were so taken with you when you first started to come over. You seemed such a nice young man, intelligent, and you seemed to like Nina for who she was. You took us right in boy, right in."

"I do like Nina for who she is." I told him slowly. "You're wrong about me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Are you saying that you were not taking advantage of young girls at school? Are you saying that you didn't sleep with an engaged girl right before Nina saw you for who you were?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I did all of that and more. I discovered a near foolproof way to get girls into bed with me and I abused it. I didn't realize that there were consequences to my actions, I was selfish and self-centered, and my behavior was, in fact, despicable."

"I appreciate your honesty." He told me, somewhat taken aback by my words, "But how can you sit there, after telling me what you just did, and try to say that you are not like Bob Simpson?" He asked. "Maybe I'm missing something here."

"You are." I said. "You're missing something big Mr. Blackmore. You're missing the fact that I've never treated Nina like that. I've never tried anything with Nina, not even once. Nina is my friend. That was what she started out being and that was what our relationship has always been based upon. Your daughter is the best friend I've ever had in my life and that friendship has evolved into love. When we had our fight and she stopped seeing me, what did she tell you was the reason?"

"Because you were sleeping with every girl at school!" He almost yelled. "I thought we'd established that."

"Did she tell you that she loved me?" I asked next.

"Of course." He answered, exasperated. "That's what guys like you do to…"

"No Mr. Blackmore." I cut in. "That's where you're getting locked up. You're comparing what happened between me and Nina to what happened between your wife and this Simpson guy. But that's not what happened at all."

"Because she came to her senses before it could." He said.

"No." I shook my head. "She stopped seeing me because she loved me and I wasn't returning her love. She was in love with me during the period I was sleeping with all of these girls and I was in love with her but I didn't realize it. I didn't know that you could love someone you were friends with. By the time I realized it she had gotten fed up with my other activities. She'd gotten fed up with the pain that comes with watching someone you love play with someone else. She left because she figured that I would never love her and she would never have a relationship with me, not because I was trying to sleep with her.

"Once she was gone I realized my mistake. I realized how much I loved her and I felt physical pain that she wasn't with me anymore. When she ignored me at school it hurt Mr. Blackmore, more than I ever would have thought possible. I stopped my activities with other girls and I started concentrating on getting Nina back." I held up my hand so he could see it. "You see this? I drove a car with a stickshift all the way across town with this hand bleeding from a scalpel wound just so I could have a chance to talk to her, to say my piece to her. Does that sound like the sort of thing Mr. Simpson would have done? I love her Mr. Blackmore, I want to be with her always, do you understand? I feel the way about her that you felt about your wife when you went off to the war."

This comparison upset him. "You have no idea how I felt about my wife!" He yelled. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" I asked calmly. "And why is that? Is it because I'm so young?"

He didn't answer, simply looked at me.

"You were sixteen when you fell in love with your wife, weren't you?" I asked him. "About the same age that I am now, right? And your wife was only what? Fourteen, fifteen? A little younger than Nina is now. Why is it so hard for you to accept that your daughter might know what love is? Or me?"

"I just can't accept this!" He told me. "I can't accept your story that you're really a nice young man who's merely trying to court my daughter in the old fashioned way. You have a gift young man. Like you told me, you're a good listener and you give off a vibe that tells people you can be trusted. You do this so well that I came in here and told you a story that I've never told anyone before. Me, who hated your guts, told you this story." He shook his head. "I can see why the girls go for you and I can see why Nina fancies herself to be in love with you. But you're a scoundrel all the same. You use your gift for your own pleasure and I don't want my daughter to be one of your playthings."

I took a sip of beer again, trying to think my way through what he'd just said. Finally I asked him, "Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?"

"What?" He asked.

"Do you remember what it was like to be sixteen years old and to have hormones surging through you day and night. Do you remember being able to think of nothing but sex? What it felt like? When you'd get it? Who you'd get it with?"

He swallowed nervously and then nodded. "Yes, I do."

"That's what I'm going through right now." I told him. "About two years ago I figured out a way to seduce girls easily. Never mind how I did it, but I did. I found that I could have sex pretty much with whatever girl I wanted to. Now put yourself into the shoes of a fifteen year old and ask yourself if you would be able to disregard that gift if you had it."

"Of course not." He admitted. "But…"

"Nina was never a part of that." I told him again. "I never tried to use this on Nina. Nina is my friend, do you understand? Even now, when I'm deeply in love with her, I do not use this gift on her. To do so would cheapen the relationship, would make it less than it really is. I have done nothing more than kiss your daughter Mr. Blackmore and I've only done that at her initiation.

"But that's not all. I've given up this gift for Nina. I don't do it anymore. I have the same hormones surging through my body, I have the same desires as any other sixteen going on seventeen-year-old. I could pick up that phone right now and in less than an hour I could have some girl over here that would fuck my brains out. But I don't do it. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because of Nina." I said. "I love her Mr. Blackmore. I feel about her the same way you felt about your wife. I want to marry her some day, do you understand? I don't know how to make this any more plain to you than that, but that is the fact."

He set his empty beer bottle down on the table and sighed. "Like I said young man," He told me. "You SOUND very convincing. But how can I take the chance that you're what you say you are? How can I gamble with my daughter's life?"

"You're not really doing that." I said, finishing off the last of my own beer. "Nina is seventeen. She's an adult in all but legal status. She's decided that I am the boy for her. She loves me as much as I love her. One way or the other we're going to be together. One way or the other I'm going to marry her someday, and someday soon I'd imagine. You can try to keep us apart but it would be futile. Once she turns eighteen, and that happens in five more months, she can do whatever she wants to do. You can threaten her and try to intimidate her to stay away from me if you want. If you do that, one of two things will happen. She'll either listen to you and dump me or listen to me and dump you. Either way she is going to be filled with resentment. If she goes with me, she'll resent me for taking her away from her parents, if she goes with you she's going to resent you for taking her away from me. With either equation she loses.

"I'm not asking you to open your arms to me and welcome me into your family just yet. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that Nina has a say in this matter. Right now she's saying she wants to be with me. The same equation holds true here. If you allow it, or at least accept it, one of two things will happen. One, I'll dump her at some point in the future and break her heart. That's something I can do with or without your consent however. If it's with your consent, at least you'll have the luxury of saying, "I told you so" to her, right? At least you won't lose your daughter in the process. Or we can continue our relationship to the point where I know it's heading. We can get married someday, Nina can get her medical degree and I can get my business degree and we can have a pleasant relationship with our in-laws on both sides. That's what I want Mr. Blackmore.

"Nina's a big girl, let her make her own decision, for better or for worse, on her own."

He stared for a long time, his brain working over what I'd said. I hoped I'd given him the logic he needed to make the right decision. I had every intention of pursuing Nina to the conclusion of our relationship but, as I'd pointed out, the road would be much bumpier if decided to keep up the resistance.

"I'll let her see you." He finally said quietly.

It took a minute for that to sink in. When it did, a grin spread across my face. "Thank you." I told him.

"I don't know WHAT I'm going to tell Mary, but I find you make a good argument." He smiled a little. "I guess my little girl is growing up some and I guess it's time to let her spread her wings, for better or for worse as you say."

"I agree." I told him.

"But if you hurt her." He warned, pointing a finger at me. "I'll make what Jeff Zand did to Bob Simpson look like a mother's kiss compared to what I'll do to you."

I chuckled. "I'll consider myself duly warned." I answered.

Al Steiner-July 30, 1999 Chapter 11 ->

Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad Bill." He said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snowbank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" She yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about." She smiled. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." Her smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said. "It's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your Mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision." She admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She smiled and kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet." She said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" She asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your Dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about." I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" She asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it." I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose." She said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided that it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house; just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb.

There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go." She replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date." She told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No." She agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom," She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow." I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry." I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have NEVER fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't." I said softly.

"I couldn't Bill." She told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her. "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?" She asked.

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your Dad." I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart Nina. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your Mom and your Dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?

"Of course." She answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble." I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your Dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your Mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better Bill." She told me.

"I do my best." I told her. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right." She answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a Black Angus restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of "War Games". The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen "War Games" before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," She whispered in my ear. "Are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" She asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No Nina." I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why…"

"Then why won't you touch them?" She asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes." She told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think…"

"No you didn't." She breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked it's way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh Bill." She whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh." Was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie." She commented breathlessly.

"Yeah." I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house.

Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We exchanged "I love you's" and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on a BTO album that I'd found in my Dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina." I protested playfully, not pulling away from her. "We're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" She asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way." I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found it's way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Her's showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some REAL studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of." She told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough." I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterword, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples." She said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all." I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know." She answered, "But I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you." I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right." She answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." She said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later." She whispered, licking at my lips. "Your Dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing." She told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away." She said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that." He told me. "But I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that Bill?" He asked.

"Get into pizza delivery." I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be." I said, "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is NOT charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting Bill." He said. "But you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I NOT charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahh." I said. "That's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay Bill." He told me patronizingly. "Tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple." I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people that are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people that would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour that the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza.

That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice Bill." He said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that." I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street.

A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.

Dad too began investing. Like Tracy, once he knew the source of my information he had no problem acting upon it. He diverted all of the money that he had going into savings into the computer stocks. He also freed up some more money from Mom's paycheck and added that to it. When I explained the ramifications of the big play that was soon to come he became very enthusiastic, diverting every spare penny into the investments. Mom questioned this a little but Dad convinced her that I knew what I was doing without actually telling her how he knew this. Since she had seen me obsessively studying all aspects of business for the last two years she had no problem accepting the fact that my foresight was based only on my own common sense.

My new schedule did cut down on my time with Nina on the weekdays. Occasionally she would come over to my house after work and we'd spend a little time together either downstairs or in my room. These were nice times; all times were nice when I was with her, but there wasn't much of an atmosphere for intimacy. Even if my door was closed it felt decidedly weird making out while my parents were home. The most we ever managed was a few deep kisses and a slight dance of tongues.

The weekends however, were now completely free since I no longer had to work on Saturday and Sunday nights. Our ski trips became longer. We would head out early in the morning and drive to resorts further and further away from what we were used to. We trekked all the way up to the very northern fringes of the Idaho panhandle or to the western portions of Montana. We loved everything about these trips; the loading of the equipment in the frigid early morning air, the long drive as we shared coffee from my thermos, the standing in lines waiting for the lifts, the time in the lodge, but especially the long, tired drives home. We would switch off the driving chores but often as not, Nina would end up curled up on my shoulder as we approached Spokane, fast asleep, a contented smile on her face.

The ski trips are special memories of special times but we could not do them every weekend. Sometimes the weather would intrude upon our plans but usually finances did. Skiing is an expensive hobby and most of my money was tied up in my stocks, either growing with latex for college or growing with computer technology for my big move. But having fun does not necessarily have to cost money. Some weekends we would just go ice skating on the frozen lake, or we would take in a movie, or we would just hang around my house. We were in love and we didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

As the weeks went by Nina's complexion cleared up again, leaving her soft face unmarred. The pimples she'd had went nearly out of my mind. Her boobs continued to be sore for about a week and that too went away. Unfortunately I wasn't given much opportunity to touch them.

In late February we took a ski trip to western Montana and enjoyed ourselves so much that the sun was setting before we packed up and headed home. Nina volunteered to drive the first leg back and before she even got the car back onto I-90 I was fast asleep beside her, my hand resting on her knee.

The sensation of the car coming to a stop woke me some time later. I opened my eyes and saw that complete darkness had fallen outside. The stars were out and shining with a brilliance that can only be experienced at high altitude. Nina had pulled into a turnout beside the road, crunching over the gravel and finally coming to a stop behind a snowbank. From the other side the sound of traffic could be heard passing on the interstate.

"Where are we?" I asked, yawning, looking around outside. My ears popped as I yawned.

She turned off the headlights and pitch-blackness resulted, making the stars shine even brighter.

"We're in Idaho." She told me. "Up near the summit outside of Coeur d'Alene."

"Nina." I admonished. "You shouldn't have driven so far. Why didn't you wake me up sooner."

"I was okay." She told me, leaning back in her seat. "You looked like you were enjoying your little nap." She giggled. "You're cute when you're asleep. My eyes were starting to get a little tired though so I thought I'd rest. It's pretty here, isn't it? You can see all the stars."

"Yes." I agreed, looking around. It was a very pleasant spot. Even the sound of passing traffic added just the right amount of white noise. "Why don't you let me drive for a while. We're awfully late."

"I called Daddy from the ski resort before we left." She said. "He knows I'm going to be late. Why don't we just sit for a while? Enjoy the night."

I smiled, putting my arm around her and drawing her close. "If I didn't know better." I told her. "I'd think you were trying to put a move on me."

She snuggled up to me. "And what would you do if I was?" She challenged.

I shrugged. "Call the cops?"

"I don't think they'll hear you from here." She said.

"Well," I answered. "I guess the next best thing would be to give in."

We kissed, lightly at first, reacquainting ourselves with the taste of each other. Her arms went around my neck and mine went around her waist, inside of her coat. Before long our passion heated up and we were exchanging deep soul kisses, our tongues dueling back and forth. The gearshift and the parking brake lever were getting in the way so I finally pulled her over the top of them so she was sitting on my lap, facing me.

"I don't know about this." She said, bending her neck uncomfortable against the roof of the car.

"Here." I said, reaching down with my right hand and grabbing the seat lever. "Is this better?"

With a pull the seat reclined backwards until it was resting against the back seat. This put me almost horizontal and put Nina's body comfortably against me.

"Worlds better." She whispered, bringing her lips to mine.

We kissed contentedly for an unknown amount of time, our libidos shifting into high gear while the idling car engine kept us warm. The spring from the seat bit into my back and my left leg fell asleep because of her weight pushing down on my thigh but I was in heaven all the same. When she began rubbing her hips back and forth, putting pressure on my straining erection I groaned, letting my mouth find her neck.

"They're not sore anymore." She whispered to me.

"What?" I asked, kissing her earlobe and pulling her waist harder into me.

"My boobs." She whispered back, nipping at my ear. "They're not sore anymore."

Not needing to be hit over the head with a hammer, I slid my hands under her shirt. Her coat got in the way of this process so she impatiently sat up and ripped it off her body, tossing on the driver's seat. When she leaned back down the going was easier and my hands found her bare flesh.

"I like your hands on me." She said softly, kissing my eyelid.

"And my hands like to be on you." I assured her.

As I felt her under her clothing she sat up a little. I don't know who initiated the action but suddenly my arms pushed upward, hiking her sweater and her bra up to her shoulders. Her bare stomach and breasts were now exposed to me although it was too dark to see them in any detail. But my hands found them and began to touch them softly, feeling them unencumbered for the first time. As I've mentioned before, they were small, each hand covered a breast completely, but they were firm and very erotic to touch, the skin warm and moist from aroused perspiration. She moaned as I slid my palms back and forth across them, as my fingers gently touched and flicked her erect nipples. Her chest heaved as she panted with sexual excitement and the knowledge that she was showing a secret part of her body to me for the first time.

I let my hands slide from her breast to her armpits. I tugged gently upward and she slid forward. With a pull of my arms she leaned forward into me and her left breast was suddenly against my face, the nipple pushing into my cheek. I slid my tongue out and licked around the perimeter, finally touching the nipple, feeling the rough ridges of it. Nina jerked as if shocked at the contact.

"Oh Bill." She moaned.

I teased the nipple for the briefest instant and then gently sucked it into my mouth, suckling it as a baby would. It tasted divine against my tongue. I had sucked many a nipple in my two lives but never had one sent tingles through my body as this one did.

Nina's hands went to the back of my head and pulled me tighter against her chest. She moaned and cooed as I suckled, her fingers running spastically through my hair. I switched to the other nipple, bathing it with my saliva, my hand cupping the first. Nina's hips began moving in an involuntary rhythm on my abdomen as sensations that she was unfamiliar with assaulted her body.

I switched breasts again, allowing my hands to drop down to her stomach and flanks where my fingers slid slowly up and down upon the soft, sensitive flesh there. I could feel the gooseflesh that was covering her body beneath my fingers, hard, miniscule bumps of overheated skin.

And then suddenly she was pulling back from me, her fingers pushing off my shoulders, her nipple popping free of my mouth and leaving a trail of my saliva from it.

I looked up in confusion, my own arousal near a fever pitch. What was wrong?

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, near tears, her body trembling all over.

"What's the matter?" I asked breathlessly, still tasting the aftereffects of her flesh in my mouth.

"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.

"Nina?" I asked gently.

"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."

"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!

"You must hate me." She said.

"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.

"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."

She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.

"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."

She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."

We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.

"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."

She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.

Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.

It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.

"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"

I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.

"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.

I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.

"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."

I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.

He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."

"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.

"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"

"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.

"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.

I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.

"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."

"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."

"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.

"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."

"Good for you." I said, wondering if he really was a shoe-in like he claimed. It was possible. If he'd made a good impression as an ROP student, and he would have had to make a damn good one after the marijuana incident, the word would filter upward to the powers-that-be in the department. The powers-that-be would see to it that his name was among the next hiring group. The pitfall of this was that the same thing worked in reverse too.

My Mom and Dad, as I've mentioned before, loved to go to parties with their co-workers. It didn't matter the occasion, if there was a party, they were there. One such party was for the opening day of baseball each year. They were in the habit of traveling to one of Mom's fellow worker's house, a woman whose husband possessed a large screen television, for opening day each year. In truth my Dad cared even less about baseball than Mom did. It was simply an excuse to get together with friends, drink lots of beer, eat fancy appetizers and drink more beer.

They left the house at 9:30 that morning and I would have been surprised to see them home anytime before 6:00 that night, riding in a cab of course. Nina and I decided to take advantage of the situation. She came over at 10:00 that morning and by 11:00 we were making out on the couch, our passion accompanied by the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, one of my Dad's albums.

Since that day I'd put my mouth to her breasts we'd been very reserved in our affections. We kissed a lot but didn't tend to go much further than that, even if we were alone. Only once had my hands gone beneath her shirt since then and that had been only because she'd physically picked them up and put them there. I was determined not to push her too far too fast. As a result I was actually getting used to the sensation of blue balls.

But on this day Nina was extremely passionate. Her hands were feeling me all over. She slid them over my chest, under my shirt to my back, to my butt where she squeezed brazenly as our tongues dueled. She ordered me to feel her tits and I gladly put my hand beneath her shirt while my tongue continued it's exploration of her mouth.

As I felt and kissed her she suddenly pulled her mouth from mine. She looked at me, blushing furiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, worrying I'd gone too far again.

She licked her lips nervously and then said, "Wouldn't you like to take my shirt off?"

I stared at her, searching her eyes, trying to determine if she was doing this because SHE wanted to or because she thought I wanted to. I saw nothing but passion there, mixed with a little nervous anticipation.

"Yes." I said, stroking her face, feeling the heat coming from the aroused blush. "But are you sure you want me to?"

"Take it off." She told me. "Do to me what you did that night."

Surprised to find my own hands trembling I reached for the hem of her sweater. I lifted upwards and she raised her arms to allow me to pull it off. Her white bra was only a few shades lighter than the pale skin of her stomach, skin which had spent the winter firmly clad in clothing. The sight made my mouth water. I stroked the exposed flesh above her bra cups softly, raising goose bumps on her, and then let my fingers slide around to the back. We kissed as my digits began the process of unclasping her bra snaps.

In a moment I would see my beloved's bare breasts, a sight I'd fantasized about so many times.

The phone started to ring, shrill, annoying decibels, cutting through the air.

We broke our kiss and looked at each other, my fingers freezing in place.

"You gonna answer that?" She asked, pushing her chest into mine.

"Hell no." I said, shaking my head, leaning in to kiss her again.

We tried to re-establish the rhythm and the passion we'd just had but the telephone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I didn't attempt to take off her bra while the infernal noise was going on because I didn't want my first view of her breasts in the light of day to be marred by the distraction of a ringing telephone. I wanted to drink in the sight, to relish it, to assign the entire being of my concentration to it. How long could a telephone ring? I wondered. Don't most people give up after ten rings or so? If nobody answers after ten rings they can assume that nobody's home, right?

But not this person. That phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. We would pause at the end of each ring, relishing the brief silence, expecting that another one would not follow and that we could then get back to business. But after two seconds or so another ring would always shatter the calm of the living room. Finally our mouths broke apart.

"I'm ripping that fucking cord out of the wall." I told Nina, pushing away from her.

"Bill," She said, obviously as annoyed as I, "Why don't you just answer it? Whoever it is must have something important to say or they wouldn't have let it ring so long. Maybe there's some sort of emergency."

"They're gonna have an emergency if they don't have a damn good reason for this shit." I proclaimed.

I walked over to the phone and picked it up roughly, cutting it off in mid-ring. I put it to my ear. "What?!" I almost yelled.

There was a brief pause. Finally, "This is the AT and T operator. Will you accept a collect call from Tracy?"

Tracy? Goddam her! This had better be good. "Yes." I said shortly. "Put her on."

"Thank you." The operator said, probably sounding much huffier than her supervisor would have cared for.

"Bill?" Came my sister's voice hesitantly.

"Hi Tracy." I said impatiently, looking over at Nina, who was sitting on the couch in her bra, her nipples poking at the material. I could vaguely make out the shadow of her aureole through the cotton. My dick was throbbing with desire. This had better be good.

"Uh…" She said uncertainly. "Are Mom and Dad home?"

"No they're not." I said. "It's the first day of baseball." I knew that Tracy would need no further explanation than that.

"Oh yeah." She said, giggling, her tone telling me she knew damn well what day it was and that Mom and Dad wouldn't be home. "It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I told her. "So they're over at Janice and Ken's. You might try them tomorrow. Probably later would be better. They're bound to be hung over."

"Okay." She said. "Oh, did you hear about Cindy?"

This got my attention a little. "No." I said. "What about her?"

"I got a letter from her yesterday. Her professor boyfriend is divorcing his wife. Cindy has moved in with him. Can you believe it?"

"Actually I can." I answered. This news didn't surprise me in the least. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.

"She's dropping out of college too." Tracy added. "I guess she figures she got what she went there for."

"I guess she did." I replied, casting another glance at Nina, disheartened to see that her nipples were losing their erection. "Listen Tracy." I said.

"I was kind of in the middle of something."

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'll let you go and get back to it."

"Thanks." I said.

"Umm?" She said hesitantly. "There IS one thing I wanted to ask you while I had you on the line."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well," She said uncertainly. "The people that I hang out with here are having, well, a little baseball pool."

"A baseball pool?" I asked, exasperated. What the hell did she want to talk to me about this for?

"Yes." She answered. "For five bucks you can enter who you think will be in the World Series this year. If you're right, you win the pot in October."

"The World Series?" I asked, trying to glare through the phone.

"Yes." She said. "So I was wondering if maybe YOU could tell me who was going to be in the series this year? I know you have a real good head for this sort of thing Bill." She giggled knowingly.

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then cast a glance at Nina, who was looking at me expectantly, questioningly.

"Tracy," I told her honestly. "I don't have the slightest idea."

There was a long pause. Finally, pouting, "Bill, this doesn't hurt anything. How is this different than you taking advantage of stocks you know are going to go up? I could win twenty-five hundred bucks from this!"

"It doesn't Tracy." I said, lowering my voice a little so Nina couldn't hear. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She nearly screamed, pissed at my refusal to supply her with this information. "You've already lived through it! You know! You just don't want to tell me for some moralistic, bullshit reason."

The biting edge of her words cut through me like a knife, deflating my desire like a punctured balloon. "Tracy," I said carefully. "I really don't know. I'm not a baseball fan. I've never paid attention to baseball in my life, just like Dad. How the hell would I know who was in the series in 1984?"

"Because you've already been through it!" She cried. "You HAVE to know. You just don't want to tell me!"

"Tracy?" I asked, looking at Nina again, she was now definitely sensing that something was wrong. "Tell me who won the World Series in 1982."

"What?" She asked.

"You've already lived through it." I said, mocking her tone. "It's only been two years from your perspective instead of," I thought for a second, doing some quick mental addition, "Seventeen years from my perspective. So tell me, who won the series?"

"That's different!" She said desperately. "You're a boy. Boys know this shit!"

"This boy doesn't." I told her, feeling my own anger starting to rise now. "But let's put that aside. Let's ask you some girl shit. Who won best supporting actress in 1982?"

"What?" She asked, confused.

"You heard me." I whispered harshly. "That's girl shit if I've ever heard it. So who won it?"

There was silence on the line for a moment. "I don't know." She finally said.

"And I don't know who won the fucking World Series in 1984." I told her. "And if you call me back in October and give me the names of the two teams who are actually in the fucking thing, I still wouldn't know who won it. I don't watch baseball Tracy. I don't give a rat's ass about who was in it or who won it. You should know that. You're right, this information is harmless, and I would tell you if I knew, but I don't know. And I don't appreciate you screaming at me because of this. And I especially don't appreciate your indignant tone with me because of it."

The silence on the line was longer this time. "I'm sorry Bill." She finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Goddam right you shouldn't have." I said.

"I just thought that maybe…, well, you know."

"Tracy," I told her, calming a little. "You're going to be all right. You don't need to be so greedy. Isn't it enough that you're alive?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of our conversation took less than thirty seconds. When I hung up, Nina was looking at me quizzically.

"Your sister?" She asked carefully.

I nodded.

"You seemed mad at her." Nina said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle." I told her.

"Bill," She said softly. "What's wrong? You can talk to me about anything you know?"

"I know Nina." I answered. "And usually I do. But this is something of a family secret if you know what I mean."

"Like what my Dad told you?" She asked sharply.

"Kind of." I agreed. "But much more secret than that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She said, pouting a little.

The mood for the day was effectively broken. By the time my parents got home that evening Nina was long since at her house and I was long since releived of my testosterone by my own means. I spent the rest of the day with Mike, drinking some beer he'd managed to get hold of. It was fun but not as fun as what Tracy had interrupted.

It was late April when I went to Nina's house to pick her up one evening. It was Friday night and we had a date to go see the release of the movie 1984 based on the Orwell novel that had been the basis of the first conversation we had shared. I pulled to the curb at her house at 6:30 and stepped out of my car, heading for the front door.

I was no longer nervous about picking up Nina at home. The impasse with her parents was holding strong. Nina had told me that her parents had gone back to their usual relationship, as I'd predicted, but that I was never discussed in their household. It was taboo apparently. When she told them that she was going out with me they would give a small grunt in reply and question no further. That they weren't happy about her continued relationship with me was obvious but they never tried to stop her or talk her out of seeing me. She said they treated it as a phase she was going through, a phase that would eventually end. The fact that they still, after all this time, didn't trust me, that they still, after seeing the obvious happiness of their daughter, didn't trust my intentions, spoke volumes about how badly they'd been stung by the Bob Simpson episode. They really thought that I still intended to dump their daughter like a bag of garbage. All I could do was hope that someday they would come around. Didn't they realize what they were doing to Nina?

Because of this impasse, an unwritten set of rules had developed about my picking up Nina for dates. I did not enter their house or speak with them in any way. Nina would simply answer the door when I was expected and then leave upon my arrival. They, in turn, would be out of the room when I arrived, keeping us from even having to look at each other. I expected nothing different on this day. But something different was what I got.

I rang the doorbell and stood patiently, waiting for the door to swing open.

It didn't. I rang the doorbell again, pushing longer this time and finally was rewarded with the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and there stood Nina. She was wearing a robe tied tightly around her. Her hair was a frazzled mess, as if she'd gotten out of the shower and dried it but had not combed it. She most definitely didn't appear ready to go to the movies any time soon.

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, her voice worried. "I don't think I'm going to make it tonight. Daddy's sick."

"Sick?" I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She shook her head. "He says it's just the stomach flu but I don't think so. He was sitting in his chair after dinner and he started getting all fidgety. Then he started throwing up. He's all pale right now and sweaty and he looks like he's not breathing right."

"Sweaty?" I asked, feeling an instant return of my paramedic instinct. When people were sweaty for no good reason, something was usually very wrong. That in conjunction with "not breathing right" made me immediately concerned.

"Yes." Nina nodded. "I've seen people in the ER that look like he does now." She told me. "And usually they're very sick. I'm worried about him Bill. I've been trying to get him to let me take him to the hospital but he's being stubborn. He's scared, I can tell, but he won't go. I want to stay here in case something happens."

"Let me see him." I said suddenly.

"Bill," She shook her head. "I don't think…"

I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pushed past her and entered the Blackmore house for the first time in many months.

"Bill!" Nina protested.

"Where is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes scared, her own face pale. She pointed to the kitchen. "In the den." She said. "Through there."

"Come on." I told her, heading that way.

Mr. Blackmore's den was a room that had been built to house a bedroom. He had long since converted it to his own personal use. An oak, roll-top desk was the dominant piece of furniture. It sat against the far wall. It's surface was scattered with books containing lovingly placed stamps beneath plastic covers. On the wall above the desk a deer rifle sat in a rack. On either side of this were large racks taken from an elk and a deer. On a small love seat next to the desk was Mr. Blackmore.

"Jesus." I muttered, looking at him.

He looked worse than Nina had led me to believe. His skin was not merely pale but was gray and ashen. Sweat was glistening off of him, his shirt was damp with it. His mouth was open and he was breathing rapidly, seeming to struggle to get air in. His right arm was massaging his left shoulder.

"What are YOU doing here?" Mrs. Blackmore, who was sitting next to him, asked sharply.

I ignored her. "Mr. Blackmore." I told him, walking over. "You need to go to the hospital. Now."

He looked up at me. "Bill," He said, shaking his head. "I think you'd better leave. Sorry to have to postpone your little date." This last was said quite sarcastically.

I reached down and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"You will LEAVE this house immediately!" Mrs. Blackmore told me, ripping his hand away from mine.

"I know what I'm doing." I said forcefully, meeting her gaze. We stared for a second and she finally dropped her eyes.

I took his wrist back, finding his radial pulse. It was beating rapidly and irregularly, sometimes not pulsating for as long as six seconds. I noticed that when I could not feel the pulsations, Mr. Blackmore's breathing became more ragged at the same time. Though I did not have a cardiac monitor on me, I had a pretty good idea of why this was happening.

"Nina," I said. "Go call 911 and get an ambulance here."

"What?" Mr. Blackmore said. "I don't think…"

"Do it now." I told Nina calmly and with unmistakable command in my voice.

She gave a quick glance towards her father. "No Nina." He told her. "I'll be all right."

"Do it Nina." I said firmly. "Tell them he's having a heart attack."

Nina was convinced. She rushed to the phone. Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore were not. They called once after her but quickly realized it was futile. When she was gone they turned to me.

"How dare you come into this house and…" Mrs. Blackmore started.

"What do you think you're…" Mr. Blackmore started.

"Quiet, both of you!" I barked. It had the desired effect.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said, looking at him. "Are you having chest pain right now?"

"No." He told me. "Just some indigestion. She made some spicy food tonight and it didn't agree with me."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "Why are you rubbing your shoulder like that?"

"It's sore." He said. "What business is this…"

"Show me where your chest hurts." I told him. "Point with your finger."

Rolling his eyes upward he put a finger right in the middle of his chest. "Right here." He told me. "It's just indigestion."

"Indigestion doesn't hurt right there." I told him. "It hurts down here." I put my finger just under his rib cage. "And it doesn't radiate up to your left shoulder either. And it doesn't make you short of breath or sweaty. It doesn't make you throw up. And it most definitely doesn't make your pulse irregular. Have you ever had heart problems before?"

"No!" He said.

"You're having them now." I said. "You're having a heart attack Mr. Blackmore and a very dangerous one if I'm right about what I'm feeling in your pulse. You need to get to the hospital, now."

"What the hell do you know about it?" He asked angrily. "You're just a kid."

I smiled, gazing at him meaningfully. "We've had this conversation before." I said. "Do we need to rehash it? I think you're having a heart attack. Go to the hospital with the ambulance when it gets here. If I'm wrong, then you'll get to say I told you so."

Before he could answer Mary Blackmore spoke up. "Jack." She said softly. "Why don't you do what he says?"

I looked over at her in surprise. She was the last person in the world I expected to have as an ally in this thing. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. I think she knew that I was right and she was terrified that she was about to lose her husband. So terrified that she was even willing to listen to me.

"Listen to your wife Sir." I told him. "You want to see your grandkids someday don't you?"

"Okay." He nodded. "Once again young man, you've stated your case well."

"You can't die Mr. Blackmore," I told him. "Until you learn to get used to me dating your daughter. I won't allow it."

He actually chuckled at that.

From outside came the sound of approaching sirens.

Chapter 12

The paramedic and the EMT that showed up were both strangers to me. Probably they were people that had worked briefly in the field and then had gone onto other things; the fire department, the police department, nursing, medical school. They came in the door shortly after the fire engine crew had barged in. I was glad to see that the paramedic took Mr. Blackmore's condition as seriously as I did. I stood back and said nothing, feeling confidant he was in good hands.

While the paramedic went through the routine questioning, questions I was very familiar with, his partner hooked up the EKG machine. It was an older model of the device, a model I was unfamiliar with since it had been replaced long before my debut in the medical field, but the display was the same. I saw the rapid complexes of his normal heartbeat intermixed with frequent premature complexes; beats that were not perfusing much blood, beats that were the telltale sign of a very irritated heart. Worse still was the fact that sometimes Mr. Blackmore would have fifteen to twenty of these premature beats in a row. This was known as ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, in medical circles and it was very dangerous. It was, in fact, only a step above complete cardiac shutdown.

The paramedic, a young, blonde man whose hair was probably a little longer than was allowed, saw the display and tightened up almost inperceptively. He glanced at his partner for a moment and a look was passed between them; a look that the ordinary citizen would not have even noticed but which I was well versed in. It was a look that said "Holy Shit!".

"Set me up an IV." The paramedic told his partner calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal request. It wasn't. Usually IV's were not started on scene.

"Right." His partner nodded, going for their medical box.

"Put him on high flow oxygen." The paramedic told one of the firemen.

He went mechanically about the task of installing the IV line into Mr. Blackmore, speaking soothing words to him the whole time, telling him what he was going to be doing. On the other arm a fireman was taking his blood pressure. He shouted out the reading when he had it.

"Ninety-four over forty." He said.

The paramedic digested this, chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a second. That was not the greatest blood pressure in the world in relation to a cardiac event. Finally he plugged in the IV and taped it down.

He injected some lidocaine into the IV port and watched the display on the EKG. The lidocaine was supposed to numb the heart a little, making it less irritable and less likely to throw premature beats, go into V-tach, or, worst of all, go into fibrillation. The runs of V-tach slowed a little, becoming less frequent and shorter in duration when they did come. Not the best thing in the world but better. Hopefully it would be enough to deliver him to the hospital alive.

"Let's get him out of here." The paramedic said.

Mr. Blackmore was loaded up onto their gurney and rushed out of the house to the waiting ambulance. Mrs. Blackmore was placed in the passenger seat by one of the firemen. Another fireman climbed in the back with the paramedic.

Again this probably seemed routine to the average person and again it wasn't. A paramedic only took a fireman in with him when he thought that he might need an extra hand on the way to the hospital. In other words, when he thought there was a good possibility that CPR was going to need to be performed at some point. Runs of V-tach had a nasty tendency to degenerate into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.

"Bill," She asked me. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I hope so." I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"

She nodded and rushed into the house.

We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.

"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"

Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No." She said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."

"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.

She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."

I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.

It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.

He invited Nina's Mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain bespoke the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.

"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction." The doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."

"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.

"It's too early to tell." He said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."

"What do you mean?" She wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".

"Well," He explained. "A heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure.

"But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."

"There are?" She asked.

"Yes." He nodded. "There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."

"So he'll be okay?" She asked hopefully.

"With a little luck," He said, "Your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."

"When do you start?" She asked.

"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen…"

He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.

As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?

We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?

After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.

"Thank you." Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.

"No cream, one sugar." I said. "Just the way you like it."

She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"

I smiled. "Nina told me." I answered. "She takes it the same way."

She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.

Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.

"We think we cleared the obstruction." He told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."

He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.

By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.

"Thank you Bill." Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."

"I don't know about that." I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."

"You saved him Bill." Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" She asked sharply.

"Nina, I…" I started.

"Hush." Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"

Mrs. Blackmore swallowed nervously and then reluctantly looked at me. "She's right." She finally said. "You did save him. We owe you our thanks."

"I did what any decent person would do." I told her, emphasizing the word "decent". "I'm glad he's going to be all right and I was glad to help."

She nodded and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"So." I said at last, breaking it. "Why don't we see if they'll let you two visit him for a bit? You're probably anxious to do that."

Only one visitor at a time was allowed in the recovery room. It was a rule the staff was very firm about despite my attempts at intervention using my adult voice. Finally Mrs. Blackmore went in, leaving Nina and I alone in the waiting room. We sat together and I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, yawning with weariness.

"Sorry we couldn't go to the movie tonight." She told me.

"Understandable." I assured her, stroking her hair.

A minute went by. Finally Nina asked, "Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know Daddy was having a heart attack?"

I had been afraid of this question, though I knew it was coming. I didn't enjoy lying to her.

"I read a lot of medical texts." I told her. "It's kind of a hobby of mine. I thought about being a paramedic once so I went through their textbook and studied it. Your Dad was having textbook symptoms of a heart attack and he was displaying the common response to it. Denial. When I felt his pulse and noticed the missing beats I was sure. That's another textbook symptom."

"You knew all this from reading a textbook?" She asked, her tone unreadable.

"Yes Nina." I said. "I have a good memory for written words."

"I see." She said softly. And she said no more about it.

We sat and talked softly for more than fifteen minutes, me continuing to hold her and stroke her hair. A slight cough interrupted us and we both looked up to find Mrs. Blackmore looking at us, taking in the manner in which we were seated.

"Hi Mom." Nina said, somewhat embarrassed. She broke free of me and sat up.

"How's Daddy doing?"

She walked over slowly. "He's a little groggy from the medicine they gave him but otherwise he's okay. They're going to take him up to his room soon.

We won't be able to visit him anymore until tomorrow. Why don't you go in and talk to him real quick?"

"Okay." She nodded, standing. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She left the room leaving me alone with her mother. We looked at each other for a moment and finally she took a seat next to me. She sat stiffly upright.

"You didn't have to stay you know." She told me.

"I wanted to." I told her. "Besides, how else are you going to get home? You know how much a cab ride would be from here?"

"We could've handled it." She answered.

"Like I said Mrs. Blackmore." I replied. "I WANTED to stay."

Another uncomfortable silence developed. There was so much I wanted to say to this woman next to me, so much I wanted to explain, but this was not the time. Not when her husband, a man I knew she loved deeply, was in a hospital room after nearly dying.

But Mrs. Blackmore apparently DID want to talk about it.

"You're a very strange young man." She said, not looking at me.

I nodded. "I've been accused of that." I agreed.

"I like to think that I've got you figured out." She said. "That I know exactly what you're like, how you'll act, what you'll do. I tried to tell Nina this when she started seeing you again. But she didn't listen to me, wouldn't hear a word of it. I tried to tell myself that it was teenaged rebellion, that she knew I was right but that she wouldn't listen because she thought she was in love with you and because her Mom was telling her these things."

"But?" I prompted, looking over at her.

"But now I'm forced to wonder if maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time." She admitted.

"Really?"

"Really." She sighed. "You see, I've been waiting all of this time for you to toss my daughter aside like an old shoe. That's what people like you do I told myself. You get them to fall in love with you and then, once you get what you want a few times, you get rid of them. I have speeches all memorized for the day that you finally do that; speeches I'll recite to her as I'm holding her while she cries. I'll tell her that someday she'll find someone who REALLY loves her for herself, not for her body. I'll tell her about how I found a man like that and how he came back to me even though I made a horrid mistake once. I'm well prepared for the day when you finally show Nina that you are nothing but slime." She stared over at me, her eyes softening. "But that's not going to happen, is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it's not." I said. "I love your daughter Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."

She nodded softly. "You know something?" She asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside.

But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.

"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."

"Do you know why I feel this way?" She asked me pointedly.

I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.

"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" She said.

This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh…"

She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."

"Look, Mrs. Blackmore…" I started.

"Call me Mary." She said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"

This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?

"Bill." She went on. "You know about Bob Simpson, right?"

I nodded. "Yes." I answered.

"I appreciate your honesty." She said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me.

I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."

"Okay." I agreed.

"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"

"Yes." I answered. "I do."

"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."

"I know." I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina.

Never."

"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."

"And then she went back to you." Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."

"And the rest is history." I said softly.

She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about Bill." She told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"

"No." I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.

"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina IS my future Mary. Can you understand that?"

"That's just it." She said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.

"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"

I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have." I agreed.

"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."

"Me?" I asked.

"You." She nodded. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her." She said.

"Yes." I nodded enthusiastically. "I do. That's what I've been trying to say all this time."

"I recognize that now." She said. "And I realize that you are not exactly Bob Simpson. But you're close. And just because I recognize it doesn't mean I like it Bill. I'm willing to acknowledge that you and Nina are in love with each other. But I can't forgive you for what you've done in the past and I have no proof that you are no longer doing such things. I still believe that Nina is heading for destruction by being with you."

"That's fair enough." I told her. "You think that we're too young to know what love really is and that I'll give in to the temptation to stray away from Nina, right?"

"Roughly." She answered.

"We are young." I said. "But tell me this, do you think that Jack knew what he wanted when he told you he wanted to marry you before he went off to the war?"

"What?" She asked.

"He loved you back then. Very much from what I understand. And though he didn't have the, uh, experience that I do, he was pretty certain that you were the woman for him. So do you think he knew what he was talking about?"

"Yes." She nodded, seeing where I was taking this.

"That's the same way I feel about Nina. I know she is whom I want to spend the rest of my life with. My experience has done nothing but show me that sex is nothing but hollow pleasure if it's not with someone you love. I don't plan to repeat those experiences. I am committed to Nina now and I will remain so. I'm the same age Jack was when he fell in love with you. Nina is older than you were when you fell in love with Jack. She's older than I am in fact since I got to skip second grade. Why do you think that you, of the previous generation, have some sort of all-knowing lock on what love is and that those of us in this generation are clueless?"

THE LOOK was strong upon her face. She smiled. "You are certainly a remarkable young man Bill." She said. "I'll give you that. Like I said, I'm not quite sure you're right for Nina and I'm not quite sure you are my idea of the perfect suitor. But there's little I can do about it. You've proved yourself worthy of my giving you a chance. So for Nina's sake I would like to extend you a welcome into our house for as long as you and she are together. Maybe someday I'll learn to love you. Or maybe I won't. But until we know for sure, you no longer have to hide on the porch when you come over. You're welcome in our house."

"Thank you Mary." I answered, touched by her cynical words. "I'll take you up on that. And be assured, you're not going to get rid of me."

"Time will tell Bill." She answered. "Time will tell."

Two days later Jack Blackmore was transferred to the hospital that I worked at in order to undergo bypass surgery. He was installed in a private room on the seventh floor. His spirits were reported to be high by Nina, who visited him daily after school, usually joining her mother there. I had not had opportunity to see him since the night he'd been taken away.

On the Tuesday following his heart attack I had a brief chat with my Dad before I headed off to school.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" He asked me, nearly appalled by what I was suggesting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it wise." I agreed. "But it's not dangerous. After all, the man's undergoing a bypass tomorrow. What can it hurt?"

Dad shook his head. "I'll concede to your greater medical knowledge." He told me. He did as I asked.

After work that night I went out to my car and put a few things into a plastic bag. I then went back inside. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and headed for the ICU where Jack was being stashed. Visiting hours were soon coming to a close and Nina and her mother had already gone for the night. I was unquestioned as I walked past the nurse's station. The surgical scrubs I wore saw to that.

I entered his room and stood in the doorway for a moment. Jack Blackmore was dressed in a standard hospital gown. IV's were installed in his arm and connected to a pump. Wires snaked from beneath the sheets and his gown and fed to a monitor on the wall above his head. He was sitting in the bed, which he'd adjusted to a chair position, watching a baseball game on the television. He looked over at me as I entered, his eyes taking a moment to realize that I was not just another hospital worker coming in to take his blood pressure or to get him to piss in a jar.

"Bill." He nodded when he recognized me. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I told him, coming in and closing the door behind me. "How are YOU?"

"Hanging in here." He said as I took a seat. "I never did get a chance to thank you for talking me into going the other night." He lowered his voice a little. "The doc tells me I might've died if I hadn't of come in."

"I was glad to help." I assured him.

"As much as I hate to admit it." He said. "I owe you one."

"Maybe I'll collect someday." I said. "But in the meantime, I brought you something you might like."

"What's that?" He asked.

I reached into my bag and withdrew two dripping, icy cold bottles of beer. Beer that my Dad had bought for me that morning and which had sat in an ice chest in my car all day. It was his favorite brand. His eyes lit up as he saw them.

"I can't drink that." He told me, his voice far from virtuous.

"Sure you can." I said. "You're probably sick of Jell-O and powdered eggs about now. You're probably even sicker of powdered orange juice. Have a brew. You're going in for bypass surgery tomorrow. What can it hurt? Hell, they ought to be feeding you bacon and eggs and greasy tacos tonight. The cholesterol can't hurt you now."

He licked his lips for a moment and then said. "You have a gift for putting things into perspective young man. Give me the beer."

"Better pour it into your cup." I instructed. "If the nurse comes in and sees it, she'll kill me."

He gave me a shrewd look. "We wouldn't want that now, would we?" He asked.

We poured the beer into the little plastic cups that are only found in hospitals and stashed the bottles away.

"To good health." I offered, holding up my cup.

He nodded. "To good health."

We clinked them together, well, not really, plastic doesn't clink, but you get the idea. We drank. The beer was like nectar on my parched throat. It probably tasted even better to Jack Blackmore, who had just faced death in a much different way than he had in World War II.

"Mary tells me that you had a talk with her." He said after the first drink.

I looked at him for a moment and then nodded. "We did." I said.

"Uh huh." He grunted. "She also tells me she invited you into our house."

I swallowed nervously, wondering if Mr. Blackmore was about to veto this decision. If he was about to tell me that he would see me in hell before he saw me in his house. "She did." I said.

"Well," He said, sipping out of his beer again. "I guess I'll have to agree with her then."

It took me a moment for what he said to filter through, so much was I expecting the "see you in hell" speech.

"You agree with her?" I finally asked.

"Young man." He told me. "You alone have caused more turmoil in my household than anything since Bob Simpson himself. I've fought with my wife, my daughter, sometimes both at the same time over the subject of you. That last thing I ever thought I'd do was invite you into my house. But I'm forced to admit that much of the turmoil and arguing that you've caused was because of the preconceived notions that Mary and I had about you. Notions that, like Mary pointed out, are apparently wrong."

"I'm not inviting you over because you saved my life, although I'm grateful for that. I'm inviting you over because I think I was wrong about you. You're not Bob Simpson. You're an offshoot of him, but you're not him. And I think that maybe you're starting to get out of that stage. My daughter adores you Bill, absolutely adores you. But I also realize that maybe you feel the same way about her. That maybe you were telling me the complete and honest truth that day I came over to your house. If that is so, I apologize for not believing you and ask that you understand why I didn't."

"I do." I said. "I probably would've reacted the same in your shoes."

"I suppose you would have." He said. "I'm not sure I like you yet. I'm still holding judgement on that matter, but I'm going to give you a chance. Just like any father gives any suitor their daughter brings home."

"Thank you." I said.

"You asked me the other day if I wanted to live to see grandkids."

"Yes." I said.

"I do." He nodded. "And I assume that you intend to provide those grandkids?"

I swallowed nervously again. "Yes." I finally said. "I do."

He nodded slowly, taking a long drink from his beer. "Be sure you treat my daughter right Bill." He said. "She's the only one I got. I intend to live long enough to kick your ass if you ever hurt her. Do you understand?"

"I do." I told him. "And you're gonna have to live a long time to see that Mr. Blackmore."

We stared at each other for a moment. Finally his expression softened. "Who do you like?" He asked, jerking his head towards the television.

"Like?" I asked.

"In baseball?" He clarified, as if I was an idiot. "You're from Spokane so I assume you like the Mariners."

"Well to tell you the truth Mr. Blackmore…"

"Jack." He said. "Call me Jack."

"Jack." I said, the name sounding strange on my lips. "To tell you the truth I'm not much of a baseball fan at all. In fact I don't really follow sports at all."

"You don't watch sports?" He asked, looking at me as if I was some sort of communist radical.

I shook my head. "No."

"If you're going to be my son-in-law Bill, we're going to have to change that."

The next day Jack Blackmore went under the knife for a triple bypass operation. They cut open his leg and removed arteries from it. They then split open his chest, stopped his heart and installed those arteries in his heart, bypassing the occluded vessels. They restarted his heart and sewed him back up. The procedure took nearly five hours to complete from anesthesia to recovery room. Nina and Mary spent the day there, hanging around in the surgery waiting room, reading old magazines, drinking coffee, and worrying.

I spent the day in school and at work, doing some worrying of my own. At the front of my mind was the fact that I'd most likely pushed fate off of it's path once more. Mr. Blackmore, Jack, was supposed to be dead in all likelihood. But now he wasn't. Was fate going to work swiftly to reclaim him? Was he going to die on the operating table, a victim of reaction to anesthesia, improper procedure, or some other malady? Was he going to die of a post-op infection? A thousand things could go wrong, any of which a vengeful fate could seize upon in order to take the wayward Jack Blackmore out of the picture.

Since he was in the hospital where I worked I stopped up to see how things were going at every opportunity. I popped by upon arrival to find Nina and Mary still in the waiting room, waiting anxiously. I hugged Nina and told her it would be all right. She wiped a few tears away as she heard this. The words felt almost like a lie on my lips. By my second break he was out of surgery but not allowed any visitors yet. I offered more words of encouragement before heading back to my station. By my last break they'd both been in to see him. Their moods were better and they were more relaxed. He'd come out of surgery just fine, they told me, though he was in considerable pain.

I went back up when my shift was done and found them both in the private room that he'd been moved to. They were sitting in the chairs by his bed, just watching him as he floated in and out of consciousness. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that he'd been heavily medicated.

"How's he doing?" I asked the two women in his life.

Before they could answer, Jack himself spoke up. "Like shit." He said thickly, his eyes turning to me.

"Not good huh?" I asked him, stepping closer.

"It feels like someone chopped my goddam chest open with an axe." He said.

"Jack." Mary admonished automatically. "Your language."

He gave her a look, a look that only people that have been married for thirty-three years can pass.

I stayed with them until visiting hours were over. They seemed to have no problem with my presence there. Nina and I held hands as the conversation went back and forth and as Jack went in and out. He tried explaining the finer points of the Mariner's strategy to me but the Demerol or whatever they were giving him made him continually forget what he was saying.

When we finally left him for the evening I rode the elevator down with Mary and Nina and we walked out to the parking lot. Their car was parked in the visitor lot while mine was parked in the employee lot. I walked them to their car and it was time for me to make my leave.

Mary walked around to the driver's side of her car while Nina and I stood at the passenger door, looking awkwardly at each other.

"Well," I said, "I'll see you tomorrow. Are you going to be here?"

"Only in the late afternoon." She said. "Since Daddy's doing fine I'm going back to school and ROP."

"Oh." I nodded, casting an eye at Mary, who was watching us, refusing to get into the car. "Well, I'll see you at school tomorrow then and I'll probably stop by here after work."

"Good." She smiled hesitantly. "Well…"

"Well…" I repeated. We continued to stare at each other, casting nervous glances at her mother.

"Oh for Christ's sakes." Mary suddenly announced. "If you want to kiss each other go ahead and do it. I've seen you do it enough through the curtains."

With that she huffily got into the car.

Nina and I looked at her and then at each other, astonishment and embarrassment on our faces.

"You heard Mom." Nina told me, smiling.

"Yep." I said, leaning in and kissing her.

The next day Nina went back to school, as she'd said. She would not be able to visit her father in the hospital until at least four o'clock. Jack was continuing his recovery and was reported to be doing well. Mary Blackmore was holding vigil at the hospital.

I reported to work as usual, not stopping upstairs. At my first break I stood hesitantly outside the central supply department. Finally I pushed the elevator call. When it arrived I rode upstairs.

When I entered the room Mary and Jack were talking softly about something. They both looked at me strangely as I entered. We stared at each other, nobody wanting to talk, neither of them wanting to ask me what I was doing there without Nina.

Finally I stepped in. "Jack?" I asked. "How are you doing?"

He hesitated for a moment, continuing to look at me. At last he said. "A little better. Not much, but a little."

"Good." I replied, going over and grabbing a seat.

Jack stayed in the hospital for two weeks. He suffered no post-op infections and in fact made what was termed by his cardiologist a "remarkable recovery". During this time I made it a habit to head upstairs on breaks and check on him, to pass a few words with the elder Blackmores. It was only two days before they stopped looking at me strangely and started greeting me with something approaching warmth. And of course I visited after work when Nina was there.

Understandably Nina and I had little time or place or mood for physical affections. Our brief kiss as we parted at night as Nina climbed into her Dad's car, Mary climbed in her car, and I climbed in mine became an accepted ritual with her mother but there were no rendezvous at the empty house, no making out, no dates.

When Jack was released he was still in pain, particularly when we moved his chest or took a deep breath, but he was much better. He was instructed to get up every day and walk or perform some other form of exercise. He was instructed to change his diet, to avoid alcohol, and to avoid everything else that was the least amount of fun. He would be off work for at least another month before he would be allowed back on light duty for another two months. If all went well he would be able to resume his route about the time that Nina and I left for college.

Two days after Jack went home, I went to work as usual. The first thing that happened was Mindy greeting me at the locker room door as I emerged dressed in my scrubs and sterile cap.

"Hi Mindy." I said, somewhat surprised to see her there. "What's up?"

"Hi Bill." She greeted, smiling. "I got a question for you."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Since you're my favorite employee," She said. "I thought I'd ask you first.

My husband and I bought tickets for "Fiddler On The Roof" on Saturday night down at the theater. But the asshole went and got himself a promotion at work and has to go to Seattle for a training session over the weekend."

"Really?" I asked, immediately interested.

"Yeah." She said sourly. "Anyway, I'm trying to get rid of the tickets now.

I paid twenty apiece for them but if you're interested I'd be willing to let them go for ten apiece." She smiled a little. "Of course they won't let you have the complimentary glass of wine, but hey? So what do you say?"

"I say, will you take a check?" I asked.

Nina was delighted to go to the theater with me. She'd never been to such a thing before, had never even seen the movie version of Fiddler On The Roof. She was a little nervous about having to dress nice for the occasion, rarely did we go someplace where a dress code was in place, but she was excited about it whenever I talked to her.

She called me up Saturday afternoon about one o'clock.

"Mom and Dad want to know if you'd like to come over for dinner with us before we go?" She asked me.

"You're kidding." I said, feeling a little nervous myself at the prospect. Though the Blackmores had warmed to me during Jack's stay in the hospital I still had not been inside their house since the day of his heart attack. To me it didn't seem we were quite ready for that step despite the invitations from them.

"Not at all." Nina replied. "She's making her roast chicken."

I had enjoyed Mary's roast chicken once before, in the days before our break-up, back when they'd still thought I was a suitable companion for their daughter. It was truly a work of art.

"Well," I said doubtfully. "What do you think?"

"I think you should come." She said softly. "They're trying Bill, they're trying to accept you. I think you might do some damage to that if you refuse."

I sighed. "What time then?"

"Four-thirty."

"Tell your Mom and Dad I'd be honored to accept their invitation."

I had just hung up the phone and was heading for the bathroom when it rang again.

"You got that?" I heard Dad yell from the other room where he was watching a nature program on PBS.

"Yeah." I called back. "It's probably Nina again."

He grunted something in reply and I picked up the phone. "Hello?"

It was not Nina. "Bill Stevens please?" A gruff voice demanded more than asked. I was immediately on guard just hearing it.

"This is Bill." I said slowly. "And who is this?"

"Mr. Stevens." Said the voice. "Sergeant Matt Cable, U.S. Marines. How are you today?"

U.S. Marines? What the hell? A part of me wondered if this had anything to do with the Beirut bombing that I'd tried to stop. Was Sergeant Cable from intelligence? If so, he wouldn't have called on the phone, would he? "I'm just fine, uh, Sergeant. What can I help you with?"

"Well Mr. Stevens." Cable told me forcefully. "The question here is what I can help YOU with."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you planning to go to college?" He asked next.

"Yes." I said. "Uh Sergeant, perhaps you could…"

"Good." He went on, not even hearing me. "And have you thought about how you're going to pay for college?"

Suddenly I got it. He was a recruiter! He was trying to get me to join the Marines. How the hell did he get my phone number? I didn't remember any recruiters calling me at home in my previous life. But even as I thought this a vague edge of a memory surfaced, more a sense of deja vu. Maybe they HAD called me and I'd just dismissed it.

"Uh, yes Sergeant, I have college expenses all taken care of. Thank you very much for asking. Now I'm kind of busy and…"

"Ahh." Cable went on again. "But did you realize just how expensive college really is? The average cost today for a four-year degree is approximately thirty thousand dollars. Do you have that kind of money?"

"I will." I said shortly. "Listen, I appreciate your calling and all, but I'm really not interested in joining the Marines. How did you get my number anyway?"

"The high schools in the area provide us with a list of graduating seniors." He said absently. "But really Mr. Stevens, I think you should give some thought to the Corps. It will give you four years of discipline and maturity. You'll get to serve your country in the most honorable way imaginable, and you'll make over forty thousand dollars for college while you're doing it. You can also learn valuable job skills…"

"Like charging machine gun nests?" I asked.

"What?" He said, confused. He was obviously not accustomed to having his sales pitch interrupted.

"Valuable skills you said. Is charging machinegun nests and jumping out of landing craft onto a hostile beach a valuable skill? What if I get killed? Can't really go to college then, can I?"

He paused for the longest time. Finally he said… "You misunderstand Mr. Stevens. Not everybody in the Corps does that. There are many support positions that require skilled individuals. We will train you in those skills. For instance, computer science, an up and coming field. We can train you in it. By the time you get out you'll possess a valuable civilian skill and you'll have money to go to college with to expand upon it. Not only that, you'll have had the satisfaction of serving your country."

"Uh huh." I replied. "And suppose I take the ASVAB and it tells you that I'd make a lousy computer tech? Suppose it tells you that I'm not good for much of anything besides shooting a gun and charging out of landing craft? The ASVAB is taken AFTER I've signed my name, right? So if it tells you I should be a grunt and I've asked for computer science, where am I going to end up?"

This threw him completely off guard. "Uh… well," He stammered. "The fact of the matter is…"

"The fact of the matter is that you just want me to sign my name on the line and you don't care what happens to me after that. You don't care because you got whatever points they've given you for signing up another stupid kid so your cohorts can train me to love the idea of dying for my country in some conflict over oil supplies or something equally worthless. Do you believe in honoring your father Sergeant Cable?"

"Well, of course." He answered, reeling from what I'd just said. He didn't have enough sense to gleam the fact that I wasn't interested and end the conversation.

"Well my father didn't charge machine gun nests or fight VC. He braved hostile police and National Guard soldiers so he could smoke dope and burn his draft card. If I was to join the Marines after he went through all of that, it would be an awful betrayal, don't you think?"

He didn't answer that one, there was only silence on the line.

"So if it's all the same to you," I finished. "I'll just go to college with the money I have, study well, and leave the machine gun nest charging to those too stupid to see through your used car salesman speech. And hopefully we'll have ourselves a nice war sometime and they'll reinstate the draft so I can go to protests and smoke dope and burn MY draft card and honor my father in a manner that he so deserves. Good day sir, and please lose this phone number."

I clicked down the phone, smiling to myself. That was the most fun I'd had without Nina in quite some time.

The day was a glorious example of spring in Spokane; perhaps the nicest time of the year in our city. Unlike Western Washington, we don't get near the rainfall and cloud cover in the eastern portion of the state. At ten minutes to four, when I headed over to the Blackmore house, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was a deep blue, the trees were blooming with fresh leaves and fruit blossoms, and the temperature was a pleasant seventy-two degrees.

I was actually sweating a little in my suit and tie, both from the warmth upon my thick clothing and from the nervousness of having dinner with Nina's parents. I wheeled to the curb, took a few deep breaths to gather my courage, and then headed to the door.

Nina answered it and she quickly made me forget about her parents. She was wearing a pretty black and white dress complete with nylons and high heels. Her face was made up and her hair was styled attractively. I felt my eyes widen as I took in the sight of her, as I saw her blush at my perusal.

"I've never worn anything like this before." She said, embarrassed. "Mom helped me pick it out."

"It's beautiful." I told her, leaning forward and giving her a peck on the lips. "Your mother has good taste."

"Thank you." Mary Blackmore said dryly from just inside the doorway. It was my turn to blush.

"You look very nice too Bill." Nina squeaked, standing aside to allow me entry.

I stepped inside to find her mother, wearing a pantsuit and a cooking apron, appraising me. We looked at each other for a moment.

"How do you do Mary?" I asked politely. "Thank you for inviting me over."

She nodded, her face forming the slightest hint of a smile. "I told you that you're welcome in our house Bill." She said. "And Nina's right. You DO look very nice. Are you hungry?"

"Famished." I assured her, telling the absolute truth.

"Well good." She said, turning and heading for the kitchen. "Because I've made enough for an army."

While her mother went to finish dinner Nina led me into the living room where Jack was sitting in his recliner, watching television. The Mariners were battling the Blue Jays and apparently getting the shit kicked out of them. Jack seemed in a foul mood because of this.

"Hi Jack." I said nervously, seeing the scowl on his face.

"Goddam bunch of pansies!" He yelled at the TV as a Mariner hit into a double play. Beside him a glass of lemonade sat untouched so long the ice was melted.

"Jack, your language." Came drifting out of the kitchen.

He shot an irritated look in that direction for a moment and then turned to me. "There's no hope." He told me.

"No?" I asked carefully.

"None." He assured me. "Well don't just stand there. Have a seat. Watch this pathetic excuse for a game with me until dinner. Maybe you'll learn something."

"Okay." I said, heading to the couch. Nina came with me. When she sat down she did it inexpertly, since she was not used to wearing a dress. It hiked all the way up to mid-thigh before she shifted and pulled it back down. It took every ounce of my willpower to keep from gazing at this directly, instead of with my peripheral vision. Somehow I managed.

Jack saw my struggle, I know he did. I think I gained a point or two with him.

He continued to explain the finer points of baseball to me as we sat there, while Nina looked bored. His conversation was peppered with the occasional "goddam", which was always answered by an admonishment from Mary in the kitchen, no matter how softly he muttered it. Each admonishment was met with an irritated stare back towards the kitchen.

When Mary called us to dinner we sat down at the table, Nina seated next to me. We dug into delicately basted and roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, and homemade biscuits. It was all as wonderful as I remembered it. Many boys, when taking dinner with their girlfriend's family for the first time make the mistake of only eating one helping for fear of looking like a pig. I did no such thing. I ate until I was stuffed, refilling my plate three times. It wasn't hard to do. I knew I'd earned some brownie points with Mary for doing so.

We pushed away our plates at last and Jack stifled a burp, an action that earned him a sharp look from his wife but no verbalization.

"Great dinner Mare," He told her affectionately, patting his stomach. "Up to your usual standards."

"I agree." I put in. "Your chicken was divine."

"I'm glad you liked it." She said tonelessly, though obviously pleased with the praise. She stood up. "Let me start clearing the table."

While she began picking up the dishes Jack turned to me. "Chicken is good." He told me. "Especially the way Mary does it, but there's nothing like fresh meat you've brought down yourself. You like venison?"

"I don't know." I told him. "I've never had it."

He looked at me in disbelief for a moment. "You've never had venison?"

"Never." I told him. "My dad doesn't hunt."

"So you've never had elk either?" He asked next.

"Never."

"Boy," He said. "You've lived in Spokane all of your life and you've never had venison or elk?"

I shook my head.

"Amazing." He said, staring. "So you don't have a hunting rifle then?"

"I've never fired a gun in my life." I told him.

"Bill." He said seriously. "You and I are going to have to take a little trip one of these Octobers over to the panhandle. You're not one of those goddamn animal rights activists are you?"

"Jack." Mary warned from the sink.

"No." I told him, wondering if he was really offering to take me hunting. Was this the same man who had stormed my house on New Years Day? "I suppose I've never been hunting before because my Dad has never been hunting before.

There was nobody to show me how to do it. I'd really like to learn how if you'd teach me." I told him.

He nodded, smiling. "The first October you have free, you come see me." He said. "We'll get you a rifle and a license and we'll head up. I'll show you what it's really all about."

"That'll be cool." I answered truthfully. "I'll be looking forward to it."

"I think Mom and Dad are actually starting to like you." Nina told me as we drove towards downtown and the theater building.

"Yeah." I agreed, resting my hand on her nyloned knee. "Weird, isn't it?"

"They're starting to see you as I do Bill." She told me. "Especially Daddy."

I looked over at her. "I'm not gonna have to kiss him, am I?" I asked.

She chuckled. "Who knows?" She asked. "Maybe he's a good kisser. He's certainly done it more than I have."

"Well maybe we'll play a little catch-up tonight." I suggested slyly.

"Maybe we will." She answered back, just as slyly.

We both enjoyed the play immensely. Nina because it was the first time she'd seen a live play and because the story was both romantic and tragic, elements she loved in her art. Me because it was one of my favorite productions and because I was seeing it with Topal, the Russian Jew who played the part in the movie, cast as the lead character, something I'd never been able to see in my previous life. The acting and singing were magnificent and by the end Nina had tears streaming down her cheeks as the Jews were forced from their village. I myself had to stifle tears despite having seen the play and the movie multiple times before.

We joined the throngs exiting the theater and made our way to my car, walking hand in hand, talking about what we'd just seen as we went. Nina went on and on about the story, the plot, the acting, the thrill of seeing it live. I was glad that I was there to share this first experience with her, to hear her reactions to it.

When we reached my Datsun I opened the door for her and she sat down. Her skirt rode up again as she did this, reaching well above mid-thigh. This time there was no father to think about and my eyes drank in the sight of her legs, clad in dark nylon and spread just a tad. I felt warmth spreading to various parts of my body as I witnessed this.

Nina saw where my eyes were glued and she smiled, pulling down her skirt demurely. "What were YOU looking at?" She asked teasingly.

"A work of art." I told her, making her blush.

I got into my side of the car and started it up, heading for the freeway. My hand dropped to her left knee, leaving it only to shift gears.

"It's still early." Nina told me, glancing at her watch.

I looked at mine, seeing it was shortly after ten o'clock. "Kind of." I agreed.

"It's a nice night." She said next, looking at me, her own hand dropping to my thigh.

"That it is." I answered, suppressing a smile.

Silence developed. Finally she said, "So why don't we go find a nice place to sit for a while and just look at the stars and the moon?"

"The stars and the moon?" I asked lightly.

"Yes." She said firmly. "They're very pretty tonight. I'd like to look at them. Surely you know a place where we can look at them alone."

I grinned, nodding slowly. "I think I know such a place." I said, putting on the gas a little.

"I thought you might." She said.

The place was a little used park near the falls, almost directly across the river from the larger park where the high school students liked to have their keggers. As a matter of fact we could hear the faint hoots and howls and drunken laughter mixed with the indecipherable sounds of car stereos drifting over the roar of the falls towards us. A kegger was going on as we sat there.

I had long since removed my tie and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. I'd also thrown my jacket in the back of the car. We walked over to a picnic table and sat on the surface of it, our feet resting on the wooden seat, looking out at the falling water, smelling the mist. Our hands intertwined gently and we simply looked for a while, not speaking. There was a light breeze, warm enough to keep us from shivering and the sound of thousands of crickets chirping came from behind us. The stars and the moon were shining in the sky.

"It really is a beautiful night." I offered, edging a little closer to her.

"Yes." She agreed, letting her head fall to my shoulder. "It's too bad we don't have a blanket or something so we could lie on the ground and really look at the stars. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"I have the blanket in my trunk from when we went on the picnic last month." I offered, thanking whatever gods there was that I was a lousy housekeeper.

Nina gulped and then raised her head back up. "Really?" She asked.

"Really." I said seriously.

"Break it out." She told me.

We spread it about fifty yards away from the car, near the cliff that led to the river below the falls. When the wind blew right a fine spray of mist would hit us delicately. We lay down on our backs, about a foot apart, our hands together, our heads looking upwards.

"Do you like astronomy?" She asked me, her thumb tracing circles around the back of my hand.

I shrugged. "I've read a little on it." I told her, only semi-lying. In my previous life I'd taken an astronomy course in college as a science elective. That had been in my pot-smoking days. There's nothing like getting stoned and heading up to the college's observatory in the middle of the night. I got an A in the class.

"So have I." She told me. "I bet I can name more stars than you."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "What's the bet?"

"Loser has to kiss the winner until they say to stop." She offered.

I nodded, feeling my penis stir in my suit pants. "You've got yourself a bet."

She pointed to the most obvious. "Polaris." She said.

I pointed to another. "Regula." I told her, pulling out my big guns.

"Amateur." She scoffed, pointing again. "Betelgeuse."

"Not bad." I allowed, pointing again at a fuzzy blur. "You see that one?"

"Which one?" She asked.

Gently I took her face in my hands and pointed it in the direction I was looking. "That red one over there about ten degrees west of Cassiopeia."

"I see it." She said, looking at me instead of the star.

"That's Mars." I said firmly.

"No it's not." She told me. "Mars is a planet and the planets are all in the ecliptic. Besides, Mars isn't visible right now."

"It's not Mars?" I asked innocently.

"No." She told me.

"Bummer." I said. "I guess I lose then."

We stared at each other in the moonlight. "I guess you do." She told me, angling her face towards mine.

There was no slow build up to our kisses, our tongues found each other in the first two seconds while our arms and hands pulled our bodies together. I felt the scratchy material of her dress beneath my hands, the outline of her bra straps bulging from beneath. Her hands yanked the back of my dress shirt out of my pants and then plunged beneath it, her manicured nails scratching at my back.

I rolled her onto her back, pressing my body to hers and began to kiss her neck, inhaling the perfume she'd applied, working my way down to the hollow of her throat. She arched her back as I kissed her there, licking lightly with my tongue, tasting her delicate skin.

"I've missed this so much." She told me breathlessly as my hand slid up her flank and across the bulge of her right breast.

"Have you?" I muttered, nipping at her skin lightly, my fingers coming to rest on the silver button at the front of her dress. It was cool to the touch, round, and I swirled around it, playing with it.

"Yes." She nodded, kissing the top of my head, her hands pulling free from my shirt.

Slowly I undid the button, leaving a gap in the front of her dress. She smiled, arching her back a little more. My fingers dropped to the second button. In the moonlight I could now make out the top of her bra and the upper swell of her breasts. I leaned my head down and kissed her chest, just above this, running my tongue down to the top of her bra. She shivered in delight, pulling me closer. I undid the remaining buttons, spreading the dress wide open, so her entire bra was visible to me.

I let my mouth travel between her breasts, feeling the cotton material pressing into my flesh and then I began to kiss her ribcage below the bra cups; teasing, soft kisses punctuated with licks. Nina moaned softly at the sensation, her fingers finding my hair. I worked my way back and forth beneath her breasts, my mouth kissing every inch of the exposed skin of her chest. Occasionally I would rub my cheek across her bra cup and feel the material and the protrusion of her nipples sliding across.

Finally my hands slid behind her back and found the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick it was undone. I slid my hands back around to the front and pushed upward, moving the now-loosened bra off of her breasts, baring them. I looked at them in the moonlight, seeing the rigid nipples, seeing how they heaved up and down with her excited respiration.

"They're beautiful." I told Nina softly. "I'd like to kiss them."

"Ohh." She groaned, pulling my head down.

I took the right nipple in my mouth, sucking on it gently, as I had in the car that night. I swirled my tongue around it, suckled it, kissed it, made it stand out proudly before I switched to the other one. Nina held me firmly to her as my hand dropped down and landed on her knee, where it began squeezing and caressing through the nylon. Slowly I began to slide my hand upward.

I was ready to halt the exploration of my hand at the slightest sign of protest but I received none. Her legs slowly parted, encouraging further travel. I shifted to the inside, my digits trailing over the smooth nylon and tight muscle of her thigh. I reached the hem of her dress and slowly continued onward. She opened her legs wider. I squeezed her inner thigh, marveling at the feel of her legs in pantyhose and then the back of my hand reached the junction of her legs; the panty portion of the hose. I felt dampness against my knuckles and Nina drew in a sharp breath, pushing her crotch into me.

Continuing to suck her breasts I let my hand turn over so my fingers were now touching her. I felt the wet material and the outline of her swollen lips. I pushed slightly, making circles around the area, memorizing the feel of this moment, making out the bulge of her clit through the thin layer of clothing.

"Oh God." Nina moaned, her hips bucking a little. "That feels so good."

I raised my head from her breasts and moved it back up, so I was staring in her eyes. They were shining and very excited.

"It's not supposed to feel bad." I whispered to her, bringing my lips to hers once more.

Her tongue plunged into my mouth, attacking mine viciously, her lips sucking it into her mouth. Her hand slid down to my crotch and began to squeeze my erection through my dress pants, making my own hips begin an involuntary rhythm.

My fingers left her junction and continued upward, across her lower stomach, seeking and finding the top of her pantyhose just under her belly button. I slid one finger beneath the elastic, touching her bare stomach, letting it slide back and forth along the edge.

"Yes." She whispered into my mouth, sucking my upper lip, running her tongue along my teeth.

I pushed downward once again, this time beneath the pantyhose, my fingers feeling the soft flesh of her lower stomach and finally encountering coarse, curly hair. I pushed onward and she spread her legs even more. I touched warm wetness and smooth lips, felt the erect clit and then my middle finger was resting against her lips. Her crotch began to push upward against my hand, demanding more, so I gave it to her. My middle finger slowly slid into her tight warmth, her membranes clutching at me greedily. It slid in easily, lubricated by her copious juices. She was tight, tighter than anything I'd ever felt before, tight enough that I worried if intercourse was even possible with her.

"Oh Bill." She moaned, squeezing me extra hard. Suddenly her fingers were fumbling with my belt. She pulled the end free of the loop and gave a sharp yank, freeing the buckle.

"Nina?" I asked, panting.

"I want to feel it." She told me, nipping at my neck.

I nodded and her fingers popped open the button on my pants. She yanked the zipper down and plunged her hand inside, diving beneath my underwear. Suddenly her cool, eager fingers were around my cock, feeling it, touching it, moving harshly over it while her hips continued to move up and down under my own fingers.

She was inexpert at the job but that didn't matter. The feel of her hand on my bare flesh was thrilling enough, the thought that she was touching me intimately driving me on. I let my finger slide out of her a little and I began pushing against her clit, rubbing my hand in circles.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her own hand becoming erratic and finally dropping away from me. "Yesss Bill!" She cried, grabbing my forearm and pulling it harder into her. Her hips were now blurring up and down, moving with instinctive force. Her juices were soaking me as I rubbed her clit and slid my digit in and out.

She lost the ability to speak coherently. She only moaned and said things like, "Ohhh yess, ohhh Bill, ooooh."

Finally she arched upward and all of her muscles tightened. Her fingernails bit into my forearm painfully and from her lips came: "Mmmmmmm!"

I continued to rub her until she relaxed once more, her butt dropping back down to the blanket. A relaxed sigh escaped from her lips and she looked up at me. Slowly I pulled my hand from her crotch. It was dripping wet and I resisted the urge to put it to my nose, to inhale her special scent for the first time.

"Wow." She muttered, taking deep breaths.

"Are you okay?" I asked gently, a little worried that I'd overwhelmed her.

"Yesss." She breathed. "That was the most incredible thing I've ever felt. Having you do it is much better than…" She stopped suddenly, realizing what she was saying.

I must say that I was shocked by her words. "Better than what?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Though it was very dim lighting I could tell she was blushing again. "Well," She said, giggling a little. "You know? After our other, uh, sessions, I had to do something to get myself to sleep at night. There's nothing wrong with it you know."

No there was nothing wrong with it. In fact the mental image of Nina laying in her bed and masturbating herself was so powerful and erotic that I nearly came just thinking about it. For some reason I just hadn't considered the possibility that she was doing that, although my first act upon returning home was a quick session with my five best friends.

"I think that's very sexy." I told her.

She giggled again. "Now you know one of my secrets. You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Of course not." I said, laughing. Who would I tell? Her Dad? Her Mom?

"It's just embarrassing." She said, her hand touching my cheek. "But it was nothing like it felt when you did it to me just now. I mean, wow." She shook her head.

"I'm glad I could help." I said, kissing her lips.

"What about you?" She asked. "Do you ever, you know?"

"Masturbate?" I asked teasingly.

"Well, yes." She nodded.

Now had I been a normal teenager I wouldn't have admitted it under torture. I would have claimed that I'd never so much as laid a finger on my penis, not even to pee, not even to wash it. Teenagers have a horror of being discovered masturbating. But I was not an ordinary teenager and I knew that women were as turned on by the thought of a guy jerking off as guys were thinking about women doing it.

"All the time." I told her. "Especially after one of our sessions. Especially then."

"Really?" She asked, her eyes shining with arousal again.

"Really." I nodded. "After we make out I HAVE to. You see, when I'm uh, turned on for a long time without uh, relief, it actually causes pain if I don't."

"You mean blue balls?" She said clinically.

I laughed. "Nina, you never fail to surprise me." I told her. "Yes, that's what I mean."

"So every time you and I have made out you've gone home and…"

"Whacked off." I confirmed.

"Wow." She whispered, licking her lips. "What do you think about when you do it?"

"You." I said. "Making love to you."

She gulped, her eyes drifting down to my dick, which was still protruding through my pants, as erect as it could be. "So you're going to do that tonight when you get home?" She asked.

"First thing." I answered.

She hesitated for a second. "Maybe I could, you know, do it for you?"

"What?" I asked, my dick giving a twitch at the thought.

"You did it for me." She said, sliding her hand over my chest. "The least I could do is return the favor, right?"

I swallowed. "Well." I said. "If you really want to…"

"I do." She whispered, pushing me onto my back. "Just tell me how to do it."

She reached out and grasped me once more, encircling my shaft with her fingers.

"Do I move it up and down?" She asked, doing just that.

"Yeah." I breathed, lost in the sensation of her hand upon me. I directed her to move it upward a little more and to increase her speed and loosen her grip. Eager to learn, she complied. Her hand stroked me softly, finally gaining speed as my hips began to move up and down.

"Involuntary action of voluntary muscles." She said, watching this phenomenon. She speeded up, increasing the pressure.

"How much will come out?" She asked me, just as I started to feel the tingles running up my spine.

"A lot at this point." I groaned, actually humping her hand.

"Yeah?"

"Yeahhhhhh!" I breathed. "I'm gonna…"

She watched intently as orgasm assaulted me and my dick began to spurt jet after jet of pent up semen from the head. I groaned in pleasure, the exquisite feeling of relief, doubled by the fact that it was not my hand that was providing it. It shot straight up and landed on my stomach, my pants, my shirt. It covered Nina's hand, running down the back of it, sticking to her fingers. The blue ball sensation, which had been building in my testicles, was releived in an instant.

When the last bit dribbled out Nina removed her hand and looked at it. "Wow." She said. "That was very sexy Bill. Can we do that again sometime?"

"You bet." I agreed, basking in the afterglow.

It took a few minutes to clean ourselves up. There was a hopeless stain on my dress pants that would require a dry cleaner to remove but Nina had somehow managed to only wrinkle her dress and run her pantyhose in one spot.

It was high on her thigh, probably a result of my hand being in there and her mother would most likely not notice it.

When we were composed we kissed each other one more time and carried the blanket back to my car. From across the river the sound of the kegger continued. I smiled as I thought that I'd just had much more fun than most of them would have and that I wouldn't wake up with a hangover as a result.

We talked of inconsequential things on the drive home, both of us still glowing from the experience we had just shared, both of us realizing that things were moving forward in our relationship. I gave her a long, luxuriant kiss goodnight at her front door, not even caring that her mother was probably watching, and then watched her until she was safely inside.

I drove home to a darkened house, my parents already in bed. I went directly to bed, smiling as I fell asleep.

Chapter 13

Graduation night came at last. We put on our dress clothes and then covered them with gowns. We put stupid looking hats on our heads and filed into the school auditorium where our parents were assembled. We listened to a bunch of boring speeches by the principal, a guest speaker, and the school valedictorian, Carrie Founder, who had an appointment with a good-looking loser and an overdose of anti-depressants in her future. She rattled on and on so long that she began receiving catcalls from her bored peers. At last we filed across the stage where the principal read our names from a little card that we each discreetly slipped to him and he then handed us a fake roll of paper with a ribbon attached to it. Our real diplomas, we were promised, would come in the mail in a week or so. Flashbulbs exploded from the audience like strobe lights.

Nina, Mike, and I hung together through all of this, passing the occasional comment under our breaths, Nina and I holding hands for much of the night. We got our fake diplomas and returned to our seats, watching, catatonic, as the rest of our class marched through one by one. Why are these so-called "great memories" that people go on and on about; graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, so damn dull while you're actually sitting through them? Most of the students, myself included, were looking forward to what came AFTER the ceremony.

The school was of course sponsoring a graduation party. It was to be at a local community center and was touted as a fun-filled celebration with dancing, music, and food in a safe, alcohol-free environment. Of course no one but the geekiest planned to be there although many had claimed to their parents that was where they were going. The REAL party was to be at the falls where three kegs were being brought in for the occasion. Marijuana sales had also gone through the roof in the proceeding two days.

When the ceremony was over everyone headed out to the parking lot. Hundreds of students and parents hugged each other, slapped each other on the back, shook hands, posed for the obligatory pictures, and generally congratulated each other on surviving the Spokane Public School System with their lives and sanity intact. Then the parents began to drift to their cars, leaving the students to their own devices. Of course the memory of Lisa Sanchez's untimely death on the previous graduation night was strong among the parents. Admonishments to be careful, and not to drink and drive, and other worried comments echoed through the parking lot followed by the reassurances of those that thought themselves immortal.

Even my Dad, knowing what he did about me, was worried.

"You'll be okay tonight Bill?" He asked as we stood next to his car.

"You bet Dad." I told him. "I'm going to be the designated driver tonight. I'll get everyone home safe."

He nodded slowly and then climbed into the car, Mom beside him. They drove off and I returned to Nina, who was standing with her own parents.

"Congratulations Bill." Jack told me, holding out his hand. I shook it and then received a surprise when Mary, repeating his words, actually stepped forward and hugged me.

"Thank you." I told both of them, giving Mary my best hug before she released me.

"Where are you two going tonight?" Jack asked next.

"Oh, just to a party." Nina replied vaguely.

Jack gave her a knowing look. "And will there be drinking at this party?" He asked.

Nina hesitated and was probably about to give him a pathetic lie. Nina was not a very good liar, particularly to her parents. But I jumped in.

"There certainly will be." I said.

Nina looked sharply at me, her expression disbelief. Jack and Mary also seemed surprised.

"It's graduation night." I went on. "I believe that the law states you MUST drink on graduation night. But have no fear. I'm driving and I take that very seriously. I'll get Nina home safely, I promise."

"You're not going to drink?" Jack asked, skeptical.

"Maybe a beer or two at the beginning." I answered. "But I'll be sober when it's time to come home. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." Jack told me, his eyes boring into me. "Remember what I told you about my daughter. She's the only one I got."

"And remember what I told you about your daughter." I shot back. "She'll be safe with me. Won't you Nina?"

"Of course." She said softly, watching the exchange and realizing it was taking place on a level she was not a part of.

Jack and Mary finally climbed in their car and drove off. Nina and I went to find Mike, who was explaining to his parents how he was going to the school sponsored party where no alcohol was allowed. His parents were reassured by this and were smiling as they entered their own car. When they were gone we all looked at each other.

"Let's go." I said.

"Fuckin aye!" Mike put in happily.

We climbed into my car and headed for the falls.

I must say that it was very eerie being at the party. You see, I'd attended it before when I'd graduated the first time in my previous life. The only differences were the presence of Mike, who had not graduated before, and Nina, who had not been a member of the party-group before. Aside from that, everything was the same. Everything.

The kegs were scattered throughout the parking lot as they had been before, lines of people, still dressed in their dress clothes winding their way to the tap to fill their cups. The same cooperative effort with the car stereos had occurred, with everyone agreeing to tune them to the local rock station and not to play any tapes. The music of Van Halen, Foreigner, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, and others marched by and I was almost able to predict which song was coming next. The conversations were the same and though I hadn't memorized them on my first trip through, hearing them as I went by it was uncanny how much my subconscious had absorbed seventeen years before. It was a little like being in the middle of a dream, one of those dreams you have of prior events in your life, but never had the sensation of deja vu been so strong.

Nina, Mike and I paid our money and had our hands stamped. I quickly drank down three beers, giving myself a pleasant, non-dangerous buzz. The alcohol was able to dampen the sensation a little but not completely. It was very disquieting.

Mike of course was hitting the keg as fast as he could, filling his cup and then walking immediately to the back of the line. By the time he reached the tap again, his cup would be empty. He then repeated the process. He also had several joints with him, which he shared with those in line around him. It was less than an hour before he was hopelessly wasted. This was not surprising.

What was surprising was the fact that Nina was sticking with him and doing the exact same thing. She was drinking beer like water and hitting every joint or pipe that was passed her way. I'd never seen her do anything like this before.

"You might want to slow down a little." I suggested to her as she came staggering over to me after her latest trip through the keg line. She was weaving and unsteady on her feet, spilling some of her beer on her arm.

"Fuck it!" She said, giggling. "I'm having a good time tonight. How many times in your life do you graduate?"

I nodded. "Good point. But be careful. If you keep up this pace you're going to be unconscious before too long."

She reached down and grabbed my cock through my pants, making me jump and look around to see if anyone had seen it. A few had, and they turned away, smirking.

"Nina!" I admonished, pushing her hand away.

"I'm not gonna pass out until I get what I want." She grinned, taking a huge drink of her beer.

Apparently Nina wasn't the only one whose inhibitions were being destroyed by alcohol. Every time she walked away from me some girl would come up and strike up a conversation. Most of them were girls that I'd bedded before during my "male-slut" period. Most of them made no bones about what they wanted.

I'd run into this before of course. When I stopped making my rounds and committed myself to Nina a lot of the girls continued to approach me for a while. They always used the line that I was used to, that they needed help "studying" and had heard that I was an awesome tutor. I would tell each one the same thing, that I had a girlfriend now and that my tutoring days were over. It hadn't taken long before the grapevine had informed all but the most aggressive that I was out of circulation. Even the most aggressive gave up after a while. But the party atmosphere and the alcohol had renewed a lot of the aggression. I believe I gave up more sex that night than I ever would have thought possible.

One girl, Jessica Round, was especially persistent. She would not take no for an answer. I remembered her well. A redhead that was a member of the elite, she'd been well versed in sexual technique before I ever got to her. She had been one of my favorites both because of her staggering good looks and because of the fact that she was on birth control pills, which made a condom unnecessary. She had been one of the longest holdouts when I'd dropped out of circulation.

Three times she approached me when Nina was getting her beer refilled or heading off to the porta-can to pee. On the third time she became nasty in her suggestions.

"C'mon," She pleaded, burping a little as she sipped from her beer. "I haven't had my pussy eaten with any skill since I came over to your house that time. Ditch that little lisping, skinny chick you're with and take a walk with me." She grinned. "You WON'T be sorry."

I bit back my anger for a second and took a deep breath. An idea came to me.

"Listen Jess." I said softly, conspiratorially. "Nina and I are pretty much committed now so I can't really do that."

"Nina." She scoffed. "What does that…"

"But." I said.

"But?" She asked hopefully.

"Well, I couldn't really take myself out of circulation without finding a suitable replacement, could I?"

She looked at me fuzzily. "What do you mean?"

I pointed at Mike, who was standing among a group of guys near the keg. They were all looking at the passing females with admiration and probably explaining to each other which one's they'd fucked, how they'd done it, and when they'd done it. A joint was being passed around while they conversed.

"You see Mike Meachen over there?" I asked her.

"Yeah?" She asked confused.

"He's even better at it than I am."

"Mike Meachen?" She asked, scowling.

"I've lectured him on the proper study techniques so that my name could live on. You get him to go for a walk with you and you won't be sorry."

"Mike Meachen?" She repeated again.

"Trust me on this Jess. He's good. All you have to do is tell him EXACTLY what you want him to do, and he'll do it. Be specific, he doesn't mind. He aims to please."

She appraised him for a moment. "Well," She said, "He IS kinda cute."

"Would I steer you wrong?" I asked. "Sensual pleasure is just waiting for you." I winked. "And of course, he's just as discreet as me. So go get him."

She smiled drunkenly. "Okay." She announced. "Thanks Bill."

She headed off in his direction. Nina returned a moment later, carrying a fresh beer. Her gait was very unsteady now and her eyes were glassy.

"What were you talking to Jessica for?" She asked with distaste and more than a little suspicion.

I shrugged. "She's kind of aggressive." I told her. "So I directed her attention elsewhere."

"You've, uh, done her before?" Nina asked.

"Nina…" I started, uncomfortable.

"I only ask because she used to come up to me all the time and ask what the deal was with you. And then she started asking me if I liked the "vacuum cleaner" treatment. She's a ho."

"I agree." I said. "And I'm sorry you had to deal with her. She's from a previous life Nina."

"Okay." Nina nodded, kissing my cheek. Her breath smelled of beer. "What's she doing over there with Mike?"

"Watch and see." I said happily, taking the cup out her hand and taking a quick drink.

It didn't take long, less than thirty minutes in fact. I couldn't hear what was being said but suddenly the attractive redhead joined the group that Mike was a part of. The other guys tried to flirt with her of course but she only had eyes for Mike. Within ten minutes she was rubbing against his arm. Within fifteen she was pushing her breasts into his back and shoulder.

Within twenty he accompanied her to the keg and refilled her glass. There was one more whispered conversation and the two of them walked off into the woods, holding hands, carrying their beers with them. Even from my vantage I could tell that Mike was nervous. Again I found myself wondering if he'd ever actually been laid before. Oh well. He was about to be laid now.

"How did you do that?" Nina asked me, weaving a little.

"I can do anything I set my mind to." I told her. "Anything."

She leaned forward and kissed me again. Then she looked up. "I'm very drunk Bill."

"I know." I said. "But you only graduate once, right?"

Mike and Jessica emerged from the woods about forty minutes later. Both were staggering and holding onto each other, their hair mussed up, their clothes wrinkled. Both were smiling. That was a surprise. Had Mike done a good job on her? Maybe a combination of her drunkenness and her instructions to him had done the trick. She seemed happy, which hadn't exactly been my goal, but so did Mike. They hit the keg again and then split up, Jess heading over to a group of her friends, Mike heading over to his. It wasn't a minute before he began his description of what just happened to him. By morning her reputation would be shot. Cruel? Maybe. But so had been the way she'd talked about Nina.

By this time Nina had gone back to the keg herself and was having difficulty standing. She giggled at everything and her words were slurred. She rubbed her body against mine shamelessly, pushing her breasts into my arm, grabbing my butt.

"I think you'd better lay off the beer Nina." I told her carefully, holding her up.

"Everything is starting to spin a little." She admitted. "But I'm having such a good time."

"When things start to spin," I suggested, "That should be your warning sign that you've had too much. Believe me, you want to quit."

"Then take a walk with me." She said. "Let's go into the woods like the other couples have."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I told her.

"Why?" She burped, nearly falling. "I want to make love under the stars. Come on Bill," She kissed my neck, nipping at it. "Let's go."

"Not tonight." I insisted.

"Don't I turn you on anymore?" She pouted.

"Very much." I told her. "But I want your first time to be special. Doing it in the woods on a bunch of pine needles while you're drunk would not be special. Do you want your life-long memory of your first time to be, well, nothing? Because believe me Nina, you won't remember anything that's happened tomorrow."

She looked at me for a moment and was about to say something else when her face suddenly soured. "I'm gonna throw up." She said matter-of-factly.

She was right. I led her over to the edge of the woods, out of sight of everyone else, and she began vomiting up great gluts of beer. It went on for several minutes and I held her up while she did it. For the first time I began to worry about what her parents were going to think when I brought her home. Her Dad would kill me.

I led her over to my car and placed her in the passenger seat.

"Sit right here." I told her. "And if you need to throw up again, just do it outside, okay?"

She groaned in reply, but it was an affirmative groan. I headed back to the party to try and collect Mike.

Mike wasn't in much better condition. He was sitting on one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed, concentrating intently.

"You okay Mike?" I asked him.

"I feel sick." He told me. "I'm trying not to barf."

"C'mon." I told him, grabbing him by the arm. "Let's get you back to the car. I'll help you."

He leaned heavily on me as we walked.

"Guess what dude?" He burped, tripping and nearly falling.

"What?"

"I fucked Jessica Round tonight."

"Yeah?" I asked, knowing I was hearing a true pussy story for once from him.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I ate her pussy and everything. That bitch was hot for it. She kept tellin' me what she wanted me to do."

"Did you do it?" I asked.

"Goddam right." He affirmed. He then went on to describe the encounter in greater detail. By the time we got to the car I had the high points.

"Oh dude," He moaned as we reached my trunk. "Take me home."

"You need to do something for me first." I told him.

"What's that?" He slurred.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"What?" He demanded, holding onto the trunk to keep the world from spinning out from under him.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"That'll make me throw up!" He cried.

"Right." I acknowledged. "You're going to do it anyway so you might as well get it over with here instead of in my car. Besides, you'll feel better. Trust me."

"I don't know man." He said doubtfully.

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced him. He staggered over a few paces, got down on his knees, and stuck his finger down his throat. A moment later he was regurgitating beer all over the place. While he did this I went to check on Nina. A fresh puddle outside the passenger door told me that she'd had another bought of vomiting. She was currently curled up in the seat, her head against the doorframe, asleep. I elected not to disturb her.

When Mike finished I loaded him into the back seat and buckled him up. I buckled up Nina and then started up the engine. I headed back to the city.

Mike was easy to get home. A few quick shakes in front of his house and a helping hand getting out of the car and he went staggering up his walkway, giving me a slurred farewell. He had some trouble getting the door open but finally figured out he was using the wrong key. Once this was rectified, he was inside. I drove off towards Nina's house.

The Blackmore house was darkened as I pulled to the curb and shut down my engine. I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Maybe I could get her inside without awakening her parents. Beside me Nina was unconscious, snoring softly. I began to shake her gently, trying to wake her.

"Nina." I called, using a louder and louder voice. "You're home."

She stirred a little but would not open her eyes. She batted at me once when I shook her a little too hard.

"Shit." I mumbled.

I began patting down her pockets, looking for her keys. Feeling the tell-tale bulge in the right front of her pants, I put my hand in, having to force it the pants were so tight, and finally felt the cold metal of the keys. It took a few moments of stern yanking before they popped free. Using the dome light I searched through the ring and finally identified a likely house key.

I got out of the car and walked up to the door, quiet as a mouse, and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock. It wouldn't turn. With a curse I pulled it out and searched through the ring again, locating another prospect. This one did the trick. I released the bolt and pulled the key free. I then tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked too. Using the first key I unlocked that and gave the knob a quick turn to make sure it would open. Knowing that Nina had a cat that was not supposed to be outside, I did not open the door just yet, although that would have made my task easier.

I quickly returned back to the car and opened the passenger door. I shoved the keys back into Nina's pocket and then reached down and picked her up, cradling her like a baby. This was easy since she only weighed about a hundred pounds or so. Even in her stupor her arm automatically went around my neck.

Tiptoeing I walked up to the door and, after considerable twisting and stretching, managed to get my hand on the doorknob. With the layout of the Blackmore house in my mind, giving me the fastest route to her bedroom and back out, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, prepared to make the dash.

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

My eyes looked up to the lighted box next to the front door. An alarm code box. As soon as I heard the noise and saw the box a memory came to me, a memory of the days before our breakup, when Nina's mother used to drive us to this house after school to study. I remembered either Nina or her mother punching in a code as soon as the door was unlocked. A code that shut off the infernal beeping before the alarm would start to ring. How in the hell had I forgotten about that?

I shook her up and down, trying to rouse her. "Nina." I whispered frantically into her ear. "What's the code for your alarm?"

"Huh?" She croaked, her glassy eyes creaking open a quarter of an inch or so.

"What's the damn alarm code?" I asked desperately.

She giggled. "That's funny." She went back to sleep.

"Nina!" I barked louder.

A bedroom door opened from down the hall. A light clicked on.

"Nina?" Came Jack Blackmore's voice. "Turn off the damn alarm! What's the matter with you?"

Footsteps began to approach. Mary's voice spoke up. "Jack? What's wrong? Why is the alarm going off?"

I could only stand there as Jack came around the corner. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and was shirtless, the surgical scar on his chest standing out like a zipper. His eyes locked onto me standing there and holding his unconscious daughter in my arms.

"Christ Almighty." He muttered, tromping over. He punched in a code and the beeping fell silent.

"Jack?" Came Mary's voice from the bedroom. "Is everything all right?"

Jack looked at me carefully for a moment and then at Nina, who was snoring drunkenly again. I wondered if he was going to go get his hunting rifle and blow me away right there or if he would at least give me a running start.

"Is she okay?" He asked tonelessly.

"Uh…" I stammered.

"She smells like a damn brewery. Is she okay?"

"She had a little too much to drink." I finally admitted.

Mary came around the corner. She was dressed in a long cotton nightgown and pulling a robe around her body. She took in the scene before her and walked carefully into the living room.

"What's wrong with her?" She asked.

"Too much to drink." Jack explained.

"I tried to get her to slow down." I offered weakly. My arm muscles were starting to cry out as I stood there. I wondered if we were going to end right back up at step one again because of this?

"And you?" Jack asked me. "Have you had too much to drink too?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "I only had three beers all night, and those were when we first got there. I told you I take driving very seriously."

He nodded. "You seem sober enough." He pointed out. "Well don't just stand there. Go put her in her room. Mary, can you take care of her once she's there?"

"Of course." Mary said, shaking her head sadly and looking at her intoxicated daughter with something that looked almost like affection. Strange.

"C'mon." Mary told me, leading the way.

"Aren't you guys mad about this?" I finally had to ask.

They both stopped and looked at me. "Mad?" Jack asked. "Why would we be mad? You got her home safely just like you said."

"Yeah." I stammered. "But…"

"You mean because she's drunk?" Mary asked next.

I nodded.

They looked at each other for a moment and chuckled knowingly.

"Bill." Jack told me. "We'd be about the biggest hypocrites in the world if we got mad over this. Why back in our day I drug Mary home many a time carrying her just like you're carrying Nina there."

"And I've dragged Jack into the house more than my share too." She added.

My mouth was agape as I tried to picture what they were saying.

"Drinking is a part of every young person's life." Mary said, reaching out to stroke Nina's hair. "She's free and eighteen and if she wants to drink until she vomits, that's her prerogative. Did she vomit?"

"Uh, yeah." I nodded.

"You were a lot more responsible than we used to be." Jack told me. "Why we used to go out to parties and when it was time to go we decided who would drive by whoever had to carry the other. A couple times we woke up the next morning and the car was in the garage and we had no idea how we'd gotten home."

They looked at each other affectionately again. "It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves back then." Mary said nostalgically. She turned to Jack. "Remember that time we woke up in someone's house in the morning and we didn't know where we were?"

Jack laughed fondly. "Oh yeah." He nodded, turning to me. "It was back in the late fifties or thereabouts. We went to this Christmas party and got drunk out of our minds. The next thing we know, we're waking up the next morning in chairs at someone's dining room table. Never seen the house before in our lives."

Mary actually giggled, to my astonishment. "And the kid!" She said. "Remember the kid!"

"Oh yeah." He repeated. "There was this kid eating breakfast at the table. A bowl of cereal. We'd never seen him before, had no idea who he was. He just kind of looked at us and said hi and then went back to eating. Were we hungover? Oh boy I guess we were. Our car was out front so we got into and tried to drive home but we had no idea what part of town we were in or anything."

"It took us about twenty minutes to find a street we were familiar with." Mary laughed.

That this story would be one of their fond marital memories seemed strange at first but I finally realized I was dealing with the alcohol generation here. In their youths alcohol use did not have the stigma it would develop in mine. Drinking was a part of every social function and was seen as a rite of passage almost. The Blackmores seemed almost proud of their daughter for having her first vomitus trip through the land of intoxication.

"This is very weird." I couldn't help commenting.

They offered no comment to that. Mary led me to Nina's bedroom where I gently laid her down on her bed. She shoed me out and closed the door while she began attending to her comatose daughter. When I returned to the living room, Jack was holding two bottles of beer in his hands. He handed one to me.

"Since you didn't get to drink at the party tonight," He said. "I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home."

I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest.

"You're not supposed to drink, are you?" I asked lightly.

"Screw those doctors." He told me. "If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn't have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me."

"I won't insult you by saying no." I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.

Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn't quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.

Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn't a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80 degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.

The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He'd picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks proceeding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn't be mailed to him for a week, he KNEW that he'd passed. I couldn't doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was "Congratulations". His score was ninety-one percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o'clock the afternoon of June 20.

I didn't believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I've mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner's muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence that he would do so.

The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he'd gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o'clock, that something was wrong.

It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.

"I didn't pass dude." He told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.

"What happened?" I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I'd failed the same test before of course but I hadn't wanted it as badly as he did.

He sighed, shaking his head. "My legs and my endurance were fuckin' top rate." He said. "I lit into that course like you wouldn't believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat, it didn't even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledge hammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn't even winded and my time was pushing the record." He gave me a bitter look.

"And then what?" I asked gently.

He scowled. "I'm tellin' you man." He said. "I've spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that's the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren't working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom." He sniffed a little. "Automatic disqualification."

I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I'd never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I'd taken it I hadn't worked my arms either. But I'd also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position. Actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.

"I'm sorry Man." I told him. "I know how much you wanted this."

He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. "That kinda shit happens." He told me. "Oh well. There's always next year, I guess. I'll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then."

We smoked the joint together but it didn't improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn't like seeing him that way.

As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice; the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina's time was taken up by much of the same process.

But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my Dad's boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He'd purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it's engine broken, it's paint faded, it's hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.

I myself had owned a small boat in my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I'd finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts.

But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I'd gotten Dad's tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could.

I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.

And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the "engine doesn't work" problem that my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.

He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we'd installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.

"Head gasket is blown." He told me happily.

"Okay." I said, not knowing what that meant. Like my old man I knew next to nothing about the internal combustion engine. "Can we fix it?"

"Are you serious?" He asked, shaking his head.

"What do you mean?"

"I can do it in a day for less than a hundred bucks." He told me. "The head gasket is the seal between the head and the engine block. If it's blown it fucks up the compression and lets oil and shit spray out. That keeps the engine from running or from cooling right. If that's all that's wrong, we'll have this thing up and running next weekend."

"No shit?" I asked, impressed.

"No shit." He answered happily.

So the next Saturday he came over at nine in the morning and we went to work. First we visited the auto parts store where he requested the appropriate parts and I paid for them. We took them back to my garage and he opened his toolbox. We went to work, me very much in the apprentice mode.

I had noticed that he was preoccupied with something else throughout the day but I didn't broach the subject. Mike was not the kind of person you tried to draw out. If he wanted to tell you what was wrong, he would do it. If he didn't, you weren't going to get it out of him.

It was after we'd removed the head and placed it on some newspapers on the garage floor along with all of the other parts, as he was scraping the old gasket off, that he finally spilled it. Our hands were grimy and greasy and both of us were dripping sweat from the high humidity. We were both drinking cans of beer that my Dad had supplied us with.

"I'm thinking about joining the Air Force." He told me, scraping away with a razor.

That one sentence sent chills through my body, even before my mind completely processed it. The Air Force? I could almost feel fate pulling at Mike, could almost sense it as a hostile, aware presence in the garage with us, a cloaked figure with a satisfied smile on it's face.

"What did you say?" I asked quietly, hoping I hadn't heard him right, or that he was merely joking with me.

"The Air Force." He repeated, grinding away at a stubborn piece of gasket. "I got a call from this recruiter guy the other day and I talked to him about twenty minutes. He was a really cool guy."

A really cool guy. Not surprising. Recruiters were, after all, salesmen. A good one would have gone out of his way to learn the lingo of his target group and would talk just like a teenager, even if he was a fifty year old man. They were paid to seduce the young and they were good at it.

"What did he say?" I asked, my mind in overdrive trying to think of a way to counter this situation.

"Well we talked for a little bit." He said. "And I told him that I was interested in firefighting. He says that every Air Force Base, everywhere in the world, has a fire department. They handle all of the medical aids and fires on the base housing. They also get extensive training in aircraft fires and rescue. If I spent four years in doing that it would almost guarantee me a job when I got out. Think of how that would look on my resume, being trained in aircraft suppression, HAZMAT, and with four years of practical experience doing it."

I realized two things as I listened to him. One, was that he was repeating, almost word for word, what the recruiter had thrown at him. Mike would never have said anything like "resume" or "practical experience". The second thing was that he was seeking my approval of his plan. Whether he was doing it unconsciously or consciously, he was running his idea by me hoping I'd say it was a great one. This gave me hope that I could divert him from what I was sure would be a destructive path. I had no illusions about what would happen if Mike joined the Air Force. But I needed to do it carefully. If I pushed too hard, my words would have the opposite effect that I intended.

"Did he tell you that you could go into the fire department?" I asked.

"He said that I could put that in as my request for skills and they would try to place me there." Mike said. "It sounds like a pretty good deal."

"Yeah." I nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like one."

"I made an appointment to talk to him tomorrow." He said.

I chewed my lip a little, knowing that the recruiter had every intention of getting Mike to sign his name to the line tomorrow, knowing that Mike would most likely do so if left to his own devices. What to do?

I picked up my beer, which was warm at that point and tasted like shit but I took a big drink of it anyway.

"I've looked into the military a little bit." I told him.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I affirmed. "It could be a good career move under certain circumstances, but there's a few things you have to realize."

He scowled a little bit. "What do you mean?"

I took a deep breath. "Well," I said. "First of all there's the recruiter. You have to understand what his purpose is. In our country we have a volunteer military. There's no draft in place so they have to staff everything with people who have signed their names of their own free will. In order to do that, they have to make the military look attractive to their prospects, to draw them away from civilian life. That's where the recruiter comes in. He probably sounded like he was your best friend, right?"

Mike shrugged, scraping away a little more gasket. "Yeah, he was pretty cool."

"That's because he's a salesman. His job is to sign up people for the Air Force. He wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't good at it. So he'll pretty much tell you anything in order to get you in there. He'll go on and on about how great the Air Force is but he won't tell you the unpleasant parts because that might put you off a little. So the first thing you need to realize is that the recruiter is not really your friend. He has a job to do, and his job is to sign you up."

"Yeah," Mike scowled further, "But…"

"Now hold on." I interrupted. "I'm not saying the military is a BAD idea. I'm just trying to get you to see that the recruiter can not necessarily be trusted to hold your best interests in mind. Can you see this?"

He thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah." He agreed. "I see where you're coming from."

"For instance," I said. "Did he mention the ASVAB to you?"

"The az-vab?" Mike asked.

"Armed services vocational assessment battery." I translated. "The ASVAB. It's a test they give you once you're committed. It's a general knowledge exam designed to get into your mind a little and see what makes you tick. Psychologists and so forth have designed it and it measures what your strengths and weaknesses are. From that, they determine what job you're going to be assigned to once you're in."

"But he told me they'd put me into the Firefighting School." Mike protested.

"No no." I corrected. "You yourself just told me that they would put that in as a request for skills and TRY to assign you there. He didn't actually say that you would be put in there, did he?"

Mike thought for a moment. "No." He finally said. "He didn't. But still, my request will be in. Why wouldn't they put me there?"

"Lots of reasons." I explained. "First and foremost your ASVAB might say you wouldn't be a good firefighter. If that's the case, then you won't get it no matter what. If your ASVAB says you'd make an excellent, oh, missile technician in some silo in North Dakota, then that's where you're going to go. But even if your ASVAB says you'd make a good firefighter, there might not be any openings for that skill. I imagine that firefighting and MP skills are taken up pretty quickly."

"If they don't give me what I want." Mike said firmly. "Then I won't do it."

"That's the catch." I told him. "You take the ASVAB after you've signed your name and committed yourself. You would have taken the oath at that point. You can't back out after that. You'd be in for four years, doing whatever they wanted you to do. If they wanted to send you to Germany to clean out shithouses, you'd be doing it. Once you sign your name, you're government property. The only way out at that point is some sort of discharge that would be other than honorable. It could be medical, psychological, dishonorable, but no matter what it would be, it would destroy your chances of getting on with any fire department anywhere."

He had stopped scraping the gasket and was looking at me. I could read his face and could see that a part of him wanted to be angry with me, to storm out of my garage for telling him something he didn't want to hear. But another part of him, the part that was becoming an adult, was also there. That part was carefully considering what I'd just said.

"Are you sure about all of this?" He asked me.

"You don't have to believe me." I told him. "You have an appointment with the recruiter tomorrow. Ask him all of this. Ask him directly if what I've just told you is true. He'll hem and haw and try to convince you that you'll almost surely be put in the firefighter class but he won't give you any sort of guarantee in writing and he won't be able to say, "Mike, you WILL be in that firefighting class". I'm not wrong about this Mike. You need to be wary of making impulsive decisions that can erase four years of your life."

He nodded, not speaking.

"If you don't join up." I told him. "You can take the Spokane test again next year. Or you can start applying at other departments around here. Someone, somewhere is always hiring. Seattle Fire hires twice a year I hear and they pay quite a bit more than Spokane. Put in your interest cards everywhere and fill out the applications. Take the tests even if it's some bum-fuck Egypt department that you'd never work for. It's good practice. In the meantime, sign up for the fire science classes at the community college."

"College?" He asked, never having considered that concept.

"Why not?" I enquired. "It's cheap and it gives you something to do. When you go to the interviews you can tell them that you're working on your degree in Fire Science. They love that shit. Once you get hired you can drop out if you want. Or you can continue. My point is that just because you missed one test the first time, you don't have to do something rash like joining the military. If you do that there's a good chance you might regret it later and have no way out. If you stick it out for a while you might get hired somewhere else or you might get hired at Spokane next year. If none of that works out, then maybe you can give the military a try. But there's no hurry is there? The Air Force will still be there in a year, won't they?"

"I suppose so." He told me.

"Just don't let the recruiter seduce you tomorrow. Be on guard and ask the right questions. Remember that the recruiter can act like your friend, he can make you believe he's your friend, but he's not your friend. He exists to get you to sign your name. He doesn't give a fuck about you."

Mike nodded. He didn't commit himself one way or the other but I knew I'd given him a lot of food for thought. I hoped it was enough.

The conversation soon turned to other things. We worked for another three hours and finally the engine was back together.

"Okay." Mike told me, standing near the back of it. "Fire it up."

I turned the key and it roared to life, sounding exactly like an eight cylinder, gas-guzzling engine should. Mike proclaimed the boat fixed. Of course it still had to have it's registration updated but we made tentative plans to take it out the following weekend.

I thought about reminding him of what we'd talked about as he headed home but decided not to. I could only hope his maturity would win out over his other side.

I didn't get a chance to talk to Mike for a few days. The day after the boat was fixed Nina and I spent the day together downtown, catching a movie and then having dinner together. We made out a little in my car at a deserted park but did nothing fancy. My mind was preoccupied with a thousand things, as was hers. We said our good-byes at her doorstep at ten that night, exchanging a demure kiss. I then went home and wanked myself to sleep.

Monday and Tuesday were my normal routine. I got Dad to go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and re-register the boat. He did so grudgingly, he hated DMV as much as anyone, but he was proud of the accomplishment of getting the old boat running again. I told him my plans to take it out the following Saturday and he quizzed me once more about my experience with driving a boat and driving a car with a boat trailer attached to it. I assured him that I knew how to do it. One of the advantages of having my Dad in on my secret was that he didn't question things like that too heavily and that I didn't have to lie to him. It was nice.

During this time period I almost called Mike a half a dozen times. I was worried that the recruiter had somehow gotten to him. I wouldn't have even put it past one of those slime to outright lie and tell him that of course he'd be placed in the firefighting program. After all, by the time he found out to the contrary, it would be too late wouldn't it? And if his complaints somehow landed on something other than deaf ears, the recruiter could always deny it. I hoped he'd taken my speech about putting things in writing seriously.

He finally called me on Wednesday, just before I left for work. It was maddening as he talked of inconsequential things for five minutes and part of me wondered if he knew what hell he was putting me through and enjoying it. Finally the subject of the meeting with the recruiter came up.

"You were right Dude." He told me. "That asshole was a piece of shit."

"Yeah?" I asked, suppressing a shout of joy. "What happened?"

"I asked him the questions you told me to ask." He said. "He went on and on about how I would most likely be placed exactly where I wanted to be, even in the city I wanted to be in, but that he couldn't ACTUALLY guarantee it. He told me the ASVAB was just a formality and that it didn't mean much but he wouldn't break out anything in writing to put me in the firefighting program. He kept trying to smooth talk me and get off the subject of where I would end up. He started talking about college, and money for college, and serving my country, and a bunch of shit like that. Finally I told him to fuck off and left."

"That's fuckin cool Mike." I said, unable to suppress any longer. "You made the right decision."

"Yeah." He said. "Thanks for clueing me in about that asshole. I owe you one."

He had actually thanked me! Unbelievable. "No problem man." I told him. "That's what friends do."

"We still on for Saturday?" He asked next. "I'm ready to try water-skiing."

"We're on." I told him. "You and me and Nina. We'll head out about nine."

"Cool." He said, then paused for a second. "I'm not gonna be in the way or anything with you and Nina, am I?"

"No." I assured him. "You need three to water-ski anyway. Someone has to be the observer."

"That's cool." He told me. "You're lucky. You got a girlfriend to take with you. I seem to be fresh out of women at the moment. I tried to call Jess Round but she's not even speaking to me. She told me to fuck off when I got hold of her."

"Fuck her." I told him. "She's a ho. We'll find you someone else."

"Think you can do it by Saturday?" He asked jokingly.

"I'll get right on it." I said, just as jokingly.

It was Thursday morning and I was at the local AM/PM pumping gas into my Datsun. I wasn't thinking of much, just reflecting upon the fact that I missed the convenience of just sliding my ATM card into a little slot and pumping my fill without ever having to actually go inside the store and pay in cash. It was one of those things that would appear in the next few years that I had to live without. Such a little thing, the ATM card and the interlinked networks, but something that once you got used to, you felt the sting if it wasn't there anymore.

ATM machines themselves were just starting to make their appearance to the world. At the moment, my bank did not have any of them. When I wanted money I had to physically go inside and cash a check. I had to be sure to do this between nine and five on a weekday or I was shit out of luck in the money department. I reflected, as the numbers on the pump clicked off dollars and cents, that the American public in general was probably spending a lot less money than they would in a few years. Right now you had to go to the bank to get cash and cash was basically the only way to acquire anything small. In a few years you would be able to go to any machine anywhere and deplete your checking or savings account at any hour of the day. It would be no longer mandatory to take out a supply of money in order to survive the workweek.

I was wondering if this was a bad thing or a good thing when I detected a presence moving in on me. My instincts flared, thoughts of Richie Fairview coming for his final revenge crossing my consciousness. Adrenaline flooded me in an instant as my body prepared to fight or flee. I turned into my aggressor, my arms coming up in a defensive posture and suddenly I was enveloped in a pair of female arms, a warm, soft body pressing heavily into me.

"Bill!" A familiar voice squealed at me. I felt the press of breasts against my chest as I was pulled into my attacker.

"Maggie?" I asked, taking in the form and instinctively returning the hug.

She gave me a wet, sloppy kiss on the cheek. "Did I scare you?" She asked teasingly, pulling back to look at me.

"No." I lied. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting gas." She told me, finally releasing me from her embrace. She was dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a half-shirt. She looked very pretty.

The endlessly horny part of my brain remembered what that body looked like naked, how it felt moving beneath (or above) mine. "What else does one do at a gas station?"

"Good point." I allowed. "How have you been? What have you been up to?"

"I'm still going to college." She said. "Working on my pre-recs for nursing school. Hopefully I'll be able to transfer over to State next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed."

"Good for you." I told her, knowing what was going to come soon from her lips. An offer to get together with her for a little fun. Fortunately she'd allowed me an opening to derail her offer before it came. I seized upon it. "My girlfriend is going to be getting those pre-recs too. She wants to go to med school."

"Girlfriend?" She moaned sadly, but good naturedley. "Don't tell me you're out of circulation?"

"Afraid so." I confirmed.

"Well that sucks the big one." She giggled. "I was hoping you and I could get together, you know, for old times sake." Her tone heavily implied that this would still be a possibility, girlfriend or not.

"Sorry." I said, smiling. "But if I was ever tempted…" I winked.

We chatted for a minute, her catching me up on the whereabouts of Cindy. "That bitch moved in with the college professor and left me holding the lease for our apartment. If I wouldn't have found another roommate right away they would've had to evict me. She's such a blonde."

"Are they still together?" I asked.

"Oh yeah." She nodded. "They're gonna get married as soon as his divorce is final."

"Go Cindy." I said.

"So who's the lucky girl that snagged you?" Maggie asked me. "She must be a hottie."

"Nina Blackmore." I told her.

Her brow crinkled in confusion. "Nina Blackmore?" She asked. "Really?"

"Really." I confirmed, knowing the source of her confusion. Though Nina was pretty and though I longed for her body as well as her mind, she was not exactly in the category of "hottie".

"Well congratulations." She told me. "But if you ever break up with her…"

"You'll be the first one I call." I promised. "But I don't think I'm gonna break up anytime soon."

"Pretty serious huh?" She asked.

"Very." I confirmed.

She sighed. "That's what I need." She told me. "Someone to be serious with. Having different boyfriends every month used to be fun but it's getting kind of old. And now with AIDS and all that shit, well, you know?"

I nodded and then an idea suddenly hit me. It was an impulsive decision, one that I did not have time to think out carefully, but I went with it.

"Hey Maggie," I said. "Do you like to water-ski?"

She looked at me, wondering what this was about. "I've done it a few times." She said. "It's fun."

"I just fixed up my Dad's ski boat." I told her. "Nina and Mike Meachen and I are taking it out on Saturday. You want to come?"

She grinned knowingly. "Are you trying to fix me up with Mike Meachen?" She asked.

"No." I protested. "I just thought you'd like to come, that's all. What's wrong with Mike anyway?"

A giggle. "You are." She accused. "There's nothing wrong with him I guess.

He's kinda cute, but he's younger. I don't go for younger guys."

"You don't have to go for him." I said. "I just wanted to know if you'd like to go skiing with us."

She considered for a moment. "Okay." She finally said. "What time?"

That evening after work Nina came over for a visit. We did the obligatory time chatting with my parents and then we went out front to sit in the porch swing with our arms around each other, watching the sunset while we rocked slowly back and forth. I told her that I'd invited Maggie to go boating with us and felt her tense up.

"Maggie Bartlett?" She asked carefully. "You invited HER to go?"

"Yeah." I answered, wondering suddenly if it had been such a good idea after all. "I ran into her at the gas station. I thought that maybe her and Mike might hit it off a little."

She looked over at me. "She's very pretty." Nina said.

I shrugged. "I suppose."

"You've uh, done it with her before." She said. It was not a question.

"Nina that was the past." I said. "And it was a long time ago." Which wasn't exactly true, Maggie and Cindy had been the last two girls I'd slept with after all, but I didn't think that little fact needed to play a part in this discussion.

"Bill…" She started worriedly.

"Those days are over." I told her. "I promise you that. I'm committed to you completely. Maggie is just a friend and I thought that maybe her and Mike would maybe make a good couple. Mike needs a girlfriend and Maggie needs a boyfriend. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If you want, I'll call her up and tell her we cancelled the trip."

She considered this for a moment. "No." She said finally. "Let her come. It's very nice of you to try and fix Mike up. It's just weird to think that I'll be spending the day with someone that you used to… you know?"

I nodded. "Are you sure?" I asked.

"I'm sure." She told me. And then softly, "Was she good at it?"

I nearly choked. "What?"

"Was she good at it?" Nina asked. "In bed?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "Terrible."

Nina smiled a little. "You're not a very good liar Bill."

My mother was still not in on the secret of my recycling and so she naturally questioned my Dad's decision to allow my friends and me to take out the boat. I can see her point of view well. Somehow, how I know not, Dad convinced her that it would be all right. She didn't like the idea but she consented to it. And since she'd consented to it she made it her mission to make sure we were suitably supplied for a day at the lake. She packed a picnic basket with enough fried chicken, homemade potato salad, chips, and pork and beans to kill us all. She filled up a large ice-chest with soda. After a stern, motherly warning to be careful and to bring back her silverware, we were allowed to proceed with the loading of the boat.

Things were a little awkward at first. Maggie was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt over her bikini top. Nina was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans too. They were pulled over her one-piece bathing suit. The two girls sized each other up for a few moments, exchanging only polite pleasantries with each other, both of them wondering what I saw in the other.

Mike was also surprised, although pleasantly so, to find Maggie there. I'd decided that the best course was not to tell him beforehand. If there was chemistry to be found between the two of them, then so be it. I did take one step in order to help the chemistry along.

"What's she doin' here?" Mike asked me when we were out of earshot.

"She's an old friend of mine." I told him.

"She's fuckin' hot." He proclaimed. "I used to see her at school."

I nodded. "Don't get your hopes up." I told him. "She's got a boyfriend. She's just along for the ride."

"She does?" He asked, disappointed.

"Sorry dude." I told him. "She's off the market."

"That's the shit." He pouted. "Oh well, she's nice to look at anyway."

"You got that right." I nodded.

By telling Mike that he didn't have a chance with her I figured that I was actually giving him his best chance. If he knew that she was available he would have been hitting on her like mad and I knew his lines and techniques would have been immature enough to drive Maggie away. But if he thought she was already spoken for he would tend to be much more like himself. That was what I wanted.

Mike and I, shirtless for the occasion and wearing shorts, finally picked up the tongue of the trailer and placed it on the hitch on my Dad's car. I was gratified to see that Maggie was taking in the bulging leg muscles of Mike as we did this. I suppressed a grin.

We connected the wires for the trailer lights and, with a last farewell to my parents, pulled out into the street and headed for the freeway. We got on I-90 heading east for Idaho, Nina and I in the front, Mike and Maggie in the back. My plan was working so far at that point. The two of them were talking easily in the back, discussing the merits of Spokane's community college. In the front, Nina rested her hand on my bare thigh and occasionally gave me a little squeeze.

Our first stop was a grocery store just outside of Coeur d Alene. The drinking age in Idaho was nineteen years old at that time. In a few years it would be raised to twenty-one thanks to the efforts of the group that my Mom and Dad were supposed to be part of.

"Okay Maggie." I said, handing her the cash that we'd pooled. "Go do your stuff."

She smiled sweetly and stepped out of the car. "You wanna come?" She asked Mike. "I'll need help carrying everything."

"Sure." He barked, stepping out with her.

While they were inside Nina and I went back to the boat and opened up the ice chest. We took out all of the soda my Mom had placed in there and tossed it into the trunk of the car. When Maggie and Mike returned they had three twelve packs of Olympia and two bags of ice. This was placed in the ice chest and we headed North.

Lake Pend Oreille, our destination, is a huge lake, the third largest West of the Mississippi. We paid our money and pulled into a launching facility at the south end of it. The facility was crowded with other boaters out to take in a day on the lake and we had to wait in line for about twenty minutes. The air was festive as we watched people scurry here and there, watched the sun beat on the blue surface of the water, and listened to the gunning of boat engines. Finally it was our turn. It had been a while since I'd done such a thing but I managed to back the boat into the lake without breaking or hitting anything. We detached it from it's trailer for the first time in years and I parked the car while Mike held the boat to the dock with a rope.

We climbed into the boat, Nina sitting next to me in the front while Mike and Maggie sat directly behind us. The engine fired up at once and I took a moment to praise Mike's mechanical skills.

"You fixed the boat?" Maggie asked Mike, her eyes shining at him. It seemed she was warming up to the possibilities he represented.

He nodded suavely. "Yeah." He confirmed. "I know a little about engines and stuff."

"Don't be modest." I said as I backed the boat away from the dock. I turned to Maggie. "We wouldn't be out here today if it wasn't for him. He's a goddam mechanical genius."

Mike blushed at the praise and Maggie smiled. "You know?" She said. "My car's been making a funny sound lately. Maybe you could take a look at it sometime."

"Maybe I could." He nodded. "What's the sound?"

While Maggie described the ticking noise her car was making I throttled up a little and began to ease the boat out towards the buoy. Nina dropped her hand to my knee again and smiled at me. I was able to read her thoughts. She was thinking that bringing Maggie along was a good idea after all.

Conversation became impossible once I passed the buoy and throttled up the engine to full. It screamed with horsepower, driving the boat along at 45 MPH, the bow bouncing over the chop on the surface of the water, tendrils of spray occasionally wetting us. It was thrilling to be on the lake again, to be at the controls of a boat after all that time. I felt the thrum of the engine beating through my chest, felt the bow bouncing up and down in the waves, felt the sun beating down on my shirtless body, felt the hand of my beloved on my thigh.

I headed in a NorthWest direction, hoping to find a reasonably deserted portion of the lake so we could do some skiing and maybe find a nice island to hang out on. I looked at Mike at one point and mimed the act of drinking with my hands. He got the idea and fished in the ice chest, pulling out a frosty can of beer for me. While I opened it he pulled out three more and distributed them. Nina, who had recently sworn off alcohol opened hers and took a huge drink.

Finally finding an empty spot I throttled down the motor and let the boat drift.

"Who wants to ski?" I asked.

Nina and Mike had never done it before so Maggie volunteered to be first. She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto her seat. Her bikini top was red and was very brief, allowing her large breasts to bulge out the side. I tore my eyes away from the appetizing sight of this and looked at Mike instead. His eyeballs were nearly bugging out.

She put on the life vest and then jumped into the water.

"How is it?" Mike asked her.

"A little chilly." She admitted, suppressing a shiver. "It's making my nipples hard."

I looked over at Nina to see if this statement would offend her but she only giggled and took another drink from her beer. Mike, on the other hand, was staring agape. This made both of us laugh even more.

Maggie smiled up him. "The water might make Nina's and my nipples hard," She said, "But wait till you see what it does to you and Bill. Does the word "shrinkage" mean anything to you?"

We all laughed at this and Mike, trying to compose himself, finally picked up the water skis and put them in the water for her.

"Thanks." She said, gazing at him. While he blushed she began the process of putting them on.

She fumbled around in the water for a few moments and finally mangaged to get the skis on her feet. Mike tossed the rope to her next and I instructed him to face backward and watch her carefully.

"No problem." He assured me, watching her legs bobbing up and down.

"And tell me if she falls." I added.

"Oh yeah." He nodded.

I throttled up a little until the rope was tight and pulling Maggie forward.

She got into position and then gave me the thumbs-up. I throttled up more and she was pulled neatly out of the water where she began sliding across it's surface, a huge grin on her face.

Maggie turned out to be quite an accomplished skier. I turned left and right and she hung in there, turning gracefully behind me, maneuvering herself so that she went back and forth across the wake. Finally I turned a little too sharp and she hit the wake at the wrong angle. She went down in a tumble of arms and legs, her skis flying free.

"She's down!" Mike screamed, much too loudly.

I throttled down and circled around to pick her up while she swam after the skis.

"You asshole." She yelled at me when I got close. "You turned too sharp."

"If you can't hang…" I said, smiling. "You wanna try again?"

"No." She said, shaking her head. "Let someone else have a chance."

She tossed the skis in the boat and climbed up the ladder. Her body was dripping with lake water and when she pulled the life vest off I noticed, uncomfortably, that her bikini top had pulled down from her collision and the upper half of her aureole was showing. I dragged my eyes away from this but Mike didn't.

"Like what you see?" Maggie asked him sweetly, slowly reaching down to pull her top back into position.

Mike suddenly found something to look at in the sky, his face reddening even more. "I didn't see anything!" He protested.

Nina and I both suppressed laughter at this while Maggie kept the amused, interested expression on her face. "It's okay." She said. "Accidents happen." She handed him the life vest. "Let's see how you do Mr. Mechanic."

Mike gulped and then began to put on the vest. He did it quickly and jumped into the water. But not before everyone had seen the fact that his shorts were definitely bulging outward.

We spent the next two hours skiing back and forth across the portion of the lake we were on. Mike did badly at first, continually falling the moment I tried to pull him out of the water. He was making the typical beginner's mistake of trying to pull himself up instead of letting the boat do it. This let the line develop slack which, when it was unslacked inevitably pulled the skier sharply forward. Maggie gave him helpful hints from her position as observer and finally he was able to get up without falling. Once he figured this out he was unstoppable. He had a keen sense of balance and soon he was out-skiing Maggie.

Nina had no trouble gaining her feet but she had a lousy sense of balance. It was quite a while before she was able to keep from falling whenever I turned. While she skied and while Maggie continued to serve as observer I taught Mike the basics of piloting the boat. At last, when Nina came dripping inside it was my turn. With Mike at the helm I skied back and forth for a while, reacquainting myself with the pleasure of sliding along the water. While Nina sat backwards, watching for me to fall, I couldn't help but see that Maggie and Mike were sitting quite close together in the front. Just call me Cupid.

We were all buzzing pleasantly from the beer and absolutely famished with hunger when I finally pulled myself back inside and threw down the life vest. We opened up another beer and then went to find a place to eat.

I found a small island to park at. It was about an acre or so and had some scrubby looking trees growing on it. We pulled the boat onto the shore, tied it to a tree to keep it from drifting away, and then grabbed our picnic blankets. We spread them in the shade and opened up the food my Mom had packed for us. The next twenty minutes were filled with contented chomping and chewing and the slapping at bees and flies that had been drawn by the smell of fried chicken. Out on the water an occasional boat shot by, most pulling skiers behind them, but for the most part it was peaceful and quite.

After we stowed the food away and got rid of the trash we lounged on the blanket. I sat up drinking a beer while Nina laid down on her back with her head on my lap. She seemed very contented to be there. Maggie looked at us for a moment and then at Mike.

"That looks comfortable." She said and then patted his bare leg. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." He croaked, shifting his position to give her room.

With a smile she stretched out and put her head in his lap. He seemed as if he was in ecstasy and a look was passed between the two girls. A knowing look.

The conversation went back and forth, varying on subject as we sat there. Mike was strangely quiet through all of this.

"I have to pee." Nina finally said, lifting up her head.

"Go do it in the lake." I suggested.

"That's disgusting." She told me. "You don't do that do you?"

"Of course not." I lied, suppressing a smile.

"I hope not." She said. "I had my head on those shorts."

"Don't let him fool you Nina." Maggie said. "Men are pigs. They pee anywhere." She raised her head off of Mike's lap. "Come on." She told her. "I need to go too. Let's take a walk to the other side of the island."

"Okay." She said, slipping into her sandals and giving me a brief kiss on the lips. "We'll be back."

Maggie gave Mike a saucy look and the two girls then tromped off, disappearing into the trees.

Mike and I looked at each other for a moment. When he was sure they were out of earshot he said, "Are you sure she's got a boyfriend? She's been flirting with me all day."

"That's what I heard." I shrugged. "Maybe I was wrong. It sure seems like she likes you."

"It does, doesn't it?" He nodded, obviously unaccustomed to the sensation.

When the girls returned the flirtation continued, gearing up a little. She fawned over his red shoulders and offered to rub lotion on them. Watching the way her fingers slid over his skin, massaging in the lotion, I knew he had to fighting to maintain control of himself. I knew from experience that Maggie could do wonders with her hands.

"Do you want to go swimming?" Nina asked me, giving me a look that said they wanted to be alone.

"Sure." I nodded, standing up.

"We'll just stay here." Maggie said, putting some more lotion in her hand.

Nina and I splashed out into the water, holding hands as we went. The water was a bit biting but it wasn't icy and we quickly got used to it. We went out until we were almost completely submerged and then began to move along the shoreline. In a matter of minutes, Mike and Maggie were out of our sight. I mentally wished him luck and then diverted my attention to Nina.

We played in the water for a while, splashing each other and romping around.

Gradually our playfulness turned to caresses and hugs. While still standing in shoulder deep water I pulled her tightly to me and we kissed; a long, sensuous kiss that made things stir a little down below.

When our mouths parted she looked at me. "I'm glad you invited Maggie along." She told me. "It would've been kind of awkward without her here."

"That's what I figured." I answered. "Did she tell you anything when you went off to pee?"

"Just that she thought he was kind of cute. And that he seemed very, you know, inexperienced."

"Does that bother her?" I asked.

She smiled knowingly. "No." She said. "In fact she kind of seemed to like the idea. I think she wants to teach him a few things."

"Oh?" I grinned. "What kind of things?"

"These kind of things." She said, leaning in and putting her mouth to mine.

We stood there kissing hotly, our hands gliding up and down each other's backs while the waves gently lapped against our bodies. We quickly heated up despite the cold as we rubbed against one another under the water. There is something intrinsically erotic about making out in a lake. Maybe it's the water, maybe it's the thrill of doing it outdoors, or maybe a combination of both. Whatever it was we both felt it, both responded to it.

Her hand slid down my chest and across the front of my shorts, her fingers squeezing my turgid erection.

"Nina." I said with feigned shock at her naughtiness.

"Just checking for shrinkage." She told me, licking at my lips, sucking at my tongue. "It doesn't seem to be a problem here."

"No?" I asked.

She nibbled on my ear. "Well, there's only one way to be sure." She said.

Her fingers found the button on the top of my shorts and undid it. Next she found the zipper and slowly slid that down. Her cool hand reached inside and wrapped around me, squeezing and sliding up and down. I let my head fall onto her shoulder and my hands slide down to her ass, which I began stroking through the material of her shorts.

She stroked me to a near frenzy while I fondled her ass and kissed on her neck and shoulders. At last she pushed downward on my shorts, sending them down my leg and freeing my cock.

"I don't think this is a good idea." I whispered to her.

"Shhh." She whispered into my ear, her hand grabbing me once again. "I want to make you come again."

"But…"

"Shhh." She repeated, silencing me by putting her mouth to mine. She kissed me for a second and then said, "Take off my shorts."

"Your shorts?" I asked, wondering uneasily what she had in mind. She didn't want me to make love to her here, in this lake did she? That certainly wasn't the first time of love with her that I'd envisioned. We also had no protection. "Nina, I think we should stop and think about what we're doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing." She told me, giving my cock a few strokes. "Now take off my shorts."

The demanding tone of her voice drove me to action. Too aroused to fight anymore I reached down and unbuttoned her. I slid down her zipper and then pushed the shorts down her legs. She kicked them free and they floated up to the surface next to her. With her free hand she grabbed them and tossed them onto the shore where they landed with a wet plop. She was standing before me only in her bathing suit now. Her face was flushed with excitement.

"Now come here." She told me, pulling me towards her by the cock. She pulled me until I felt the head touch the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She slid it up and down a few times and then the top of my shaft was touching the material that covered her crotch. She let go of my cock and pulled my groin into her, closing her thighs around it. I felt the soft, baby smooth skin of her upper legs engulf me while the top of my shaft pressed firmly against her mound through the bathing suit.

"Ohh." She sighed, gyrating her hips a little, obviously enjoying the pressure in her nether regions.

I certainly was. It wasn't as pleasurable as being inside of a vagina, but it was very nice indeed. I moved my hips back and forth a little and her thighs rubbed the sides of me, sending pleasure radiating upward. Nina began to move back and forth too, increasing the pressure on her mound while her hands pulled at my ass, driving me into her.

We were both panting as my hips moved, driving my cock between her thighs. She kept them just tight enough against me to generate a pleasant friction but not so tight that abrasions would result. Her hands squeezed and fondled my ass and my hands did the same, dropping down and grabbing her cheeks, my fingers sliding beneath the elastic and touching bare flesh.

I had never done anything like this with anyone before, in either life and I found it blackly exciting. Especially when I considered that the woman who had initiated this was Nina who, though I loved her deeply, I'd figured to be a bit sexually repressed due to her upbringing and history. I guess I was wrong about that.

"Do you like it?" She breathed, her eyes shining as she watched my face.

"Yeah." I panted back at her. "Where did you learn this?"

"I read a lot." She told me, giving my ass an extra hard squeeze. "And some of the stuff I read is not exactly what my mother would approve of."

"I guess not." I answered, kissing her neck.

"I want you to come." She told me, whispering in my ear. "I want to feel it."

I didn't answer her, just continued to thrust in and out against her thighs, against her nylon-covered sex. Her tongue dipped into my mouth again, finding and attacking mine, her lips sucking obscenely at me. Nina had learned the lessons of kissing well. Finally I could take it no more. My hips began to blur as I drove in and out of her thighs.

"Yes." She told me, breaking the kiss for an instant, leaving a string of saliva stretched between our mouths. "Come. I want to feel it."

"Ahhh." I groaned, feeling the sensation beginning. I pulled her tightly to me and pumped like mad, my body out of control as the spasms began. She kissed me hard and squeezed my ass with all her might as I began to shoot between her legs. My semen shot out and splattered against her thighs, against her crotch. Some of it floated upward in the water, sticking to her swimsuit. It went on and on, seemingly forever before I finally relaxed in her arms.

We stayed that way for a moment and then finally I looked up at her. She was smiling. "That was interesting, wasn't it?" She asked me playfully.

"You never fail to amaze me Nina." I told her. "Tell me about this book you read this in."

A giggle. "Let's just say that you'd be surprised at what kind of things you could find at the public library."

I reached down and pulled my shorts back up, tucking myself inside and fastening them. I suggested we move a few feet from where we were.

"How come?" She wanted to know.

"Because the evidence of our indiscretion is floating all around us in the water." I said. "A lot of it is stuck to your swimsuit."

She looked around and saw the little stringy globules floating everywhere. The sight gave her the giggles, especially when she saw it sticking to her suit in various places. "What would my mother think about that?" She asked, moving with me out of the danger zone.

I spent a few minutes splashing water over her to get rid of the residue and then dropped my hand down between her legs.

"What are you doing?" She asked, making no move to stop me.

"Just making sure you're clear down there." I said.

She was, but I made extra sure, running my hand all over her thighs and the crotch of her suit. One of my fingers slid deftly inside, touching hair and the swell of her vaginal lip. She jumped a little at the contact.

"You know." I told her. "It seems the least I could do is return the favor you just did for me." I slid my finger between her lips, pushing the crotch of the suit further aside. Despite the fact that she was under water her passage was slick with her juices.

"If you insist." She breathed.

It didn't take long. She held tightly to me as my fingers moved in and out and my hand made circular motions across her clit. When she came her pelvis humped up and down on me and her teeth bit lightly into my shoulder.

We spent a few more minutes kissing and holding each other, just enjoying the touch of our bodies together. Finally we decided we should start working our way back. She went and retrieved her shorts from the shore, washed the dirt off of them and then put them back.

We made sure to make enough noise as we headed back to the boat so that Maggie and Mike would not be caught in an embarrassing situation. Our ploy worked. When we trodded ashore we found them lying on their stomachs, very close together. Their eyes were shining with the glow of new discovery.

We spent the rest of the day at the lake, either lounging on our island or going out for skiing runs. We had to refill the gas tank on the boat once, it really was a gas-guzzler, but otherwise it ran perfectly. By the time the sun started to set we piled in the boat once more and began heading at a sedate pace towards the launch ramp. As we idled along slowly, watching the sun sink towards the mountains, watching the light fade from the sky, feeling the warm summer breeze caress our exposed skin, Nina cuddled up beside me. Behind us Mike and Maggie were also pretty chummy. He had his arm around her shoulders and they kissed frequently. You could almost taste the romance in the air.

There was of course a considerable line of boats waiting when we reached our destination and we had to wait until well after full dark before we could pull up to the ramp and put the boat back on the trailer. We didn't mind. We sat with our arms around our respective companions and watched the brilliance of the stars as they came out, even seeing the occasional satellite as it passed overhead.

Knowing that I would have to drive home I'd quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.

I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they'd connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He'd probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don't believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn't know, couldn't predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn't happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?

I couldn't have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.

My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o'clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn't think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.

He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.

"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.

"It's Tracy." Dad said hollowly. "There's been an accident."

Chapter 14

Those four words: "there's been an accident" brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father's tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it's presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I'd won? Why hadn't I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.

"Is she…" I asked my Dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't speak the word.

"She's alive right now." Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. "We don't know a lot about how she's doing."

By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.

"What do you know?" I asked him. "What happened?"

"We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police," Dad said.

"South Lake Tahoe?" I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.

He nodded. "Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don't know what happened yet, or at least they're not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down."

"Jesus," I muttered. "And Tracy?"

"She didn't drown," Dad told me. "She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn't know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn't hurt too bad they said."

"They don't know anything about her injuries?" I asked.

"Nothing," Dad said. "I tried calling the hospital she's in but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything."

"What time did all of this happen?" I asked him, feeling guilt that I'd been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.

"We got the call a little over an hour ago," he told me. "The accident happened about an hour before that. They had a little trouble identifying her because she apparently had a fake I.D. on her. Only after they searched through her things did they find her real driver's license. I guess she was up there for a little gambling trip."

"Jesus," I said again.

"There's a red-eye flight out of Spokane in two hours," Dad told me. "It doesn't go to Reno but it stops in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours away by car. Your mother and I are going to be on it."

"Me too," I said quickly.

"Bill," he started. "There's nothing that you can…"

"I'm going Dad," I told him. "I'll pay for the ticket myself."

He looked at me for a moment. "You don't have to do that," he said. "Why don't you get the boat put away so we can get ready to go?"

Obviously a damper had been put on the end of what had been a very pleasant day. Mike and Maggie, after hearing the story of Tracy, offered condolences and then quickly slipped away. I was not so far out of it that I didn't notice Mike climbing into Maggie's car even though he only lived around the corner. Nina offered me some soothing words and a hug and then she too left, making me promise to call her and let her know what was going on. I promised.

I showered quickly and packed a few things. Soon we were on our way to the airport.

We took off on time, heading Southwest for Sacramento. The flight took forever. I spent much of it staring out the window to the darkness below while Mom and Dad held hands quietly next to me. Around us the lights were dimmed down and most of the other passengers were asleep in their seats. I was exhausted from the day I'd just spent and the droning of the engines was soothing white noise but I couldn't sleep. Not while my sister was maybe already dead somewhere, maybe sitting in the refrigerated section of the county morgue in Reno, a little tag tied to her toe.

Sometimes having knowledge of how a medical system works is not a good thing. This was one of those times. I could perfectly envision Tracy being taken into some hospital room, possibly the trauma resuscitation room, possibly the emergency operating room. I could see a team of doctors working on her, mechanically following written protocols as they cracked open her chest, or cracked open her skull, trying to save her but knowing it was useless. Doing it only because their training dictated they try. I could see a technician squeezing a bag attached to a breathing tube to supply her with oxygen while the efforts were going on. The technician would probably be checking out her tits as he did it, admiring them, thinking lightly that it was a shame they were going to be taken out of circulation soon.

At some point the doctor in charge would decide enough is enough. The time would be noted and all of the devices would be taken off of her. She would be zipped into a body bag which, by protocol, would have already been placed beneath her before she'd even arrived. The doctors, nurses, and technicians would all go onto other things, treating patients, stitching wounds, writing orders, fetching blankets, reflecting sadly for a moment how it was a shame that someone so young had died that way.

But none of them would shed a tear for her. None of them would slam their fists into the wall, cursing the insidious nature of DEATH, the mortal enemy. They would go about their tasks, eat their lunches, and the next day none of them would even remember her. Except maybe the technician who had admired her tits. The zippered bag would be moved into a storage room somewhere and a phone call would be placed. Soon a white van from the coroner's office would arrive and the bag would be placed on a small gurney and taken to the county morgue. The next day a pathologist would rip open her body, saw open her skull, take out her internal organs and weigh them, and then finally stuff everything back inside and crudely sew her up.

I could not get this vision out of my head no matter how hard I tried to think of other things. As our aircraft slowed and began to descend into Sacramento we passed within sight of Reno. I could see it's lights shining up from the pre-dawn darkness and the vision became almost overwhelming. Tracy was down there somewhere. Was she still drawing breath? Not if fate had had it's way.

We touched down normally at ten minutes after four in the morning. The Sacramento airport was almost completely deserted, the few passengers from our plane it's only customers at the moment. Mom went to go secure a rental car while Dad and I headed directly for a bank of pay phones. He dialed a number that he had written on a slip of paper. The number for Washoe Medical Center in Reno, where Tracy was (if she wasn't in the morgue, a nasty part of my brain insisted upon reminding me).

Dad fought through at least five different people, said Tracy's name at least fifteen times, and was placed on hold at least ten. It was maddening watching this, waiting for someone to tell him something. Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes he managed to get hold of someone who knew something.

"She is?" he said softly.

She is what? I wondered, wanting to rip the phone out of his hand. She is dead? She is alive? What?

Dad, sensing what I was going through, held the phone away from his mouth for a brief moment and told me, "she's in surgery right now." He then spoke into the phone again. "What kind of surgery? Can you tell me how bad she is?"

He listened, his face souring. "What do you mean you don't know who I am?" he shouted into the phone. "I'm her father and I'm very worried about her. Please tell me what's going on!"

He listened some more, his expression darkening. "But I'm in Sacramento!" he yelled. "I'm more than two hours from there! Are you really going to let me go the next two hours wondering? Just tell me how bad she is! What kind of surgery she's having!"

He listened for another moment and then slammed the phone down angrily. "Fucking asshole!" he shouted at it loudly enough for his words to echo through the terminal. A few people glanced at him uneasily and then went about their business.

He turned to me, shaking his head. "They won't tell me anything about her condition." he told me, "because they can't verify who I am. Who the hell else would call up and say they were her father?"

I sighed. "You're dealing with bureaucracy at it's finest when you're dealing with a hospital," I told him. "And remember, the accident happened in California, law suit capital of the world. They probably have lawyers who call up and pretend to be family members in order to get information. It happens all the time, even in Spokane."

"That's disgusting," he proclaimed.

"That's lawyers," I said. "At least we know she's still alive."

"Yeah," he breathed. "Let's go find your Mom and get headed up there."

Mom had procured a Toyota Corolla for us. Dad updated her with what he knew as we walked to the rental car pick-up. Fifteen minutes later we were roaring away, Dad at the wheel, Mom in the passenger seat, me in the cramped back seat, reading the map we'd been given and navigating. There was little talk as I directed Dad down Interstate 5 to I-80 East. We passed through the darkened city of Sacramento and it's suburbs and were climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the sun made it's appearance in front of us.

It was shortly before eight in the morning when we entered the Reno city limits. I navigated Dad through the city, past the towering casinos, until we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. We practically rushed inside and spent twenty more minutes finding someone who could tell us something. Was Tracy dead? Was she alive? Was she horribly crippled? Was she on a ventilator awaiting permission from the parents to pull the plug? The tension was so thick between the three of us that it was almost palpable in the air.

We were directed to a small waiting room on the third floor of the hospital.

It was empty when we arrived. This time my knowledge of the medical system was an asset. I smiled happily as I read the sign and saw what part of the building we were in. Hope showed itself for the first time.

"We're in orthopedics," I told Mom and Dad happily, my voice conveying the message that this was good news.

They looked at me cautiously, waiting for me to explain the ramifications of this.

"We're not in neurology, which would be bad," I told them. "That would mean she had some sort of neurological damage. You know, brain injury, spinal injury, paralysis, something like that. Orthopedics is bones. They put you here when you have broken bones, and only broken bones."

They became cautiously hopeful but I could tell they were awaiting a final word. It was understandable. I was too. About ten minutes after we arrived a young doctor came into the room. He was dressed in scrubs and I had an eerie flashback to waiting for the prognosis on Jack. He introduced himself and we all stared for a moment in disbelief as we heard him say his name.

"Did you say Dr. Quack?" Dad finally had to ask.

He smiled the smile of one who has explained this many times before. "It's spelled with a KW," he said, "but yes, you have the pronunciation right. But have no fear. My name does not reflect my skill, although I had to put up with quite a bit of teasing in med school and residency. Anyway, I'm an orthopedic surgeon and I'm in charge of Tracy's case."

"How is she?" I blurted before anyone else had a chance to.

"In considerable pain," he told us. "And she'll be in a wheelchair for a few months, but other than that, she's doing fine. I expect a complete recovery."

It took a few moments for that to sink in. I almost thought I hadn't heard him correctly. Doing fine? Complete recovery? Had fate been thwarted again? Beside me Mom and Dad breathed great sighs of relief. Dr. Kwack smiled at us for a moment and then explained her injuries.

"From what I hear," he said, "Tracy was seatbelted into the right rear of the taxi. The driver was making a left turn and was struck by a shuttle van right where your daughter was seated. The impact was considerable and the taxi was spun around to where it rolled off of an embankment into Lake Tahoe, landing upside down in the water. Fortunately Tracy was able to extricate herself from her seatbelt and get out of the car before she drowned. This is a remarkable feat I must add since her injuries were undoubtedly caused by the initial impact. It must have been horribly painful for her to drag herself out of the car but somehow she did it."

"And what are her injuries?" Mom asked.

"Her pelvis is broken in four places," Dr. Kwack explained. "Her right femur, that's the long bone in the leg, is broken in two places. She has two broken ribs on the right side and had a partially collapsed lung when she was brought in. A chest tube down in the ER took care of that. She also has a nasty cut on the right side of her head. That's been stitched up. I operated on her leg and her hip and put pins in to help set the bones back together. She's going to have to go through some physical therapy and she'll probably always walk with a little limp since her right leg is going to be about an inch shorter than her left. And she'll probably set off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life. But she's alive and doing well."

"When can we see her?" Dad asked, tears in his eyes as he heard the news. It was understandable. There were tears in mine too.

"She's just been moved to her room," he said. "And she's pretty doped up on pain medication, but you can go see her now if you wish. She may not be capable of talking to you, but you can see her."

We did. And Dr. Kwack was right. Tracy was flying high. She was lying in a hospital bed, her body covered by a gown. Her entire pelvis and right leg were encased in a fiberglass cast. Her ribs were taped on the right side and the plastic hose of a chest tube snaked out from beneath it. Her face was deeply bruised, the right cheek an ugly purple color, her right eye swollen shut. Some of her hair had been shaved away and a neat line of stitches was visible on her scalp. There was also the inevitable catheter hose protruding from beneath the sheets and ending at a plastic bag with urine in it. The other end of the hose would be threaded through her urethra and into her bladder. Remembering my own experience with such a thing I pitied her.

Mom wept openly at the sight of her, stroking her hair and trying to get her to talk. Tracy opened her eyes a few times to Mom and Dad's voices but seemed to have no awareness of what was going on around her. When she tried to speak it was only in nonsensical grunts. We stayed for nearly an hour before a nurse finally suggested we leave for a little bit. She would probably be like this for the next twenty-four hours we were told.

We found a hotel room in one of the downtown casinos and fell into immediate sleep within minutes. It had been a long night.

The next day Tracy, though in pain, was awake and alert enough to talk. She told the story of what had happened to her both to Mom and Dad and I and to the investigator from the South Lake Tahoe Police department.

Her and one of her girlfriends from college had ridden a Greyhound bus up to the casino area to do a little weekend gambling and drinking. Tracy, I knew, did not like to ride in a car with anyone but she had no problem with airplanes or buses, figuring that fate would not wipe out an entire vehicle full of people just to get to her. Since you had to be twenty-one to gamble or drink in Nevada, Tracy and her friend had secured fake ID's from a reputable dealer at the college. She declined to name just who this person was to the cop, although he did ask. The Greyhound had dropped the two girls off at one of the casinos on Friday night. They'd spent a few hours gambling and drinking and then, finding the room rates at the casino a little more than they could afford, rode a shuttle bus to one of the motels on the California side of the town and got a room there. Early the next morning they rode another shuttle bus back to the casinos.

The two friends spent all day on the strip and Tracy managed to get ahead more than a hundred bucks. Her friend was down about the same amount. Feeling fatigued, Tracy elected to head back to the motel to take a nap for awhile. She tried to find a shuttle bus heading in her direction but discovered that none were scheduled for more than an hour. Wanting badly to sleep, she'd gone out to the taxi stand and hopped in a cab. After all, she was ahead of the game and she could afford it.

The last thing she remembered was driving down the boulevard of South Lake Tahoe in the back of the cab. The next thing she knew, she was in horrible pain in a helicopter, looking up at a trauma nurse in a blue jumpsuit. Things were very spotty from there.

She was questioned several times about the accident itself but she said she could not remember anything. Nobody disputed her on this point. Amnesia is common among accident victims.

The cop filled us in on a few details that had been uncovered.

"According to the witnesses," he explained, "the cab made a left turn against across traffic and was struck by the shuttle van, which was moving about thirty miles an hour. The van driver was slightly injured, as were six of the passengers, although that's probably just what we call Jacoby and Myers pain around these parts. Anyway, your daughter and the cab driver were the only one's with any significant injury. The fault for the accident lies directly on the cab driver. No question about it."

"The driver of the cab was drunk," he said. "From what we've learned he's a hopeless alcoholic. We found an empty pint of vodka under the seat in the cab. Vodka and gin are the favored beverages of those alcoholics that are trying to function on the job. It doesn't leave much of an odor on the breath although it does leave a little. Our officers smelled it right away when they questioned him. They took a blood sample from him at the hospital. He registered point two-one percent. That's more than twice the legal limit. He has two previous convictions for driving under the influence. One in Nevada, one in California. He'll be charged with felony driving under the influence this time."

Tracy, who had remained very composed through all of this, listening respectfully, suddenly turned angry. "Why," she asked the cop, "was this man still driving a cab if he had two DUI convictions?"

The cop gave a cynical look. "Don't ask me," he replied. "If it'd been up to me the asshole – excuse my language – would have had his license yanked forever the first time he got convicted. Unfortunately, it's not up to me. You don't get much around here for DUI. A little fine, a little lecture from the judge not to do it again. Sometimes I think those Iranians have the right idea about that problem. They give 'em the death penalty. A little harsh maybe, but they don't have pretty young girls ending up in hospital beds because of drunk cab drivers."

Though my parents were screaming liberals and routinely canonized the efforts of groups such as the ACLU, they didn't dispute the cop's argument. Nor did I.

"Anyway," he went on, "I think this time he'll at least do a little time in county. He'll also have his hack license taken away. I wish I could promise you that he'll never do it again but you know alcoholism is a "disease" and it's not really his fault. That's what they tell us anyway." He looked at Tracy meaningfully. "Are you SURE you don't remember anything?"

She shook her head, the effort obviously painful. "Not a thing," she said quietly, her eye, the one that was open, flitting away from the cop's face.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Doesn't matter," he finally said. "I'm glad you're gonna make it all right. You probably won't even have to testify. I'm sure a plea bargain will be worked out." He said the words "plea bargain" the way other people say "venereal disease".

We stayed at the hospital for a good portion of the day. Mom brought Tracy some flowers and Dad brought her a large stuffed bear with it's leg in a cast. Her friend Linda, who had accompanied her to Lake Tahoe, stopped by also and we all got to meet her. Linda was a cute blonde, very nice, though a little on the shy side. She was a business major and a member of the young republican's club. She'd apparently gone through quite a bit of turmoil of her own during Tracy's accident. She'd returned to their room expecting to find Tracy there and didn't. She was only slightly worried at that point, figuring her friend had slept and then gone back to the casinos.

But when she still hadn't returned the next morning she became seriously worried. She began calling the cops and the local hospital. The local hospital of course hadn't heard of her since she'd been taken to Reno and whomever she'd talked to at the police department didn't recognize Tracy's name in relationship to the accident. She became frantic when the time for their return came and went and Tracy still hadn't shown up at the room. Another call to the cops was made and someone finally was able to make the connection and let Linda know where Tracy was and that she was alive.

Linda didn't stay long, just long enough to assure herself that Tracy was fine, exchange a hug or two, and let my sister know that she'd retrieved all of her belongings from the motel and would keep them for her. She told us all that she was pleased to meet us and then disappeared.

When Tracy received her latest pain shot and drifted off to sleep we decided to disappear also. We piled into the rented Toyota once more and headed back to our hotel room.

Mom laid down herself and fell quickly to sleep. Dad, claiming he was too wired to sleep, decided that he would go downstairs for just a little bit and maybe have a beer. I gave him a knowing look as he went.

I tried to lay down myself but found sleep impossible. There were many unanswered questions going through my mind. Finally I got up and crept out of the room, catching the elevator to the lobby. Dad was not in the bar but this did not surprise me. I began wandering through the casino, dodging the occasional security guard to keep from being ejected. I walked past jingling slot machines, beeping poker machines, and hundreds of people, finally finding Dad sitting at a two-dollar blackjack table. He had a beer and a stack of five-dollar chips before him and was hitting on a fourteen when I put my hand on his shoulder.

He looked up and gave me a guilty smile. The dealer, oblivious to my presence, slapped down a five on top of his fourteen. He took a quick look and then tucked his cards under his bet.

"Doing a little gambling?" I asked him with mock sternness.

He shrugged. "As long as we're here," he said, "I thought I'd try my luck a little. It's funny. Your mother looks at this whole thing as a tragedy and of course it is, but I know the real tragedy that was supposed to happen. It was supposed to happen on her graduation night and it was supposed to happen the other day, wasn't it?"

"It certainly seems a little more than a coincidence," I told him, keeping my voice low to avoid having the other players gleam what we were talking about. I didn't really have to worry. They were all watching the dealer who was admonishing an ancient man at third base for touching his bet after the cards were in play. "All of the elements were there. Drunk driver, car, water. Somehow Tracy dragged herself out of there though. She didn't drown. That goes against everything I thought I understood about this whole thing."

"Yeah," Dad nodded. "And it makes me feel guilty to feel good about the fact that my daughter was merely injured. We got lucky Bill. Somehow we did. So I figured I'd come down here and see if maybe some of that luck is still floating around."

"And is it?" I asked him.

Before he could answer me the dealer, finished with her gentle reaming of the third baseman, resumed play. With a ten showing she flipped up her down card. It was a five. She gave herself another card, a six, and the table groaned. With a sorrowful look she collected all the bets.

"As you can see," Dad told me, "the theory's flawed. I'm losing my ass." He put another five-dollar chip on the table. "What brings you down here?" He gave me an evil smile. "Pity you're in Reno and too young to gamble, eh?"

I laughed lightly. "You gotta take the bad with the good. But anyway, I wanted to borrow the car," I told him, "I need to talk to Tracy."

He turned serious. "You don't think she's telling everything she knows, do you?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I don't think she's lying about anything but I just wanted to be able to talk to her alone, to see if she tells me anything else if you and Mom aren't there. She doesn't know that you know after all."

The dealer gave him two aces. She herself had a four showing. Dad smiled and picked up another five-dollar chip, splitting his bet. "That's a good idea," he told me, watching as he was given an eight and a nine to go with each of his aces. He looked at this in satisfaction for a moment and then reached in his pocket and withdrew the car key while the dealer attended to the other players.

"Thanks," I said, taking it from him and pocketing it. "I won't be too long."

"Who knows?" Dad said. "Maybe I'll win so much while you're gone I won't have to worry about things like stocks and investments."

At the table the dealer flipped up a ten to go with her four. She dealt herself a two and then a five. Another apologetic smile to the groaning crowd and she began to collect the money. Dad looked at this in disbelief. Two of the other players got up and left.

"I wouldn't go cashing in any stocks just yet," I told him, chuckling to myself as I headed for the door.

Tracy was awake when I entered her room. She almost looked as if she was expecting me. I took a moment to marvel at the condition of her face. Two and a half days after the accident now it was very swollen and a spectacular array of colors had erupted upon it. Hues of purple, black, blue and yellow competed for billing, centering around her right eye, which was still swollen tightly shut. Though I'd spent eight years looking at people that had been battered with everything from baseball bats, to steering wheels of cars, to crowbars I had never had much opportunity to observe these injuries after they'd had time to swell and discolor. I now knew why police photographers liked to wait twenty-four hours before they snapped shots of assault victims. It was hard to believe that in a week or so her face would be back to it's normal, pretty self as Dr. Kwack had assured her.

"How bad is it today?" Tracy asked. "They won't give me a mirror."

"It's pretty bad," I admitted. "But you're alive. It'll get better."

She nodded, wincing a little as she did so. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah," I answered, coming over and grabbing a seat next to the bed.

"I thought you might come by alone," she said. "I was kinda hoping for it."

"Oh?"

"I lied to the cop Bill," she told me, her voice hitching, tears running from her good eye as she began to cry. "I remember everything that happened. Every last fucking thing."

She broke down completely, sobs pouring out her, her chest heaving up and down. I got up out of my chair and sat on the edge of her bed. It was awkward with the cast and the pulleys and the IV line but I managed to get my arms around her and her head pulled against my shoulder. She cried hysterically for the better part of five minutes, her tears burning my chest and wetting my shirt. I soothed her the best I could, patting her on an uninjured part of her back and speaking soothing words to her. Finally her sobs quieted down and she got control of herself again. She raised her head from my shoulder and looked at me, sniffing.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't ever do things like that. I don't ever cry."

"It's okay Tracy," I told her. "Sometimes you have to. Do you feel better?"

She smiled a little, a weak smile at best. "A little," she said. "Can you get me some water?"

I released her and stood up, picking up her glass from the tray next to the table and pouring some of the water from her plastic pitcher. There was a flexible straw in the glass, bent at a ninety-degree angle. I handed the glass to her and she took a long sip. Figuring that the immediate crisis was over I sat back down in the chair again.

"You know something?" she asked. "The day of the accident I was in the sports bar in Harrah's. Linda and I were having a beer and, you know, checking out the guys and I happened to see that they were taking bets for the football season. You could put down money on who you thought would be in the Super Bowl, just like our pool for the baseball season that I asked you about that time."

I nodded. "I really didn't know," I told her, wondering what this had to do with anything. "I still don't, although with Nina's Dad's help I'm actually starting to like baseball a little bit."

She smiled. "But I thought that you did," she told me. "I thought you just didn't want to tell me because you didn't want me taking advantage of your knowledge. I was pissed off at you Bill, I almost hated you because I thought you were depriving me of something that I had a right to."

"Tracy," I started, seeing that a tear was flowing from her eye again.

"Let me finish," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.

I nodded.

"When I was in the sports bar and saw the football thing I thought about calling you again. I was going to yell at you and demand you tell me who was going to be in the Super Bowl this year. It's supposed to be held at Stanford stadium this year and that's only an hour from Berkeley. I wanted to get tickets, go watch the game and then catch a bus up to Tahoe and collect my money. I figured I had a right to that information. I was gonna call you up and law down the law with you. I was gonna threaten not to…"

She sobbed a little and took a deep breath. "Not to speak to you anymore if you didn't tell me." She sobbed some more. "I'm sorry Bill. I can't believe I was such a bitch, that I was thinking things like that. I was actually telling myself that you didn't love me very much if you wouldn't kick down a little information to me. The only reason I didn't call you was because when I was talking to Linda about wanting to make a bet on the Super Bowl she told me that my fake ID wouldn't hold up for something like that. But I was prepared to do it Bill. I was really going to."

"Tracy…" I started again and then trailed off. I honestly didn't know what to say, what to think about what she'd just told me.

"I just can't believe I was like that," she cried. "I was actually thinking you didn't love me, that you were trying to keep me down or something. I'd completely forgotten that I was still alive because of you, that you'd already showed me how much you loved me by saving me, not once but twice. And how do I repay you? How do I return your love? By trying to get you to exploit what you know against your morals. By calling you up and trying to get you to tell me about a baseball game and then getting pissed at you because you don't know. By wanting to threaten you if you didn't tell me about a football game. By thinking you're some kind of moralistic…" She broke into fresh sobs again. "Oh God Bill!"

"It's okay Tracy," I soothed, holding her hand. "At least you like me now, right?"

She composed herself a little but continued to squeeze my hand almost painfully. "I've had a lot of time to think in here," she told me. "A lot of time. And I realized that I was having a lot of bad feelings for you. I told myself it was because of you withholding knowledge from me. You were on your way to getting rich but you weren't including me in it. Like I said, I felt I had a right to get rich off of you, and do you know why?"

"Why?" I asked, though I suspected the reason.

"Because I was blaming you for this death sentence I have hanging over my head. I realize now how irrational that is, you didn't cause it, you just told me about it. But somehow, in my mind, I thought it was your fault. You were the one that screwed around with fate and caused this. Never mind that fate would've taken me on graduation night if not for your interference, you were the one that put all this in motion and therefore you were the one to blame for it. So then part of me figured that if I got stinking rich all of this would just go away. I wouldn't have to worry anymore about riding in cars. Do you know how damn inconvenient it is to NEVER get in a car with someone? That was all your fault Bill. That was what I thought, what I brought myself around to believing. And then you wouldn't help me get rich to compensate for it. When I went up to Tahoe this weekend, I was a very bitter person."

I nodded, not talking, understanding the source of her feelings a little. I can imagine what it's like living every day wondering if fate was finally going to catch up with you. She probably felt a little like soldiers in a war feel after a while.

"Sometimes I would feel paranoid beyond belief. Like I didn't dare even step outside the dorm room because fate was waiting for me out there. It would send a drunk driver along to run over me and knock me into the duck pond or something just to get at me. Other times I'd think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, that I could climb into a car with Ted Kennedy and be perfectly safe. I can't even go to counseling about it. Can you imagine how the counselor would react? And I can't tell my friends about it either, although I must admit that sometimes, after Linda and I had a few beers, I was tempted to tell her what happened to you. Something kept me from doing that. The only person I could really talk about it with is you, but I didn't want to talk to you because you were trying to keep me down and you had caused all of this in the first place."

"But through all of that I stayed away from the situation that I knew fate wanted me to get into. I never got in a car with anyone else driving. I rode my bike when I wanted to get somewhere close by, even if it was pouring rain. If I needed to go to The City for something I took BART or the city bus. I was very careful not to give fate an opportunity.

"A few times though, I got into cabs. I didn't really like doing it but I also didn't think it was that dangerous. Cabs are public transportation aren't they? It never occurred to me that a cab driver would be drunk."

"You've ridden in cabs before?" I asked, surprised.

She nodded. "A few times. I only did it as a last resort but I never had a problem before. Sometimes we even drove right along the Bay too. I figured cabs were reasonably safe. In truth I didn't ride in them much mostly because they're expensive. And then I got in the one at the casino."

"What happened then?" I asked.

"I knew something was wrong almost right from the start of that trip."

"What do you mean?" I asked, fascinated, eager to hear this story.

She swallowed nervously. "It was the eeriest thing. I'd been drinking at the casino and was pretty buzzed, feeling kind of good you know? I was up a hundred bucks and ready to just go back to the room and crash. As soon as I closed the door in the cab and it pulled away I started to get nervous. I didn't know why at first. I didn't equate fate with any of it. I just felt twitchy, uncomfortable, like I didn't really want to be there. I thought it was the cab driver. He didn't seem drunk at all, that really would've made me nervous obviously, but there was something about him I didn't like. Something about his face, which looked kind of old and gross looking. He was talking about how good the tips were in his job since he usually only drove people who'd won big. Kind of hinting, you know? He asked me if I'd won big."

She breathed deeply, wiping a tear from her eye. I could see that she was trembling.

"He turned his head towards me when he asked me that," she went on. "When he did that I smelled it. Alcohol on his breath. Like the cop said, it wasn't much, just a faint whiff of that odor that people have when they've been drinking. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Oh yeah," I affirmed softly. As a paramedic I'd smelled that odor thousands of times and knew it well. When I'd been new and had worked the night shift in downtown Spokane that odor had been on nine out of ten of my patients.

"As soon as that hit my nose and I realized I was in a car with a drunk driver at the wheel I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. The buzz that I had went away like that." She snapped her fingers. "I almost panicked, especially when I glanced over to my right and saw that we were driving alongside the lake. It was dark but I could see the water less than twenty feet away, just down a small incline. I could imagine perfectly being under that water, trapped in my seatbelt, not able to breathe, drowning. I could see Mom and Dad and you at my funeral, crying while they lowered my coffin into the ground.

"The cab driver was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question. Everything was moving in slow motion. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going and he was drifting into the other lane. That broke through. I yelled at him to watch where the hell he was going and he jerked his head back, steering back into his lane. He said something like, "Jeez lady, I wasn't gonna hit nobody" and looked offended. But I was still terrified.

"I told him to stop right there and let me out. He said, "what are you talking about, your hotel is still a couple a miles away?" and I told him I didn't care, to let me out right there. We argued for a minute about it and he just kept driving down the road, telling me that we were almost there and that he couldn't let someone out before they were where they were going. Finally I screamed at him to stop the fucking cab now.

"Things got really slow motion at that point. He was pissed off and said "fine, walk if that's what you want". But instead of simply stopping and letting me out he tried to pull into a parking lot on the other side of the street. He did it without looking to see if anything was coming first. Something was. It was one of the shuttle vans that take people from the motels to the casinos. He pulled right in front of it. It didn't even have time to put on the brakes. I didn't even have time to yell. In that second, while I was looking at it's headlights less than five feet from me, I knew that fate had finally caught up with me. I knew that I hadn't listened to you as much as I should have. I knew that I was going to die. I KNEW it!

"When it hit, glass sprayed all over me. I felt something like a sledgehammer hit me all over my right side. I felt the doorframe hit the side of my head. The noise was incredible Bill, I never heard anything like that. I felt us spin around and then start to tip over. Just as I became upside down there was a splash and water was covering my face. I couldn't breath and my body actually felt a little better, less pain when the cold hit me. I felt the seatbelt holding me in place just like I'd imagined. I was trapped underwater and I was going to die. And it felt RIGHT. I knew that if I just sat there for a minute or two it would all be over. Something inside of me told me just to do that. Just to wait there until everything went black. I wouldn't be in pain. I wouldn't have to worry anymore. It would just be over. It was a calming feeling Bill. The thought of just dying actually got rid of the panic.

"I sat there upside down, not breathing and I saw the roof of the car hit the bottom of the lake. I saw a bunch of bubbles go floating up. I saw a bunch of muck get stirred up and obscure everything outside. It seemed trippy to me. I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking, "so this is what it's like-this isn't so bad". I even saw the cab driver get out of his seat belt and swim out through his window. He'd had it open and he just squeezed his way out. His arm was bleeding and leaving little trails of blood in the water and I tripped off of them for a second. I knew that he'd swim to the top and that he wouldn't try to come back for me. I knew it.

"I didn't feel any pain right then. I was relaxed. Just waiting to die. Just waiting to do what I was SUPPOSED to do. It didn't feel bad at all. It actually felt kind of nice."

"Jesus." I mumbled, staring at her. She hadn't said that with nostalgia, but with horror.

"I was just starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to just suck in a bunch of water and get it over with. I was SUPPOSED to die, so why prolong it? That's when I thought of you." She soured a little. "It wasn't a nice thought. I thought, "that'll teach Bill not to tell me what I want to know, not to keep me down anymore. Now the asshole can just cry his ass off at my funeral." It was that thought that got me moving. I actually saw you next to my grave, tears running down your face, wondering why I hadn't listened to you. The fact that you could cry for me told me that you really did love me, that you would be…" She broke a little. "Be disappointed in me."

"I sat there upside down, underwater, not able to breathe and all these thoughts going through my head. Was I really going to just die in order to get back at you? You'd fucked over fate time and time again and I was going to let myself die just to prove you were wrong? What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn't I at least TRY to get out of here?"

"I didn't think I was going to make it. I really thought I was going to die anyway because I was supposed to but I decided to at least try." She shook her head. "It was absurdly easy to get out of there. I've been wondering why the Tracy in the other time-line found it so difficult." She glared contemptuously at me, directing her glare to the "other Tracy" whom she obviously had little respect for. "That Tracy simply drowned. She wasn't injured like I was. I found the clasp on my seatbelt and pushed it, expecting that it would be jammed or something but it wasn't. It came right apart and I dropped slowly onto the roof of the car. My right leg was pinned a little bit between the front seat and the door that had been hit. It hurt when I pulled it but it came out without any problem. I was free but I was still in the car.

"Everything was calm and cool. I was considering myself as good as dead so I didn't worry too much about what would happen if I failed to get out. What did I have to lose by trying? I had time and presence of mind to actually consider the options of escape before I gave it a shot, that's how calm I was. I looked at the driver's side window, thinking I could swim out through there. But it was rolled up and the glass hadn't broken. I knew I wouldn't be able to break it. I looked at the window where the van had hit us. The glass had broken but the frame had been smashed in and I didn't think I could squeeze through it. So finally I looked at the window where the driver had gone out. There wasn't a partition between the front and the back seats like the cabs in Berkeley have so I decided that was the way to do it. I twisted myself around and pushed myself into the front seat.

"I noticed I was running out of air at that point, that I badly needed to take a breath, but that still didn't worry me. The worst that could happen was that I could die, right? All I was doing was trying. I didn't even think about how long I'd been under the water. So I pushed myself through the window. As I did that I felt some pain in my hip and in my leg but it wasn't bad, it was distant. Once I was free, I just let myself float up to the top.

"When I broke the surface and took the first breath of air, everything changed. I saw the stars outside, I saw the cab driver pulling himself onto the shore while other cars had stopped and people were starting to run over to the edge of the lake. I tasted the air as it went into my lungs and that was when I realized that I was still alive and that I could stay alive."

She looked meaningfully at me. "That's when it came home to me how precious life was and how close I'd just come to losing it. That's when all the pain hit me and I realized that it wasn't over yet, that I could still drown. Only then, I didn't want to drown, I didn't want to die. Pain went shooting through my whole body, centered on my right side from my face to my feet. It was agony Bill, absolute agony. I started to sink in the water and my face went under. I sucked in a bunch of water before I could force my head back up and started coughing. The coughing made the pain worse.

"I started flailing around in the water, really panicking now and then I noticed the cab was not completely under water. The back wheels were sticking up. I grabbed hold of one and held on as tight as I could. I've never hugged a tire like that before. I tried to put my feet down on the bottom and stand up but as soon as they touched, pain went shooting through my leg and my hips. Horrible pain. So I just held on and let my feet float. I coughed some more, thinking I still had water in my throat and a bunch of blood came shooting out. That's when I realized that I couldn't breathe very well. Every breath was hurting in my chest and it didn't feel like I was getting enough air. I also noticed blood dripping from my head down into the water. I was hurt bad. I started to wonder if I was going to die from the injuries.

"Through all of this nobody on shore noticed me. There must've been sixty people gathered at that point but they were all gathered around the fucking cab driver, may he rot in hell. He'd collapsed on the embankment and some people had pulled him up. They were all fawning over him, asking him a bunch of questions, and nobody was seeing me down in the water because I was on the other side of the cab hanging onto the tire. I tried to scream at them but as soon as I sucked in breath to try it made my chest hurt and made me cough up more blood. Meanwhile it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

"I was out there for almost five minutes and things were starting to get kinda gray and fuzzy. I was thinking that I was going to die anyway, just lose consciousness and slip into the water. It was like one of those dreams where you're trapped and in trouble and trying to call for help but nobody can hear you. You ever have those?"

"Yes." I nodded, surprised. They were a common stress dream for me though I wasn't aware that Tracy, or anyone else for that matter, had them too.

"I would've thought that it WAS a dream except for the pain and the trouble breathing," she went on. "Finally a cop car showed up. The cop waded through all the people and looked at the cab driver for a minute. Then he shined his flashlight on the cab, probably just to see it, and his light caught my face. The next thing I know he was splashing into the water and coming after me. He asked me how I was but I couldn't even talk by then, I was concentrating everything just on getting in the next breath. So he dragged me to the shore.

"He tried to pull me up the embankment but that hurt so bad that I DID manage a scream. So he decided to leave me down there. He stayed with me until the firemen put me on a backboard and pulled me up. A paramedic cut off all my clothes and stuck an IV in my arm. I was hurting so bad and was so scared that I wasn't even embarrassed to be lying naked in front of all those people. They gave me some oxygen and that helped a little, but not much.

"While they'd been working on me I heard a helicopter land and felt a bunch of dust and shit blow over me. A few minutes later a nurse in a jumpsuit came over and looked at me for a few minutes. She told me she was going to make it easier to breathe and then she jabbed a needle right into my chest."

"A chest decompression," I said. "I've done a couple of those."

"Whatever it was, it hurt like hell," Tracy told me. "But there was this pop in my chest and I heard a bunch of air come hissing out and all of a sudden I could breathe again. It made the pain from the needle worthwhile. So anyway, the next thing I know a bunch of firemen picked me up and put me into the helicopter. A few minutes after that we took off.

"What I told the cop was the first thing I remember was actually the point that things got kind of fuzzy on me. Everything is jumbled after that. I knew I was hurt bad but I didn't feel like I was going to die anymore. The clarity went away. I barely remember landing and being taken out of the helicopter. I remember all kinds of doctors and nurses poking and probing me, jabbing needles into me, and I definitely remember someone sticking their goddam finger up my ass. What the hell do they do that for?"

I smiled a little, sensing the old Tracy returning a little. "If you have an orifice," I told her, "they're gonna stick something in it. They leave no hole un-probed."

"Assholes," she mumbled. "So when they got done with the poking and probing and all that, they gave me something in my IV. Everything got really hazy after that. I have a vague memory of a doctor cutting into my chest and sticking a tube in there. I remember it hurt but that's the only clear thing until I woke up the next day and you and Mom and Dad were there."

We sat in silence for a minute, her words hanging in the air. She took another sip out of her water and then handed it back to me to set down on the table.

"So do you hate me?" Tracy asked finally. "I wouldn't be surprised if you did."

"Hate you?" I asked. "Why would I hate you?"

"Because of the way I treated you, the way I was thinking about you. I was being a bitch Bill. A total, unthinking, unfeeling bitch."

"I could never hate you Tracy," I said gently. "And I'm sure that what you were feeling was a natural tendency considering what you were going through."

"A natural tendency?" she asked.

"Well, I don't believe that there have never been any extensive psychological studies on the effects of having a family member return from the future to let you know that you have a death sentence from fate hanging over you. The target group is probably rather small. But I can understand the need to blame someone, something for what was happening. It's human nature and fate is not an easy target to discharge your frustration upon. I came back and told you something that profoundly affected your life. It's only natural that you wanted to punish the messenger for the bad news. I understand, I really do."

"You're not just saying that?" She asked, another tear trailing down her face.

"Of course not," I said, standing and giving her another hug. "I'm glad you're still alive, ecstatic about it. Remember, my number one goal since the day of my return has been to keep you alive. That was all that ever really counted." I shook my head angrily. "I didn't realize how close it had been until you told me your story just now. Christ Tracy, I should have warned you. I'd seen some signs that fate was still at work and I didn't even equate that with you."

"Signs?" She said softly. "What kind of signs?"

I told her about Mike and how he had come to me, telling me he was thinking about the Air Force.

"That's it?" Tracy said. "That's the sign you were talking about?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Don't you see, I should've at least called you and…"

"Bill," she interrupted. "You couldn't have prevented this. If you would've called me up with that story about Mike and the Air Force I would've laughed at you. I would've asked you if you were going to start reading the entrails of chickens next. Then I would've tried to get you to steal someone's invention or tell me about the Super Bowl. It wouldn't have made any difference. I still would've gone to Tahoe and I still would've gotten into the cab that night. You're not to blame for any of this. You've saved my life three times now because of what you know, what you've told me. If I hadn't of thought of you, of all you've gone through while I was upside down in that cab, I would've just drowned. It was thinking of you that got me moving, that got me out of that cab. I owe you my life and I promise I'll never forget that this time. I promise."

There were tears in my own eyes now as I listened to her. I was unable to say anything for a moment. Finally I looked at her.

"San Francisco and Miami," I told her.

She looked confused. "What? What are you talking about?"

"The Super Bowl," I said. "It's going to be the Forty-niners and the Dolphins. The forty-niners are going to win."

She looked surprised, "You DO know?"

"I didn't know about the World Series," I told her. "And I wouldn't know about any other Super Bowl. But I have a memory attached with this one. My first trip through I was at the community college working on my history degree during it. I remember specifically that it was my first year of college. Some friends that I was hanging out with had a Super Bowl party and there was a girl that I knew was going to be there. I was trying to get into her pants and had received some hopeful signs that the party just might be the clincher.

"Back then I was just getting over my shyness and learning that girls weren't the mysteries that I'd always thought they were. Everyone else at the party liked the Niners but Terry, that was her name, liked the Dolphins.

I didn't really give a shit about football one way or the other so I braved the contempt of my peers and allied myself with her on the subject of the Dolphins." I smiled. "It worked. After the Dolphins lost the game we went to her place and consoled each other."

Tracy laughed. "You know," she said, "it just figures that the reason you would remember something like that would be because of sex."

I shrugged, laughing with her. "Unlike most guys, I know where the real priorities lie."

"And so do I," Tracy told me, turning series. "So thanks for telling me and if there's a pool at college, I suppose I'll get in it. After all, who could resist? But I think I'm going to have a new outlook on things from now on. I won't call you up and bug you anymore about your knowledge, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "But remember, nobody's a saint. If I happen to remember anything non-dangerous, I'll be sure to clue you in. And when you get some free money, I happen to know of some good stocks to invest in."

It was three more days before Tracy was able to travel. We stayed in Reno, visiting her every day as much as we could. I'd called Mindy at the hospital in Spokane to let her know what was happening and that I would not be in to work probably all week. She commiserated and told me she would say a prayer for my sister. I thanked her. Mom had a similar conversation with her employer. Dad, being a teacher, was off work for the summer and had no such concerns. I also updated Nina on how things were going and she was pleased to hear that Tracy was going to be all right. She told me she loved me. I asked her is she'd heard anything about Maggie and Mike. She hadn't.

With less to worry about I silently wished them luck.

Tracy was unable to fly on a commercial airline due to her cast so a medical transport plane was suggested in order to get her home. We were delayed an additional day because the insurance company that covered Tracy did not want to pay for such a thing because they felt it was unnecessary. I had a little talk with them while Mom was out of the room, mentioning things like lawyers and lawsuits and media coverage. They listened to me and eventually saw it my way, making the arrangements, not just for the plane but for ambulance transportation from the Spokane Airport and for a hospital bed and visiting nurses at our house. I thanked them politely and hung up.

Tracy said goodbye to the nurses that had cared for her and to Dr. Kwack. An ambulance picked her up and drove her to the airport where they loaded her onto a twin-engine prop plane that was designed just for such things. It was staffed with two nurses in addition to the pilot. Mom rode with her after giving the small plane more than a few nervous glances. Dad and I had a flight back to Spokane in another two hours on a commercial jet and would actually arrive home first. We watched the small plane climb into the sky and disappear into the clouds.

I'd told Dad about my conversation with Tracy and he was shocked to hear of her greed and feelings before the accident but also pleased to hear about her apparent conversion after the accident. As we waited in the lounge before our flight was called, Dad drinking a beer, me drinking a soda, he asked me about what I thought the meaning of all this was.

"So the accident that Tracy was supposed to have has happened," he said, taking a sip. "But she's still alive. What does that mean?"

"I've been thinking about that," I told him, envying the beer he had. "And the answer is, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure."

I shook my head. "I can see it both ways. For one, all of the requirements of the accident were allowed to come together and it occurred. Though Tracy didn't die, probably because she had forewarning of the accident, it has happened. So maybe it can't happen again. But on the other hand, Tracy was supposed to die in the accident. But she didn't. Will fate keep trying to get her? Will it try to arrange another accident? Maybe, maybe not. Again I believe that the basic premise still holds. The longer Tracy stays alive, the more likely it is that fate will accept her being here. What confuses me however is the fact that she's been in taxi-cabs before without any problem."

"What do you mean?" Dad asked.

"She's been in the exact same circumstances before in Berkeley and nothing happened to her there. She told me that they even drove along the Bay a few times. Part of me wants to think that there is no fate and that everything is just random chance. But I can't believe that since the accident was almost exactly the same as it was supposed to be. It just doesn't make any sense that earlier, when the pull to put things right was stronger, that fate didn't seize the opportunity on one of her cab rides. How much of this IS random? Can fate send a cab driver that is drunk when Tracy hails a cab?

Or does it have to wait until a drunk one just happens to cross her path? Before, I would have thought that if Tracy tried to get into a car as a passenger that fate would automatically have arranged to have a drunken cab driver there. Remember, it wants to put things right. So if fate was trying to get her and all of the conditions had been met, why hadn't…" I trailed off, a thought suddenly coming. ALL of the conditions?

"What?" Dad asked.

"Jesus." I said softly. "Could it really have been that simple?"

"What do you mean?" He repeated.

I told him what I was thinking. He raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.

"Interesting," he muttered. "Sounds like you need to ask Tracy about this, but maybe you've hit upon it."

"Wow," I said, shaking my head, thinking that Tracy was going to be pissed if that was the truth.

Tracy was installed in a hospital bed in my Dad's den since her old room was upstairs and moving her up and down would have been damn near impossible. Her chest tube and her IV had been removed before leaving Reno and she was given strong oral analgesics in place of the Demerol that she'd been taking.

The catheter remained and Mom was given instructions by the nurse on how to empty it and how to keep an eye on the output. She was given a supply of bedpans for her other bodily functions. The nurse was scheduled to stop by twice a day to check on her, give her a sponge bath, and to make sure she was healing up. Arrangements were made for further treatment at a local hospital and later, at a local physical therapy facility.

We moved in a TV, a stereo, and her record collection, putting all of it in easy reach. We brought in books, magazines and everything else we thought would make her comfortable in her little prison. She was obviously not happy to be bedridden but her spirits seemed high as she settled in. She fell into an exhausted sleep shortly after dinner so I never had a chance to be alone with her, to ask her what I suspected.

Though I was tired myself I was also going into withdrawal from not having seen Nina in nearly a week. I called her up and she came over. We spent two hours on the porch swing just talking, occasionally sharing a kiss. She went home around ten o'clock and I went by Tracy's new room on the way upstairs. My sister was snoring the snores of those on narcotics. I went upstairs and fell asleep the moment I was undressed and in bed.

The next morning was Saturday. Mom prepared one of her famous, high cholesterol though nearly as good as sex breakfasts. Dad and I ate at the table while Mom ate in the den with Tracy. After all of the dishes were done and put away Tracy said she was going to read for a while and then maybe catch a nap before the nurse showed up to check on her. Her morning medication was working strongly upon her and she seemed quite cheery.

Mom and Dad flipped on the TV and went about the task of reading the newspaper. I wandered out of the room and into Tracy's. She was lying awake in the bed, a book open on her chest, the radio playing the local rock station softly.

"Book no good?" I asked her.

She smiled. "I don't know," she said. "This medicine they gave me has got my mind a little fuzzy. I read two pages of it and then realized I couldn't remember a single thing I'd just read. Music is a little better, much better in fact." She raised her eyebrows and I noted that I could actually see her right eye a little now. "In fact, I think a little Pink Floyd would go nicely with this stuff. You think maybe I could borrow a few of your albums?"

"What's mine is yours," I told her. "I'll go get them in a minute. Do you mind if I sit down for a second?"

"Sure," she said. "What's up?"

I grabbed Dad's desk chair and pulled it over next to the bed. "I've been thinking about all of this fate stuff," I told her.

"Yeah," she said, disgusted. "Fucking fate."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah," I said. "Anyway, I was kind of thrown for a loop by the fact that you'd been in cabs before in Berkeley and you never had any problems with that. In light of what happened to you, doesn't that strike you as a little strange?"

"As a matter of fact," she said, "it does. I've been wondering about that myself. I didn't see cabs as a threat so I willingly climbed into them more than once. If fate was out to get me then why didn't it go for me earlier?"

"We thought we had all the pre-conditions for your accident worked out," I said. "Water, drunk driver, automobile. We thought that was everything. But what if that wasn't everything?"

She looked confused. "What do you mean? What else could there be?"

"On those other times you got into the cab," I asked her, "had you ever been drinking on any of those times?"

"Drinking," she asked, "what does that have to do with anything?"

"Were you?" I repeated.

"I don't think so," she answered after a moment's thought. "Usually it was when I was heading for the airport to go home on the holidays or returning from the airport. You know, when I had luggage and shit with me? Why…" Her eyes widened as she realized what I was saying. "Holy shit."

I nodded. "In my previous life, when you were killed on graduation night, you had a blood alcohol level of point oh nine. The papers made a big deal about that in their article about teenaged drinking. David Mitchell's attorney made a big deal of it at his trial, as if the fact that you were drunk too excused the fact that he'd killed you and abandoned you in the water. When your boyfriend at college drove into the Bay in the car that you were supposed to be in, you had been drinking. And when you got into the cab in South Lake Tahoe you'd been drinking too."

"Oh my God," she exclaimed, sitting up a little in the bed. Her book tumbled off and fell to the floor. "Are you saying that I had to be drinking too in order for the accident to happen?"

"I don't know," I told her. "You tell me. Were you drunk or had been drinking on any of your other cab trips? Or on any other time you'd gotten into a car with someone since graduation?"

She thought long and hard about that, her face scrunched in concentration. "Only once," she finally answered. "The night that Darren had his accident, the accident I was supposed to be in, I took a cab home instead of riding with him. I was drunk then. But other than that, never."

"Hmm," I said thoughtfully. "That fits. On the night of Darren's accident, fate had already arranged something for you. All of the conditions were met but you didn't get in the car. You got in another car. The fact that you were drunk was probably cancelled out by the fact that you hadn't gotten in the car you were supposed to have gotten in. Interesting. Are you sure there are no other times you got into a cab or another car while you were drunk?"

"Well, another car yes," she told me. "Quite a few times. But never while the driver was drunk too. And I never got into a cab while I was drunk at all. After you told me about graduation night and especially after Lisa Sanchez died, I made sure that I never got in a car with someone who was drunk. If Cindy and I went out, one of us would always stay sober, I made sure of it. When I went to college but before Darren's accident, I did the same thing. I made damn sure that if I was drinking someone else who had not been was doing the driving. On all of the cab rides I took before except for that one, I was stone cold sober since they were usually to or from the airport. Jesus Bill, do you mean to say that I could have been riding in cars all of this time as long as I wasn't drunk?"

"It kinda seems that way, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Fuck me," she muttered, shaking her head.

"But again Tracy," I qualified, "we don't know the exact rules here. I could be wrong."

"Doesn't it feel right to you?" she demanded.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Fuck me," she said again.

Mike stopped by for a few minutes the next day. He asked about Tracy and was glad to hear she was doing okay. He told me he couldn't stay long because he and Maggie were going downtown to catch a movie.

"You and Maggie are getting along pretty good huh?" I asked casually.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes beaming. "She's great. We've been out every day since the boat trip, doing something. You were wrong. She doesn't have a boyfriend at all. Hasn't had one in a while in fact."

"Cool," I nodded. "Guess my information was wrong then."

"Guess what else happened while you were gone?" He asked.

"What?"

"I got a job at the fire department."

"A job? What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna be what they call the courier. The position was open and the battalion chief at the station where I was at called and asked if I wanted it. I'll start next Monday. I'll drive around in one of their little trucks delivering the inter-station mail and the supplies. It's five days a week, about four hours a day and it pays five-fifty an hour."

"That's cool Mike," I told him, pleased. I guess the battalion chief had liked him after all.

"Yeah," he nodded. "And the best thing is that it keeps my foot in the door at the department for the next time they test. Keeps my face known and all that, especially since I'll visit all the stations on all three shifts. And the guys at the station where I was at told me I could use their weight room whenever I wanted to help build up my arms for the combat challenge." He gave me a determined look. "I'm gonna ace that motherfucker next time I take it."

We talked a little bit more and he eventually climbed back in his car and drove off to go get ready for his date with Maggie. Talking with him had put me in a great mood.

Nina came over for dinner that night. After eating my Mom's ham we spent a little time talking to Tracy in her little cave. The two of them chatted on and on, mostly ignoring me as Nina asked question after question about college life and Tracy answered them. We were at the stage where we were waiting for either the acceptance or the rejection letters from UWS and Nina told her how she waited every day for the appearance of the mailman and was disappointed every day when the letter wasn't there. Tracy said she remembered well what that had felt like. Finally, with her pain medication kicking in, Tracy started to nod off a little.

"We'd better let you sleep," I told her, standing up. "You got your appointment tomorrow at the hospital."

"Yeah," she mumbled sleepily. "What a nightmare that's going to be. Another ambulance coming over to wrestle me onto a gurney."

We said good night to her and headed out towards the porch, passing Mom and Dad who were in the living room watching television. Mom was working on some of the paperwork from her job that she'd missed while she was gone. She didn't plan to go back to work until Tracy was better so she was completing some of her work at home. Dad was going over some bills. My parents rarely watched the television, they just liked to have it on while they did other things. They both grunted to us as we went out the front door, closing it behind us.

We sat on the old porch swing and Nina leaned into me. The sun had just set and the few clouds in the sky were tinged with red as the sky steadily darkened. The evening star was the only one out.

"How come an ambulance has to come and get Tracy?" Nina asked me.

"Because she's in that lower body cast and she can't bend. She won't fit in the car so they have to put her on a gurney, take her to the hospital for the appointment, and then bring her back again. That's how they're gonna have to do it for the next five weeks until the cast can come off. Then she'll start physical therapy until she's able to walk again normally."

"Poor Tracy," she said sadly, snuggling a little closer to me. "Are you going with her tomorrow?"

"No," I said. "Just Mom and Dad. I imagine it'll degenerate to just Mom after a few times."

"What time does she go?"

"The appointment's at nine," I answered. "But the ambulance will be here at eight-thirty. Why?"

"Oh, just curious." She said innocently. Maybe a little too innocently.

We talked and swung gently back and forth as the last of the light faded from the sky. The kids that had been outside playing all drifted back in as their mothers called them. Other stars appeared and the sound of the crickets began.

I pulled her a little tighter and she turned her face up to me to be kissed.

I put my lips to hers, feeling her tongue dart out to taste me. My tongue answered back for a moment as I relished the feel of her mouth against mine.

I broke the kiss and tried to pull away but her arms went around my neck, pulling me gently against her. Her tongue shot back into my mouth insistently, hungrily. I kissed back enthusiastically for a moment, aroused by her aggression. I allowed my hand to drop to the skin of her bare thigh.

"Nina," I said breathlessly when our kiss finally broke. "My parents are right inside."

"So?" she asked, licking across my upper lip with her tongue. "They know we kiss don't they? Besides, I don't think your parents are the type to watch us."

"Yeah," I said, "But…"

"I missed you while you were gone Bill," she told me. "I missed talking to you, being with you, hearing you. I got to catch up on that yesterday. But I also missed touching you and having you touch me. I missed kissing you." She sucked my upper lip into her mouth and let her tongue slide inside my mouth again.

I gave in, surrendering to her kisses, my hand rubbing up and down on her thigh, feeling the skin beneath my fingertips, feeling my penis come to full staff in my shorts. After five minutes of this Nina let her hand slide slowly down my chest and stomach, her fingernails scratching at me through my shirt. Her hand continued downward and was suddenly resting on the bulge in my shorts. Her fingers, which were quickly becoming expert at the task, began to squeeze.

"Mmmmm, and I missed this," she said softly against my lips.

As much as I enjoyed the feel of her caressing hand on me I had to reach down and gently remove it. We were on a front porch on a suburban street. And though it was dark, it wasn't pitch black and anyone could have wandered along at any time. My parents also might have wandered out to the porch for whatever reason.

"Prude," Nina accused playfully, giving me one last squeeze but taking her hand away.

"Sorry," I chuckled.

She gave me another kiss and then moved her lips to my ear. She licked at the lobe briefly and then whispered, "I guess I'm gonna have take care of myself again tonight."

She had found one of my weak spots and she knew it. The thought of Nina laying in bed and rubbing herself was almost more than I could handle. I groaned in frustration.

"Unless," she continued to whisper, "you'd maybe like to take a little walk with me? Didn't you tell me once that you and Mike had a spot over at the school? A private spot? A spot that we could maybe put to a little better use than smoking pot?"

"Let's go," I said, standing quickly up.

She giggled and stood, taking my hand in hers. We started to walk.

It was very dark as we crept our way into the back of the school. There were no light poles or building lights nearby. The only illumination came from the stars and the half-moon that drifted above us. The crickets ceased their chirping as we found a spot under a tree and sat on the ground, our backs against the trunk.

"There," Nina told me, pushing her body against mine. "Nice and private. No parents, no people out for a walk. Nice place you have here Bill."

"Thanks," I said softly, pulling her to me and kissing her again.

Our kisses were frantic, deep, without a hint of gentleness as our tongues dueled in each other's mouths. Our hands slid up down each other's bodies, grasping and groping. I slid my hand beneath her shirt, under her bra, taking her bare breast in my palm and feeling it. Her hand slid down the back of my shorts, feeling my ass.

"Kiss my neck," she commanded, letting her head fall back on her shoulders. "I love it when you do that."

I complied, letting the back of my tongue trail across her cheek to her throat. My free hand slid up the inside of her bare thigh to the edge of her shorts. She opened her legs for me. I slid my fingers under the leg of the shorts, which were loose and baggy upon her. They moved upward until I reached the crotch of her panties, which were soaked with her excited secretions. Two fingers wormed their way beneath the cotton to her swollen lips. She moaned as my digits penetrated her.

It was awkward and my hand and forearm quickly got sore from the angle, but I brought her to orgasm as I slid my fingers in and out of her body. She thrust her pelvis rapidly into me and began to whine as she came. I silenced her vocalizations by putting my mouth to hers.

She relaxed against me, her tongue continuing to flit in and out of my mouth. I pulled my fingers free, again resisting the urge to smell them, to put them in my mouth and taste her.

She broke the kiss and looked at me in the darkness, her hand dropping down to the button on my shorts. "Your turn," she told me, unfastening it.

She unzipped me and then began to tug on the shorts and underwear. I lifted my hips a little, allowing her to drag them down to mid-thigh. My erection popped out and she took it in her hand, moving it slowly up and down as I'd taught her that night near the falls. I moaned while she kissed my neck, her hand continuing it's work.

"Does it feel good?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I moaned.

"Would it feel better," she asked quietly, "if I put it in my mouth?"

"What?" I asked, startled.

"I want to suck it," she told me, "would you like me to?"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" I asked, trembling with desire at the thought but not wanting to push her into doing anything too soon.

"Yes Bill," she said, kissing me again, squeezing my cock. "I want to make you come with my mouth, I want to feel it when you shoot. Can I?"

I nodded. "Yes Nina, oh yes."

She gave me one last kiss and then slowly shifted her legs so she had room. Still holding it in her hand she lowered her face to my lap. Her mouth opened and she put it on the head, allowing me to feel the wetness of her tongue against me. I jumped a little and groaned at the contact. I'd had many a mouth on my dick before but this was Nina doing it and the sensation was doubled, tripled by my mind, by the thought that she was actually doing this to me. She sucked only the head for a moment while her hand slowly moved up and down on the shaft and then she sank down slowly, taking as much as she could.

I looked down and saw her brown hair in my lap, saw her head moving up and down. I felt her tonguing and sucking as she moved. I felt her other hand gently caressing my balls, feeling them, testing their texture. It was obvious that she had never done this before. Her actions were tentative, hesitant, new. But at the same time she was doing it well. She was moving in a way that I liked without instruction. She was sucking while moving her head up and down and continuing to use her hand at the same time. She tried to deep throat once but had to withdraw as she gagged a little.

"Sorry," she said, raising her head up for a moment.

"It's okay," I squeaked back.

She dipped back down and resumed where she'd left off, increasing the speed of her movements as she gained confidence. I felt my hips started to rise up and down a little as my body instinctively began to move with the rhythm.

I felt myself getting closer and closer to the edge as she went faster and faster.

I took my right hand, the hand that had probed under Nina's shorts a few minutes before and put the fingers to my nose. I inhaled her scent, the strong, womanly musk of arousal and the thought that I was smelling the essence of Nina brought me over the edge. I felt the familiar tingle running through my body, felt the machinery of orgasm kicking into gear.

"I'm gonna come," I groaned to her, expecting her to pull her mouth away and finish me off by hand.

She didn't. She increased her pace and the strength of her grip on me. Waves of pure pleasure shot through my body, spreading from my groin outward. My hips raised off the ground and I began to shoot into her mouth.

Her mouth moved spastically upon me as she swallowed my offering but she kept up the motion, bobbing her head and sucking until the last spurt had come out and the jerking of my body finally came to a halt.

All of my muscles relaxed and I leaned back against the tree with a sigh. Nina sucked and licked my now-deflating penis for a moment and then raised her head up to me. She licked her lips a little.

"How was that?" she asked me.

"Beautiful," I told her, pulling her to me. I kissed her, catching a faint taste of myself on her tongue but not minding. Obviously this turned her on.

"So I did it right?" she asked.

"Perfect," I assured her. "You're a very erotic person Nina, did you know that?"

"Thank you," she said, kissing me again. "You're not bad yourself. I read how to do that in a book called "The Sensuous Woman". I was dying to try it. I'm glad they told me how to do it right."

"You read how to do that in a book?" I asked, laughing.

"Same place I learned to do what we did at the lake," she said seriously. "That was under suggestions for sex when you're on your period if your partner doesn't like to do it then. I adapted it to the situation. There's all kinds of other stuff in there too. Even stuff about orgies."

"Orgies?" I asked, incredulous, unaware that Nina had even known that word, let alone it's meaning.

She giggled. "For instance," she explained, "did you know that it is considered poor etiquette to attend an orgy while you are menstruating?"

I cracked up completely. "No," I said. "I didn't know that. The things our parents don't teach us."

"So keep that in mind," she said, "if you ever invite me to an orgy. Be sure to have me check my calendar first."

We laughed together in the darkness. Eventually I pulled my shorts back up.

We sat for a few more minutes, just holding each other. Finally we stood up, brushed each other off, and started walking back to my house.

Chapter 15

My suspicions were correct. Nina had been just a little too innocent in her inquiries about what time Tracy left for her appointment. At 8:50 the next morning, less than ten minutes after the ambulance carted my sister away with Mom and Dad following in the car, the phone rang.

"Care for a visitor?" Nina asked me playfully.

"I don't know," I responded, "I had plans."

"Plans?"

"Yep," I answered firmly. "I need to go over my stock certificates and calculate my net worth. Also, Sesame Street starts in ten minutes."

"I LOVE Sesame Street," she told me.

"I'm sure you do," I replied. "But watching Sesame Street is meant to be a transcendental, solitary experience, wouldn't you agree?"

"I would," she chuckled. "But do you think that maybe just this once you could make an exception?"

I sighed, exaggerating the sound. "I suppose."

"See you in ten minutes," she told me.

I smiled as I hung up the phone, feeling warm inside as I contemplated the prospect of Nina and an empty house. Usually on workdays I didn't shower until about 11:00. But something had told me that an earlier shower might be a good idea on that day. I was already squeaky clean and dressed in shorts and a tank top.

When the doorbell rang exactly ten minutes later my warmth kicked up a few notches as I saw her standing there. She was dressed in a light yellow summer dress that came down to just above her knees. Her legs were bare. It was readily apparent by the way her small breasts jiggled beneath the dress that she was not wearing a bra. Her face was made up lightly and her brown hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were twinkling as she stepped into my arms, giving me a soft, very erotic kiss on the lips.

"Mmmm," I said, letting my hand slide slowly across her chest, confirming the suspicion I had about her brassiere.

She slapped at my hand. "I didn't tell you you could do that," she teased.

"I think we've gotten to the point," I teased back, "where they are now possessions of mine and I can touch them whenever I want to."

"Is that so?" she giggled, breaking free of my embrace and walking inside. I had a Rolling Stones album playing softly on the turntable and the voice of Mick Jagger was telling us about how we should have sympathy for the Devil.

"Yes," I nodded, admiring her legs, the way they moved beneath the hem of her dress. They were tanned and toned from our frequent excursions outside and very pretty to behold. "Did your mother see how you were dressed when you left?"

"Are you kidding?" she asked, sitting on the sofa. The hem of her dress rode up considerably. She made no effort to push it back down. "I had a bra on when I left the house." She smiled seductively, "but it was really uncomfortable, you know. So I just left it in the car." She patted the sofa next to her.

I sat down, letting my fingertips touch her exposed thigh. "If I didn't know better," I said, "I'd swear you have evil intentions."

"Me?" she asked. "I'm young and innocent."

"Uh huh. Did you leave anything else in the car?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she said indignantly. "I did not leave my panties in the car if that's what you were implying. What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"Bummer."

She leaned over and kissed me softly on the ear. She whispered, "I didn't leave them in the car because I seem to have forgotten to put any on this morning. How absent-minded of me."

My penis, which had been semi-erect from the moment I realized she had no bra on, suddenly stiffened to a diamond cutter. Realization struck me. With it, sexual excitement and doubt. She was completely naked under her dress! She hadn't come over here to merely fool around a little. She had an agenda. Were things moving too fast?

"Nina?" I said, trying to concentrate, to think this through as she ran her tongue up and down my neck, leaving wet trails of saliva. Concentration was difficult. Nina, despite her inexperience, had learned volumes about the art of pleasuring my flesh with her tongue.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered to me. "Let's enjoy our time alone together. We don't have much time before you have to go to work."

I gulped. "But what about… you know… uh… protection?" I asked her. "I don't have any… uh… condoms." Actually I did. There was still a small stash of them in my Bible along with a joint that Mike had given me at some point. But I didn't want Nina to know that because I wasn't sure how she would react.

Her hand slid down my chest, coming to rest on the bulge at the front of my shorts. It began to twist slowly back and forth, putting delicious pressure on me. "You don't need any condoms," she said, still whispering in my ear, letting me feel her breath on me. "I'm on the pill."

The pill? I turned my head sharply at her. "You're what?"

A smile, a very wicked one came to her face. "I went to the family planning clinic way back in January. After the first time we made out. I knew back then that we would eventually work our way to this point. They give the pill to minors you know, without telling their parents."

I was speechless as I stared at her. She seemed to be enjoying the reaction she was giving me.

"You remember the pimples?" she asked, "the sore boobs? That's why I had those problems. It takes a little while to get used to the hormones in the pill. But I wanted it to be safe when we finally made love. I wanted it to be perfect. And today is perfect. We have the time, we have the place."

"Wow," I finally muttered. "You never fail to surprise me."

"And hopefully I never will," she smiled.

"But are you sure you…"

"Oh for Christ sake Bill!" she shouted, exasperated. "Why do you treat me like a child sometimes? I'm older than you are. I'm more than ready. I'm more than willing. I've been ready for a long, long time. Do you remember the day you first asked me to come over to your house to study?"

I looked at her, confused. "You mean, the very first time? Back in eleventh grade?"

"Yes," she nodded. "It was the first day of eleventh grade and you asked me to come to your place and study." She gave me a shrewd look. "I KNEW what it meant when you asked a girl over to study. I KNEW the kind of studying that went on at your house. We've already been over that point, right?"

"Uh… yes," I said slowly.

"And you'll recall that I said I would come over. I thought you were asking me over to STUDY with you. And I said yes. I wanted to STUDY, wanted it bad." She laughed, shaking her head. "Of course, the joke turned out to be on me when it became clear a few minutes later that you just wanted to study with me. To REALLY study."

"I… uh… well," I stammered, "back then I was still…"

"Hush," she told me, leaning in to give me a kiss on the mouth. "That's the past and the past is forgiven. My point is that I've been ready to feel you inside of me since then. The reasons I want to feel it have changed, and changed for the better, but I still want it. I want it today. I want it NOW. So quit trying to be gentle and considerate. Quit trying to protect fragile little Nina from the evil world. Show me the evil world Bill. Take me upstairs and fuck me. Right now!"

She stood, pulling on my hand, beckoning me to rise from the couch. I got to my feet obediently, still shocked but also terribly turned-on by what she was saying. She began to lead me to my room.

As we mounted the staircase she turned to me and said, "but first, you've just got to show me what the vacuum cleaner treatment is all about."

"That can be arranged," I told her.

We went to my room, which was spotless and neat, the bed neatly made, all of the rock music posters and other teenage memorabilia long-since removed from the walls and replaced by tasteful but cheap paintings and photographs that I'd acquired here and there since my recycling. I paused long enough to flip on my stereo and quickly tune it from the rock station it usually was set on to a college classical music station. Mozart was playing and I thought it fitting for the occasion. We turned and looked at each other.

"Love me," Nina said softly and I stepped into her arms.

We kissed standing up, her arms dropping down to my ass, feeling the cheeks through my shorts while my hands slid slowly down the back of her dress until I encountered her bare thighs. I stroked the skin softly for a moment, relishing the feminine feel of her legs, and then I began to slide them upwards, under the hem of her dress.

She had not been lying when she'd told me she had no panties on. My hands slid up her legs until they were moving across the smooth skin of her naked buttocks. I squeezed gently, pulling her body tighter into mine, caressing her, letting my fingertips dig lightly into her flesh. Her breathing quickened as she felt me touching her intimately. Her own hands slid upwards, under the back of my shirt.

"Take it off me," she commanded. "Make me naked."

I nodded, speechless and backed up a step. I moved my fingers from her rear and grasped the hem of her dress, lifting upward. She raised her arms to assist me. A quick pull upward and it was over. The dress was dropped indifferently to the floor at our feet and Nina stood naked before me.

I will always remember that moment, no matter how long I live, no matter how many lives I inhabit. The first moment my eyes feasted upon the sight of Nina in the flesh, in the bright daylight. I had undressed many a girl before, had looked at many a naked female form, but never had it been so sweet, so anticipated, so fulfilling. She was beautiful, all I ever wanted, her treasures revealed completely at last. I realized that I'd been waiting a long, long time for this experience and I savored it.

Nina's body was the type that looks it's most alluring unclothed. Her bra and her pants and her shirt tended to hide her curves, hide the swell of her breasts, hide the smoothness of her skin. Girls like Cindy and Maggie and the many others that I'd bedded tended to look better in clothing, their charms accented by under-wire support, tight denim, tight sweaters. They made you fantasize about what they looked like naked but when you finally removed their clothing you would always find that reality was not quite as good as the fantasy. Their boobs would sag, their stomach would have a pooch to it. But Nina's body was the exact opposite. Freed of restraint, her attributes were shining. Her stomach was smooth as silk, without a line marring it anywhere. Her breasts stood proudly revealed, their small size guaranteeing not a millimeter of sag. Her lower curves were starkly outlined, making a distinct hourglass shape. And her pelvic region was without the slightest hint of bulge, her tuft of brown pubic hair accenting the pouting lips of her vagina, which were barely seen.

"Nina," I said, in awe. "You are truly beautiful."

A shy smile from her. She looked as if she wanted to cover herself with her arms and hands, wanted to hide what I so desired from my eyes, but was restraining herself. "Thank you Bill," she said quietly. "I'm all yours."

I put my hands to her shoulders and slowly let my fingertips move downward, across her upper chest to the swell of her breasts. They glided across the nipples, swirling around each for one revolution before continuing onward, over the bottom-swell and down to her lower rib cage. I passed over the slight protuberance of her ribs, across her smooth stomach to her navel, where the fingertips touched each other for a brief second before separating and continuing south to her hips. They then slid around to her buttocks once more.

"Come over to the bed," I told her.

She gave me a nervous smile and let me propel her to my bed, lying her on her back near the middle, her head resting on my pillow. She kicked her sandals off as she lay down. She kept her legs tightly together, depriving me of a good view of her sex but this did not concern me in the least. I traced my fingertip from her knee to her crotch, letting it pass slowly through her pubic hair on its way to her breast. I eased myself down next to her, dropping my head to her right breast.

I licked from the bottom upward, working my way quickly to her pencil-eraser sized nipple, which I took into my mouth and began to gently suckle. It grew considerably in my lips and her hands came up to the back of my head. My hand began to slide up and down her thighs, right in the space where they came together. After a moment they parted slightly and I began to catch whiffs of her aroused odor in my nose.

I kissed downward, licking and sucking my way over her stomach, paying particular attention to her navel, which I plunged my tongue into, making her squeal in ticklish delight. I continued downward, kissing her lower stomach, moving more slowly now, tasting the soft skin with both my tongue and my lips.

When my chin touched the top of her pubic hair, felt it tickling me, I diverted to the side, kissing my way down her hip, to the outside of her thigh. I bathed her upper leg with my lips and tongue, moving downward to her knee. She continually tried to pull me back upward but I resisted her tugs, moving undaunted at my own pace. When I reached her knee her legs had spread of their own accord. I began moving back upward again, this time kissing the skin of her inner thigh, interjecting my body between her legs.

I could see her sex now as I homed in on it. I could see her lips pouting outward from the curtain of pubic hair, could see her clitoris, erect and waiting for me, bulging from its hood. Her lips were glistening with moisture, secreting her scent into the air. Her legs opened wider, her hands at the back of my head tugging harder, more insistently. I felt her calves and feet rubbing against my flanks.

I kissed all the way up her inner thigh, until my tongue was licking in the crease between her leg and her crotch. Her odor was powerful in my nose, making me giddy, making me want to rip off my clothes and drive ruthlessly into her body. Instead, I let the tip of my tongue lightly slide through her nest of hair and track up the side of her lip. I tasted the faint bite of her secretions on my tongue.

"Bill!" she begged, her legs opening wider, her hands pulling on my head.

I quit the teasing and went to work, sliding my tongue between her lips and licking, gathering her juices, feeling the sexy slipperiness of her inner membranes.

"Ohhhh!" she moaned at this first contact.

I licked up and down, staying away from her bulging clit and then began to slowly probe into her with my rolled up tongue, forcing my way inside. She was very sensitive to this treatment and her hips began to rise and fall the second I made contact.

"Yesss!" she groaned. "Oh yess!"

I lapped at her more rapidly, drenching my face in her juices, feeling her thighs rubbing on my cheeks. I probed in and out as if I was fucking her with my mouth. Finally I began to lick softly around the perimeter of her clit. Her hip motion became more rapid as I did this so I began to apply soft licks to the surface of her most sensitive area. The motion began to lose conscious control. Her moans increased in volume, became higher in pitch. I looked up the length of her body, across the heaving breasts to her face, seeing that her eyes were tightly closed, her faced scrunched in the grimace of ecstasy.

I began to gently suck upon her clit, at the same time probing between her moist lips with a finger. Her clit grew in my mouth, her motions losing all semblance of control. My finger could only penetrate a short way before coming to the barrier of her maidenhead. I could have pushed past it if I'd wished but I didn't want to, knowing that another part of my body was tasked for that job and looking forward to it.

Her orgasm started slowly, building tempo as it hit her. Her hips rose and fell so fast that I had trouble maintaining the lock I had upon her. Her thighs squeezed painfully into my neck, threatening to cut off my blood supply. Her whine became increasingly high-pitched, eventually inaudible to my ears. Every muscle in her body tensed as I continued to suck on her, as her pubis continued to mash into me, wetting my face. Her fingers pulled at my hair, ripping some from my head but I barely noticed as I brought her to her peak and she began to slide back down.

I continued sucking softly until her body relaxed and a sigh escaped from her lips into the air, until her fingers relaxed and untangled from my hair.

Her legs dropped from around me, coming to rest on the bed. Slowly I raised my head from her crotch, seeing her lying there with her legs spread, her vagina drooling juices onto my bedspread, her lips red and swollen, her nipples standing proud and erect, her eyes shining with lust. She was panting.

"My God," she proclaimed breathlessly. "I've never felt anything like that before."

I gave her a weak smile, wiping some of her juices away from my lips with the back of my hand. "I try," I told her.

"Get those clothes off," she ordered. "Get them off and get inside of me. Do it Bill."

I stood quickly and ripped my shirt free from my body, tossing it across the room. It landed on the stereo. I was just reaching for the button on my shorts, ready to rip them and my underwear down, intending to be naked in less time than it took for me to take my next breath.

From downstairs the telephone began to ring. I stopped, everything stopped.

Call it ESP, call it intuition, call it whatever you want, but there are times in everyone's life when you simply know that the ringing of the telephone is a signal for important information. It could have been Mike calling to shoot the shit. It could have been Nina's Mom asking her to pick up some milk on the way home from my house. It could have been one of Tracy's friends calling to check on her. It could have been a friend of one of my parents. But it was none of those things and I knew it by the time the second ring came drifting up the stairs. I simply knew it.

Nina looked at me, I at her. She knew the same thing I did, that whatever information was waiting on the other end of the call was going to mean an end to our encounter.

"Alexander Graham Bell was an asshole," I told her.

Still panting, still flushed with arousal, she asked, "are you going to get it?"

"I don't want to."

"I think you should," she sighed in frustration. "Try to get rid of whoever it is."

"Right." I said, heading downstairs.

My precognitive flash, or whatever it was, was strengthened by the fact that by the time I made it downstairs to the phone it was well into its eighth or ninth ring. Whoever was on the other end wasn't giving up easily.

"Hello?" I asked, fighting to make my voice sound pleasant.

"Hi," said my Dad. "Took you a while to get to the phone."

"Sorry," I mumbled, anything but.

"I figured if I let it ring long enough, you would answer. Sorry to uh… bother you."

"That's okay," I said, wondering if my Dad somehow knew what I'd been doing.

"What's up? Is Tracy okay?"

"She's fine," he assured me. "But the doctor can't complete his examination of her until he gets some recent X-rays. She was supposed to go over to the radiology clinic for that but the radiology techs are in the middle of some sort of labor dispute and they're having a sick-out today. So basically, this whole morning was a waste of time and the ambulance guys are putting her back in for the trip home right now."

"Right now?" I asked, glancing upstairs.

"Right now," he confirmed. "We should be home in about fifteen minutes or so. Just thought I'd give you a little… uh… warning."

"Okay," I said, feigning nonchalance. "Too bad for Tracy. I'll see you when you get here."

"Right," he said, hanging up the phone.

I set mine back down, feeling frustration, feeling my erection wilting in my shorts, but most of all feeling relief that my Dad had some foresight and common sense. He must have strongly suspected what I was up to or he never would have called. Dad was not the type to drop friendly little warnings that he was on his way home. I could only imagine the embarrassment for all concerned if they had come home while Nina and I had been engaged upstairs. Would we have heard them come in? Seriously doubtful.

Time was short so I rushed back upstairs.

"Who was it?" Nina asked, sitting up on the bed, still naked.

"My Dad," I told her, "they weren't able to complete Tracy's appointment. They're on their way home right now."

"Right now?"

"They'll be here in fifteen minutes," I nodded.

"Damn," she exclaimed, standing quickly up. "Stupid interruptions."

"I know," I said regretfully, looking at her naked body, knowing I'd been less than a minute away from finally entering it.

"Oh well," she shook her head sadly, as frustrated as I was, probably more so. "The best laid plans and all that." She took a good look at herself, at her dripping body. "I need to get cleaned up before they get here. I can't go home smelling like this."

"No," I said, paling as I thought about Mary Blackmore getting a whiff of the odor of sex on her daughter. Sure, she probably suspected that Nina and I were intimate with each other, that was one thing. But to have physical proof of it was quite another. "That wouldn't do, would it?"

"I need to use your shower," she said, gathering up her dress. "I'll be out before they get here. Can you go out to the car and get my bra?"

"You bet." I said. "And I probably oughtta brush my teeth too."

She giggled. "Probably oughtta," she agreed, heading for the bathroom, her dress trailing out behind her.

By the time the EMTs dragged Tracy back into the house and deposited her in her bed Nina was dried off and dressed once more, her bra properly in place.

Everyone greeted her warmly, not expressing any surprise at her presence. I did notice a few knowing looks from both Tracy and my Dad however. If they had anything to say, they kept it to themselves.

Nina and I chatted with Tracy for a while and then Mom and Dad, who had assumed their places before the television set. I kept up my end of the conversation but I couldn't recite a single thing we talked about. My teenaged hormones were surging through my body and I was having a difficult time keeping my erection from returning as I thought about Nina just sitting there, talking normally, while under her dress she had no panties on. My balls were aching fiercely.

We went up to my room about a half-hour before I needed to start getting ready for work. This was nothing unusual, we often spent time up there alone. Usually we did nothing more than kiss.

"Got blue balls?" Nina asked me, a smile on her face.

"In the worst way," I nodded.

"I'm sorry," she told me, sitting on the edge of my bed once more. "I really meant to let you make love to me. I wanted it Bill. I still do."

"I know," I told her. "It's okay."

"I guess fate just doesn't like you for some reason."

I had to laugh at what she said. Fate like me? Probably not. "No," I said, "I don't believe that fate likes me at all."

She gave me a puzzled look for a moment and then her eyes took on a little shine. "So what are you gonna do about the blue balls?" she asked. "Play with yourself after I leave?"

"Probably before your car even starts," I confirmed. "I can't go to work like this."

"Maybe I can help," she said softly. "Come over here."

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

She reached out and grabbed the waistband of my shorts, tugging me to her so I was standing between her legs. Her mouth was right at the level of my crotch. "You ask too many questions," she told me, reaching for the button and undoing it.

"Nina," I said, feeling myself coming to full erection once again, "my parents…"

"Would never come in without knocking," she put in. She unzipped me and pushed my shorts down. Another push to my underwear and my cock was waving in her face. "Just be quiet and let me do my work."

"If you insist," I croaked as her mouth slid over me.

My mom was in the habit of leaving me a plate of whatever she'd cooked for dinner that night in the refrigerator so I could heat it up when I got home from work. That night was no exception. I was gobbling up a large bowl of her beef stew and turning a thought that I'd been having over in my mind when the doorbell rang. I heard my Dad answer it and a moment later say, "he's in the kitchen." A few seconds after that, Mike came in, wearing a T-shirt from the fire department.

"What's up Mike?" I greeted, putting my thoughts on hold for the time being. "How's the new job?"

"It's cool," he answered, grabbing a seat. "I spent most of the day filling out the forms and all that crap. Then one of the captains that works days took me out in the truck to show me what I'd be doing. I'll start tomorrow on the normal route."

I offered him some of Mom's stew, there was plenty in the fridge, and he declined. While I finished up he continued to tell me about his new career.

When I was done eating and had put my dishes in the sink, we went out front.

"I'm off the buds now," he told me seriously once we were out of my parent's earshot.

"You?" I asked, raising my brows, "off the buds? What's up with that?"

He shook his head sadly. "I'll be driving a courier truck for the fire department. They have a policy. If anybody driving any vehicle gets into any accident of any kind, they have to get drug tested. It's some lawyer shit they have there. I wish I would've known about it a few weeks ago. I smoked some the other day with Maggie. Now I have to hope and pray I don't have some asshole crash into me in the next six weeks."

"Hopefully fate will be kind to you," I said, suppressing the joy I wanted to express. When I made my crack about fate I hadn't even been worried about it. Mike had already beaten fate. He had been forced to choose between marijuana and a career and he had chosen the career with hardly a second thought. Remarkable when you consider what had happened to him in his previous timeline, when he'd continued to smoke pot knowing that he would eventually be drug-tested and caught. He just hadn't cared. Now, at eighteen, he was much more mature than "the other Mike", as Tracy would have put it, ever was or ever would be. "Are you gonna miss it much?" I asked him.

"Oh yeah," he admitted, nodding. "There's nothing like getting stoned. Well, almost nothing. But I'll live. I hope Maggie understands. She likes to smoke a little bit with me. But I don't think it'll bother her that I quit. And the minute I make captain and don't have to drive anything anymore, I'm gonna go score me a fuckin' ounce and smoke it all in one night."

I grinned. "Be sure and invite me over," I told him. "How's it going with you and Maggie anyway?"

"It's goin' great," he assured me. "If she wasn't at work right now I'd be over there instead of bullshittin' with you." He grinned lasciviously, "I'm tellin' you Bill, that chick really knows how to fuck."

"What?" I asked, surprised at his words although I really shouldn't have been.

He nodded knowingly. "And she can suck dick like you wouldn't believe too. The other night she finally gave it up for the first time. Goddam she was hot. We started out in her living room. We were watching some TV and then we started kissing a little. She let me feel her tits, she has nice tits, and then she unbuttoned my…"

"Mike," I interrupted.

"What?" he asked, looking confused, wondering why I was intruding upon his sex story.

"Have you told anybody else about this?" I asked him.

"About fucking Maggie?" he asked. "No, you're the first. Why?"

I shook my head. "Don't take what I'm telling you the wrong way," I said, "I'm telling you this in friendship and to help you, just like when I told you about the Air Force recruiter, remember?"

"Yeah, but… what are you talking about?"

"Don't tell people about what you do with Maggie," I advised sternly. "Don't tell anybody a damn thing. Not even me, not even if they ask. Keep it to yourself. I know it's hard to do, I know that a guy's instinct is to share his conquests with everyone, to let other guys know he's a man. But it's a bad idea. A very bad idea."

He looked at me strangely. I could see the old immature hostility at being contradicted wanting to come forth. "I'm just telling you," he said. "Maggie doesn't know. And she wouldn't care anyway."

"Wrong." I said. "Now I don't know Maggie as well as you do, but I know women pretty well. And I know guys pretty well. If you tell me, you'll tell others. But even if you don't, you can't even trust me. Suppose I passed on what you said to Tracy. Tracy might run into Cindy, who is her friend. Cindy is also a friend of Maggie's. Suppose Maggie hears from Cindy exact quotes from what you just told me. She wouldn't be very happy. Her unhappiness will increase with each person that the story passed through before it got back to her. It really is a small world and if you are in the habit of blabbing your exploits to people, word will get around and get back to her. Women will break up with you in an instant if they find out you're telling people about what you do with them in bed. Worse than that, any other woman that the story has passed through will not have anything to do with you because they know you'll tell everyone. Are you following me?"

He looked a little shell shocked by my words. "Yeah, I see. But you won't tell Tracy anything."

"You can't know that." I told him, "You can't know that about even me and I'm your best friend. All it would take would be a few beers with Tracy, a little loosening of the tongue, and then out pops the story. You definitely can't know that about other people. Trust me on this. Keep you mouth shut about it if you want to keep her. Fuck the shit out of her at night. Enjoy it immensely. But don't tell a soul about it. Why even take a chance on her finding out? What's more important Mike, continuing to get the pussy and not having anybody know you're getting it or getting it a few times, letting everybody know, and then losing the pussy because you blabbed? Myself, I gotta go with continued pussy every time. No contest."

He was looking thoughtful at my speech but didn't say anything.

"Besides," I went on. "After it becomes known that you and Maggie are together, everyone is gonna know you're fucking her anyway. They'll know you're a man, they'll know you're taking her home and boffing the shit out of her. So why provide them with details? Let them just think about what you're doing with her and they're not. Let the fuckers be envious."

He nodded a little, brightening to what I'd said. "I see what you're saying."

"So if I come up to you and say, "Mike, you been fucking Maggie or what?", what are you gonna say?"

He smiled. "I'd say this:" He shrugged, "Maggie and I are just good friends."

I grinned. "You're learning Mike. You're learning."

"You know where I learned that line from?" he asked me.

"Where?"

"From you," he told me.

"From me?"

"Over the last couple a years," he said, "I used to see you with girls from school all the time. They used to be around you at lunch, around you after school, around you before school. Whenever I'd ask you about one of them, that's what you'd say. That you were just friends."

"And friends were all that we ever were."

He shook his head in wonder. "You sly motherfucker," he said respectfully.

The next morning, shortly after breakfast, Tracy and I were playing a game of cribbage in her cave. Tracy was not a happy person being eternally trapped in a den of her parent's house. She was suffering from a full-blown case of cabin fever and was very cranky at best. I was twenty points ahead of her and had just slapped down a double card run, fouling her mood even more.

"You lucky asshole," she said in disgust, throwing her cards at me. "This is a stupid game."

"And I'm about to skunk you at it," I added. "Which means you'll owe me fifty cents instead of a quarter, plus double points."

"Fuck you and deal," she told me. "And please turn off whatever crap that is you've put on the turntable. It reminds me of taking car trips with Mom and Dad when we were little."

"It's the Beatles," I told her. "This is the most classic rock and roll there is. How can you not like it?"

"It's old fogey music. Put on one of my albums, they're much better."

"Eighties music is an atrocity. You can't compare the freakin Thompson Twins to the Beatles. It's not even the same category."

"I LIKE the Thompson Twins," she said. "And I HATE the Beatles. And I'm the one that's injured and you're the one in MY room. So put on the fucking Thompson Twins."

"All right," I gave in, setting the cards down and heading for the stereo. Just then the phone started to ring.

"You got that Bill?" Dad yelled from his perch in the living room. Mom was off at work.

"Yeah," I said, changing course and heading for the phone. "Hello?"

"Bill?" It was Nina and she sounded very excited. "Have you got your mail yet?"

"I don't think so," I said, already intuiting what she was talking about. "Nobody's gone out to get it anyway. Why? Did you get a letter from the college?"

"Acceptance and full academic scholarship!" she squealed happily. "I'm in Bill. I'm in! And I'll be able to afford to go!"

"That's great Nina," I said, getting excited myself. "Let me go check the mail and see if mine's there. Here, talk to Tracy." I handed the phone, actually tossed it, to my sister and rushed out of the room.

Still wearing my sweat pants and no shirt I rushed by my Dad, who looked at me curiously, and out the front door. I went directly to the mailbox by the curb, throwing open the door and peering inside. There was a stack of mail in there. I grabbed it, shuffling quickly through the envelopes, magazines, and junk mail, looking for a return address from the University of Washington at Seattle. I found it near the bottom.

Standing there, holding it in my hand, I was suddenly scared, suddenly afraid to open it. Inside was either a yes or a no. If it was yes, Nina and I would be going to college together. If it was a no, who knows what would happen. I took a deep breath. With hands that were shaking, I finally tore open the envelope. One quick glance told me all I needed to know. I returned to the house.

I tossed the rest of the pile of mail at my Dad as I rushed by him once more. I went back into the den and ripped the phone out of Tracy's hands.

"Me too!" I said happily to her. "Acceptance and full academic scholarship!"

We talked for a few minutes excitedly to each other about our plans, about our excitement, about how much we loved one another. During this, Tracy seemed to actually cheer up and Dad wandered into the room to see what was going on. When I finally hung up Tracy was the first to congratulate me. She gave me a big hug and even a little kiss on the cheek.

Dad was next. "Congratulations," he told me. "I'm very proud of you."

"Thanks Dad," I said, still trying to accept the fact that everything was working out for me.

"Be sure and call your mother right away and let her know."

"I will," I promised. "I'll do it right now."

"It seems," Dad said, "that the mail is full of good news today." He handed me a small folding piece of paper, an announcement. On the front of it was a picture of two bells clanging together.

I opened it and read what was inside. The text was written in tastefully printed calligraphy.

THE STEVENS FAMILY: YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE BLESSED NUPTIALS OF JACK JACOB VALENTINE AND ANITA LYNN BROWLING SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1984 AT BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH, SPOKANE WEDDING CEREMONY 1:00 PM FOLLOWED BY RECEPTION AT ENDERS HALL PLEASE COME JOIN US IN THIS CELEBRATION OF LOVE

It was that evening, long after work, shortly after Mom had gone to bed. Tracy was in the den sleeping the sleep of narcotic intoxication. Dad and I were sitting in front of the television, each of us drinking a beer, the coffee table littered with empty bottles. This was something we did with fair frequency since I'd shared my secret with him and I valued these talks with him. Being treated like an adult by your father, with all of the respect due from such a relationship, is something that I believe every boy strives for whether unconsciously or consciously.

"So what do you think about Anita's wedding?" Dad asked me, taking a sip out of his fourth beer. We were making short work of the twelver he'd purchased the day before.

"I'm so happy about it," I told him, feeling my own buzz loosening my tongue, "that I could shit. Do you know what this means? It means that I was right. That I actually did something right. That one of my plans actually worked. Wouldn't that make you happy?"

He nodded wisely. "It would," he said, "but sometimes I think you sell yourself short. You have a keen head for hatching schemes and putting them into motion. You have a gift for it. When you told me all the trouble you went through just to get them together," he shook his head. "You did good Bill. You should be proud of yourself. But what I wanted to know was if you thought we should go to the wedding. Your mother and Anita haven't really spoken in quite some time. I think you know why."

"Yeah," I nodded. "My fault. And I'm sorry for that. I wish I could tell Mom how sorry I am that I hurt one of her friendships."

"Don't worry about it," he told me. "From what you've said, the relationship pretty much died after they got married anyway, didn't it?"

"Yeah," I said. "It did. Anita left the area and never looked back. I'm glad she's back on track."

"And the wedding?" he persisted.

"I want to go." I told him. "Whether you and Mom go or not, I still want to. It'll give me closure to this whole thing with her."

"Closure?" he said, puzzled.

"Sorry," I chuckled. "Buzzword from the nineties. I used to hate it then but here it is slipping from my mouth now. It means that once I see that Anita is happy, that she is content with her husband, I'll be able to put the episode with her behind me once and for all. To close it."

"I see," he nodded. "Closure. I like it."

"Don't like it too much," I told him. "It'll be horribly overused and you'll hear it so much you'll want to puke eventually."

"I'll take your word for it," he said, draining the last of his beer. "And I'll feel your mother out about going to Anita's wedding. But for now, I think I'm gonna call it a night."

"Me too," I said. "Oh, and by the way, can you do me a favor tomorrow?"

"What's that?"

"Well, earlier tonight, after dinner, I was going over my net worth. Do you know that I now have more than twenty thousand dollars in stocks?"

"Not bad," Dad said, impressed. "Almost like you were psychic, huh?"

I chuckled. "Almost. Anyway, I figure I can afford to cash out about six hundred dollars worth."

"What for?"

I told him.

He listened carefully to me, not speaking.

"I think that's a good idea Bill," he finally said. "I'll do it as soon as I get up and around."

The next day at work I told Mindy my good news. She expressed sadness that she would be losing me as an employee come August 30 but was very happy for me. I asked her if she would give me a letter of recommendation and by the time I left that night she handed me five copies of the most glowing, syrupy letter you could ever hope to read. According to her words, a hospital would be committing financial suicide by not hiring me as an employee. She assured me that any central supply supervisor would hire me on the spot once they read it. I thanked her and went home, filing the letters away.

The next day I went to the bookstore and bought copies of the two major Seattle newspapers. I began pouring through the want ads, looking for central supply tech positions. I found two. I called the numbers listed and gave my address. They promised me that applications were on their way to me.

The day after that I took the money that Dad had cashed out for me and went to downtown Spokane. It took me three hours but at last I found what I was looking for. I still had more than three hundred dollars left over. Some instinct told me not to put it back into stocks. I listened to my instinct, stashing the money in my checking account instead.

On the Fourth of July Nina, Maggie, Mike, and I took Dad's boat out to Lake Pend Oreille again. We left early in the morning, stocking up with two cases of beer and another onslaught of food courtesy of my mother. The lake was very crowded and it took us nearly an hour to launch once we hit the boat ramp. We spent the day water-skiing, drinking beer, hanging out on various islands, and generally just enjoying each other's company.

Maggie and Nina seemed to lose the awkward relationship they had with each other and worked their way to chatting happily about school, future careers, and even female problems. They had a long, drawn-out conversation about the pros and cons of birth control pills, which eventually led to the discussion of period cramps and water retention. Mike and I put in the obligatory male chauvinist pig comments when they seemed required but basically just kept out of the conversation. I was glad to see Nina developing a friendship with another girl. She had so few friends.

As the sun started to sink in the sky we loaded up the boat and worked our way northward on the lake, heading for the resort town of Sandpoint, which had a fireworks display each Independence Day that drew observers from all over the Pacific Northwest. Nine o'clock anchored us about a half mile offshore amid hundreds of other boats. At ten o'clock the fireworks began.

It was truly a spectacular show and I'd chosen our observation platform well, maybe a little too well. They burst right over the top of us for more than twenty minutes. The explosions were loud enough to hurt and the debris rained down all around us, instilling a sense of danger to the show. When it was finally over we began heading back towards the south end of the lake, a trip of nearly thirty miles.

It was well after midnight before we pulled the boat from the water. Like before, I'd ceased drinking more than three hours before so I'd be sober enough to drive home. Like before, everybody else was asleep before we even reached I-90. As I drove us towards home I remembered the last time we'd taken the boat out, the news that had awaited me when I got home. Irrationally, I worried as I drove, wondering what bad news would be there when I arrived.

But there was none. My house was darkened when we pulled up to it at 1:30 the morning of the fifth. We parked the boat and everyone went home. Well, almost everyone, Mike decided he would see Maggie safely back to her apartment. And so ended a perfect day.

Nina and I had no real opportunities to be alone long enough to do what we so badly wanted to do. Tracy had her appointments but they always seemed to be during my work hours. Sure, we could have torn one off on the boat trip, Maggie and Mike had, taking "a little walk" on our island and disappearing for an hour, but both of us, by unspoken agreement, wanted our first time to be in an actual bedroom.

She never left me with blue balls when we went out. She became quite accomplished with her mouth and hands whenever we went out to the movies or on some other date. I received several blowjobs from her while parked in my car at the local make-out spot near her house. Once she even wore a dress and I was able to return the favor, eating her to orgasm in the back seat while Journey played on the tape player. But as for intercourse, we bided our time, knowing that eventually the perfect day would come.

I was sent the applications for the central supply tech from the two Seattle hospitals and I filled them out, sending in an impressively constructed resume that Maggie, who had a flair for such things, had done for me along with copies of my letter from Mindy. It was the University of Washington Medical Center, the hospital that Nina would eventually train in, that responded first. They offered me an interview on July 23 at 11:00.

I didn't want to drive to Seattle for the interview since it was four hours by car so I looked into plane tickets. I was quite appalled by how much a round trip across the state cost on the cheapest airline.

"I'd better get this fucking job," I muttered, mostly to myself as I reserved a seat on an airliner. Dad, who had been nearby, overheard me and asked me what the problem was.

I told him how much I was spending for the ticket and grumbled about the goddam airlines for a moment. He looked kind of thoughtful for a second, and then said, "why don't you give Ron a call?"

"Ron?" I said, knowing whom he was referring to. Ron Valet was the private pilot who worked with Dad and a good friend of our family. It was Ron and his wife Karen that Mom and Dad went to the space needle with every day after Thanksgiving. I'd been up in the plane with him several times during my life, although not since my recycling. He happily jumped on every opportunity to display his skills.

"Why not?" Dad asked me. "He's off work for the summer, just like I am. If you paid for the gas I'm sure he'd be happy to fly you down there and back. Hell, he'd probably even pay for the gas if you couldn't afford it. He was bitchin to me the other day about how he hasn't done any flying lately."

"That's a good idea Dad," I told him. "You really don't think he'll mind?"

"If he's not doing anything else, he'll be more than happy," Dad assured me.

Unfortunately, when I talked to Ron, it turned out he WAS doing something else. "Sorry Bill," he told me with genuine regret. "Karen and I are purchasing some investment property up in Idaho and we have an appointment that day to sign all the papers at 11:30. I wouldn't be able to fly you back."

"That's okay Ron," I replied. "It was just a thought."

"I'd be happy to fly you down in the morning," he told me. "And if you didn't mind staying overnight or something, I'd even be happy to pick you up the next morning. Still might save you some money."

I considered for a moment, my mind going over the figures in my head. I could rent a motel room in Seattle for about forty bucks. The cost of gas for four flights would be only about fifty bucks. That was still quite below what the cost of a round trip airline ticket would be. "I think that's a good idea Ron," I finally said. "Are you sure you won't mind?"

"It would be a pleasure," he assured me with complete truth.

I was flipping through the latest copy of the Seattle newspaper later that day, looking for something to occupy myself with during my overnight stay there. I'd considered and then rejected the idea of asking Nina to come along with me. As much as her parents were growing to like me I did not think they liked me quite enough to allow their daughter to accompany me on an overnight trip. It was as I was perusing the sports page that I happened across a couple of advertisements that got my attention. I looked at them carefully, considering what I was thinking about. Was it possible to take care of two things at once on the Seattle trip?

I made a few long distance phone calls, putting my name down for reservations and promising I'd have checks in the mail the very next day. If my plans didn't work out I could always renege on these promises. I called up Ron again.

"Would it be a big problem," I asked him, "if you picked me up in Seattle around six o'clock at night instead of in the morning?"

"None at all," he assured me. "Got some plans?"

"Something like that." I said. "And would there be any problem with a passenger on the way up and back, and with, oh, say forty pounds of cargo or so for the return leg?"

"None at all," he repeated. "That's well within the weight limit of the plane. What do you have in mind?"

I told him and he assured me again that there was no problem with anything. Smiling, I hung up and then dialed Nina's number. Jack answered the phone and recognized my voice immediately.

"I'll get Nina," he said.

"No," I told him, "it's you I wanted to talk to."

"Me?"

"Yes," I explained. "Jack, you're on light duty right?"

"Yeah."

"Any chance you could take off the 23rd and the 24th of this month?"

He snorted. "All they have me doing is busy work. Besides, I've been there for thirty-three years. I can take off whenever I damn well please. Why do you ask?"

"A friend of my family is flying me to Seattle that day for a job interview," I told him. "And I'll be forced to stay overnight for various reasons. Now I was flipping through the paper and happened to notice that the Mariners are playing the A's on that day at four o'clock. I've managed to get my hands on a couple of home plate tickets. Interested?"

"You want to take me to a baseball game in Seattle?" he asked, surprised.

"Not only that," I went on, "but I also have a couple of reservations on a deep sea fishing boat that leaves the waterfront at 6:30 the next morning and stays out for eight or nine hours. I know you like fishing so I thought that maybe you'd like to come along. Ron, that's our friend, will pick us up at the airport at six o'clock that night and have us home by 8:00."

There was a long pause. Finally, "Bill, why didn't you ask one of your friends to do this with you?"

"I did Jack." I replied.

A slight cough. "Bill," he said, "you've got yourself a traveling companion. Thank you for inviting me. Of course you'll let me pay for…"

"Negative," I interrupted. "It's all on me. I can afford it. Just be packed and ready to go at 7:00 that morning."

"Thank you," he repeated, seemingly touched.

Of course, being me, I DID have an ulterior motive.

I picked Jack up at his house at 7:00 AM on the morning of the 23rd. He carried a small suitcase with him and seemed quite excited to be going on the adventure. Nina accompanied him out and gave me a hug and kiss before we drove off to the small, private airport.

When we arrived, we found Ron already there, performing the pre-flight checks on his small Cessna. Ron was sipping a cup of coffee and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Aviator sunglasses were perched on his nose. He was a short, terminally joking man and I'd always liked him. He'd given me fifty bucks as a graduation gift.

The introductions were made and Ron noticed that Jack was giving nervous glances at the aircraft.

"Not afraid to fly are you?" he asked Jack gently.

"I was a paratrooper in the war," Jack replied. "The last time I flew it was over Berlin and I had a parachute and an M1 on my back."

"Well have no fear," Ron assured him. "I go along with the smart pilot's credo. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. I've been flying for more than twenty years, including a stint in A-1 Sandies in Vietnam. I've logged thirty-six combat missions and more than six thousand hours total. You are perfectly safe with me at the stick."

"That's good to know," Jack put in.

We roared into the sky shortly afterword, Jack sitting in the front next to Ron, me sitting in the back. The two older men exchanged tales of their war experiences as we soared over the gentle rolling hills of Eastern Washington and finally over the Cascades where the unstable air bounced us around quite frightfully. We landed perfectly normally at nine-fifteen that morning and caught a cab to the motel where I'd made reservations.

I changed into my suit and caught another cab to the medical center, arriving twenty minutes early. The interview went well, outstanding in fact. I was all but assured that the job was mine if I wanted it.

We went to the baseball game and spent a pleasant four hours just shooting the shit and drinking beer and eating hotdogs. Jack bought my beer for me and no one ever questioned the fact that I was drinking it. The Mariners, despite horrible odds to the contrary, beat the A's 4-3, coming back with a two run homer in the eighth just when things seemed hopeless.

We went back to our motel room and crashed hard, Jack in one bed, me in the other. Jack, I found, snored like a chainsaw.

A wake-up call at 5:30 the next morning got us up and around. The day was beautiful for fishing, with no clouds and no rain. Summer is the best part of the year in Seattle. We scored some coffee and a light breakfast from the motel restaurant and then caught a cab to the waterfront. I had a large ice chest with me, the same one I took on boat trips, and we filled it with ice and beer. We obtained our one-day fishing licenses, rented our equipment, and at 6:40, the seventy foot fishing boat headed out of Puget Sound for the open water.

The sea was very rough, with fifteen-foot swells bobbing us up and down like a cork in the Pacific Ocean. There were sixty fishermen and women on the boat and well over half of them became completely incapacitated with seasickness. Bodies were laying everywhere, on every bench, on every table.

The bathroom was flooded in vomit, it overflowed the toilet and ran across the floor.

Jack and I did just fine. Both of us had been deep-sea fishing before, Jack many times throughout his life, me on five consecutive years as part of a company function in my previous life. Of course I didn't tell Jack this and he admired my stamina. Those of us that remained un-sickened managed to catch the limit for everyone else that was unable to fish. We no sooner dropped our lines in and let them sink to the bottom than we were pulling them up with three fish on the hooks. I caught twelve rock cod and Jack caught ten. He also managed to hook a lingcod, an ugly, dangerous looking fish, which the first mate gaffed and drug aboard with a long pole.

Jack and I basked in male bonding throughout that day, becoming closer and closer to each other, becoming friends despite the differences in our ages (which wasn't quite as great as Jack thought it was). We drank beer and ate the sandwiches we'd bought at the waterfront deli before departure. We gave contemptuous glances and comments to those that were too sick to fish, even though their non-participation was a blessing because we rarely got our lines tangled with another fisherman.

By the time the all the lines were pulled in for the last time and the boat began heading back towards the protected water of Puget Sound, we were pleasantly exhausted, sunburned, and sore all over. We found a relatively clean spot near the stern of the boat and sat down, both of us cracking open a fresh beer. Jack surprised me by producing a couple of cigars from his belongings. He offered one to me and I took it, seeing with pleasure that it was a genuine Havana.

"These are illegal in this country," I said with mock sternness. "And you, a government employee, has them in your possession."

He burped, firing his up with a disposable lighter. The fragrant smoke drifted off behind the boat. "Yep," he commented, unconcerned that he was violating a federal law. "A buddy of mine makes a trip up to Calgary every couple a months and picks me up some. That little shitpot country ain't good for much but goddam do they know how to make a cigar."

I took his lighter and, after considerable work in the wind, managed to get mine burning. I'd never been much of a cigar smoker but Jack was right, there was something about a good Cuban. I had a sudden vision of offering him a few tokes off of the illegal smokeable that I had stored in my bible and the image of Nina's father getting stoned was so amusing that I had to suppress a grin.

We smoked in silence for a few minutes, feeling the stern of the boat go up and down, left and right in the swells, watching the sea sick people that were still laying out on every available surface. I was gathering my courage to bring up the subject that I wished to talk about. Jack, perhaps sensing my mood, simply sat there.

"Can I show you something Jack?" I asked him finally.

"Sure," he told me, tossing his empty beer can into a garbage can six feet away; a fairly remarkable shot I might add.

I reached into my pocket and took out a small box that I'd carried with me the entire trip. Inside of it was what I'd purchased downtown the other day. Wordlessly, I handed it over to him. He looked at the felt-lined box for a moment, his eyes narrowing. Finally he opened it and beheld the diamond ring that sat inside.

"That's an engagement ring, isn't it?" he asked, snapping the box shut and handing it back.

"It is," I agreed.

"I'm already married," he told me. "And I don't think I'm your type. But I'm flattered."

I laughed nervously. "I think you know who the ring is for," I told him.

"I guess I do," he nodded, opening the ice chest. "Why are you showing it to me?"

"Because I'm asking your permission to marry your daughter," I said. "A little old-fashioned maybe, but I know how much she means to you and I thought I owed you this."

"You're asking me permission?" he asked, considering this while he pulled two beers from the ice and handed me one. "And suppose I say no? What are you going to do then?"

"Are you saying no?" I asked, cracking open my beer.

"I'm not saying anything just yet," he answered. "I'm just curious as to what you're going to do if I say no."

"Ask her anyway," I admitted. "I think you know that."

He chuckled. "Then I guess this whole conversation is pretty much meaningless then, isn't it? No matter what I say, you're still going to do it."

"But I'd feel better about doing it," I explained, "if I had your permission, which would necessarily include your blessing. It also would make you a co-conspirator when we tell Mary."

He laughed harder. "Mary scares you a little bit does she?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Good," he nodded. "Maybe that fear will keep you in line." He looked meaningfully at me. "I'd be proud to have you as a son-in-law Bill. You have my permission and you have my blessing." He held out his hand to me.

I shook with him, feeling relieved that this conversation had gone well. "Thanks Jack, thanks a lot."

He nodded, puffing his cigar. "But those threats I made to you that one day, remember those? They still apply. Even more so now."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"When are you going to ask Nina for HER permission?" he asked next.

"Soon. Very soon."

Chapter 16

Saturday, the 28th of July, 1984. Dad and I dressed in our suits and climbed into the car for the trip to Blessed Sacrament church. Mom stayed behind, her official reason being that someone had to stay with Tracy. This was only an excuse and everyone knew it. Tracy's cast had been removed and she was now able to hobble around on the braces that had been installed. She was starting physical therapy the following Monday and would no longer need an ambulance to take her places. Tracy would have been perfectly fine by herself but no one questioned Mom's decision. If anyone had, perhaps the REAL reason that she wasn't going would have come flying out of her mouth and with it, an entire can of worms. Nobody wanted that.

So we drove in silence, stifling in our suits, alone in the car. We arrived at Blessed Sacrament and were led to the bride's side of the church by an usher. Blessed Sacrament is perhaps the nicest church in the Spokane area. It is an impressive, gothic structure with expensive stained-glass windows and a towering ceiling. It has an actual belfry. Anita's wedding in my previous life, for reasons that I could not fathom, had not been held there, it had been held at a park. I wasn't much of a church going person, never had been, never would be, but I'd been inside it a few times before recycling on calls. People had a strange tendency to pass out during church services, don't ask me why, but any paramedic can attest to this. We used to joke that maybe the person was having a moment of religious doubt and a vengeful God had showed them the error of their ways in dramatic fashion.

It looked much more festive on that day than it ever had when I'd come to revive someone. Flowers were everywhere, filling the air with their perfume. An organist was playing religious hymns at soft volume, keeping everyone in the proper mood. Photographers and a man with a video camera moved here and there, snapping and filming away. The pews were about half-filled, mostly with people we didn't know. I recognized a few of the real estate agents from my trip to Anita's office and hoped that none of them would recognize me. I didn't think they would. If I'd left an impression at all on any of them it would have been as a boy bundled in a down jacket and wearing a ski hat. I doubted they would equate that image with the nicely dressed young man they saw before them now.

The ceremony began. The organist kicked up the volume a little and Jack Valentine made his entrance accompanied by his best man. They were dressed in matching tuxedos and he looked very distinguished, very worldly as he marched down the aisle and took his position near the minister.

And then Anita made her entrance. She was truly beautiful in her flowing white dress and veil, her hair done just right. Her father, I knew, was no longer a part of this Earth so in his place she was accompanied down the aisle on the arm of Ryan, her young son who was dressed cutely in a tuxedo of his own. Her maid of honor and bridesmaids trailed behind her. Her daughter held the trailing edge of her dress.

Like graduations, weddings are usually much more fun to anticipate than they are to actually witness. The minister went on and on for nearly twenty minutes about love and respect and nurturing before he got to the wedding vows. These went on for nearly ten minutes though they were admittedly well written. Another ten minutes of talking, lecturing, and praying occurred before we got to the good part; the part that ended with, "you may kiss the bride". Jack did and we moved on to part two, the reception.

Enders Hall was a large, multi-purpose building that had been designed with wedding receptions in mind. Tables were scattered throughout it with pink tablecloths adorning them and little cards with the names of the guests printed on them. A four-piece band played softly in one corner of the room.

An open bar was set up in another corner. In yet another corner was a large table where the wedding gifts were being stacked. We placed the punchbowl set that Mom had purchased on the table and then went and found our seats.

Dad got himself a beer and me a coke while I chatted with our table companions, two of Anita's co-workers, one of whom had been present the day I'd visited the office. She showed no sign of recognizing me. When she asked how I knew Anita I told her I was a neighbor that used to cut her lawn and watch her kids on occasion.

We all took our turns kissing the bride and shaking the hand of the groom. When Dad and I approached, Anita made the introductions tonelessly, without the slightest hint of what I had once been to her. As I kissed her cheek I remembered the days when I used to kiss her everywhere, when I used to make love to her on her bed, in her shower, when I used to put my head between her legs. Anita had still never been topped in the bedroom department. I knew Jack was a happy man.

"Congratulations Anita," I told her sincerely. "I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you Bill," she replied, her eyes meeting mine. "I'm very happy too."

Champagne was poured, toasts were made, the band kicked up the volume and the pace. Dancing was started. Anita danced with Jack, with Jack's best man, with her son, with several others. Finally she approached me and grabbed my hand.

"Care for a dance with the bride?" she asked lightly.

I looked at her for a moment and then said, "of course." I stood and we went to the dance floor.

We grabbed each other's hands and began to move to the music, swinging our hips. Around us, other combinations of couples were doing the same. Anita was smiling at me nervously and I wondered just why she had done this. A part of me was afraid she was going to ask me to resume our previous relationship despite her marriage.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to you," she said quietly, "since that last day. That day you came over to my house."

I nodded carefully. "I thought it best if we didn't."

"And you were right," she told me. "I wanted to tell you I was sorry for the way I acted on those last few weeks. That I'm ashamed of what I said to you, what I did, how desperate I was. Very ashamed. And I appreciate your discretion in keeping your mouth closed about it all of this time. When I look back on those times…" she shook her head sadly. "I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you did and why you did it, from the very first day we… you know, to the very last day when you had to come and explain the facts of life to me."

"You don't have to apologize or explain anything Anita," I told her. "It's me who is very sorry for doing such a sleazy thing in the first place. I've grown up since then and I'll never do that to anyone again. I'm glad you met someone to love, who loves you."

She offered me a strange smile. "Yes," she said. "Jack and I seemed meant for each other. We're very happy." A pause. "But something bothers me."

"What's that?"

"You knew his name," she said. "On our last night together, you asked me about him. You asked me by name. How did you know Bill? How did you know?"

We continued to dance while I considered my actions. "I can't tell you Anita. It's too difficult to fathom anyway. Let's just say that you and Jack were fated to be married and that I almost screwed that up by interfering. But now things are right and I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you," she said.

I led her over to the edge of the dance floor and positioned my body so that nobody could see what we were doing. I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew a wrapped package. It was long and skinny, the box originally designed to hold a set of drumsticks. I handed it to her.

"What's this?" she asked, taking it.

"I was going to slip it into the wedding gifts," I said. "The card simply says it's from "fate". It's something I thought you might like to have. You can do with it what you wish of course but after talking to you, I think you deserve to get it personally."

She looked at me for a moment, her mouth open to ask another question. She closed it, the question unasked, and began to open the wrapping paper. She slid the box out and lifted the lid, peering at what I had for her. She stared for a long time, her eyes wide.

Inside the box was the coil wire I'd taken from her car on the day I lured Jack and her to the house. I don't know why I kept it. I should've just thrown it away, its job done. But I hadn't. I'd taken it out of my jacket pocket and put it in my closet until the day before.

"Is that…?" she asked slowly.

"A coil wire," I confirmed.

"Then you were the one…" she stared at me, eyes wide. "You?"

I shook my head. "Not me. Fate. And only fate Anita. Enjoy your marriage. I wish you all the best. I really do."

I walked away from her with a smile on my face, leaving her to quickly shove the coil wire back into the box and hide it. Shortly after that, Dad and I left. Anita moved away from her house after returning from her honeymoon. A rental company took over management of it. I never saw her again. But I'd achieved closure to that part of my life and that was what was important.

When we got home Mom was listening to the radio and working on some paperwork. Though she'd worked at home during her absence from her job during Tracy's recuperation, she was apparently still far behind. Rarely did we see her without a sheaf of papers and computer printouts before her. She asked us about the ceremony and seemed genuinely interested in our answers. I asked where Tracy was, since I had not seen her in her room, and was told that she was in the back yard, practicing her walking.

I went upstairs and changed out of my suit, replacing it with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I finished and emerged from my room, Mom and Dad were both missing, their bedroom door tightly shut. Like most kids I pained myself not to speculate too much on just what they were doing in there but like most adults I realized the effect that attending weddings tended to have. I was feeling such an effect myself.

I gave Nina a call, hoping we could get together for a bit but this idea was shot down the instant I got her on the phone. An aunt from Moses Lake was visiting for the day, had come specifically to see Nina and give her a late graduation gift. Nina was trapped at home for the foreseeable future. With a sigh I helped myself to one of my Dad's beers and wandered out to the back yard where Tracy was before I was forced to hear any noise drifting out of Mom and Dad's room.

Our back yard was typical for the period in which our house was built. Considerably larger than what tract houses come with today, it was landscaped with the bare essentials. There was a large lawn, an elm tree that was large enough to climb in if you wished (and that dumped an incredible amount of leaves to the ground each fall), some brick flowerbeds that my mother had rose bushes planted and growing wild in. There was a small cement patio with a cover over it. A barbecue and some simple patio furniture sat upon it. Dad had often talked about installing a swimming pool and a hot tub but had never become quite financially irresponsible enough to actually do it. A pity.

Tracy was wearing a college T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Her right leg was clamped into a set of metal braces that looked like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. A large, metal cane apparatus was attached to her right arm and helped support her weight as she ambled along. She was dripping sweat, her face running with it, her T-shirt stained with it, and her face was scrunched in a painful expression as she hobbled in what appeared to be a circular course around the old elm tree where Mike and I had once built a tree-fort thirty feet above the ground.

"How's it going Trace?" I asked her, grabbing a seat at the table and setting my beer down next to a glass of ice water that Tracy had put there. A fly had fallen into the water and was struggling weakly between two ice cubes.

"Hey," she hailed, changing course immediately and heading my way. "This hurts like hell. But not as much as when I first tried it. I'm getting better I think. But I'm ready for a break now. More than ready." She wiped sweat from her brow, moving her damp hair from her forehead. "How was the wedding?"

"Boring," I answered, "like all weddings. But I was glad to go. It's nice to see that Anita is happy. We also had a chance to have a little talk."

"Oh?" she said, hobbling over and sitting down, unclipping her cane and putting it aside. It slid down the length of the chair and clattered to the cement loudly. She gave it an irritated look and then chose to ignore it. She reached for her glass and spotted the fly. Her face wrinkled in disgust. "Gross," she declared.

"I'll get you some fresh water," I offered, standing up and picking up the glass.

"I'd rather have one of those beers," she told me.

"Have this one." I slid mine across the table to her. By the time I returned from the kitchen with a fresh one for myself, half of it was already empty. By the time I finished telling her about the wedding and my conversation with Anita, it was completely empty.

She burped in an unladylike way. "So you actually gave her back the coil wire you took?" she asked me wonderingly. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't even know why I kept the thing in the first place. Some impulse."

"Impulse huh?" she smiled cynically. "I think you just like to be dramatic."

I didn't dispute that this might be the reason. We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the butterflies attacking Mom's roses.

"So will you be ready to go back to school in September?" I enquired.

"I'm going whether I'm ready or not," she said firmly, with determination. "I need to get back on track if I'm going to get my undergraduate degree in three years."

I nodded. "That's what Nina's intending to do too. I'm gonna give it a shot, after all, most of the general Ed classes should be pretty easy, but I'll also be working. If it's too much, I'll drop back on the pace a little."

"Not me," Tracy said. "Full steam ahead for me. I plan to take the BAR exam in 1989, 1990 at the latest."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't worry. Corporate America will still be there whenever you finish."

She looked at me for a moment, her face serious. She picked up her beer bottle as if to take a drink and then saw it was empty. She set it back down. I was about to go get her another when she said, "I'm going to change my focus off of business and corporate law."

"To what?"

She sighed. "I've had a lot of time to think while I've been recuperating from this. More time than I've ever wanted. What the hell else is there to do? I've been thinking about fate and consequences and free will and drunk cab drivers." She shook her head angrily. "And it's the drunk cab driver that keeps coming back to me. He was out there driving a goddam cab after two DUIs. He was licensed both by the State of Nevada and the State of California to do that. For what he did to me he's getting ninety days in jail. Ninety fucking days Bill! What kind of shit is that?"

"It's just life, fate, the American way?" I answered. "Whatever you want to call it. I'm just glad you lived through it, that you're still here to bitch about the injustice of it."

"Fuck that," she said. "Fuck fate and fuck everything. That asshole should NOT have been driving anything, especially not a taxi. Our system allowed this to happen and it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"Yes," I agreed, "it is."

"So I'm going to focus on criminal law," she said. "I want to try and put some of these assholes in jail. I want to do everything I can to try to stop things like this, or worse things, things like what was SUPPOSED to be, from happening time and time again. Not just drunk driving, although that will have special attention from me, but every other crime that's under-treated by the system, that's allowed to perpetuate itself because of apathy."

I felt a chill going up my spine as she spoke. She was talking about becoming a victim's rights advocate. Did she realize this? There were ramifications here, serious ones. I took a long drink of my beer. "That's uh…, very uh…, noble Trace," I managed to say.

"I've had a life-changing experience," she said softly. "I'm still alive when I should be dead, even after having the accident I was fated to have." She looked at me. "I can see that some of the thoughts I've been having about fate are occurring to you too."

She did realize the ramifications. No slouch was my sister. "Sometimes," I said, "this whole thing just scares the crap out of me. Before I came back I was pretty much an atheist. I didn't believe in anything. But now, I'm forced to concede that SOMETHING is at work behind the scenes here. I don't know if it's the Christian God, or Allah, or Buddha, or something that nobody has even conceived of before, but there is a definite power at work here."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. When I decided to go into criminal law and to fight for victims, when I actually DECIDED that, it was almost like I felt something click, like I felt some gears that had been out of alignment sliding back in. I imagine I'll be doing whatever it was that Mom and Dad were supposed to do but didn't, or won't be I should say. I feel like things are, if not exactly RIGHT, at least copacetic. The accident has happened and as a result of it someone is getting involved in victim's rights. The stress on the system is releived."

"So you should be reasonably safe?" I asked.

She chuckled a little. "I still won't be getting into any cars with drunk drivers if it's all the same to you, but yeah, I feel like I'm safe."

We watched the butterflies for a few minutes, me finishing off my beer.

"What about Mike?" I asked her. "He's on a completely different path, so am I for that matter. Anita is back where she should be, Nina is still going to be an emergency room doc, albeit a decidedly less bitchy one, so there's no great stress on the system in those cases. But what about Mike and I?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, like I told you before, I believe that fate is nodal, which means that the longer the insult to it has gone on, the more likely it is that it will be tolerated. I think the evidence we've seen so far seems to confirm that theory. From what you've told me, Mike is completely off of his former track. He doesn't even smoke grass anymore. Like you said, he's matured to the point that he's no longer capable of making the mistake that led to his former life. He's graduated from school, he's signed up for college classes, he has a job, he has a girlfriend. Fate has apparently accepted the new Mike and allowed for him. It probably would have done the same in my case eventually but I was a much stronger stress to the system and stumbled into the right set of circumstances. Fate seized the chance to correct things. The accident relieved the stress on the system as well as it could without actually killing me."

"And me?" I asked. "What about me? I must've stressed the shit out of the system. I'm not in the career I'm supposed to be in, I'm not marrying the person I'm supposed to, I'm not having the child I'm supposed to, and, if all goes well, I will be much wealthier than I'm supposed to be. How does all that fit in?"

She rubbed her ribcage a little, massaging away the tenderness that still plagued her from the accident. "You're a special case," she said.

"How so?"

"You've never had any inclinations at all to stray back onto your previous path, have you?"

"No," I said. "None."

"No strange urges to go to paramedic school, to major in history in college, to dump Nina and go find, what was her name?"

"Lisa," I answered. "And no, nothing like that."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I believe that you probably stressed the system so badly and so rapidly just by the mere fact that you came back to 1982 with your knowledge intact, that it was forced to simply accept your presence. In effect, it simply gave up on trying to divert you since it was basically hopeless. It could try to divert the other paths that you intersected, but not you. It wouldn't be possible for you to deliberately make all of the same twists and turns along your way, particularly when the consequences were unpleasant."

"That makes sense," I told her, marveling at her insight into this metaphysical subject. "It makes a lot of sense."

"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked, "that this might not be your first trip back to 1982 and beyond?"

"What?"

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she smiled. "You were fated to meet the old man on that day, the day before you came back. What was it you said to him when he asked what your greatest wish was?"

"To be fifteen again, knowing what I know now," I answered, not quite getting her.

"Suppose you hadn't answered that way," she suggested. "Suppose you'd simply answered, "to be fifteen again", leaving out the last part. That's a perfectly natural response to that question under those circumstances, wouldn't you say? In fact, adding the last part is a little bit strange if you think about it. So suppose you did just say, "fifteen again". Boom, you would've found yourself a teenager again with no idea of your former life, with no knowledge of your future mistakes or my impending death."

Another shiver went up my spine as I considered this. It was a frightening thing she was suggesting.

"You would have caused absolutely zero stress to the system," Tracy went on, "and you simply would have continued along as before; marrying Lisa, grieving for me, having Becky, getting divorced; until eventually you would have come to the convalescent home and the old man again with nothing changed. You would have responded the same way and been sent right back again, starting over. For all we know, you might've been doing the same seventeen year stretch of your life over and over again for the past ten thousand years."

Frightening became staggering as I envisioned my poor self endlessly living through the same events, some of them quite tragic, over and over again without memory of it each time. Was such a thing possible? Of course it was. At least as possible as Mr. Li sending me back in the first place.

"Wow," I said softly. "But why would this time have been different?"

"Maybe there are little things that fate can't control," she answered. "Maybe some part of you was aware of what was happening, some part buried deep in your subconscious and it caused that little add-on to slip out at the moment of truth. The cycle gets broken. You could also have wished for world peace or a million bucks or something like that. Thankfully for me, if that's what the case is, you didn't. You added, "knowing what I know now". That's what made everything possible. You get to move on past 1999 now."

"That's a truly bizarre and terrifying thought," I told her, trying to shake off the feelings that this discussion had given me. Leave it to Tracy to make you think that you might be ten or twenty thousand years old and had barely escaped from some eternal feedback look in the time-space continuum by the addition of five little words on the end of a sentence. "Well, if it's true and I'm free at last, at least I'll finally get to see how all the Y2K crap is going to come out."

She looked at me strangely. "Y2K?"

"It's not important," I said. "Just be sure to keep your computer system updated come the late nineties."

She seemed about to say something else but didn't. We watched the butterflies again.

"Where are Mom and Dad anyway?" she asked me. "Dad usually comes to check on me fifty or sixty times a day."

I gave a sour look. "They're uh…, in their bedroom."

"In their bedroom? Doing what?"

I gave her the look that one gives someone when they've asked an incredibly stupid question. "Well I don't know Tracy, they didn't clear their itinerary with me. But the door is closed."

A comical expression of disgust came across her face. "Oh my God, you mean…," she shook her head violently. "I'm not gonna think about this. I'm changing the subject. How's Nina?"

I grinned, amused by her discomfort. "Nina's fine except for being trapped at home by an aunt. As a matter of fact I wanted to talk to you about that very subject."

"Oh?"

"I bought her an engagement ring."

Tracy registered absolutely no surprise at this revelation. "Is it a nice one?" she asked.

"Reasonably," I assured her.

"When are you going to offer it to her?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I need a good, female perspective on this. You see, the first time I got married, you know, before, there was no proposal. We simply decided it made good financial sense."

"That's sad," my sister commented.

"Yeah," I replied, "it was. Lisa didn't get an engagement ring until about six months after we were married. She only wanted it because her wedding ring looked "lonesome" without one. So we went down to a jewelry shop together, bought one with our joint checking account, and had it soldered on. Not very romantic."

"No," Tracy agreed wholeheartedly.

"I want this to be different. I want it to be something she'll always remember, something she'll tell her friends, our kids, our grandkids about. Do you see?"

She was beaming. "Oh yes," she replied, "I know exactly what you're talking about. Let me think." She thought for a minute. "Well of course you simply have to drop the ring into a glass of champagne."

"A glass of champagne?" I asked, wondering if Tracy's perspective was the right one to tap after all. "Isn't that cliche?"

"No," she said firmly, "it's what we all want. Trust me."

"I'll give it some thought," I said doubtfully.

"But for the set-up for it," she said next, "consider this: A hot-air balloon ride."

That actually sounded a little more interesting. "Go on."

"They have champagne balloon rides outside Coeur d' Alene. You can book private flights where there's only the pilot. When you break out the champagne up at six thousand feet, you can make that your moment." She shivered a little as she considered it. "That would be the ultimate."

The balloon thing seemed like a good idea at first and I mulled it over for the rest of the day. I considered things like whether or not Nina was afraid of heights (I'd never bothered to ask her this), whether the presence of the balloon pilot would intrude upon the atmosphere of the occasion, and what would happen if I accidentally dropped the ring out of the balloon from six thousand feet over some farmer's back forty. I decided that more research was in order.

The next day Nina, Mike, Maggie, and myself went on another ski trip, this time to Coeur d' Alene Lake which, while smaller than Pend Oreille was considerably closer. I managed to get Maggie to myself for a little bit about halfway through the day, while Mike was dozing on a picnic blanket and Nina was off trying find a private place to pee. I posed my question to her as we waded in waist-deep water near the beached boat, drinking cans of beer.

"You're gonna ask her to marry you?" she squealed happily.

"Christ Maggie," I scolded, "you think maybe you could yell it a little louder? The people on the golf course across the lake didn't quite understand you."

"Sorry," she said, "but it's so exciting. Congratulations." She stepped forward and gave me a hug, allowing her wet, bikini-clad breasts to push into my bare chest. There was no overt sexuality behind it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't pleasurable.

"So what do you think?" I asked her once we'd broken apart. "What's the most romantic proposal scheme you can come up with?"

She smiled sexily. "Well, a traditionalist would suggest putting the ring in a glass of champagne."

"Again with the champagne," I muttered.

"But I'm not a traditionalist," she continued. "I think the best way would be to take her out to a nice dinner in a romantic restaurant. You know, a dressy place with wine and a snooty maitre 'd and all that. Order some expensive food, some expensive wine, set up the mood. But don't give her the ring there."

"Not there?"

"No," she shook her head, "that's just the set-up. After dinner, you find someplace to be alone. You know, ALONE?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Then you start kissing her. You kiss her lips, her cheeks, you nibble on her ears, you kiss your way down her shoulder and across her arm. Ideally she would have on a strapless dress for this occasion. If you could arrange that, so much the better."

"Of course."

"So, anyway, you continue down her arm, just kissing and making her generally hot." She gave me a knowing look, "I KNOW you know how to do that.

When you make it to her hand, her left hand, you surreptitiously remove the ring from your pocket or whatever and slip it into your mouth. You kiss her fingers and then take the ring finger and start sucking on it. Then, using only your mouth, you put the ring on her finger." She sighed as she thought about this. Uncomfortably, I could see that her nipples had hardened. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" I asked, "that gave me a hard-on just hearing you tell about it."

"So it's a good idea?"

"I'll consider it," I told her. "I'm not sure that's quite right for Nina, but I'll mull it over."

"You do that," she said. "Trust me on this. It'll be erotic beyond belief.

She'll remember it forever."

Just then Nina came tromping back out of the woods beside the lake. We hushed up our conversation and Maggie said, "I'm gonna go wake up Mike. After that conversation I'm gonna have to have someone go with me when I pee, if you know what I mean."

She headed out of the water, flashing Nina a pleasant grin. A minute later her and Mike had disappeared the way Nina had come. But that was okay. We found something to occupy ourselves with while they were gone.

The next day at work I brought the question up to Mindy. Since my days there were numbered, Mindy was pretty much letting me get away with whatever I wanted. She encouraged me to come in late (which I never did), to leave early (which I sometimes did) and to take long breaks. When I told her what my intentions were and asked her for advice on the matter, she took me aside and talked to me for more than thirty minutes on the subjects of women, romance, intrigue, mystery, and various other topics. She gave me no actual suggestions but listened carefully to those that I'd already received. After talking to her I was able to formulate a plan that incorporated elements of both Maggie's and Tracy's suggestions.

The next day I went to work on the plan. The first step was to talk to Nina. I gave her a call and asked her if maybe she was up for a nice dinner on the following Saturday night.

"A nice dinner?" she asked. "How nice? Would I have to dress up?"

"Yes," I told her. "That dress you wore to the play would be appropriate. So what do you say?"

"Where did you have in mind?" she wanted to know.

"You'll see it when you get there," I said cryptically. "So are you in?"

"I'm in."

When I hung up I began making phone calls, referring to a list I'd made after considerable research. I made the necessary arrangements, writing everything down so I wouldn't forget it. The final phone number was one that did not involve research. It was here where everything could fall apart. But it didn't. The recipient of this phone call was more than happy to help me out, especially after I told him what my intentions were.

I hung up the phone with a smile. Everything was in place. Well, almost everything. I went to see Dad.

"I need you to cash out some more stocks for me," I told him.

He nodded, taking a sip out of his coffee. "It'll be nice when you're finally eighteen and able to cash out your own damn stocks," he said good-naturedly. "How much?"

I told him.

"That much?" He asked, surprised.

I told him what it was for and he smiled.

"I'll do it today," he told me.

Saturday, September 3, 1984. A day that will live in infamy.

I woke up early, very early, six o'clock in the morning type of early and was unable to sleep any more. My date with Nina was still nearly nine hours away, the moment of truth considerably more than that, but I knew there would be no more sleep for me. I drug myself out of bed and went downstairs to watch some television. I knew the day was going to drag on like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

I was right of course. I spent much of it lounging around in my shorts, watching television, picking at my breakfast and my lunch. I talked with Tracy, with my Mom, with my Dad, all of whom were in on my intentions. They made comment after comment about my nervousness. I denied that I was nervous but knew that I was lying.

At about two-thirty, absurdly early, I began getting ready. I took a shower, washing myself thoroughly. I dressed myself in my best suit, fixing my tie so it was just right. And then I waited for it to be four o'clock, time to go pick up Nina.

I restrained myself from leaving the house early. It would have screwed up the schedule I'd carefully planned. Finally I made one last check of my possessions to make sure I had everything I needed. I had the ring, I had the roll of twenty dollar bills that was so thick it looked like a pimp's flash money. My family wished me good luck and I headed out the door, climbing into my faithful Datsun and heading off to Nina's house.

Jack and Mary met me at the door, inviting me in. Nina was nowhere to be seen.

"She's putting the finishing touches on," Mary told me, offering me a seat. The interrogation began.

"Kind of early for a simple fancy dinner," Nina's mom commented, handing me a glass of iced tea that I hadn't asked for.

"We'll probably be out for a while," I told her, sipping out of it.

"This date wouldn't have anything to do with that little present you showed Jack on the fishing trip now, would it?" Mary asked pointedly.

"Mary…" Jack started but was silenced by a sharp glance from her.

I licked my lips nervously, unable to think of an answer.

"Does it?" she persisted.

"Yes," I answered. "It does. It has everything to do with that. I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me tonight."

She stared hard at me for a moment and then her face softened a little. "Do you have something special planned? Something she'll remember?"

I looked down the hallway toward Nina's room, seeing that the door was still shut. I gave Mary a brief summary of what I had planned, leaving one part out of course. Mary listened to me carefully, her eyes boring into me.

"That's very romantic," she finally said, her face breaking into a smile. "Can I see the ring?"

Another quick glance and I pulled the ring, free of its box, from the inner pocket of my jacket. She stood and sat next to me on the couch, taking it from my hand. She appraised it for a moment, looking at the gold band, the diamond protruding. She nodded, handing it back to me. I returned it to its hiding place.

Mary continued to stare at me for a moment. "You know how I used to feel about you Bill," she said. "We won't rehash that. But I'm glad to find, after getting to know you, that I was wrong. As wrong as a person could be.

I wish you luck tonight and I'd like to be the first to tell you, welcome to our family." She leaned forward and gave me a hug. Surprised, I returned it.

"Of course you won't do anything stupid, like eloping, will you?" This was more a command than a question.

"No," I said quickly. "I promise."

"Good," she said, a tear coming down from her left eye. "Because I want Nina to have a big wedding with lots of guests. I want to help her plan it, I want to help her make out a guest list. You'll let me do that, won't you?" More tears were coming down now.

"I promise Mary," I told her, giving her another hug. "We'll get married in Spokane and we'll let you plan it. I promise."

"Thank you."

"Of course this whole discussion is meaningless if Nina tells me no," I put in.

Mary broke the embrace and looked at me in much the same way I'd looked at Tracy when she'd asked what Mom and Dad were doing in their room. "You don't really think that's a concern, do you?"

Mary had herself under control and Nina sensed nothing amiss when she emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later. She was not wearing the dress she'd worn to the play but an entirely new one, a dark blue and white one. It was not strapless, as Maggie had suggested it be, but that was not important. She looked ravishing in it.

"You look VERY nice," I told her, standing up and giving her a hug and kiss.

I took a quick look at her left ring finger, which was bare at that moment but would hopefully be adorned with my ring later that evening. "New dress?"

"Mom helped me pick it out," she affirmed. "You look very nice too. So where are we going?" The anticipation was killing her.

"You'll see," I said. "I think you'll like it."

We said our good-byes to the elder Blackmores. Mary, I could tell, was stifling tears as we left. Nina noticed this too and asked her mother what was wrong.

"Nothing dear," she said. "It just pains me sometimes to see how grown-up you've become. When you wear a fancy dress like that it hits me hard."

I held the car door open for her and then stepped around to my side, strapping in and firing up the little four-cylinder engine. I pulled away from the curb and headed for the freeway.

"Mom is so weird sometimes," Nina commented.

We made idle chitchat until I hit the freeway onramp. I'm sure that Nina was expecting me to head for downtown. I didn't, instead taking the opposite direction. She looked at me suspiciously.

"Bill, where are you going?" she asked. "Why are you being so mysterious?"

"I'm a mysterious person," I told her, refusing to say further.

It took us about ten minutes to get to our first destination. By the time I pulled in the front gate it was apparent to Nina where we were going.

"Why are we at the airport?" she wanted to know. "What's going on? Bill, tell me!"

"Well," I said, pulling into the parking lot of the private airfield and stopping. "I wanted to take you someplace REALLY nice. Nicer than we have in Spokane. In order to avoid a long drive, I enlisted the services of a family friend."

"We're getting on an airplane?" she asked.

"For a bit," I allowed. "He's the same guy that flew me and your Dad to Seattle. You're not afraid to fly, are you?"

"I've never done it before," she said. "Where are we flying to?"

"Seattle," I said, "All the nice places are there. I have reservations for us at what is reputed to be the nicest restaurant in the entire state of Washington. I will get you there, wine and dine you, and have you safely back in your own bed tonight."

"We're going to Seattle?" she said in disbelief. "What's the occasion?"

"Just because I love you Babe," I told her, calling her by that term of endearment for the first time. "Just because I love you."

Ron had of course been the unpredictable part of my plan. Would he volunteer to fly us there and back? Would he be free to do so? The last thing I wanted to do was impose upon a family friendship and make someone do something they didn't want to. But to my delight, he'd jumped upon the suggestion, especially when I'd told him my intentions. He'd offered to stand by at the airport until the next morning if that was required. I'd gratefully accepted and told him that a few hours should be all that was required. We'd talked over his portion of the plan and, once briefed in, he'd proved to be a godsend. His experience as a pilot had allowed me to time everything down to the minute. He also had some connections in Seattle that helped save me some money for phase two. When Nina and I walked across the tarmac, past rows of Cessna's and Pipers and the occasional Lear, we found him waiting beside the plane, its engine on, its propeller turning, its pre-flight check already completed, the flight plan already filed.

Introductions were made and Ron told Nina how lovely she looked and how much he'd enjoyed her father's company. He soothed her nervousness about the small plane, speaking loudly over the noise of the engine. He offered her the co-pilot's seat and helped her inside after I'd been stowed in the back.

Less than five minutes after my car had pulled into the parking lot we were taxing across the field. Less than five minutes after that, Ron, ignoring me completely, asked Nina, "you ready?"

"I think so," she answered nervously.

"Then push that throttle all the way to the front. Do it slowly so we don't stall the engine."

Nina reached out with a hand that was trembling slightly and grasped the throttle lever. She pushed it forward as instructed and the engine wound up to full. The plane began to move down the runway, moving faster and faster.

When it got to take-off speed Ron pulled smoothly back on the stick and we rose into the air, an audible bump sounding as the wheels broke contact with the ground.

We soared into the bright blue sky, Ron turning the plane until we were heading West. He took us up to our assigned altitude of seven thousand, three hundred feet, leveling us off and engaging the autopilot. By the time he did this Nina had lost her fear and was staring at the ground with awe, picking out sights that she recognized.

"There's the falls Bill," she told me, pointing. "And there's the river stretching off. I never knew it was that crooked before."

Ron kept silent as we plowed westward at a hundred and ten knots. Nina kept looking at the ground. I sat back and thought about all the things that could go wrong with this day and all the things that could go right.

Nina turned to me and said, "How are we getting from the airport to the restaurant?"

"You'll see," I told her.

About halfway to Seattle, just as the Cascades were starting to become visible in the distance, Ron checked his watch and concluded that we were a little ahead of schedule. He cited a tailwind as the reason.

"Care for a little flying lesson Nina?" he asked, winking.

"Why the hell not?" she replied with determination.

Now it was my turn to be terrified as Nina took the stick and, with Ron's instruction, began subjecting us to a series of turns and dives in the clear air. He'd done this with me before, back when I was about fourteen or so, and I knew it was basically harmless. But still… My stomach knotted as we moved up and down, left and right, as the horizon bobbed like it had on the fishing boat while Nina tried to get the feel of the rudder and the stick. She was almost as terrified as I was but definitely loving every minute of it. Her face showed nearly the same ecstasy as it had when I'd eaten her to orgasm. At one point she over-corrected for a bank, giving way too much left aileron. I thought I was about to die a horrible death for a few moments as I found myself looking out my side window directly at the ground. Nina, almost panicked, jerked her hands from the stick and screamed. But Ron, calm and cool, without the slightest bit of concern, simply chuckled and took the controls. Within four seconds he had us straight and level once more.

"Well that was exciting, wasn't it?" he asked us.

Both of us were trembling too badly to speak.

He played with the autopilot for a moment and then we were back on course. "Time's a wastin'," he said. "We'd better end our lessons for now and get ourselves to Seattle."

Once again the air over the Cascades bumped us around violently. It was like driving a car with old shocks across a four-wheel drive trail at sixty miles an hour. Neither Nina nor I got much more than a mild adrenaline rush from it. Nina's time at the stick had prepared us for anything and the serene expression on Ron's face soothed our nerves.

We circled in and landed with a thump at a small airport near downtown. Ron taxied the plane to the tarmac and parked it in a slot that had been assigned to him over the radio. No sooner had the engine been shut down and the doors opened up when phase two happened right on schedule. A sleek, white limousine came gliding in from the parking area. It circled around and stopped right next to the plane.

"Bill," Nina asked, her eyes shining. "Is that for us?"

"Yes," I affirmed. "They have nice taxis in Seattle, don't they?"

"I've never ridden in a limo before," she told me as the driver, an older man dressed in a white uniform, got out and stood by the back doors. "Bill, you can't afford this."

"Not as a regular means of transportation I can't," I allowed. "But for this one day, don't worry. I can cover it. Don't fret about money today, okay?"

She hugged me quickly. "This is like a dream-date."

"Is it?" I asked, giving her a quick kiss. "Why don't you go hop inside? I'll be there in a minute."

She did so. The limo driver smiled, introduced himself to her, and opened the door. While she got in and began gawking at the interior, I turned to Ron and thanked him. I gave him some money for the landing fee and for fuel. He didn't want to take it from me but I finally won the battle of insistence.

"What are you going to do while we're gone?" I asked him.

He shrugged, "Probably hang out in the pilot's lounge. Watch some TV, read some magazines, talk to other pilots. Don't worry about me. You just go out and have yourself a good time. I'll be here when you get back, no matter what time that is."

"Thanks Ron," I told him. "I owe you two now."

The driver introduced himself as Paul. He shook my hand and then politely brought up the subject of the bill. He ordinarily wouldn't have done that I was sure, but he was probably a little concerned about my age. Understandable I guess. I peeled off the required amount from my pimp's wad and handed it across to him. He at least had the class not to count it in front of me, simply pocketing it instead.

"I understand we're going to Fullers at the Sheraton, is that correct sir?" he asked me.

"That's correct," I answered.

"And that I'm to pick you up at ten o'clock out front?"

"Again, correct."

"Very good Sir," he said, opening the door for me.

"Hey, uh, Paul," I asked, "what is it that you do while you're waiting for ten o'clock to roll around?"

He looked at me strangely. I wondered if anyone had ever asked him that before. "Well usually I just go find something to amuse myself," he told me. "Sometimes I go home if I'm nearby. I go get gas, I go take care of errands. I'm on hire for the customer so I can't assign myself to another customer, although if the boss could figure out the timing you could bet he'd give it a shot."

"So basically you have nothing to do?"

"Right."

I peeled off two more twenties from my wad and handed it to him. He looked surprised although he didn't hesitate to take the offering and make it disappear.

"When you drop us off at Fullers," I told him, "come back here and pick up Ron there." I pointed to Ron, who was fiddling with something inside the cockpit of the plane. "Take him anywhere he wants to go and then bring him back here when he wants to come back."

"Of course sir," the driver nodded.

I sat down in the back of the car, next to Nina and Paul closed the door on us. The inside of the limo was nice, with plush seats, a small mini-bar complete with ice bucket, a stereo system, and a bank of controls that moved the seats back and forth and the sunroof and windows up and down. Nina was playing with these controls like a little kid, her eyes shining with excitement.

"I can't believe all this," she told me, giving me another hug. "Sometimes you are just too much."

"I hope not," I mumbled, pulling two glasses from the bar. "Would you care for a drink?"

"I'd love one," she answered. Meanwhile Paul had buckled himself in and was putting the car in gear. We pulled away from the tarmac and started heading for the street.

"What would you like?" I asked.

She smiled, "Surprise me."

I made us a couple of seven and sevens and we sipped from them as we drove along the major arteries and into downtown Seattle. We cruised between large high-rises, catching occasional glimpses of the blue-gray water of Puget Sound. We saw the distinctive outline of the Space Needle poking up into the sky far to our north. We watched the occupants of cars around us and pedestrians on the downtown streets trying to stare into the tinted back windows of the limo, to spot who we were. We held hands and leaned against each other, feeling closeness, feeling love. My doubts about the outcome of the evening began to drift away.

The Seattle Sheraton, where Fullers is located, is a thirty-five story building about six blocks from the waterfront, right in the heart of downtown. Our limo received no notice as Paul drove it into the turnaround near the front lobby entrance. There were several other limos already there. He hopped out and rushed around to open our door for us. We stepped out, leaving our glasses behind and thanked him. He nodded politely and told us he would see us at ten.

"Ten?" Nina asked, looking at me knowingly. "Why ten? How long does it take to have dinner in this joint?"

"Not that long," I answered. We began walking towards the lobby doors.

"So what else have you got planned?"

"You'll see," I told her.

The lobby alone was enough to make Nina and I, both middle-class products, feel slightly out of our element. It was spacious and seemed to ooze class.

Well-dressed men and women walked to and fro amid well-dressed hotel staff. We moved quickly to the elevators.

We rode up to the thirty-fifth floor and stepped out, following the signs to Fullers. The maitre d' was almost a stereotype of what you see in bad movies. He had it all, the balding head, the snooty French accent, the little mustache. I found myself wondering if it was all an act because that was what people expected to see when coming to such a place. Maybe he went home each night and ripped off the little mustache and then talked to his wife in a Texas accent or something. He eyed the two of doubtfully as we approached his little table.

"May I help you?" he asked, not terribly politely.

"Yes you may," I told him. "We have reservations for two for Stevens at seven o'clock."

"Well let's check into that," he told me, giving a condescending smile. He perused his book for a moment. "Oh yes, Mr. Stevens." He tapped it with his pencil. Without even bothering to check his seating chart he said, "unfortunately your table is not quite ready yet. It may be a few minutes. Perhaps you'd like to wait in the bar?"

I smiled, a very adult smile, staring into his face. I reached into my jacket and withdrew two twenties which I slid into his palm. "I would prefer to be seated immediately," I told him, "at a table with a view."

He glanced down at what I'd pressed into his palm and his expression changed instantly to one of respect. "Of course Mr. Stevens," he told me, picking up two menus. "If you and your guest would follow me please?"

It was amazing what a forty-dollar bribe got you. We were placed at a secluded table next to the large picture window. Puget Sound was plainly visible, as was the sinking sun. Sailboats and motor boats, and a large freighter could be seen moving across the surface of the water. The table was covered with a tasteful white cloth. Two candles burned near the center next to a complimentary plate of goose-liver pate and crackers. Our seats were held out for us and we sat down. We were assured that our waiter would be right with us.

"How did you know to give him money?" Nina asked me, trying a bit of the pate after putting her napkin in her lap.

"Universal language," I told her. "If I wouldn't have given him something we would have sat in the bar until about eight or eight-thirty before being sent to a seat near the kitchen door and receiving horrible service from the waiter all night. By now, the maitre d' is telling the waiter that I know the rules. I imagine the service will be pretty good."

Nina shook her head in amazement. "Why can't everyone just do their jobs like they're supposed to, without worrying about the money?"

"What are you?" I said lightly. "Some kind of communist? Everyone do their jobs without worrying about money? That's un-American."

As predicted, the waiter arrived promptly and was so polite it was almost sickening. He read off the house specialties to us and named the market price for such things as the lobster or Alaskan king crab. He asked us if there was anything he could get for us while we perused the menu.

"Yes," I told him, nodding. "We'd like a bottle of Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon."

He looked at me for a moment, giving a little cough. "Begging your pardon sir," he said quietly, "but I'm sure you're aware that the legal drinking age in Washington is twenty-one. You don't exactly look that old."

I smiled, reaching into my wad and pulling out a twenty. "I assure you I'm of age," I explained, slipping him the twenty. "Here's my identification."

He took a look at the denomination for a moment and then nodded, slipping it into his pocket. "Thank you sir, everything appears to be in order."

When he left Nina asked me, "just how many of those twenties do you have anyway?"

"Enough," I answered.

The dinner was excellent. I decided to go for broke and had the live Maine lobster. Nina, after several reassurances not to worry about the price, went with that also. We sipped our Cabernet throughout, putting a respectable dent in the bottle. We talked between bites about anything and everything; the ease of conversation had always been the strong point between Nina and I. Just after the dinner dishes were removed I stood up and excused myself, telling Nina I needed to use the facilities.

It took me less than a minute to find our waiter. He had just carried someone's MasterCard to the cashier and was waiting for it to go through.

"Excuse me," I said to him.

He looked up at me questioningly. "Is everything all right sir?"

"Perfect," I assured him. "But I was wondering if you could do me a little favor?"

We talked for a moment and I handed him Nina's engagement ring along with another twenty-dollar bill. He agreed to do as I asked.

I returned to the table where Nina was watching the sunglow against the offshore clouds. She commented on how pretty it was.

"Yes," I told her, reaching across and taking her hand, "it's nice this time of year here. Of course we're probably going to hate it during the winter, spring, and fall."

"Maybe," she said, going back to her examination of the water and the sky.

The waiter came a moment later carrying a dark green bottle and two glasses.

He set the glasses down before us and then showed me the bottle he had. It was Dom Perignon and it would add sixty-eight dollars to the bill. I nodded.

"What's this?" Nina asked as the waiter made a show of putting the bottle down and popping open the cork.

"I thought a little champagne would be nice," I explained.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" she asked brightly, letting me know that she wasn't adverse to that if that was my intention.

"Something like that," I nodded.

He poured a dab of the champagne in my glass and then stood by, waiting for me to complete the ritual of tasting it. Where did this ritual start anyway? Had anyone ever tasted the wine or whatever and then said, "this swill tastes like shit, take it away"? I was sure that somewhere, someone had done that. I picked up the glass, actually quite curious as to how Dom Perignon would taste since I'd never had it before. To my disappointment it tasted only slightly better than Brut, which sold for two bucks a bottle. Oh well, the champagne wasn't there to taste good. I nodded my approval of it and he picked up my glass to pour it full.

After setting my glass of bubbling champagne down he picked up Nina's. He had obviously done such a thing before. He was so smooth about it that even I didn't see him slip the ring into the glass before he poured. For a moment I actually thought he was ripping me off, that he'd look puzzled when I asked him where the ring was. Ring? What ring? You didn't give me a ring. But when he set the glass down before her, there it was, sitting on the bottom, little bubbles clinging to the gold band and the diamond. Nina didn't notice it.

The waiter put the bottle into an ice bucket and then beat a hasty retreat, giving me a "good luck" look as he went. Nina grabbed her glass, holding it by the stem, her thumb and forefinger hiding the ring from her view. Perfect.

"Shouldn't we toast?" she asked me, gazing at my face. "That's what you're supposed to do with this, right?"

"By all means," I said, picking up my own glass. I gazed back at her, knowing the moment of truth had come, knowing it was too late to back out. "To a long life together," I said, "filled with love and understanding."

She smiled. "That's sweet Bill," she said. We clinked our glasses.

She put hers to her lips preparing to sip out of it. Her eyes widened as she got a look at what was sitting on the bottom of the glass. She stopped, just staring, the glass hovering against her face.

"Bill," she said slowly, without moving, "there's a ring in my glass."

"What do you know about that?" I said softly. "It kind of looks like an engagement ring, doesn't it?"

She finally lowered the glass, her face suddenly nervous, her eyes searching mine. "Did…, did you put that in there?"

"Not personally," I told her. "But I arranged for it." I leaned forward. "Will you marry me Nina?"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked from my face to the ring to my face again. She started to say something and then stopped. Her hands began to tremble, making the champagne bubble more, obscuring the ring. The tension in the air was very thick, at least from my vantagepoint. I momentarily lost track of time. How long did she sit there, not speaking, not answering, leaving me hanging? How long? A minute? Thirty seconds? An hour? Would she say yes? Would she throw the glass of liquid at my face and tell me I was some kind of madman if I thought she would marry me? Would she say she'd love to but that we were too young?

"Nina?" I finally spoke, breaking the silence. Had she even heard my question?

"You're asking me to marry you?" she asked breathlessly. "You're really asking me that? This ring is really for me?"

"Yes Nina," I nodded, "to everything. I want you to be my wife. I've asked your father and he's given me both permission and blessing. But all of that's meaningless without you. So now I'm asking you formally. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"

"You asked my father?" she asked.

Christ, she was killing me with anticipation. Couldn't we talk about her father after she said yes or no? "Yes Nina," I told her. "When we went fishing. I also talked to your mother tonight."

"Mom and Dad know where we went, what you were going to do?"

"They do," I nodded. "So does Ron for that matter." I took a deep breath, "now I don't want to rush you or anything and if you're not sure right now just tell me, but…"

"Oh God Bill," she said, her face breaking out into a huge, happy smile, "what do you mean "if I'm not sure right now"? Of course I'm sure, of course I'll marry you. Do you know how many times I've fantasized about this day? How many times I've lain awake wondering if you were ever going to ask? How you would ask if you did?"

"So that's a yes then?" I said, pretty sure it was, but wanting to confirm it.

"Of course it's a yes!" she said, leaning forward and kissing my lips, my nose, my cheek. Tears were now running from her eyes. "Do you have any idea of how happy you've just made me?"

A great sense of relief flooded me at her words, at her actions. At the tables around us I could see that some of the other diners had gleamed what was going on and most were giving us looks of happy approval. "About as happy as you've made me." I told her.

We broke apart and she looked in her glass again, eyeing the ring. "How do I get this thing out of there?" she wanted to know.

"The only way to do it without violating etiquette is to drink the champagne down and then reach in."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, the twinkle in her eye becoming mischievous.

"Yeah."

With a smile she put the glass to her lips and upended it. The champagne poured into her mouth and was swallowed in less than two seconds. Her eyes began to water profusely from the effects of the carbonation but she reached in and pulled out the ring. She held it triumphantly before her.

"Would you like to put it on me?" she asked, handing it across.

I took it and she offered me her left hand. I slid the damp ring onto her third finger, seating it in place. The fit wasn't perfect, it would have to be sized when we got back to Spokane, but it looked at home there.

We drank the rest of the bottle of champagne, sipping at it while we discussed what we'd just agreed to do. Now that the question was out and answered favorably I became almost giddy, feeling elation like I'd never felt before. She was going to marry me! Nina too was blushing and giggly. Part of that was the wine and the champagne we'd consumed, but a good part of it was simple happiness and excitement I'm sure.

The waiter came by once to offer coffee or desert. We declined. He also offered his congratulations to us as he spied the ring on Nina's finger.

"I promised your mom that we wouldn't elope," I told her. "She wants to plan your wedding, help you with the guest list, all that crap. She's very adamant about it." And of course I knew why. My first talk with Jack Blackmore had made that clear.

"But when?" she wanted to know. "When can we do it?" She giggled a little, "get married that is."

"I'm not much for long engagements," I told her. "If it was up to me, we'd be man and wife before we climbed back in that airplane with Ron. But under the circumstances, we're kinda stuck by the fact that we're going off to college next month. Also, I'm still seventeen until February. That creates additional paperwork."

She pouted a little. "So when?" she asked.

"Next June," I told her. "Near the end of the month. That lets us be home from college for the summer long enough to get back into the swing of things, go to all the rehearsals, and all of that. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like a plan."

I paid the bill and left a generous tip for the waiter. We walked arm and arm back to the elevator and, when it arrived, found ourselves alone in it. As it began plunging downward we shared a kiss, a very deep kiss that involved a brief dance of tongues. When our lips parted she looked into my eyes.

"You know what would make this night absolutely perfect?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"Making love," she answered.

I took a glance at my watch, seeing that it was five minutes after eight. Right on schedule. "Funny you should mention that," I told her.

"Oh?" Definite interest showed upon her face. "Have you made other arrangements?"

"It just so happens," I told her, "that I have a reservation for a suite in this very hotel. All I have to do is check in at the front desk, pay my money, collect my key. I hear the rooms are VERY nice."

Another look of astonishment. "You reserved a room, HERE? At this place?"

"I hope you don't think that too forward of me," I said.

"But we have to be out of here at ten," she said. "You want to pay God knows how much for a room that you're only going to use for two hours? Bill, that's insane!"

"Isn't it? So what do you say? Care to join me for a bit in the executive suite?"

The elevator ground to a halt at the fifteenth floor. The doors slid open and a middle-aged couple dressed for a night on the town stepped in. We moved back to give them room. They eyed us carefully for a moment, as if trying to decide if we were dangerous, and then turned their backs to us. The doors slid shut and we began descending once again.

Nina and I looked at each other. She whispered, "Go get the key."

We rode to the lobby and less than ten minutes later we were riding back up to the thirtieth floor, key in hand, one hundred and seventy-five dollars lighter. I considered it money well spent.

Even though I'd lived in two lives (at least) and had been around a combined, remembered total of nearly thirty-five years, I was still impressed by the executive suite. As I said before, I was strictly a product of middle-class upbringing. My idea of a nice hotel room had always been a single bed in a small room with something of a view. I considered it classy if the bedspread actually matched the carpet.

The sheer amount of square footage in the room was staggering. There was a sitting room with plush furniture and a bar. There was the bedroom that was nearly four times the size of mine at home and featured a king-sized bed with frilly covers and a twenty-seven inch TV. The remote control was not even bolted to the nightstand. The bathroom had a huge shower, a separate bath, and a sunken Jacuzzi big enough to hold six people. The water was roiling and steaming in it and a small sign assured us that the water was fresh for our visit. The window did not face Puget Sound unfortunately but did look out to the north, giving an impressive view of the Seattle high-rises and the Space Needle in the distance. A complimentary bottle of White Zinfandel sat in a bucket of ice.

"Wow," Nina muttered, taking in all of the opulence, wandering from here to there, looking at this and that. She stared for the longest time out the window.

"You like it?" I asked, coming up behind her and encircling her waist with my arms. She leaned back into me.

"This has been the most incredible night of my life Bill," she told me. "I'll remember it forever."

"That was the plan," I said, squeezing her to me.

She craned her face upward, resting the back of her head on my shoulder. Her left hand, the one with her new ring on it, reached up to caress my face. "Give me some more memories," she told me.

Our lips came together in a kiss; a hot, passionate exchange of tongues. She squirmed her body around so that she was facing me, her breasts pushing into me, her arms around my neck. By the time it broke I was erect, knowing that nothing could stop us now, that this was finally the hour. No one knew where we were. For obvious reasons I had briefed no one in on this particular part of my plans for the evening. There would be no phones ringing to stop us. For the next ninety minutes we were in splendid solitude. Not an eternity, but at the same time, it was.

Nina reached up and pulled the knot out of my tie, loosening it. She pulled it off my neck and tried to let it drop to the floor. We both laughed as it hung stubbornly to my chest, suspended by the tie tack. I disconnected it and tossed the tie, tack and all, into the corner. I shrugged off my suit jacket and let it fall to the carpet.

Nina kicked off her high heels and then stepped back into my arms. "Undress me," she said. "Undress me and make love to me. Make me yours Bill."

I led her by the hand over to the bed and we stopped there, her facing it, me standing behind her. I slid my fingers over the material of her dress to her neck, touching the skin for an instant before grabbing the small zipper.

Slowly I slid it downward and the dress parted, showing me the skin of her back, the straps of her bra. I leaned forward and kissed the back of her shoulders while my hands pulled the dress off of her arms. Gravity did the rest, letting it fall to her feet. She stepped out of it and turned into me once more, her chest bare except for her bra, her silky white slip hanging to mid-thigh on her pantyhose covered legs.

I kissed her again, letting my hands touch the slip, to feel the soft material. I gently pulled on it and it came free, dropping, as the dress had, to her feet. Again she stepped out of it, this time kicking it away from us. My hands traveled across her back, across her butt, pausing to give a quick squeeze through the panty portion before continuing down to the back of her thighs. I stroked her through the nylon, pulling her tighter against me, inhaling her perfume as our tongues continued to dance.

I reached upward and found the clasp on her bra, undoing it, releasing her breasts from their confinement. I stepped back, breaking our kiss, my eyes devouring her as I pulled the bra free and tossed it to the floor. Her nipples were turgid, standing out like sentinels, begging for my mouth to kiss them, my hands to touch them. I didn't resist their call, I leaned forward and took one between my lips. Nina cooed as I sucked first one and then the other.

I let my fingertips slide into the elastic waist of her pantyhose, right against her hips. Slowly, I dropped to my knees before her, so her crotch was less than six inches from my face. The material of the panty portion was semi-transparent, allowing me to see the darkness of her pubic hair contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. I could see the dampness across her lips outlining their shape. I could smell the aroma of her juices mixing with the nylon, creating a powerful scent that made my mouth water, my penis pulsate.

"Take them off Bill," Nina panted from above me.

My fingers were still in the waistband and it was only a matter of applying downward tugs. Slowly the top of her pubic hair came into view, then her glistening lips, then the tops of her thighs. I leaned forward and slid my tongue between those lips, licking her while my hands continued the work of removing the pantyhose. She cried out softly, pushing her crotch into my face, her knees wobbling. Her hands dropped down to my head, partly for balance, partly to pull me harder into her.

When the pantyhose were completely off and she was naked, I pushed backwards on her, forcing her to sit on the edge of the bed. Her legs opened up, giving me better access to her slit, her legs went around my shoulders, her body lay back onto the bed.

I slid my hands up and down her thighs for a moment as I licked her lips and teased around her hardened clit. But this was not my main goal, just the warm-up. I pulled my hands free and, keeping my mouth on target, began to undo the buttons on my shirt. I had to tug it out of my pants in order to get the bottom ones but finally I was able to shrug the dress shirt off. I then tugged upward on my T-shirt, having to remove my face from Nina's slit in order to do so.

She looked up at me from her position on the bed, her eyes glazed with lust and a little fear. "I'm ready Bill," she said. "Very ready."

"Me too," I told her, standing up.

She watched me while I unbuckled my belt and unsnapped my pants. I kicked off my own dress shoes and then let the pants drop to the floor, leaving me standing only in a pair of socks and a tented pair of BVDs. Two quick kicks with my feet and the socks were gone.

"Come on," she panted, spreading her legs wider, opening herself to me.

I pushed my underwear down and off, letting my erection free. Nina looked at it and shivered a little as if she was fully realizing that it would soon be inside of her body, thrusting within her. I climbed onto the bed, positioning myself with my head near the pillows. Nina scooted up until she was next to me.

I took her in my arms so that we were both lying on our sides, facing each other. We kissed while our bare chests, our bare legs slid flesh to flesh. My erection was pushing into her upper thigh. My hands felt her nakedness, sliding up and down her body, over her butt, down her thighs, back up to her back and shoulders. Her hands did the same, paying particular attention to my ass, which she seemed rather fond of.

I rolled her onto her back and then slowly positioned myself atop her. Our faces were inches apart, her nipples barely grazing my chest, her inner thighs touching my outer thighs, my hard cock resting in her wet pubic hair.

Her eyes were locked onto mine, so close I could see the individual flecks that made up the color of them, that I could see the minute contraction and retraction of her dilated pupils. Her hand was suddenly grasping me, squeezing deliciously, pulling me towards the center of her.

"Do it Bill," she whispered, "put it in me. I want to feel it."

"It'll hurt a little," I said softly, kissing her eyelid.

"I know, but do it anyway."

I replaced her hand with my own and then gently put the head against the moist wetness of her velvet lips. She gasped a little just at that contact, her body twitching. I slid up and down through her slit, wetting the head and feeling the warmth of her. I slid the shaft through her groove, wetting it. Thanks to my tongue and her fevered excitement, she was quite saturated with wetness. Gently, ever so gently, I put the head against her opening.

"Yes," she moaned, pulling at my ass with her hands. "Oh yes."

I pushed forward slowly, feeling her tight lips spread apart, accepting the head and a small amount of the shaft before fetching up against her hymen. She jumped a little as I touched it. I paused for a second.

"C'mon!" she cried, nipping at my neck with her teeth, her hands pulling on my ass, her body trembling all over with excitement and fear, "do it Bill, do it!"

I pushed forward, firmly but slowly. At first I didn't think it was going to work. I felt my dick trying to bend, felt the first warning pangs of pain moving upward as receptors in my nether regions tried to warn me that I was about to break something. But finally I broke through with absurd ease.

There was no noise, no ripping sound, no flurry of trumpets, only a sensation of something giving way. Nina let out a soft cry of pain, wincing, and suddenly, instead of only having the head in, I was inside of her well past half-shaft. I could feel her tightness around me, gripping me. I stopped, not wanting to hurt her anymore.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She was panting, her face flushed and sweaty. She nodded rapidly. "It wasn't that bad," she said. "Just a little burning. It's gone now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she nodded, kissing me. "You're inside of me now Bill, you're fucking me. You're finally fucking me after all this time."

"Yeah," I said, feeling her tight walls gripping at me again.

"So finish the job," she said, pulling at my ass once more. "I want to feel you come in me. I want to feel it."

I began to move in her, slowly at first as I concentrated on just getting myself all the way in. It took quite a few strokes before her tight, virginal hole adjusted to having something inside of it. I stroked in and out, pushing further with each thrust until her wetness coated me, easing the passage and at last I was able to push forward until our pubic hairs met.

"That feels sooo good," Nina sighed, pulling me against her. "Faster now."

I let my hips rise and fall, pistoning my cock in and out of her, sliding along on the lubrication of her juices, feeling her grip at me, feeling her hips begin to rise slowly to meet each of my thrusts. We kissed each other as we moved, switching from mouths to necks to ears. I dipped down and took one of her nipples between my lips for an instant.

"Yess!" she cried, "this feels so good. Keep fucking me."

"Yeah!" I agreed, picking up the pace, hearing the wet squish of our union, smelling the thick odor of our combined juices rising into the air around us. Her legs wrapped around my butt, her calves sliding up and down. Her fingernails scratched and dug at my back. Sweat formed on my face and dripped down on to hers. It formed on our bodies, giving a sensual film of slipperiness between us.

Never had an act of sexuality seemed so perfect, so right to me. This was more than just physical pleasure, much more. This was an emotional giving, a sharing of mind and soul. It was as if we were two halves that had wandered aimlessly all of our lives, not realizing we weren't complete until we'd found each other and joined. There was a rightness to this act that I'd never felt before, a feeling that transcended anything else, that made even the best sex I'd ever had seem like nothing more than a quick jerk-off in a bathroom, a quick release of a biological build-up. I felt every inch of her body against mine, every nerve ending aware and I felt her soul, her essence against mine. It was at that moment, in that hotel room, not at our wedding ceremony nearly ten months later, that Nina and I became man and wife. We wedded each other in spirit, in mind, if not in legality, as I thrust within her and she thrust back at me, as I filled her body and she accepted me.

Like during the terrifying moments after I'd asked her to marry me but before she'd answered, time seemed to slow, to stop. I didn't have any idea how long our act of love continued, how long I slid in and out of her tightness, how long we sweated and groaned, joined at the crotch. At one point she moaned and bucked uncontrollably beneath me, her legs tightening, her fingers scratching, her voice becoming the high-pitched whine I was starting to be familiar with. I continued to buck against her until her orgasm passed, her body relaxed and then I felt my own impending release coming on strong.

"Nina…" I groaned against her sweaty neck, her damp hair.

"Yesss!" she encouraged, thrusting back harder against me. She already knew the signs to look for. "Come for me Bill, come IN me."

It hit me like a freight train, starting in my pubic area and exploding outward like seismic waves from an epicenter. Pure pleasure assaulted me, had its way with me. My hips began to pound more forcefully, with less control. My mouth opened, my head arched backward. And suddenly I was pouring myself into her, feeling spurt after spurt of my hot seed blasting from my body and into hers. It went on and on, much longer than what I considered to be normal. But at last I dropped atop her, spent, exhausted, feeling the cooling wetness our juices, feeling the sharp cold of excited sweat beginning to dry on my flesh.

We kissed softly, just touching tongues, playful kisses. We held each other tightly, my softening cock still nestled in her warmth. Nina looked at me.

"I never knew it could be like that," she said.

"Me either," I answered. "Me either."

I would have expected her to express disbelief with this statement since she knew of my past history. I suppose it sounds phony as hell, what someone would say in the moment after bagging a virgin but before he slipped out the door, never to be seen again. But it wasn't phony. It was the truth and I meant it with all my heart. Nina didn't question it. She knew I spoke the truth, she knew it. She simply pulled me tight to her and kissed me.

"I love you so much Bill," she said, tears from her eyes wetting my face.

"I know Nina," I said, tears of happiness coming from my own eyes. "And I love you."

And so it was Ron who became the first of our Spokane friends or relatives to find out officially that Nina and I were engaged. She proudly displayed the engagement ring for him as we climbed into the plane for the return trip. He offered congratulations to us both, giving us warm friendly hugs. I was glad that we'd had time to utilize the large Jacuzzi in the hotel room before we left in order to wash the smell of our act of love from our bodies (of course the Jacuzzi itself led to another act of love that was shorter in duration but no less passionate). Though Ron probably suspected what we'd done, after all, he had to know it didn't take three and a half hours to simply eat dinner and propose, I didn't want him to confirm any theories he had by catching a whiff of us in the cramped space of the plane.

It was just after ten-thirty when we lifted off, heading east for Spokane. Nina sat in the back and fell quickly asleep, her soft snores reaching my ears even before we leveled off. Ron and I sat in silence, him monitoring his gauges and instruments, me looking out the side window, seeing the lights of Seattle slipping behind us. We would touch down a little after midnight, be home a little before one. I didn't think that our houses would be darkened when we got there. In fact, I imagined that both the Blackmores and the Stevens were anxiously awaiting the official word on the night's activity.

I was lost in my own thoughts as we flew, thinking of all the things that I'd done since my return from 1999. Had I made the most of my gift? Maybe, maybe not. Had I abused my gift? Definitely, but that was human nature I supposed. Had I chosen my gift wisely when it was offered to me?

I thought long and hard on that one, considering everything that I might have asked for at the moment that Mr. Li enquired as to what my greatest wish was. Had I chosen wisely? Was there anything else I could have said that would have made things easier?

I looked back at my sleeping fiance, at her lovely face, at her gentle form. I had found love because of what I'd said. I thought of Tracy, of my sister still being alive more than a year after she'd been fated to die. Tracy was alive because of what I'd said. I thought of Mike, my loser best friend. Mike was now on a career path, had a girlfriend, had every indicator of developing a normal, happy, productive life. Mike was matured and respectable because of what I'd said.

Sure, I hadn't been able to save the marines in Beirut. I probably wouldn't be able to stop the Persian Gulf War or the Challenger disaster or the Oklahoma City bombing. But what of that? Those things would happen anyway, with or without my interference.

My former life had been filled with stress, irresponsibility, uncertainty, grief, and occasional despair. I would probably not escape all of these things in my new life but I could not believe that they would be as deep seated, as constant. Mr. Li had given me a chance to correct my past mistakes, to put things into a new order, to change fate on a small scale.

Had I chosen wisely?

I'd been feeling stressed that day, the day I encountered him. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect I had to conclude that it was perhaps the wisest thing I'd ever said.

Epilogue

If Nina and I hadn't been such good friends, if we hadn't been so deeply in love, I don't believe our relationship would have made it through our first few years in Seattle. There was no conflict between us during this time, don't let me lead you to believe there was, but we simply had a very limited amount of time together. We spent our first year there in the college dorms; seeing each other only on nights that I didn't have to work and on the occasional weekend. When we did get to see each other we were usually tired and confined to public places. Nina was carrying twenty-one units, I was carrying eighteen. Our days went by in a haze of lectures, notes, homework, stolen kisses between classes, and the occasional date to a cheap restaurant.

We were drawn closer together during this period by the fact that we were unable to establish any real friendships with other students. Neither of us developed any sense of camaraderie with those that shared our majors. I was majoring in International Business because that was the subject that would prepare me to take the greatest advantage of my pre-knowledge. Unfortunately the only people that majored in this subject, beside myself, were aspiring future businessmen of the type that represented everything I always found distasteful about capitalism. They were all clean-cut, conservative, right wing spouting members of the young republicans. They were the people who would one day make the sorts of decisions that would destroy the lives of thousands and then go on to a three-martini lunch to celebrate. They all wanted to be millionaires by thirty and would stop at nothing to achieve this goal. They were young men and women in the process of selling their souls.

Nina's classmates were of two different varieties. There were the rich elite, those that had had their money handed to them all of their lives, who had gone to private academies and had grown up in the lap of luxury. They were the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of plastic surgeons, cardiac surgeons, and family practitioners to the elite. Their snobbery, Nina complained, was so entrenched within their personalities that they wouldn't even talk to you unless you had a last name that they could recognize. The second group was the super-smart nerds, the kids that had damn near aced their SATs but that had been scarred by persecution in grammar and high school. They were the kids that used to have their books knocked out of their hands, that used to be the favorite victims of the Richie Fairviews. They were better than the elite was but not much. Many of them had an inferiority complex a mile high and were so competitive that they were incapable of friendship. Nina spoke sadly of them in her discussions, not even realizing that she had been fated to be one of them.

But we had each other and that was enough. We could talk together, share our fears and frustrations together, congratulate each other, and occasionally, very occasionally that first year, make love to one another. It was always sweet.

We went home for the summer and quickly became immersed in our wedding plans. Mary proved to be a fabulous planner, taking to her task with a zeal I'd never seen or suspected. We were married on June 28th, 1985 before more than seventy guests. It was the happiest day of my life, either life, to that point. After the reception we climbed on a plane and flew to Los Angeles where we boarded a cruise ship for a seven-day trip to Mexico and back. For the first time in our relationship we had all the time in the world to enjoy each other's bodies. We missed two of the three ports of call and probably spent more time in our cabin than we did on deck.

When we returned to Spokane after the cruise we were faced with the bizarre situation of not having anyplace to stay besides either her parents house or mine. We both agreed that it was less weird to stay with mine. Less weird, but still weird. Sleeping with your new wife in your old bedroom while your parents were in the house is strange no matter how you slice it. We found ourselves making love on the floor when the urge struck us because we didn't want Mom or Dad to hear the bed squeaking.

Ironically, the best example of my business skills came our sophomore year in college, long before I picked up my degree in it. We had to rent an apartment in Seattle; there was no way we were going to stay in the dorms another year; but we needed to protect our capital from taking a serious ding from this. In order for my first major move to be successful, I needed to have as much of the twenty some-odd thousand dollars in stocks and bonds available at that time. I could not let it whittle away bit by bit paying for living expenses.

I constructed a paupers budget that had us eating Rice-a-roni, hotdogs, and bologna sandwiches a lot but that served to use up my hospital salary, the interest on the bonds, and the growth of the stocks in such a way that we were still making more than we were putting out. Our apartment was less than six hundred square feet and you practically had to do an armed reconnaissance before you dared to venture out to the car or the bus stop but we got by.

Both of us kept up our maddening pace at school, sacrificing time together in the early years because we knew it would be returned to us when we were older. We somehow managed to keep our spirits high, to keep our love strong. The best part of those years were the nights after I'd returned from work, when I would find Nina just putting her studying aside, her body clad only in a long T-shirt. We always kept a bottle of cheap white wine in the refrigerator and we would often share a glass of it before retiring to the bedroom for a lovemaking session before dropping off to sleep.

In 1986 the day I'd been waiting for since my return finally came. The business section of the Seattle newspaper announced that Microsoft Corporation would have an initial public offering of stock. The price was twenty-one dollars a share. I called my father, I called Tracy, I called Mike, I called Jack, all of whom had begun investing at my advice. I told them what they should do. I myself was probably among the first to buy when the market opened that Monday. I took everything I could spare, all my bonds, all my stocks that were simply holding money, nearly twenty-three thousand dollars worth of capital and bought Microsoft with it at twenty-one a share. That was nearly eleven hundred shares of what would eventually become the staple of the computer industry. By the end of the day that price had already risen to twenty-six a share. In less than eight hours I'd already made more than five grand. And it would do nothing but go up and up.

I continued to shove my money into Microsoft exclusively until the price rose into the forties per share. Then I began to concentrate on other IPOs that were just coming to bear.

In June of 1987, only three years after her first day of college, Nina finished her undergraduate degree. She was consistently on the honor roll and had no problem securing both admission and a student loan for the medical school. She began her classes there in September of 1987.

In January of 1988, a semester earlier than most of my classmates, I graduated with honors with a bachelors degree in International Business. Before I'd even been given my degree I was offered a job with one of the more prestigious investment firms in the Seattle area. They were impressed with my honor roll placement, my interview skills, and most of all, my portfolio. I was singled out as a rising star, going to work in a place that usually only hired those with family connections. The starting salary was forty-eight thousand a year; a considerable amount for that time period.

Nina and I stayed in our apartment, paying five hundred and twelve dollars a month in rent and stashing most of my salary into more rising stocks.

I hated every minute of it while I worked there but I learned much. I was considered somewhat of an eccentric, a square peg, but they were very impressed with the witchlike feel I had for the stock market and for picking out trends in it. It wasn't hard to do when you had knowledge of how the system worked coupled with knowledge of future events. I learned to research and invest in small, unheard of stocks that were about to benefit from some technological or sociological advance. Things like the latex glove industry in the face of the AIDS crisis.

Not surprisingly most of my brilliant insights were in the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, I knew from my previous life that there would be a big push to equip every major fire department engine and truck company in the country with semi-automatic defibrillators. So, using the skills I'd learned, I would research which companies made those things and direct my clients to invest their money there. Invariably I was right and my clients made money. My reputation grew and I began to develop contacts; the most important thing in that business. The fact that I couldn't stand most of my clients didn't matter. I learned to put that aside. My clients were my ticket to freedom.

By 1990, just as Nina was starting her third year of medical school I had both the contacts and the impressive reputation I needed. I resigned my position with the firm and Stevens Investment Consulting was born. My price was high, higher than anyone in the Seattle area. I did not advertise in any way shape or form. But I had more clients than I could handle. Word of mouth had spread that if you wanted to make some guaranteed money, you went and saw Bill Stevens. I rented a spacious office near downtown. I hired an attractive secretary to staff the front desk. And I dispensed killer advice that never, as far as I know, cost anybody a dime in losses. Amusingly enough, a good portion of my clients were the investment counselors that I'd worked with at the firm. After all, who knew better than they how accurate my predictions were. None of my clients ever knew that I lived in a pauper's hovel in South Seattle and drove an old Datsun to work. None of them knew that I was cramming every spare penny into the same stocks I was recommending to them.

Our net worth climbed past the million-dollar mark about the time that Nina started her fourth and final year of medical school. We celebrated by making a few purchases. I bought my wife a Volvo with all the bells and whistles. I bought myself a BMW with all the bells and whistles. I bought the both of us a three-bedroom house in one of the middle-class suburbs, putting down twenty percent and assuming a thirty-year loan at seven and a half percent. The real estate agent that sold it to us thought we were mad once she got a look at our credit report and earnings sheet.

"But sir," she'd nearly pleaded. "This house is only two hundred and twenty thousand. With your income and assets, you qualify for well over nine hundred thousand. Why would you want to…"

"Ma'am?" I'd interrupted, "this is the house we want. Are you going to sell it to us or not? If not, I'll be happy to find another agent who will."

She sold it to us of course. She certainly did not want to lose her commission. We moved into our first house on September 18, 1991. We made love in the bedroom that first night before we even began to unpack.

Nina Stevens became Doctor Stevens on June 3, 1992. My parents, her parents, Tracy, even Mike and Maggie flew up for the ceremony. After they all returned home Nina was left with four weeks before her residency in emergency medicine began. I took a vacation from work, it's easy to do when you're the boss, and I rented us a condo on the leeward side of Maui. Except for our honeymoon it was our first real vacation. We spent three and half weeks relaxing on the beach, eating in restaurants, sightseeing, and making love at least twice a day; sometimes in our condo, sometimes on a deserted stretch of beach as the sun went down, and once in the bathroom of a sightseeing dinner cruise boat. That last one was not exactly making love, it was pure lustful fucking, through and through. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

When we returned to Seattle the hell of residency began for Nina. She would work thirty-six hours at a stretch at least three times a week, learning the finer points of treating medical and traumatic injuries in the busiest emergency room in Washington. If she was allowed to get any sleep there at all it was typically less than an hour at a time. When she was home she was exhausted. Many was the time that she drug herself into the house at some forbidding hour and tried to tell me about her shift but fell asleep in mid-sentence. I would carry her to bed like a child on these occasions, undress her, and tuck her in.

I concentrated on my own work during this period, spending hours at my computer terminal in the office or in the den of my house, researching companies, finding out what they made, how they made it, what kind of raw materials they used to make it with. I spent even more hours on the phone with my clients, advising them to buy this, to sell that. My reputation continued to grow to the point where I had to turn down clients because I simply didn't have the time to consult with them. And of course, under the rules of capitalism, my price went up along with the demand for me. I received so many offers of employment at outrageous salaries from large firms that I lost count of them. I had so many rich pricks offer to partner with me that I had to develop a standard speech for turning them down.

I suppose it was inevitable that one day two gentlemen in suits entered my office and approached Darla, my young secretary. They spoke a few words to her, showed her some identification, and a second later my phone was ringing on my desk. She told me about my visitors and I instructed her to let them in.

"Mr. Stevens," said the taller of the two, his eyes flitting around my office, looking for something incriminating. "I'm Special Agent Talon, FBI."

He flipped open a little leather case, displaying his credentials. "This is Agent Sparks from the Federal Trade Commission." Sparks displayed his own credentials. "Would you mind if we had a few words with you?"

"Not at all gentlemen," I said, suppressing my nervousness at the appearance of a couple of feds, "please sit down." I waved them to the chairs before my desk. "Can I have Darla bring you some coffee or tea? Maybe some bottled water?"

"No thank you," Talon answered for both of them. They took their seats and spent a moment just looking at me.

"What is it I can help you with?" I asked.

"Word among the investment community," Sparks said, speaking for the first time, "is that if you want to make some guaranteed money in the market, you go see Bill Stevens at Stevens Consulting."

I gave a small smile, "glad to know that my reputation proceeds me."

"Uh huh," Sparks continued. "We did a little checking on you Mr. Stevens. When we hear something like that it makes us a little curious. Guaranteed money? In the stock market? There is really no such thing. The stock market, as you surely know, is little more than a respectable form of gambling. Some have a flair for it, some do not. But nobody has the reputation that you have. Nobody."

He leaned forward, his gray eyes burning into mine. He was trying to intimidate me. "You charge nearly three times what other investment consultants do," he said. "There is no reason or justification for such an outrageous fee in a business such as this. None at all. But somehow you not only get away with it, you have more clients than you can handle. We sent one of our agents to try and sign up with you just to check you out and he was turned away, not because he's a fed but because you have no time to take on new clients, you're that booked."

"Is there something illegal about that?" I asked, starting to get a little angry.

Sparks ignored my question. "We've talked to many of your clients. It seems that you have quite the ability to spot and exploit trends in the market. An almost spooky ability. Time after time we were told how you advised them to put their money in this stock or that stock, usually something obscure that they'd never even heard of, and then low and behold, that stock begins to go up and up. Not one person we talked to complained about their stocks going down. Not a single one. Not one of them bitched about the fee you charged. Not a single one. Do you find that a little strange Mr. Stevens? Because I surely do."

"My clients TALKED to you?" I asked, appalled. I don't know why that surprised me but it did.

"Oh yes," Sparks smiled, perhaps sensing a little uplifted corner of my persona that he could pry at. "They were quite willing to talk to us once we implied to them that something illegal might be going on and that they might be implicated. Most of them happily showed us the records of their buys and sells. They sold you out in an instant at the mere suggestion that they themselves might be in danger."

"Figures," I muttered, seething at this knowledge. I recovered myself quickly. "But I'll ask you again gentlemen, have I done anything illegal?"

"I don't know Mr. Stevens," Sparks asked me, "have you? From everything we've learned it certainly looks like a fair amount of insider trading is going on here. Somebody is feeding you information, probably several somebodies inside of these corporations."

"Are you serious?" I asked, feeling myself on a little firmer ground. "You're suggesting that I have contacts inside of more than a hundred corporations that are feeding me inside info? Do you really believe that? It would have to be that many because that's how many companies I routinely advise my clients to invest in. I'm sure you know that if you've checked on me like you said. That's an awful lot of inside information, isn't it?"

"So you say you're doing nothing wrong?" Sparks asked, "that you're just very adept at picking the right stocks time and time again. So adept that you never guess wrong?"

"Basically, yes." I nodded.

"Would you mind if we took a look through your files?" Sparks asked next.

I laughed out loud, not able to help myself. "Let you look through my files?

Are you mad?"

He gave me a reasonable look. "If you have nothing to hide Mr. Stevens," he said, "then why should you mind letting us take a look?"

I shook my head at them. I'd had about enough of this. "Gentlemen," I asked, "this is the United States of America, is it not?"

"Yes Mr. Stevens," Sparks nodded.

"Good. Then I'm protected by a little document called the constitution am I not? A little addition to that document known as the fourth amendment? If you want to look through my files than you go get a judge to give you a warrant allowing you to do so. But you can't do that, can you? Because you don't have any probable cause that I've committed any crime. You're just here on a fishing expedition, hoping that I'll break down in front of you and bust open some international inside trading conspiracy. Well sorry to disappoint you gentlemen, but that's not going to happen. There is no conspiracy and you will not be looking at any of my files."

Talon took a deep, angry breath. "Mr. Stevens," he said, "I have some very good friends at the Internal Revenue Service. I can make a few phone calls and you would find yourself under very intense scrutiny every time you filed your taxes."

"You're threatening me?" I barked, laughing. "You've got to be shitting. You know damn well you've already had your buddies at the IRS look into my background. You could probably recite my net worth as well as I can. You want to have them audit me every year? Go ahead, bring it on. They'll find nothing. I pay every penny of capital gains tax and income tax that I'm responsible for. I take no questionable deductions. I'm sure my clients have told you that I'm somewhat of a weirdo in that regard. When they bitch about their capital gains tax I always tell them they should be proud to pay it, that there is not nearly enough distribution of wealth in this country. I tell them I think the tax should be greater than it is, that the rich should be hammered with taxes. Bring on the audits guys, you can't threaten me with that."

They both stared for a moment, feeling the balance of power shifting on its axis. "Mr. Stevens," Talon started again.

"Gentlemen," I said, standing up. "I'm a very busy man and I have work to do. I think the time has come to put an end to our discussion. If you wish to talk to me again, please call in advance and set up an appointment. I'll be sure to have a lawyer present. Good day."

Despite my bravado in the face of the feds, the encounter disturbed me greatly. They might not have known what they were dealing with but the fact remained that I had been noticed. I did not like to be noticed. I went home that night and found Nina in the bathtub, fragrant bubbles covering her body as she soaked after an exhausted sleep. She was due back at the hospital at six the next morning.

I leaned next to the tub and gave her a kiss. Somehow my hand just happened to drop into the water and land against her slippery thigh. The kiss deepened and two minutes later I was naked in the tub with her. A considerable amount of water splashed onto the carpet in the next fifteen minutes.

After, as we lay in our bed naked, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around I told her about my visit from Talon and Sparks. She was very alarmed by it.

"Feds?" she asked, looking at me. "You're not in any trouble are you Bill?"

"No," I shook my head. "They were just harassing me. They thought my record was a little suspicious and were trying to see if I was doing anything wrong."

"But you haven't been," she protested sternly. Nina was well aware of my prowess at picking stocks. She used to express doubt that I was committing so much of our net worth to a particular issue but she'd long since learned to trust my "instincts". How could she argue with constant success? If she had any suspicions about where my knowledge was coming from, if she ever thought it was more than just my own common sense and thorough study, she never mentioned it, either directly or indirectly.

"No," I said, "I've always gone out of my way to be on the up and up. I've never cheated so much as a penny on our taxes. We have nothing to worry about in that regards but at the same time I think it's time for a change."

"What kind of change?"

I told her. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. By the time she left for the hospital a decision had been made. I put it into motion the very next day.

On November 16, 1993, at the age of twenty-six, with a net worth of 1.9 million dollars, I retired from work. I was free.

I didn't spare a thought about the clients I was abandoning. After all, those assholes had talked to the feds about me, had shown them records. I could understand that. But not a single one of them, not one out of the forty or so the feds talked to had bothered to give me a little call and let me know that the FTC and the FBI was sniffing at my ass. Fuck them. They'd paid me their money and I'd advised them well. Our relationship ended right there.

Darla was another matter. The closing down of Stevens Consulting left her without a job. I'd lured her away from a job that she'd hated by offering her a handsome salary. This had been in the days before sexual harassment became the issue that it is today and Darla had been expected to offer special services to her previous boss as a condition of continued employment. Naturally she'd been prepared to offer those services to me when I hired her and had been quite surprised when I didn't request them. I had changed her view of the world as she knew it.

She became a very loyal employee, a secretary that other businessmen and women could only dream about. She also became a friend during the many hours we spent alone in the office. She was very attractive and I can't say that I hadn't enjoyed looking at her nyloned legs on occasion as she typed on her computer or answered the phone, but I never once considered bedding her. I told her the news of the closure of Stevens Consulting and she broke into tears.

Her tears dried up when I gave her her severance package. I gave her a check for twenty thousand dollars and a lifelong offer to consult in investment for her free of charge. If she played her cards right she would never have to work again and she knew it. She gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an unspoken offer to continue the affections in my office. I gave her an unspoken denial and we parted.

Though Nina was still locked in the rigors of residency, I had nothing but time on my hands now. Using my computer I could monitor and adjust our investments, dispense advice to my few clients: Maggie and Mike, Jack and Mary, Mom and Dad, Darla, Tracy; by checking my computer and spending less than two hours per week before it. Our net worth had reached the point where it could only get bigger as long as I kept shifting it from rising stock to rising stock. I began to spend a little on self-pleasure.

During the last two years of Nina's residency I learned to fly an airplane and purchased a Cessna that could hold four people. I learned to sail on Puget Sound, even venturing into the open water of the Pacific Ocean and learning the finer points of open sea navigation and handling. I learned to play golf, bringing my handicap from an initial twenty-six all the way down to a nine.

I learned to hunt for deer and elk, my father-in-law taking on the responsibility of teaching me. I purchased a Winchester 30-06 and fired it at a range until I could hit a target the size of a quarter from two hundred yards. My first trip to the Idaho panhandle in October I brought down a four point buck. The next October Jack and I climbed into my Cessna and I flew us to the most remote airstrip in Northern Wyoming that we could find. We spent a week camping out, drinking beer, and basking in maleness. We both bagged an elk on that trip and had to arrange for the meat to be shipped home via ground transport because it's sheer weight would have overloaded my plane.

I kept myself amused by my many pursuits during those days, never recklessly spending money, but gratefully abandoning my miserly ways at the same time. We remained in our simple three-bedroom house, our neighbors never knowing or suspecting that we were multi-millionaires. In fact, since they knew Nina was a doctor in residency, they kind of figured that I was some sort of unemployed loser that had latched onto her. I never bothered to correct this impression.

As the end of her residency began to come into view we began to talk about what was next. Where we would go, what we would do. It wasn't a long discussion. Both of us longed to leave Seattle behind. We hated the weather, we hated the bustle of living in such a large city. We both wanted to go home.

Three things happened in the last six months of her residency. The first was that Nina began looking for a position in a Spokane emergency room. The trauma center expressed immediate interest in her and the employment process began. I flew her back and forth for interviews three times and she was offered the position. Her starting date was to be two weeks after she passed her final boards.

The second thing occurred directly because of the first. I began to scout out locations for our future home. We had long talks about our dream house during this time. I assured her that we could afford whatever it was that we came up with and that I would make it happen. We both listed what we wanted and compared the lists. Eventually we came up with a master plan. I searched out and eventually found a good architect. He flew with me to Spokane and we began scouting out land for sale in the region. It didn't take long to find exactly the plot we were looking for. I started the legal process of purchasing the land while my architect began the process of planning the house we wanted. Construction began three months before we were to leave Seattle.

The third thing that happened had nothing to do with houses and jobs. Well, almost nothing. Nina and I had several long discussions and finally, two months before we returned to Spokane, a month after our new house had begun the process of being built, Nina threw away her birth control pills. October 18, 1995, the day she started her first day as a staff physician in the emergency room of the trauma center, she was two months pregnant.

We spent our first six months back in Spokane living in a house we'd rented in the River View section while construction on our dream-house was underway. Nina swoll up with pregnancy, her breasts edging into the territory of the C-cup for the first time in her life. She continued to work and I continued to oversee the construction, making sure everything was just right.

Our house was being built on four acres of shoreline property on Lake Pend Oreille. It was a very rural part of the lake, accessible only by a twisting, two-lane road. Our land was covered with evergreens and brush. No water or electricity ran there and we had to arrange to have it; as well as a septic system; put in. The location was exactly forty-two miles from the Spokane City Limits; forty-eight miles from the trauma center. Nina assured me that she didn't mind the commute. It would take her just under an hour both ways but since her schedule was only three twelve hour shifts one week and four the next, it wasn't a terrible hardship. After the horrors of internship the schedule, including the commute, seemed almost serene.

I was able to watch the land change from forbidding forest to a nice plot overlooking the lake. The house itself is nearly six thousand square feet. It has seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large family room, two dens, a game room, and a wine cellar. It has a built-in swimming pool that looks like a tropical lagoon (Nina's idea). It has a tennis court and a par three golf hole (my ideas). It has a large, redwood deck in the back with access from the master bedroom and the living room. The deck contains a covered hottub capable of holding eight adults in comfort. Forty-eight steps lead downward from the deck to a private dock and a huge boathouse. These days the boathouse contains a forty-foot cabin cruiser, a ski-boat, a small bass boat, and a couple of jet-skis. Real water enthusiasts are we Stevens'.

One month before Nina's due date the finishing touches were finally completed and we moved in. We kept up with tradition and made love before the boxes were even unpacked.

Laura Stevens entered the world on June 18, 1996, a tiny, red-faced infant, nearly bald, that looked so much like her mother that it was difficult to believe that I had anything to do with the conception.

Since then we've had two others. Jason, born September 20, 1997, also looks like Nina though there is at least a hint of my facial features in his form.

Megan, born October 3, 1998 is the baby of the family. God help her, she looks just like me. There's no denying paternity there.

I spend my days watching these children, caring for them on the days that Nina is at work. My life is happy. There is little else I'd rather do. I go fishing at least once a week. I go hunting once a year. I go to Mariners games in Seattle at least three times a season. I've replaced my single engine plane with a twin engine capable of holding ten. Trips to Las Vegas or Reno occur frequently.

I spend about three hours a week monitoring my investments. I was able to take huge advantage of many initial public offerings, especially over the last four years. I got in on America Online, Amazon.com, E-bay, and many other Internet stocks that went through the roof. The Stevens' family holdings have nearly tripled in the last five years. On the day I type these words our net worth is just a hair over eleven million dollars. A good thing because I've now reached the point where my pre-knowledge has run out. Obviously I've gained considerable knowledge of stocks and investments so I'll keep some money in the market but I'm planning to begin shifting the bulk of our holdings over to CDs, Mutual Funds, Treasury bonds, and other safe, quiet storage vessels.

Nina works her shifts and is a very popular doctor among the staff and her coworkers. But at the same time her superiors consider her somewhat of a pain in the ass. She doesn't work any of the many overtime shifts that are offered to her. She doesn't write papers for publication in the hospital journal. She doesn't participate in the education or training of the area's paramedics. She goes to work, does the job that she loves, and then comes home to the family that she loves.

Mike took the test for the Spokane Fire Department in June of 1985. By then he had a year of being their courier and two semesters of Fire Technology classes from the community college under his belt. He'd worked out obsessively throughout the year in fire station workout rooms and his body was an efficient, well-honed machine. He passed the written test in the high nineties but it was the physical agility test, the combat challenge, that was his shining moment. He didn't just break the previous record, he shattered it by more than eighteen seconds. His oral boards were just a formality at that point.

Early that August, while Nina and I were still sharing my old bedroom prepatory to heading back to Seattle, Mike entered the fire academy. On November 3 he was given his first assignment; an engine company very near where a girl named Julie had once thrown me out of her car. It was the busiest station in Spokane and he spent eighteen months there.

Once his probation period was up he began taking more Fire Tech courses. He collected his associate's degree in 1987 and then transferred to State College. By 1990 he held a bachelors degree.

He continued to date Maggie throughout the year prior to his hire. Unfortunately when he made the discovery as a rookie firefighter of how damn easy it was to get laid when the public adored you, he gave Maggie the old, "I think we should see other people" speech. I heard all of this from Nina, who corresponded in letters and phonecalls with Maggie. It was very apparent that Maggie did not take the speech well.

I felt sad for both of them, part of me wondering what Mike was thinking – it was obvious how he felt about her – the other half knowing exactly what he was thinking and what organ he was doing it with. Mike went on something of a rampage, very similar to what I'd done upon my recycling with exactly the same sort of blindness. I didn't interfere, didn't try to talk him out of what he was doing. I knew he wouldn't listen to me. I only hoped he would catch himself before it was too late.

Maggie was in her first year of nursing school when they broke up. She grieved for a while and then carried on, beginning to date again after a few months. She drifted back into her pattern of changing boyfriends as often as she changed her socks for about six months. She then began to date a radiology tech that she'd met during her hospital time.

They became a couple. Maggie wrote letters to Nina telling how happy she was. I read the letters and had to agree with Nina's assessment that they sounded entirely too cheery, too forced. They sounded like Maggie was trying to convince herself that she was happy.

The radiology tech asked Maggie to marry him a week before she graduated from nursing school. He didn't put a ring on her finger with his mouth, nor did he put one in a glass of champagne. In fact, he didn't even HAVE a ring when he conversationally brought up the subject of marriage to her.

Maggie said yes to him immediately. Two days later they went and picked out a ring together. The one that she liked cost more than he cared to spend so he asked her is she would mind pitching in a little for it. After all, money was tight, the republicans were fucking up the economy, etc. She pitched in. She tried to make the whole thing sound romantic in her letter but the underlying bitterness and disappointment were plainly visible between the lines.

She told Nina about their plans. They were going to get married as soon as possible, as soon as she secured employment as a nurse. He was going to quit his job and start a medical billing business that he could operate from their home.

Neither Nina nor myself had ever met this radiology tech but it certainly sounded to us like he was someone looking for a free ride. We wondered how Maggie could not see this too. Nina briefly mentioned this possibility during a phone conversation and Maggie blew up at her, slamming the phone down in anger. They made up a few days later but Maggie made it clear what the rules were: no more talking about her radiology tech.

I was forced to wonder if Maggie was following along her fated path. I hadn't known her at all in my previous life, nurse or not a nurse, she hadn't worked in any of the ERs, but I rather suspected that she was.

It was two weeks after the engagement notice, a week after her graduation, when Mike called me at our small apartment. He was in tears. We talked for more than an hour and he poured out his heart to me. He told me how much he loved Maggie, how stupid he'd been, and how he'd now lost her because he'd realized this too late.

I calmed him down – believe me, I was able to sympathize – and told him that he might be right, that it might be too late. I also told him that he didn't have a hair on his ass if he didn't at least TRY to get her back if that was how he felt about her. Even if he were still ultimately rejected he would at least not have to spend his life wondering if he COULD have. He asked how he could go about doing that.

"Do you want to marry her?" I asked him. "Is that what your goal is?"

"Yes," he answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Then in order for you to have any chance at all you're going to have to move quickly. Very quickly. You're going to have to be aggressively romantic."

"Aggressively romantic?"

I explained what that meant. We discussed a few different approaches to the problem and eventually Mike arrived at a course of action.

"Good luck," I told him after the details were worked out.

"What do you think my chances are?"

I didn't like to lie to my friends but in this case I made an exception. "About fifty-fifty."

Armed with information that I'd taken out of Maggie's latest letter to Nina, Mike was waiting for her when she emerged from a job interview at Holy Family Hospital – interestingly enough the same hospital where I'd performed a similar mission for Nina. Perhaps it was fitting. He proclaimed his love for her right there in the parking lot. He told her how wrong, how stupid he'd been. Finally he dropped to one knee and offered her an engagement ring. He told her that he would marry her that night, that hour. It was a very risky move on his part but it paid off.

She didn't accept his ring right there. She didn't gush all over him and go off into the sunset with him. But she also didn't slap his face. She left the parking lot that day by herself, her mind very troubled. But the next day she called him up and agreed to have lunch with him. By the end of that day they found themselves at Mike's house, in bed, her newest ring on her finger.

The next day she broke the news to the radiology tech. He did not take it very well. He screamed and yelled and cussed and Maggie was forced to flee in terror, honestly fearing for her safety. The words "bitch" and "cunt" and "whore" followed her to her car.

Mr. Radiology then made perhaps the worst mistake of his life. After Maggie left he went to Mike's fire station carrying an aluminum baseball bat and intending to express his displeasure with Mike in dramatic fashion. It was pretty dramatic all right. He'd failed to take a few things into consideration before launching his attack. One was that Mike was in exquisite physical shape as a result of his passion for working out. Another was that there were two other firemen in the station and firemen are fiercely loyal to each other.

The scuffle lasted approximately forty-five seconds. Radiology did not land a single blow with his bat or anything else. The Spokane Police arrived in force less than three minutes later. They charged in with their batons out, just itching to thump upon the person who had dared to storm a firehouse (the cops are VERY protective of firefighters and paramedics). What they found was their aggressor lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding from multiple places on his head and face. Radiology went to jail after a two-day stay in the Spokane Trauma Center.

The last thing that he did not take into account was that assaulting fire personnel is heavily frowned upon by the legal system, even if a deadly weapon is not involved, which in this case it was. The proverbial book was thrown at him and he ended up spending a year in the county jail which, of course, resulted in the loss of his job.

Neither Mike nor Maggie was ever bothered by him again. Less than six months later they were married. Nina and I both drove to Spokane to attend.

Did they live happily ever after? Does anybody? They are still married today and have two children that are a few years older than mine. Mike was promoted to engineer in 1989. He made Captain in 1991. He's being pressured from above to apply for Battalion Chief these days but he insists he just wants to be a Captain forever. He has his own station, his own crew, and he still gets to run into burning buildings once in a while.

Maggie went to work at Holy Family hospital, moving from department to department for a few years until she found her niche in labor and delivery. She's been there ever since and is now the dayshift charge nurse.

As a couple they are considerably more wealthy than the upper-middle-class status that their income alone would have provided. Since his first year on the fire department Mike has been taking investment advice from me. He's never committed as much as I have but the net worth of the Meachen family is currently around 1.8 million dollars. They have a large house, paid for, in the River-View area of Spokane. You can see the falls from their bedroom window and their deck.

They remain our best friends. We get together either at our house or theirs no less than twice a month, sometimes more. We spend every New Year's Eve together partying the night away. We go on skiing trips, boating trips, Vegas trips, and the occasional cruise together. We couldn't ask for better friends.

Tracy, like Nina, pounded out her undergraduate degree in three years. She was accepted into the UC Berkeley law school and graduated with honors in June of 1989. She could have had a job with any number of prestigious firms as a litigator. Instead she applied and was instantly accepted at the Spokane County District Attorney's office as a deputy DA.

She moved back home in early July of 1989, saving me the bother of warning her about the impending earthquake that was going to strike the bay area in October of that year. She has been with the DA's office ever since and she has made quite a name for herself as the prosecutor that doesn't like to plea bargain. This has made her butt heads with her superiors on more occasions than she cares to count but they can't argue with her conviction rate, which is impressive indeed. She is particularly fierce when she gets her hands on a manslaughter case and even the judges seem to fear her when this happens.

It was in July of 1994 that she went to work one morning and was handed a new case file by her boss. The suspect in the case was one Dennis Castleton. He was a first sergeant in the United States Army home on leave for two weeks. The cops had filed a charge of second-degree murder against him but it was expected that the charge would be reduced to manslaughter. Sergeant Castleton was not an ordinary soldier but a member of the elite Army Rangers that had seen combat in the Persian Gulf War. The victim of the crime was a two-time loser that had been recently paroled from state prison after serving six years for armed robbery. The victim's name was Richard Fairview.

Apparently Sergeant Castleton had been leaving a bar with his wife when Fairview, a methamphetamine addict that was out of product and desperate for more, spotted what he thought was an easy mark. He approached Castleton, pushed him roughly up against a car, and demanded all of his money. Fairview had no weapon (if he'd had a gun he could have sold it for crank) and was relying solely on his intimidating size to get what he wanted. Why not? Castleton was only five foot eight and a hundred and forty pounds or so. I guess Richie hadn't learned much from his encounters with me back in high school.

When the cops arrived they found Richie Fairview dead on the pavement. An autopsy would reveal multiple skull fractures from having his head bashed repeatedly into the side of the car and a crushed trachea from having a hand chop brutally into it. Sergeant Castleton was without so much as a scratch on him.

Tracy reluctantly had herself removed from the case on the grounds that the victim had once stabbed her brother. The case eventually went to trial but the jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of acquittal. The DA elected not to re-try it and Sergeant Castleton was released. He was given a court martial by the military and ultimately reduced one grade in rank. He would go on to fight another day. I only wished I'd had the opportunity to buy him a drink at some point.

Tracy, like many of my friends and all of my family, is considerably wealthier than her colleagues thanks to her wise choices in investments. She owns a large house not terribly far from Mike and Maggie's. She vacations in some new, exotic place each year. She's actually been to Russia, to Africa, to the Middle East, and even did a brief stint on a very expensive Antarctica tour in 1993. She always returns from her vacations refreshed and ready to get back into the fray of the Spokane County justice system.

In addition to her DA duties she is also active in many victims rights organizations. MADD is chief among them, although she is not a mother. She is very radical on the subject of DUI laws. Sometimes I think the Iranians would think her a tad radical on that subject.

Her personal life could use a little improvement. She is driven by her job and her relationships with men reflect that. She's been married twice now, both marriages conceived in passion and haste, both dissolved after less than two years. No children were produced either time. Most men have a hard time with her aggressive, pushy nature, not to mention the long hours that she works at her job and her volunteer work. Husband number one was a fellow prosecutor and you would have thought he'd have understood. He didn't. Number two was a detective sergeant with the Spokane Sheriff's department. He hadn't understood either. Both I think were drawn to Tracy by her good looks and strong personality and then driven away when they found that personality was stronger than they'd thought.

But there's hope for my sister yet I'm starting to think. She attended my birthday party five months ago and there met Brent Hartley, a colleague of Nina's and one of our family friends that we've developed. Brent had recently been utterly fucked in a divorce settlement and at times seemed on the verge of suicide. Tracy and he began chatting together and before the night was over both were smiling and being very chummy with each other. They've been dating ever since and they seem to be happy together. Who knows? Maybe something will come of it.

Mom and Dad have done well for themselves. Dad has been listening to my investment advice ever since I lived at home and as a result he was able to retire comfortably in 1990, fully five years before he retired in my previous life. Mom retired shortly after this. Their house is now paid off but they refuse to move out of it even though they could easily afford something quite nice if they wished. They love their house, have many memories attached with it and plan to die there. The longer I live in my own house, the more I understand their feelings.

What they've done instead is buy a large (and I mean LARGE) motor home which they use to tour North America with. They are often gone for months at a time, several times a year to parts as distant as you can get without leaving the continental landmass. They have taken their motor home to Alaska, to Florida, to Maine, to Arizona, and to many places in between. They are planning a trip to Cabo San Lucas later this year.

I arrange to have their place looked after while they are gone and to pay their bills in their absence. I make sure their lawn gets mowed, their Northwest Electric gets paid, and their water pipes don't freeze. I'm glad to do these tasks for them. They seem very happy in their retirement.

Jack and Mary Blackmore are still hanging in there and show no signs of stepping out anytime soon. They too have made use of my stock knowledge and are quite wealthy. Unlike my parents, their desire to move someplace very nice was stronger than their desire to stay in their house for nostalgia's sake. They live in a nice lakefront three bedroom on the shore of Lake Coeur d' Alene. When Nina and I need a babysitter it is usually they who are the first to volunteer.

Jack, Mike, and I have become frequent companions. Jack fits in with us very well and sometimes we completely forget that he is more than forty years older than we are. We all go hunting together each fall, finding the most remote airstrip we can to stage from, always spending at least a week out in the boonies somewhere, tromping around in camoflaugh gear, packing hunting rifles, drinking beer, sleeping in tents. We go fishing together several times a month on either Jack's lake or mine (usually Jack's, he's got a bitchin bass boat). We fly to Seattle for Mariners games at least four times every season. We have an annual deep-sea fishing trip that we take on a chartered boat.

Jack drinks as much beer as he always has and he's had no further heart problems. He was seventy-three years old on his last birthday but looks fifty due to frequent exercise and outdoor activities. When Viagra first came out I asked him jokingly (after several beers on the fishing boat) if he wanted me to ask Nina to write him a prescription for some.

He looked at me lecherously and said, "I certainly don't need any of THAT shit youngster. I ain't that old."

So that's how our lives have gone, how things turned out differently with pre-knowledge. I didn't change the world, just a few lives in it. Fate has seemingly accepted us, made allowances for us. We have left a wake of passage in the smooth fabric of what was supposed to be but, as I've seen, the wake has mostly closed up behind us leaving only a few ripples to mark our passage.

Only a few ripples.

On a beautiful April afternoon in 1998 I had to drive to Spokane to pick up the new fish-finder I was planning to get Jack for his birthday. Laura, who was almost three, and Jason, who was seven months, were with me since it was a day that Nina worked.

As always when I found myself in Spokane on such days, I stopped at the trauma center for a brief visit. Nina, as well as her co-workers, enjoyed seeing the kids for a few minutes and I enjoyed seeing my wife doing her job. I got the most enjoyment when we snuck in while she was in the middle of a procedure and I got to observe her at work. It was then that I could contrast the Nina that was with the Nina that should have been. It was then that I could feel how I'd thwarted fate, how I'd defied it in the control of a life.

We spent about twenty minutes in the doctor's lounge, the kids sitting on their mother's lap. Laura was babbling about something or other, using her fifty or so word vocabulary while Jason and I were munching on some chips from a dip tray that someone had brought in. Most of the crumbs from Jason's chip were tumbling down the front of Nina's scrub shirt, which was just starting to bulge outward at the abdomen from the presence of the as-yet-unnamed Megan, who was four months along in her belly.

Finally a nurse poked her head in.

"Nina," she said, "we got an ambulance three minutes out with a twenty mile an hour auto-ped. Positive loss of consciousness and repetitive questioning. Obvious tib-fib fracture too."

She sighed, "Thanks Jen," she said sourly, handing the kids over to me. "Oh well, duty calls."

We exchanged kisses and I took the kids and went outside to the ambulance bay, hanging out until the ambulance of which they'd spoken backed in.

I looked at the ambulance with nostalgia, as I always did when I found myself in such situations. It was amazing how much I remembered from my former career, how much I missed it at times. The ambulance was the 96-240.

I remembered that it was the rig with the bizarre electrical problems that sometimes caused the radios, the power windows, and the power steering to just die until you shut off the engine and started it again. The EMT that jumped out of the driver's seat was Rob Forehand, an aspiring fireman that had been my partner for a short time once. The paramedic that jumped out of the back was Jim Corgan, one of the oldest employees that we'd employed. He was number one on the seniority list and always had his choice of shifts when we bid for them. He was also cursed with a chronically sore back, a hazard of the business, and typically took off four months of every given year on work comp. I knew these two well but they had no idea who I was.

I smiled as they gave me a disinterested glance, probably figuring I was the family of a patient out for a smoke or something. They pulled their patient out of the rig. He was a street person dressed in scraggly clothes and smelling strongly of alcohol. He was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar around his neck, two IVs plugged into his arms. They started to move him towards the entrance doors.

"Hey Rob," I said to the EMT, smiling. "Hope you get hooked up with the fire department soon."

He looked at me strangely, trying to place my face, trying to figure out if he knew me.

Before he could say anything I turned to his partner. "How you doing Jim? Good to see you. How's the back treatin' you these days?"

He gave me the same expression, finally answering, "Uh, it's okay."

"Good," I nodded, shifting Jason in my arms and grabbing Laura's hand once more. "I'll let you get back to your work."

I disappeared back to my Toyota four-runner, leaving their puzzled expressions behind me. Sometimes I just couldn't resist doing things like that.

We left the trauma center and headed for better parts of town. We picked up the fish-finder and I decided to treat my two children to some greasy fast food from a drive-through. Nina would most definitely not have approved but Jason couldn't talk yet and Laura lacked the vocabulary or the memory to rat me out.

We took our contraband to a nearby city park. Had I known something was going to happen? Had I been led there by fate for unknown reasons? Maybe. Maybe not. If so, fate does have its kind side.

The park was one that I'd once taken my daughter Becky to when she was young. Did I stop there out of nostalgia? Did I stop there because I remembered it was a good park to take kids too? I honestly don't know. I don't remember the vision of Becky coming to my consciousness at all in the decision to stop there. Thinking of Becky always made unpleasant feelings of guilt and loss to surface so my mind worked hard to keep those thoughts suppressed.

But whatever the reason, Laura, Jason, and I soon found ourselves sitting at one of the picnic tables beside the playground area. Ten or so kids of various ages and sizes were playing on the monkey bars, on the swings, on the slides, while their parents, mothers only for the most part, sat at benches or tables and kept an eye upon them.

The kids chowed down their chicken nuggets and french fries. They slurped their orange sodas dry. Finally Laura headed off to play on the jungle gym with the other kids. I carried Jason over to the swings and installed him in the baby swing. His little fists gripped the chain tightly but his face was all smiles as I began to push him in ever increasing arcs.

Then it happened.

"Swing me Mommy, swing me!" A girlish voice demanded from behind me.

I froze, waves of gooseflesh traveling up and down my entire body. I felt myself go clammy. I knew that voice, knew it well. It had been more than fifteen years since I'd last heard it. I had fought hard to keep it out of my conscious thought. But I never doubted for an instant, even before I turned around to look, that the voice was Becky.

I let my head pivot on my shoulders until I was looking at the little girl. She was about three years old, her dark hair tied into pigtails that bounced up and down as she skipped towards the swings. She was wearing a pair of blue jean overalls and sandals. It was Becky, no doubt about it, none whatsoever. Her face was slightly different than it had been, different in only the subtlest ways, ways that probably reflected the difference in paternity. But she had the same brown eyes, the same brown hair, the same upturned nose that she'd inherited from her mother. I was inundated with stark feelings of merging realities, with a horrid sense of deja vu unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

This feeling was intensified when I saw Lisa coming up behind her. She looked exactly the same as she had when I'd last seen her. Exactly. She was wearing a light summer dress that came to her knees. It was white with blue patterns upon it. I remembered that dress, had seen Lisa wearing it many times when we'd switched off Becky according to our custody arrangement.

Becky came running up at full speed and jumped onto the swing next to mine, one of the big-kid swings, landing on her stomach. Her feet came up off the ground and her forward momentum set her swinging in that position. She didn't even notice the man next to her, staring at her, not breathing as he did so, his mouth agape in surprise. Was her name still Becky? I knew that it was, I simply knew it.

Lisa noticed me staring at her daughter and quickened her approach, her eyes looking at me suspiciously. Parents do not like to see complete strangers looking at their children in that manner. I forced my mouth closed, forced myself to commence breathing once again, forced my eyes off of the small child, forced a pleasant, non-threatening smile onto my face. My hands returned to Jason's swing, picked up the task of keeping him in motion. Lisa continued her approach, keeping a wary eye upon me, keeping her distance in case I proved to be dangerous.

I looked at her, keeping my smile upon my face. "Hi," I greeted.

"Hi," she said carefully.

"Sorry I was staring," I told her. "Your little girl there looks and sounds just like my niece. It kind of startled me for a moment when I saw her since she lives kinda far away."

This seemed to put Lisa's mind at ease a little. "That's okay," she said, "no harm done."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I assured her, giving Jason another push and trying to keep my eyes off of the little girl swinging back and forth next to me. "The resemblance was kind of startling at first. I guess I'll have to tell little Belinda she's got a twin in Spokane."

Lisa smiled for the first time as Becky climbed off the swing and then held her arms out to Lisa to be picked up, "swing me mommy, swing me!" she demanded again.

Lisa dutifully picked her up and placed her on the swing in the proper fashion. Becky grasped the chains and her mother began swinging her up and down, her rhythm matching that I was setting with Jason. As she pushed I noticed that there was one thing different about Lisa, one feature that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen her. This Lisa was wearing a wedding ring.

"Higher mommy, higher!" she demanded, giggling.

"If I swing you any higher Little Beck," Lisa replied, "you're going to go catapulting across the park."

I felt another chill as I heard Lisa use the nickname we'd routinely called Becky. I suppressed any outward display of how weird I was feeling.

"How old is yours?" Lisa asked me as she continued to push.

"Jason here is closing in on eight months," I answered, "I have a three year old over there by the monkey bars too. And yours?"

"Just turned three," Lisa answered. "We're finally out of the terrible two's thank God."

"Yeah," I nodded with genuine sympathy, "us too, at least until Jason here gets into them."

We began to talk, the polite conversation of two parents that meet in a park. At least at first that's how it was. By the time the kids got tired of swinging, by the time Becky moved off towards the monkey bars and the jungle gym, we were conversing like old friends. I could tell that Lisa was surprised by how easy I was to talk to, by how our two personalities seemed to click to a certain degree. We moved over to one of the benches that sat next to the play area, me carrying Jason in my arms, and sat down. We talked of the rigors of child-rearing in this day and age.

"My husband and I both have to work," Lisa told me, "but child-care is SO expensive. So we try to keep our schedules as opposite as we can. We don't see each other as much as we'd like to but at least Becky doesn't spend much time in daycare."

"What does your husband do?" I asked, seemingly casually.

"He's the manager of the grocery store where I work."

I knew instantly whom she was talking about and felt another little chill. In my previous life, just as Lisa and I had started flirting with each other during my many trips to her line for sandwiches, she'd been bothered by her store manager, a man named Nick Morse who obviously wanted to date her. He'd been flirty with her ever since her initial hiring at the store but had become persistent after she'd broken her ankle in the fall. Since a relationship had seemed to be developing with me, she'd shunned his advances during this time period. It eventually got to the point, just after we'd began officially dating, that she had to threaten him with a charge of sexual harassment if he didn't back off. Back off he did. Eventually, in that life, he began to date another girl that worked in the store and married her about the time that Becky was born.

But without my presence in the picture Nick had apparently been successful in his courting of Lisa. I had not asked her name during our conversation, but I would have been willing to bet my net worth that it was Lisa Morse. The little girl, my daughter, and yet not my daughter, had to be Rebecca Morse. The fact that she was still married to him a year after my marriage with her had dissolved in divorce told me that she'd found the right person, or at least a person more right than I was. There was a twinkle in her eye when she spoke of her husband, a twinkle that I'd never seen when I had been married to her.

What did all of this mean? Lisa was now with someone she actually enjoyed being married to. I was with someone that I enjoyed being married to. This had occurred because I hadn't followed the path that I was fated to follow. I had been fated to marry her, to have Becky with her, and to be unhappy with her. She was fated to be unhappy with me. By altering fate we'd both ended up happy instead of sad. We'd both ended up finding soul mates instead of finding each other. What kind of fate had arranged for the previous pattern? What kind of fate had WANTED us to not find the person that matched? Was fate cruel, or just indifferent? Who or what had written these patterns? How much damage had been done by altering them?

I didn't know. I still don't.

I never saw Becky again. It was quite enough to know that she was simply alive.

I began searching for Mr. Li shortly after Nina and I moved back to the Spokane area. I had a thousand questions to ask him, a thousand things I wanted to know about him. How had he come by this power that he had? Why had he picked me? I also felt I owed him a large debt of gratitude for what he had done for me. I wanted to make sure that he did not end his life dying in a shitty convalescent home. I wanted to try to prevent his getting terminal cancer in the first place if I could. Depending on where the cancer had started, that was surely possible.

But Mr. Li proved impossible to track down. My source of information was Tracy, who, as a deputy DA had access to a nationwide computer network of known people. This should have done the trick. Unfortunately, I did not know enough information about Mr. Li. All I knew was his last name and his age approximated to within ten years or so.

When I'd first met Mr. Li on that fated night in 1999 I didn't know that he would have a very profound impact upon me. I'm surprised I was even able to remember his last name by the time it became apparent what he'd done. When I'd gone to bed that night Mr. Li had been nothing but a vague memory of a sad event, an event that I'd been forced to stand helpless before. Paramedics train their minds not to think about such things. If we grieved for every person that died before us, if we allowed ourselves to feel saddened by all of the human suffering we saw, we would all go mad very quickly. A paramedic's mind is accustomed to purging all information the moment it is no longer relevant.

According to Tracy's computer work there were nineteen hundred and four people with the last name of Li in the State of Washington that were between the ages of fifty and eighty. And that was only in Washington. Who was to say that Mr. Li even lived in Washington back then? My task seemed quite hopeless.

But as the years rolled closer and closer to 1999 and as my hopes of preventing Mr. Li's death from cancer decreased, I knew that I could at least keep the man out of the convalescent hospital. I could have him put up in a private home with around the clock nurses and premium medical care. Hell, I'd even spring for daily blowjobs if that's what he wanted. I was determined to see that old man die in comfort, to repay him for what he'd done for me.

I made contact with several people in the administration of that particular con home in mid-1998. I passed several envelopes full of twenty-dollar bills and extracted promises that I would be called immediately the moment anyone named "Li" was admitted to their facility. I promised more little envelopes when the information arrived to me. I checked back frequently with them, more than once a week when 1999 began.

But a strange thing happened, something that I could not figure out. As 1999 wound onward towards the 7th of July, the date that I'd met him and come back, no Mr. Li appeared. He had to have been there for a while before I'd encountered him, hadn't he?

By July 2nd I was very confused. Still no Mr. Li in the con home. The man was going to die in five days, had to be wracked with cancer at that very moment. Where the hell was he? Had I imagined the whole thing? That certainly wasn't possible. How else could I have had so much knowledge of what had been unless I'd really lived through it.

July 4th came. The Stevens' family and the Meachen family celebrated by taking our cabin cruiser out onto the lake and watching the fireworks near Sandpoint. It was an annual tradition. We all got drunk and poured ourselves into bed later that night, Nina and I in our room, Maggie and Mike in a guest bedroom, Jack and Mary, who had watched our children, in another guest bedroom. The next morning, still hung over and feeling like shit, I'd called the con home once more. Still no Mr. Li.

Nor was there an admission on the 6th of July under the name Li. Very strange. Would the anniversary, the sacred date, the date of his death pass by without my ever contacting him? It seemed it would. And there was nothing I could do about it.

The 7th of July was a hot, sticky, typical Eastern Washington summer day. I went out to get the mail about 10:00 that morning, the same time I always did. Our mailbox was out on the main road in front of our plot and it was a considerable walk from the house itself. I took Frank, our two-year old German Shepherd with me like always. He tagged along my heels, sniffing this, peeing on that as we went. I reached down and petted him a few times, talking to him as a man does his dog.

I hadn't been thinking of much of anything as I opened the mailbox and pulled out the pile of envelopes and advertising circulars that were inside.

I was flipping through them, sorting what was important from what was not when a voice called my name.

I jerked a little, startled by the voice in the stillness and looked towards its source. Our little stretch of the world was typically pretty deserted and having someone else out there when I picked up the mail was so unusual as to be unheard of. Frank barked once and then began to growl menacingly, his eyes locked onto one of the pine trees that guarded our driveway.

A man stepped out from behind it. I did not recognize him at first. He was Asian and very short. He was dressed in a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. His face was rugged and ageless. His appearance there coupled by the fact that he knew my name, put me immediately on guard.

"Can I help you?" I asked with a voice that was not quite steady. Beside me, Frank continued to growl.

The man smiled, continuing his approach. "You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked.

I didn't say anything, just continued to watch warily.

"Not surprising," he nodded. "The last time you saw me I looked considerably worse than I do now. But I know you've been looking for me for a long time." The smile widened. "I didn't want to be found by you, didn't want to cause you undue worry. But today the time has come for you and I to have a little talk."

I stared, wondering if what I was thinking was correct. "Mr. Li?" I asked in disbelief.

He chuckled. "The one and only."

I stared in disbelief at the vision before me. He was not emaciated in the least. In fact, his body appeared to be in tip-top physical shape. His calves were muscular, his stomach flat. His face was unlined, his eyes bright and inquisitive. He had no respiratory problems, in fact seemed to be breathing quite a bit easier than I was at that moment.

"But…" I started, "you're supposed to be…"

"Dying?" he asked, smiling at me.

I nodded.

Another chuckle. "There's a lot of things that have happened in the last seventeen years that weren't supposed to happen, eh? And a lot of things that WERE supposed to happen that didn't. You've led me on a very strange journey Mr. Stevens, a very strange one indeed. But the time has come for you and I to have a little talk together, to hash out a few details." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "This is my address.

It is imperative that you show up here tonight, alone. I believe your wife Nina is off work today, is she not? Childcare for your three lovely children should not be a problem."

"Mr. Li…"

"Take the paper," he told me, offering it. "Be there tonight at six o'clock.

Be sure you are not late. Do not tell Nina what you are doing. If you care for the life that you have built over the last seventeen years, you will do as I say."

Numbly, I took the paper from his hand. I glanced at it, seeing the address: 123 Lakefront Drive. I shivered as I read this.

"Yes," Mr. Li told me. "I live less than three miles from where we now stand. I jogged over here as a matter of fact. I'm sure you've noticed my house a time or two as you sat out on your back deck. It's the brown one you can see across the bend of the shore."

"But, how…"

"Tonight," he said, turning from me and stretching his legs a bit. "Everything will be answered tonight. Just be sure to be there."

He began trotting off down the road, his legs pumping as he ran. In less than thirty seconds he'd disappeared around the bend.

I spent that day very troubled, very uncommunicative with my wife. She commented upon it a few times and finally dismissed it as a case of PMS on my part. She retreated to her private den to study some medical journals, leaving me to keep an eye upon our brood.

I mechanically made lunch and then dinner, serving everyone about five o'clock. I only picked at my food. After Nina began doing the dishes I told her that I had to go into town to take care of some business. I don't believe that she bought the lie that I gave her but she didn't question me.

I climbed onto the Honda motorcycle I'd bought a few years before and headed off, arriving before Mr. Li's house less than ten minutes later.

It was more modest than ours was but definitely expensive. A single story, four bedroom or so with a swimming pool. I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell with a trembling hand.

Mr. Li answered the door before the echo of the doorbell even faded away. He was dressed in a pair of sweats and was shirtless, his stomach and chest without an ounce of fat upon it.

"Bill," he nodded, stepping aside. "Come in please."

I stepped in and he showed me around his house. There were indeed four bedrooms, two of which were empty. Pictures of an Asian woman were in every hallway, on every wall. She was pretty and the pictures were from various points in her life. He made no comment upon them. His den was what interested me the most. It had an expensive roll-top desk and a modern computer upon it. The window looked out over the lake and my house was plainly visible from there. A large telescope sat next to the window.

Mr. Li led me back to the living room and offered me a seat upon his couch. He disappeared for a moment and then came back holding an icy cold bottle of my favorite brand of beer. This didn't surprise me at that point, I simply took it from him and gulped down half the bottle in less than ten seconds.

"So you remember what you did for me?" I asked, although it was not a question as much as it was a statement.

"Yes," he nodded, sipping out of a bottle of Chinese beer. "I remember everything."

"How did you do what you did?" I asked. "What powers do you have?"

"Powers?" he scoffed, "I have no special powers at all. None except for one special gift that I'm allowed to pass on at my moment of death. I passed my gift on to you Bill. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. What has allowed you to do what you have done was the result of a miscalculation of thinking on a dying old man's part. An old man whose judgment was severely impaired by the effects of enough narcotic painkillers to kill an average person. An old man who'd been consumed by loneliness and loss but who should have known better. When I think of what might have happened, what could have happened, I still shudder to this day."

I stared, unable to comprehend exactly what he was saying.

"I am descended from ancient Chinese royalty," he told me. "My family has been instilled with this gift, the granting of a single wish, for the past sixty generations at least. The gift is intended to go to the first born grandchild of each recipient. It is intended that no one else but that grandchild even know about the gift. Don't ask me who gave it to us, why we have it, what entity powers it. We have this gift, I know not why. Only the bare essentials of it were explained to me when I received it for reasons which will become clear in a moment. The gift must be passed on by each holder upon his death or it is lost forever." He looked sternly at me. "I had no one to pass the gift on to, at least no one I would have trusted it to. I'd spent the years of my life thinking that it was finally going to die when my cancer took me away."

"You have no kids or grandkids?" I asked.

"My only son is dead. I have no daughters. My only grandson lives in Seattle. He is a greedy, shallow man who is only interested in himself. It is he who had me sent to that horrid place when my cancer finally reached the stage that I was unable to care for myself. If I had given the gift to him, God only knows what horrors might have occurred. I'd decided long before you were even a part of this earth Bill, that he would not receive the gift. I decided to let it die with me before he would have it."

"You were given this gift?" I asked, sipping from my beer, trying to comprehend.

"By my grandfather," Mr. Li nodded. "It was 1938 and I was nineteen years old. This was in Nanking, in Manchuria. We were under occupation by Japanese troops and it was not a gentle occupation. The Japanese were running wild in the streets, killing men at random, especially service-aged men such as myself. They were raping any women they could get their hands upon, even the elderly and children, often killing them afterward. They burned houses, temples, dug mass graves, slaughtered thousands.

"All of my family died that year at the hands of the Japanese," he continued. "I was not the one intended to receive the gift, I had two older brothers and a sister. I was the baby of the family. My oldest brothers were both killed in the army, fighting the Japanese. My parents and my sister were killed in Nanking on a night that I had been out visiting the girl I was courting. Even in the horrors of war some things still go on. Love is one of them. I was taking a great chance by leaving the safety of our family house to go see her. Had any soldiers seen me I most likely would have been shot on the spot, maybe even tortured first."

"It is perhaps ironic that I had been the one taking a huge risk in leaving the house but that while I was gone on that day, it was the house that became a deathtrap. A squad of soldiers had wandered by while my sister was out getting water. They took a liking to her and followed her back home. There, they held my family at gunpoint while they took turns raping her in front of them. Then they shot everyone, leaving the bodies there to rot while they continued about their business.

"When I returned home I found all of them dead in the living room, my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother, all except for grandfather. Can you possibly begin to imagine the horror of finding such a thing? Can you imagine it Bill?"

"No," I answered honestly, shaking my head.

"Grandfather had been shot twice in the chest," he continued. "He was covered in blood, both his own and that of grandmother who had been shot in the head while she'd been sitting next to him. He was dying fast but he was awake when I came in, he was alert. And he was staring at me, beckoning me over to him.

"I was still trying to deal with the knowledge that my entire family had been slaughtered like pigs, worse than pigs actually, people didn't torture pigs first. I was looking at their corpses, their beloved faces that were now dead and locked in screams of terror. My sister was lying naked in the middle of the room, her legs spread wide, bruises on her body, a hole in her throat from a bayonet. Father had died trying to protect mother with his body, he was lying atop of her, more than twenty bullet holes in his back. The bullets had simply traveled straight through him and into mother.

"I wanted to scream. I wanted to go find a rifle and start killing any Japanese that I saw. I wanted to attack their headquarters in Nanking personally, seeing how many of them I could kill before they cut me down. I wanted revenge Bill.

"I knew nothing about the gift that grandfather had for me; I wasn't the one whom it was intended for remember, but grandfather knew my state of mind at that moment and he also knew his time was very short.

"The gift can be a very dangerous thing. Extremely dangerous if it is used improperly. It is customary for the giver of the gift to act as advisor to the recipient long before the time comes for the passage. It is imperative that the gift be used wisely and not for the purposes of achieving power or influence. Grandfather did not have much time to convince me of several things. One that the gift existed in the first place, two, that I should not use it to either wish for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, which I probably would have done happily considering my state of mind, or to have my family back alive again. I must not do either of those things he told me as blood ran out of his mouth and he gasped for every breath. Do you know why he told me these things Bill? I suspect that you do."

"Fate," I answered. "You would have been tampering far too much with fate. If you had wished for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, who knows what could have happened, what sort of world would have resulted. Even though the major events of World War II hadn't happened yet, it would have altered the entire historical timeline."

"Yes," Mr. Li nodded. "Grandfather explained that was not a wise choice for that very reason. And as for wishing my family back alive,"

"It would have been basically useless," I finished for him. "They were fated to die. If you had brought them back alive then they simply would have been killed again the next day or the next week."

"Correct," Mr. Li said. "Grandfather told me that the use of the wish had to come from my heart and had to be a wish aimed at personal betterment. He was going fast, reaching the end of his strength when he asked me the question at last. What was my greatest wish?"

"What was it?" I asked, fascinated.

"Song, my love, the girl I'd been out to see that day, was the only thing I had left. The only thing. I wished for her and myself to survive the war unharmed." He told me. "A very simple wish, just as yours was, but one that had far-reaching implications, just as yours did."

"Song and I left Nanking, sneaking out past the occupation zone in the dead of night. We were never seen, never challenged. Of course not, we were guaranteed to survive the war unharmed. We made our way to Chinese controlled territory and we got married. The next day after our wedding I joined the army. For the next six years I fought the Japanese, killing as many of the bastards as I could get into my rifle sight. I charged machine gun nests in order to drop in grenades. I cleared paths for other soldiers across dangerous territory. I always took the point when out on patrols. Bullets whizzed around me so close that I could hear them. Artillery exploded all around me, sometimes close enough to knock the wind out of me, but never was I struck by anything. For those six years I was basically immortal. Then the Russians invaded Manchuria to help drive out the Japanese. The Americans dropped a couple of atomic bombs. The Japanese Empire was destroyed in the way it was fated to be destroyed and the war was over at last. The limits of my wish had run out.

"I returned home to find Song and the now five-year old son that I'd sired before heading off to fight waiting for me. It was time to start our life. It wasn't long however, before another war started, the civil war between the Communists and the old regime. I was loyal to the old regime but I wasn't protected in that war as I had been in the previous one. My immortality had ended. I did not fight. My family was among the first to flee to Taiwan. It was during the trip across the straights on a freighter that I finally received firsthand knowledge of how cruel, how vindictive fate was capable of being.

"We were strafed by a communist plane about halfway across. It came out of nowhere and only made one pass. Song was hit in the chest by a piece of metal that had been thrown from an exploding fuel tank on a jeep that had been hit. The piece of metal, no bigger than your thumb, missed every major organ but severed her spinal cord. She was left paralyzed from the chest down. She spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She was never able to give me any more children."

"We only stayed on Taiwan for a few years before we were allowed to immigrate to the United States. We settled in San Francisco and raised our son there. I found a job at the Port of San Francisco unloading ships. It was hard labor but it paid well. I did that until my retirement in 1980, working my way up to management eventually. Song remained my faithful wife but her health was always poor. She died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia in 1977.

"My son, Chang, attended Stanford University, obtaining a law degree much like your sister. He joined an exclusive firm and worked there for many years. He became fully Americanized, changing his name to John Lee instead of Chang Li. He sired one son before his marriage was dissolved in divorce.

He might have been worthy of the gift had he survived, but he didn't. In 1980, after years of eighty hour workweeks at the firm, he developed a bleeding ulcer, what is known in medical circles as a "GI bleed" I believe. He bled to death internally one night at the office when he ignored the persistent vomiting and diarrhea filled with blood, passing it off as a case of the flu.

"That leaves only my grandson, who is now thirty-eight years old. He too went to Stanford University but his major was business. He is an evil, corrupt man and I have nothing to do with him. His interests are in money and power and mostly in his own advancement. He works in Seattle as a high-ranking corporate officer for Pacific Healthcare. He makes more than two hundred thousand a year, plus stock options. He has a wife, three children, and two mistresses at my last count. His children are exact clones of him. The whole lot of them make contact with me as little as they can get away with, which is fine by me.

"It is here Bill, that we encounter dual realities. In the first reality, the one in which I met you for the first time in 1999, I was living in San Francisco in my old house I'd purchased my second year working at the port. I was a tottering old man, without much to say to anybody, without much to do. I watched the television, I played golf on occasion, but mostly I sat at home and did nothing. I was sedentary and cared about little. Perhaps I'd begun to become a little mentally unstable? I think that possible.

"In early 1997 I began to notice that it hurt whenever I urinated. Sometimes there would be a brown tinge to my urine. Finally it began to hurt a lot and the urine was consistently the color of fresh apple cider, that dark brown. When I finally dragged myself to the doctor to be examined it was discovered that I'd had prostate cancer. I say "had" because by the time I got checked, it had moved past my prostate and into my bladder and kidneys. It was making its first attacks on my colon and liver. It was much too far-gone for me to live much longer. Even radiation and chemotherapy only slowed it down a little. My days were numbered.

"When it got to the point in January of 1999 that I was unable to care for myself anymore, my grandson, who was listed as my beneficiary, pulled a few strings within his corporation and got me admitted to that concentration camp in Spokane. It was far enough away from him in Seattle and most of all, it was cheap. He sold my house in San Francisco and pocketed most of the money. He sent lawyers out to visit me to make sure my will was updated. He made sure that my doctor brought up the "do not resuscitate" order and made sure it was initiated. He sat by simply waiting for me to die so he would have one less inconvenience to worry about. Very American attitude, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," I nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. I'd been in every convalescent home in Spokane County at one time or another during my career. Of the forty or so that we have, perhaps three could be considered a quality type of place. The remaining thirty-seven were basically warehouses that people stashed their elderly relatives in to die. They were sentenced to those hellholes the moment it became inconvenient to care for them. And the vast majority of the residents of these places were not the relatives of the poor, they were not the relatives of ethnic minorities, they were the relatives of good old, white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class Americans. Mr. Li's presence in one had been an anomaly. One did not often find Asians in con homes. Asian culture has a much greater respect for the elderly than American culture.

"So there I laid," Mr. Li continued, "for more than six months. Getting worse every day, getting weaker, my mind and judgement deteriorating. Sometimes I was delirious, sometimes I couldn't even keep track of which day it was. And then came the final day, the day I met you. All that day I felt myself becoming more and more aware, more alert than I'd been in years.

The time of my death had come and the clarity that went with the gift was manifesting itself. The clarity was there, but my judgment was impaired severely. No offense Bill, but I never would have given you what I did if I'd been in my right mind. Never.

"But I didn't think of such things as the consequences of my actions. I didn't think about how dangerous a thing I was doing, I only thought about how, after the year I'd spent seeing the worst of America, seeing myself dying in that concentration camp, someone had finally come along that possessed some basic human kindness, some empathy. Someone who treated people with respect. I decided to take a chance on you and I offered you my gift. I had no time to explain the ramifications to you; it was an impulsive decision in the last few seconds of my life. I still had the ability to withdraw the offer if you had wished for world peace or immortality or something like that. Something that would have had dire consequences to fate and the world.

"But you didn't. You asked to be fifteen again, knowing what you knew at that point. That seemed almost noble to me. You obviously didn't believe anything would come of it but you used the gift for personal betterment. That was what it was intended for. I honestly didn't see the consequences to fate that might have occurred if you had been a less moral person than I thought you were. Thankfully my instincts were mostly right about you.

"At the moment of truth, at my dying seconds, I thought it had all been for nothing. When my grandfather passed the gift on to me in that house in Nanking, I'd felt a definite power shifting from his body to mine. It was the gift. I'd felt it enter me, felt it as a presence in me ever since that day. I knew at that instant that my wish had been granted and that the gift was now mine to pass on. I knew it."

"I didn't feel anything like that when you died," I told him, confused. "Nothing like that at all. To tell you the truth Mr. Li, I didn't think much about you at all once I wrote the paperwork and left the hospital. It was my nature. I could not allow myself to get involved in the tragedy I witnessed for my own sanity. And I never felt anything enter my body. If I have the gift with me now, I don't feel it at all."

"I understand your feelings at my death Bill," he told me. "I was in war and I probably understand them better than you do. I saw human suffering and loss during the war on a scale that you probably can't even imagine. So don't feel sorry for forgetting about me after you left. But as for the passing of the gift, you didn't feel it pass to you and I didn't feel it leave me because it involved time travel. Your wish was granted but it set up a paradox. Two people cannot possess the gift at the same time. It was not passed to you because by granting your wish I was left alive. That was why I thought it didn't work.

"I remember dying. It's not an unpleasant experience I might add. In fact, it feels almost blissful when your body finally accepts its demise. I'd never felt more at peace, more free of pain. I remember grieving absently that the gift had died with me. Everything finally went black. I was at rest.

"And then, seemingly seconds later I woke up in my small house in San Francisco and it was 1982 again. My body was functioning properly, my brain was functioning properly, and I had every memory of what had just happened. I was horrified by what I had done, by what I had put at risk. I could have destroyed the world Bill if you had wished for the wrong thing or if you had treated your gift differently once you were sent back."

"I knew that I was going to have to find you immediately and keep a close eye upon you." He cast a smile, "It's a good thing that you wore a nametag with your first and last on it or I might never have found you. You never told me your name.

"I moved to Spokane, leaving my small house in the hands of a real estate company. I located you as a teenager and I've been keeping an eye on you ever since, making sure you didn't put anything at risk." He gazed at me meaningfully, a little apologetically, "I'm sorry to say that I was prepared to arrange your death if you started to go too far off the path of morality."

I was shocked. "My death?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I would have done it without hesitation if you were putting the fabric of existence at risk. You came close a few times. I must say you were not very moral when you first returned. You put at risk more than twenty relationships by your philandering. You tried to stop an historical event from happening in Beirut."

"You knew about Beirut?" I asked, astonished, "how?"

"You had copies of your letters in your house, did you not?" he asked mildly. "I simply entered it when no one was home and took a look."

"You were in my house?!"

"Bill," he said, "I don't think you realize even today what was at stake with your wish. What you wished for was something I had no right granting. It put the entire world at risk. Of course I was in your house. I was in it more than a hundred times over the years, snooping through your things, trying to see what you were up to. I've been in the house that you share with Nina now at least fifty times. I've been watching you obsessively through my telescope. I needed to make sure that you've stayed on the straight and narrow. I don't think you realize the responsibility that I feel for empowering you in this way. You could have destroyed the world by utilizing your gift in the wrong way. Literally destroyed it. I was obligated to keep an eye on you."

"Jesus," I muttered, wondering at the fact that this man had been watching my every move for the last seventeen years. It was a spooky feeling.

"It was touch and go with you for a while," Mr. Li went on. "You teetered on the very brink of temptation those first few years. Thankfully I discovered the same thing that you and Tracy did, that fate tends to keep things in line despite your interference."

I looked sharply at him, "You know what Tracy and I talked about?"

"Your house was bugged," Mr. Li said. "I had transmitters in your telephones and in every room of the house. I listened to everything that you said to anybody." He gave me a stern, disapproving father look, "I heard every one of your "study sessions". I listened when you told Tracy about your gift. I listened when you told your father about your gift. I listened to your father and Tracy when you weren't there to see if they would tell anyone else about it. I couldn't monitor Tracy at Berkeley from Spokane unfortunately but I was able to bug your father's office. He kept the knowledge to himself and so, apparently, did Tracy.

"You gradually realized the proper use of the gift, for personal betterment.

You found love, which is perhaps the greatest thing on this earth. You did use the gift for money and you are very rich now, but you've never used it for power or influence. You've chosen well Bill. Only one time was I obligated to interfere in any way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, still trying to grapple with the knowledge that Mr. Li probably had logs of every time I'd taken a shit over the last seventeen years.

"Stevens Consulting," he said. "A very good idea. A wise use of the gift I might add. I used your service myself by working through an agent of mine. A man named Dean Stockwell."

"Dean Stockwell?" I gasped, remembering that he'd been one of my clients.

"Oh yes," Mr. Li grinned. "He accessed your services at my instruction. By then I was reasonably wealthy from my own insight but I wanted to make sure I was using an expert. Someone with the base knowledge to take full advantage of the knowledge we shared. But towards the end I sensed some greed in you. You had more than enough money to comfortably live out the rest of your life but you wanted more, you didn't seem to know when to stop.

I figured that you would need a little nudge to push you back on the path.

So I made an anonymous phone call, several of them as a matter of fact, to the FTC. They landed on you within days. Shortly after that, you retired."

"YOU did that?" I asked in disbelief.

He nodded. "I did. Sorry if that offends you. Anyway, while I've been monitoring you all of these years, I've also grown moderately wealthy. I've broken all contact with my son and his family. I went to see a doctor in late 1996 and they discovered the bare beginnings of prostate cancer in me. A single course of radiation and chemo and it was gone forever. I'm something of a health nut these days. I run forty miles a week. I've participated in five marathons. I have a resting heart rate of fifty and a blood pressure that is consistently in the nineties. I could probably live another twenty years at this pace." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't Bill."

"What do you mean?"

"I mentioned a paradox a few minutes ago. One has been created. The gift cannot belong to two people at once. When I woke up in San Francisco after dying in Spokane I could still feel the gift with me, could still feel it inside of me. I'd given it to you and your wish had been granted, but the gift itself had not been passed on because I remained alive as a result of the gift. That is the paradox. It is a paradox that will correct itself in a few minutes."

"Correct itself?"

He nodded. "If nothing is done, when the time of my death in the previous life occurs, everything will go back to the way it was. I will be dead, taking the gift with me. You will return to your previous existence with no memory of what has happened. You will simply wake up in bed in your apartment in Spokane as if nothing had ever happened. Your wife will once more be an unpleasant doctor married to a neurosurgeon. Your sister will be dead. The kids you've had with Nina will have never existed. The correction will have occurred."

That was the most horrifying thought that my mind had ever entertained. I would lose everything in a few minutes? Even the memories of the life I'd built? That couldn't be! It couldn't! I couldn't even speak, my horror was so complete.

"Before you ask," Mr. Li told me, "yes, I'm sure about this. We have less than twenty minutes now by my calculations. I have twenty minutes to live no matter how healthy I am, no matter what steps I've taken. Reality will simply go back to the way it was."

I shook my head in denial, in fear. Twenty minutes? Would I never see Laura or Jason or Megan again? Would I only see Nina as an enemy, not as a woman I loved, that I knew intimately? It couldn't happen, I couldn't accept it!

"But there is a solution," Mr. Li said softly.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The gift," he said. "I still have it. I can still pass it on to you."

I looked at him, not comprehending on the surface, but catching his meaning somewhat lower in my psyche. "But in order for you to pass on the gift, you have to…"

"Die," He nodded. "I'm going to be dead in twenty minutes anyway, one way or the other, no matter what happens. I cannot tell you what to wish for Bill, you have to decide for yourself, but there is a wish that you can make that will break the paradox. I've struggled over the years trying to decide if your family, which will be based upon your moral code, is worthy of having the gift transferred to or if I should simply let it die with me." He shrugged, "I don't know if I made the right decision or not but I like you Bill. I know you better than I've ever known anyone before, even my wife when she was alive. I think you deserve the chance. I will give you the gift tonight, right now and I want you to promise me that you will use it as it is intended, that you will follow the tradition, that you will teach your descendants the responsibility. Will you do that?"

"Mr. Li," I started, my body charged up. Was he talking about suicide? Right here in front of me? For the purpose of breaking the paradox? Was that really what he was talking about?

"Will you promise Bill?" He insisted, staring at me.

I continued to stare, feeling an incredible mix of emotions surging through me.

"Bill?"

"I promise," I finally said.

He smiled, nodding seriously. He picked up his beer and then took a swig of it. "Do you know what to wish for?" he asked me.

"I think so."

He reached into a pocket in his chair and pulled out a pistol. It was a chrome plated, semi-automatic. Its hammer was back. He looked at it for a moment, his hands trembling.

"Mr. Li," I said, shaking my head. "I can't go through with this. I can't sit here and watch you shoot yourself. I can't."

"Be strong Bill," he said. "It'll be over soon. Don't call anybody afterward. Just go home. The maid will find me tomorrow and start the machinery."

I was crying now, actually crying with fear. How could I sit there and let someone shoot himself? I couldn't.

"You can do this Bill," Mr. Li told me. "Remember, I'm going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. Save your family. Write your existence as it is now into the pages of fate. I've lived a full life. My last few years have been lived with good health and considerable comfort instead of dying and in pain. You've done me a favor. Now it's time for me to do you a favor."

I was trembling, crying, unable to leave, unable to stay. I've never felt so confused in my life as I did at that moment.

"There will be a few moments of clarity right before I die," he said, putting the barrel of the pistol under his chin. The contact kept his hand from shaking. "That goes with the gift. Be sure to take advantage of it Bill. Be sure to ask the right thing."

"I will," I choked, watching paralyzed as he held that gun to his chin. "I will."

The gunshot was flat and undramatic. The ejected shell casing flew across the room and landed with a clink on the fireplace bricks. A small spray of blood shot from the top of his head and his body slumped over to the left, the pistol falling forgotten to the floor at his feet. His eyes remained open, staring at me.

"Jesus," I muttered, watching blood pour from the hole in the top of his head, watching his left pupil begin to dilate. "Oh Jesus."

Mr. Li's dying lips began to move. There was blood in his mouth. Words began to form. They were choked and very liquid but perfectly understandable. "What… is your… greatest wish?" he asked me.

I took a step towards him, keeping my eyes focused on his face. It was difficult to do through the haze of tears. My own mouth opened, "I want everything to continue on as it has been." I told him.

He nodded, more blood pouring out of his mouth. "Excellent." he muttered and then his eyes began to glaze over as awareness left them. He slumped further over and his breathing began to become agonal in nature, very irregular. This went on for nearly five minutes. I kept my eyes upon him the entire time. At last he drew in a breath, let it out, and then didn't pull in the next one. His mouth became still.

At that moment I felt it. The power, the gift, leaving the dying vessel of Mr. Li and entering my body, my soul. I cannot describe exactly what it felt like. The closest thing I can come up with is the sensation of runner's high, the feeling of well being that creeps over you about two or three miles into a run as endorphins are released from glands in your body. A sensation that seems to start at the top and quickly work its way throughout, spreading from place to place, energizing you. That was the closest I could come to the sensation but that does not do it justice. All of a sudden I was empowered, I felt it take up residence in me, felt it nestling in. It was a sensation that I would carry with me always, until that moment when it was time to pass it on.

I stood there looking at Mr. Li, feeling the power in me for an unknown amount of time. Finally the sensation receded, leaving only a small core inside me. I felt like myself physically but at the same time I could feel the power tucked away, just waiting for release.

"Thank you Mr. Li," I finally said to his body. "Thank you for everything."

He had no answer for me. I left his house a few minutes later and climbed onto my Honda. I didn't head for home right away. Instead I took a long drive.

It was after midnight when I finally parked my motorcycle in the garage and carried myself into the house. My mind seemed clearer than it had been, more focused, more in perspective. I was beginning to grasp the depth of the gift I'd been given, the responsibility that went along with it. Just beginning mind you, I had a lot more growing to do, a lot more maturity to acquire.

I tossed my helmet on my workbench and forced my way between the cars and into the house. It was darkened, as you would expect at that time of night, everyone asleep, no one with any idea of how close they'd come to being simply erased or put into an alternate path.

I checked on Laura. She was three and a half years old, her face so much like her mother's. She likes to throw the covers off along with her pajamas as she sleeps. I found her curled in a ball in her room, her little butt sticking up, her thumb tucked into her mouth, her body shivering in the air conditioning. I put the covers back over her knowing it was an exercise in futility. Twenty minutes later they'll be off again.

I checked on Jason who was almost two. He is the opposite of Laura. He has covers piled thickly atop him. He has a collection of Hot Wheel cars that he can never keep confined to one place. I stepped on them in my bare feet as I gazed upon his sleeping form, as I listened to his soft breathing.

A short trip down the hall brought me to Megan's room. She was nine months old, almost ready to begin walking and talking. The first and only child to adapt my facial features. She is an aficionado of stuffed animals and they cover her bed, sometimes making it difficult to find her in there. She is also a poor sleeper, waking at the slightest noise. She hears my entrance into her room. She creaks her brown eyes open and gazes at me sleepily. I kiss her, hug her, tell her everything is okay and she drifts back to sleep.

I went to my own bedroom where Nina was sleeping soundly on her side of our King sized bed. Like Laura, she's not a big fan of either clothing or covers when sleeping. She's dressed only in a pair of panties, her breasts bare, her pillow hugged tightly to her face. In the dim light I could see the stretch marks on her stomach and the single line of scar that marks Megan's entrance into the world via caesarian section. Megan had been in the breach position. I looked at my wife with love, with deep feelings of gratitude towards Mr. Li, who made all of this possible.

I continued to stare at Nina, at her firm breasts, her bare thighs, her scarred but still flat stomach. We are happy together, still deliriously in love after more than fourteen years of marriage. We make love at least twice a week, often more. We sit together on the couch or in the bed or on the deck outside after she gets home from a day at the hospital and we do what we have always done best, we talk. Nina is still my best friend but she is still ignorant of the secret that I carry. She had no idea that a cosmic clock had nearly ticked away our life together. And she never will.

As if sensing my thoughts she mumbled in her sleep, rolling to one side, kicking the last vestiges of the covers off of her body. Her eyes opened and she saw me standing in the doorway, looking at her.

"Bill?" she asked sleepily, stifling a yawn, "what's the matter?"

"Nothing Babe," I told her reassuringly, "I was just checking on the kids. Go back to sleep."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

I gave her a smile. "Perfectly okay," I assured her. "Everything is just fine."

AN id=title>

Chapter 1

"I wanna go back and do it all over, but I can't go back I know I wanna go back cause I'm feeling so much older but I can't go back I know" – EDDIE MONEY

I was feeling stressed that day. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect it was perhaps the wisest thing I've ever said in my life.

I picked him up at a convalescent home in suburban Spokane; a withered, emaciated ninety year old. His race was indeterminable, he was so withered by time but his name on the bank of paperwork the con home staff had given me identified him as So Li, which, I was reasonably sure, made him Chinese. He was suffering from cancer, not just to one particular body part but throughout his entire body. I took one look at him and knew he wasn't long for this world. His breathing was ragged and irregular, his skin pale and feverish. His body probably weighed about seventy-five pounds if he was lucky. There was absolutely no muscle in evidence upon his bones and his flesh hung loosely from every extremity. Despite all of this he was mentally quite aware of his surroundings, something else I recognized almost immediately.

"How are you doing Mr. Li?" I asked him, bending over his form on the hospital bed.

"Can't…" He puffed softly. "Breathe." He finished.

I nodded, taking the stethoscope out of the leg pocket of my jumpsuit and putting it in my ears. I listened to his lungs, hearing nothing but bad news. He was barely moving any air at all. I'd been a paramedic for eight years but even a newbie could have seen that Mr. Li's survival on the trip to the hospital was in question. He needed a breathing tube placed in his lungs to help him.

The nurse (and I use that term loosely) was the epitome of white trash. Bleach blonde, sixty or so pounds overweight, and chewing a large wad of bubble gum as she peered at us. She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him LESS oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in the con home. My partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to our portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Li a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated." I said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" The nurse yelled, startling me. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Li gave her a contemptuous glance and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Li, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel NOT to use advanced life support measures to save their life. After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Li back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing me of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" I asked her pointedly.

She dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. I looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the Doctor's signature were all present. "Okay." I said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future." I advised the nurse. "Mr. Li can hear everything you say."

She scoffed at this, giving me a condescending look. "He's a gork." She told me, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And a gook on top of that. What's the big deal?"

I turned away from her in disgust. As hardened as I've become doing this job, it never fails to amaze me how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses can be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working THERE.

I returned to my patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Li?" I asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"

Looking in my eyes, he nodded his understanding.

"Is that your wish Sir?" I asked him. "For me NOT to do anything?"

He smiled slightly. "Yes." He panted. "It's… " A pause to breathe. "My time."

"As you wish." I told him

We loaded him onto our gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back I hooked him up to my EKG machine in order to allow me to watch his heart rate. I put my pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Li was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.

"Mr. Li?" I addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at me.

"I'm gonna start an IV on you." I told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to, you know, help you with the pain and the discomfort."

He smiled, nodding at me.

I went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile that I was forced to use the smallest needle that we carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. I threaded it in slowly, cognizant of the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.

"I'm sorry Mr. Li." I told him when I finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."

"Thank… " A pause. "You."

"No problem." I told him.

While I adjusted the drip rate I noticed him staring at me, a queer smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.

"You're a… good boy." He said, panting. "You treat me… with… respect… where… others don't."

"I'm just doing my job." I told him, returning his smile.

He shook his head. "Been taken… before… " He said. "Not all… like you. Not at… all".

"Well." I shrugged. "I try."

"What… " He asked. "Is your… greatest… wish?"

"My greatest wish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. He nodded.

I laughed, thinking of my life. I was a thirty-two year old private paramedic that had been doing the job too long. I wasn't a dirtbag by any means but I wasn't at the pinnacle of success either. My job was constantly in jeopardy of being taken away by the Spokane Fire Department, who were just itching to get into the ambulance business. Like many fire departments around the country, they had initiated so many fire codes and regulations over the years that they no longer had any fires to put out. They knew that it wouldn't be long before the tax-payers started wondering just what they were paying these guys for anyway and, as such, their mission for the next century it seemed, was a take-over of the medical aid business. Private ambulance companies, who didn't have the political clout or the hero reputation to exploit, had already fallen to them in cities and counties all around the United States. It was a nationwide trend. Spokane FD had already tried twice, getting voted down by the city council once and then, having the same body approve them later, they were stopped by a superior court judge. At my age, I was too old to get picked up by them when they were eventually successful and I didn't know how to do anything else. I had an ex-wife and an ex-kid to pay money to each month. In short, I was in a rut that I saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as I'm prone to doing, that shift. For that reason I answered Mr. Li the way I did.

"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"

He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.

I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.

Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.

I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.

Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?

I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.

I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?

A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.

"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."

School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.

"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.

"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.

"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."

This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."

"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"

The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"

"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."

She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.

Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!

I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.

I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).

"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.

I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."

He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.

I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.

As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.

"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.

I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."

She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.

"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.

There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.

She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."

"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."

"What?!" She said, amazed.

"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"

"Huh?"

"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"

She gaped at me, not answering.

"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"

"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."

I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"

"What do you… "

"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.

"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"

I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.

"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."

"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.

"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.

By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?

Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.

SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. AT amp;T BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.

I finished up my breakfast and found, after some searching, my backpack which contained all of my schoolbooks and papers. If my fifteen-year- old self was true to form, I knew my homework wouldn't be done and my assignments wouldn't be read. That was something I would have to rectify, I figured. One of the things I regretted later in life were my poor high school grades and study habits, which precluded me from getting into a top-rated college. How hard could the work possibly be now?

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of Mike Meachen, my best friend back in high school. Mike was a year older than I and had always been the dominant member of our friendship. From Mike I learned how to smoke marijuana, how to drink beer, how to smoke cigarettes, how to cut school. Mike would drop out in the eleventh grade and work a few menial jobs for a few years before taking his GED and joining the Air Force where he was eventually dishonorably discharged for marijuana use. I hadn't talked to him in years but the last I'd heard he was still living with his parents. Could I steer Mike onto a different path? I wondered as I went to the door and bade my family farewell.

Though I was expecting it, it was still startling to see him as a sixteen-year-old again.

"Sup?" He muttered to me, his version of 'what's up?'.

"Not much." I told him, careful to give no hint of the startling change in me just yet. I closed the door behind me and we started the two-mile walk to our high school.

I was surprised at the immaturity of his conversation as we trodded to school. It centered on his phony sexual exploits with girls I'd never met, which girls at our school he'd like to fuck, and other adolescent posturing. I had to remind myself that my conversation back then had been pretty much the same and that I now had seventeen years of maturity over him. I nodded and responded to his statements with appropriateness. He noticed no change in me. I'd always been quiet anyway.

As we got close to the school feelings of unreality washed over me again. I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in years. But I was seeing them as they were then, not as my mind was telling me they should look now (I had to keep reminding myself that NOW was THEN). They were in ones, two, and even groups of six or more, heading for school. Boys and girls both. I saw Steve Johan, who would join the Army after graduation and be killed in a helicopter crash. I saw Nina Blackmore, a skinny, nerdish, friendless girl who would go to medical school and work as an emergency room doctor at Spokane's trauma center. She would also acquire good looks early in college as her body filled out and marry a rich neurosurgeon. I saw Carrie Founder, one of the best looking girls in the school giggling with some of the other elite. Carrie I knew, would marry a loser and pump out four kids before divorcing. During that period she would put on nearly a hundred pounds. Eventually, she would end up living in a trailer park with some other white-trash loser. As I paramedic I would one day pick her up for overdosing on anti-depressant medicines and pretend I didn't know her. I saw lots of others that I hadn't thought of in years and others who's faces I recognized but who's names I could not come up with.

I would be lying if I said that my attention was not distracted by the girls. Like many men there was a special place in the part of my mind that controlled lust that was obsessed with the idea of bagging a teenager. It was no doubt because they were forbidden. It was something I'd never done or attempted to do before, knowing that the risks were not worth the benefits. But things were different now, weren't they? A horny part of my mind asked me. I was a teenager now! I could do it legally!

I had been shy back in high school, a phase I'd gotten over later in life. But as a result of this shyness, I did not manage to get myself laid for the first time until I was a senior in high school (and to be honest, it was late in the year at that). But I wasn't shy now, was I? My eyes began tracking through the crowds, taking in the lean forms of the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old girls, their tight asses, their firm breasts. I began to imagine the possibilities and my fifteen-year-old dick began to stir in my 501s. Although I intended to do as much good with the gift I had been given; there were so many things I could change or prevent now that I had pre-knowledge of it; it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a little fun; would it? Of course not.

My musings were interrupted by Mike.

As we came to the front of the school he jerked my arm, pulling me backward. "We'd better go around the other side." He said, alarmed. "Richard Fuckface and his asshole friends are standing over there."

I looked where he was indicating and saw a real blast from the past. Richard Fairview was one of many bullies at our high school. He was about six feet tall and about as dumb as a person could get while still remembering to draw breath every couple of seconds. He'd been one of the terrors of our school, his scam, when he wasn't beating people's ass for the fun of it, to post himself at an entry point and rip off lunch money from arriving kids that were dumb enough to approach him. As always he had five or six companions lounging there with him. They were all smoking cigarettes and eyeing the approaching throngs, looking for targets. I'd had my ass beaten by him a time or two. Had that happened yet? I wondered, unable to place just when those occurrences had taken place.

A smile formed on my face. In the ensuing seventeen years I'd learned a lot both about psychology and physical combat. Bullies, I knew, relied mostly on the complacency of their victims. They relied on their size and intimidation to get what they wanted. Very few of them actually knew how to fight. I, however, had worked for years at a job where physical assault by one's patients or one's patient's family members was an almost daily happening. Though somewhat of a wimp in high school, life had taught me a thing or two about hand to hand fighting. The most important thing I'd learned was that, while getting hit by a fist was painful, it wasn't THAT painful.

"C'mon." I told Mike, smiling still, heading directly towards Richard and his co-horts.

"Are you high?" Mike asked me. "He's got his friends there. I could kick his ass any day one on one but his friends will jump in."

"No they won't." I told Mike confidently. "Just watch. Stand back and don't do anything. His friends won't get in on anything."

"Bill?" He said, alarmed, but I strode purposefully forward. Reluctantly, he followed. I had to give him credit. He was loyal, willing to back me up in the face of these six guys.

"Trust me." I assured him. "Richard's about to fall from grace, big time."

As we approached the gang of bullies Richard himself eyed us and stepped forward, blocking our paths. To our right were the chain- linked bike racks. To our left was the school's perimeter fence. It was Richard's kind of tactical situation all right, blocking his victim in.

"Hey Billy-fag." He hailed, his gray, stupid eyes boring into me. "You got change for a dollar?"

I stared back at him, barely able to suppress a smile. "Yeah." I told him, my voice full of mocking contempt. "But you ain't getting' it."

He looked at me in shock, almost stepping backwards at my boldness. I think that he would have backed down right there except for the fact that a group of junior and senior girls were happening by at that particular moment and, hearing my words, stopped to see what would transpire.

"What did you say you little fuckin' pussy?" He enquired toughly, in disbelief.

I had to search through my memory banks to come up with a statement that was suitably insulting to a high school bully from the eighties. After a moment I came up with one. "I said, why don't you suck my dick asshole, if you're not too tired from fuckin' your momma all night."

His friends, as well as the group of teenagers gave a collective gasp. "You gonna let him say that shit to you Richie?" One of them asked, goading him.

"You're dead motherfucker." Richard said, advancing towards me, his fists clenched and raised in a pseudo-boxing stance.

I snorted contempt, which again almost gave him pause. He threw a haymaker right at my face, which, had it impacted, probably would have broken my nose. But it didn't. I easily sidestepped to the left, allowing his fist to whiz through thin air and spin his body around. Once he was turned away from me I stepped forward and drove my right elbow into his back, right above the kidney, as hard as I could. There was a solid thump followed by the whooshing of air being ejected from his lungs and a startled, painful cry from his lips. His hands dropped instantly down and he staggered forward two steps, holding his back.

I raised my right foot off of the ground and slowly placed it against his ass. With a hard shove of my leg, he was propelled into the chain link of the bike racks, making a musical jing as the metal was struck. He bounced off and landed on his ass on the grass, a stupid expression of surprise on his face.

While his friends gaped, unmoving at this development, the girls all erupted in fits of derisive laughter, pointing at him. As I'd planned, this infuriated him. He leapt to his feet and charged me, meaning to grab hold of me and take me to the ground, I was sure. But he hadn't learned from his first attack. He threw his weight forward and, once again, I easily stepped around him. As he passed I kicked his feet out from beneath him. He became horizontal for a brief second before crashing to the pavement, scratching up his hands and knees.

As he tried to get to his feet I hooked my foot forward, as if I was performing a kick-off in a football game, and connected directly with his face. There was an audible crunch as his nose was shattered along with several teeth. I pulled my foot back and watched as blood began to pour onto the ground from his face. He seemed quite dazed, frozen in place, so I stepped forward and kicked once more, this time connecting with his rib cage. I felt the crunch of ribs fracturing this time and Richie finally collapsed unmoving to the ground, guarding his side.

I looked at his friends, who were staring at me, mouths agape in disbelief. They could have stomped me to death in less than a minute had they wished but, as I'd figured, they didn't. I locked gazes with them, putting on the meanest expression I could call up. "You guys want some of this too?" I asked toughly.

None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.

"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.

I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.

I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.

From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.

"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.

"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."

We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.

"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.

I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."

"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"

Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.

"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"

"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."

"I thought so." I said.

Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.

"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.

I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"

"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.

I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.

"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."

"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"

I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."

"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.

"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"

"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.

"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."

"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.

"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."

He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.

While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.

"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."

She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.

"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"

"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "

"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"

"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "

"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "

"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.

She blinked at me in surprised respect.

"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."

"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"

She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "

She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?

The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.

"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.

"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.

A minute later, the class began.

I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.

My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.

Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.

"Now we've been discussing the circulatory system for several days now." She said at one point. "So can anyone tell me the complete route a blood cell takes through this system?"

Obviously she was expecting no hands to go up. It was almost, but not quite, a rhetorical question. She was met with blank looks from her class of thirty or so until I, deciding to have a little fun, put up my hand.

"Yes Billy?" She asked impatiently. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

I smiled at her shyly. I knew she was expecting nothing from me beyond that. I'd flunked her class. "No." I told her. "I was going to answer your question."

Her eyebrows went up. "YOU know the route a blood cell takes through the circulatory system?"

The class was looking at me now, obviously expecting me to make a joke of some sort, although I was not even known for that sort of behavior.

"I think so." I said softly.

She gave a patronizing smile. "Well do tell." She said.

"Okay," I began. "Why don't we start with an oxygenated cell as it leaves the heart. Is that a good starting place?"

She raised her eyebrows higher. "Sure." She finally said.

I nodded. "Okay. An oxygenated cell will be pumped from the left ventricle, through the aortic valve, into the Aorta, which will then branch into the descending and ascending Aortas. Of course at this point it may be sent to the coronary arteries but let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is not. From the aorta the cell will be pumped through the arteries into the arterioles and finally into a capillary bed somewhere where it will then give up it's oxygen molecule to a cell and pick up a carbon dioxide molecule for transport back to the lungs. At the point of transfer the capillaries will become veinuels. The cell will pass through these into veins, eventually making its way to either the superior or inferior vena cava, depending upon what part of the body it just oxygenated."

Mrs. Crookshank was obviously in shock, as if she'd seen a monkey suddenly start to talk. "Go on." She said numbly.

I nodded. "The vena cava lead, of course, to the heart. Specifically the right atria. The cell will enter the right atria and will then be pumped to the right ventricle. From there the cell will be pumped through the pulmonary valve to the pulmonary artery, which, I might add, is the only artery in the body to carry unoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery will take the cell into the pulmonary capillary system where it will drop off its CO2 molecule, which will then be exhaled by the lung, and pick up another oxygen molecule from the alveoli in the lung. From there the now oxygenated cell with pass through the pulmonary vein, the only vein in the body that carries oxygenated blood, to the left atria. The left atria will pump the cell into the left ventricle and the process starts all over." I smiled. "Takes a little over a minute I hear."

The class was completely silent, staring at me. Finally Mrs. Crookshank spoke. "That's exactly right Billy." She said. "Very good."

"I read a little bit on it." I said, casting my eyes back to my desk.

At lunchtime it became quickly apparent that I'd altered history, as it was, a little already. As I waited in the snack bar line, and as I found an empty seat on the quad, I could see that people were pointing at me and looking at me. When I would turn to look at them, they would cast their eyes away. I figured the word had spread about my fight with Richie. People were probably in disbelief. I could almost hear the conversations they were having. Him? That little wimpy guy? Kicked Richie's ass? Sent him to the hospital? How? Does he know karate or something? He must!

I didn't mind. Obviously the word on the fight had not leaked to the wrong set of ears. If it had, I probably would have been pulled into the principal's office to talk to the cops. After all, what I'd done was felony assault. Not that I was worried about that either. Would the cops really believe that I'd done such a thing?

Finally someone came over to ask me about it. It was one of the hard- core stoner crowd; a group that I'd sometimes hung out with but had never really been a part of. I remembered smoking grass with the guy, who was a junior, on occasion, but I couldn't remember his name. He had long, unkempt black hair and the beginnings of a mustache on his lip. I wondered if he knew how ridiculous it looked. He approached carefully, as if I might suddenly lash out at him.

"What's up dude?" He asked me.

I shrugged. "Not much. What's up with you?"

"Nothin'." He paused. "I heard you got in a fight with Richie Fairview today."

"You could say that." I agreed.

"I heard you put him in the hospital."

"Wouldn't know about that." I replied. "But I doubt he'll be rippin' off people for a while." I smiled. "And if he does decide to go back into business, he might just think twice about who he fucks with."

The stoner who's name I couldn't remember grinned. "You know karate or somethin'?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Just a little about psychology and life."

His eyes widened. "Trippy." He finally said, reminding me of a phrase I hadn't heard in a while. "Listen, me and Raisin and Debbie are gonna blow this scene and head over to Raisin's house. Smoke some buds and listen to some AC\DC. You wanna come with us?"

I didn't have the slightest idea who Raisin might be, but I knew who Debbie was, even without a last name supplied. She was a cute, though skanky redhead that hung out with the stoners. She always kept close to whomever possessed the little baggie, hanging all over them and flirting with them. But, if I remembered correctly, she very rarely gave up any pussy. The polite term for her would be cock-tease. And no matter how many times they failed to get laid by her, they still fell for it every time. Thinking of her made my dick stir a little in my pants again. She was older than I was, sure, but I was definitely more experienced. Could I seduce her? And even if I couldn't, the thought of smoking a little grass was appealing in and of itself. As a paramedic we were drug tested. I hadn't smoked any pot in the last seven years.

"I'm in." I told him, standing up and throwing the remains of my burrito in the nearest garbage can.

Apparently Raisin was the one with the pot. I remembered him when I saw him. He was a short, bleached blonde who, like many short people, had adapted humor as his defense. He was one funny motherfucker. We climbed into his car; an early seventies Ford Falcon. My as-yet- unnamed friend and I climbed in the back. Debby climbed in the front with Raisin, who was looking real hopeful about his chances.

As he screeched out of the school parking lot Debbie giggled. "Fire up a joint NOW Raisin." She said. "C'mon. Getting stoned always get me horny."

"Can't Baby." Raisin replied, turning a corner at near-suicidal speed. "Don't have any rolled yet. Just hold your titties for a few. We have to get some papers."

She feigned a pout at his words and I took a moment to appraise her. She really was pretty good looking in a future trailer trash sort of way. Her red hair appeared natural, her tits firm and jiggly. As was the style of the eighties, she had on too much make-up. But I felt I could live with that. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, fresh no matter how skanky she appeared. I was determined to bag her. I thought I knew how.

Raisin pulled the Falcon into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. He backed into a spot near the back corner.

"Okay, here's the deal." Raisin told my back seat companion and me. "Bill, how much money you got?"

I shrugged. "About three bucks or so."

"Good." Raisin said. "You go up to the counter and buy a candy bar or something. Lonnie," He turned to my now-named companion. "While he's got the clerk distracted, you swipe a pack of papers from the display."

"Man, I hate doing this shit." Lonnie whined. "Why don't we just use a toilet paper roll or somethin'?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' barbarian?" Raisin enquired. "I refuse to smoke out of something that used to hold paper that I use to wipe my ass with. Just get the fuckin' papers."

Lonnie exited the vehicle, still whining, and I exited with him.

"Why don't we just buy the papers?" I asked, following behind him.

"Cause," He explained, as if I was an idiot. "They won't sell 'em to kids."

"As far as I know it's not against the law to buy papers." I opined. "Let me handle this."

Lonnie was doubtful but obviously agreeable to anything that didn't put him in harm's way. I pushed through the door of the store, making a little bell chime. The clerk was smoking a cigarette and watching a small television set. He was about twenty or so and looked as if he'd been rolling up some herb himself. He eyed us suspiciously as we entered.

I pulled out my money and then pulled a pack of zig-zags from the display and put them down on the counter. The clerk looked at them for a minute and then looked at me.

"How old are you kid?" He asked, taking a puff off of his smoke.

"Fifteen." I said.

"Uh huh. And what are you going to do with those? Let me guess, they're for your father."

"Nope." I said simply, shaking my head. "They're for my friends and myself. You see, we just scored some killer bud and now we want to smoke it. That requires papers, as I'm sure you're aware. So, how much?"

The clerk stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

"Now come on." I said reasonably. "Would you rather we came in and tried to steal them? That would be counter-productive for all concerned, wouldn't it? We're not asking to buy cigarettes, just papers. They're not controlled substances are they?" I smiled. "C'mon, didn't you used to cut school and get stoned? Help out the younger generation here."

He stared for another instant and then began to chuckle. "Fuckin' classic." He said, shaking his head. He picked up the pack of zig-zags and rang them up. "Seventy-nine cents." He said.

I started to hand him a buck and then paused, my eyes looking at a display behind him.

"Oh," I said. "And how about givin' me a three pack of those Trojans there? The unlubricated ones." I winked at him. "We got a girl with us too and I think I might find some use for them."

"That was fuckin' radical." Lonnie proclaimed as we left the store. "Totally!"

"Let me tell you somethin' Lonnie." I told him. "I've found that you'll get a lot farther in life using that approach then tryin' to sneak around the issue. Keep that in mind."

"Trippy." He said again. "But why'd you buy the rubbers? You don't think you're gonna get into Debbie do you?"

"You never know." I told him. "It's best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Avent-you-what?"

"Never mind." I said, opening the back door. The condoms were in my pants pocket. The papers I tossed to Raisin. "Let's go get stoned." I told him.

As I suspected she would be, Debbie was putty in my hands. We went to Raisin's house, which was actually an apartment. I'd been in the apartment complex many times as a paramedic on calls. It was populated with various varieties of unemployed trash living off of welfare. It was strange being in them in a way. They looked exactly the same as they had\would in my when. Raisin's mom, a single mother, was employed and spent the day at her job. This made Raisin's apartment a favored locale for school cutting, pot smoking teenagers. The apartment was cleaner than most I entered on calls, but not by much. It was a two bedroom and there were dishes scattered everywhere but at least the laundry was picked up and there were no roaches in evidence. The entire place reeked of stale cigarette and pot smoke.

Raisin put on an AC\DC album, Highway to Hell, and cranked up the volume. He then went about the task of rolling up a fat one which he lit and passed around. Predictably Debbie sat next to him on the couch, cooing at him and flirting with him. By the time the third cut on the album was playing, we were all pleasantly stoned; me probably more so than the others since I'd been away for a while.

"Isn't Bon Scott the greatest fuckin' singer on earth?" Raisin asked the room at large.

Lonnie gave a concurring opinion and even Debbie agreed, although it was easy to read her face and see that she didn't give a rat's ass about Bon Scott. I tried to remember who teenaged girls had been into back in the early eighties and drew a blank.

The conversation traveled around the room for a few minutes, long enough for me to be appalled by its immaturity. Both Raisin and Lonnie were trying like hell to win Debbie's favor but their attempts were pathetic at best. Lonnie was talking about how many push-ups he could do. Raisin was talking about how many beers he could drink before he puked. Had I been like this once? I feared that I had. No wonder I hadn't gotten laid until I was nearly eighteen. It was time to liven up the conversation a little.

"Have you guys ever considered," I asked. "How much religion has fucked up our views on sex?"

That got their interest. They all looked at me, wondering if I was telling a joke.

"What?" Debbie finally squealed.

"Think about it for a second," I explained, knowing that when you were stoned it was real easy to 'think about it'. "The drive to reproduce is, aside from food and water, the most powerful urge in the human body. We want to have sex; we NEED to have sex. It's programmed into us, into our genes and chromosomes. If a species didn't want to have sex, which after all is for reproduction, it could not perpetuate itself."

"Per-what?" Lonnie, his eyes open less than a quarter inch, asked.

"It could not keep the race alive." I termed it. "If we were not programmed with the urge to screw each other, we would have died out long ago. So, the urge to screw is given to us by God or chance or whatever, so that we will survive forever. It's a natural urge that serves a basic function, right?"

"Yeah." Debbie said, her eyes twinkling a little. Lonnie and Raisin had to agree with my logic too.

"Now we all feel these urges. I myself feel them very strongly." I gazed meaningfully at Debbie as I said this. She blushed a little but held my gaze. "Sometimes it's all I can think about. It's a bitchin' thing really. For the most part, guys want to put their dicks into a girl's pussy. Girls want to have a dick put INTO their pussy. Am I right?"

"Fuckin aye!" Lonnie nodded.

"Hell yeah." Raisin agreed.

Debbie refused to comment, she just giggled.

"But then you got religion fuckin' us all up." I went on. "There's some other social factors in there too, but religion is the biggest one. Here you have a natural urge, the urge to reproduce. It's a function of your body. But you got religion tellin' you that it's dirty. They make people feel guilty for these urges which occur through no fault of their own. They tell you that sex is wrong. They tell you to NEVER do it before marriage, and then they tell you that it's okay to do it when you are married but not to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you're sinning."

"Yeah!" Lonnie put in. "That's fucked up."

"And if that wasn't bad enough." I went on, watching Debby carefully now. She was staring with rapt attention. "Religious influence throughout our history has led to the passing of laws against certain types of sexual acts. Did you know that in the State of Washington it is illegal for a man to eat a pussy."

"What?" Debbie and Lonnie said together; Debbie blushing a little.

"Yep." I nodded, picking up the roach in the ashtray and taking another hit. I was really rocking now. "And it's also illegal for a woman to suck a man's dick. Its called oral copulation in the penal code and it's listed as a crime. Now here we have an activity that people enjoy doing to each other." I paused, smiling at Debbie. "At least I know I enjoy the shit out of eating a nice pussy. An activity that hurts no one but that if fact brings a GREAT deal of pleasure to people. At least when I do it anyway. But, thanks to religious assholes back in our history, it's illegal. I could be arrested for, say, eating out Debbie there. And she could be arrested for giving me a BJ."

"You've never eaten a pussy before." Debbie giggled, her eyes shining.

I looked at her meaningfully. "Debbie, I'm an expert at eating pussy. I bet that I could make you come in less than ten minutes using only my tongue upon your gorgeous body."

She swallowed nervously. "Oh really?"

"Really." I said. "Come here a second." I patted my lap.

"Why?" She challenged. Lonnie and Raisin were both speechless, watching this development.

"Just come here and let me give you a little sample of what my tongue can do for you." I chuckled. "Unless you're scared that is. Afraid I might make you lose control."

"You talk pretty bold little boy." She informed me nervously.

"Come here." I whispered, staring lustfully at her. "Let me show you a sample."

She hesitated for another second or so and then curiosity got the better of her. She stood and walked over to me. I patted my lap again.

"Sit down." I told her, reaching out and touching the side of her right leg. The denim of her jeans was tight. Tight enough to let me feel the muscle of her leg beneath it.

She sat on my lap, turning her face towards me, her eyes transfixed upon my face. "Well?" She said.

I reached up and took her face in my hands, feeling the soft skin of her cheeks. I pulled her forward, drawing her lips to mine. She came willingly, parting her lips. I kissed her softly, feeling her puffy lips meeting mine. I darted the tip of my tongue forward slowly, touching the inside of her lip and running it back and forth, tasting the smooth membranes and feeling the back of my tongue rubbing against her top teeth. I withdrew my tongue for an instant and then darted forward with it once more. Her tongue shot out to meet it this time. I swirled the tip of mine with hers, marveling at the fact that I was making out with a sixteen year old girl. My cock jumped to full attention.

I gave her my best kissing, sucking lightly on her tongue and lips, nipping a little at them. It was undoubtedly a far cry from what she was used to, which was probably some brute ramming his tongue down her throat. I used my tongue like an instrument, tasting her young mouth, and arousing her. She pulled herself closer to me, forgetting that two other people were in the room. Her sweater clad breasts pushed against my chest.

I kissed across her cheek to her neck, licking and sucking on it softly, working my way upward, nibbling at her soft flesh. When I reached her earlobe I nipped at it and then slid my tongue softly through the hollow of her jaw. I blew lightly in her ear and then began to whisper to her.

"Have you ever been kissed like this before?" I asked.

"No." She groaned, her hands moving up and down my back.

"Do you like the way my tongue feels against your skin?"

"Yes." She panted, trembling all over now.

"Imagine this tongue and this mouth sliding all over your beautiful body. Imagine it suckling your nipples like a newborn baby. Imagine it kissing your tummy, your legs, sucking on your toes, and finally going between your legs and licking you there. Eating you until you come in my mouth."

"Ohh." She squeaked.

"You want that, don't you?" I whispered in her ear. "You want to come in my mouth, don't you? Has anyone ever made you come before?"

"No." She shook her head as I nibbled her earlobe again.

"I can." I told her. "I can make you come until you beg me to stop. I can make you come until you scream. Would you like me to?"

"Oh god." She whined, loud enough for the other two to hear.

"Would you?" I repeated.

"Ohhhh." She was now trembling all over, her skin flushing.

I ran my tongue across the side of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, until it was teasing the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. I sucked a little and then raised up and kissed her again. Her tongue eagerly sought out mine, sucking it into her mouth a little harder than I liked, almost painfully. That was okay. I knew I had her.

I pulled her tighter against me, feeling her breasts push into my chest. They were firm and oh so young. My instinct was to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted her to ask me, to beg me to take her there.

I put my lips back near her ear and began to whisper to her again. "You're getting hot from my mouth, aren't you Debbie?"

"Yessss!" She hissed, breathing rapidly. "I've never…, ohhhh!"

"I've gotten you this hot by just kissing your face and your neck." I whispered. "Imagine what else I can do for you. I can give you pleasure you've never dreamed of before. All you have to do is ask me. Ask me to show you."

"Ohh God." She moaned again, grasping me tighter against her. She was approaching the edge of control. I knew that she was now mine, that if I stood up and led her to the bedroom, she would come. But I wanted her to ask me.

"Just ask." I told her, nibbling her ear again. "Just ask me to show you and I will."

"Please?" She said immediately. "Show me. You have to show me!"

I smiled, breaking the kiss. I gave her butt a little pat, indicating she should stand up. She did so, ignoring Raisin and Lonnie, just staring at me with glazed, lustful eyes. I stood too.

"Hey Raisin," I asked, smiling. "You mind if I borrow your room for a while? Me and Debbie have to talk."

He was speechless, just staring at me. Though I didn't want to, I could see that he'd sprung a woody watching the two of us.

"I'll take that as a yes." I said, grabbing Debbie's hand and leading her there. She didn't even look back.

Raisin's room was suprisingly pretty neat. His bed wasn't made but the floor was free of laundry and there was little debris lying around. I led Debbie inside and then shut the door. It was latched less than a half a second before her mouth slammed into mine and her tongue was probing for my tonsils. She pulled me tight against her, grinding her crotch into mine, rubbing her hips in circles.

"Oh god," She said, breaking the kiss and licking at my neck. "I've never been this fuckin' turned on before. I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I have that effect on women." I said, kissing her back and leading her over to the bed.

We sat down on the foot of it and I kissed her again, running my hand up under her sweater. I felt her smooth stomach and the cups of her bra for a moment before pushing upward, lifting the hem of the sweater over her head. She raised her arms to allow me to remove it. I tossed it to the floor next to the bed.

I began kissing her smooth shoulders while my hands slid around her back, finding the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick of my fingers the clasp was undone, allowing the bra to sag free. I pulled it off of her and tossed it to the floor next to her sweater.

I leaned back and stared at her chest for a moment. Her tits were almost more than I take. I had to restrain myself from simply attacking them. Though large for a teenager, they were firm, unaffected by years of gravity pulling on them. The nipples were small but erect, standing out proudly. The flesh was slightly paler than the surrounding skin. Sixteen year old tits! My mind screamed at me.

She saw my gaze and flushed deeper, covering them with her arms. Obviously my eyes upon her embarrassed her.

Gently I reached out and pulled her arms back down. "Don't cover them up." I said softly. "They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

She was nervous, not saying anything but giving me a slight giggle.

I reached out and stroked them softly with my fingers, running the tips around the perimeter, feeling the young, springy flesh, testing the weight of them. She sighed a little as I did this. Again, she was probably expecting me to maul them as a normal teenager would. I let the tip of my fingers circle inward, finally just flicking her nipples. She shuddered at the contact.

She was actually trembling as I leaned forward and began planting kisses on her bare shoulder. I let the underside of my tongue slide downward along her flesh, across the top of her heaving chest until I encountered the swell of her tit. I began sucking and licking the delicate skin there, giving the occasional soft nip with my teeth. Her hands landed on the back of my head, trying to push me down to the nipple. But I refused.

I kissed and sucked my way all over her right breast, moving from top to bottom, running my tongue over the underside and her lower chest, relishing the taste of her young skin, driving her nearly crazy with my teasing, but avoiding the nipple. Finally I repeated the process on her left breast. I then slid my tongue between the two, feeling them pushing into my cheeks on either side. She was now whimpering, almost crying in her desire.

At last I moved my mouth to the right nipple. I flicked at it with my tongue, tasting and feeling it's texture. At the contact she pushed her chest forward, trying to force it into her mouth, but I backed away at the same rate she advanced, frustrating her. I began sliding my tongue around the perimeter of the nipple, making it swell further. Finally I took it in my mouth and began suckling it gently, just as an infant would do.

"Ohhhh." She moaned, her fingers running through my hair. I pushed her to her back on the bed and went to work in earnest.

I worked on her nipples for more than ten minutes, moving from one to the other, tasting them, sucking them, loving them, until her hips began to move up and down. As I did this I reached down with my hands and pulled off her shoes, letting them fall to the floor. Her socks followed this.

Once she was barefoot, I began kissing my way downward, paying particular attention to her flanks, which I'd realized in my mid- twenties was a powerful erogenous zone on women when a tongue and mouth is applied to them with the right pressure. When I reached the waistband of her jeans I kissed along it, heading for her stomach, darting under the hem with the tip of my tongue. Her tummy was a work of art in and of itself. It was as smooth as the proverbial baby's butt, unlined by stretchmarks or any other signs of time. I reached her bellybutton and teased it for a moment, making the muscles in that part of her body go into seizure. I then trailed the back of my tongue downward again, until I reached the top of her jeans.

She was wearing button-fly jeans. I reached up and slowly undid the first button, revealing just a hint of her lower stomach. The flesh there was even paler than that of her breasts. I kissed and sucked that which was revealed for a second and then undid the second button, repeating the process.

When I undid the third button the top of her panties came into view. They were sparkling white, a sharp contrast against her skin. I captured the cotton material in my teeth for a second, pulling them lightly away from her body briefly before releasing them. As I did this I caught the first whiff of her odor. It was fresh and musky, the scent of a teenager, and only touched my olfactory senses for an instant. But it was enough to make me pick up the pace.

I ripped open the rest of her buttons and disengaged myself from her, so that I was kneeling at the foot of the bed. I put my hands in the waistband of her jeans and began tugging.

"Raise your hips." I commanded.

She instantly obeyed, obviously eager for me to get on with what I'd promised her. I pulled the jeans downward, struggling a little but finally removing the tight material from her body. They joined the sweater and the bra on the floor, leaving her lying before me in only her white, cotton panties.

I paused long enough to take off my own sweater, leaving me bare from the waist up. She stared at me lustfully as I did this, her legs twisting this way and that, unable to come to a rest. They were very pretty legs, smooth as silk, lightly tanned. Looking between them I could see that the crotch of her panties was wet, sucking lightly into her pussy. My mouth began watering as I captured her legs and placed them on my shoulders.

I reached forward and grabbed the waist of her panties. She raised her hips without instruction this time and I pulled them off, tossing them to the floor and returning her legs to my shoulders. I was now looking at her pussy. An actual sixteen year old pussy. The lips were swollen and inviting, her clit peeking out of its hood. There was a growth of reddish-brown hair, thick on the top, sparse around the lips. Her odor was now strong in my nostrils, making me giddy, the smell of a teenager in heat.

"Have you ever been eaten before?" I asked her, letting my finger lightly slide between her wet lips, parting them.

"Yes." She panted, still trembling. "Once."

"How was it?" I asked.

"It was okay." She said. "Please, do it now?"

I smiled. "Okay? Did you come?"

"No." She shook her head and then repeated. "Please?"

"Then you were just licked before." I told her, sliding my finger into her about a half an inch, far enough to feel that she was TIGHT. "Prepare to be EATEN."

"Ohhhh." She moaned as I moved my head forward.

I licked between those wonderful lips, tasting her nectar, feeling her smooth membranes with my tongue. I probed in and out, lapping like a cat a bowl of milk. She moaned as I did this, spreading her legs wider. I ran my hands up and down her smooth thighs while I continued to lick at her.

Her pubic hair tickled my face as I sucked each lip in between probes with my tongue. When her hips began gyrating on the bed I began making stabs at her clit. The stabs took her breath away, made her squeal in delight with each one. I ran my tongue around her erect clit for a few moments and then finally took it between my lips and began to suck on it gently.

"Ohhhh!" She screamed. "What are you…? Ohhhhh!"

I increased the suction on it, stabbing rapidly with my swirling tongue as I did so. Her hips began moving up and down rhythmically. Her sexy legs wrapped around my back, pulling me closer.

"Ohhh Yesss!" She cried. "Ohhh Yesss! Oh God!"

Shortly her clit sucked back into its hood and her hips and pubis began slamming into my face. It became difficult to keep my lips where they belonged but I had experience reading the rhythm. I plunged two fingers into her, feeling that tight sheath contract around them. I almost came in my pants right there when I felt that tightness. Oh how good that was going to feel when I got my cock in there.

With a long, high-pitched scream she came in my mouth, her hips battering me nearly senseless and then finally slowing to a stop. But I wasn't done yet. I pulled my face away from her but continued to finger-fuck her. I looked in her eyes as I did it. Her eyes had a mad glint in them; an expression she wasn't supposed to wear for another five years or so. She was panting and licking her lips, her tits heaving up and down.

"Did you like that?" I asked her, driving my fingers in and out. Her hips already were picking up the rhythm again.

"Yess!" She hissed. "Oh god, I never knew anything could… " She couldn't finish. She simply closed her eyes and humped back at my hand.

I smiled and then lowered my face to her crotch once more.

"Again?" She cried. "Ohh God!"

It only took two or three minutes to pull the second orgasm from her. The third took even less time. By the time I pulled my face away and stood up, she looked nearly insane.

"Are you ready to get fucked now?" I asked her, opening the fly on my own 501s.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her eyes glued to my crotch.

"Answer me." I told her. "Are you ready to get fucked?"

"Yes!" She yelled, nodding vigorously. "Oh yes!"

I kicked off my shoes and socks and then dropped my pants, pausing long enough to pull one of the condoms from the pocket. I tossed the condom on the bed by her feet and then dropped my underwear, letting free my straining, fifteen-year-old cock. It wasn't quite as long and thick as it would eventually be but Debbie didn't seem to mind. She spread her legs wider.

"C'mon!" She told me. "Let's do it."

I picked up the condom and ripped the package open, letting it fall to the floor. I rolled it over my cock expertly, giving it a tug to make sure it was on correctly. It was. Debbie watched this all with aroused curiosity. It was obvious that she'd never seen anyone put on a rubber before, though I was sure, due to the lack of a hymen, that she'd been fucked. I understood. Teenagers didn't give a shit, didn't think about consequences. But I did.

I climbed back on the bed and positioned myself over the top of her. Our lips came together again, our tongues swirling back and forth once more. Her firm tits were against my chest and my outer thighs were against her inner thighs. I grabbed my cock in my hand and put the head against her wet lips, sliding it up and down a few times, wetting the condom.

"Do it!" Debbie yelled, pushing her hips upward.

Slowly I pushed forward, allowing the head of my cock to slide inside of her. Her tunnel grasped me tightly, feeling as if a hand was gripping me, and I could slide no further. I pulled out and pushed again, gaining a little more ground with each thrust. Finally I was all the way inside the tightest box I'd ever imagined, let alone been in. This was what fucking was supposed to be like.

I began to thrust in and out, feeling her clamping on me as I slid back and forth. After a few moments she loosened up a little, allowing me to pick up the pace. I then began to slam in and out with practiced strokes, being sure to grind my pubic bone against hers with each thrust. She moaned and clawed at my back with her nails as I fucked her, her hips rising and falling counter to my own. Her skin began to perspire heavily, making our bodies slide exquisitely together, as if greased. She kissed on my neck and my ears, her tongue strokes copies of what I'd done to her earlier.

I suddenly got up to my knees, putting her legs on my shoulders while I continued to fuck her. I was able to look down upon her supine body, to watch my cock sliding in and out her slit, to see her sweaty tits bouncing back and forth, to see her face, to watch the rapture in her eyes. I stroked her legs up and down, kissing on her calves for a while and then I began feeling those beautiful breasts, squeezing them a little rougher now. I slammed harder and harder into her, making her grunt and moan. When she came again she pulled me back down to her and thrust her tongue back in my mouth.

I was at the end of my rope by then so I went for the final push. I fucked as hard as I could, sweat dripping off my face, that tight pussy gripping and releasing me. I felt the sensation of pure pleasure starting in my groin and spreading quickly throughout my body from there. I began to groan myself, losing control of my thrusting rhythm, only battering her like an animal. The pleasure of orgasm assaulted me, had its way with me, completely took my body over for an indeterminate amount of time. It was pleasure on the purest level. My God, I could not remember when orgasms had felt like that. It made the ones I had as an adult feel like a little spasm in comparison. I shot blast after blast inside of her (inside the condom actually), continuing to pound away until I fell exhausted atop of her.

We kissed each other for a moment and then looked in each other's eyes. Hers were full of confusion and doubt.

"Wow." She whispered finally. "That was… that was awesome. Totally bitchin'."

I smiled, kissing her nose and pulling myself out of her so the condom wouldn't come off in her pussy.

"Thank you." I said, rolling to my back next to her.

She was still looking at me. "It was almost like…, I dunno." She shook her head.

"Like what?" I asked, grabbing the condom and pulling it off neatly, not spilling so much as a drop.

"Like you were, oh, I dunno, older or something. It didn't seem like I was doing someone younger than me."

I stared at her for a moment, holding the slick condom between my fingers. I chuckled. "I'm just wise beyond my years baby. That's all."

She looked at me doubtfully as I tied a knot in the condom and stood up. "What now?" She asked. "Are we like, going together now?"

Going together? I thought, accessing my memory again for what that term entailed. Finally I remembered. Boyfriend/girlfriend type of thing. Not supposed to date anyone else. I certainly didn't want that. "No." I told her. "We were just two stoned friends having a little fun together. That's all. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?"

Relief was evident on her face. She didn't want to 'go' with anybody either. "I guess it don't." She answered, then she soured. "But I guess I'll be the school slut for a while." She looked at me as I picked up my clothes from the floor. "You know, it was worth it though. Where did you learn how to, you know, like that?"

"Oh, here and there." I answered. "But there's no reason why you have to be the school slut you know. I'm not gonna tell anyone what we did."

Her smile was cynical beyond its years. "Sure you won't." She answered. "You won't tell anyone that you're the one to bag Debbie Walker."

"I won't." I said, pulling on my pants. "For what purpose would I do that? So all of you girls can talk about what a fuckin' blabbermouth I am? How will I ever get any pussy that way? No girl's gonna fuck a loudmouth. However, if you have the reputation as someone that can keep his mouth shut no matter what… well, where do you think I learned how to do what I did?"

She looked hopeful for a moment, wanting to believe me. But then she shook her head. "Even if you do keep your mouth shut, which I doubt, Raisin and Lonnie know what we did. They won't keep theirs shut."

I shrugged. "I'll tell them you wouldn't give it up. I'll call you a fuckin' cock tease when I tell them about it, kissing on me and lettin' me feel your tits a little through your sweater, but not lettin' me go any further. They'll believe it."

"YOU are going to tell them THAT?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd just explained that there really was a Santa Clause and an Easter bunny.

I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Sure." I told her quietly. "You can trust me for that. You really can. I promise. And you don't even have to trust me. Just say you didn't do anything with me but kiss me. If I'm lying and I blab to everyone, how much worse off are you anyway?"

"I suppose." She said doubtfully.

"But do me a favor." I said.

"What?"

"Well, I know you don't believe me now, but when a few weeks go by and you find out that I kept my promise, just keep me in mind the next time you get a little horny. I can be very discrete."

"Discrete?" She asked.

"Never mind." I said, pulling on my shirt. "Just keep me in mind. And if you and some of your friends ever get to discussing things like sex with each other, and if one of them ever happens to express frustration that she can't get herself fucked without the whole school knowing about it." I smiled. "Maybe you could just mention my name to them. If you know what I mean."

She stared at me for a second and then started giggling. "Are you SURE you're only fifteen?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "The best age of your life Debbie. Believe me."

Chapter 2

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all" – PAUL SIMON

Raisin dropped me off at home about 2:30 that afternoon. It was more than a half an hour before the time I was SUPPOSED to get home from school, but I knew that both my Mom and Dad would still be at work. Debbie had already been dropped at her own house. She was walking a little funny as she headed for her front door. We all watched her ass as it retreated. The moment she was out of earshot the interrogation began.

"How was she?" Lonnie asked, nearly slobbering with excitement. "Man, I can't fuckin' believe you scored with Debbie. "

"Yeah," Raisin grinned. "What a slut. Wait'll everyone hears about this shit!"

"Fuck that bitch. " I grumbled, sinking in my seat. "She wouldn't give it up. "

"What?" They said in unison.

"But we heard you in there. " Raisin protested. "She was moanin' like a fuckin' freight train. "

I shook my head. "She's a good actress. " I told them. "All she let me do was feel her tits a little through her sweater. Every fuckin' time I tried to put my hand underneath it she'd slap it away. Fuckin' cock-tease. "

"You didn't fuck her?" Lonnie asked, crushed. "What were you doing in there all that time?"

"Just makin' out. " I said. "Believe me, I tried but that bitch is harder to get into than Fort Knox. "

They were looking at me in confusion. The rule of teenaged boys of course is that even if you didn't fuck them, you told people that you did. I could almost see the wheels of irrational logic turning in their heads. If I said that I hadn't fucked her when I could easily have claimed that I had, I therefore must not have even come close to fucking her. The thought that I might actually have bagged her and was keeping it secret was so foreign a concept to them that they were able to ignore the overwhelming evidence before them and draw the conclusion I wanted them to draw. They probably figured I was even lying about feeling her tits since some embellishment was mandatory.

"That's too fuckin' bad man. " Lonnie commiserated. "I really thought someone was gonna bag that bitch this time. "

"Nope. " I said. "The same old shit. Why do we even try?"

"Some day," Raisin vowed with all the dramatics of Scarlet O'Hara proclaiming she would never go hungry again. "That bitch is gonna give it up. "

"I doubt it. " I offered. "She's good at giving blue balls though. The cunt. "

They bid me a sad farewell as I exited the car and soon the Falcon was roaring down my street, belching huge clouds of black, stinking exhaust from its tailpipe. As they disappeared I sighed with the kind of satisfaction that only a man who has just gotten laid can display. I headed for the house thinking that being fifteen again was all right. I'd wished well.

I was appalled by what I found inside. When the door opened the sound of Van Halen cranked at top volume hit my ears. The smell of marijuana hit my nose. Tracy was sitting on the couch with Cindy and a football player from school that I recognized as Cindy's boyfriend, although I could not remember his name. Cindy and the football player were kissing each other in heated passion while Tracy was flipping through a teen magazine and pretending to ignore what was going on. A plastic bong sat on the coffee table next to a paper plate with pot in it. Pepsis and a bag of chips were sitting next to this. The bong still had tendrils of smoke curling out the top of it.

They didn't even hear me come in the house, the music was so loud. I remembered that Tracy had been busted for just such a thing during her senior year when my mother had come home from work unexpectedly and had walked in on just such a scene. God, my sister was a stupid teenager too.

I kicked the plug out of the stereo system, causing "Ain't Talkin' About Love" to wind down and die. The three people on the couch jerked almost painfully in alarm. Cindy and her boyfriend separated so fast that it looked as if they'd burned each other. Cindy's boyfriend made a grab for the pot on the table. They all stopped when they saw that it was only me. They relaxed a little.

"You scared the shit out of us!" Tracy yelled at me. "You little asshole! What the hell are you doing home now anyway?"

Cindy's boyfriend was giving me a hostile look, a look that made me wonder if another Richie type encounter was brewing.

"The same thing you are. " I told her mildly, kicking the door shut. "Cutting school and smoking weed. " I looked around the room, shaking my head sadly. "However, I'm a little smarter about the way I do it than you idiots are. "

They all gaped at me. It was an expression that I was starting to get used to. I was starting to think of it as THE LOOK.

I stared at Tracy. "What if I'd been Mom coming home from work a little early because she didn't feel good or something? That kind of shit can happen you know. Do you think Mom would call the house to let someone know she's coming home? Why would she do that? Nobody's supposed to be here. You got the music turned up so fuckin' loud you didn't even hear me open the door. The damn door wasn't even locked. You guys are a freakin' bust waiting to happen!"

Cindy and Tracy just stared at me in shock. Like I said, I had always been shy before and to them my personality would have appeared to have changed radically overnight. The old Billy would, upon interrupting their session, have simply blushed and muttered a brief apology before slinking out of the room. They did not know what to say or what to think about what I'd said. But the football player reacted as his personality instinctively commanded him to.

"What the fuck is it to you?" He asked me, glaring.

"Shut your ass ball boy. " I shot back at him. "You're in MY house and I wasn't talking to you. "

His face reddened with rage. He stood up suddenly. "What did you say to me you little pussy?"

"Jeff, leave him alone. " Cindy spoke, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back down.

He shook her arm off angrily, "Say that again to me faggot. " He challenged. "I fuckin' dare you. "

"You fuckin' dare me?" I answered mildly. "Okay. " I nodded. "I told you to shut your ass. I then made a derisive remark aimed at your meager football skills. Did you hear me that time?"

"You're dead kid. " He said, starting to move towards me.

"Jeff!" Tracy spoke now. "Leave him alone!"

Jeff continued to head towards me. He was actually planning to beat me up in my own living room in front of my sister who had invited him in there. Christ why was everyone so violent? No wonder the human race fought so many wars. "Richie Fairview told me I was dead too. " I told him. "Right before the ambulance picked him up and took him to the hospital. Would you like to join him there asshole?"

He stopped. Apparently he'd heard that story. His eyes showed immediate doubt as he stared at me. I stared back.

"Go sit your ass down. " I told him. "Before you get hurt. "

He licked his lips nervously, sparing a glance at the two girls.

"I think you'd better do what he says Jeff. " Tracy told him. She was hiding a smirk as she said it. I suddenly realized that Tracy didn't like Cindy's boyfriend too much. Interesting. Was there hope for her yet?

"You're lucky they stopped me. " Jeff finally blurted. A pretty pathetic face-saving measure I'm sure even he would agree. He returned to the couch and sat down.

"Yeah, I guess I'm lucky. " I agreed, turning to Tracy. "If I was you I'd open up some windows in this house before Mom and Dad get home. The whole place reeks of pot. Do you guys do this sort of thing a lot?"

"No. " Tracy told me, obviously lying.

"Well it's amazing you haven't been busted yet. " I told her, casting my eyes on Cindy, who was looking at me as if in awe. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose fitting sweater. I'd forgotten how pretty her eyes were. They were a deep blue, the kind of eyes you could melt in. Currently of course, they were very reddened and only about half-staff and her honey-blonde hair was in disarray from Jeff's fingers. Her neck was marred by a red hickey; Jeff's territorial mark. I supposed it was better than peeing on her like a dog with a fire hydrant. I wondered about the possibilities of Cindy. Could I do it? It would be more challenging than Debbie had been.

I gave her a seductive smile and she blushed deeply. Jeff saw it and fumed at me but didn't make a move. Finally, without another word, I headed upstairs to my room, closing the door behind me.

My room was a filthy mess. I was offended by it. During my adult years I'd lost my teenaged sloppiness and had become something of a neat freak. Though I was still feeling the effects of the marijuana I'd smoked earlier and desperately wanted to lie down and take a nap, I began picking up the room.

It took me nearly two hours to get it clean, but it was a fascinating two hours none-the-less. I came across many objects and possessions that I had not seen in years. I found places for them and by the time I finished it was quite a startling change. But there was one thing missing.

While I'd been cleaning I'd heard the sound of my father coming home. I sincerely hoped for Tracy's sake that she'd cleaned the house well enough. I guessed that she had since she and Cindy were in her room, looking through some magazines as I passed by. Jeff of course, was long gone. Both girls watched me as I went by, shutting up with whatever they'd been talking about. I smiled, especially at Cindy, who returned it weakly.

Dad was sitting in his chair and drinking a bottle of beer. The television was on, showing an early edition of the local news. Again I found myself staring at him, marveling on how young he looked, how thin. He wasn't much older than I was in a way. He caught me staring at him and looked at me.

"You okay Bill?" He asked, concern in his voice.

"Oh sure Dad. " I nodded. "I'm cool. I was just tryin' to picture you with gray hair. "

"What?" He chuckled. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, Grampa has gray hair doesn't he? It stands to reason that you will too doesn't it? I was just trying to picture what you would look like. "

"That's kind of depressing. " He smiled, sipping out of his beer. "What brought you to that subject?"

"Oh, uh, we were studying genetics in Anatomy the other day. That's a dominate trait you know?"

"I've heard that. " He answered. "What're you up to?"

"Just getting the vacuum cleaner. "

Now he really looked at me strange. "The what?"

"The vacuum cleaner. " I said. "I just got done cleaning my room and now I need to vacuum it. "

"You cleaned your room?" He asked in disbelief. "You?"

"Yeah. " I nodded. "It was pretty dirty. Why did you guys ever let me get away with being so messy anyway?"

"What?"

"Never mind. " I said, moving towards the living room closet. I opened it and the vacuum was there. "I'll bring it back in a minute. "

While I carried the appliance upstairs his puzzled look followed me up.

After I stowed the vacuum back in its closet I went back upstairs to lie down. Though I was exhausted I could not sleep. For one I was afraid. What if I went to sleep and woke up back in my other life? Was that possible? I surely didn't know. What I was dealing with here was way beyond my limited range of knowledge. My very existence back in 1982 was something I'd thought impossible but here I was. Somehow that dying Chinese man had done this to me. How I knew not. Were there any rules? I could conceive of being only allowed one day. It seemed possible that I was only allowed one waking period back here. I was not ready to return yet.

But there was also the possibility that I was stuck here for good. I had to consider that too. In fact I considered that the most likely scenario. There were many ramifications to that possibility and I needed to think them through carefully. How much did I dare to change? How much could I change?

What would happen if someone found out about what had happened to me? There were people in the world that would do almost anything to get their hands on me if my situation became known. Governments wanting to know about the next seventeen years, business people wanting to know about stock trends. I could envision my family being held hostage to get me to do their bidding.

My initial thought had been to confide in Tracy. But I wondered if that was so wise. Tracy was after all, a teenager full of teenage stupidity as my earlier discovery graphically pointed out. I no longer thought that she could be trusted with a secret of this magnitude. But at the same time I needed to make sure that she did not get in the car with that college student on her graduation night. I had vowed to myself that I would prevent her death even if I could change nothing else on my return trip. That conviction was as strong in me as ever. Tracy would NOT die that night. One way or another I would see to it.

But that brought me back to the one night theory. If I couldn't tell her my secret, but if I was only allowed one night here, how could I make sure of her survival? I thought about that one for a while and finally I came up with something.

That left me to ponder the other questions in my mind. Suppose I was here for good. What else could I change? And how could I better myself and my family? I certainly did not want to end up right back where I was in seventeen years. I wanted to do things differently this time. But how? What could I do?

I reluctantly admitted to myself that I would lose Becky, my daughter in the process. This thought hurt me more than anything ever had before, but it was simply inevitable. Becky had been a very pleasant side effect of a brutal mistake that I'd made in my previous life. I simply could not, no matter how much I loved my daughter, repeat that mistake. I couldn't. I told myself that I wasn't killing her. She would just never exist in the first place. My mind was able to draw a distinction between those two things; a shaky one, but a distinction.

I lay there for more than two hours, until my mother called me down for dinner. I had a rough plan of sorts in mind by then. It was a plan that would be extensively modified and revised, but it was a plan. I felt better just having one.

Dinner was my mom's tacos. They were fried in grease and would be politically incorrect by today's standards. Each one had to have at least a hundred grams of fat. But God they were delicious. I chowed down five of them, shoveling in mounds of rice and beans as accompaniment and then washing the mess down with two Coke's from the refrigerator. The only thing that would have made them better would have been a pitcher of margaritas but I figured mom probably wouldn't whip up a batch for me.

She seemed gratified to see me eat so much. It probably put her worries about drugs aside for the moment. I remembered that I was living in the midst of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" era and that my mom had had her drug worries fueled by the little pamphlets that this era produced. The pamphlets always had "warning signs" that your kids were on drugs printed in them. I remembered how bizarre those so called warning signs had seemed to me even on my first trip through fifteen. A big one had been "loss of appetite". What was up with that? Maybe if you'd moved all the way through marijuana and had worked your way to a two hundred-dollar a day cocaine habit you would have a loss of appetite. But most teenagers simply smoked pot. Loss of appetite was most definitely not a symptom of marijuana use. They should have put "greatly increased appetite" instead. They should have put in "excessive use of Visine" as well.

I also remembered that the pamphlets had so called terminology for drugs. The theory was that parents would overhear their kids using these terms and would therefore know they were on drugs. Right, as if the kids would talk about drugs in front of their parents. I remembered having big laughs with my friends as we read these pamphlets, usually while we were stoned. Those that had used drugs in the previous generation had obviously transcribed the terminology. They said that common terms for marijuana were: Tea, Mary Jane, leaf, wonder green, and other such nonsense. None of the terms were current. In my age they called it pot, buds, herb, smoke, KGB, greenbud, and weed; none of which were listed in Nancy's pamphlets. I could imagine the laughter that would have resulted in the eighties if a kid had asked someone if they had any Mary Jane or tea for sale. I was forced to wonder if there had ever been a case of some kid being drawn off the path of drug abuse as a result of those "informational" pamphlets.

Dinner was consumed and another awkward moment occurred when Mom asked me a question just as we were about to start clearing the dishes from the table.

"Billy," She said, "Did you clean Anita Browling's windows yesterday like you told her you would?"

I looked up at her, searching my memory banks again. I came up with who Anita Browling was easily enough. She was a divorced neighbor in her late twenties that lived two houses over. She'd split with her husband sometime around the time I was twelve or so and I remembered Dad giving vague explanations about how Mr. Browling had 'found someone else' and left her (for some reason my parents had assumed that Tracy and I would be upset by their DIVORCE). My parents had, for whatever reason, kind of adopted Anita after her husband left her. She used to come over for dinner once a week. She had two small children that Tracy was volunteered to baby-sit frequently. I was always volunteered to mow her lawn for her since she professed not to know how to run a mower, or to do other small tasks such as cleaning her windows. Both of us were forbidden to take any money from her for our services, a point of resentment that had drawn my sister and I together a little in our teens.

The image in my mind of her was of a slightly chunky woman with large breasts. She was a brunette with short hair and long legs. She would meet another man at about the time of my high school graduation. About the time I moved away from home she would marry him and disappear from Mom and Dad's lives. I remembered thinking back then that I wouldn't mind doing her. But she wasn't so attractive that you could admit to your peers that you would do her, if you can dig that. I also remembered how she used to watch as I mowed the lawn, always dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. I remembered catching glimpses of her bra-clad tits when she'd bent over to pull a weed or something. My adult mind, which hadn't thought of her in years, suddenly realized that she'd been displaying herself for me. Had she been hoping for a little action from a teenaged boy?

Before I could follow that train of thought too far I came back to the original question. Had I cleaned her windows yesterday? I had no freaking idea if I had or hadn't. My mother was looking at me, awaiting a response.

"Uh… " I started, trying to think this through. Had I cleaned her windows?

"Bill?" Mom said, deepening her voice. "I told you the other day they were getting really dirty after the windstorm we had. You TOLD me you'd do it before it snowed again. "

"Uh," That gave me a little more information. I was a horrible procrastinator as a teen. Chances are I hadn't done it the first time I'd been asked. "Uh, no Mom. " I finally spat out. "Sorry. I forgot. "

"You forgot?" She asked.

"Sorry. " I squeaked.

"Billy, that is just so typical of you… " She began. Her lecture went on for nearly two minutes. I gave her uh huhs, and okays in all the right places, amazed that I still had the ability to do that after all these years. I sincerely promised that my first stop after school would be Anita Browling's house. Mom seemed satisfied. I found myself hoping that Anita would be home. I knew something that the other Billy didn't.

After dinner I went up to my room. I opened my backpack and pulled out my Algebra book. I found some blank paper and a pencil and then opened the book to the first chapter. I began studying.

Tracy had gone out somewhere after dinner and I heard her return about 8:30.

I continued to study as I heard her go to her room and slam the door. Downstairs the television was on as Mom and Dad watched whatever sitcom was on in the eighties. I could hear their sporadic laughter drifting up from time to time as well as muffled comments that I couldn't understand but were probably commentary on how TV wasn't the same as it had been a few years ago. I had managed to get a basic concept of the Algebra in the past few hours, working my way to the test questions of Chapter 2. The homework that had been assigned I'd finally figured out and completed.

With a headache behind my eyes I closed up my book and stowed it in my backpack. I still had assignments to complete in my other classes but I decided to catch them up tomorrow. I was studied out.

I changed into a pair of sweat pants from my dresser, wondrous at the fact that I was donning a piece of clothing that would not have even come above my thighs the day before my legs had\would get so much bigger. I put on the longest, baggiest T-shirt I could find and then walked downstairs, passing the living room without even drawing a glance from my parents. A moment of searching led me to a bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen cupboard. I grabbed three of them and then opened the refrigerator. I pulled out one of my father's bottles of Budweiser and stuffed it down the front of my sweats. The coolness chilled my skin but I ignored it. The T-shirt covered the large bulge the bottle made in my crotch. I dashed back upstairs and went to the door of Tracy's room.

Music was playing from inside. Rick Springfield this time. Jessie's Girl was the cut. Good old Rick. The former soap opera star turned singer who went after the easiest market to impress; teenaged girls, leading the way for Bon Jovi and other such musical travesties. Within two years, I was gratified to remember, he would fade into a land that was even beyond obscurity. The world would be better off for it I knew. I knocked on Tracy's door.

"What?" Came a voice from the other side.

Instead of answering I knocked again, not wanting to draw the attention of our parents.

The music turned down and the door creaked open about six inches, enough to allow me to see Tracy's impatient face. She was dressed in a long T-shirt that showed off her legs. Her auburn hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders. For the first time I marveled that my sister was very attractive. No wonder the college student had gone after her.

"What?" She hissed disgustedly at me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute. " I told her. "Can I come in?"

"About what?" She asked. "About that crap you were spouting today in school?"

"Yeah. " I nodded, seeing in her face that she was fearful about talking on that subject. "About that. "

She threw the door open. "Come in. " She said finally.

Her room was a pretty neat for a teenager. The bed was made, her books were all stowed in their proper places. Her dresser was cleaned off; all of her makeup in a little tray. The only clutter was the Rick Springfield album cover, which sat next to her stereo and her rumpled clothes that she'd recently removed. She shut the door behind me as I entered.

"Can I sit down?" I asked her as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She waved me impatiently to the chair next to her dresser. The same chair she'd been combing her hair at this morning. I pulled it out and planted myself in it. I pulled the beer out of my pants and set it on the desk. With an expert spin of the cap, it was opened. The three Tylenol went into my mouth and were washed down by the glorious taste of the cold beer. I sighed at the first swallow and quickly took another. Tracy watched all this without speaking, without even asking why I had one of Dad's beers.

"Say your piece and get out. " She told me. "I wanna listen to the rest of this album. "

For the second time that day I interrupted her music by unplugging the stereo. Rick managed "I wishh IIIII haaaaaaaad JJ… " And then stopped, his voice deepening to silence.

"You dick!" She proclaimed. "Why did you… "

"Tracy listen to me for a minute. " I interrupted. "I know you're expected to act a certain way in the presence of your younger brother. You're expected to treat me with contempt in order to show how superior you are. I concede your superiority, okay?"

"What?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Your friends are nowhere around and I won't tell them that you actually allowed me in your room, allowed me to shut off your precious Rick Springfield album. You can go back to treating me like shit as soon as I leave here but for now I need you to listen very carefully to me and to remember what I'm about to tell you. If you could drop the snotty attitude for a few minutes I'd appreciate it greatly. "

She stared. Finally she asked, "What's happened to you Bill? You've been acting strange all day. It's like you're a different person. "

"Never mind that. " I told her. "Tracy, do you remember when we were little kids?"

"Yes. " She answered carefully.

"We were very close back then. We were playmates. We used to conspire together. You used to call me 'little brother' and I used to call you 'big sister', do you remember?"

"No. " She shook her head, but casting her eyes aside in a way that told me she was lying.

"Well you did. " I told her. "We were best friends until about the time you started junior high school. From then on I was the object of your scorn. I understand that Tracy, I really do. You discovered boys, you discovered peer pressure. You grew out of me. It's a natural thing. And I developed interests of my own too. But the fact is, we're still brother and sister and some day we'll be close again. Can you understand that?"

She seemed about to say something snotty once more. Something like, 'as far as I'm concerned you'll be a piece of shit until you die'. But she paused at the last second and her eyes softened. "Yes Billy. " She answered. "I guess that some day we will be. "

A small triumph but a triumph in any case. "Good. " I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Now here's a harder one. Despite our fighting with each other do you realize that we actually love each other as brother and sister?"

She opened her mouth. This time I was sure she going to say something foul.

"Again," I said before she could. "No one else is here in the room and I'll never tell anyone what you say. We don't have to get into any deep philosophical discussions. I just want an acknowledgement that, as brother and sister, we love each other. We may not always LIKE each other, but we love each other. Right?"

She licked her lips nervously. "I suppose. " She finally allowed.

"Okay. " I nodded, taking another drink of my beer. "On that note I want you to listen to me very carefully for a minute. I'm going to tell you something very important. The most important thing you will ever hear in your life. Please don't ask me to explain. I can't do that right now. You probably will think I'm nuts but that doesn't matter as long as you REMEMBER what I'm about to say. Remember it well. "

"Okay. " She said carefully.

I took a deep breath, downing another large drink of beer. I passed the bottle to Tracy and she looked at it for a second and then took a swig. I took faith in the fact that she didn't pause to wipe off my saliva first.

"Now hopefully I'll be able to explain this thing further to you before the time comes. " I said. "But there's a chance I won't. There's a chance I'll be the same old Billy you're used to tomorrow. If that is the case I want you to remember this. "

"Billy, what are you… "

"Shhh. " I hushed her. "On the night you graduate from high school you will tell Mom and Dad that you are going to a party at Cindy's house. That will be a lie. What you will be doing instead will be going to a frat party at the university. "

"Billy, what?" She cried, her flesh breaking out in goose bumps.

"Listen. " I admonished. "I can't explain further right now. I don't even know what the best way of telling you this is. But you have to listen to me. A guy named David Mitchell will want to take you to this frat party. He will be driving a 77 Camero. He will be a football player at the college and very good looking. Now you will meet him about a month before graduation but it's graduation night you need to worry about. Do not, under any circumstances, get in that car with him that night. No matter what you have to do, no matter what lies you have to tell, do not do it. Your life depends upon this Tracy. Don't do it no matter what. "

"Billy, you're kinda scaring me. " She said.

"Good. " I answered. "That's my intent. Lisa Sanchez will be part of the group that gets in that car. Her boyfriend will be another college student named Rick Manchester. "

"Lisa Sanchez?" Tracy asked. "She's a cheerleader. I don't hang out with her. "

"You will. " I told her. "I'm giving you the names of all the people in the car so that you'll know when the time comes, that my information is accurate. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep you out of there. If you can keep Lisa out of there too, so much the better, but the important thing is that YOU do not get in that car on that night. "

I was gratified to see that she was scared shitless by what I was saying. Good. I figured she would obey me even a year and half later when all of the circumstances that I described came together. At least I hoped she would.

"What happens if I get in the car?" She asked me.

"Dave will be drunk that night. " I said. "He will drive the car into the Spokane River from the levee road near the falls and you and Lisa will drown before you can get out. " I took a deep breath, tears forming in my eyes as I remembered my mother coming to my bedroom at four o'clock in the morning in tears, waking me up to tell me that there'd been a horrible accident. Please, let me be successful here. There was more to the story of course. Dave would be charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. His sentence would be suspended and he would go on to play football in college, prompting my parents to become victim's rights activists; a pursuit they'd still been active in at the time of my recycling.

Tracy was looking pale as she tried to digest what I was telling her. "Bill, how can you know this? Where did you get this information? Did you have a psychic flash or something?"

"I can't tell you now. " I told her. "It's too early. I'll tell you later if I can. "

"But… "

"Tracy, just remember. " I said. "Just remember and don't get in that car that night. "

"I won't. " She promised.

I smiled and nodded. If I was only here for one day then I'd done the best I could do. If I woke up tomorrow back in 1999 then Tracy would probably still be alive. That would be the best purpose of the gift I'd been given.

Although getting laid had been nice too.

I made sure my alarm clock was set for the proper time and turned it on. I then lay down and turned out the lights. For the longest time I still couldn't sleep, fearful of what I'd find upon awakening. But at last my mind was able to shut down and I drifted off.

CLICK. "So if you're tired of the saaaaame old story. Ohhhhh, turn some pages. I'll be here when you are ready, to roll with the changes…" Came the voice of Kevin Cronin from my clock radio the next morning. REO Speedwagon. Another blast from the past. A song I hadn't heard in years. My eyes opened and I saw the now familiar confines of my teenaged bedroom. I was still here! I felt like shouting with joy. Still here!

Tracy was looking someone haggard as she combed her hair at her desk. Her face was pale and her eyes had bags beneath them. She looked up at me as I headed to the shower.

"Morning Trace. " I told her.

"Morning. " She said slowly, her eyes trying to read my face.

"Sleep well?" I asked her.

"No. " She told me. "I was awake most of the night. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares. "

I nodded. "I'm sorry about that. " I said. "They'll pass. Just remember what I said. "

"I will. " She told me. "I don't think I could ever forget it. "

"Good. " I muttered, walking to the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

Dad, as usual had the newspaper before him at the breakfast table. As I slurped down my cereal I asked him if I could see the business section.

"The business section?" He asked, raising his brow again.

"Yeah. " I told him. "I'm just curious about something. "

He shrugged and handed it over, going back to his perusal of the front page while I opened my section to the stock market report. I scanned through the list of publicly traded stocks for a few minutes, happening across several that seemed good prospects but, most importantly, not seeing the one that would be an absolute killer investment. I smiled to myself. So it wasn't on the stock market yet. Good.

"Find what you were looking for?" Dad asked as I sat the section back down in his pile.

"I think so. " I told him. "Have you ever considered investing in the stock market?"

He lowered his paper and looked at me, his eyes taking in my face, finally concluding that I wasn't joking. "Not really. " He answered. "I have my pension plan from the school district. The stock market seems like kind of a gamble. "

"In a way it is. " I agreed. "But if you could pick the right stocks and invest heavily in them, you could really make some money, couldn't you?"

"Ahh," He said. "But that's the trick. You have to pick the right stocks. If you pick the wrong ones, your money is down the toilet. It would take either someone with a lot more market savvy than I have or a genuine psychic to make a killing in the market. "

"A genuine psychic huh?" I smiled. Tracy, who had been silent during this exchange, gave me a sharp look.

"But as far as I know, such creatures are rare. " Dad said.

"I suppose. " I said. "But if someone DID have knowledge about which stocks were going to go sky-high in the future, that someone COULD make quite a bit of money. Couldn't they?"

"Well sure. " Dad answered. "It's a nice fantasy. Suppose you knew that say, oh, AT amp;T was going to go through the roof next year. If you knew that, you could invest every penny you had in it. When it skyrocketed, you could sell it off at enormous profit. But unfortunately, we don't know that information, do we?"

"I guess not. " I said, my mind whirring a mile a minute. "But it IS a nice fantasy. "

"So where were you yesterday dude?" Mike asked me as we walked to school that morning. The snow on the ground was almost completely melted and the sun was high in the sky. It was still a little cold but on the whole it was a beautiful Eastern Washington late winter day.

"Oh I met up with Raisin and Lonnie. " I said absently. "We went over to Raisin's house and smoked some buds. "

"Yeah?" He asked, obviously hurt that he hadn't been there.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Debbie was there too. I got to make out with her a little. "

"With Debbie?" He asked. "The cock-tease?"

"That's her. " I affirmed. "She cock-teased me damn near to death. "

He asked for details and I provided him with the story. I knew that would serve to reinforce the story that Lonnie and Raisin would pass around and therefore protect Debbie's reputation.

When I was finished he said, "It's too bad you didn't get to fuck her. " He put on a sophisticated look. "I fucked her once you know. "

"Oh really?" I asked, as if I believed him.

"Yep. At a party at Nick Costigan's one night. I had some weed and she wanted some. I told her she wasn't getting any until she gave up the puss. "

He then went on to describe his mythical session with her. Of course he'd made her come six or seven times until she'd begged him for more. He'd then fucked her up the ass, making her come an additional three or four times before he finally 'shot my wad' in her ass. After that she'd always wanted a repeat performance but he'd always turned her down. She was nice in a pinch he told me.

"How come you never told me about this BEFORE?" I asked, unable to help myself.

He blanched for a minute. I'd just asked a forbidden question. When you were told a pussy story you weren't supposed to question its validity. They might not listen to YOUR pussy stories if you did that.

"She asked me not to tell anyone. " He answered. "She didn't want anyone knowing she fucked. "

"I see. " I nodded. "So why did you tell me just now?"

"Well," He stammered. "It's been a while and I know you won't tell anyone. "

"Ahhh. " I nodded. "I get it. "

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Finally I asked, "Mike, do you ever think about what you're gonna do AFTER high school?"

"What?"

"After high school?" I repeated. "It's gonna end some day you know. What are you gonna do with your life?"

"You sound like a fuckin' school counselor. " He informed me, almost angrily.

"High school ain't ever gonna end man. It's a fuckin' prison. "

"In a way. " I allowed. "But some day you'll be freed from it. You ever think about what comes next?"

"No. " He said, his tone telling me to drop the subject. "I don't. "

Mr. Achmed was surprised to see me hand in homework to him that morning. He was even more surprised to find it was correct. He expressed his pleasure with my work and made a point of calling on me during class. Most of the time I managed to come up with the right answers to his questions. Instead of making me happy however, it kind of pissed me off.

Now that I was supplying the right answers to his questions he was paying attention to me. But before, when I was flunking all of his tests and getting an F or a D in his class, I was simply ignored. The same was true for my other teachers. Now I'm not a screaming liberal that likes to blame everyone but the person responsible, but there is a certain amount of responsibility instilled in a teacher isn't there? Why hadn't I been helped along before this? Why had I been allowed to simply sit in class and flunk without even a single pulling aside by a teacher? Cynicism was the answer of course.

It was the answer, but it wasn't an excuse. I had been a paramedic and, except for cops, you would be hard pressed to find a more cynical group of people. I had been called out for so much bullshit in the course of my career that I assumed everyone was full of shit until proven otherwise. People called us for hangnails, for colds, for ear infections that their kids had. And they reported these things as finger amputations, difficulty breathing, and head injuries. But never had I acted upon this cynicism. If someone said they were having chest pain, then they were having chest pain and I treated it appropriately even if they were twenty-five year olds only trying to get out of work for the day. If someone said they were short of breath than they were short of breath, even if they were speaking in complete paragraphs. If you acted on your cynicism you would be right probably ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But that one time you were wrong would bite you in the ass hard.

My teachers obviously assumed that trying to reach a disinterested student was a waste of time. Most of the time it probably would have been. But sometimes it wouldn't have been. Shouldn't they have been extending at least a little effort when someone like me simply sat in their classrooms and paid no attention? How many people that might have been turned around had just been allowed to sink into the abyss because the teachers assumed they were lost causes and directed their full attention to those that showed an interest in their subjects?

I was surprised by how strongly I felt about this subject and was quite pissed off by the time I left Algebra and headed for American History. My feelings were reinforced when I explained to the teacher that I didn't have my homework that day but that I would turn it in tomorrow.

"Fine Billy. " She said absently, moving onto the next student, obviously not believing that I was going to turn in anything the next day. Granted I did not make a habit of turning in the homework but had she ever talked to me about this? No. Had she ever called my parents and talked to them about it? No. To her I was a lost cause, unworthy of her attention. She would expend no efforts towards me unless I showed HER that I was interested in her subject. Why wasn't she trying to GET me interested in her subject? Why was she simply letting me sit there every day? What system was encouraging this?

Her lecture that day was on the role of Southern abolitionists in the beginnings of the drive towards the Civil War. She portrayed them as saintly people, dedicated to the cause of abolishing the evil institution of slavery. She implied to the class that they were right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in American History. About halfway through I could take no more. I raised my hand.

She ignored it for quite some time but finally was forced to call on me.

"Yes Billy?" She said. "Do you have a question?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I'm just curious about something. You just told us that the abolitionists used to use protests to influence those southern slaveholders. Exactly what kind of protests are you talking about?"

She gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said, "Well, they used a variety of methods. Boycotts of services and that sort of thing. "

"That sort of thing?" I said. "Isn't it true that they used to attack slave holders and their families in the middle of the night? Burning down their houses and hacking the men and even the women and children to death?"

She nearly choked but she composed herself quickly. "Well, there were some cases of the more fanatical elements doing things like that of course. But that was rare. Usually they used the other measures I talked about. You have to understand that these people felt very strongly about anti-slavery. About it's wrongness. It's only natural that some of them went off the deep end as it were. "

"Really?" I pressed further. "I actually read that grotesque violence was more the rule than the exception. I guess I must have read wrong. But to answer your other point about them feeling that it was wrong. Don't you think that these abolitionists were motivated more by economic factors than religious or moralistic ones?"

She was now speechless.

"I mean think about it. Who were the southern abolitionists? Poor whites for the most part, right?"

"Well yes," She nodded, "But… "

"Poor whites without jobs. How could they compete with slave labor? They couldn't. Isn't it true they also used to kill the slaves when they would attack a plantation? Hardly sounds like people that are just interested in freeing the slaves now, does it?"

"Well again Billy," She said firmly. "What you are talking about was the exception, not the rule. There were SOME incidents as you described but usually they used economic measures like boycotts to achieve their ends. And many of them were imprisoned or killed by the corrupt southern system for their efforts. "

"Well of course they were. " I snorted. "They were destroying valuable property and threatening a near-perfect economic system. The plantation owners ran the law after all. I imagine they came down rather hard on them when they caught them. "

She was actually flustered by what I'd said. "Well that's a very interesting point of view Billy. " She told me. "But I think we've discussed it enough now. If you don't mind, I'll get back to the lecture now. "

"Sure. " I smiled.

"Okay," She said, "Now back in 1858 there was a group called… "

Though I had no homework for Mrs. Crookshank either, she did not ignore me in class as she usually did. She remembered my dissertation on the blood cell the previous day and began probing at me to see if it was simply a well-studied joke on my part or not. Her lecture was on the major arteries of the body and she fired her first shot less than two minutes into it.

"Now can anyone tell me the name of the arteries that feed the kidneys?" She asked and then, without waiting for anyone to put up his or her hand, turned to me. "Billy, maybe you can tell us?"

She thought she had me I'm sure. I'd been doing what I usually did in her class; watching her alluring form move back and forth and not looking as if I was paying the least bit of attention to her words.

"Mesenteric. " I said in a bored voice, causing her to give me THE LOOK.

"Yes. " She nodded, obviously taken aback a bit, and then went on.

She called on me multiple other times during the lecture, making the questions harder and harder. We covered the carotids, the circle of Willis, and all of the coronary arteries. Some of the questions I knew were not even part of her lecture, were not even part of high school curriculum. I came up with the answers every time, spouting them out in a monotone voice with an expressionless face. It quickly became clear to the entire class that some sort of battle was going on between Mrs. Crookshank and I. Finally, bored, I conceded the battle, telling her I did not know the answer to a question she asked. The look on her face was of weak triumph and more than a little relief.

She wrapped up her lecture just before the bell rang and assigned us our homework for the next day. As the class filed out she called, "Billy?"

I turned to her questioningly.

"Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?"

"Sure. " I said, walking over.

Her eyes looked me up and down as I stood before her desk. "You seem to have quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy and physiology. " She almost accused.

I shrugged. "I like to read. " I said.

"Really?" She said. "What books have you read?"

"Oh the usual. " I told her. "Gray's Anatomy, A Physician's Guide to A amp;P, stuff like that. "

"You've read them?" She found this hard to believe.

"Yep. " I nodded. "Fascinating reading. I've even read your textbook a little. It's not bad but it oversimplifies things a little, wouldn't you say?"

She swallowed deeply, took a deep breathe, and then said, "Billy, I majored in Biology in college and I have an extensive background in A amp;P. I asked you questions today that are well beyond high school level knowledge and you answered every one correctly except one. "

"I only pretended I didn't know that one. " I told her. "I felt you were, shall we say, singling me out, and I wanted you to stop. " I smiled cynically. "Kind of unprofessional for a teacher wouldn't you say?"

She dismissed the subject of her professionalism, or lack thereof, with a shake of her head. "I see. So you're telling me that you've known the answers to my questions all of this time, but that you haven't answered any of them, either in class or on your tests or in your homework until yesterday?"

I shrugged again. "What can I say?"

"What can you say?" She asked, getting a little angry now. "This makes no sense. Why would you do such a thing?"

"Well Mrs. Crookshank," I told her. "I'm what's known as a classic underachiever. That means I have above average intelligence and good reasoning ability but that I am bored to death by high school because the curriculum is so scaled-down that the work is not challenging to me. This sets up a vicious cycle in which I stop listening and doing the work and therefore get far behind and fail many classes. It's mostly my fault of course, but the system itself is also partially to blame since it sets such absurdly low standards in the first place in an attempt to pad the statistics. I mean, when regional test scores are low, what do you people in the education business do? Do you beef up the learning or reevaluate your teaching methods? No. What you do is scale down the curriculum and lower the standards for passing, therefore making it easier for those "struggling" students to pass, but boring the crap out of those of us who would probably benefit from harder, more challenging classes. What then happens is that many of what could potentially be your best students simply don't give a damn while many of the less intelligent and less worthy ones have their good grades spoon fed to them by teaching them with Dick and Jane methods. "

She gaped at me. I knew I'd hit upon the very subject that line teachers like her had bitched about for years to their administration. In a few years, after several lawsuits about people graduating at a functionally illiterate level while promising students were actually dropping out, education reform would hit the State of Washington like a sledgehammer, improving things remarkably. I almost wished I could tell her that. She would still be teaching when it occurred. But I didn't.

"I read psychology too. " I told her instead, heading out the door.

I ran into Debbie at lunch. She giggled over to me and smiled. I greeted her, looking her up and down, remembering what her young body had felt like naked beneath mine.

"Word has it I'm the biggest cock-tease in the school. " She told me.

"Well what do you know about that?" I smiled. "Better than being the biggest slut, isn't it?"

She nodded, giggling again. "All the girls are asking me why I made out with you. "

"Yeah?" I grinned. "What you tell 'em?"

"That you were a totally awesome kisser. The best. "

"Thanks. " I said gratefully, wondering how long it would be until one of the other stoner girls decided to try for herself. "How are you today?"

She smiled shyly. "I could use another 'kiss' myself. " She said, blushing.

I chuckled. "I got something to do after school today, but why don't you give me your phone number? Maybe I'll give you a call on Saturday. "

She handed a piece of paper over to me. She'd already taken the time to write her number down. "Call me ANYTIME. " She said, walking away.

Period four, which I hadn't gone to yesterday, was Driver's Education. I was gratified to see that at least they took this subject very seriously. The information, though very familiar to me, was not the least bit scaled down. Period five was PE. It was spent learning the finer points of basketball. And though I enjoyed seeing all of the high school girls jumping around in their school sweats and T-shirts, I was no better at sports than I had ever been. I did enough to get by and let the rest ride.

As I dressed in the locker room some of Richie Fairview's cronies were in there. Usually they were the terror of the locker room. They eyed me nervously and came nowhere near me. When they started to approach some poor freshman slob, probably intending to make him cry just for the fun of it, I gave them a glare and they immediately found something else to do. I smiled to myself. Maybe I couldn't change the world, but I was doing a little bit at least.

Period six, the final period of the day was English. The subject was paragraph writing. I listened blandly and noted down my homework. I kept my mouth shut. When the bell rang I shouldered my backpack, found Mike, and headed for home.

Shortly after arriving home I gathered up a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Tracy had been lying on the couch flipping through a rock music magazine and had only grunted a reply to my greeting when I'd come in the house. However when she saw me heading out the door with the cleaning supplies she favored me with a pitying look.

"Going to clean Anita's windows?" She asked me.

I nodded, putting on a look of resigned disgust. "Yep. You know how it is. "

"Yeah," She nodded. "I know how it is. I gotta watch her little brats on Saturday night. " She shook her head in disgust. "Saturday fucking night! Can you believe the nerve of Mom and Dad? Volunteering me for that shit on Saturday night. And do you know why she needs a babysitter that night?"

"Why?" I asked, pausing in the doorway.

"Because she's going to a party. A party! Well what the hell do they think I was gonna do? I'm tired of them springing this crap on me at the last minute. I have a life too. "

I smiled. "Yes you do. " I told her. "Let me talk to her. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing anything Saturday, maybe she'll let me baby-sit instead. "

"You?" Tracy asked with horror. "You can't baby-sit. "

"Why not?" I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.

"Because you're a boy!"

"So? What's that got to do with anything? Why do girls automatically make good babysitters while boys are untrustworthy?"

"Well," She tried to come up with something and failed. "Just because. Boys aren't as responsible as girls are. "

"Oh we're not, are we? Why is that?"

"Because," She said, "If a boy was left alone in a house he'd do all kinds of things. "

I started laughing.

"What?" She asked.

"When you were babysitting her kids," I asked, "Did you ever drink her booze?"

"No. " Tracy said indignantly.

"Oh come on Tracy. " I chided.

"Well maybe once or twice. " She admitted.

"And did you ever have your boyfriend over to her house?"

"Well, yes. "

"And did you ever smoke weed over there and make out on the couch? Or maybe use her bedroom for a little… "

"All right!" She yelled, laughing. "You made your point. At least to me anyway. But Mom and Dad and Anita are never going to buy it. "

"I'm just offering. " I told her. "I'll float the idea by Anita while I'm over there. And Mom and Dad will go along if Anita does. Don't worry, I'm good at talking people into things. And if it doesn't work, you're no worse off are you?"

"I guess not. " She answered, her demeanor brightening. "Well thanks Bill. I hope you can talk her into it. " She chuckled. "It's kinda hard to picture you babysitting though. "

"Kids love me. " I assured her, "And I love them. I'll be fine. " I headed for the door and then paused, "By the way, what are her kids' names anyway?"

Anita Browling's house was a single story with a small lawn and small back yard. Like all the houses in the subdivision, it had been built about 1970 or so, during a major growth spurt for the Spokane area. Like many of the other houses on the block, the paint was peeling off due to the extremes of the weather. I knew that at some point in the near future I would be volunteered to paint the house for her. Was that this coming summer? I figured it would be. I knew, looking at the paint that it hadn't been done yet and I also knew that I'd done it before Tracy's death. It had\would take me nearly two weeks in the hot sun to complete.

Anita was home when I knocked. I remembered that she worked early in the morning, Tracy often had to get up at 5:00 AM to go baby-sit on vacation days, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was she did. She was wearing a pair of dark slacks that hid the form of her slightly large hips and a button-up blouse that showed off her large breasts nicely. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She smiled warmly as she saw me standing there with my cleaning supplies in hand.

"Billy. " She greeted, throwing open the door and allowing me entry. "Did you come to do the windows today? You're such a sweetie. "

"No problem. " I said, smiling back. "I'll have 'em squeaky clean in no time. "

Her two children (Ryan and Jennifer, Ryan and Jennifer, my mind repeated to me), were coloring in books at her coffee table. They both looked up at me for a moment and then went back to what they were doing. The living room was a little cluttered with toys and so forth but remarkably neat for a woman with two children. The television was turned off and the stereo was turned on. Barbara Striesand was singing about love, how it was ageless and evergreen, whatever the hell that meant.

"I really appreciate you doing this for me Billy," Anita was saying. "They get so dirty during the winter and I have such a hard time climbing on the ladder you know. "

"I'm happy to do it. " I assured her, "Where should I start?"

I got the ladder out of her garage and began doing the outsides first, moving from one to the other, scraping and wiping off the accumulation of dirt, grime, road salt, and all of the other shit that floats around in our air or is blown forcefully through it during the winter. Anita stayed in the house for this portion although I caught glimpses of her through the windows when she happened to be in a room that I was cleaning. I watched her whenever I saw her, checking out her form and imagining the possibilities. Though she was slightly chunky, there was nothing in the world wrong with that. Her skin looked soft, her face pretty, and she had beautiful breasts that bounced nicely when she walked. Sure, a teenager wouldn't admit he desired her, such were the commandments of peer pressure, but an adult would have no problem with her whatsoever. And I was most definitely an adult.

She waved at me whenever she happened to catch me looking in at her, or smiled at the very least, but there was no overt flirtation. I began to wonder if my mind was remembering things correctly. Was I confusing my previous masturbation fantasies with reality?

When I went in the house to do the inside of the windows it was only a minute or two before I got my first clue. I was up on the stepladder doing the living room window and she came up to offer me a soda to drink. As she handed it to me I was looking down at her. She had undone the top button of her blouse, allowing me to look straight down the front of it. I could see the mass of her white breasts contained in a flimsy, lacy bra. I was certain that the top button had not been undone earlier and I was also certain, as a fifteen year old would NOT have been, that she was well aware of the view she was giving me. She was showing herself to me. But for what purpose?

"Thank you. " I smiled, taking the soda and swigging out of it. I then handed it back to her. "Could you set it over there for me?" I asked, pointing at a coffee table next to the ladder.

"Sure," She replied, taking it from my hand. When she bent over to set it down gravity pulled her breasts away from her body, as well as pulling the blouse away from her tits. This allowed me a fine view indeed. She caught me looking as she stood back up and I turned my head away, as a teenager would do. There was no sense tipping my hand, was there?

As I moved from window to window I grew more and more certain that she was deliberately showing herself to me. Why was she doing this? I wondered. Was she just teasing a teenager? Or did she desire something more? I didn't know. Though my memories of her little shows were correct I also remembered that she had never made any attempt to actually seduce me. What should I do next? How could I find out safely?

As I cleaned I also chatted and talked to her two kids, remembering my promise to Tracy. Jennifer was four and Ryan was six. I truly do love children and they were cute ones. I applied all of the skills I'd picked up in my thirty-two years charming them. The responded to me well, obviously impressing Anita with my rapport.

"Your kids are really cute. " I told her at one point, and she beamed at me.

But the kids also prevented me from seeing how far she was willing to go with her little game. She was an attentive and responsible mother. I knew instinctively that she would do nothing while they were awake. That thought led to a plan.

"What time do you and Jenny have to go to bed?" I asked Ryan playfully.

He pouted. "Eight o'clock on school nights. " He said. "And we're not even tired then!"

"That's a bummer. " I told him, marking the time in my head. "Your mommy's a real meanie, isn't she?"

"Yeah!" They agreed together, giggling and making their mommy giggle too.

While I cleaned her bedroom windows she was folding her laundry on the bed and chatting with me about this and that. She asked about school and I had to search my mind for answers since I'd only spent two days in the place. As far as I know I said nothing inappropriate. When I finished the window I stepped down from the ladder and spied the doorway that led to the master bathroom. That would be HER bathroom.

"Do you mind if I use your restroom?" I said, nodding towards the door.

"Sure. " She said, waving me in that direction.

I went inside and closed the door. After emptying my bladder into her toilet I buttoned up my pants prior to flushing. When my pants were secure I pushed the handle and used the noise of the toilet to cover the sound of me opening up her medicine cabinet. I took a look inside, quickly flitting my eyes over the shelves full of Tylenol, old antibiotics, old codeine, and various over the counter remedies. I spotted what I was looking for on the bottom shelf. A square plastic case with little white pills and occasional rows of pink ones, which were sugar pills I knew, imbedded in it. Each of the pills was in a spot marked with the day of the week. I picked it up for a second, seeing both that she was current and that she was not due for her period for more than a week. I smiled. I would have had to come up with another plan if she had not been on some sort of birth control. And being able to predict her period was a bonus I hadn't counted on.

When I emerged from the bathroom she was putting her clothes in the dresser.

"Anita?" I asked her as I folded up the ladder.

"Yes. " She asked, turning towards me.

"You have Tracy coming over to baby-sit on Saturday, don't you?"

She creased her brow a little. "Yes," She nodded. "Your mother said she would. "

"Well," I said, carefully, "The fact is that Tracy had plans for that night and my mom kinda ruined them by volunteering her to baby-sit. "

Anita's face immediately turned to distress. "Oh my goodness. " She said. "I had no idea that Tracy had plans. If I'd of known that I never would have asked your mother. " She shook her head. "Your mother told me that she'd be happy to baby-sit. "

"Yeah," I agreed, "Mom's like that sometimes. "

"Well I'll just cancel my plans. " She announced. "I don't want to make Tracy miss her party. Especially after all she's done for me in the past. And you kids never accept any money for what you do. "

"Well, you don't have to cancel your plans. " I told her. "I talked to Tracy about it and I don't have anything to do on Saturday. I thought maybe I could take her place. That way both of you could go to your parties. "

"You?" She said doubtfully.

"Why not?" I said. "I like your kids a lot, and they like me. I can take care of them all right. We'll have fun. "

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced her. Shortly after that I went home. But I wouldn't be home for long.

When I walked in the door Mom and Dad were both home. Mom was cooking up something in the kitchen. It smelled like steak. Dad was watching the news on television. I gave him a quick hello and headed directly for mom. She would be the authority on the subject I was about to discuss.

It took ten minutes and a phone call to Anita but I secured her permission to baby-sit Anita's kids in Tracy's place. She was doubtful about the plan and I knew she would probably call every ten minutes while I was over there, but I was able to wear her down.

With a smile on my face, I headed upstairs. I paused at Tracy's room and gave a knock on the door. From behind it came the sound of Rick Springfield again. The music turned down and the door creaked open. She looked at me.

"Looks like you're gonna be partying on Saturday. " I told her.

"You convinced them?" She asked in disbelief.

"Putty in my hands. " I assured her.

"Oh thank you!" She squealed, pulling me to her and giving me a big hug. She drew back and looked at me. "You know Billy," She said. "Sometimes you're not such a little asshole after all. "

"I'll take that as a compliment Trace. " I told her, walking away.

I entered my room as happy as I'd been in a while.

After dinner I went upstairs and took a shower, cleansing my body and making sure to brush my teeth and use plenty of mouthwash. I put on the tightest pair of pants that I could find, a pair that hugged my lower body like a second skin. I put on a clean sweater and combed my hair. I checked my watch. 6:40. Almost an hour and a half to go. I pulled out my books and began studying.

At 8:30 I had completed all of my homework and stowed it neatly away in my backpack. I went to Tracy's room and knocked on the door. She opened it.

"Can I use your phone a minute Trace?" I asked.

"Sure. " She said, waving me inside.

She had been doing her homework I saw. Her Biology book and a spread of papers were scattered on her desk. She was dressed in her jeans and sweatshirt still. Her Rick Springfield album was still playing on the stereo.

Earlier I'd looked in my mom's phone book and found Mike's phone number which, of course, I did not remember. I picked up her phone and dialed it.

His mom answered and I asked for him. A moment later he came to the phone.

"Hey dude," I said, "I'm telling my parents I'm coming over to your house tonight for a while. So don't call me. "

"You got it dude. " He assured me. "What's up?"

"Oh, I'm just going out for a while. "

"Doing anything cool?" He asked, fishing for an invitation.

"Naw. " I assured him. "Just gonna fuck off a little. "

"Whatever. " He said, disappointed, sulking a little, but at least I was safe from being busted via a telephone call from him. "See ya tomorrow. "

When I hung up Tracy looked at me questioningly. "Where are you going?" She asked.

"Out. " I told her.

"Just out?"

"Just out. " I said, my tone telling her she should mind her own business. I headed downstairs.

"Mom, I'm going over to Mike's for a little bit. " I said as I passed through the living room.

"All right dear. " She said absently, her attention riveted to the television. "Be back by ten. "

"I will. " I told her.

Three minutes later I was in front of Anita's house. I could see the light was on in the living room and the faint blue glow of a television screen shining through. I found myself nervous as I contemplated what I was about to do. Was this really wise? If I had misread her I could get into a lot of trouble. I might even end up talking to a shrink or something. But my little head told me I was doing the right thing. Even at thirty-two I still listened to him probably more than I should. I walked up her driveway. After another brief, fearful pause at the front door, I knocked.

The sound of her voice came drifting through the door. "Who is it?" "It's Billy. " I said, speaking only as loud as I thought I needed to in order to be heard.

"Billy?" She said, confused. A moment later the door crept open about six inches, revealing her. She was wearing a robe I saw, pulled tight around her body. Her face was void of makeup and a towel was over her head, allowing a few damp strands to peek out.

"Hi. " I said, embarrassed, not even faking it. "I was wondering if I could uh… well, talk to you about something for a minute?" "What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned. "It's kind of personal. " I told her. "Could I uh… come in?"

"Uh… " She hesitated for a second, leading me to believe I'd made a terrible mistake. Then she said, "Sure. "She opened the door, allowing me entry. I stepped into her living room and she shut the door behind me. Her living room was now absolutely spotless. The television was on showing a news program. A half-full wineglass sat on the coffee table near the couch. A glance into the kitchen revealed a half-empty bottle of white wine. My hopes perked up. She'd been drinking. "Sit down. " She said, looking at me. "Can I get you anything to drink?" "Oh, no thank you. " I told her, heading for the couch and planting myself near where she would sit.

She came over and sat down next to me, her robe riding up a little in the process and allowing me a brief glance of her milky white thighs before she pulled the hem back down. She picked up her wineglass and had a sip before using the remote control to turn down the volume on the television.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" I asked her nervously.

"Not at all. " She said, shaking her head. "I was just watching the news before Dallas comes on. What's wrong?" "Well," I started, "It's kind of embarrassing you know, but… " "Billy, what is it?" "Well," I continued, "You've been a good friend to me and I feel like I can, you know, trust you. " "Of course you can trust me. " She said. "But you're also friends with my mother. " I said. "I really wouldn't want to have her find out about what I have to ask. " "If you don't want me to tell her, I won't tell her. " Anita assured me. "Think of me as a doctor. "I paused for a moment, as if I was thinking it over. Finally I said, "Okay, well, you're younger than my mother and you're a girl and all, so I thought maybe you'd understand. " "Understand what?" She asked. "I've got a girlfriend!" I blurted. She smiled. "Well good for you. " She said happily. "What's her name?"

"Debbie. " I said, pulling out the first name to come to mind. "We've been going out for a while and… " "And what?" She asked. "And well," I took a long pause, considering my words. "And it's getting to the point where she wants to, you know, do things with me. "She raised her eyebrows, blushing a little.

"Do things?" "You know," I said. "Like uh… sex. " I squeaked.

"Sex?" She said, blushing harder now. "Yes. " I nodded.

"Billy," She said sternly. "Don't you think you're a little young to be thinking about sex?"I looked at her confused. "Anita," I said honestly. "Sex is pretty much ALL I think about. How old were you when you first, you know, did it?"She licked her lips a little. "Okay," She said, smiling a bit. "I see your point. So you're saying she wants to have sex with you?" "Yes. " I nodded. "And do you want to have sex with her?" "More than anything. " I answered. "But you see, I uh, well, I've never had, uh, sex before. " "And has she?" Anita asked. "I think so. " I nodded. "That's the problem. I don't know how to do it. " "Well I'm sure if she loves you… " Anita started. "Love?" I interrupted. "Love doesn't have anything to do with it. I don't love her, she's just my girlfriend. She expects me to do it with her and I've told her I've done it before. " "You lied to her?" "Yes. " I said. "Do you have any idea what would happen if people found out I was a virgin? I'm in high school. You have to be a stud or people think you're a fag!"She took a moment to digest this, perhaps thinking back to her own high school days. When it was processed she nodded a little, licking her lips again. "I suppose you're right. " She told me. "So what is it you want from me?" "Can you tell me how to do it?" I asked, looking hopefully at her. "Please?" "Tell you how to do it. " She said to herself, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. "Yeah. " I said, nodding. "So I'll know how to make it seem like I've done it before. Like, you know, how do I treat her boobs and all? And how do I, you know, put it in? How are you supposed to move once you're in? They don't teach you this stuff anywhere! Debbie's a blabbermouth. If I don't do it right, the whole school will think I'm a virgin by the next day. You gotta help me!" I pleaded, seemingly near tears. "Billy," She said. "I appreciate your fears but you can't just TELL someone how to do it. The only way to learn is, well, to do it a few times.

It comes naturally, you'll see. " "But I told her I've done it before!" I said. "She'll know! Can't you at least tell me a little bit about how to do it? What about foreplay?" "Foreplay?" She asked. "Yeah. " I said. "I heard you're supposed to do foreplay. I don't even know what that is!"She looked at me in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing. I flushed as if deeply embarrassed.

"Forget it. " I said angrily, standing up. "I'll just go home. "

"No, no. " She said, stifling her outburst. "I'm not laughing at you, just at what you said. I'm sorry. "Slowly, I put myself back down in the chair, noting the gleam forming in her eye. For the first time I felt I was making some headway. I noticed she'd let the hem of her robe creep up a bit, showing me her flesh up to mid-thigh. She'd also let the top open a bit, revealing a bit of cleavage and confirming my suspicion that she had no bra on under the robe. Perhaps I hadn't made a mistake in coming here. "Listen. " She said. "There's a lot involved in making love. It takes a lifetime to learn it all. But you just want to seem like you've done it before, right?" "Yes!" I agreed. "Okay. " She said, downing the rest of her wine and setting the glass down. "Let me see what I can do. " "Thank you!" I blurted. She took a deep breath. "Tell me," She said. "How far have you gone before?"

"Well," I said, "We've kissed a lot and she's let me feel her boobs through her shirt a few times. " "Okay. " Anita nodded. "And one time she let me put my hand UNDER her shirt. But she wouldn't let me put it under her bra. " "And that's as far as you've gone?" "Yes. " I nodded. "But she's hinted that she'd like for you to do more soon?"

"Uh huh. " I said. "That's why I came to you. " "Okay," Anita said. "If I tell you this, it has to remain here, do you understand? You're mother, your friends, nobody can ever find out about what I've told you. Can you do that?" "Yes," I said, sensing the kill coming. "I promise. " "Okay. " She smiled, leaning back into the couch a little. "I'll teach you the basics on how to have sex with a girl. " "I knew you'd help me Anita. " I grinned, feeling an erection starting already as I saw the shine in her eyes increase. Her nipples were hard. I could see them poking through the fabric in her robe. And she kept shifting her legs back and forth while she sat there. She was showing unmistakable signs of arousal. Signs that a fifteen-year old wouldn't be able to pick up upon, but signs that were very familiar to a thirty-two year old. "I'm glad to help. " She told me. "Now the most important thing in the early stages is to be gentle. " She told me. "Girls don't like it when you maul them. If she lets you feel her breasts, don't squeeze them hard, caress them. " "Caress them?" I asked. "Yes. " She nodded. "You need to touch them gently, as if they were a delicate egg or something. Remember that. Don't break the egg. Just glide your hands over them and don't attack the nipples. Just run your fingers over them for a few minutes. Touch them lightly. That really gets girls hot. " "Wow. " I said. "Like this?" I held up my hands and roughly moved my thumb and index finger back and forth.

"No no. " She said, shaking her head. "You have to… " She paused, thinking.

"Well," She said softly. "I suppose it would be easier to show you instead of telling you. " "Show me?" I asked, feigning confusion but feeling my cock leap to full life. I'd done it! She was going to SHOW me. "Yes. " She said. "Again, you can never tell anyone, but in the interest of education, I suppose I could volunteer as a test subject. " "What do you mean?" I asked naively. Slowly she put her hands to her robe and opened it at the chest, revealing her silky skin and freeing her braless tits. They were glorious, sagging only a little, the size of softballs. The large nipples were standing out proudly, just begging to be touched and sucked. "Here. " She told me. "Give me your hands. "Slowly I reached out and put my hands in hers. She took them and placed them upon her tits, allowing me to feel the soft, springy flesh, the hard points of the nipples pressing into my palms.

"Now caress them. " She said softly, her eyes shining. "Pretend I'm Debbie. " "Okay. " I said, faking a stutter. I began to squeeze and caress them, running my fingertips over the soft flesh, twirling around her nipples, which were easily the diameter of dimes. I hefted their weight in my hands, testing them, before going back to caressing. Her eyes softened as I did this, her breathing quickening.

"Very good. " She said, pushing her chest forward into my hands. "You're a quick learner. " "Cool. " I muttered, continuing my actions. I looked below her tits as I did this, seeing her stomach. The skin was tanned and looked soft although there were a few creases and stretchmarks. Her belly button was large and had a faint fuzz of black hair leading downward from it. I could almost make out her crotch but her robe was still closed over that portion of her body. "Wouldn't she want me to, you know, suck on them?" I asked Anita. "Girls like that, don't they?" "They love it. " Anita breathed, twisting her shoulders into me now. "But it's another thing that you have to do carefully. " She explained. "You have to treat a nipple like a baby does. Pretend you're sucking on a bottle when you suck a tit. Don't go after it like a shop-vac. " "Can I try it?" I asked her. "Just to make sure I'm doing it right?" "I suppose. " She allowed, reaching up and putting her hand to the back of my head.

She pulled my face to her left breast and my lips contacted the soft skin just above the nipple. I kissed and sucked for a second and then moved down, taking her large nipple in my mouth. As I began to gently suck she moaned, her fingers twining through my hair. I put my hands on her stomach, sliding them around to her back and pulling her tighter to me. I lapped and slurped at her nipple, tasting every square millimeter of it before switching to the right one. I took that nipple in my mouth and gave it a similar treatment. I raised my head from her chest. "Is this what foreplay is?" I asked her.

"Yesss. " She hissed. "But if you really want to master foreplay, there's one thing you want to know how to do. " "What's that?" I asked, licking her nipple once more. "How to eat a woman, er, a girl. "

"You mean… "

"You need to know how to eat pussy. " She told me.

"Can you teach me?" I asked, looking up at her flushed face.

"Yes. " She nodded, putting her hands to the top of my head and pushing me downward. Her robe parted and her chunky legs spread before me, revealing her crotch. It was covered with a mat of thick, curly, black hair. Her pink lips, swollen with her excitement, protruded from the center of her bush. Her clit was peeking from its hood near the top. Her thick, clean smell rose up before me, driving my desire, making me long to bury my face between those soft legs. I gave up all pretenses and dove in to her, attacking her slit with my tongue.

"Ohhhh!" She squealed in surprise as I drove my tongue into her body, plunging it in and out, lapping up her juices. She tasted so good. There is nothing like eating a pussy that is attached to a woman that has just emerged from bathing. Nothing!I licked up and down, in and out, while her hands pulled me closer and her bare legs wrapped around my back. I felt her legs as I ate her, admiring the silky softness of them. When she started to buck back at me I went for her clit, licking it and then finally sucking it into my mouth. Her moans were so loud I feared that the neighbors would hear. Not that I stopped because of this though.

She came after only a few minutes, a loud screaming orgasm that splashed my face with her fragrant juices and made her rip several strands of my hair from my scalp. When she finally calmed down I looked up at her, my face wet, hairs sticking from between my teeth. Her expression was of total disbelief.

"Was that how you do it?" I asked her, sliding my finger through her slippery slit. She nodded, speechless.

"Can you tell me how to fuck now?" I asked, taking off my sweater and throwing it to the floor. A minute later I was completely naked and climbing between her thick thighs. I ran my fifteen-year old cock up and down her slimy slit for a moment and then she grabbed my ass with her hands and pulled. I slid inside of her easily, feeling her grip at me, feeling my pubis mash against hers. Though she was looser than Debbie, she was certainly more experienced. Her hips rose up to meet me and she clenched her vaginal muscles expertly. She had been married after all, and knew how to fuck. She did it well I quickly discovered as I began pounding in and out. Her soft stomach pressed against mine as my pelvis moved to her rhythm. Her soft thighs slid against mine, quickly building up a sheen of sweat upon which to glide. I leaned down, feeling those tits push against my chest. My mouth found hers and our tongues began a desperate duel as we pleasured each other with our nether regions.

"Oh fuck me!" She cried, squeezing my ass cheeks. "It's been so long. Fuck me!" "Yeah. " I said, slamming harder, feeling her rise up to meet each thrust.

She broke our kiss and stared directly into my eyes, taking in my features. Her hands left my ass and began gliding over my legs, my back, my arms, playing with my armpits. Her expression was of exhalted disbelief, leading me to believe I was fulfilling a fantasy of hers. She'd WANTED to fuck a fifteen-year old and now she was getting her fantasy.

"Harder!" She commanded. "Fuck me harder!"

I pounded her mercilessly and soon her hips and her fingernails on my back told me she was coming again. She screamed out her pleasure as it hit her. "Now come in me!" She commanded breathlessly. "Oh come in me! Let me feel your fresh come squirting in my body! Oh God, please? Come in me!" "You want it?" I asked her, holding back for the moment. "Yesss!" She answered, pounding her hips and grasping my cock with greater force. "Let me feel it. Let me feel your come!" "You like fifteen year old boys?" I asked her, slamming and slamming. "You like to feel their come shooting in you?" "Ohhhhh!" She moaned, sticking her finger in my ass and moving it in and out.

"Do you?" I asked. "Tell me. Tell me what you like and I'll come. " "Oh God," She moaned, adding another finger to my ass, nearly causing me pain, but causing me great pleasure at the same time. "I love it. I've always wanted a teenager! I've always wanted to fuck you! Now please, come innn meeeee!" "Here it comes baby. " I told her, increasing my thrusts. I felt the surge running up my spine. It was going to happen now, it was inevitable. My hips became a blur and waves of pure pleasure ran through my body as spurt after spurt shot from my cock into her grasping pussy.

"Yessssss!" She screamed, feeling me shooting. Even after my thrusts slowed to a stop, hers continued. Finally we both slowed to a stop.

We kissed each other for a few moments, swirling our tongues together in the afterglow of great sex and then she looked up at me, her eyes showing shame and confusion.

"You were great. " I told her, giving her left tit a friendly squeeze. "Absolutely great. " "What have I done?" She asked, more to herself than me. "Oh my god. "I leaned down and kissed her again, licking at her lips a little. "You've done nothing Anita. " I said. "Nothing at all but give your friend Billy a little friendly advice for his girlfriend. "She shook her head violently. "No. " She told me, pushing me off of her. I slid off with a wet slurp. Her legs were still wide and a big glob of my sperm drooled out of her slit. She closed them quickly. "God, what have I done?"I rolled over and sat up. "Had a good time?" I asked, stretching a little. "I can't believe this!" She said, near tears. "You're Margaret's son! And I've, I've, taken advantage of you!"

"You did no such thing Anita!" I told her.

"I did!" She insisted, tears running down her face now.

"No," I told her. "You didn't. I took advantage of YOU. "

She shook her head, pulling her robe around her. "That's nice of you to say Billy, but you're a fifteen year old kid and I'm an adult. You came to me for help and I… I took advantage of that because it's been so long since I've had sex. I let my horniness get the better of me and I've done something awful. I… "

"Anita. " I said, still sitting there naked, her juices and my sperm drying on my dick. "There is no Debbie. "

"What?" She asked.

"There is no Debbie. " I repeated. "I made that up as an excuse to come over here. I've also had sex before, several times. Couldn't you tell while I was making love to you?"

She looked confused. "I did think you were doing it rather well for a teenager. " She admitted. "But why would you do that?"

"Because I wanted you. " I told her. "Do you know that I lie in bed at night thinking about your body while I masturbate?"

"You do?"

"Yes," I said. "Constantly. I've wanted you for such a long time now. And I've thought that maybe you were attracted to me a little, that maybe if I, you know, set it up right, you would maybe do things with me. I came over here hoping that what we did would happen. I tried to engineer it. It's me you should be mad at. I lied to you. I was conniving. And I'm sorry you're upset by what we did. You were more than I ever hoped for. "

"I was?" She asked, her eyes shining.

"Yes. " I nodded. "Can you ever forgive me for tricking you like that?"

"Of course Billy. " She said. "But I still shouldn't have done that. Do you understand how serious this is? I can be arrested for what we did. "

"I'll never tell anyone. " I told her. "I swear. "

She smiled a little, wiping her face. "Fifteen year olds swear lots of things. " She told me. "And they very rarely understand the consequences of breaking those swears. "

"Anita," I said, "I'm not an ordinary fifteen year old. I DO think about consequences. I think about them obsessively. Would you like to hear an example of how I think about them?"

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"While I was over here earlier I was already planning this episode. But I was worried about the possibility of getting you pregnant. I did not want to do that. So I looked in your medicine cabinet to make sure you were on birth control of some type. I was looking for a diaphragm case or birth control pills. Only when I found your pills and assured myself that you were current on them did I decide to come over here tonight. "

"You did that?" She asked, staring at me. Giving me THE LOOK.

"You are currently eight days from your period. " I told her.

"My God. " She said, looking at me with confused respect.

"Does that sound like a typical teenager to you? I like to think things through before I do them, eliminate all of the possible dangers that I can. So what would I have to gain by telling anyone this? A few minutes of celebrity if I told the story, which my friends wouldn't believe anyway, they would only pretend to. That certainly does not balance out the loss of you as a friend. " I leered at her. "A very special friend. "

"Wow. " She whispered, staring at me. "I don't know what to say. This is the most confusing moment of my life. "

"I'm sure it is. " I told her. "But did you enjoy what we did?"

"Well… " She started.

"Did you?" I asked.

"Yes. " She admitted. "Immensely. " She blushed again. "I've laid awake at night masturbating while thinking about YOU. But I never thought for a minute that we'd actually, you know. " She shook her head. "You are a sneaky little bastard, you know that? You played right into one of my fantasies, almost word for word. "

"I'm pretty perceptive they say. " I agreed.

"I'll say. "

"So why don't we mark it down as a pleasant experience for all concerned?" I asked her. "I enjoyed making love to you, you enjoyed making love to me. Both of us had fantasies fulfilled. I will never tell anyone about it. Nobody even knows where I am tonight. What we did will remain secret forever. I promise. "

"Okay. " She nodded, smiling again now. "But we shouldn't do this anymore. " She qualified. "It's still wrong. "

"If you wish. " I agreed sadly.

"I think that would be for the best. "

"All right. " I paused. "But is it still okay for me to baby-sit on Saturday? I'd hate to disappoint Tracy. "

"Oh sure. " She said. "Perfectly all right. "

"Good. " I stood up. "Is it okay if I use your shower before I go home?"

"My shower?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I wouldn't want to go home smelling like sex. That leads to unwanted questions from parents. "

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head in amusement. "Very good thinking Billy. " She told me. "You know where it's at. "

"Thanks. " I told her, picking up my clothes.

I made it about ten steps towards her bedroom before her voice called me. I turned to look at her. She was standing up, her robe was flapping loosely, allowing me to see her breasts and her bush again. I felt my penis give a little twitch.

"Maybe I should go with you. " She offered, smiling sexily. "Just to make sure you get nice and clean. "

My dick took a bigger lurch. "By all means. " I answered.

Chapter 3

Take away my inhibitions

Take away my solitude

Fire me up with irresistance

Put me in the mood

Storm the walls around this prison

Leave the inmates, free the guards

Deal me up another future

From some brand new deck of cards

BOB SEGER

The next day at school, nothing terribly eventful happened. I turned in all of my completed homework to some very surprised teachers and, having done that, they began to truly notice me for the first time. They began to call on me in class, seemingly pleased when I supplied them with correct answers to their inquiries. In the classes where I'd already made my new self known, things mellowed out. Mrs. Crookshank asked me occasional questions on various anatomical topics but there was no longer a sense of challenge in them. She stayed confined to the current subject at hand and called on me no more than she did the other favorites in her class. The disinterested students like my former self, she continued to ignore. My history teacher on the other hand, seemed almost afraid of me. She didn't call on me a single time but eyed me nervously whenever she was discussing a controversial topic about the Civil War that was being scaled down into black and white, good and evil for the 'tender young minds' she was instructing. I know she was expecting me to pop up with another mini-lecture to counter hers. But I kept my peace, remaining in my seat quietly, mostly lost in my own thoughts, knowing that there was nothing that she was going to teach ME about history.

That night was Friday night; the night that Mike's parents allowed him to use the car. He told them that we were just going to drive around downtown; cruising he called it. It was, I remembered, the same thing he told them every weekend and every weekend they bought it. What we actually did was drive to a secluded park near the falls where a kegger was being held. For two bucks a head you could drink all the beer you wanted.

The night was brisk, as it always is in Eastern Washington in late February, but the good weather was holding. The stars were out and a full moon hung in the sky, providing scant illumination to the darkened family picnic area.

The atmosphere was festive as we arrived, paid our money, and filled our first plastic cups with Olympia from the tap. Kids ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen were everywhere, lounging near cars, sitting on the picnic tables in groups of three, four, eight. Music blared from at least ten different car stereos and at least five different boom boxes, most of it conflicting with each other.

I took a moment to stare at the falls, watching the white, foamy churning of God knew how many millions of gallons of water rushing over the cliff. I could hear the roar of them even over the car stereos. It wasn't very far from this spot where Tracy had an appointment with destiny. An appointment that I sincerely believed I'd cancelled. I took a drink of beer in her honor and then joined the party.

I drank beer after beer, getting pleasantly buzzed. I took a few hits off of joints or pipes that were passed my way, increasing the buzz to blissful intoxication. I listened to the conversations around me, which, admittedly, were not terribly stimulating. The talk was of rock bands, cars, drug experiences, fights, who was a bitch, who wasn't. It was peppered with unnecessary profanity, particularly the word 'fuck', which was the favored modifier among this age group.

It was less than an hour before a girl named Stephanie found me. She was skinny and bleached blonde, but attractive. She was also a junior and nearly two years older than I was. She chatted with me for few minutes and then brought up the subject that had led her to me.

"I heard you and Debbie got a thing goin'?" She asked, taking a drag off her cigarette. "Is that true?"

"No." I answered. "She's just a friend of mine."

"A friend?" She giggled. "I heard you were more than friends. I heard she threw herself at you over at Raisin's house the other day."

"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, sipping from my latest beer.

"Lonnie." She said. "He said you were pretty smooth about it too."

I smiled at her, staring into her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about." I said. "Debbie and I flirted a little but nothing more than that. You know how rumors are around here."

"Yeah." She nodded, tossing down her smoke and crushing it under the toe of her tennis shoe. "I do. Some people just can't keep their mouths shut about things."

"Yep." I agreed. "But some people CAN."

Less than an hour later we were 'taking a little walk' into the wooded area around the park. We sat against a tree, watching the falls, the sound of the party distant in our ears. We started kissing, which led to my hands beneath her jacket and sweater, which led to me taking off her pants and eating her pussy on the cold, damp ground. I pulled two orgasms from her and then extricated a condom from my pocket. A minute later my pants were off, my dick was capped, and I was thrusting within yet another tight, teenaged pussy. After, we returned to the party, walking together as friends out for a nature walk, the discarded condom marking the spot of our indiscretion.

"Where have you been?" Mike, who was quite fucked up, asked me when I rejoined him.

"Oh," I said casually, "I was bullshittin' with some of the guys over there."

"Oh." He nodded, and then went back to his graphic description of the time he'd bagged a girl AND her sister at a similar kegger party. The rest of the guys listened respectfully to his tale. They then tried to top it.

I took a moment to be nervous about driving home with Mike as we twisted and turned along the levy road at high speed. I had no seat belt on; it simply wasn't done back then; and I was thrown from side to side as he drunkenly hit 20mph curves at around forty-five or so. But I took comfort in the fact that I'd done this dozens of times in my previous life without a second thought and nothing had happened then. I already knew that I was scheduled to live to at least thirty-two. In a way I was kind of immortal, wasn't I? Well maybe not immortal, but at least invulnerable.

I was cheered by this thought as we went on our way at 11:30 that night (we were both required to be home by midnight). That made being tossed from side to side by centrifugal force kind of fun. Even when the back end of the car slid a little on a sharp curve, bringing us dangerously close to the edge, I didn't get an adrenaline rush. I simply cheered Mike's skill with the car and asked him if he had any more weed on him.

Saturday was a good day. I woke up only slightly hung over from the beer, knowing that if I'd drank as much as I had the previous night as an adult I would have been nearly incapacitated the next day. God youth was great.

It was shortly after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away (my parents had no dishwasher, an appliance they would not acquire until shortly before I moved out) when the telephone rang. Tracy answered it.

"It's for you Bill." She told me, being very polite for Tracy. A cynical part of me informed me it was simply because I was doing a favor for her tonight and she wanted to stay on my good side. But a more hopeful part wondered if she was simply calming her attitude towards me a little.

"Hello?" I said, expecting it to be Mike.

It wasn't. It was Debbie. "Hi Bill." She said. "How you doin'?"

"How'd you get my number?" I asked her, knowing that I hadn't given it to her.

"Oh, I've got my sources." She said mysteriously. She then got right to the point. "My parents and my sister are going out of town for the day." A brief pause. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to, you know, come over?"

"To your house?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." She said. "If you're not doing anything else that is."

"Nothing planned." I told her, a smile forming on my face. "What time should I be there?"

I used my charms on Mom to score a few bucks off of her, though I had to endure one of her lectures as the price. Soon I was heading out the door. I stopped at a convenience store and bought another package of condoms. Twenty minutes after that I was in Debbie's house.

We didn't bother much with preliminaries. Less than ten minutes after my arrival we were in her bedroom stripping off our clothes. She begged me to eat her again like I had at Raisin's house and I teased her a little, saying I didn't want to break the LAW or anything. Finally I buried my face between those thighs and went to town. I then fucked her, after donning a condom of course. I then taught her the finer points of giving a blowjob, stopping her before I actually came in her mouth because I wanted to fuck her again. I showed her the female superior position and she caught on quickly, finding that if she rubbed herself in a certain way, she could bring herself off.

"See," I told her, after I'd finally blown my second load into the condom. "You can do that with any guy and you don't have to rely on his skill in order to get yourself off. As long as you can keep him from coming for the length of time it takes you to rub yourself to orgasm on his cock, you can be satisfied."

Her naked, sweaty body was collapsed across mine, her ample tits pushing into my chest. My hand was idly stroking her firm ass. "But how," She asked. "Do I keep them from coming? I haven't done it with many people besides you, but every time I have, the guy comes in less than a minute or so."

"Suck him off first." I advised her, knowing that I was making some future lover very happy. "Use those tricks I taught you when you were sucking me. Take the load and then demand he eat your pussy. Tell him he gets nothing else if he doesn't return the favor."

"Wow." She whispered, her tongue licking at the sweat on my neck.

"While he eats you," I continued, feeling myself stirring again already. God the wonders of youth! "He'll get hard again, but it will take him longer to come since he'll have just done it. You should be able to keep him active long enough to give yourself a good come." I patted her ass, rolling her over and beginning to kiss her again. "Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She breathed, thrusting her tongue at me.

I went home mid-afternoon and fell fast asleep. My balls were aching in a very pleasant way; the way that tells you that they were happily overused. I'd taken a shower before leaving Debbie's house so I had little to do before my babysitting assignment that night. When I awoke I only had to put on fresh clothes, comb my hair and, of course, brush my teeth, expunging my mouth of the smell of teenaged pussy.

As I headed out the door Tracy was getting ready for her party. She was dressed in her tightest pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She smiled as I went by.

"Heading to Anita's?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "Have a good time tonight."

"I will." She said. "And thanks again."

"Anytime Trace." I replied, heading downstairs. "Anytime at all."

Anita was dressed in a red dress that showed off her natural attributes, her tits, nicely. Her chunky legs were covered with dark pantyhose. She saw me looking as I entered her house and blushed a little.

"You look VERY nice." I told her lecherously. "Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?"

She giggled like a teenager. "My presence is quite expected." She told me. "Besides, the kids are awake anyway."

I nodded. "Of course." I said, and turned to the kids, who were playing on the floor with a collection of Hot Wheels. They saw me and squealed, heading for me.

"But sometimes," Anita said thoughtfully. "A girl gets a little ill and has to come home early; say around nine o'clock."

"Really?" I asked, smiling, wondering if my dick could perform after my earlier session with Debbie.

"Really." She nodded and then turned to the kids. "Gimmee kisses." She told them. "Mommy's going bye-bye."

She returned at ten after nine, just after the kids had been put to bed. After brief inquiries about their health and well being, she walked over to me and took my hand. She traced her manicured nails over the back of it and then guided it under her dress, sliding it along over her nyloned thighs to the junction of her legs. I could feel dampness and musty heat emanating from her crotch.

"Do you feel how wet I am?" She asked, grinding her thighs together, pulling on my wrist to put pressure on her sensitive regions.

"Yeah." I nodded, my mouth drying a little.

"That's from thinking about you and all the things I'm gonna do to you tonight." She told me.

"Cool." I gasped.

"Why don't you take these pantyhose off of me?" She asked, kicking off her shoes. "I could use a little air."

I kneeled before her and pulled off her pantyhose, as requested, and, while she stood there before me, she threw the hem of her dress over my head. Her bare legs and crotch were directly before my face, the silky material of her dress billowing over my back. The smell under there was rich with musk; her pussy lips were oozing moisture. She widened her stance a little, spreading her legs and bringing her pussy near my mouth. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and pulled it forward, into her wetness.

I ate her to orgasm as she stood there, though her knees became quite wobbly as she came and she had to hold onto my shoulders for support. She then pushed me to my back on the floor and pulled my shoes from my feet and my pants and underwear from my body. She spread her dress around my hips and lowered herself onto my straining, very erect cock. Slowly she sank down upon me, engulfing me in her wet snatch and then pumping her hips up and down.

I must say that she gave me one of the best fucks I've ever had, before or after recycling. I wondered why her husband had divorced her. He couldn't have found someone better in bed. Better looking maybe, but not better in the sack.

I staggered home about ten-thirty that night and fell immediately into bed. My crotch was throbbing with the beat of my heart and my dick had a raw, used feeling to it. I had a smile on my face as I fell into sleep, thanking God for Mr. Li and for the fact that I hadn't been in a jovial mood that night and wished I was an Oscar Meyer wiener or something. Never in my life had I had so much sex in so short a period of time. And with three different girls too! My last thought was what tomorrow would bring.

It didn't bring much. My body was aching and sore. Since it was Sunday, the Lord's day after all, I spent the entire twenty-four hour period without leaving the house. It was a day of rest. There was school tomorrow.

The poor weather returned for Monday's walk to school. The temperature was in the thirties, the sky was cloudy and spat intermittent flurries of snow down upon Mike and I as we walked to school. Mike was telling me what a great kegger it had been on Friday and that I should have gone to the one on Saturday night as well.

"I'm tellin' you man, there was bitches everywhere." He proclaimed.

"Yeah?" I replied, brushing a snowflake out of my eye and pulling my hood tighter against the cutting wind.

"Fuck yeah." He said. "I met this bitch from Spokane High and we got all fucked up together. After a while we went off to the trees and she gave me a fuckin' blow job."

"A blow job huh?" I asked, as if interested, wondering if Mike had ever really been laid at all.

"Yeah," He leered. "She could suck start a Harley, I'm tellin' you. You shoulda come. I bet you coulda got laid too."

"I'm waiting for Miss Right." I told him.

He looked at me strangely for a moment and then, finally figuring it was a joke, started laughing.

I didn't laugh back and we walked on in silence. Mike bothered me. I knew the path that he was on but every attempt I made to even talk about steering him off of it had failed. I wanted to help him, to keep him from ending up a thirty-three year old loser living with his parents and never having held a job for more than a year in his life. Didn't he want to marry, have children, raise a family? Didn't he want what everyone else in the world did? Surely the life he would end up with was not what he desired, was it? But I had no idea how to even begin to steer him. His facade was of the tough, independent person, streetwise, never needing advice or help from anyone. How could you reach such a person? Especially when they'd spent their entire life as the superior member of the friendship. I was clueless and hoping that some answer would come to me. But the answer, for the moment, eluded me.

"Well look who's back." Mike said as we approached the school.

I looked where he was indicating and saw Richie Fairview standing with his cronies in their accustomed spot near the bike racks. The same spot where I'd engineered his downfall and his trip to the hospital. Even from this distance I could see he had a bandage on his nose. Though he had a heavy coat on I was reasonably sure that his chest was taped up beneath it. I'd felt a definite crunch when I'd kicked him the other day.

"Well well." I smiled, already turning that way.

"You gonna fuck him up again?" Mike asked, a little fear in his voice, but not as much as before.

"Only if he wants to go the hard way." I said, heading directly for him.

You have to understand that Richie was more than just Richie to me. He was the epitome of bullies, the sum of all large, stupid aggressors that had picked on me since grammar school. He encompassed bullies that would pick on me after Richie would eventually graduate or drop out or whatever. As a shy, easily malleable kid in school I'd been easy fodder for them throughout my school years. And they had left an impression that was deeper than I'd realized until I'd seen Richie on my first day back. Richie represented all bullies that had ever said an unkind word or had laid an unjust hand upon me. By besting him at his own game, I was besting demons that had helped shape my previous life. I intended to make him suffer, to bring him down as far as I could, to expose the lie that all bullies represented; that they were gods, unchallengable.

His friends tittered nervously as I approached, whispering some things to him, him nervously whispering some things back. The very fact that he was standing at the head of them despite his earlier defeat told me a lot. He'd undoubtedly told them that he was going to repay me for the sneak attack on him the first time. They were anxiously awaiting his revenge. I was pretty sure there would be no revenge. The Richies of the world don't generally think things through very carefully.

"Hey Dickwad!" I yelled directly at him when I was close enough. "How was the hospital?"

"Fuck you motherfucker!" He yelled, taking a few steps closer; again telling me volumes about his intentions. Had he been meaning to fight me, he would have waded right in. But he didn't. He took a few steps towards me, obviously hoping I'd cower and back down. When I didn't (and why he thought I would, after our last encounter is a mystery to me), he slowed down, his mind re-evaluating what his strategy was. In that moment I knew I'd won the confrontation.

"That's some pretty insulting shit you're talking." I told him conversationally, walking closer. "I suppose you think that your friends here are impressed by it." I shook my head sadly. "They're not. Talk is cheap faggot, action is where it's at. If you wanna impress your friends and restore your reputation as a badass you're simply gonna have to kick my ass. Isn't that what you told them you were gonna do?"

"I AM gonna kick your fuckin' ass!" He roared, taking a tentative step forward.

I laughed. "Are you now?" I asked. "Well go ahead and do it." I made a 'come-on' gesture with my fingers. "Kick my ass. Let's see you do it."

He stood still, his face fuming, infuriated with shame and anger. He wanted to, that was obvious, but he also remembered what had happened last time.

"I'm waiting." I said impatiently. "When are you gonna kick my ass? It's sitting here right in front of you. Start kicking."

He remained motionless, his body trembling with rage, rage I was oh so pleased to see. This was even more satisfying than besting him in the first place.

"Yeah." He finally said. "So you can rat me out and have me arrested or something."

"Oh please." I scoffed. "Having someone rat you out never bothered you before. Why don't you just admit it? You're scared of me. You wouldn't take a swing at me if I dropped my hands and closed my eyes, would you? It HURTS to get the shit kicked out of you, doesn't it? It's an experience you don't care to repeat, is it? You know that if you take a swing at me, or make any move at all towards me, you're gonna be riding in an ambulance again, don't you?"

"Fuck you!" He yelled, near tears now, on the brink of collapse.

I shook my head again. His friends were staring at him, nervous fear in their faces.

I spat, the wad landing on his shoe. "You fuckin' disgust me." I told him. "If you want to fight you come and find me." I said. "We'll have ourselves a fight. But keep in mind, that if you start any of your 'fuck you' and 'I'm gonna kick your ass' bullshit with me again, I'm not gonna be so generous. Like I said, talk is cheap. If you want some action, look me up.

If you don't want some action, keep your fuckin' mouth closed when you see me."

I turned my back to him and walked into the school, Mike in tow. I knew I had nothing to fear by turning my back to him. I knew it.

Lunchtime. In my previous life I'd always eaten pretty much alone since Mike had a different lunch schedule than I. But now I found myself the center of some attention. People kept coming up to me, just wanting to talk about this and that. I was becoming popular I realized, not sure I liked it. And again, I was thirty-two years old, not fifteen. The conversation I was offered was not terribly stimulating.

After only five minutes the combination of the cold and the endless litany of pussy stories, car stories, or drug stories drove me inside to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was the domain of the preppie students, those college bound overachievers. The air was warm and scented with the aroma of spaghetti. It was filled with the babble of conversations and the clanking of plastic trays on simulated wood grain tables.

I stood near the doorway surveying the scene, seeing the gathering of cliques at various tables, trying to find a place to sit down. Many of the students in there were those that were in my classes. They'd always ignored me since I wasn't quite one of them and I had no desire to strike up friendships with them now. With burrito and soda in hand I scanned around the room and finally locked onto a solitary figure sitting by herself near the back of the room.

It was Nina Blackmore, the future emergency room doctor. Like always, she was by herself, eating out of her tray and reading a book. Nina, in addition to being a high school classmate, had been a junior high and grammar school classmate as well. She'd appeared at our school when I was in the third grade, a new student from somewhere or other. That, in combination with a lisp that she'd had at that time had doomed her to the role of unpopularity. She'd been the butt of jokes since forever, although they'd been particularly bad in grammar school. Third, fourth, and fifth graders can be unusually cruel to kids who were somewhat different.

I myself was as guilty of this as everyone else. I'd done my time chanting teasing rhymes at her back then, deriding her, calling her ugly, making fun of her lisp in as cruel ways as fourth grade minds could conceive. Though she'd gone to speech therapy until well into junior high and lisped no more, the damage was done to her. She was an outsider, belonging to no clique, doomed to be by herself until probably college where she would show up the vast majority of her classmates by working her way into a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year job.

But even then the mark of her school years would be forever upon her. I would know her as a paramedic, would frequently transport patients to the emergency room where she was employed. She would have a reputation as a cold hearted, vindictive bitch among the paramedics and nurses that she dealt with. She was the kind of doctor that would question a paramedic or RN's every decision, no matter what the outcome of the patient. And she'd always reserved her most scathing comments for me. I'd always known that this was because I'd gone to school with her and had once, in grammar school, been one of her tormentors.

A typical example of her wrath is something that occurred nearly a year before my recycling, on a frigid January day. I'd been dispatched to a call for a child with seizures in a middle class section of the city. Child seizure calls are generally nothing that gets paramedics terribly excited. Usually the child either has a history of seizures or is having them because of a high fever. Seizures are not usually life threatening.

However, when I walked into the house that day with my partner and the crew from a Spokane Fire Department engine company, I took one look at the kid in question and knew that I was dealing with something more than a seizure call. The kid, who looked to be about ten years old, was lying on the carpet near the sofa. His skin was blue; as blue as a police uniform, and he was not breathing. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, bugging out. He was lying still.

There was a brief second of pause while we all clicked into 'this is really an emergency' mode. And then every eye in the room (except for the kid) turned to me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

"Start bagging him." I barked to one of the firefighters and she rushed into action, opening their bag and pulled out the equipment.

I kneeled down next to the kid and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but it was weak and very slow. What the hell was going on? I'd wondered, trying to think. Ten year olds did not just suddenly collapse and die from a seizure. There was something I was missing.

The mother was, understandably enough, absolutely hysterical but, while I opened up my airway bag and began setting up to put in a breathing tube, she was able to tell me that she'd heard a strange noise and had entered the room to find her son seizing on the couch. It had gone on for a considerable time and then he'd simply stopped just before we'd arrived. His breathing hadn't started again. She told me he had no known medical problems. He'd had no fever, had in fact been perfectly fine when she'd talked to him less than ten minutes before she found him seizing.

While I pulled out my breathing tube and a laryngoscope, a lighted instrument used to peer down someone's throat prior to placing the tube, the firefighter began bagging the child, forcing air down his throat and into his lungs. While she did this my partner had hooked the child up to our EKG machine. I took a quick glance at the reading. His heart was only beating thirty times a minute and was slowing further with each passing beat. What the hell?

The firefighter that was bagging seemed to be having trouble. "The air won't go in." She told me. "It just blows out the side."

Armed with that information I took another look around the room. The television was on, tuned to a cartoon show. A half-eaten hot-dog was sitting on a plate on the coffee table. The light bulb suddenly went off above my head.

"Was he eating?" I asked the mother.

"Yes." She sobbed, wringing her hands. "I'd just given him his lunch."

"Shit." I muttered, everything falling into place.

"Stop bagging him and let me in there." I told the firefighter. She stepped aside and I picked up my laryngoscope. Lying on the floor near his head I inserted the blade into his mouth and lifted the tongue out of the way. A lightbulb on the end of the blade illuminated his airway for me. It was blocked solid by a chunk of pink hot dog.

"Matt, give me the Magills." I told my partner.

He slapped a long set of forceps into my hand, an instrument designed specifically for removing foreign objects from airways. I'd never used them before, true choking calls are rare, but they worked just exactly as I'd been promised. I grabbed the chunk of meat and pulled it free, revealing his vocal cords and trachea behind it. I gave him a second to see if he would start breathing on his own. When he didn't, I picked up the breathing tube and slid it through his vocal cords. The firefighter attached her bag to the top of the tube and began forcing pure oxygen down into his lungs.

By the time I got the tube secured his skin had pinked up considerably and his heart rate had increased to more than a hundred. By the time we loaded him into the back of the ambulance his eyes were open and he was gagging violently, no doubt upset to wake up and find a large tube in his throat. By the time we got to the hospital I'd been forced to remove the tube and he was breathing well on his own. He was a little confused and dopey but awake and able to talk. When we brought him in to Nina's emergency room I was positively glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done, convinced that out of all the times I'd been needlessly called, for once I'd actually been NEEDED.

And what did Nina, the good doctor have to say to me after she heard the progression of the call?

"You're supposed to try abdominal thrusts on an unconscious choking victim before you resort to the Magills." She said icily. "Did you miss that part of the class back in ambulance driver school?"

She actually wrote me up for this, making me answer to our county emergency medical services authority. I was given a written reprimand in my file for failing to try a less invasive method of clearing the airway first. The medical director, to give him credit, was at least apologetic as I signed it. He mumbled something about how the ends don't justify the means and then explained that "certain doctors" seemed to have a problem with the whole world.

Though I'd been pissed at her, she'd after all turned one of the high points of my career into a disciplinary procedure, I'd understood even then that I was partially responsible for what had happened. I understood even better looking at her now in the cafeteria, sitting alone and reading a book while she picked at a plate of cafeteria spaghetti. After all, the experience with Richie was fresh on my mind. Had what she'd done been much different than what I'd done? We'd both attacked visible symbols of past torment. We'd both given in to basic human nature.

Was it too late for Nina? I wondered, looking at her. Was the damage to her already done?

I took a deep breath and headed her way.

"Okay if I sit here?" I asked her when I arrived.

She looked up at me with suspicion plain in her eyes, perhaps wondering if I'd come to renew the teasing she'd been so familiar with in grade school. While waiting for an answer I looked at her, marveling over the power of suggestion. Nina had been called ugly since the third grade. It was an accepted fact among everyone that she WAS ugly. But the funny thing is, that she really wasn't. She was skinny and had small breasts; a late bloomer as I've mentioned before. Her face was without any make-up but it was smooth and actually sort of pretty. Her brown hair was unstyled but looked just like everyone else's hair all the same. She was called ugly and probably felt ugly because we'd all agreed back in third grade that she WAS ugly.

It was also assumed that she was dumb, a natural conclusion based on the fact that she never said anything to anybody. It had been assumed of me on my first trip through school too. Obviously she was far from dumb. One did not make it through four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency if one lacked intelligence. Could there be meaningful conversation here perhaps? I saw the book she was reading, 1984 by Orwell, a very deep book.

"Please?" I asked again, "I won't bite you."

Her eyes softened a little, as if to say that she was reserving judgment for the moment. "Sure." She finally said.

I took the bench across from her, setting down my food, drink, and napkin. "That's a good book." I offered, nodding at the cover. "I've read it quite a few times. Very thought provoking."

She nodded, not saying anything, keeping her eyes firmly on the page. Suspicion was radiating off of her in waves. Maybe it was too late, I wondered.

"Its also," I went on, "The most depressing book I've ever read. Is this your first time reading it?"

"No." She said softly. "I've read it five or six times."

"Then you probably know what I mean." I said. "I mean the thought that everything is controlled. Everything. The entire war is just a production to keep the masses from bettering themselves. The entire writings of history are rearranged on a regular basis to control the way people think. Even the resistance doesn't really exist. When you get to the point that they are captured and you find out that they'd been known about the entire time." I shook my head. "It's just a depressing thought, a depressing book.

But also one of my favorites."

She was looking at me now, confusion and a little curiosity shaping her features. "It's one of my favorite books too." She said carefully, as if expecting me to start laughing at her or speaking in a fake lisp.

"Have you ever thought," I said, "That all of that stuff in 1984 could actually be happening now? That we, as proles, wouldn't even realize it? I mean, think about it, with today's technology how hard would it be to re-write history, or to control the media, or to keep track of everyone?"

"Not very hard at all." She said, putting the book down for the first time. Careful interest was visible now. "Sometimes I swear that it's really happening to some degree or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm sure most intelligent people know that you can't possibly know what's REALLY going on, how things REALLY work. I'm pretty certain that they don't really work the way we're taught in government class though."

She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth. Strange I'd never noticed that before. Probably because I'd never seen her smile before. I wondered if anyone else had.

We continued to talk about 1984 and other books by Orwell. The only other one that I'd read was Animal Farm but she'd read them all. She explained the basic plots of them and the underlying message with animated clarity. Once she started talking to me I found her conversation intelligent and her insights well thought out. I almost forgot that I was talking to a teenager. Before I realized it lunch was over and it was time to head for the next class.

"Nice talking to you Nina," I told her with frank honesty as I stood.

"Thank you." She squeaked, her face blushing, her eyes confused.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." I told her and smiled. "It's nice to talk to someone who thinks like you do, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'll be here tomorrow if you want to, you know, talk some more."

"I'd like that." I said, giving her a wave and heading for the door.

I was cheerful as I walked alone through the crowded halls, making my way through kids in groups, heading for driver's education. I was thinking that maybe Nina could be softened a little bit after all, and I'd truly enjoyed talking to her. What was that they said, still waters run deep? It seemed that was true in her case. If only I could figure out a way to reach Mike. If only meaningful conversation could be the key to derailing him from his path.

My thoughts were sidetracked as I found myself walking behind Richie Fairview. He was with two of his cronies and was trying, in his idiotic way, to strike up a conversation with a group of cheerleaders that were walking the same direction. The cheerleaders were trying there best to ignore the trio of thugs and Richie, deciding to up the ante a little, began reaching for their skirts, trying pull them up.

At the sight of this all of my anger at Richie and bullies in general came flooding back. He didn't know I was behind him but he was about to find out. I kicked out my foot, catching his back leg just as he was stepping forward. He stumbled forward and crashed to the hallway floor, scraping up his elbows and hands and sending up a chorus of delighted giggles and laughter from the cheerleaders.

Richie rolled over and jumped to his feet in an instant, his fists raised, an obscene epitaph on his lips. And then he saw who had tripped him. He stopped.

"You oughtta be more careful asshole." I told him conversationally, continuing to walk by. "You can get hurt falling down around here."

I didn't look back at him, just continued to walk down the hall towards my class. Behind me the cheerleaders were still chuckling. I wasn't attacked from behind. I knew I wouldn't be. A smile was on my face as I found the right classroom and went about the task of learning to drive a car.

The next day as Mike and I entered the school there was no Richie Fairview positioned out front, nor were there any of his goon squad. It seemed they'd finally learned the lesson. So I'd succeeded in clearing out a threat to helpless freshmen and sophomores everywhere. Richie would probably fade into joking obscurity, I figured, robbed of his most potent weapon, his reputation. In a way I was somewhat disappointed. I had actually been kind of looking forward to another confrontation with the dumb slob.

Oh well, there were plenty more bullying assholes I could deal with. I was actually starting to see myself as some sort of superhero, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, battling the forces of evil, my very name revered by all. I wondered if I could force Richie to start paying back the kids he'd ripped off. I could picture it, ordering him to give a dollar a day to every kid he'd ever robbed. And if he ever gave them any shit, they could come to the GREAT BILLY for help and justice.

I was standing at my locker, Mike beside me, running these amusing thoughts through my brain when my instinct alerted me to danger. Perhaps it was my peripheral vision, catching just a glimpse of a dark figure moving towards me, maybe it was my ears, hearing the advance of a footstep, perhaps it was some sort of sixth sense, but suddenly all of the instincts I'd developed from my years on the streets told me something was coming from behind me. I reacted quickly, but not quickly enough.

I turned, raising my hands into a defensive posture just as Richie Fairview swung at me. I raised my arm to protect my head, automatically assuming that's where he would strike me. Because of that the blow that was aimed at my body struck home, hitting on my left flank and driving the wind from me. My first thought upon being struck was that it hurt, but that it wasn't that bad. I was still standing and it was time to play some catch-up.

His right hand pulled away from my body and prepared to move forward for another blow. I stepped forward and grabbed at his wrist just as he started the second swing. I caught his wrist neatly in my hands and started to pull it forward, intending to spin him around and push him against the lockers where I could batter his vulnerable back and kidney region. Maybe I could put the fucker into renal failure. But as I started the maneuver that would have put this plan into motion I looked down for an instant at his hand, the one I was holding.

The hand wasn't empty. There was a buck knife in it. The blade, which was about five inches long, was stained with blood.

The implications of this hit me immediately. I'd been stabbed in the abdomen! How bad was it?

Mike, noticing at about the same time as I did that Richie was playing for keeps, stepped behind him and threw his arm around Richie's neck, choking him, pulling him off balance. His other arm pulled at the knife hand, keeping it well away from me. The priority of the battle had just changed. The goal was no longer to beat the crap out of Richie, it was to get the knife out of his hands and end the confrontation as quickly as possible. I'd been stabbed!

I saw the best way to do it right before me. Richie, off balance and struggling against Mike had his legs spread wide in an attempt to keep his feet beneath him. I let go of the wrist, trusting Mike to keep the knife away from me and stepped forward, bringing my knee up into his crotch with all the force I could muster. I kneed him so hard that pain went shooting up my leg from my kneecap.

Richie squealed so loud that I'm surprised nearby windows didn't break. He began choking and gagging, the knife dropping forgotten from his hand, clattering on the cement floor of the hall. Mike, seeing the knife drop, kicked it clear and then let go of Richie, who dropped to the ground in a most ungraceful manner, curling immediately up into a ball. He began vomiting.

I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.

"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.

"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.

"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?

"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.

"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!

"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.

"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.

"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"

"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"

"What are you… "

"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."

"But who… "

"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"

That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.

The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.

But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.

But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?

As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."

"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.

"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"

"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."

The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."

A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.

"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.

I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.

"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."

Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?

Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.

"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."

Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?

"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"

"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."

It took me a few minutes to come fully awake and they gave me some Demerol to take the edge off my various pains. A doctor filled me in. Apparently the knife had severed a couple of minor veins but other than that, had touched nothing important. My spleen, kidney, and lung were all fine. My large and small intestines were fine. I was, in short, very lucky, suffering little more than a flesh wound. I would be kept in the hospital overnight for observation and released the next morning. After a week or so of taking it easy, I could go back to school. He then suggested I stay away from knives.

"You're parents and your sister are outside." He told me. "But before they come in the police would like to speak with you for a few minutes."

"Okay." I told him, nodding, examining the catheter protruding from beneath the sheets with distaste. How long until they took it out?

The police officer was older. I didn't recognize him. Probably he'd retired before I made my debut on the streets of Spokane where I would, over time, get to know most of them on a first-name basis. He was wearing a uniform that would be changed in a few years and carrying a thirty-eight in his holster, a gun that would be exchanged for nine millimeters soon. He looked me up and down for a moment, his gaze telling me that he'd seen it all and heard it all. I was familiar with the gaze. I'd acquired it myself.

"So Billy," He said, opening a notebook. "Suppose you tell me what happened today?"

I knew what he was expecting. He was expecting me to say that I had no idea who had done this to me or why. That I hadn't so much as caught a glimpse of the person responsible. That I couldn't identify them in a line-up. In short, he expected me to act like a typical teenaged victim.

"Well officer Morgan," I said, reading his nametag. "I was stabbed by a kid named Richard Fairview."

"Really?" He said, looking at me.

"Really." I nodded. "He came up behind me at my locker and just as I turned around, he stuck a buck knife in my side. I fought back and managed to keep myself from getting stabbed twice. In fact, I kneed the motherfucker so hard in the balls that I think I dislocated my knee in the process."

Officer Morgan chuckled. "Well well." He said. "This is different. So tell me, why did Mr. Fairview stab you?"

"Because he's a piece of shit thug and I've been screwing with him for the last few days."

"Screwing with him?" He asked, making a notation on his pad.

"I'm sure you've got reports of his little trip to the hospital the other day." I said. "He's a shake-down artist at the high school, ripping off kids as they come in. Perhaps your department has had dealings with him before?"

"Oh yes." Morgan nodded, looking at me as if he was seeing an optical illusion. "We have quite a file on Mr. Fairview. Are you telling me you sent him to the hospital the other day? Because if you are, I think you might want to get your parents in here and have me advise you of your rights. What happened to the gentleman the other day was a felonious assault."

"He tried to rip me off." I said. "And when I refused to give him money he tried to assault me. I simply took defensive measures. Very stern defensive measures."

"I see." The cop nodded, looking at me now with something like respect. "Please go on."

"Well, after that I've been making a point to tease him every time I see him." I shrugged. "I guess I went a bit too far and he decided to take action."

"That's a delicate way of putting it." He said. "It's hard to believe a little guy like you did all of that damage to that big asshole."

"I know a little karate." I said. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." The cop said. "I ran your record and Fairview's record while I was waiting to interview you. Fairview has got multiple arrests for everything from assault to drugs to attempted rape. He's a pukebag in the making. You, on the other hand, come from a middle-class family, have no arrest record whatsoever, in fact you're not in our system at all. All of the witnesses, and there was a surprising amount willing to talk about this thing, say that Fairview came up from behind and struck you with the knife and that you were acting in complete self-defense. Your friend Mike confirms your story. Fairview's story is among the most ridiculous I've ever heard. He says that you attacked him with the knife as he walked by, he took it away from you and stabbed you in self-defense." The cop gave me a sly smile. "He's a couple of rooms over you know."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yep." Morgan nodded with satisfaction plainly visible on his face. "Don't tell anyone I told you but you seem trustworthy. The docs say he might lose those testicles, you got him THAT hard. Even if he don't lose 'em, it's doubtful that he'll ever have kids." The cop looked to the heavens. "Imagine that, that little shitbag won't get to breed more little assholes. Goddamit sometimes there IS justice in this fucked-up world." He gazed at me. "So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write up your story pretty much as you told it. But I would suggest highly that you profess ignorance to the little incident the other day. You're the only one that's told me about it. Even Fairview himself didn't mention it. So, to avoid complications, how about we just leave that little tidbit out of the story? Makes things much easier for everyone. You don't know WHY he attacked you by your locker, he just did. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed, fascinated by the way he was talking to me.

"Good." Morgan nodded. "I'm gonna charge him with assault with a deadly weapon. In light of his previous record he'll get a year or so in juvie. It goes without saying that he'll be expulsed from school. So congratulations hero. You got rid of one first class, A-number one dirtbag.

I might put you in for a goddam public service award."

He took another twenty minutes or so to interview me thoroughly about the incident. He thanked me again and then left the room. A few minutes later my parents came in with Tracy in tow. Mom looked as if she'd been crying. So did Tracy I saw. Even Dad looked as if he'd aged since I'd seen him that morning. I felt sorrow and shame for having put them through this ordeal.

"Billy?" Mom said, coming forward and stroking my hair.

"Yeah Mom?" I asked. "I'm all right, really."

She gulped. "This isn't because of, well, drugs is it?"

So that is how I spent the one-week anniversary of my recycling in a hospital bed. They kept me doped up throughout the night but I still found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to the fact that I'd been stabbed in this life but that I hadn't been stabbed in my previous life. The implications of that were starkly frightening. I was not invulnerable. All bets were off. I could just as easily be killed here as I could have in my own when. I could die before I turned thirty-two!

Since I'd come back and changed things from their natural order anything could now happen. Anything. The risks I'd taken so far now gave me the shivers. Riding in Raisin and later Mike's car without a seatbelt on with an intoxicated driver at the wheel. Playing games with dangerous bullies at school. Even playing mind games with my teachers. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have really thought that I was safe? Had I actually been thinking of myself as a superhero before Richie had struck me?

I made my second solemn vow since returning. I vowed that I would be careful. I was having too much fun to die.

"Are you SURE you'll be okay Billy?" Mom asked me for perhaps the fiftieth time. "We can still cancel our plans."

"No, no Mom." I insisted once more. "I'm healing up just fine. I get to go back to school on Monday. Really, I'll be fine."

It was Saturday night. I'd been home from the hospital for a week and a half, bored out of my mind, unable to leave the house or do much of anything besides lie in bed and let my wounds heal. Mom had taken off work to take care of me and had fawned over me for the past nine days. I had soup and sandwiches delivered to me in bed, I had sodas brought to me whenever I wished. I was surprised I was allowed to go to the bathroom by myself. I love my mother dearly, I really do, but after nine days she was starting to get on my nerves. Saturday night was the night of her company's annual awards banquet, an event that she and dad attended every year and would usually come home from in the wee hours of the morning in a cab they were so drunk. The last thing in the world I wanted was for them to stay home. I needed a little peace.

"Well," She said doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely Mom." I nodded from the couch. "Besides, Tracy's here." I nodded in my sister's direction. "If there are any problems, she can handle them."

"Yeah Mom." Tracy readily agreed, too readily some would say. "I can take care of him."

She seemed satisfied. She headed upstairs and began to get ready. Two hours later her and Dad were out the door.

"Thank God!" Tracy said once their car had disappeared from sight. "How the hell could you stand it having her home all the time?"

"Mom's all right." I said. "It's just parental authority that gets old."

She smiled, not bothering with THE LOOK. By now Tracy was used to my odd sayings. "Whatever." She said. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course." I told her, offended that she felt the need to even ask that.

"Cindy scored some killer buds." Tracy told me. "She's gonna bring 'em over and we're gonna get stoned while we watch Saturday Night Live. If you can keep your mouth shut, maybe she'll share with you."

I smiled, knowing that I'd made great progress with my sister since returning. I'd never even been aware that she smoked grass in my previous life. Now she was offering to get stoned with me. Sure, it wasn't exactly a blood oath of loyalty, but it was a start. "Suppose I told you I COULDN'T keep my mouth shut." I asked. "What would you do then?"

She gaped at me for a moment and then laughed. "You're an asshole Billy." She said, shaking her head. "Do you want to get stoned or not? I've never done it with you before, you should think of it as a privilege."

"It sounds like a plan Trace." I said. "And it is a privilege."

Cindy came over at nine o'clock. She was wearing the obligatory tight 501's and a sweater that accented her pert tits nicely. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled. My loins stirred at the first sight of her, my dick threatening to harden by visual stimulation alone. I'd found over the past week that, injuries aside, my libido was that of a fifteen-year old. I NEEDED to have an orgasm at least once a day. I seemed to go into physical withdrawal symptoms if I didn't. I'd jacked off so much there were actual abrasions on my dick. And Cindy had been a star player in many of the fantasies.

I was heartened by the fact that, after a quick greeting to Tracy, she rushed over to my spot on the couch and planted herself next to me. My dick stirred again as I smelled the scent of her perfume. It was heavy upon her skin but it was feminine and went right to my brain.

"You poor thing." She said with syrupy sympathy. "How are you doing?"

I smiled. "Everything that's important still works." I told her.

She giggled. "I guess Richie Fairview can't say the same." She replied. "Can I see where you got stabbed?"

"Sure." I told her, while Tracy stared in disbelief at her friend. I raised up my shirt, showing her the jagged wound. The stitches had been removed leaving only a healing line on my side. A similar wound, where they'd done the lavage, was just below my belly button.

"Ohhh." She crooned, looking at it. "You poor thing. Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad." I told her.

"Well here." She said, kissing her finger and then touching it to my bare skin, just atop the scar. "That'll make it better."

My flesh jumped at her touch, feeling the slight wetness of her saliva transferred from her fingertips to my side.

"You missed one." I told her, pointing at the surgical incision. She gave me another smile and then repeated the procedure for that one.

"Hope that makes them feel better." She said, eyeing the bulge in my sweat pants.

"It does." I assured her. "It really does."

Tracy seemed in shock as she watched her friend openly flirting with me. When they walked into the kitchen to fill the bong with water I saw a quick, whispered conversation that ended with Tracy glancing at me and then shaking her head in disbelief. I was in disbelief as well but fully prepared to take advantage of the situation. Why was Cindy acting this way with me when she'd treated me with quiet contempt before? I didn't really care but I was curious.

"You like to smoke buds?" Cindy asked me as she pulled a small baggie from her pocket.

"I LOVE it." I told her, staring into her eyes hard enough to make her blush.

Tracy looked at us uncomfortably.

She began loading up the bong, which I insisted, in the interests of safety, that we take out into the garage to smoke from. I knew that the smell of pot lingered in a room for hours and I'd recently learned very graphically that all bets were now off. I was being careful. The girls whined a little at my suggestion but finally agreed to it. So we got stoned amid my father's tools and boxes of motor oil, in the unheated garage where we could see our breath misting into the air.

"Now don't you feel safe?" I asked the two of them once we were back inside.

"If Mom and Dad come home unexpectedly now, all we have to worry about is pretending we're not stoned. We don't have to worry about them smelling it in the house."

"Mom and Dad never come home early." Tracy scoffed, taking a swig from a Coke. "You're just paranoid Billy."

"Tracy," I told her. "If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's to expect and plan for the unexpected. Sure, they probably won't come home early tonight, but it's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? If you work to eliminate all risks you'll usually be pretty safe. If you go through life assuming the worst will never happen, someday you're gonna get fucked." I stared directly at her as I said this and it was clear she got my message. Her arms broke out into visible gooseflesh and she trembled uneasily for a second.

"I guess you're right Bill." She allowed carefully, no doubt thinking about the conversation I'd had with her not too long ago.

"That's some pretty deep shit." Cindy said, scooting herself a little closer to me. "Is there anything to eat here?"

While Tracy was heating up some frozen burritos in the microwave, Cindy and I continued to sit on the couch.

"So where's your boyfriend tonight?" I asked her.

"You mean Jeff?" She shook her head and made a sour face. "I'm not going out with him anymore. He's an asshole."

"I could've told you that." I said.

"I made out with him a few times and he was telling everyone he was screwing me. Do guys really think that we won't hear about it when they say shit like that?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure what they think." I replied. "I think that 'think' is probably too strong a word for what they do. It seems to me that girls should stick to a general rule when deciding who they are going to, well, have fun with."

"Oh?" She asked perkily.

"The more a guy talks about having gotten pussy, the less pussy he's actually got. Now Jeff probably told you he'd screwed plenty of girls, right?"

"Oh yeah." She said. "As if that's going to impress us."

"Exactly. On the other hand, the guys that never tell pussy stories are usually the ones getting all the pussy. You see, they are smart enough to realize that discretion is the better part of valor. It's a pleasant cycle.

You don't talk about it, you get more of it, you get better at it. Your best lovers are gonna be those guys that have never told a pussy story in their life."

"Like you?" She asked, twirling a lock of her hair with her finger.

"Perhaps." I agreed. "But of course there's only one true way to find out how good someone is in bed."

"Really?" Cindy smiled. "And what is that?"

"Extensive personal research." I told her, letting my fingertip glide over the back of her hand. "Do you like to research?"

Tracy's return kept her from replying. She had plates of burritos and fresh cokes in her hands. Her eyes saw my fingertip caressing Cindy's hand and she shot another puzzled look at her friend. I could understand the source of her confusion. Cindy had always gone for the football player types. The good looking, rich boys from good families, and always older than her. Now she was shamelessly flirting with ME, her brother, who was not only not rich, not a football player, and not blessed with the rugged good looks of a Ken doll, but was two years younger than her as well. To Tracy it was probably as if the fabric of existence had suddenly developed a tear.

I got up to go take a leak (and to adjust my hard-on a little, it was bent at an uncomfortable angle). When I returned I could see that the two girls had been discussing something. Cindy was batting her eyes at me and Tracy was staring at me, as if she was seeing a completely different person.

When Cindy got up to go pee a few minutes later, Tracy waited until the bathroom door was closed and then turned to me almost angrily. "Do you know what Cindy told me?" She asked.

"What?" I said mildly.

"She heard that you screwed Steph Massie over by the falls last week. Is that true?"

"No." I shook my head. "We took a walk is all that happened. Talked a little. I was trying to get somewhere with her but she wouldn't go for it."

"That's not what Cindy heard." Tracy accused.

"Oh?" I asked. "And what did Cindy hear? And what does she care about Steph anyway? They don't exactly hang out together."

Tracy scowled at me. "Who do you think Cindy got the buds from you idiot? Everyone knows that Stephanie's brother is the biggest pot dealer in school."

"Oh," I paused, reaching back in my memory. Now that she mentioned it I DID remember that little piece of trivia. "Well, what did she hear?"

"Steph told her that you took her into the woods and gave her the best lay she's ever had." Tracy shook her head in disgust. "And believe me, that bitch has had quite a few lays. Did you really fuck her?"

"No." I said. "I didn't."

"Well why would she be telling people that you did?"

I shrugged. "She's just telling dick stories. You know how women are always doing that."

"Dick stories?" Tracy asked. "Girls do NOT tell dick stories!"

"Tracy," I finally asked. "What possible concern is this of yours?"

"What?"

"Why are you grilling me about this? What business is it of yours?"

"Because Cindy thinks you're some kind of great lover and she wants to, you know? That's why!"

"Wouldn't that be Cindy's business?" I asked.

"I just think she should know the truth." Tracy said indignantly.

"Okay. Tell her. Get her alone and tell her that I said I've never fucked Steph or anyone else. Tell her I'll deny fucking anyone, anywhere, at any time to my dying day. I'll go to my deathbed swearing that I'm a virgin." I smiled. "Maybe that will get her to back off."

Tracy opened her mouth to say something and then stopped, staring at me, her mind turning over what I'd just said. Her exasperation with me slowly turned into something else. It was the same change of expression I'd seen on the cop's face in the hospital. The expression became one of respect.

"You see Trace." I continued. "I might TRY to get somewhere with Cindy tonight. I might even get her to come to my room with me. But I won't get anywhere with her. Even if we're up there for an hour. Even if Cindy comes down and tells you I fucked the shit out of her, that I was the best lover she'd ever had, it would only be a lie. I will never get anywhere with anyone to hear me tell it. I guess I'm doomed to just keep trying forever and ever."

"Wow." Tracy whispered, in awe. "Do you know anyone else like you?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, no." I replied. "All of the guys I know get pussy all the time. I should know, they tell me about it."

"A shame." She commented as the bathroom door opened and Cindy emerged again.

"Have you guys been talking about me?" She giggled, seeing the serious expressions on our faces.

"No." We both answered together.

"We were just talking about brother/sister stuff." Tracy added.

We went out to the garage and smoked a few more bowls. When we resumed our places on the couch, Cindy proclaimed she was cold and asked if there was a blanket we could cover up with. Tracy retrieved a large blue comforter from the linen closet and threw it over us. Under the cover of the cover I went to work.

While we watched TV my hand found its way to the tight denim of Cindy's leg.

I caressed it for a few minutes and, when she didn't object, began to slide it upward. My fingers slowly traced over the material between her legs and continued to the waistband. I deftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of her jeans and slid my finger in the gap this created, the pad of my finger touching the soft skin of her lower stomach. She settled into the couch a little more, opening her legs for me.

I undid the rest of the buttons and slowly slid my hand into her jeans, my fingertips gliding over the silky material of her panties, staying on the outside of them. I probed further down while she spread her legs even wider. Beneath my hand I could feel the cushion of her pubic hair and, further down, the outline of her lips and dampness seeping through the cotton. I found the spot just below her clit and began to apply pressure, rocking my hand back and forth.

Though I kept my eyes on the television and my face expressionless, I heard definite change in Cindy's breathing pattern as I caressed her. I wondered if she'd ever been stimulated like this before. Probably not. The first instinct of a guy when getting his hands down a girls pants is to drive his finger into the pussy and thrust it back and forth. Now there's a time for doing that of course, but the beginning stages of foreplay are not it. Females like a slow build-up to passion, a gradual rise in excitement.

Cindy's hand came sliding across my lap. Her fingers closed around the bulge of my cock through my sweat pants, feeling the length. She gave a little coo as she felt me and I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. She was, to my pleasant surprise, pretty good at what she was doing. My dick was straining, eager for release and the touch of a female hand upon it felt heavenly.

Next to us, Tracy continued to stare at the television, either oblivious to what we were doing or pretending to be. It didn't really matter. I slid my hand upward a few inches and then let my fingers slide beneath the waist of Cindy's panties. My fingertips felt soft, feminine skin and then kinky, curly hair. I continued downward, having to push harder now, until my fingers were sliding across wetness and slippery warmth. My middle finger curled downward, sliding between an unseen set of lips that gripped eagerly back.

"Ahhh!" Cindy uttered, jumping a little at the contact.

Tracy glanced over at her, a knowing expression on her face. "You okay Cindy?" She asked sweetly.

"Yeah." Cindy answered, a little breathlessly. "Just a, Oooh," She shivered a little as I began to move my finger, "A hiccup."

"I should get those kind of hiccups." Tracy commented and then went back to the TV.

Soon her hand crept under the waist of my sweats and was digging through my underwear. Her cool, soft fingertips closed around my shaft and began to glide up and down. It felt great, to be gripped by a hand other than my own, but she was doing it with such enthusiasm that the comforter was noticeably rising up and down. Tracy couldn't have helped but see it, though she said nothing and pretended not to notice. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist and forced her to slow down a little.

I continued to finger her, feeling my hand get wet from her juices, feeling her jack my aching cock up and down. I was trying to think of a way to get her up to my room when I received help from an unexpected source.

"TV sucks." Tracy suddenly proclaimed. "It's more than an hour until Saturday Night Live comes on. Let's listen to some music."

"Uh, okay." I nodded, not caring if she wanted to put on a polka album at that point.

"You just bought the new Foreigner album a few weeks ago, didn't you?" She asked me.

I looked at her. Had I? I supposed I had if she'd brought it up. "Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Well why don't you go up and get it for us?" Tracy asked. "I've been dying to hear it."

"Uh, why don't you go get it?" I asked.

"I don't want to go in your room." Tracy explained, smiling. "How about you get it. Maybe Cindy can go help you look for it. She can pick out some of your other albums that she wants to listen to later." She turned to Cindy. "He's got a great collection."

"Okay." Cindy said immediately, her hand shooting out of my sweats so fast it was like it had never been there. She extricated my hand from her pants and buttoned back up, making no particular effort to hide what she was doing from Tracy. When her pants were fastened she stood up. "C'mon Billy, let's see your albums."

"And take your time." Tracy said. "Look at them all REAL carefully while you make your decision."

"You bet." Cindy said, heading for the stairs. She looked over at me, "You coming Billy?"

I looked at her seductive smile and started to rise, stopping when I realized that my sweats were probably poking out before me.

"Well Billy?" Tracy asked, looking at me. "Are you COMING?"

I looked in my sister's eyes and saw only amusement there. "Yeah." I said, throwing off the covers and standing up. Tracy's eyes dropped to the tent at my crotch.

"Looks like you dropped something in there." She smiled. She then gave me a meaningful look. "You owe me one." She whispered.

"I suppose I do." I agreed and then headed for the stairs. "Even though I won't get anywhere."

Cindy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She took my hand in hers and led me to my own bedroom. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean it up.

Had it been its former self, the encounter might have ended right there. We entered and she closed the door behind her, she then turned to me. Despite her aggression, her eyes were showing nervousness; her body trembling a little.

"You're very beautiful." I told her, my eyes roaming up and down her form, knowing that I'd be kissing it and tasting it soon.

"Thank you." She said softly. "I can't believe I'm up here with you."

"Do you want to leave?" I asked.

"No." She said, stepping forward, putting her arms around me. I returned her embrace, already giddy at the feel of her against me. She leaned her mouth towards me. "I want to stay."

Knowing I had a reputation to live up to now, I gave her my best. I was helped by the fact that she was a girl I'd often dreamed about, both in my first trip through school, and after my return. I stood near the door with her for more than five minutes, just kissing her, letting her taste my tongue, letting me taste hers. She was a good kisser, much better than I'd expected, although not quite as good as Anita. But she excited me more than Anita, aroused my hunger more. As I began kissing her neck and her ears and undoing the ponytail to let her blonde hair cascade free, she put her hands into the front of my sweats again, grasping my cock, fondling it urgently.

"Come on." She said eagerly. "Let's do it!"

I nipped at her nose and then planted a soft kiss on her eyelid. "Patience." I told her. "This is an experience to be savored." Little did she know that it was taking all of my willpower to keep from throwing her to the bed, stripping her pants off, and pounding away like an animal.

Instead I led her to the bed, or she led me I guess since she refused to remove her hands from my cock.

"Do you want me to blow you?" She asked, kissing on my face, squeezing my cock.

"Sure." I nodded, kicking off my shoes. Although I hadn't planned on that, I certainly wasn't going to refuse it. And if she could make me come it would give me more staying power for my later work.

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of the bed, dragging my sweats and underwear down as she went. My cock popped free, slapping her across the cheek as it was liberated. She giggled and then slowly ran her tongue up the shaft from the base to the head.

"Ahhh." I groaned, pleased at the sensation. I was even more pleased when she took me into her mouth and deep throated me, her lips slowly sliding down until they were nestled in my pubic hair. With exquisite slowness she pulled back up, applying suction as she went. "Goddd." I breathed. "Where did you learn that?"

"You like that?" She said, planting little kisses. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

She took me back in her mouth and began to bob up and down on me. Her hand locked around the shaft and began to jack with the rhythm of her head. Her tongue swirled round and round, wetting me and sending saliva dripping down into my hair, her mouth applying a pleasant amount of suction. My hips began to rise and fall immediately from the bed. My god it felt good. This seventeen-year old girl KNEW how to give a blowjob. I would put her up against a twenty-year whore in that department.

She slurped and sucked and made little grunting noises for only a short time before the first orgasm came straining up my spine.

"I'm gonna come Cindy." I warned her, in a voice that wasn't steady.

"Mmmmm." She moaned around my cock and picked up her pace.

I began to ejaculate a large, pent-up load into her mouth. Her hand continued to jack at me throughout it and her mouth sucked my come from the head. She gulped and gulped, swallowing every drop. When she pulled her face from my crotch, my dick was wet and shiny but clean as a whistle. She smiled up at me, licking her lips.

"You're not the only one who has some talent you know." She said, standing and pushing me back onto the bed. "Now what are you gonna do to repay me?"

"I'll think of something." I said, pulling her face to mine and putting my tongue back into her mouth.

I pulled off her sweater and then her bra, baring her gorgeous breasts. There is something sensuous and indescribable about a set of tits that belong to a seventeen-year old. They are so fresh, so firm, so visually stimulating. Could there be anything on earth more appealing? I had to taste them so I rolled her over on the bed and took one into my mouth, working the nipple, teasing it, making her sigh in pleasure. I worked on the other nipple for a while and then stood and reached for her waistband.

She watched me, her face flushed as I unsnapped her jeans and pulled them from her body. Her legs were long and lean, smooth to the touch, with just a few light hairs on the upper thighs. Her panties were dark red with white polka dots. The crotch of them was darker red, made so by the wetness that had soaked in there. I ran my index finger up and down her spread legs a few times, relishing the feel of that soft skin, that youthful skin. Finally I continued to her crotch and hooked the finger through the elastic of the panties. My knuckle was against her lips, feeling damp heat. I tugged and she lifted her hips, allowing me to drag them free and off of her body.

I couldn't have imagined a sexier looking vaginal area. Her pubic hair was blonde, only slightly darker than that on her head. It was sparse, revealing two very swollen lips and one very erect clit. I don't believe I've ever seen a finer one.

"You like what you see?" She asked me, opening her legs more, obviously knowing that her crotch was one that men dreamed of.

"Very much." I said, picking up her legs by the calf and placing them on my shoulders. "I think I'll eat it."

"Ohhh." She moaned as my head went forward.

Though she was a teenager, her smell was of a woman. Sharp and musky, dripping with pheromones. My dick sprang back to life as her odor hit me. Her taste was tart as I slid my tongue between those pouting lips and plunged it in. I drove it in and out, drinking from her, enjoying my feast, feeling those soft blonde hairs tickling my nose. When her crotch began to rise and fall and her fingers began to pull strands of hair from my head, I attacked her clit, taking it between my lips. She screamed as she came in my mouth.

When her gyrations stopped she hooked her hands into my armpits and pulled on me. "Fuck me!" She commanded.

"I want to eat you some more." I told her, trying to pull back.

"Fuck me!" She growled. "Fuck me now! And then, after you come, I want you to eat me again."

So she had fantasies. But I imagined it would not be as enjoyable as she imagined since I intended to wear a condom. "I need to get a rubber first." I told her, trying to get up.

Her strong arms pulled me back down. "I'm on the pill." She told me. "Now fuck me! And then eat me!"

"Are you REALLY on the pill?" I asked, hesitating.

"Yes Goddamit!" She whined, "I've been on it for a year now. Now fuck me Billy! Fuck me now! Get your ass up here!"

I figured, through my haze of lust, that she probably wouldn't lie about that. So I climbed aboard, sliding up her sweaty body and putting the head of my dick against her wet lips.

"Do it!" She yelled, putting her legs around my ass and pulling with them. "Fuck me!"

I thrust forward into her tight slit, going in in one smooth, gripping motion. We sighed together as our pubic bones met.

"Fuck me hard!" She panted, thrusting her hips up at me. "Come on!"

I fucked her hard, pounding into her body and establishing a rhythm that got my heartrate well into the aerobic exercise category. Sweat began to form on my face and drip onto hers. When the droplets landed near her mouth she would lick at them. She kept chanting "yes, yes, yes, fuck me" as my cock assaulted her tight pussy, making wet, squishing sounds and pouring her juices out onto the bedspread.

I angled upward with my thrusts, making the shaft rub forcefully against the top of her vagina, where the clitoral nerves were. I made sure my pubis ground into hers with each thrust, which served both to pleasure her, driving her towards orgasm and served to pleasure my cock. I squeezed her tits, tweaking the nipples, I felt her tight ass as it moved beneath me, I gave her my fingers, allowing her to suck on them. I felt vague pain both in my side and in my stomach as my wounds were stretched and pulled by my frantic action but it was unimportant, overridden by the pleasure her young body was giving mine.

She came again, screaming into my ear and then biting down on the lobe. I was right behind her, pumping out another load into her gasping chasm.

My thrusts had barely stopped before she pushed me downward. "Now eat me." She said. "Please? Eat my pussy now that you've come in it. Please?"

Obviously this was a long-held fantasy of hers. Though she had definite experience, I doubted she had ever gotten someone to do THIS act for her before. Teenagers and even college age men would be disgusted by the very thought. Hell, most fully-grown and matured men were. Though it wasn't one of my favorite activities, it wasn't repulsive either. It was something I'd done before (I'd found that many women shared Cindy's fantasy of having sperm licked from their vagina). My motto had always been do whatever it takes to insure future copulation. I gave her a smile and then slid down her body. I spread her sweaty legs wide and looked at her pussy. It was drooling juice and sperm, oozing it onto the bedspread. I hesitated just to make her ask again. I didn't have to wait long.

"Come on?" She begged. "Do it, please?"

I lowered my head and went to work.

It took her only a short time to come again but still I ate her until yet another orgasm came through. I then rolled over onto my back and pulled her on top of me. With a few adjustments her pussy was soon clamped down on my cock once more and I was thrusting up into her. She didn't want me to come in her pussy again though. Instead, she pulled herself off of me and took me into her mouth once again. She put her impressive blowjob abilities to work and soon I was blasting another load down her throat.

She crawled up onto my body and collapsed atop it, kissing my cheeks and my lips. "God o'mighty." She proclaimed. "That was the best sex I have ever had. Stephie was right about you."

"Stephie?" I asked. "Do you mean Stephanie Massie?"

"You know damn well who I mean Billy." She smiled, nuzzling me a little. "She told me you could eat a pussy like there was no fuckin' tomorrow. And goddam if you can't."

"I certainly wouldn't know how she would know that." I told Cindy.

"You're full of shit." Cindy told me affectionately. "She gave me every stinky detail. You fucked the shit out of her."

I shook my head, smiling a little. "Nope." I said. "I most certainly did not. She let me kiss her a little but she wouldn't let me do anything else."

Cindy stared into my eyes, trying to read what was behind them. "Are you for real?" She finally asked.

"As real as I can be." I said, sitting up. "But you know what? You and I didn't do anything either."

"We didn't?"

I shook my head again. "Nope. We looked at records, I tried to put a move on you, and you shot me down. Hell, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

She looked at me grinning. "I guess I can't."

"But if you're ever with groups of girls and you want to tell them some dick stories about how Tracy's little brother ate your pussy until you screamed, or about how he fucked you until you clawed marks in his back, or about how he licked his come out your still-twitching cunt afterwards," I licked my lips. "Well, there's not much I can do about that now, is there? I'll deny it of course, but you know how girls love to listen to those dick stories? Hell, people believe everything they hear, don't they?"

"I guess they do." She said teasingly. "But I'm not that kind of girl. Suppose I promised to keep my mouth shut about what happened here today?"

"Oh I don't expect you to." I said. "I guess I'll just have to live with the reputation your lies will give me, won't I?"

"I guess you will." She said, giggling now. "It's a tough life, isn't it?"

Chapter 4

Here, at last, is chapter four of my ongoing saga. This chapter is a bit different since it covers a much greater span of time than the previous chapters did. Again, comments are greatly appreciated and I will eventually answer all legitimate email. Sorry to all that it sometimes takes me a while. Send comments to al_steiner@hotmail.com

Working hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Paying anything to roll the dice

Just one more time

Some will win

Some will lose

Some are born to sing the blues

Oh the movie never ends

It goes on and on and on and on

JOURNEY

Time continued to go on, as it does. I was pleased to see that it passed at an adult's pace instead of a child's or a teenager's. I went to bed each day and I woke up each day still in my new life. Gradually I became convinced that I was there to stay, that I wouldn't suddenly wake up again back in 1999. This was an idea that, once I became used to being back in my teens, used to terrify me.

Of course there were things that I missed. Modern music for one. I longed painfully sometimes to hear a little alternative rock or modern heavy metal instead of what I considered to be golden oldies. I missed some of the conveniences that I'd become accustomed to in the nineties that weren't commonplace in the early eighties. Video recorders and rented movies were a prime example. My parents would not own a VCR until late in 1984. Even then video stores would not begin to crop up until early in 1985. But most of all I missed Becky. There were times I cried in my bed at night as I lay sleepless, feeling condemned to the knowledge that I would never see her again, never hold her again.

As I'd vowed after Richie Fairview put his buckknife into my side, I was careful what I did. I went to school each day but I did not torment any more bullies. Of course if they had decided to come looking for trouble with me I would have returned it to them in spades but none of them did. My encounters with Richie forever sealed my reputation as someone that you did not fuck with. The bullies had much easier targets than I to occupy their time.

I tormented no more teachers as I had my history and A amp;P instructors. I replied politely to their questions when I was asked with whatever answer they were looking for. I brought up no controversial subjects to them. I did my homework each day the moment I got home from school (except on those days that Anita had something for me to do; something that began to happen with increasing frequency). As the school year wound on and as winter became spring my grades improved greatly all across the board, dramatically some would even say, unbelievably a few uneasy teachers even noted. By the time the school year ended my grades were straight A's and my overall average had moved up considerably.

I similarly took no further chances with my skin. As a paramedic I used to shake my head sadly at how stupid teenagers were, assuming their own immortality. After Richie I realized that I'd been even worse than they were. At least normal teenagers will acknowledge the possibility that they CAN die, even if they think it won't happen to them. But I had assumed that I COULDN'T die, that I was safe until thirty-two. That, despite eight years of scraping up the broken remains of idiotic teenagers off the streets of Spokane. I still shudder when I think of how easily I'd climbed into the car with Mike that night of the kegger, of how easily he might have drunkenly driven over the edge of the levee, dumping us both into the Spokane River. How ironic that would have been, for me to come back and save Tracy from that fate only to suffer it myself, to put my parents through the same grief with a different child.

I avoided riding in cars with teenagers when I could. When I couldn't, I snapped on my seatbelt and pulled it tight. Most of the time it was the first time the seatbelt in question had ever been fastened. I could tell that the driver's and other passengers of these vehicles wanted to deride me, call me a pussy, and apply the other forms of peer pressure that teens use for their bizarre purposes. But they never did. Again, Richie Fairview kept them from speaking their minds. Occasionally someone would ask however, why I was doing it.

"Well suppose we crash?" I'd ask.

"We ain't gonna crash." Was the inevitable reply.

"Probably not." I'd say. "But it's possible, isn't it?"

"I guess." They'd shrug.

"Well," I'd theorize. "If we DO get into an accident, I won't get hurt as bad if I have this seatbelt on. It doesn't inconvenience me in any way to have it on. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't restrict my movement, so why shouldn't I have it on?"

They usually had no answer for that and would let the subject drop there. But they never put on their own seatbelts in response. They didn't want to be called a pussy when I'd gone.

One thing I absolutely refused to do was to get into a vehicle with someone who'd been drinking and/or getting stoned. And since I didn't enjoy walking home from places like the falls, I just avoided going with anyone where that was a possibility.

This policy led to problems between Mike and I, and we already had more than our share of problems. Our relationship had changed since my return and Mike didn't care too much for it. I was no longer his trusty sidekick, willing to go along with everything that he wanted to do. I no longer smoked pot with him on the way to school because I wanted my head clear for classes. He tried every form of peer pressure he could think of to get me to change my mind but when I continually refused he blew up at me one day and stormed off. He didn't speak to me or walk to school with me for three days and surprisingly, though it had been a childish outburst over a ridiculous subject, I was very upset by the episode.

I cared for Mike and I desperately wanted to pull him off of the path he was on. My conviction to do this became even stronger after the Richie Fairview incident. He had jumped in, without the slightest hesitation and grabbed hold of the hulking asshole, pulling him off of me. He had done that despite the fact that he'd been terrified of Fairview and that Fairview was holding a knife at the time. He had cast aside his self-protection instinct to come to my assistance and I could not forget that. Maybe if he hadn't done that, maybe if he'd simply stood there during the attack unable to move, I could have simply let the friendship die and let him go about his life. But he hadn't. He'd jumped in there without a second thought. Goddamit I owed him something. I had to try!

As was his nature, he offered me no apology for his outburst. He simply showed up at my door for the walk to school the following Monday and acted as if nothing had happened. He pulled out a joint as we went along but did not offer any to me. I suppose that was as close to saying sorry as he could come.

So I continued to walk to school with him each day even though I didn't really have to. Cindy, who had her own car and who took Tracy to school each day, had offered to give me a ride if I wanted. Her invitation did not include Mike, who she couldn't stand, and so I declined it.

After school I would go over to Mike's sometimes or he would come over to my house and then, if I'd finished my homework, I would smoke some pot with him. I learned to drop myself down to the level of a sixteen-year-old during these times and even managed to have a good time. I did not, however, go out on weekends with him anymore, always pleading other plans, which was usually true. I'd found some interesting ways to spend my weekends that did not involve putting my life at risk with intoxicated drivers. Anita figured heavily in these plans most of the time. So did Cindy.

Mike always seemed upset that I wouldn't go out with him on the weekends but didn't make a big deal of it. A status quo developed in our relationship, one that was due to break before long.

In April of that year Mike's Dad, a mechanic, fixed up a two hundred dollar Volkswagen Bug and gave it to Mike to drive full-time. I remembered the car well. It was a 68, the heater didn't work, the upholstery was ripped and shredded, and the engine would constantly require attention from his Dad. Mike and I had had some good times in that car during my first trip through.

We would go to keggers, to parties, just out cruising. We would use the car to cut school with, driving to the river to go fishing.

Though I had no plans to do most of the stuff we USED to do in the car, I figured that simply driving a few miles to school would be safe enough. I was wrong.

Mike's driving in that Bug used to scare me even before being recycled. It absolutely terrified me afterwards. It only took me one trip with him to realize that I was never going to set foot in it again. He picked me up for school the first day he had it and as soon as we were out of sight of my house, he pulled out a joint and lit it up.

"You sure you should be doing that while you're driving?" I asked nervously.

"Doing what?" He replied with genuine confusion.

I pulled my seatbelt tighter and braced myself.

In the course of the short drive to school he weaved recklessly in and out of the morning traffic. He rode up on the rear of vehicles when he had no room to weave, getting so close to them that, had they stopped, he would not have had time to even apply his brakes, let alone stop in time. He ran through one red light and three stop signs, giving only a careless glance as he did so. He smoked on his joint the entire time. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was trembling with fear.

"You okay dude?" He asked, looking at me with his stoned expression.

"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.

"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."

"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."

He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.

"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."

"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."

"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.

I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?

As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.

Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.

Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.

"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.

"Sure." I smiled back, following her.

Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.

Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.

"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."

"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"

"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"

"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"

"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."

"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"

"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.

I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.

The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.

Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.

I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.

By the time Mike abruptly ended our friendship Nina and I were quite close and able to confide pretty well in each other. As I entered the lunchroom the day after my telephone conversation she immediately noticed my upset expression.

"What's wrong?" She asked, giving me her shy smile.

"Oh," I said, sitting down and opening my lunch bag. "You know my friend Mike that I've told you about?"

"Yeah," She nodded. "The guy who likes to smoke pot all the time."

"Right." I agreed. "Well yesterday…"

I poured out the whole story to her, omitting of course the part about how I'd once been a thirty-two year old and couldn't relate to a sixteen year old very well anymore. She listened without interruption and then, when I was finished, looked at me thoughtfully.

"You seem like you're blaming yourself for this." She said.

I shrugged. "We've been friends for a long time. Maybe I'm being a little hard on him. Is it that much for him to ask for me to drive to school with him each day?"

"If you're putting your life at risk it is." She answered. "It sounds to me like HE is the one to blame for this, not you. He is the one willing to end a friendship over something so stupid as who you drive to school with and whether or not you smoke pot with him."

"Yeah, I know." I agreed. "But we've been friends a long time. I can't help but feel I've let him down or something."

"If you've been friends a long time," She said. "Don't you think he'll eventually grow up a little and realize how stupid he's been? He'll come around."

"It might be too late by then." I blurted.

She looked at me puzzled. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, just ignore me." I told her. "I can be awfully bleak sometimes."

I left the lunchroom that day feeling better about the situation. Though nothing had changed I always felt better after I'd talked to Nina.

I also got into the habit of checking the business section of the newspaper each day. I would look through the stock market report, memorizing and tracking various stocks. It became such a routine at the breakfast table each morning that Dad quickly stopped asking me why I was doing it. In my former life I'd followed stocks only as they related to my 401k plan. Now I was trying to get a grip on the market, to begin the process of understanding it and eventually mastering it. If I could master it I knew, I could master everything.

Summer break began. When I brought my report card to my mother I actually feared she was going to faint as she stared at it.

"Straight A's Billy?" She asked, looking at it in disbelief. "You?"

"I guess I just started to take all that stuff you're always sayin' about how education is the most important thing, seriously Mom." I told her.

An extended version of THE LOOK followed this.

"Do you think you can make your tacos tonight?" I asked next.

"Sure." She said numbly.

The summer went by quickly in a haze of hot days and sexual activity. Although Mike no longer hung out with me I found new companionship with Cindy and Tracy. My relationship with my sister had improved to the point where she was confiding secrets in me. She began telling me her hopes and dreams; that she wanted to go to law school, that she wanted to marry a nice man and have children, that she wanted a nice house and a nice car. These were things I'd never known about her since her life had been cut short before we'd gotten out of the teenage rivalry stage.

She also no longer seemed to have a problem being seen with me. Maybe something I'd said, something I'd done had given her a little kick in the head, but she treated me that summer as a friend and companion, taking me with her when she went to parties, either with Cindy or with one of her other friends.

She'd also developed a similar aversion to being in a car with an intoxicated driver; an aversion she'd managed to share with Cindy. Whenever we went out one of the girls would stay sober enough to pilot the car safely home. They developed a designated driver rule long before that buzzword caught on. I always suspected that my little speech to Tracy that one night had a lot to do with it.

It was from Cindy and Tracy's ranks of friends that I chose my sexual companions. They were both part of the popular crowd, members of the elite and in my previous life I would have been intimidated as hell to be at a party with them. But now things were different. I could not bring myself to be intimidated by teenagers, but oh how I lusted after them. I rarely left a party without using one or more of the condoms I carried with me at all times. I got to sleep with girl after girl from my fantasies and it was usually THEY who would approach me thanks to an underground reputation I had developed among the females.

The guys at these parties, who were for the most part older than I, either seniors or college freshmen, were oblivious to what I was doing. Despite my reputation with Fairview they considered me harmless, even as I was taking their girlfriends out for a little walk while they were playing a game of quarters or having someone pour beer down their throat with a beer bong. They wondered what I was doing there of course. I was inevitably the youngest male in attendance and none of them ever chose to converse with me.

That was fine with me. As long as they saw me as no threat when they spotted me talking amongst the girls or having a private conversation with one of their girlfriends.

Tracy told me once that many of them thought I was gay. They didn't tease me about it because of Richie Fairview but that seemed to explain why I chose to hang out with the girls instead of trying to come over and talk football or cars. I never tried to convince them otherwise although the queer logic of this amused me to no end. A guy wants to hang out with girls so he must be gay.

I had careful rules about my relationships during that summer. I generally didn't sleep with anyone more than once and I made it clear that I desired no sort of commitment or ongoing relationship. I was in it for the sex and the sex only. Most of them understood this. They were in it for the sex too and happy that I was happy to keep my mouth open while it was on their pussy and closed afterword. I had two exceptions to this rule however: Cindy and Anita. I continued to sleep with both of them on a regular basis.

It was nice. They both understood the rules, especially Anita who had no desire to have anyone find out she was boffing a teenaged boy. They were also both on birth control so I didn't have to wear a condom with them. It is nice to sink bare flesh into bare flesh for a change of pace.

Except for the rift with Mike and except for the absence of my discussions with Nina, which I missed, it was quite a pleasant summer. The best one I'd ever remembered to that point.

I got my learner's permit that August when I turned fifteen and a half. Dad then 'taught' me to drive.

"You've caught on to this remarkably quick." He said, looking at me with something close to suspicion the first day. "Tracy hasn't been letting you drive, has she?"

"No Dad." I assured him, expertly changing lanes, feeling ecstatic to be behind the wheel after, how long? More than six months? "I guess I just have a knack for it."

"Some knack." He said. "I guess we won't have to go out all that often, will we?"

September brought the start of my junior year and Tracy's senior year. I had a whole new slew of classes and subjects that I'd chosen a few weeks before. I was particularly pleased to find that I no longer had to take PE.

My first period class was Introduction to Molecular Biology. Mrs. Crookshank taught it and it was a subject I knew little about. I'd taken it so that I could relieve some of the boredom of school by learning something new. I walked into class the first day and Mrs. Crookshank greeted me stiffly.

"Billy," She nodded. "It's nice to see you again this year."

"Nice to see you too." I answered.

"Do you like to read about molecular biology too?" She asked me next.

There was a hint of teasing sarcasm in her face. "No Mrs. Crookshank." I said. "I'm an MB virgin."

Before she had a chance to reply I turned to find a seat. I saw that Nina was in the class. She was sitting in the front row and all of the desks around her were empty. She gave me a weak smile, perhaps wondering if I was going to speak to her or not after the summer.

"Hi Nina." I greeted, walking over and taking the seat next to hers. "How was your summer?"

It turned out Nina was also in my third period class; Geometry. I sat next to her there also. When the lunch bell rang we walked together to the cafeteria. We found our normal seats and began to talk as we ate. After only a few minutes it was if we'd only done this yesterday.

"So you still want to be a doctor?" I asked her as we waded through the cafeteria's version of stroganoff.

"Oh yes." She nodded. "That's why I'm taking molecular biology. You have to be heavy in the science classes to get in. Especially if you want to get a scholarship."

"Where is it you want to go?" I asked her.

"Anywhere they'll take me." She said. "But I'd prefer U of W at Seattle. It's a top rated school but close enough so that I could commute home on vacations. If I get a good car that is. My parents don't have that much money."

"Mine either." I agreed. "I keep trying to get my old man to invest in the stock market but he won't do it. I don't think he trusts my predictions of good stocks."

"Do you still want to study business?"

"I don't really WANT to." I said. "But I think that I should. I think that's where my fortune lies."

She giggled, an action she would have been incapable of a year before. "Still gonna make that fortune huh?"

"I think I'll have a good head for investment." I predicted.

We ate in silence for a moment and then I asked, "Do you follow all that molecular biology crap? I mean today was only the intro but it seemed pretty deep to me. Quite a change from A amp;P."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I've read up on it a little over the summer. Trying to get myself a little edge you know? But you know what confused me?"

"What?"

"The geometry. It sounded like he was talking in Latin."

"He was." I affirmed. "But I think I got that handled. It's mostly just memorizing formulas it looks like. The actual math part is the algebra that we learned last year. If you can memorize the formula, you got it nailed."

"You must have a head for numbers." She told me, taking another bite.

"I never did before." I muttered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing." I answered, an idea suddenly striking me. "Listen, maybe we can help each other out. Why don't we get together and study a couple times a week? You can help me with the biology and I can help you with the geometry?"

She looked up at me, speechless, her face reddening.

"You okay?" I asked, wondering what I'd said to embarrass her.

"You want to… study with me?" She asked.

"Sure." I said. "Why not? We can either do it at your house or mine. You don't live too far from me, do you?"

"No." She shook her head. She gulped. "Are you sure we should do that?"

"Study together?" I asked, confused. "Of course I do. What's wrong with that?"

She looked at me hard for the longest time, various expressions crossing her face; fear, doubt, elation, disappointment, determination. "Nothing." She said finally. "When can we start?"

"I don't know." I said, still confused. "How about whenever we get stuck on something. It's probably gonna be often the way I see it."

Her face cleared a little bit and she seemed more composed. She giggled a little and shook her head.

"What's wrong?" I asked, nearing exasperation.

"Nothing." She chuckled. "Just thinking weird thoughts."

"I get those a lot too." I told her, still wondering what had gone through her head.

I saw Mike in the halls of course but he didn't talk to me, didn't approach me. His locker was no longer next to mine. It seemed he had a new group of friends to hang out with; the freshmen kids from last year. They all looked as if they worshipped him. I sadly guessed that that was what he needed. I also knew that he would drop out by the end of this year and that I was powerless to stop it. I tried to approach him a few times and he simply walked away.

Nina and I started studying together on a regular basis and our friendly relationship deepened to the point that we became intimate friends; able to judge each other's moods with a glance, able to say nearly anything to each other. I became closer to her than I ever would have thought possible. I was closer to her than I'd ever been to Mike. After all, Nina didn't always try to top whatever story I told or try to convince me about all of the mythical dick she was getting. She didn't try to get me to smoke cigarettes or cut school or get stoned. There was also no underlying sexual tension with her as there was with most of the other girls I knew. We just enjoyed being together, talking together.

She met Tracy and my parents on her first day studying at my house. It was somewhat awkward since Nina was very shy before new people and my parents were very curious about this girl I chose to have meet them. Though I was boffing nearly everything I could get my dick into at that point, I'd never introduced anyone to them. I thought it kind of ironic that the one they were meeting was the one I had not had any sex with. Nina uttered monosyllable replies to Dad and Mom's inquiries about where she lived, what she planned to do, etc, and finally they left us alone. Tracy had only uttered a polite greeting and had retreated to her room.

After she'd left, and after I'd answered my parent's interrogation and explained that we were only STUDYING together, that we were only friends, and that they should not start compiling a wedding list, I went upstairs to put my books away.

Tracy was doing some studying of her own, this time to the accompaniment of Ozzy Osborne. She looked up as I passed and called me into the room.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"Have you no shame at all?" She asked me.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"It's bad enough that you're screwing all of my friends but isn't that enough? Have you gotten bored with that and decided to start knocking off the shy egghead girls too? You are serious scum."

"I'm not screwing Nina." I said, looking at my sister aghast. "We were just studying. She's my friend."

"You don't have any girl friends." She accused. "You have fuck partners. Are you seriously telling me that you invited that poor girl over here to study? You didn't take her upstairs for a little private session before we all got home?"

"No." I yelled, shaking my head. "My god, am I that bad?"

"Are you that bad?" She laughed. "Do you know how many relationships you've broken up in the last few months? Do you know that more than four of my friends have dumped their boyfriends after they fucked you?"

"No." I said, and then, "Really?"

"Really." She nodded. "It was kind of cute at first, how all these girls were trying to maneuver to you, to get you to notice them. But you're getting out of hand. I've got girls coming up to me and pretending to be my friend just so I'll introduce them to you. Of course I have to keep it quiet they all say. I just wanna meet him, talk to him a little. Did you know that they all talk about you in the locker room and in the bathroom? Do you know what they say about you?"

"What?" I asked.

"They talk about you the way your friends talk about chicks like Steph. You're a male slut Billy. They describe what you do to them and how well you do it using the most disgusting terms I've ever heard. They've even asked me if I've done you. Me! Your fucking sister!"

"I'm sorry Tracy, I never…"

"But you know what they never say about you?" She went on. "They never say how nice of a guy you are or how respectful you are. They never come up to me and say, 'Gee Tracy, your brother is such a sweetheart'. All they talk about is how you'll eat their pussy like a goddam vacuum cleaner or about how you'll fuck them until they scream. They never talk about how they'd like to take you home to meet their mom or about how they'd like to be your girlfriend. They talk about how they can manage to get over to your house again for another session."

"Wow." I said, unsure what to think. Though I'd known that I had a reputation among the girls I had no idea they talked the way Tracy was telling me. I was also disconcerted at my sister's anger about this. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was have her pissed off at me.

"Wow." Tracy mocked. "That's pretty goddam profound."

I sat down on the edge of her bed, setting my backpack full of books down. Tracy turned down the stereo a little.

"I'm sorry Tracy." I told her. "I didn't know that what I was doing was affecting you. I thought I was just having some harmless fun. And I assure you that Nina and I are just friends. I haven't slept with her and I have no intention of doing so."

She stared at me for a moment. "You know the damnedest thing?" She asked. "The damnedest thing is that you ARE a nice guy and you ARE a sweetheart when you want to be. If you were an asshole it wouldn't bother me for girls to talk about you that way but you aren't. It bugs the shit out of me to hear people talk about my little brother that way. You would probably feel the same way if you went into the locker room and the guys were saying how well Tracy sucked dick or how she'd fuck anyone who asked, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yeah." I nodded. Would it bother me? I would want to kill whomever I heard saying that.

"That's how I feel when I hear that." She said. "And I can't even defend you in front of them because it's true. You DO fuck anyone who asks."

"I'm sorry." I repeated. I couldn't think of a thing to say to her. I surely wasn't going to say that I wouldn't do it anymore because that would have been a lie.

"Look." She said. "I'm just your sister. I'm not gonna ask you to stop fucking girls. I know you wouldn't do it anyway. But can you maybe tone it down a little? Cut it down to one or two a week? Or maybe hit up some of the other ones more than once?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "I'll try Tracy. I'll try. But remember, I'm fifteen. I'm at my sexual peak you know."

"Fuck you dickhead." She laughed back. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you deserved it."

"I suppose I did." I agreed.

"You're really not fucking Nina?"

"I'm really not." I affirmed.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet." She said.

So for Tracy's sake I toned things down a little. Also for my own. I wasn't sure I liked being referred to as a male slut. I stopped pursuing women with the vigor I'd exhibited before, instead simply waiting for them to come to me. I also began giving more repeat performances. By the time the snow flew I had, in addition to a new best friend, a small circle of girls that I regularly had sex with instead of a constant stream. It was enough and when one of the girls got tired of the relationship or met someone they wanted to have for a boyfriend, I would covet someone else.

To my surprise Tracy and Nina actually became something like friends. Nina would come over to my house twice a week or so to study and my sister, curious about the type of girl I would choose as a friend, made a point to talk to her each time she was over. Nina was slow warming up to my sister. I knew that this was due to her past treatment by other girls, which was both crueler and longer lasting than the torment she'd suffered from boys. This was something I never would have suspected had she not told me and it disheartened me to think that the fairer sex could be even crueler to their own then boys were.

But gradually Nina lost her shyness before Tracy and even Cindy, who was also a frequent visitor to our house. The two older girls took Nina under their wing and taught her the finer points of fashion, talking her into replacing her plain clothes with more modern ones. They taught her how to put on make-up, accenting her facial features. They taught her how to fix her hair into something other than a ponytail. The change in her appearance was actually startling when you saw it. I was able to see the attractive doctor that she would one day be, although without the perpetually bitchy expression and mannerism.

And then came the day in early December when a cold winter storm was blowing across the Spokane area. Snow was being driven through the air by gusting winds that registered more than forty miles an hour. As I walked out to the school parking lot towards Cindy's car the snowflakes hit me in the face like little shards of steel, stinging me and making me pull my hood and my scarf tighter around me. Snowdrifts were already more than ten feet high against some of the buildings and the ground was covered in white. If it had been snowing like this in the morning they would have closed the school.

Unfortunately the storm hadn't geared up until late morning.

When I got to the place where Cindy's car had been parked I looked up to find nothing. I looked around the parking lot, wondering if I was mistaken about where she'd parked. The wind cut into my face like a knife as I tried to locate the Caprice. It was nowhere to be seen. Other kids were rushing to their cars in groups of two or more, some of them slipping and sliding on the slick pavement. I saw no Cindy or no Tracy though.

"What the fuck?" I muttered, wondering where in the hell they'd gone.

It took me only a minute to figure out that I was stuck here with no other prospect but to walk home. I wondered if I would freeze to death before I got there. And then I spotted Raisin heading for his Falcon. I ran after him.

When Raisin dropped me off in front of my house fifteen minutes later the sight of Cindy's car parked at our curb did not improve my mood. I thanked Raisin and bade him farewell, trudging through the thick snow on the driveway to the front door, uttering foul things under my breath about sisters and friends that left brothers abandoned in a freaking blizzard.

The door was locked so I used my key, stepping into the warmth of the living room, prepared to chew out the traitorous girls. But they weren't there. The television was off, and on the stereo turntable one of my Pink Floyd albums was spinning silently around at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute, the arm suspended above one of the tracks. A quick glance at the coffee table gave me a pretty good idea what had happened. An opened bag of Doritos was sitting there along with the remains of some sandwiches and a few candybar wrappers.

They were getting stoned! They'd left me to freeze to death in the snow so they could go home and get stoned. And they'd probably smoked all of the pot before my arrival. The bitches! Where were they now? I began stomping through the house, looking for them.

When I approached the door that led out to the garage I heard girlish giggles coming from the other side. Fumed, I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. What I saw on the other side made me freeze in my tracks.

Cindy and Tracy were out there all right. The smell of greenbud came wafting over me and there was an actual haze in the confined space. But the surprising thing was who was with them. Nina was there, her mouth applied to the neck of the bong, sucking a hit up through the water while Cindy held the lighter and cheered her.

"That's the way girl!" Cindy encouraged. "Hit that shit!"

Tracy looked up at me, her eyes half-lidded, a shit-eating grin on her face.

"Hey Billy." She haled. "Glad you got home okay. You want a hit?"

Nina, hearing my name broke off what she was doing, leaving smoke curling from the bong. She saw the dumbfounded look on my face as I stared at her. She held my stare for a moment and then burst out into hysterical laughter, expelling a large cloud of fragrant smoke from her mouth and nose. Tracy and Cindy instantly joined her in hysterics. They were pointing at me as they doubled over in laughter.

They laughed for nearly three minutes as I stood in the doorway and simply stared. I could not believe that they had actually gotten Nina stoned. I could not believe that she'd gone along with it. What were they thinking?

When their giggles and chortles dried up I walked over to them. Nina started to say something and then burst into laughter again. Cindy joined her.

"You got her stoned?" I asked Tracy, who was the only one not laughing. "And you had her cut school?"

"We didn't have her do anything." Tracy told me, picking up a baggie and loading another hit into the bong. "She asked us if we had any pot. She wanted to try it. It seems all those stories you told her about smoking out made her curious." She giggled, jerking a thumb towards Nina. "As you can see, she seems to like it. Why didn't you ever smoke any with her?"

"I didn't think she'd want to." I said, watching Nina's face. She would start to calm down a little and then would look at me and burst into fresh laughter.

"I guess you were wrong." Tracy said, handing me the bong and a lighter. "I think there's a lot of things about Nina that you don't know."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Later." She answered. "Have a hit."

Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I flicked the bic and put my mouth to the bong.

Cindy and Nina both left shortly before Dad arrived home from work. I worried about the two of them on the snowy roads with a stoned driver at the wheel. I wouldn't stop them from leaving but I made them promise to put on their seatbelts. I knew Nina would and I also knew the chances of them being in a fatal crash were slim. Most fatal accidents occurred during the summer months, when the weather was clear and when the drivers could barrel along at suicidal speed. During snowy weather everyone drove slow. While there were more accidents, they tended to be minor. You simply couldn't generate enough kinetic energy to kill during a snowstorm. If Cindy got in an accident it would probably be a fender-bender. But then nothing is absolute so I worried.

After dinner and dishes, while the household began to wind down for bed I found my way to Tracy's room once again. Outside the wind was still howling against the windows, making the storm-shutters rattle and bang. They would have cancelled school the next day except for the fact that it was Saturday.

Tracy was lying on her bed, reading the latest (for that time) Stephen King book. She was wearing her standard pajamas, a long T-shirt.

"What's up?" She asked as I tapped on the frame of her door.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"Sure." She nodded, setting the book down and sitting up.

"Earlier today," I started. "While we were smoking out."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Wasn't that some killer shit? I was droning all through dinner. Do you want to smoke some more? I still have a little left."

"No," I said, shaking my head. And then I amended. "Well, maybe tomorrow. But anyway, while we were smoking you said that there's a lot of things I didn't know about Nina."

"Yeah?" Tracy smiled a little.

"What did you mean by that?" I asked.

She gave me a very adult look. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked.

"Don't know what?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Nina's in love with you Billy."

"What?!"

"Not just infatuation, not just attraction, not just puppy-love, whatever the fuck that is, but love. L-O-V-E. The big one. The ultimate like. She's head over heels in love with you little brother."

I was stunned into silence for a moment. Finally I said, "Did she tell you this?"

"No." Tracy said. "She doesn't have to. It's pretty plain to everyone who talks to her. I've known it ever since I started getting her to talk to me.

She thinks you're the shit." She shrugged. "God knows why."

"Wait a minute." I said, trying to deny it. "I think you're mistaken. We're good friends, we like to talk to each other, I can see how you would think…"

"I'm not mistaken Billy." Tracy said firmly. "You can accept it or not accept it. I'm just supplying information for you. She is in love with you. No doubt about it. And she's terribly afraid that you don't love her, that you'll never be interested in her, that you'll break her heart someday."

"What? How…"

"Because I'm a girl." Tracy answered before I could finish asking. "We know these things. She knows you could hurt her bad and she also knows she is powerless to prevent that if you decided to do it. She loves being around you but she wants more. She's not getting more but she stays around because of the hope that someday she will. She'll stay as long as the slimmest hope remains of that. The only way you'll get her to stop loving you is to destroy her hope completely. She may or may not recover from that. She's kind of a fragile girl, as you may have noticed, and I tend to think that maybe she wouldn't.

"I'm not telling you all of this to scare you or anything. I just want you to know what you're dealing with here. She loves you. You are God to her. So you need to tread carefully with her because you're playin' with her fuckin' emotions. Do you understand?"

"No." I shook my head. "I do not." I became angry. Here I was a thirty-two, almost thirty-three year old and a seventeen-year-old girl was telling me about love? What the hell did she know about it? She was probably reading all kinds of things into Nina's conversations based on the romance novels that she obsessively read all the time. "Nina and I are friends. No more than that. That's all we'll ever be. She likes me, she enjoys my company, but she doesn't love me. I used to tease her in grammar school for Christ sake! You've got your signals crossed."

She picked up her book again. "Believe what you want Billy." She told me, dismissing me in a non-verbal way. "But I'm not wrong about this."

Winter went on. I got straight A's again in the first semester of school. Second semester began with Nina and I in three classes together. We continued to study together a few times a week. I always watched her carefully, listened to her words carefully when I was with her. She liked to be around me, that was for sure, as I liked to be around her. She valued my opinion as I valued hers. She joked with me, revealing a quick and witty sense of humor beneath her shyness, a sense of humor that I knew that no one but me ever saw. We enjoyed being together. We were friends, very good friends, best friends even. But love? I thought not.

On February 10 of that year, 1983, I went down to the department of motor vehicles with my Dad after school. I took the written test, passing with 100 percent. I then climbed in Dad's Dodge Diplomat with a crusty old driving tester and took my driver's license test. The instructor was impressed with my abilities, stating that she'd rarely seen a new driver that operated a motor vehicle so well. She gave me a ninety-six on the exam, marking me down a point because I hadn't parallel parked terribly well, something I'd never mastered. I returned to the DMV office and had my picture taken. I was now a licensed driver.

As I drove my Dad home that day he congratulated me and gave me a brief lecture on safe driving. Doing his fatherly duty you understand. When he was finished I turned to him.

"I'd like to get a job Dad." I told him.

"A job?" He asked, looking at me.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I want to start making my own money. You know, so I can buy my own car and start putting money away for college. Stuff like that."

"Well that's admirable Bill." He told me, taken aback a bit. "I certainly am not going to stop you."

"Could I use the car on weekdays after you get home? If I find a job that is?"

"I suppose." He told me. "As long as we don't need it for anything. Of course you realize our insurance rates are going to go up now that you AND Tracy are listed on the policy. Also the gas is going to go up. And then there's Tracy. She likes to use the car too."

"I'll pay for whatever the increase is." I promised. "And Tracy and I will work something out."

"Yes." He said thoughtfully. "I suppose you will." He told me. "You and your sister have been getting along pretty well this last year." He said.

I shrugged in the way of teenagers.

"Much better than you used to. In fact, there was a dramatic change in your relationship and even in your personality some time ago." His eyes bored into me. "It was shortly before you got stabbed that time."

What was he saying? I felt suddenly nervous under his gaze. Dad knew something had happened to me but he didn't know what. Did he? Was he simply probing for information? Or did he suspect the truth? The truth was nuts wasn't it? He couldn't be suspecting it. Could he?

"I guess I just got my shit together Dad." I answered nervously. "Tracy too."

He continued to stare for a moment and then gave a slight shake of his head.

"Don't say 'shit'." He finally responded. "If you want to get a job and if you and your sister can work out the car, then you've got my blessing."

"Thanks Dad." I told him.

I certainly did not want to work in one of the sweat shops that was a fast food joint so I didn't bother applying at any of them. I had nothing but time I knew so I bided it carefully, only putting in applications at places where I knew I would be able to stand the pace. You have to understand that I had spent eight years as a paramedic. For all the gore we have to put up with, for all the responsibility that we are instilled with, for all of the abuse that we have to take, the job was anything but fast paced. On a twelve-hour shift we would respond to an average of six calls, each one taking an hour or so to complete from the moment of dispatch until the paperwork was dropped off at the hospital. That left six hours of downtime on each shift. Sometimes, on slow shifts, it was even more. I knew I would not be able to handle working on a burger assembly line for hours at a time.

It was a pizza joint that eventually ended up hiring me in early March. The manager had granted me an interview and had started it by saying that he probably wouldn't hire me since he generally only offered jobs to those with previous experience.

"Well Sir." I'd told him. "I can respect that opinion. And I understand it completely."

"You do?" He asked, mildly amused, checking his watch for his next interview.

"I do." I said. "But I'll tell you something. If you hire me you will not be sorry. In fact, I'd venture to say that it would be the best hire you'll ever make. You know why?"

That got his attention. "Why?" He asked.

"Because my father has instilled in me a solid work ethic. He's taught me that employment is sacred in this life, a thing to be cherished above all but the family unit. If I am given the position you will receive complete loyalty from me. I will show up each of my scheduled days on time and ready to work. I will do whatever jobs you see fit in whatever manner you see fit to do them. I am not your typical teenager who will call in sick when he hears that a good kegger is going on at the falls. I will put aside my personal life in order to fulfill my responsibilities to this restaurant and hopefully you will move me up the ladder of advancement as reward." I gave him my sincere smile. "Hire me and you will not be sorry."

He hired me. I started the following week making pizzas in the back and washing up dishes on Friday through Monday night from 5:00 PM to 10:30 PM. I did my job well, showing up on time, as I'd promised, and completing all assignments given to me without complaint. After all, I had an adult's work ethic. The manager was quite impressed with me. He often commented how mature I seemed. The pay was a pittance, $3.25 an hour, which was minimum wage for that time, but it was income none-the-less and, as a kid, I had no real expenses to speak of. We were paid once a week, on Friday. My schedule entitled me to $71.50 each paycheck. Uncle Sam and Aunt Washington took $12.00 from this, leaving me with $59.50 in cold, hard cash.

In my previous life I'd been a horrible financial manager. I lived paycheck to paycheck, never maintaining a savings account except for my 401k, which was automatically deducted. I'd run up a considerable debt with credit cards and car payments, not to mention alimony and child support. I'd been in the rut familiar to many Americans, that being that you owe so much that you could only afford to pay the minimum payments on anything. This of course left you in exactly the same place each month, each year, since the interest on these things accumulated as fast as the minimum payments reduced them. Even before Mr. Li entered my life, even before the Spokane Fire Department began threatening to take my job from me, I'd always wished that I had my financial history to do over again. Well now I did. I made another solemn vow. I would manage any money I got wisely, utilizing the brutal lessons I'd learned before being recycled. I would not live beyond my means ever again. It was un-American of course, but I was going to do it.

I took $10.00 of each paycheck for personal enjoyment type things. $5.00 paid for the gas I used in my Dad's car and another $5.00 went to insurance rate compensation. That left me $39.50 each week that had nowhere to go. I opened up a savings account at a nearby bank. I was amused and slightly offended to find that I had to have my Dad's permission before the bank would open it for me. My God, what chaos would erupt if minors were allowed to open bank accounts without regulation. I began putting this money in there each paycheck. The interest on the account was a pittance, a mere two percent, but that was okay. The savings account was just a holding tank until I built up some capital. When I accumulated enough money, I had a better place in mind to store it.

My parents watched all this with interest, not surprised at my work ethic, which I'd learned from them after all and which they'd expected nothing less than, but with my frugelness. You see, my money management skills in my previous life I'd learned from them also. My parents, through my childhood and teenaged years had managed their money about as well as I did as an adult, which was not well at all. I'm certainly not blaming them for my later troubles just explaining the fact that they were wondering where I'd learned my money management. They watched my savings account grow each week (they had to co-sign my deposits) with respect and admiration and more than a little confusion. God forgive them, they even suggested I take some of that money out from time to time and enjoy myself a little.

"I'm saving for college." I would tell them. "And maybe a car sometime soon."

"I see." They would reply. "That's very wise Billy."

My work schedule put somewhat of a kink in my sex life since the weekends had been my traditional boffing time. But it was only a minor kink. The girls that really wanted to experience my skills would find the time to be with me on weekdays. I would generally have them come over immediately after school where I would take them to my room, show them the pleasure they were seeking, and send them on their way before Dad got home from work. On most of these days Nina would come over after the latest girl had departed and we would study together or just sit on the couch and talk, drinking soda and munching on chips or something, maybe watching some TV. Mom and Dad were under the impression that Nina was my girlfriend, which actually struck me as somewhat funny. They had no idea that I was screwing the brains out of various teenaged girls before they got home. They even expressed pride that I still went over to Anita's and mowed her lawn or cleaned her windows or babysat her kids or put her storm windows up or took them down. They had no idea that their dear friend was paying me for these services in something more valuable than mere money. I don't believe even Tracy knew what the score really was between Anita and I.

The months went by. The frigid chill of winter gave way to the spring of 1983. I heard through the grapevine that Mike was leaving school to go to independent study classes. This rumor filled me with dread and reminded me that I still had a piece of unfinished business. Independent study was one of those state-sponsored atrocities that accounted for more dropouts than anything else. I should actually say IS, since the thing still existed before my recycling. What happens is a poor student is encouraged to leave mainstream high school and go to a separate campus for study. They are required to be there only twelve hours a week and are given various assignments to complete at their own pace. They and their parents are told that they can graduate this way if they only complete the meager amount of work that is supplied. What inevitably happens is that the student in question finds that even twelve hours a week is too much and they eventually leave it for the abyss of drop-out status. The whole thing is nothing more than a false hope for parents and a dead-end for students. Mike was no exception. He would be in independent study for less than two months before leaving school behind forever. He would eventually pay money to be crammed for his GED so he could get into the Air Force where he would ultimately be dishonorably discharged for marijuana use.

I had to take a shot at preventing this. I simply had to.

That week I had my Dad deposit only $24.50 in my savings account, keeping an extra fifteen bucks for myself. Naturally, since this was a break in the routine, he questioned it.

"Swaying from your convictions a little?" He asked as I handed him the deposit slip.

I shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "I guess you guys are right." I told him. "I SHOULD enjoy myself once in a while. I thought I'd just blow fifteen bucks on something this time as a reward."

"Well good for you." Dad told me. "What are you going to spend it on?"

"No firm plans." I lied. "Maybe I'll just spend it all on video games down at the arcade. You know, Space Invaders and all that?"

"Well you deserve it." He told me, putting his signature next to mine.

The following Monday at school I found Steph wandering through the halls. She was glad to see me.

"Do you think maybe your brother can get me an eighth of some good greenbud?" I asked.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" She smiled. "You got the cash?"

I handed her fifteen bucks, a ten and a five. She took it from me and then peeled off the five and handed it back to me. "For you it's only ten." She smiled. "IF, you let me bring it over to your house today to deliver it personally."

I looked her up and down, remembering what her body had felt like beneath mine. And it was five bucks. I'd certainly made worse deals in my life. "You're on." I told her. "Just show up right after school. I have to work today."

"I'll be there." She promised, stuffing the ten into the pocket of her jeans.

She was there. She handed me a plastic baggie of pungent pot and then we retired to my bedroom. I enjoyed her body in as many different ways as I could imagine while she enjoyed mine. She left with a smile on her face.

I stuffed the pot she'd given me under the center of my mattress and headed for the shower. I had to be to work shortly after Dad got home.

The next day, Tuesday, I found Mike wandering through the halls between third and fourth period. I took a deep breath and then walked up to him, matching his pace when I was beside him.

"What's up Mike?" I asked carefully.

He looked over at me, his face registering instant hostility, obviously debating whether or not to speak to me. Finally he said, "Nothin'."

"Haven't seen you in a while." I commented.

He shrugged. "Been busy." He told me.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah." I replied. "Me too. Workin' and everything. Listen, I was thinking that maybe we could get together after school today. Bullshit a little you know. Just like old times."

"Naw." He said instantly. "Got things to do."

I nodded again. "Okay." I answered, knowing that I was resorting to dirty tricks but it was a desperate situation, wasn't it? "Too bad. I just scored an eighth of some killer greenbud."

His eyes lit up like pinball machines. "Really?" He asked, his disinterest dropping away instantly.

"Yeah." I said. "But it's cool. If you got things to do…"

"Well I can prob'ly come over for a while." He put in. "You know, we haven't hung out in a while."

"Cool." I said, suppressing a smile. "I'll see you after school then."

"Right."

On the way home from school I asked Tracy and Cindy if they maybe wanted to go to the mall for a few hours before Dad got home from work.

"The mall?" Cindy asked, lighting a cigarette. "I was hopin' you had some new albums to show me today."

Tracy gave her a look of annoyance and then turned to me. "What's the matter Billy, you getting' shy about your study sessions with our friends?"

"No." I answered. "Not at all. I have something important to do today. Mike's coming over."

"Mike!" Tracy said, disgusted now. "That fuckin' hoser! I thought you'd wised up and stopped hangin' out with him."

"Please?" I said, not offering any explanation. "This is important. If you guys go out for a while I'll smoke some of the bud I scored with you later."

That did the trick. I'd long since learned the barter power that the possession of a little marijuana held in a teenaged society. Cindy let me out at the curb and roared away shortly afterword, Tracy in the passenger seat, with a promise not to return until Dad got home.

Mike pulled his Beetle to the curb soon after.

Our conversation was cautious and casual as we went to the garage and smoked ourselves into oblivion with Tracy's bong that I liberated from the secret hiding place in her room. By the time we re-entered the house we were well into the stratosphere. I hoped I was coherent enough to speak my mind effectively through the drug haze. My own intoxication was countered by the fact that Mike, in his stoned state, would be extremely susceptible to suggestion. We watched some TV for a few minutes while we munched on some food we'd found in the fridge. By the time we went to the garage for our second set of bonghits, we were comfortable speaking to each other despite our months of separation.

"I hear you're going to go to independent study." I said as I dumped the bong water down the sink and rinsed the chamber.

"Yep." He nodded, obviously excited about it. "My parents put in the application the other day. The counselor says it'll be approved and I can prob'ly start next month. After only six months of it I'll graduate."

"Six months huh?" I said. "And you only have to go twelve hours a week?"

He nodded. "Isn't that fuckin' cool. And I get to schedule my own twelve hours. I can go six hours for two days and take the rest of the week off, or four hours for three days, or three hours for four days. Whatever I want."

I carried the bong upstairs and replaced it in Tracy's room. Mike took a seat on the couch while I was gone. When I returned I sat next to him and took a sip out of a soda.

"Mike," I asked. "Do you realize that you're being encouraged to drop out of school?"

"What?" He replied, looking at me with renewed hostility.

"The system is encouraging you to drop out of school. Independent study is nothing but a joke, a joke designed to allow people to drop out with some measure of self-respect intact. First they offer you something that sounds appealing: you only have to go to school twelve hours, you work at your own pace, you'll get to graduate early. It's an offer too good to be true."

"What the fuck you talking about?" He asked. "It's not too good to be true.

That's how it works."

"Really?" I continued. "How many people do we know that have gone through independent study? Let's see there's Rodney, Steve Kale, Michelle Beckenwood, Stacy Smith. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of them graduated, not a single one.

"Yeah, but they were stupid." He said defensively. "I'm different."

"No you're not." I told him. "You're being used by the system. I'm sure the counselor spouted a bunch of bullshit to you and your parents about how this will help you. They're lying. It doesn't help you, it helps them. They've marked you as a likely dropout in the near future so they're trying to get rid of you before that happens. They don't give a shit about you or your future, they WANT you to drop out. But they want you to do it this way because it doesn't go on the school's statistics as a dropout; you go down as a transfer to another school. That way they don't lose any of their budget money or have their teaching methods audited by the state board of education.

"So off you go to independent study where you're encouraged to fade politely away. Do you know how they get you to drop out with this program? Do you know what the kicker to it is? It's that flexible schedule you were talking about. Come whenever you can, you only have to be there twelve hours a week. But you see, if you offer a teenager a deal like that, they'll abuse it and those fuckers KNOW that. You get up on Monday and say to yourself, 'I don't have to go in today because I only have to go twelve hours. I can knock out some hours tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolls around and you say the same thing. After all, you don't HAVE to be there on Monday or Tuesday. Before long you'll find yourself at Thursday without any hours built up. By that time the thought of spending six hours is too much to take. So you cut for that week; after all, anyone they send to independent study is an accomplished school cutter, aren't they? Before two months go by it will be too much trouble to go at all. There will be no paperwork done, nothing that says you've officially dropped out, but you will in effect have dropped out. Just like they planned for you."

Mike had simply stared at me during this speech, absorbing what I was saying without expression.

"Where did you come up with all that shit?" He asked me finally.

"My Dad's a teacher." I told him. "He works for the damn school district. Believe me, that's the way it is."

"What the fuck are you tellin' me all this for?"

I took a deep breath. "Mike, you're my friend. We've been friends since we were kids, right?"

"Yeah," He nodded, "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Friends try to help each other. Remember when Fairview stabbed me? You grabbed him off of me. You helped me. That's what I'm trying to do for you.

Help you. You're about to make a big mistake, a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life."

"How do you know I'm makin' a mistake?" He shouted. "Even if I do drop out what makes you think it's gonna be a mistake? What do I need a fuckin' diploma for anyway?"

"What do you want to do with your life Mike?" I asked him.

"What?"

"What do you want to do?" I repeated. "What would like to do for a living? What would be a dream job for you?"

"Man," He said, dismissing me. "Fuck this shit. Let's talk about something else."

"Look Mike." I said carefully. "Like I said, we're friends and I'm trying to talk to you as a friend. Nobody else is here, nobody's gonna hear what you say. I'm not putting you down or anything, I'm just trying to help you because you need some help. You're on a path of destruction here and I'm trying to steer you off of it. So tell me, what would you like to do for a living? What would be a cool job?"

For a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He shrugged. "I never thought about it before. I can't picture myself in five years, I don't know."

"Maybe that's part of your problem." I said. "You don't have any goals." I looked him up and down for a minute, an idea occurring to me. "You'd probably like a job where you get a lot of days off each week, wouldn't you?"

"The more the better." He agreed.

"A job where even when you ARE at work, you get to spend a lot of time sitting around on your ass."

He scoffed. "Yeah, like there are jobs like that."

"There is Mike." I told him. "There is."

"Yeah?" He said cynically. "Name one."

There was only one that I could think of. It was one that was well within reach of Mike if he would only graduate from school. "A fireman."

"A fireman?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Firemen work twenty-four hour shifts ten days a month. That leaves twenty days off a month. When they're on shift they have beds, TVs, lounge chairs to sit in, all the amenities of home. They get to sleep while they're on the clock. And they make damn good money, much more than they deserve to."

He was turning the idea over in his mind. I could see him doing it and I felt the first ray of hope. Was I finally getting through to him a little?

"And you know what the best thing about being a fireman is?" I asked.

"What?"

"The public fuckin' worships you. You can do absolutely no wrong. And women dig firemen in a bad way. They'll practically drop down and give you head right there."

He was definitely interested now.

"The requirements are that you're eighteen and have a high school diploma. You also have to be able to pass a physical agility test, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. You're in good shape."

"Are you sure about this?" He asked.

"Dude." I told him. "If you can just graduate you'll be in."

"No shit." He said softly.

"Look Mike, if you just work through this year you'll have it made. The school has a work-study program for seniors and fire technology is one of the classes. If you can hang in until then and bring your grades up to a 2.0 average you can go to the ROP classes. That means you'll just have to take three classes each day and then you'll spend the rest of the day hanging out at a fire station somewhere. You'll get to go to calls with them and watch them work and it'll look damn good on your application after you graduate."

He soured a little. "There's no way I'll get my grades up to a 2.0. I'm workin' on straight F's now."

"I'll help you with your work." I promised. "Just come over after school," I paused and then amended, "Well, after my Dad gets home that is, and I'll help you with your work. You can do it if you just go to school each day."

He shook his head. "I haven't spent a whole day in school for the last year.

I'm not sure I can do it."

"You CAN." I insisted. "Dude you're only seventeen years old. You have the rest of your life in front of you. How hard will it be to spend six hours in school for another couple of months? If you work at it we can bring your grades up and you'll be almost free next semester. A year of ROP and only going to three classes and you'll graduate. You start applying at fire departments and one of them will take you. It's not that long and it's not that high of a price, is it?"

"I guess not." He said.

It was touch and go for a while. Mike told his parents his decision to stay in school and they accepted it dubiously. However when his parents told the school counselor to withdraw the application for independent study they met some resistance. According to Mike, she tried her damnedest to get him and his parents to change their minds. She nearly begged he told me. But in the end he stuck to his guns and his parents stuck to theirs. The application was withdrawn and Mike stayed in high school.

As I promised I helped him with his homework. There was some friction at first when he discovered that I wasn't planning to DO his homework for him but to help HIM do it. There was also some friction when he didn't show up a few times so he could go get stoned with someone. I talked to him plainly about this, explaining that I would only continue to help him if he showed up each day. He was morose about it but agreed. His attendance at my study sessions improved remarkably.

His attendance at school also improved. Though he whined about it to the point of genuine annoyance on my part, he faithfully showed up to classes each day, only occasionally cutting out for a session with a marijuana pipe or something.

By the end of the first month of our studying together, study sessions in which Nina was a frequent participant, he began to catch on to his work and actually began to complete more of his assignments in school. I felt I'd done well with him and my satisfaction was great.

As the end of the school year drew closer I worried incessantly about Tracy.

This was the point that she was scheduled to die. All of the signs told me I'd steered her away from that path. When Lisa Sanchez, the cheerleader, began making friendship overtures to Tracy, she'd been almost rude in her rejection of them. The friendship that eventually evolved into the foursome that was fated to drop into the river never flourished. As a result, Tracy never went to the party where she would meet the football player that would cause her death. Instead she stayed close friends with Cindy, another deviation from the previous path. When Tracy had begun hanging out with Lisa before, the relationship with Cindy had faded away. But despite all this I was worried. Again, I did not know the rules involved here. Was fate absolute? Would Tracy end up dying one way or another simply because she was scheduled to?

On the other hand I did have some indication that things were not pre-destined. Mike was a shining example. As May began winding down towards June and the end of the school year, he was still enrolled in school, was in fact working his grades upward to the C average. This was something that had not occurred before. Mike gave me hope that I'd succeeded in saving Tracy.

The end of the school year came. Mike got his report card and it showed his year's average to be 2.1. He was qualified to go into ROP the next year. He didn't give me much in the way of thanks but I understood. It wasn't in his nature. I received tremendous satisfaction from his accomplishment anyway.

Tracy graduated. I dressed in my suit and attended the ceremony with my parents. Though my sister and I had never talked about my prediction for her fate on that night since the first time, it was obvious she remembered what I'd said. She was perhaps the only member of her graduating class to go home with her parents after the ceremony. She took off her dress and went to bed early.

When I got up the next morning I staggered downstairs and found her sitting in her pajamas in the living room. The television was on, tuned to the local morning news program. Dad and Mom had already gone off to work so we were alone in the house. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to see her there. She was alive, still drawing breath a day AFTER she'd died in her previous life. Things could be changed!

My elation was dampened a little as I got a good look at her. I could see immediately that she was upset. Her face was pale and she was trembling.

"What's the matter Trace?" I asked carefully.

"I've been watching the news." She told me slowly, turning a pair of haunted eyes to my face.

"Yeah?"

"There was an accident last night." She said. "Near the falls."

I felt all the spit in my mouth suddenly dry up. My arms broke out in goose bumps. "Was there?"

She nodded. "A Camero with four people in it crashed into the river. Lisa Sanchez was killed. She drowned in the car."

I was speechless as I listened to her, numb with shock.

"There were other people in the car." Tracy went on. "A guy named David Mitchell was driving. He's a football player at the college. Another football player named Rick Manchester was also in the car. Rick was Lisa's boyfriend. And there was one other girl in there. Barbie Langston, she's David's girlfriend."

"What happened to her?" I asked unsteadily.

"She got out. Lisa was the only one killed."

"Wow." I whispered, trying to figure out what that meant. Barbie was a cute redhead who had found her way to my bedroom last summer during my 'male slut' period. She had been installed in Tracy's place when Tracy did not meet and begin dating David Mitchell. She had lived. Why? Was it because she had lived past graduation in the previous life? Was she simply a better swimmer? Was there any meaning to be found with her non-death?

"Billy," Tracy said softly. "All of those names were the ones you gave me that day except for Barbie. You described the car, the driver, the passengers, the accident location, everything. How did you know?"

"I can't tell you Tracy." I said. "I just can't."

"Billy, for Christ's sake! I would have died yesterday if I hadn't listened to you, wouldn't I have?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"You scared me that day when you started talking about all of that. You scared me bad. But I never really, you know believed it could be true. I didn't think it would really happen. Even when little things started to click into place. Lisa Sanchez trying to make friends with me, stuff like that, even then I never really believed it. But Jesus, you were right!"

"I know Tracy." I said. "And you're alive today instead of dead. I'm glad you listened to me."

"Christ." She said, shuddering and trembling. "I could have died."

"But you didn't." I told her. "You didn't."

Summer vacation began. Tracy sent off college applications and was accepted into the University of California at Berkeley on an academic scholarship. She spent a good portion of her vacation preparing for the move to California. My parents, who had no idea how close they'd come to losing a daughter, were preoccupied with helping her at this task. They took out a second mortgage on their house to help pay for some of the expenses until Tracy managed to get a job in the Bay Area. I could tell they were worried about money although they never mentioned it to either one of us.

I was able to increase my work schedule an extra hour a day and an extra day a week now that summer was upon us and there was no school to attend. By the beginning of August I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings account. It was time to make my first move.

"Dad," I said at the breakfast table one morning. "I need you to do something with my money."

He looked at me over his paper. "Your money?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I want you to pull it out of the savings account and take it to a stock broker."

"A stock broker?"

"Here." I said, handing him a slip of paper upon which I'd written careful instructions.

He looked at it for a moment, his eyes widening. "You want to buy stocks?"

"I do." I affirmed. "As you can see there, I'd like to invest six hundred dollars in Lytech Corporation and three hundred in Smith Manufacturing Corporation."

"Billy," He started slowly, as if he were speaking to a lunatic, or a teenager. "Do you understand what you're doing? Investing in stocks is a risky business. You have no guarantee that you're going to get any return. You could lose all of your money."

"I've studied up on it pretty well Dad." I assured him. "I'm pretty sure that these two corporations are going to go through the roof in the next year."

"What are they?" He asked. "I've never heard of either one of them."

"They make latex products." I told him. "Condoms and surgical gloves mostly."

"Condoms and surgical gloves?" He asked. "You think there's money to be made there?"

"It's a matter of timing Dad." I explained. "You know about AIDS, right?"

"Of course I know about AIDS." He told me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well," I said. "I've been following the news on AIDS as well as checking the business section. Right now AIDS is mostly confined to homosexual men and IV drug users. But that's slowly changing. As more and more heterosexuals become infected the fear of this disease is going to grow, probably into a paranoia."

"That's all very interesting Billy, but…"

"When I got stabbed." I told him. "I remember that the paramedic who was treating me was not wearing any gloves. I'd been cut open and I was bleeding and he was touching me with his bare hands. The nurses and the doctors in the hospital did the same thing. It wasn't just me, it was almost all of the patients that I saw there. Nobody was wearing gloves on their hands as a matter of routine. It just isn't done right now. Are you following me?"

"You're saying that is going to change?"

"In a big way I predict, and soon. As more heterosexuals get the disease and the epidemic grows, ambulance companies, fire departments, hospitals, nursing homes, every medical office is going to start ordering huge supplies of latex gloves. There might even be a shortage of them for a while. The price of them will go up according to the law of supply and demand and their sales figures will probably increase by at least four hundred percent, maybe more. This is the perfect time to invest in the latex business."

He was impressed with my reasoning of the subject but I could tell he still wasn't convinced.

"It's still pretty risky Bill." He told me. "Are you sure you want to invest ALL of your money in this?"

"All of it." I nodded. "Can you do that today?"

He gave me one last glance and then said, "Sure. I'll do it during lunch hour."

The summer rolled on. I continued to have plenty of sex on a fairly regular basis but my heavy work schedule put something of a ding in the variety I was getting. I was down to three females that I enjoyed, rarely getting anything new. Anita would still have me over to do some work for her a few times a week, after which, or sometimes before which, we would go to her bedroom and enjoy a long sex session. She always had me over in the evenings when her kids had gone to bed. Cindy still came over to check out albums with me during the day when my parents were not home. If fact, with Tracy gone a lot of the time on various missions to prepare for college, Cindy's visits became more frequent. It seemed she felt a little guilty about screwing me while my sister was there. With Tracy gone we enjoyed the best sex we'd ever had, with no worries about being too loud or too obscene.

The third girl was Maggie Bartlett, a friend of Cindy's. She would come over on the days when Cindy did not. I tried to talk them into a threesome a couple of times but they just giggled and told me they weren't into that. A pity.

Nina and I remained in contact with each other even though we no longer had to study for anything. We would meet a few times a week at my house or hers, just enjoying each other's company. A few times we drove into nearby Idaho to spend the day at one of the resort lakes. One such day I found myself looking at her in her bathing suit while we soaked up rays on the hot sand. She was starting to fill out nicely. Her breasts, which the previous summer had been almost non-existent, were now pushing at the cups of her one-piece. Again I remembered her classy good looks as the bitchy emergency room doctor. Now that I'd removed the bitchiness I figured she would make some guy very happy someday.

"What are you looking at?" She'd asked, blushing a little as she found my eyes upon her.

I smiled. "Just seeing how your tan is coming along." I told her.

"Well?" She asked. "How is it?"

"It's lookin' good." I answered. I picked up a bottle of sun lotion. "Can you put a little of this on my back? I don't want to burn." That was the advantage of having a girl for a best friend. You could have them put oil on your back. You certainly wouldn't ask a guy friend to do something like that.

"Sure." She said softly, taking it from me. I noticed a slight tremble in her hands as she squirted some into her palm.

Dismissing this, I laid on my stomach on the towel. Her hand began smearing the slippery lotion across my back. Her hands on my skin felt good I realized. They were soft yet eager, gliding over my shoulders and through the small of my back. Her touch was almost sensuous and I felt myself, to my surprise, getting a hard-on beneath my suit.

What a mind-blower, I thought. Nina is giving me a boner. What a strange world.

On September 2 Tracy left the house for California and UC Berkeley where she would begin her first semester as a college student. She planned to get her graduate degree in Business Administration and then move from there to law school. Her hopes were to one day be a rich corporate lawyer. At least she was honest about it.

I gave her a big hug before she climbed into Dad's car for the trip to the airport.

"Take care of yourself." I told her, "And be careful."

"You too." She answered.

She climbed into the car and a minute later it backed out into the street. As I watched it go I felt a tear running down my face. Tracy was still alive.

My senior year began. Because Cindy had graduated and enrolled in college that meant that I was without a ride to school. Though Mike had improved in many areas over the last few months his driving was not one of them. I attempted to mellow him out a bit by letting him know that the fire department would not hire him if he had too many points on his driving record. I suppose this did some good, he never got any points put on, but I still was not going to get into that Volkswagen with him. Strangely enough, though this subject had prompted our long estrangement, he seemed to understand. The subject was never brought up. But this still left me without a lift to school and I'd been driven so long that I'd lost my taste for walking. Nina came to the rescue here. Her Mom, who was a housewife and who thought I walked on water, had always been in the habit of driving Nina to school all through high school. It didn't take much convincing on Nina's part to persuade her Mom to run by my house in the morning and again in the afternoon. Her Mom, who was considerably older for a parent, Nina had been a late child, drove like an eighty-year-old grandmother in her Lincoln. But that was just fine with me. I felt there was little chance of getting killed with Mrs. Blackmore at the wheel.

The reason I'd known so much about our school's ROP program was that I'd taken it as a senior my first trip through. I hadn't taken fire technology but health careers where I'd been assigned to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals as an ER tech. It was this part of my life that had seduced me into my eventual job as a paramedic. I took the health careers once again, as did Nina. I tried to remember if she'd been in it with me before and I couldn't. She had been such a forgettable person back then. Nina planned to sign up for emergency room assignment since she figured, as I had all those years ago, that would be the most exciting. Though I was tempted to do the same, I missed the thrill of the unknown that came with working in emergency situations; I chose central supply instead. Those that chose central supply were sometimes hired by mid-semester if they showed some responsibility. I planned to show lots of it. Central supply techs were paid six dollars an hour.

Mike was accepted into the fire tech ROP program. Like with our health careers program, it was required that you spend the first two months in a classroom learning the finer points of your career assignment. He grumbled about having to spend three hours a day in a class instead of in a fire station like he'd thought but he stuck with it. I knew his grumbling was good-natured and offered only because it was expected of him. He was actually finding the classroom lectures on the basics of firefighting interesting, perhaps the first thing besides marijuana and pussy stories that had ever interested him. I began to feel that Mike was going to be okay.

I perhaps suffered the worst through the classroom portion of ROP. They were teaching us how to take blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and how to respond to various hospital emergency situations like fires or floods. This was all stuff I knew not just intimately but genetically it seemed. There was however some interesting perks to the classroom. It was made up of mostly girls. I had a fresh hunting ground to pick from and an additional challenge thrown in since most of the girls did not know who I was because ROP classes were made up of students from all the regional high schools.

As I went to work on a few of the more attractive students I noticed that Nina, who was in the same class, would become morose and even throw some dirty looks my way. What was up with her? I wondered. Was Tracy right? Was Nina in love with me? I hoped not. She was my best friend and I was her best friend but I'd never done anything to encourage her to love me. If it was true, how could it have happened?

In deference to her feelings I tried to keep my flirtations discreet when she was around. There was no since hurting her. And if she did have some love-like feelings for me they would eventually fade, wouldn't they?

I was troubled by these thoughts but not too troubled. By my second week there I enticed a girl named Susan Kelly, a breasty brunette whose ambition was to someday work as a registration clerk, to my house after school. I was glad to find that I still had the touch after the long summer.

In September of that year the United States sent a force of Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force. I knew that tragedy would befall 240 of them at the hands of Muslim extremists. With their deployment came the opportunity for some experimentation on my part. I knew what was going to happen. Could I, in good conscience, simply let it occur without trying to stop it? I could not.

The question was, how could I stop it? I put some thought into the matter while I read as much on the peacekeeping force as I could. A plan developed in my mind by the end of September.

Using plain paper and pen I drafted a letter to the commanding general of the American forces there. I stated that I was an American Muslim and that I'd received information about an impending attack upon the forces there by way of relatives in Lebanon that were part of the extremists but not as radical as their friends. I explained exactly what was to take place and on which day. I made twenty-five copies of the letter and dropped each copy into a separate envelope, all of which I addressed and labeled CONFIDENTIAL.

I put stamps on all of the letters and then borrowed my father's car one Saturday morning, telling him that I was going to an all-day party. I promised him I wouldn't drink and he gave me the keys.

I left the house at 9:00 that morning, getting onto Interstate 90 and heading west. Four hours later I was in Seattle; a large, anonymous city that I'd never lived in. Careful was my watchword and if any feds tried to find the deliverer of the message, as I was sure they would, I wanted no trail leading them to Spokane. I dropped the letters into a mailbox in one of the suburbs. I had a quick lunch and then headed home. I'd taken my shot. My conscience was assuaged.

Of course I had no way of knowing if my letters had reached their destination and, if they had, if they would be taken seriously. I hoped that they were enough to at least take simple precautions. I listened to a news station on the radio all day on October 15, the day the attack was to take place. Nothing came across about a tragedy in Beirut. But towards the end of the day something else came across.

"U.S. Marines," Said the ABC announcer, "Have captured a group of Muslim extremists that were setting up heavy caliber mortars near the Marine Barracks, apparently with the intention of shelling the soldiers inside. A source tells us that the Marines were acting on information they received via an anonymous tip that the attack was to take place. General…"

I'd done it! I had prevented a tragedy! The Muslims that had been about to shell the barracks, destroying it and killing 240 Marines had been captured before they could do it. I had changed history!

I walked around in a state of elation for the next seven days, beaming with pride at what I'd done. What else could I change? The Challenger disaster was coming up in a few years. I could probably stop that also. In the course of that week I had myself believing that I could prevent the Persian Gulf War.

And then came October 23. I awoke to the news that a suicide bomber with a truck full of explosives had rammed into the Marine Barracks, killing many inside. My elation died the instant I heard that.

It was two days before the final death toll was announced. 240 Marines had been killed. 240! That number put an icy finger of dread upon my heart.

In my previous life the Marine Barracks had been shelled from outside the base by Muslims armed with Russian made eighty-millimeter mortars. 240 had been killed by the attack. In this life I'd prevented that from happening but a week later a suicide bomber had hit instead. 240 had been killed by that attack. I wondered if the death list of those 240 was the same in both lives. Instinctively I knew that it probably was. I had prevented nothing.

240 Marines had been killed, as if they were fated to die. As if they were fated!

I had prevented Tracy's death in this life. Was she too fated to die? Was she just going to be killed in some other manner now that I'd changed her original destiny? Was there anything I could do? Could I really change anything here? Was I fated to end up a paramedic in debt again? Was Mike fated to end up an unemployed loser? Was Nina fated to end up a bitchy emergency room doctor? If so, what had been the point of coming back? What had been the point?

I was depressed and edgy for the next week as news of the bombing in Beirut was swallowed up by news of the successful invasion of Grenada a few days later. Nina, who knew me better than anyone, picked up on my mood and tried to discover the source of it in her gentle, probing way. I told her nothing, claiming that everything was just fine. What else could I say? How could I possibly tell her what was bothering me? That I feared my sister had a death sentence hanging over her head. That I feared that everything I'd done over the last eighteen months had been meaningless.

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her as we rode the bus to our ROP classroom one day.

"Fate?" She asked, looking at me. "What do you mean?"

"You know, that everything is pre-destined. That we have a schedule that we follow in life and that we're powerless to change anything?"

"No." She said. "You don't believe that do you?"

"I didn't used to." I said. "But lately I've been wondering."

"Are you okay Bill?" She asked tenderly. "You've been kind of, well tense the last few days. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing I can put into words." I told her. "I guess I'll get over it."

I turned my head to look out the window and as I watched the traffic pass by outside the bus I felt her hands on my shoulders. They began squeezing and kneading the muscles there, forcing them to relax. It felt wonderful and I leaned my head back and sighed.

"That feels good." I told her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I've been reading on massage techniques." She told me. "Am I doing it right?"

"Perfect." I said, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take me away.

As I felt her squeezing and caressing me a thought occurred. Nina had put her hands upon me completely uninvited. She had simply reached over and done it. Nina, who'd been so shy once that she wasn't even capable of smiling in front of someone, who couldn't even bring herself to answer questions in class, who wouldn't have dreamed of touching someone with or without permission the day I'd first approached her in the cafeteria.

Nina had changed. She was no longer the mousy butt of everyone's jokes. She had friends now. Me, Tracy, Cindy, even Mike. She had learned to socialize with people even to the point of taking some bonghits at a party. I didn't think it possible that she would evolve into the Dr. Blackmore that I would one day know. She would become Dr. Blackmore but she wouldn't be the same person. She couldn't become that person at this point, the psychology that had formed her future personality had been altered. Was it possible that maybe things COULD be changed? That maybe they tended to fall into pre-destined patterns but that rule was not absolute?

In Nina's comforting hands I found some hope.

We graduated from the classroom portion of ROP and were given our assignments. Nina went to the emergency room at one of the smaller hospitals as an ER tech. I went to the supply room in the basement of the regional trauma center and was put to work sterilizing and packaging medical supplies and instruments. Mike was assigned to Spokane Fire Station #3 near downtown.

It took me only a few days to be trained in the routine that I would be following. Central supply was a little more challenging than making pizzas, but not by much. My work mate was Julie Salinas, a cute Mexican girl that had been in my training class. I'd tried once to initiate some intimate conversation with her but she'd shot me down without a second glance, stating in no uncertain terms, that she was engaged to be married after graduation. I'd shrugged her off. That kind of thing happened from time to time and there were plenty of other targets in the class.

When I walked in and saw her there the first day I assumed it was not going to be pleasant. She had been a little snotty in her rejection of my advances. But I was surprised to find that she was friendly to me as we spent three hours together each day. With our bodies covered by baggie scrubs, our shoes covered by paper coverings, our hair covered by paper nets, we would chat easily as we went about the tasks of putting forceps and scalpels and syringes and little bottles of medicine into sterile packaging and then labeling them for the appropriate departments within the hospital. It was a fun relationship. She was pleasant to talk to and since I already knew that she wasn't interested in me I was releived of the sexual tension that usually went along with being next to someone like her. Or so I thought.

As the first few weeks went by I couldn't help but notice that Julie was always there when I got there. I knew she had her own car which allowed her to drive to the hospital instead of taking the bus but why in the name of God would she show up earlier than she had to? Finally, when our relationship matured to the point that I could ask such things, I asked her.

"Because." She told me. "I intend to get hired here at mid-semester. Can you imagine? It's a dream job. If they hire you, you get paid for your time here and still get the school credits. You also get another three hours on the clock at $6.00 an hour. So if I get noticed by showing up a half an hour earlier than everyone else, so much the better. They only hire three or four of us each year you know and there's more than twelve of us working down here."

"That's a pretty good idea." I said with complete honesty. After all, I was counting on getting hired also. To do so would nearly double my current income. "I wish I had a car so I could do it too."

I meant nothing by this statement. I was merely speculating out loud, wondering in my mind if I could break loose some of my portfolio to purchase a cheap car. If it helped me get a job it would be a sound investment, wouldn't it?

"If you want," Julie said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I could give you a ride. I have to drive right by your school to get here and right by it to get home. I'd rather work with you then some of the other losers they got around here."

"Really?" I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her intentions. Usually when girls asked me something like that what they wanted was sex. I wasn't so sure about that with Julie though. After all, she'd already told me she was engaged. She in fact talked quite a bit about her fiance, who was in his second year of junior college where he was learning the finer points of drafting. She was also a practicing Catholic; a religion which most definitely frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex.

Finally I decided it was a genuinely innocent offer that a friend makes to another friend. "I'll take you up on that." I told her. "Thanks."

"No problem." She assured me.

Nina and I had arranged our school schedules that year so that we shared the last two classes before lunch and ROP. We always sat together in the classroom during those classes and then walked together to the lunchroom where usually we would sit with Mike and eat lunch prior to heading off to our job sites. Mike had had the same idea as Julie. He drove his Bug to the fire station, getting there earlier than he was required. He also tended to stay a little later than was required. He talked repeatedly of his experience at the firehouse, continually and obviously inflating his stories of what they allowed him to do. For instance he told me once that they'd allowed him to don breathing gear and go into a burning building to help fight a fire, something that they would NEVER do. But I was gladdened by his exaggerations. It meant that I'd hit upon just the right thing when I'd suggested firefighting as a career.

After he took off from lunch break to head downtown Nina and I walked out to the bus area where the ROP buses picked up the students. As we walked I explained my new riding arrangements to her along with the theory that it would help me get hired at mid-semester.

"Julie?" Nina said, frowning. "You're going to be riding with her?"

"Yeah." I said. "That way I'll be able to…"

"But she's engaged!" Nina nearly yelled. A very un-Nina-like display of emotion.

"So?" I asked, looking at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're gonna…" A pause as she tried to formulate her words. "Get a RIDE from an engaged girl?"

"Well yes." I affirmed. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Her face was actually turning red as her eyes, once so soft and mellow, burned into me. What the hell was the matter with her?

"No." She said stiffly. She turned away from me and started heading for the bus stop.

I followed after her, grabbing her by the arm. "Nina?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She said. "Nothing at all. I'll see you later."

Right then Julie, driving her Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb in the red zone. She saw me and smiled. "You ready?" She called.

"Just a sec." I told her, turning back to Nina. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm fine." She said sadly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Do you still want to ride with me to school?"

"Of course." I said, "But aren't we going to get together and study today after school? We have to go over that calculus."

"Not today." She said coldly. "I've got things to do." She turned away from me once again and disappeared into the crowd of students waiting for the bus.

With a troubled mind, more troubled than I cared to admit, I went to Julie's car and got in.

By the time we arrived at the hospital I was suspicious about Julie's intentions. She was overly friendly and openly flirty with me; signs I'd learned long before to both recognize and take advantage of. Despite my troubling conversation with Nina I found myself responding to her banter.

All through our workday it went on. She stood closer to me than was really needed, always taking the opportunity to touch my hand or bump her hip against mine. A few times she even turned so that the swell of her breast rubbed across my shoulder. It happened a little too frequently to be accidental. By two o'clock thoughts of Nina were forgotten as I pondered the prospect of bagging Julie and started working the problem of how to get her back to my place through my mind.

That turned out to be much easier than I'd thought it would.

As she drove me towards home she asked, "So, are your parents home right now?"

"No." I told her. "My old man doesn't get home until a little after four."

"Really?" She said, a smile blooming on her face. "You know, some of the other girls said they went over to your house and studied with you."

"Did they?" I asked, familiar with this opening line.

"Uh huh. Susie, Lori, and Stacy all said you're a GREAT study partner." She looked over at me. "I need to study you know."

I chuckled. "I don't think your fiance would like you coming over my house to 'study'." I told her. My own personal form of legal disclaimer. "There are those who say my study techniques are somewhat radical."

"Well I sure ain't gonna tell him." She informed me, as I'd known she would. "I'm not married yet you know."

"No." I nodded. "I guess you're not."

There is of course a certain amount of subtle nuances and so forth that must take place in such encounters before the real action begins. You can't just go inside, tear of your clothes and start rutting like an animal on the carpet. Well at least not for a first encounter. Thankfully with Julie, this period was brief. We started on the couch, were coy with each other for a few minutes, and then we began kissing.

I pulled her sexy body to mine and probed between her large lips with my tongue, licking and sucking each lip while my hands ran up and down her back, feeling her hard body beneath the T-shirt she wore, tracing the outline of her bra strap. She returned my kisses eagerly, showing some skill of her own with her tongue in the way she caressed the inside of my lips with it, the way she probed teasingly in and out, sliding it with mine on a film of saliva. Her breath was sweet and scented with the bubble gum she'd recently been chewing, it's ebb and flow increasing as she became excited by my actions.

I moved from her lips and kissed my way down across her puffy cheek to her neck, licking the salty taste on her dark flesh, nipping with my teeth and sucking lightly. She threw her head back and cooed softly, her hands sliding down to my butt and then up under the back of my shirt where she ran them up and down my bare back. Her hands were soft as they glided across my skin, punctuated by the occasional scratch of her painted nails when I gave her skin a little suck or bite.

I dropped my own hands to the hem of her shirt and slid them underneath, running my fingers up her smooth flanks on each side, feeling her soft skin and the harsh roughness of her bra when I reached her chest. I brought my hands together in the front, moving them along her bra, cupping her firm tits through the cotton and wire, squeezing them together. I could feel her nipples protruding against my palms.

I went back to kissing her, more gently this time as I ran my hands around to her back and began toying with the clasp that held her bra together. She returned my kisses while her own hands slid down my back and into the back of my pants, worming their way through my underwear until her fingers were squeezing my ass cheeks, kneading them. She pulled me tighter against her, so that the bulge of my cock was pressing against the crotch of her pants.

She broke her mouth from mine for an instant. "You have a nice ass." She breathed, nipping at my earlobe with her teeth.

"Thank you." I breathed back, pulling her face back to mine and continuing our dance of tongues.

I undid the bra clasp with a quick, expert twist of the fingers and then lifted my arms, pulling her shirt and the bra off in one quick motion. She raised her hands in the air to assist me, breaking the kiss only long enough for the shirt to clear her head.

I slid my hands around to the front again, taking her tits in them, feeling the yielding but firm flesh, the hard nipples. I stoked them up and down, gliding my fingertips around the perimeter of each nipple, finally tweaking them a little. They were as rigid as stone it seemed. I broke the kiss and pulled away from her, looking at her chest, drinking in the sight of those beautiful mammaries. As I've mentioned before, teenagers have the nicest tits; they can truly be taken as a sign that there IS a God. Julie's were no exception. They were perhaps a little larger than was considered average but they had no sag to them. They were pale in contrast to the darkness of her skin except for the nipples, which were the color of ripe cherries. I hefted them a little in my hands, stroking the sides and bottoms of them, running my fingers beneath them.

"You like them?" She asked sweetly. She knew that I liked them.

"They're all right." I shrugged and then smiled.

"You asshole." She giggled. "You want to taste them?"

"If I must." I said, feigning a sigh of a laborer contemplating an unpleasant job.

"You must." She told me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me towards her.

I sucked and licked her nipples for several minutes, tasting their texture, making her squirm on the couch beneath me.

"You know," She panted, running her fingers through my hair and sliding her denim-clad leg up and down in my crotch. "I heard that you have some really COOL study methods."

"Yeah?" I answered between tongues on her right nipple, which was dripping with my saliva. "What might those be?"

"You know?" She groaned. "Like doing things with your mouth."

I switched to the other nipple, cupping the bulk of the breast with my hand.

"I'm doing things with my mouth right now." I told her, sucking the flesh on the side of the tit.

"Other things!" She insisted. "Things a little lower."

I looked up at her. "Your toes?"

"Higher." She giggled.

"Your belly button." I guessed, sliding down and sticking my tongue into it, making her squeal.

"That tickled." She said, delighted. "But you're getting warmer."

"Well," I finally said. "Maybe you should just come upstairs to my room and show me what you mean."

"Maybe I should." She said, getting up.

Upstairs, standing near the foot of my bed while I watched her, she kicked off her shoes and socks and then unbuttoned her jeans. They were tight on her and it was with some effort that she pushed them off her body to the floor, revealing the dark elegance of her legs to me. Her panties were blue and cut high. They did not leave her body with the jeans, but remained behind after being dragged down just far enough for me to see a few tufts of her black pubic hair peeking out the top of the waistband.

Julie was certainly not shy about displaying her body. She even teased me a little, sliding the panties up and down a few notches, revealing more and more of the top of her bush before she finally slid them down and off her body. Her bush was thick and black, the lips of her pussy all but hidden in it. I stepped forward and ran my hand of her thigh, feeling the skin, finally probing lightly through the kinky hair until I felt warm wetness against my fingertip. I withdrew my finger and brought it to my nose, inhaling her scent, letting the pheromones do their work on me.

She reached forward and undid the snap on my jeans, pushing them down. Mine were not as tight as hers were and they slid easily to the floor where I kicked them and my shoes off. I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the ground while Julie slid her hand into my underwear, grasping my cock.

"Nice." She said, feeling it up and down. With her other hand she tugged at the elastic, pulling them down my legs, her head traveling downwards as her hands pushed them to my feet. As she reached my dick her tongue slid out and circled the head for a brief second, just enough to make my whole body twitch.

"How about you show me how to study now?" She asked.

I nodded, stepping around her and lying on my back on the bed. "Come here." I told her, patting the mattress next to me.

She lay down and I pulled her body against mine, sliding her on top of me, chest to chest, face to face. I kissed her again while I felt the glory of her form pressing against mine. Remaining on my back I put my hands into her armpits and tugged a little, forcing her to move upward on me. I pushed upwards at the same time, bending her back a little and those tits were dangling in my face. I reached out for them with my tongue and worked them for a minute, getting her back into the swing of things and then I let go of her.

"What's wrong?" She asked me, looking at my intense stare.

"Do you want me to eat you?" I asked her.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Bring it up here." I commanded, touching my lips with my fingers. "Put your pussy on my mouth."

"You mean, sit on you?" She asked, her eyes sparkling.

I nodded. "Come on."

She didn't have to be told twice. She slid her crotch along the length of my stomach and chest, inching forward until her soft thighs were pushing against my ears and her hairy pussy was hanging only inches from my mouth. Using my fingers I probed through her thick nest until her pink, juicy lips were visible. They were swollen and ready, gleaming with moisture, thick with the aroma of arousal. I brought my head forward and began to lick at her, driving my tongue into her passage.

My reputation among the girls was based almost entirely upon my skills at cunnilingus. For that reason, whenever I got my mouth on a pussy I gave it my very best. You had to leave the customer satisfied after all. I ate Julie until she battered my face beneath her and dented my wall by slamming the headboard of the bed into it. Her juices poured over my face and I lapped them up. When her first orgasm faded away I put her on her back and ate her again in the traditional method, starting slower this time, working my way from the bottom of her slit upwards so that by the time I reached her clit it was once again swollen and ready for a fresh assault. Her second come was even more powerful.

When that one was done I crawled up her body, which was now slick with her aroused sweat, and positioned myself atop her. She spread her legs wide for my coming penetration. With my mouth kissing hers, with my hard cock nestled in her pubic hair, feeling the waiting wetness, I reached over and opened the nightstand drawer next to the bed. Inside of that drawer, among other things, was a bible that my Mom's sister, a religious fanatic, had given me long ago. What I was doing was a practiced and perfected maneuver.

Without needing to look, or even take my mouth off her, I flipped open the bible to the middle where I'd cut a hiding hole in some of the pages. Inside this hiding hole were my condoms. I pulled one out and then flipped the book shut again. Less than a minute later the condom was firmly on my cock and the wrapper was resting on the nightstand.

"C'mon." Julie panted. "Do it."

I slid my dick through her swollen lips for a bit, wetting the condom. When it was ready I positioned the head between her lips.

"You ready to get fucked?" I asked her, looking in her brown eyes.

"Yes!" She cried, kissing my neck and squeezing my ass. "Do it! Fuck me!"

I drove forward, feeling my dick slide between those lips and into her tightness. She moaned as I penetrated her and my own voice joined hers as I felt her chamber squeezing at me. I began to move in and out, slowly at first but quickly increasing to a full-blown grind. She slid her legs up and down mine, her hands up and down my back while her hips rose up to meet me.

She came again after about five minutes, clawing my back as she did so. I continued to pound away at her until she came again. Now it was my turn to come. I picked up the pace, angling my thrusts for the maximum sensation, anticipating the feeling of blasting inside of her hot body.

But I couldn't come. My mind simply would not make the vital connection that allowed the process of orgasm to begin. It was not the first time this had happened. I'd noticed it happening over the last few months, though it was usually when I was fucking Anita or Cindy or Maggie. It was something that had happened to me in my previous life when I'd been married for a while. The mind was no longer able to generate orgasm through sensation alone, it needed a little something else. That something was usually a fantasy and I'd always figured that it was required because I'd grown a little bored by screwing the same person over and over. But I'd never screwed Julie before. Why should I require a fantasy now? Julie was something new, something fresh. Wasn't she fantasy in and of herself?

I continued to fuck her, moving in and out, feeling her tits with my hands, stroking her legs, kissing her mouth, her neck. I tried to will myself to come. I'm fucking a beautiful teenager, I told myself. But I still couldn't come.

I began to run various fantasies through my head as I screwed her. Those that have been married for any length of time will probably be familiar with this method. I thought of the first time I'd fucked Cindy. That brought a little stir in my nether regions but no orgasm. I thought of what it would be like to fuck Darla Watson, a cute blonde at school that had always rejected my advances. I imagined it was Darla's body beneath mine, Darla's mouth kissing me. No good.

Sweat was now pouring off of my face and I was starting to get tired. Though Julie was still enjoying herself beneath me I knew that if I didn't come soon I was going to have to call a halt on the grounds of fatigue. I couldn't keep up this pace indefinitely. I was loath to do that since I NEEDED to come and since it's damn near impossible to take a condom off your cock if you haven't blasted into it.

I raised my hand to my forehead to wipe the sweat out of my eyes while my hips continued to rise and fall and Julie continued to buck and moan against me. Suddenly I was thinking of Nina. I don't know what brought her image into my mind but I wasn't thinking of her as the friend I knew. I was thinking of her naked and sweating beneath me.

I felt a tingle run up my back at that very thought. The fantasy expanded. I closed my eyes and pressed my body tighter into Julie, my hips picking up speed. I imagined that instead of Julie it was Nina beneath me, her flesh pressing mine, her breasts against my chest, her sex grasping and squeezing my cock.

"Ahhhhh!" I groaned as my mind blew a circuit breaker of some sort and a powerful orgasm went slamming through my body almost without warning.

"Yess!" Julie screamed, feeling the change in my rhythm.

I bucked up and down atop her like I was in seizure, shooting blast after blast into the condom until I feared I was going to overfill it. Finally, drenched in sweat, I collapsed atop her.

She kissed and licked on me, telling me how great I'd been but I barely heard her.

Had I really been fantasizing about Nina? Had that fantasy really given me one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had?

I rolled off of Julie and removed the condom, tying a knot in the top and dropping it into the wastebasket next to the bed (which I would of course empty before Mom and Dad got home). I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and she curled up next to me, resting her head on my chest.

We made some small talk with each other for a few minutes and all the while my mind was spinning. I'd gotten off thinking about Nina. What did that mean?

When Julie finally got out of bed and went to use the bathroom I started to run the fantasy through my head once again. I started to really imagine what it would feel like to kiss Nina, to feel her body against mine, to make love to her. These thoughts were not, I found, the least bit unpleasant to contemplate.

Chapter 5

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

But I love you

Oh how I love you

THE MOODY BLUES

Julie left the house, giving me a quick kiss on the lips and walking out to her car. She told me she would see me tomorrow and then a moment later she was roaring away. I closed the door after she'd gone and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, glancing at the clock as I did so. A half an hour until Dad got home. Just enough time for a shower.

Though I didn't have to work that day a bathing session was necessary none-the-less. I was wearing only a pair of sweatpants on my body and I knew I had to reek of Julie's musk both from my skin and on my breath. There was no sense giving my Dad anything to raise his eyebrows about.

As I put ice in a glass and filled it with water from the tap, preparing to slake my considerable thirst, my mind was still reeling with the new images of Nina it had produced at the moment of truth earlier. The memory of the powerful orgasm those images had generated was still fresh and in fact the images themselves were still flitting at the forefront of my thoughts, keeping my dick in a semi-erect state.

It was Nina I was thinking about! Nina! What a mind-blower. I felt very weird about this. Nina was my best friend, my companion, my confidant for nearly two years now. Why was I suddenly having sexual thoughts about her? Was it just my teenaged libido in overdrive or was it something else entirely? As I struggled to understand the meaning of these thoughts I found myself thinking of her in more than the sexual way. I thought of all the time we'd spent together, of all the things we'd done. I liked being around her. There really wasn't anything else I'd rather do in fact. Not even sex, my greatest obsession, compared to simply being in the company of her, talking to her, listening to her.

My God, I thought. I wasn't talking about love was I? Though I looked like a teenager and though I'd learned to act like a teenager I was still, under all of that, a thirty-three year old man. Nina was seventeen. And while I'd reluctantly acknowledged the possibility that she might be in love with me, through no fault of my own of course, I'd never even considered, even for an instant, the possibility that I might be in love with her. Sure I loved her as a friend. Sure, even though she was sixteen years younger than I was (although in reality she was nearly a year older than I was) I'd always found her a mature and easy to talk to companion, much easier than my ex-wife had ever dreamed of being, easier in fact than even Tracy. But none of that meant love did it, not romantic love anyway.

I thought of how upset she'd been earlier that day because I'd chosen to accept a ride from Julie. I remembered being baffled by her anger. Why should she be upset because of that, I'd wondered? It had been in all innocence, or so I'd thought then, and we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend anyway, so what right had she to be mad at me? And then I imagined how I would feel if Nina had told me that she was going to be riding to ROP each day with someone like Rick Felone, one of the few other guys that had been in our ROP classroom. I was surprised at the sudden surge of anger and jealously that hit me at the very thought of this.

Jesus, what was happening to me? What was I going to do about it?

Before I had a chance to think too heavily on those questions the doorbell rang. Muttering a curse under my breath at being interrupted while I'd been thinking some deep thoughts, I set down my glass and headed into the living room.

Figuring it was a door to door salesman selling some worthless product or religious fanatics selling something even more worthless I threw open the door prepared to send them away post-haste so I could go up to take my shower and continue my thoughts of Nina to their conclusion. However it was neither on the other side of door. It was Nina.

Her expression was very cool upon her face, very unreadable as she stood on the porch. Her eyes took in my attire and I realized that she couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. What was she doing here anyway? She'd told me that she wasn't coming over.

"Hi Nina." I greeted her with false cheeriness, stepping back a bit to keep her from catching any sort of scent from me. I did this instinctively without even realizing why I was doing it. "Come on in. What are you doing here?"

She made no move to come through the door, she simply stood there. "I came over to apologize for acting so weird today at school." She said. "I thought I'd been out of line, getting upset just because you wanted a ride with Julie."

"That's okay." I told her. "I understand completely. Why don't you come in?"

"I was so upset by what I'd said," She continued, still making no move to come through the door. "That I decided to head over as soon as I got home from school."

My mouth dropped open and a burst of adrenaline flooded me as I realized what she was saying.

"When I got here," She told me. "I saw that you already had company. Julie's car was out front."

"Listen Nina," I started and then immediately faded away. I had no idea what I should say to her. Should I lie and say nothing had happened? I rejected that thought even as it formed. I could hardly deny it. Nina, as I may have mentioned earlier, was not stupid. Julie's car had been out front and I'd answered the door wearing nothing but sweats and smelling like I'd just fucked someone.

"What you do is your business." She told me and I saw that a tear was now running from her left eye. "It's never been any of mine and I've never pretended that it was. You've been screwing everything with a vagina for the last two years and I've never tried to convince myself that you have any feelings for me. To you I'm just Nina."

"No Nina." I protested. "That's not true at all."

"It is." She said. "But do you know what? I've always had feelings for you. Ever since you first started talking to me in the lunchroom I've had strong feelings for you. Over the past two years they've never been returned but I've always had them and I've always hoped that some day…" She sniffed a little, more tears coming down now. "Time and time again I've started to feel like maybe there was some hope. Even though I've heard all of the stories about you, about how you'll screw anyone. Even though girls are always coming up to me and asking about you, trying to get me to introduce them to you, I still had some hope. I kept deluding myself, telling myself that you really were a nice guy. That you really weren't doing all of these things that I was hearing."

"I am a nice guy." I protested. "It's just…"

"Time and time again I would see what you were doing and try to tell myself I wasn't really seeing it. I would try to tell myself that someday…" She took a deep breath. "Anyway, when you told me that Julie and you were just going to ride together I felt, well, jealous, threatened at first. I know we're not going together or anything but still, I feel these things Bill. I can't help it. I've got these fucking feelings for you. But then I thought about it and decided I'd overreacted a little. I told myself that there was no way Bill would ever do anything with an engaged girl. I convinced myself that I'd let my feelings come out a little too much this time." She snorted in disgust. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me. So I came over here to tell you I was sorry about that.

"When I got here and saw Julie's car out front it suddenly came home to me. Everything that I'd always heard about you was true. All of the times I'd convinced myself that people were just talking about you, all of the times I saw with my own eyes what you were doing and convinced myself it was something else, all of that just fell apart when I saw her car. You really are an asshole Bill, and the worst kind. You're an asshole that can pretend not to be one."

"Nina," I said, "Let me explain…"

"There's nothing to explain." She said. "I've got to get away from you. I've got to stay away from you, do you understand? You're not good for me and you give me too many bad feelings. I just came up here to let you know that you're going to have to find another way to get to school." Tears were now running freely down her cheeks and her voice was breaking as she held off sobs.

"Nina, let's talk about this." I said.

"No." She cried, turning away from me. "Goodbye Bill." She started down the walk.

"Nina!" I yelled, starting after her.

"Leave me alone." She sobbed. "Just stay away from me here, now, and forever. Don't call me anymore, don't talk to me anymore. Please."

She continued down the walkway and turned left at the sidewalk, heading for home. Less than ten seconds later she was out of my sight. But she wasn't out of my mind.

Despite what she'd said to me I tried to call her several times that day. I needed to talk to her, to tell her that I wasn't really an asshole. I needed to try to get her to change her mind. Each time her mother answered the phone and told me that Nina was not there. Her mother's voice, which usually lit up when she was talking to me, was emotionless and flat, with no hint of the previous warmth that had been in it. Finally she told me that her daughter did not wish to speak to me and asked that I refrain from calling anymore. I put down the phone feeling defeated.

The next morning Dad saw me bundling up and preparing to walk to school. He gave me a puzzled look.

"Isn't Nina coming to pick you up today?" He asked.

"No." I told him. "She's kind of, well, mad at me. She's not going to give me a ride anymore."

"You guys broke up?" He asked, his voice soft with sympathy.

"She was never my girlfriend Dad." I told him, irritated. "She's just mad at me and doesn't want to give me a ride anymore."

He stared levelly at me. "Bill." He told me. "I hate to tell you this but Nina WAS your girlfriend, whether you realized it or not."

I shook my head. "No Dad." I said. "We were just friends. We never…, well you know?"

"Is that what you think a girlfriend is?" He asked. "Someone to, 'you know' with? You and Nina might not have ever done that with each other but you were boyfriend and girlfriend all the same. You liked being around each other, you liked to talk together. You were friends. You loved each other.

Isn't friendship the most important part of a relationship, any relationship? Why do people disregard such things?"

Had it been so obvious that even my Dad had seen it? How could I have not seen it all this time? And how could fate have been so cruel to allow me to realize it on the very day, at the very minute that it's destruction was being engineered.

"I don't know Dad." I said with complete honesty. "Maybe they're just assholes."

He gave me a meaningful look. "Maybe they are." He replied. "And maybe they need to take a good look at what is making them an asshole, don't you think? Maybe they can change that little something?"

I gave him a sharp look. What was he saying? What did he know? Was he talking about my social activities? Surely he didn't know about that did he? But then I'd assumed Nina hadn't known about that either, an assumption that, now that it had been proven wrong, seemed painfully naive. Was my assumption that Dad or even, I shuddered, Mom, didn't know as flawed as that about Nina?

Dad had hidden his face back behind the paper, offering me no more insights into what he was thinking. Troubled, I picked up my backpack and headed out the door. I wasn't surprised to find that it was raining as I headed, on foot, to school. It was that kind of day.

My attempts to talk to Nina at school were met with stony silence. By the time lunch came around I knew better than to even try anymore. As I ate my lunch in the lunchroom I looked over to where Nina sat and dread covered me like a blanket. She was sitting alone at a table, eating from her tray, a book open before her. Just like she'd been doing the first day I'd approached her. Just like it.

Julie picked me up once more for ROP. As we drove to the hospital together I was disquieted by the freeness of her affection towards me. She would put her hand on my leg as we talked, or brush my hair from my eyes for me. Once she even kissed her finger and put it to my lips gently. She told me how great of a time she'd had yesterday.

"Do you think maybe we could study together again after school?" She asked brightly.

"Uh…, not today." I told her. "I have to work." In truth I could have easily arranged a little meeting before work but I simply wasn't up to it. I'd never felt less like having sex in my life.

She pouted a little. "Well maybe next week." She said. "I really need to bone up on certain things."

As we worked side by side I noticed again how much she went out of her way to bump into me or to rub her breasts against my shoulder. Since I was quieter than usual she decided to talk more than usual. I winced when she mentioned her fiance.

"Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision when I said I'd marry him." She told me.

I looked over at her, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended to. "What do you mean?"

"Well," She beamed, her eyes shining. "I'm still young, ain't I? Maybe he's not the right one. Maybe I just jumped because he was the first one to ask.

There's lots of other guys out there that might be, uh, better, isn't there?"

I quite simply didn't know what to say to her.

When I came home from work that night my Mom was sitting on the couch watching television and working on some sort of project for work. I gave her a perfunctory greeting and started to head for my room.

"Bill?" She asked, "Are you doing okay?"

I stopped, turning towards her. "Sure Mom." I answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Dad told me about you and Nina breaking up." She said. "I just wanted to know how you were handling it."

I didn't even bother explaining to her that Nina and I hadn't had a relationship to break up from. By now it was starting to sound like a lie even to me. "I'm okay Mom." I assured her. "It'll work out."

"I certainly hope so." She told me sympathetically. "I really like her a lot you know. I thought you two made a cute couple."

I smiled weakly.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your life or anything Bill." She said. "But I think you had a good thing with her. If I were you, I'd do whatever I had to to get her back. Sincerely."

"Thanks Mom." I muttered, unsure what I was thanking her for. Why in the hell hadn't anyone told me this stuff a month ago, or a year ago, or even twenty-four hours ago?

Of course I was deluding myself because they had. Tracy in the most direct way, although I'd refused to hear her, Mom and Dad in more indirect ways. How many times had they referred to Nina as my girlfriend, either to me or when talking about her to someone else? And how many times had I reproached them for this, angrily even on occasion? Too many to count.

"Well that's my motherly advice for the day." She said. "If you're feeling down maybe this will help." She picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to me. On the front I recognized my sister's handwriting.

"From Tracy?" I asked. Since leaving for California Tracy had not exactly been an open line of communication. Two phone calls, one of which had just been to tell us she'd arrived safely, and this one letter. Since she lived in the dorms it was almost impossible to get hold of her.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "And about time too. I swear, you send them to college and they forget you exist."

I opened the envelope and sat down on the couch, pulling the single handwritten sheet of paper out and unfolding it.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Bill, it started. It was mostly to let us know she was alive and well and doing fine. She chattered on about how much she was enjoying her classes and the California weather, how much she liked living in the dorms, about her job at the campus book store which would help supplement her living expenses. And then towards the end she told us that she'd met a boy and had been dating him fairly frequently. His name was Darren Maxwell.

Darren Maxwell. I'd never heard that name before in my life, before or after recycling. But for some reason that name gave me a twinge of fear. I continued to read her decidedly unfeminine handwriting, becoming more nervous in a much more identifiable way. He was a junior at the school attending on a baseball scholarship. A baseball player. He was a sports figure, just like the guy who had been scheduled to cause her death. It should have felt stupid that I was worrying about her just because she was dating a baseball player but it didn't. It made me very uncomfortable. I found myself wondering what kind of car he drove and if he liked to drink at parties.

Troubled, I put the letter back into the envelope and put it back on the table.

"What's the matter Bill?" Mom asked me. "You look kind of pale."

"Nothing Mom." I said, standing up. "I think I'm gonna hit the rack."

I was halfway up the stairs when it hit me. I realized why Darren Maxwell's name bothered me so much. He had the same initials as David Mitchell. The same amount of syllables in his name. I wondered if they looked alike. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, if the initials and the sports history were just a meaningless coincidence. Every time I started to convince myself that paranoia was all it was I would think about Beirut and about Nina sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book before she went off, alone, to medical school.

"Jesus, this is creepy." I muttered.

I lay in bed but it was a long time before I got to sleep.

I tried to call Nina twice over the weekend. The first time her mother not so politely told me that Nina did not wish to speak to me. The second time her Dad told me he would call the cops if I called there again. On Monday at school I tried to talk to her in class.

"I told you to leave me alone." She said quietly but coldly, in a voice that did not promise the opening of negotiations.

I left her alone.

Julie picked me up once again, for what I planned to be the last time. Though I wanted a job at central supply as much as anyone, I could not ride to work with her anymore. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to bring Nina around again but it certainly wouldn't help for her to see me driving off every afternoon with Julie. I planned to tell her on the way to the hospital that this would be the last ride. But before I could, she blindsided me.

She was bubbly and exuberant as I climbed into the car and she roared off with much more enthusiasm than she usually displayed.

"You're in a happy mood today." I commented, trying to think of an opening, or closing line.

"Yep." She bubbled happily. "I sure am. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Look." She said, and waggled her left hand before my face.

I blinked in confusion, not following her. "Your hand." I said dryly. "What about it?"

"Notice anything missing?" She smiled, waggling her fingers.

And suddenly I did. The diamond engagement ring that she'd been so proud of, that she'd annoyed the living shit out of every member of the class with, was no longer on her ring finger. "Your ring." I said hollowly, knowing what the significance of it's absence had to be.

"Yep." She nodded, dropping the hand into my lap, very near my crotch. "I'm free. Absolutely free. I gave it back to him on Saturday night and told him I didn't want to marry him or see him anymore."

I took a deep breath. "Why did you do that?" I asked slowly.

"Because I don't want to see him anymore." She told me. She gave my leg a squeeze. "I've found someone else."

She'd found someone else? Oh shit. "And who might that be?" I braced myself.

She gave me a look that conveyed the message that she thought I was teasing her. "You, you hoser." She smiled. "What we experienced the other night was just, just incredible, wasn't it? I knew right then we had something special going. Didn't you just feel the electricity?"

"Oh God." I couldn't help but mutter. Could this week get any worse?

"Hey," She said, "Are your parents gone? I was thinking maybe we could cut ROP today and go over to your place." Her hand trailed upward until it was firmly in my crotch. "Spend the afternoon together?"

Slowly, patiently, I picked up her hand from my lap and put it back in hers.

"Julie." I started, and then was unable to think of anything to say.

"What?" She said, confused by my rejection of her hand and the serious tone of my voice.

I looked at the ceiling of the car for a moment, trying to think. Why the hell was she doing this to me? Didn't she understand THE RULES? She was supposed to enjoy our session and leave it at that. She wasn't supposed to break up with her fucking fiance because of it. She wasn't supposed to be feeling electricity or any of that romance novel crap. I had no experience with this sort of thing.

"Sweetie," She said, concerned. "What's wrong?"

Sweetie? Oh Christ. This was getting way out of hand.

"Look Julie." I said patiently. "I'm not your sweetie. I'm just Bill. Bill from class. We had a little fun together the other day, something we probably shouldn't have done, but I never meant for it to go any further than that. I never meant for you to break up with your fiance over it."

Her face turned deadly serious. "What are you saying?" She asked.

What was I saying? Hadn't I just said it? "What I'm saying," I told her carefully. "Is that I am not looking for a relationship with you. We just had a day of fun together."

"You don't want to go out with me?" She whispered, her tone conveying danger just under the surface.

"No." I said. "What happened between us just kind of happened. I didn't intend for it to go any further than that. Can't we just be friends?"

"Friends?" She nearly spat. "It sounds to me like you think I'm some sort of slut."

"No, no!" I protested. "That's not…"

"You take me over to your place and fuck me and you just want to end it like that? That's how guys treat sluts!"

"But…"

"I'm not no fuckin slut!" She screamed at me. "Did you think I was one? Did you think you were just gonna fuck me and then we'd forget about it the next day? How could you think that? I'm a Catholic Goddamit. I go to fucking church! Nobody treats me like a fuckin slut!"

"You're not a slut Julie." I protested. "All I was trying to say…"

She suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing her car to a screeching, smoking halt in the middle of one of Spokane's major arteries. I heard the screech of other brakes behind us as several cars nearly rear-ended her.

"Julie, Jesus, what are…"

"Get the fuck out of my car you asshole!" She screamed at me. "Get your fuckin ass out NOW! I don't ever want to see your fucked-up, lying face again!"

"Let's talk about…"

"GET OUT!" She screamed and I saw murder in her eyes.

I unsnapped my seatbelt, opened the door, and got out. Before I could close the door she peeled away, ripping it out of my hand, leaving me standing in the middle of the street in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. I looked around uncomfortably at the angry faces of the motorists whose progress I was impeding and I hurried to the curb.

"I think I could have handled that better." I muttered to myself.

I took a quick look around me, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was in front of a liquor store and three blacks were hanging out in front of it. They were in their early twenties or late teens and looked like gang members based on their garb. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking from forty-ounce cans of beer. They eyed me with amusement.

"Homey," One of them said to me sympathetically. "That was one pissed off bitch."

"Yep." Another agreed. "I heard her rap all the way over here. I was you Homey, I'd stay away from that shit."

"Sure thing." The other one put in. "Bitch done dropped your ass off in the hood. You'd a been good as dead she'd a done that shit at night. Lucky for you it's day, you only half as good as dead 'round here now."

They all laughed at that, shaking their heads at my predicament. I felt no fear from them. I'd worked for years in 'the hood' and had gotten good at reading the intentions of the inhabitants of it. Their jostling of me was for their own amusement. They meant me no harm. However, there were others around that would mean me some harm if I encountered them. I was no longer in possession of the safety my uniform provided or the portable radio that I'd once carried here that could summon every cop within five square miles in less than two minutes. I was in a delicate situation.

"Yeah." I said to them. "I do seem to be out of my element here, don't I?"

This cracked them up again. "You ain't shittin." One of them said.

"The bus stop around here somewhere?" I asked.

"Right here Homey." One answered. "Should be comin round in about twenty minutes."

"Hope you can make it that long." The one that had made the crack about the hood commented.

I looked around again, not seeing anything that offered comfort to me. The street was lined with liquor stores, cheap motels, and the occasional sub-human apartment complex. There were alleys between each of the buildings that undoubtedly contained all manner of thug of all races and creeds. This was not a place to take a little stroll. I turned back to the three-man comedy team.

"Gentlemen," I said. "I propose a business deal."

"Say what?" The apparent leader of the trio asked me.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, my weekly ration from my paycheck. I silently gave thanks that I'd increased it to ten after starting work in the hospital. "Take this ten." I said, "And take it into the liquor store there. Buy me one of those forties you're drinking, since I can use a drink about now, and give me back a buck for the bus. You guys keep the rest for yourself in exchange for keeping me from getting killed before the bus gets here."

They all stared at me for a moment, a trio of THE LOOK. Finally the leader spoke.

"And what's to stop us," He asked. "From just takin the dime and sendin your ass the fuck out of here?"

I shrugged. "Absolutely nothing." I answered.

It took them a moment but they finally started laughing. The leader, shaking his head and grinning, plucked the ten out of my fingers and headed into the store. He returned a minute later handing me a frosty, forty-ounce can of King Cobra and a dollar bill.

"You know somethin Homey?" He asked me as I cracked open the beer and took a huge swallow. "You're all right. You the most fun we had around here in a fuckin week."

And so I made it safely out of the worst area that Spokane had to offer. I boarded the bus, buzzing pleasantly from the beer that I'd just slammed into my system, gave my business partners a wave goodbye, and found myself a seat. I thought it prudent to avoid going to the hospital that day, giving Julie twenty-four hours to cool down. Since I was not accustomed to riding the bus and since I did not have any more money to spare I simply sat in my seat until the bus I was on passed near my home. It took nearly two hours and by the time I got off my bladder felt as if it was going to burst. I ran the five blocks to my house, fumbled with the key, and dashed full speed to the bathroom.

It was a fitting end to the school day I supposed.

When I came home from work that night Mom was once again sitting on the couch and watching television.

"Hi Bill." She greeted. "Feeling better today?"

"Much." I lied, putting on a cheery face.

"Have you talked to Nina?" She asked delicately.

"She won't talk to me." I answered. "But life goes on, doesn't it?"

"What did you guys fight about anyway?" She asked.

"It's kinda personal Mom." I explained. "But don't worry. I'm coping."

She gave me a sideways smile. As I started up the stairs she suddenly called me back.

"I almost forgot." She told me. "Anita called and asked if you could put up her storm windows this week sometime when she gets home. Winter's coming soon you know."

"Sure." I answered. There had been a time, about a week ago, when the news that Anita had called, asking me to do something for her would have caused a stir in my nether regions. But now, nothing. Sex was still the furthest thing from my mind. "I'll do it tomorrow afternoon."

She beamed at me. "It so sweet of you Bill." She commented. "Helping Anita out even with your busy schedule. You're turning out all right."

"I hope so." I said as I headed upstairs, realizing that for the first time in forever I was looking at a trip to Anita's as a chore.

I sensed no thawing of feelings from Nina the next day so I did not attempt to talk to her. At lunch she sat alone again at her table. Mike joined me at mine, pointing at her.

"Why's she sitting over there?" He asked, not bothering to finish chewing his food first.

"She's pissed off at me." I told him.

"How come?"

"It's personal." I answered.

He stared at me for a moment and then, in the way of Mike, dismissed the subject. "You ridin' the bus today?"

"Yep." I answered, wondering if he was going to start questioning me about Julie now.

Instead he gave me a sour look. "I'll be with you." He said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "How come?"

"Bug's broke." He told me. "The fuckin oil pump took a shit on me. Have to wait till my dad gets paid again before I can get it fixed."

I commiserated with him for a minute and then our talk turned to other subjects. After lunch we boarded the bus and found seats together. Nina, not even looking at us, found a seat by herself near the front.

My stop came before his so I bid him farewell and exited through the door along with the other ROP members assigned to the trauma center. As I headed for the main doors I saw Julie's car parked in the parking lot. I felt my nerves tense up as I anticipated having to work with her. After all, we worked with scalpels and other sharp instruments.

But as it turned out my fears were groundless. She had already talked to the supervisor apparently and had requested a change of work partner for personal reasons. My new partner was Brett Jackson, one of the other guys in the class. Julie was working with another girl in a section across the room from me. Brett asked a few questions regarding the transfer but I gave him no answers. Eventually he gave up. Julie and I stayed far apart and she did not try to cut my heart out with an unsterile scalpel. It seemed that particular crisis was passed.

When I rode home that day Nina sat away from me once more. But I also noticed the fact that Mike was not on the bus. He should have been picked up before me. Where was he? Had he found another ride home? For some reason his absence filled me with the same sense of dread I'd felt when I read Tracy's letter. When the bus dropped me off at school and Nina hopped into her Mom's car and I started home, the sensation was still with me. What had happened to Mike?

In the old days, before I'd become Anita's lover, she'd always had me over to do whatever work she required done in the afternoon shortly after I came home from school. Since the first time we were intimate with each other however it became a rule that we planned my work in the late afternoon, timed so that she could feed me dinner and then put her kids to bed in time for us to retire to her bedroom, the confines of which I knew as well as my own. As I headed over at five o'clock that day I still felt like sex was the last thing in the world I wanted to participate in. I also knew that Anita would be expecting it. Beyond that my mind refused to consider anything.

She gave me a saucy smile for greeting, a smile I knew meant that she was exceedingly horny and in need of my talents. I sighed and went to work.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon I had all of her storm windows up (knowing in the back of my mind that I would soon be required to put up Mom and Dad's storm windows too). I entered the house to let her know I was done, intending to tell her that I was going to skip dinner that night and just head home. But as I made my way to the kitchen I smelled the familiar aroma of her burgundy beef stroganoff, a dish that she knew was one of my favorites and that she often prepared for me. I also knew that quite a bit of preparation time went into the construction of this meal and I found myself without the heart to turn it down. Besides, I rationalized, Mom, knowing I would be eating at Anita's would have prepared only enough dinner for Dad and herself.

"Do you want to take a shower before dinner?" She asked me as she started the finishing touches on her meal.

"Sure." I nodded, without enthusiasm.

As I scrubbed myself in her shower, washing the sweat of my exertions down her drain I heard the click of the shower door behind me followed by a rush of cold air against my wet skin. Startled, I turned around to see Anita, completely naked, stepping into the shower with me.

"Anita?" I said, alarmed as she shut the door and pushed her body into mine.

"What are you doing?"

She grinned. "I'm feeling a little dirty tonight." She told me, running her hands over my soapy chest.

"But the kids." I protested. "They're still awake."

"They're watching TV." She said, grabbing the bar of soap from my hand. "Don't worry about them."

She began sliding the bar of soap over my wet skin, running it up and down between my lower abdomen and my shoulders, leaving white, foamy streaks on my flesh. Her large breasts were touching my arm as she did this, pushing their weight into me.

"Anita." I started again. "This is a bad idea."

"A bad idea?" She asked, letting the bar slide down onto my thighs and across my balls.

"Yes." I nodded. "We shouldn't…"

"Why don't you let me," She said, dropping the soap to the ground. "Decide what is and isn't a bad idea."

"But…"

"Oh dear." She said with mock concern. "I've dropped the soap. Perhaps I should go retrieve it."

"Anita…" I began again but she wasn't listening. She slowly dropped to her knees on the floor of the shower and took my wilted cock into her mouth.

"Anitaaaaa…" I pleaded, trying to resist her.

It was useless. Anita knew how to suck a cock. Though I'd sworn only minutes before that sex was the last thing on my mind it took only a moment of her teasing, sucking mouth slurping at my meat before I started to stiffen.

"Mmmmmm." She moaned, pulling her mouth free for an instant. "I LOVE to feel it get hard in my mouth." She dove back down on me.

She sucked me until I was as hard as a diamond and resting my arm on the top of the shower to keep from falling down. She then began to move her head up and down, sucking and licking and jacking with her hands. Water ran across her face as she sucked, adding it's own tickles to the experience. Just as my hips started to gyrate back and forth, she pulled her mouth from me and stood up, trailing her tongue up my body as she went. She licked across my nipples, onto my neck, and finally to my mouth where she plunged her tongue inside.

Libido is both the gift and the curse of the young. She had succeeded in driving thoughts of Nina and Beirut and Tracy and Mike from my head. She'd succeeded in transferring control of me to the other head. I put my arms around her and pulled her soft body to mine, letting my hands drop down to her ass cheeks which I began squeezing.

She broke the kiss and stood back a little, out of the spray of the warm water. She reached into her shower caddy and removed a bottle of baby oil. It was the baby oil I knew, that was responsible for the silky, sensuous softness of her skin. She put it on herself every time she bathed. I'd watched her do it plenty of times.

"Here." She said throatily, handing me the bottle. "Put it on me."

"Okay." I agreed, popping open the cap.

"Be sure to rub it in good."

I turned the bottle upside down and dumped a large quantity over the top of her breasts. The clear oil ran over them, between them, and around the sides of them, spilling onto her belly. I set the bottle down and put my hands on her, starting at the top and rubbing the oil into her skin. My hands and fingers glided over her breasts, squishing them in and out of my grasp, making them slippery and almost frictionless. Her nipples stood out proudly and I took a moment to give each one a quick suck, tasting the bitterness of the oil on my tongue as my hands continued to her stomach.

When her entire belly and flank were slippery I grabbed the bottle once more and then went to my knees before her. Her swollen, dripping pussy was right before my eyes but I ignored it for the time being dumping some oil on each of her upper thighs. I began to massage her legs, starting at the top and working my way down to her feet, rubbing and caressing them until they were as slippery as her torso.

I then dumped some oil into the palm of my hand and cupped her pussy, squishing the oil into her lips. She sighed as I touched her there and I began to rub the oil in, feeling her lips swell further, feeling her slick clit rubbing against me. I slid two fingers into her body. They penetrated the slick passage with ease. Her experienced muscles gripped at me. I began to plunge the fingers in and out while I leaned forward and took her slippery, rigid clit into my mouth and began sucking it.

"Ohhhhh." Anita moaned, her hands coming to the back of my head.

When she came, her legs trembled so badly that I feared she was going to fall on me. Somehow she kept her balance, riding through the tremors I gave her.

I stood up, my dick straining out before me, with the intention of sinking into that slippery channel and taking her standing up while her oil slickened body slid against mine. But Anita had other plans.

"I still need oil on my back." She told me.

Dutifully I picked up the bottle while she turned herself around. I poured a quantity onto her shoulder blades and it tracked a course down towards her ass. I massaged the oil into her skin, working my way lower once more until my hand was probing between the cheeks of her ass. I dumped more oil, getting her good and slippery in the valley, running my hand in and out. Anita really liked it when her ass was played with and I could hear her heavy breathing as I paid her attention there.

She stepped backward a step and bent over, exposing her crotch and ass to me.

"You know what I want." She breathed, her hand going up to her pussy where it began to rub.

"I think I do." I told her, pouring a little more oil into my hands and then dropping the bottle to the floor.

I put my oily hands back between her ass cheeks and touched the bud of her anus with my index finger. I pushed forward and the digit slid into her back passage, lubing the way as her hot tunnel squeezed me. I probed in and out for a minute and then added a second finger. Anita moaned her approval.

"C'mon!" She commanded. "Do it!"

I pulled my fingers from her and grasped my cock in one hand. With the other hand I spread her slippery cheeks apart. I moved forward, putting the head against her slick asshole. I probed forward once, feeling the orifice grip at me and then I pushed into her, sliding deep into her ass in one fluid motion.

"Yessssss!" Anita groaned and I had to agree with her. Her passage was tight and slick.

I dropped my hands to her hips and began to move in and out of her, feeling her gripping and releasing, hearing her excited moans over the patter of the water. Her hand began to move faster between her legs and her hips began to move backward against me as I moved forward.

She came again and the erratic spasming of her ass around my cock brought my own orgasm forward. With Anita giving me obscene encouragement, I blasted my load deep into her bowels.

After coming she quickly rinsed herself off and got out of the shower, leaving me to give myself another once-over with the soap, particularly in my crotch. As I cleaned my body I gave silent thanks for Anita. She'd given me just what I needed and I felt better, calmer than I had before coming over. I was pleased to find that I had come quite nicely without having to think of Nina at all. In fact she'd hardly entered my mind.

Dinner was up to it's usual standards, which was excellent, and by the time it was over and the kids were in bed I was ready for another session. So was Anita. We went to her bedroom and spent about an hour pleasuring each other in the conventional fashion.

After this, as we were lying together on her bed, sweat drying on our bodies, my seed dribbling from between her thighs and puddling on her comforter I stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts flow. Beside me, Anita was in a semi-stupor, drifting towards a full-fledged sleep. She often drifted off after we were done, leaving me to shower and find my way out alone. I'd always taken this as a sign that I'd done a good job.

I thought of Anita, thinking back on our relationship together since that first time I'd come over pleading for her help with a girlfriend problem, engineering her seduction of me. Since then we'd never gone a week without finding ourselves in each other's arms, in each other's body. As far as physical pleasure went she still remained the best. I wondered if, when she met the man she would marry, she would constantly compare him to me? Or would she maybe teach him some of my techniques? This thought actually amused me, making me chuckle for perhaps the first time during that miserable week. Anita teaching her new boyfriend and future husband some of the things she'd learned from a teenager.

I yawned and stretched, preparing to hop out of her bed and head for the shower when a thought from left field suddenly struck me. I froze in mid-stretch, coming fully awake, turning me head and looking at my bed-partner that was just about to give in to the final submersion of sleep.

Anita was already supposed to be dating the man that would marry her! She was supposed to have met him before Tracy graduated from high school. I remembered that clearly from my previous life. He'd been at her side at Tracy's funeral! By the time I went off to college she was supposed to have married him and moved away. But she was doing none of that. She had no boyfriend. The closest thing she had was… me.

What had happened? Why hadn't she started dating him? Why wasn't she falling into her previous pattern as Beirut and Nina were doing? I tried as hard as I could to rationalize a reason for the absence of the boyfriend but only one explanation held water. I had interfered with that by starting a relationship of my own with her.

What had been his name? I thought, trying to remember back over a considerable span of years. Something with a J in it was all I could come up with at first. The name danced for a while on the tip of my tongue until finally I was able to snag it. The last name continued to elude me but a first name was all I needed.

"Anita?" I said, shaking her gently until her eyes opened a little. She stared up at me blearily.

"Whu?" She grumbled.

"Do you know anybody named Jack?" I asked her.

"Huh?" She said, waking up a little more now.

"Jack." I repeated. "Do you know anyone named Jack?"

"My ex-father-in-law's name is Jack." She said. "Do you mean him?"

"No." I shook my head. "Any other ones?"

She thought for a second. "Well there's Jack Valentine at work." She said.

Bingo! Once she told me the last name it came back to me. Her future married name was supposed to be Anita Valentine.

"Why would you ask that?" She wanted to know.

"Tell me about Jack Valentine." I prodded her.

She gave me a puzzled look for a second but, like Tracy and Nina, she was well used to the occasional strange question or statement from me. "He transferred to my department about a year ago." She finally said. "He's divorced and kind of good looking. He asked me out a few times last year but finally he gave up when I kept turning him down. He's dating some tramp from accounting now. Word has it their relationship isn't going so well."

"Why," I asked cautiously, "Did you turn him down when he asked you out?"

She looked at me strangely and then smiled. "Why would I want to go out with some pinhead when I got you?" She asked. "You take care of ALL my needs. Well, most of them anyway."

"Anita," I said, thinking as quickly as I could about how I was going to phrase this. If I'd learned nothing else from my experience with Julie it was to treat a woman during a conversation like this as you would an unexploded bomb. "Don't you think that, well, maybe you should occasionally go out with guys your own age?"

"Why?" She asked softly.

Why? "Uh…, well, you know, because you might want to uh, develop a relationship with a man and maybe, you know, get married again someday."

"I would like to get married again someday." She told me, scooting a little closer to me. "And I DO have a relationship with a guy going. You."

"But Anita." I said. "I'm only seventeen years old. I'm in high school. I'll be going off to college next year."

"I know." She nodded, slapping playfully at me with her hand. "And once you're eighteen years old we won't have to keep our relationship a secret anymore. We'll be free."

"Free?" I said, looking at her like a rabbit in a set of headlights.

"Yes." She nodded. "I figure I can go with you wherever you go to college. I can get a job practically anywhere with my skills. We can rent a house while you get your degree. The only hard thing is going to be telling your parents about us." She shook her head sadly while I stared with my mouth agape. "That's certainly not going to be fun."

"No," I muttered slowly, numbly. "It wouldn't be fun at all, would it?"

She leaned over and kissed my nose with a quick peck. "But don't worry." She assured me. "It'll work out. Love will find a way. Why don't you go take your shower now? You don't want to make your parents suspicious do you?"

"No." I said. "That wouldn't do at all."

I was deeply troubled once again as I walked home and headed upstairs that evening. I brushed by my mother before she had a chance to get a good look at my face and see my emotions there. As I crawled under my covers and shut off my light I found myself actually grateful for my fight with Julie. It was thoughts of her that had kept me from telling Anita then and there that I had no intention of marrying her or having her follow me to college. In fact I never intended to sleep with her again. But I had to think carefully first about how I was going to break that news to her. It was clear that I was in the process of screwing up her life but good. Instinctive moves to correct this action might not necessarily be the best ones. The situation would need to be reflected upon first.

As I was reflecting I fell asleep. When I woke up a whole new day was beginning.

I half expected Mike to show up at my house in order to walk to school with me since his car was broken. When he didn't, I figured that one of his parents must have given him a ride. I didn't see him during the classroom portion of the day at all but that was hardly unusual. During lunch period, when I still didn't see him I was forced to conclude that he wasn't there. The conclusion was confirmed when I boarded the bus for ROP and he wasn't there either.

Where was he? I wondered worriedly. Was he sick? Had he maybe taken ill during his shift the previous day? Although that nicely explained why he hadn't been on the bus yesterday or today it didn't ring true. I had a premonition of more disaster brewing. A premonition that turned out to be correct.

Mike was supposed to come over to my house for a study session after school and when he didn't show up I called his house, noting that my hands were trembling a little as I dialed. He answered the phone on the second ring.

"Mike?" I asked. "What's up?"

"Nothin'." He told me sourly.

"Where were you today?" I asked him. "Didn't see you in school or at ROP."

There was a long pause. Finally he said, "I got in trouble yesterday dude."

My heart started hammering in my chest as I heard his words. I forced myself to ask, "What kind of trouble?"

"The captain at the station caught me smoking a joint out behind the apparatus bay."

"What?" I asked slowly. "You were smoking a joint there?"

"Yeah." He answered. "I usually smoked them in the car on the way to the station but I didn't have my car. Figures he'd come out to have a smoke just when I was trying to take a few hits."

"And what happened?" I asked next.

"I got suspended for a week." He told me. "I also got kicked out of ROP. They're gonna give me three classes to replace it."

"Mike, Jesus." I said, unable to think of anything else.

"It's cool." He told me. "I didn't really like hangin out at the fuckin fire station anyway. And the captain was an asshole. Anyway I had a meeting with the counselor and my parents today and she said I should give the independent study a try."

"You're not gonna do it are you?" I asked quickly.

"Yeah." He told me. "I am. Fuck going to class for six hours every day."

"Mike." I told him. "This isn't the end. You can still stay in school and graduate next year. You can still get on with the fire department after you graduate. You just have to tell them in the interview that you were a dumb kid and that…"

"Fuck that." Mike said angrily. "I'm going into independent study. We sent in the application today. Should be approved by next week."

"Mike," I pleaded, "We're almost halfway through the school year! You'll be done before you know it! Just hang in there for another few…"

"Fuck it!" He repeated. "I'm staying in that fuckin shithole any longer than I have to. I shoulda gone into independent study in the first place. I'd a been done by now.

"But…"

"I gotta go." He said. "I'll see you around."

With a click he hung up the phone. Slowly I replaced mine in the holder.

I sat for the longest time, trying to think my way through all of the crap that had suddenly come down in the last week but I couldn't. There was too much of it and it was cluttering up my mind. I would no sooner start to think about one aspect when another would push it's way forward, demanding my attention.

I went upstairs to my room and opened up my nightstand drawer. I looked in the cutout section of my bible and found what I needed. I took it out and pocketed it carefully. When Dad got home I asked him if I could use his car for a few hours. He handed me the keys and asked if I would be home for dinner.

"Probably not." I told him, heading out the door.

I drove to the park near the falls; the location of many a kegger. No keggers were going on at the moment since it was daytime and no families were picnicking at the moment since it was October and the weather wasn't quite up for such things. I locked up Dad's car and walked to a trail that led down to the river near the top of the falls. I began hiking.

Twenty minutes later I was standing less than a hundred yards from where the water arced over the cliff. The roar of the falls was very loud and a fine mist from below drifted through the air, blown by the prevailing winds. I found myself a comfortable spot and sat down. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out the half joint that I'd extricated from my bible.

I'd noticed long before I'd been recycled that a little marijuana helped me think deeply about things. It helped keep my thoughts from being sidetracked into something else. Though I was aware of the irony of what I was doing, using the very substance that had brought Mike down in order to help come up with a solution to his problem, as well as the many others that I'd set in motion, I took out a lighter and lit the joint. As I smoked I stared at the falls, watching the water cascade over the edge to its collision with the lower river. The sight was mesmerizing, the sound nothing but white noise. By the time I'd finished the roach my mind was clear and I began trying to think things through.

Patterns. That was what it came down to. There were two separate time lines I was dealing with. What had happened in my first trip from 1982 to 1999 and what was happening in my second trip. When I'd first come over it had seemed so simple. Everything was new, everything was fresh. I had not really believed at all that I would have to worry about the way things had turned out in my first life. But now, after all the things that had happened, I was seeing definite patterns between the two time lines. Though some things had changed I was seeing a definite tendency for things, people especially, to drift into the patterns that had apparently been set for them. As for who or what had set those patterns, I knew not and I cared not. I was only concerned with the question of whether or not the patterns were tendencies or absolute.

Mike. In my previous life he'd gone to independent study and dropped out of school. He'd joined the Air Force a few years later and the few times I heard from him after that he'd seemed to like his job as missile technician in Wyoming. However he was discovered to have marijuana in his system after a random drug test and given a choice between an Article 15 or a dishonorable discharge without criminal complaint, he chose the discharge. In this time line I'd successfully steered him off of that path at it's beginning and onto a different one, that of a firefighter. I'd kept him in high school longer than he had been previously and I'd honestly thought that I'd changed his destiny. But then he was caught using marijuana at the fire station. He was thrown out of ROP and was now planning to re-enter independent study. He'd steered himself right back into the other path with only two days worth of effort. Was he now committed to that path? Was there no way for me to steer him back again? Was it pointless to even try?

Nina. In her previous life she'd been taunted and ignored throughout her school years, eventually turning into a bitter, though highly educated person. It would be readily apparent to every person that dealt with her on a regular basis in my first life that she suffered from a raging inferiority complex. She was driven by the desire to appear smarter, better, faster, more competent, more everything, than everyone else around her. She was driven by this desire because deep inside she would always be the butt of everyone's jokes and would always feel she was inferior to everyone. The facade she would put up to convince herself and others to the contrary would often be brutal to those it touched. But in this timeline I'd steered her off of that path. I'd befriended her and, with the help of others, showed her that she really was a good person. For the longest time it seemed she could not fall into her original pattern. And then yours truly, in my idiocy, jerked her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now she was back to eating alone in the cafeteria, back to being uncommunicative with everyone. She was on her way to college and medical school next year. In the nineties would she show up in the emergency room in Spokane once again with the same chip on her shoulder, the same attitude? Although the trip took a different pathway than before it sure seemed to me she was heading for the same place.

Tracy. This was the problem that concerned me more than anything else. In the previous time line a football player named David Mitchell had gotten drunk one night and driven my sister into the Spokane River, killing her. I'd prevented that from occurring, true enough, but it was disquieting to me that the Camero had STILL crashed into the river, that Lisa Sanchez had STILL been killed in the accident, and that Barbie Langston, who had taken Tracy's place in the car, had NOT been killed. And now Tracy was dating a baseball player named Darren Maxwell. Was it coincidence that he had the same initials? Was fate simply waiting for another chance to claim Tracy, who's demise was already written in some celestial book somewhere? If so, was there anything I could do about it? Was there anything she could do about it?

And that brought me to the troubling problem of Anita. She, for a change of pace, had deviated way off of the path that she'd taken before. She had not gone out with the man that she was going to marry in the previous time line and had instead fallen in love with me after I'd initiated an affair with her. She called her intended a pinhead in fact. Why was Anita different? Or was she?

I stared at the falls and ran all these things through my mind, one by one. Mike, Anita, Tracy, Myself, Beirut, trying to determine if there were any absolutes, any hard, fast rules to this thing. I stayed there for a long time, staring and thinking, thinking and staring, watching the water rush by in the river.

Was fate, I wondered, like that river? A liquid stream rushing along towards a fixed destination. All of the billions of drops of water in that river were destined to end up, eventually, in the ocean. You could take a few drops out and move them back upstream a few feet or a few miles but they would still end up passing by the same point again, they would still end up in the ocean. A few drops would occasionally splash out of the stream for a while, seeming to free themselves of the current but they would eventually be brought right back into the flow. That was their destiny. That was their fate.

But was it possible for a few drops to occasionally escape that river, to find a new path? Sometimes it was. They could be taken away clinging to the bathing suit of a child or scooped up by a motorist whose vehicle had overheated and deposited into a radiator. They could be lapped away from the river by a deer or a coyote or a bear or even a stray dog. Though most of the drops were fated to continue on their way to the Pacific Ocean; it was possible for some to escape, wasn't it?

When I finally left I was soaked from the mist, shivering, probably on the verge of hypothermia, and I had a bitch of a headache.

But I felt better all the same.

Chapter 6

Once I rose above the noise and confusion

Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion

I was soaring ever higher

But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man

Though my mind could think I still was a madman

I hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I can hear them say:

Carry on my wayward son

There'll be peace when you are done

Lay your weary head to rest

Don't you cry no more

KANSAS

I awoke in a better mood the next morning even though nothing had really changed. Everything was falling or had fallen down around me and it was time to start picking up the pieces. I was determined to take action; to strike back at FATE. During my mind session the day before I'd realized that both Anita and myself were walking examples that fate could be changed.

It may not be easy to do, but it was possible. If things did not improve, or if they got worse from my interference, at least I'd be able to say that I'd tried.

After breakfast I went to our den and dug through my Dad's filing cabinet. After a minute of rummaging I came up with the letter that Tracy had sent us. I opened it up and scanned through it until I found the section I wanted.

"I have a job now," I read, "working at the campus book store as a clerk. I have to…" I scanned further, skipping over the brief description of her job duties. "I work 5:00 to closing at 8:00, Monday through Friday. It's fun I suppose. At least the money will help…"

5:00 to 8:00 Tracy would be in the UC Berkeley bookstore. I memorized that information and then put the letter back.

A few minutes later I was bundling up and preparing for the long walk to school. As I stepped outside the house I was grateful to see it was not raining. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it. It was a beautiful fall morning it appeared.

My happiness at the appearance of the sun quickly deflated when I felt the wind. It was blowing about twenty miles an hour, sending leaves and other debris parading down the street. The moving air was icy and cold, feeling as if it had just came off a glacier. My exposed cheeks immediately reddened and my eyes began to tear. With a sigh I pulled my hood tight, lowered my face, and moved out. This walking to school shit was getting old fast. One way or another, I swore to myself, I was not going to do it much longer.

My first stop upon arriving at school was the administration building. I walked into the main lobby area where two secretaries were working behind a counter. Both were banging away on IBM typewriters. Two student volunteers, both girls, one of whom had once been to my room to 'study', were doing some filing. The one I'd had relations with in the past was the only person in the room to pay my entrance any attention. She gave me a sly smile and then went back to what she was doing.

I walked up to the counter and stood politely for a few seconds. The nearest secretary continued to type, not even glancing my way, although there was no way she could have failed to notice my presence.

"Excuse me?" I finally said.

"You can't use the phone in here." She said impatiently, without even looking up or moving her hands from the typewriter keys. "There's a payphone outside. If you don't have a dime, you're gonna have to borrow one from somewhere else. We're not a bank."

"I'm not here to use the phone." I said.

"Then what do you want?" She asked, continuing to type away.

"I need to see Mrs. Compleigh." I told her, referring to one of the school counselors, the one who had pushed Mike into independent study.

Her hands still blurring across her IBM, she asked, "Do you have an appointment?"

"No." I replied. "But it's kind of an emergency. I need to…"

"You'll have to schedule an appointment with her if you want to talk to her." She replied tersely. She returned her full attention to her work.

"This is an emergency." I tried again. "I need to see her now."

She gave a hiss of disgust and pushed herself away from her desk. She turned to me, her eyes full of contempt. "Look young man," She said, projecting all of the petty authority she possessed towards me. "Our counselors are busy people and I can't just go sending kids in to them any time some student asks. Now if you could just…"

"Now wait a minute." I interrupted, using my adult voice, a voice I rarely employed anymore. It worked it's magic. She, as well as the other secretary and the two volunteers all stopped and stared at me. Concentrating my attention on the one I'd been speaking to I asked, "What is your name?"

"My name?" She asked, the first tinges of actual anger appearing in her tone.

"Yes." I nodded. "You know, what they call you?"

"Now you listen to me young man…" She started, but weakly. She seemed cowed by the bold way I was speaking to her. Her expression reminded me a little of how Richie had looked when he'd realized he'd bitten off a little more than he could chew.

"Your name?" I demanded, sharpening my tone a little.

"Mrs. Wilks." She finally said. "Now I really…"

"Well, Mrs. Wilks," I said, "When I went through orientation for this school it was explained to me that the school counselors existed to assist me in times of need. That they were student advocates. I was told I could talk to them at any time during the school day. Any time. Are you telling me now that that was a lie?"

"Well no." She stammered, "You can talk to them any time if there is some sort of, well, problem. It's just that for routine matters like what you're…"

"Routine matters?" I asked, exasperated. "I believe I told you twice that this was an emergency. Emergency is not a synonym for routine. Emergency means a pressing matter, a problem, something that requires immediate address by qualified people. I would like to see Mrs. Compleigh for this problem that I have. Is she here?"

"Well, yes she is." Mrs. Wilks said, looking quite dazed now.

"Good." I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Would you please tell her that a student has a problem and would like to see her?"

"Uh…, well, what is your name?" She asked.

I told her.

"Okay." She nodded, jotting it down. "And what do you need to talk to her about?"

I looked around, seeing that our audience was raptly awaiting my answer for that one.

"That is most definitely none of your business." I told her.

She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, and then perhaps thought better of it. She stood up and headed through a door, closing it behind her. The other three occupants of the room continued to stare at me for a moment. The two student volunteers were hiding smirks of amusement at the exchange they'd just witnessed. Finally they reluctantly went back to work.

Mrs. Wilks returned a few minutes later. She gave me a nervous look and said, "Mrs. Compleigh will see you in just a minute."

"Thank you." I said.

She didn't answer my thanks. She walked over to a large filing cabinet and, using a key from a ring, opened up one of the drawers. She fingered through it for a few seconds and finally pulled a manila file from it. My eyes are pretty sharp, always would be, and I had no trouble seeing my name printed on the tab. She carried the file back through the door from which she'd come. She returned a minute later and sat back at her desk.

Another five minutes went by and the same door opened revealing Mrs. Compleigh. She was about forty or so, with long brown hair that was tied into a bun. She wore a plain brown dress and nylons. Her eyes held a cynical gaze as she appraised me.

"Billy?" She asked. "If you would come with me?"

I stood and pushed my way through the little barrier door and then followed her through the back door. We moved down a hallway past the principal's and assistant principal's office, both of which were empty, a copy machine, a coffee maker, and finally to a door with the counselor's name printed on it.

She opened the door and led me into her office.

Her office was small and cramped with a cheap metal desk taking up a large portion of the room. Two small chairs sat before the desk. Her work area was cluttered with various papers and forms although my file was nowhere to be seen there. Framed pictures of two children, one a boy of about ten, the other a girl of about fourteen or so, sat on the desk flanking her penholder. On the wall behind the desk were two framed degrees from the University of Idaho at Boise. She had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in public education with a minor in Psychology. The air in the room smelled as if she regularly violated the school no smoking policy.

She worked her way behind her desk and waved me to a seat in one of the chairs. I sat.

"Well Billy," She started. "Mrs. Wilks is a little upset by the way in which you talked to her." She started. "She says you were getting smart with her. Is that true?"

"Getting smart?" I asked contemplatively. "Why do teachers, counselors, and secretaries tell kids not to get smart? Isn't that what we are in school for?"

This produced a few stunned seconds of THE LOOK. Finally she kind of shook her head, as if clearing her mind of my words. "We'll discuss Mrs. Wilks later perhaps." She said finally. "I understand you have some sort of emergency?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"I hope it's nothing serious." She told me. "You're one of our better students here. In fact, if not for some poor grades your first year, you'd probably be in the running for valedictorian. So what kind of emergency does a bright young man like yourself have?"

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment. She had rattled off my school record with the intention of making me believe that she knew who I was and how I was doing in school off the top of her head. She was trying to give me the impression that she knew all of her students by name and could instantly recall their respective records. Her psychology or education classes had probably assured her that this was a good trick to instill trust. I dismissed this without comment only reluctantly.

"Well actually." I said. "I am not the one having the problem. I came here on behalf of Mike Meachen."

Her face clouded a bit. "Mike Meachen?" She asked me. "I don't understand."

"Mike Meachen." I repeated. "Surely you remember him? You talked him and his parents into independent study?"

"I'm afraid," She told me firmly, "That what Mike Meachen and his parents discussed with me or decided to do is none of your business."

"Is that a fact?" I asked pointedly.

"YES, it is." She replied, annoyed. "Now if that's all you wanted to discuss, I have a lot of work to do."

"If that's ALL?" I asked, switching to the adult voice again. "You encourage a student to drop out of school, to destroy his life, and you wonder if that's ALL I want to discuss? What kind of counselor are you anyway?"

"Now wait just a minute!" She said sharply, sitting up straighter and leaning over the desk towards me. "Mike is going to independent study. He is NOT dropping out. He is NOT destroying his life."

"Don't give me that crap." I told her, holding her hostile gaze. "You know as well as I do that no one graduates from independent study. It's a holding tank where you put kids that you think are going to drop out anyway so that when they do, it doesn't go on your statistics."

She actually paled a little as I said this, her eyes telling me she knew that what I was saying was true and that she was shocked that I'd come up with this information. She quickly composed herself however and began spouting the company line. "Billy, that is simply not true." She said. "Independent study is a program designed to help students like Mike when they are struggling…"

"You're quoting directly from the pamphlets, aren't you?" I interrupted. "The ones that the school district administration gave you when they instructed you to seek out likely drop-outs and steer them into this program. I'm sure they told you all kinds of things about how it was for the protection of the school, the protection of the students, the protection of the goddam American way of life. But I can see in your eyes that you don't really believe all the bullshit you're spouting at me. You KNOW what I'm saying is true. You probably wouldn't admit it under torture, but you KNOW. Don't you?"

"I would appreciate you watching your language in here." She snapped, continuing to stare at me. "I refuse to have a discussion with a foul-mouthed child who comes into my office and…"

"Yes," I continued, "You know. And part of you probably hates it, don't you? Or at least maybe you did once. How long have you been doing this? Are you numb to it now? Do you sleep well at night after you send someone to oblivion? How many kids have you steered into this program, talking to their parents like you were a used-car salesman offering a Cadillac for a hundred bucks? How many kids that you steered into this thing might have been saved if you'd have done what your job was SUPPOSED to be and helped them?"

"I think I've heard just about enough from you." She told me. "Please ask Mrs. Wilks to supply you with an office pass since you're now late for first period."

I shook my head sadly at her. "No." I said softly but firmly. "I will not leave until I've had my say."

Her face reddened this time. "Young man!" She barked. "You will leave this office right this…"

"Are you afraid of me Mrs. Compleigh?" I asked.

"NO!" She lied. "I am simply tired of having my time wasted by listening to your paranoid delusions. You are a sixteen year old CHILD. You've come to some strange conclusion in your mind and you think it's the truth. Well I'm nearly forty years old and I can tell you with authority that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I struck a few of your chords, didn't I?" I asked, smiling. "I told you a few things about yourself that you didn't really want to hear, didn't I? If you were wise, you would sit down and listen to me for a few minutes. As you pointed out, I'm much younger than you are and you probably don't think I have anything of value to tell you, right? Well someone much younger than me, in a manner of speaking anyway, once tried to tell ME something. And I figured that since I was so much more "mature", that she couldn't possibly be right. Well, I was wrong and I ignored what she had to say, and the consequences of that are something that still haunts me, maybe always will. Do me and yourself a favor and hear me out?"

She looked downright nervous now but finally said, "Say what you need to say."

"Thank you." I replied. "You told me a minute ago that independent study was for students that are 'struggling' in school. Correct?"

"Yes." She said carefully.

"I don't agree with independent study." I said. "I think it's an atrocity. I think you counselors and administrators spend far too much time trying to cover up for poor students instead of trying to help them. Sure, you'd lose a bunch anyway but even if you could save just one, just a single one, wouldn't it be worth it?"

Before she could answer I continued. "But I've learned that you can't change the world. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to change a little part of it. Sometimes I think you CAN do that. You told me that Mike Meachen was a struggling student. Did you even bother to check his record before you had him and his parents in here? Did you even bother to note that he is NOT struggling anymore before you cut him off at the knees? His grades have come way up since last year. He was on his way to an upper 3 average for the first time in his life. He might have even made a 4.0 for the year until you kicked him out of school."

"I didn't FORCE anybody anywhere." She protested. "Mike and his parents WANTED him to go to independent study."

"No, you didn't force them." I said. "You just brought them in here and waved it in front of their faces. 'Look Mike, you only have to go to school twelve hours a week.' 'Look Mrs. and Mr. Meachen, your child can graduate in only a few months this way. If you don't do this, he might not graduate at all.' Isn't that pretty much the line you handed them? Did I hit upon any exact quotes there?"

She was staring at me with her mouth agape, her face telling me that was exactly what she'd said.

"But since you didn't bother checking his record first, you never noticed that he WAS going to graduate. Not through any efforts on YOUR part I might add, but on mine. The first time you waved this crap in front of him I talked him out of it. I got him to study, I got him to bring his grades up and focus on a goal. Things that YOU are charged with doing. I did them for you. He was on his way to his goals and you steered him right into oblivion. Instead of helping him, you destroyed him."

"He was smoking grass." She said defensively. "At his ROP site. You can't expect me to overlook something like that can you?"

"No." I said, "I can't. He did something stupid, I'm not saying he didn't. He did something that he needs to be punished for so that he learns not to do it again. But is this the answer? Sending him out of school? Destroying his life? He didn't kill anybody for God's sake, he smoked some pot. Jesus, haven't you ever smoked pot."

"Certainly NOT!" She said, much too quickly.

"Right." I said, letting that drop. "And granted, he should not be doing it on his job site. But he's a seventeen-year-old kid. Seventeen year olds do stupid things. Maybe he's got a problem with pot, maybe not. But did you even bother trying to figure that out? To counsel him, counselor? No, you just steered him off into independent study because you've been told to do that with people like Mike.

"Try to think back to when you were in school, to when you decided that being a school counselor or an educator was what you wanted to do. Back before the realities of life shit all over your viewpoint. Didn't you, at one time, want to do this so you could help kids? Wasn't that a goal at some point in your past?"

She was looking me up and down in a manner I'd seen a few times before. My history teacher had looked at me this way when I'd asked her sensitive questions. Mrs. Crookshank had looked at me this way when I'd explained about underachievers to her. Dad had looked at me this way when I'd explained why I wanted to invest in latex. The cop who had taken the assault report had looked at me this way when I'd explained what I'd done. It was the look of a person who had thought they'd been speaking to a child but who'd suddenly realized that they were, for whatever reason, talking to an intelligent and insightful adult. It was a look of confusion and growing respect and fear mixed with awe. It was an extended version of THE LOOK.

"Yes." She finally said. "It was."

"Have you abandoned that goal completely?" I asked next.

She licked her lips for a moment. "I hope not." She shook her head.

"Who wanted Mike out of ROP?" I asked her next. "Was it the fire department's idea or yours?"

"Mine." She admitted. "The fire department expressed concern about the incident and requested we have a talk with him. I was the one who recommended removal from ROP."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was…" She paused.

"Was what?"

"Easier." She said shamefully. "Our contract with them is delicate. It seemed the best solution to the problem was to remove Mike from the program so we didn't risk future enrollees."

I stared at her for a minute. "Easier." I finally said, snorting in disgust. "Has it ever occurred to you that you people are educating the people that are going to be running the damn country in twenty or thirty years. The people that are going to be controlling your Medi-Care and Social Security payments? Do you really want them always choosing the path that is easier on them?"

She had no answer for that.

"Mrs. Compleigh," I pleaded. "Can't you do something about this? Mike was trying to become a productive member of society. He was trying. He did something stupid that needs to be addressed. So address it. Talk to him about it. Let him know he did something stupid. Talk to the fire department and see if there's any way they can give him a second chance. If you do that, let me talk to Mike too. I believe I have some influence with him."

She smiled for the first time. "Billy, I believe you about that."

"If he screws up again than you can write him off as a loser and send him to independent study. But please, give him a second chance. Get his file out of the cabinet instead of mine this time. Read it. See how hard he's worked for this goal in the past year. He's trying. How about you do what your job title says and help him. Meet him half way. Please?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes softening. "You're a remarkable young man Billy." She told me.

I shrugged, switching back to my teenager persona. "I try." I said.

"I'll do as you ask." She assured me.

Though she was no longer talking to me and though she no longer sat with me at lunchtime, Nina was still forced to sit next to me in the two classes we shared prior to ROP. We had picked our seats at the beginning of the semester and now we were committed to them; for better or for worse. She would typically spend each class period looking straight ahead as the teacher lectured, occasionally jotting down a note in her binder. She never looked at me or acknowledged my presence in any way.

That day was no different as I sat down for my second class of the day, and the first with her. While awaiting the rest of the class to file in and find their seats she simply stared at her notebook, ignoring the activity around her, ignoring me most of all. Had it only been a week before that we used to chat happily together during this portion of the class, discussing how our day had been until that point, what we were going to do later? It seemed like an eternity had passed since I'd last heard a kind word from her, had seen her smile.

At some point I'd stopped telling myself that I wanted our relationship to mend so that Nina would not turn out to be a bitch later and started telling myself the truth; that I wanted our relationship to mend because I liked our relationship, because I enjoyed being with her. I'd never noticed before how eager I'd been for Nina to come over each day to study with me until she was no longer doing it. All of my brainstorming of the previous day had failed to produce a plan to make-up with her. I simply did not know what to do.

"Nina?" I chanced, leaning towards her a little and whispering.

She hesitated for a second, long enough to make me think that she was not even going to acknowledge my words, but finally she turned her face towards me. Her eyes were blank, revealing nothing of what was going on behind them.

"You heard what happened to Mike?" I asked her.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's too bad."

"I went and saw Mrs. Compleigh today." I told her, thrilled to be even speaking to her. "I think I convinced her to let him back into ROP. He's getting another chance."

She nodded softly. "Good." She said. "I like Mike."

There was a long silence. Just as she started to turn her head back to her notebook I whispered, "I miss you."

She looked at my face for a second, her eyes still blank. Without saying anything she turned her attention back to her notebook. She said nothing.

"Nina?" I said.

She ignored me. Before I could try again the bell rang and the teacher called the class to order. He then began the day's lecture on the Principals of Chemistry.

All day I dreaded what I had to do when I got from school. When I finally arrived home my mind tried to find excuses to delay or even postpone the task at hand. There was homework to be done, housework to be done, deep thoughts to think, bodily functions to take care of. The rational part of me rejected these excuses one by one and finally I put my coat back on and headed out the door.

A short walk brought me to Anita's house. I made my way to her front door, almost left again, and finally, employing my willpower, I pushed her doorbell.

She was very pleased at my unexpected arrival. It showed in her face as she swung open the door. She was dressed in a pair of baggy sweat pants and a T-shirt. It was obvious that she had no bra on beneath.

"Hi Billy." She beamed, standing aside to allow me entry. "Come on in. What a pleasant surprise."

Her children were sitting at the dining room table working on some learning books. An array of crayons and construction paper was spread out before them. They looked up, greeted me briefly, and then went back to what they were doing. Anita, once the door was closed, leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the mouth, probing outward with her tongue for just the briefest instant. She made a point to rub her unencumbered breasts against my chest.

"Anita." I hissed. "Your kids are right here!"

"Oh you." She slapped at me playfully, breaking the embrace. "They're going to have to get used to us eventually anyway aren't they?"

"Uh…" I started.

"So what brings you over here today?" She asked me teasingly. "Need another shower?"

"No." I shook my head quickly, banishing the image of dumping oil all over her before it could give me an erection. As I mentioned before, my mind may have been in my thirties but my body was firmly entrenched in my teens. Testosterone was surging through my veins and calmly assuring another part of my body that it wouldn't really hurt to just take a quick shower with her before we had our talk. Just to mellow everyone out a little.

"Oh," Anita nodded knowingly. "You want to get dirty first. Give me a minute to set up a movie for the kids. That'll keep them distracted longer."

"Anita," I said, "That's not why I came over here. I need to talk to you about something."

Perhaps catching the tone of my voice, she gave me a wary look. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked carefully.

"Can we sit down somewhere?" I asked her. "Somewhere private?" And somewhere without a lot of sharp objects, I did not add.

"Sure." She said. "Let's go to the bedroom."

I nodded. "Okay."

We went into her room and I grabbed a chair near her dresser. She gave me another concerned look as I did this. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong Billy?" She asked me.

I breathed deeply and slowly let it out. "Anita," I told her. "I don't know how to tell you this but it needs to be said."

"Tell me what?"

"I suppose the best way is to just come out and say it." I said, looking at her face. "We need to end our relationship with each other."

"End…" She whispered, staring at me. Finally she gave a nervous giggle. "Billy, don't joke about things like that. It's not very…"

"Anita, I'm not joking." I told her. "We have to stop seeing each other."

"You're not joking?" She asked softly.

"No." I shook my head. "I'm not."

She began to wring her hands together. "I don't understand Billy." She told me. "Why would you say something like that? We're perfect together. We have a good thing going."

"That's just it Anita." I explained. "We DON'T have a good thing going and we're NOT perfect together. I'm sixteen years old and you're twenty-eight. I'm a teenager in high school and you're a full-grown woman with kids."

"That doesn't matter!" She protested. "As long as two people love each other…"

"Anita." I interrupted gently. "I don't love you that way."

She stared at me for a second, the wounded expression on her face striking directly at my heart. God, how I hated doing this. "But you do." She told me. "You do love me."

"No." I said, shaking my head. "I don't. And I don't think you love me that way either."

"How can you say that?" She asked, raising her voice for the first time. Her eyes were now beginning to leak a little moisture down her cheeks. "After all we've done together, after all we've shared? How can you say that?"

"I'm sorry Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for what I'm telling you now and I'm sorry that I ever initiated our relationship in the first place. I shouldn't have done that."

"Yes!" She yelled. "You should have! What we have together is beautiful! You're not going to let a little age difference keep us apart are you? Billy, we're meant for each other!"

"No." I said firmly, raising my voice a little. "That's just it. We're NOT meant for each other. I'm a kid in high school Anita. I should be dating girls my own age. You should be dating men your own age. While I've been having a relationship with you, you haven't been dating anyone or gone out anywhere. I'm screwing up your life Anita. And it has to stop. Both of us need to move on."

"You're not screwing up my life!" She protested. "Is that what you're worried about? You've improved my life. I used be so lonely Bill and then I found you. You're everything I want. Just because you're younger than me…"

"Anita," I interrupted. "I AM screwing up your life. I never intended for what we had to be a permanent relationship. I was stupid and thought that there were no consequences to what you and I were doing. I figured, hey, here's a cool older woman for me to screw and she's willing to do it again and again. But there are consequences Anita, there are. More than I imagined, more than you can imagine. We have to move on now, get back on track, don't you see that?"

"No." She told me. "You ARE the track that I want to be on. I DO want a permanent relationship with you."

I sighed, not relishing what I had to say next. "But I don't want a permanent relationship with you." I said.

More tears came down. "How can you say that?" She repeated.

"Because it's true." I said. "I don't love you. I'm sorry to have to say that and I know I'm an asshole. I entered into this thing without considering there might be emotional involvement. If I would have known that I never would have started anything. I'm ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed that I took advantage of your loneliness, ashamed that I didn't see this sooner. I'm an asshole Anita and I admit that freely. I'm trying to get better, trying not to be an asshole anymore. I don't like being an asshole. But before I can do that I have to be even more of an asshole and put an end to our relationship. Now, today."

She stood up and began to pace nervously, continuing to wring her hands. She chewed on her lip for a moment. "So you're saying that you want to see other people?" She asked. "To date others for a while to help strengthen the relationship?"

"No Anita." I said. "That is not what I'm saying. I have been dating other people the entire time we've been seeing each other. There is nothing in this relationship to strengthen. I started it only for sex, don't you see that? And sex was all I ever wanted. I'm sorry. My behavior was horrid, worse than horrid. I had no right to do any of that, but unfortunately I did. I'm trying to change now and I can no longer continue to take advantage of you. We have to stop."

"I don't want to stop." She told me quietly, stopping her pacing and turning towards me.

"We have to Anita." I said.

"Maybe I don't mind being taken advantage of." She said, desperation in her voice. "Did you ever consider that? Maybe I want you to continue to take advantage of me if that's what you were doing. I can live with that Billy."

"No." I said firmly, wondering how, in my supposed maturity, I'd managed to miss how deeply she'd felt about me all this time. God I was an idiot. "That won't work. I couldn't live with that. I couldn't keep doing that to you. Despite the way I've acted, I have a conscience. My conscience will not allow me to do that."

She let loose a sob. "Billy, we can't just stop!"

"We have to." I insisted.

She began crying freely now, her chest hitching up and down, tears coursing down, sobs pouring out of her mouth. I stood and put my arms around her, letting her put her head to my chest and cry on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Anita." I whispered to her. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

Her tears slowed down a little and suddenly her hand was around mine. Before I knew what was happening she'd pulled it under her shirt and placed it on her bare breast, allowing me to feel the familiar flesh. I tried to pull it out but she held it firmly with her hand.

"Anita." I said sharply, "Let me go."

"Just one more time Billy?" She pleaded, her free hand sliding down and tugging at the buttons on my jeans. "Just one more time?"

Again my teenaged body had ideas of its own. My teenaged body thought that one more time was a fine idea. Despite all that had just happened and had just been said, my dick stiffened up at the thought. My adult mind was appalled by this.

"No!" I yelled, slapping her hand away from my crotch a little sharper than I'd intended. I jerked my other hand free of her tit and stepped away from her.

The look in her eyes would haunt me. It was anger, hurt, and desperation. "Please?" She pleaded.

"I have to go Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for everything."

I opened her bedroom door and headed for the living room. As I left she called my name again. I looked back at her.

"I'll be here for you when you want to come back." She said. "I'll always be here for you."

I swallowed nervously. "Goodbye Anita." I finally said. "And I'm sorry."

She remained in her bedroom as I made my way out of her house. The children gave me worried looks as I left. As I closed the door behind me I could hear the sound of her sobs coming from the bedroom.

I only picked at my dinner that night, scraping much of it down the garbage disposal when I did the dishes. My mother expressed concern but I explained my loss of appetite away by proclaiming I felt like I was coming down with something. She felt my forehead, in the way of mothers, and told me she hoped I felt better soon.

"Me too." I said sincerely.

After the last dish was done I went upstairs to my room. I opened my closet and removed a copy of the World Almanac, that great repository of usually useless but occasionally helpful factoids. I paged through the index until I found the page for the section I wanted. I turned to the page.

UNITED STATES AREA CODES read the heading. They were arranged alphabetically by state. I flipped to California and scanned down the column until I saw Berkeley. 415 was the code. I memorized this information, carefully put the book away, and then headed downstairs.

Mom and Dad were both watching television, or at least sitting in front of it. Dad was correcting some papers for his classes at school. Mom was working on some paperwork for her job. I figured they were well occupied so I headed for Dad's den. I called information for the 415 area code and asked for the phone number for the UC Berkeley bookstore. This was the first time I'd called information after being recycled and it startled me a little when the operator actually read off the number to me instead of having a computer do it.

"Did you get that Sir?" She asked.

"Uh, yes." I said, "Thank you very much."

"Your welcome." She said cheerily. "Is there anything else I can help you with."

"No thank you."

She hung up and I dialed the number she'd given me. A man with a decidedly feminine voice and trouble pronouncing the letter S answered the phone. Ah, California.

"Bookstore, can I help you?" He chirped.

I asked for Tracy.

"Just a minute."

The phone clunked down and, instead of being placed on hold, I heard the low murmur of conversations drifting into my ear and the sound of the man who'd answered yelling for Tracy. A few moments later I heard the phone being picked back up.

"Hello?" Came my sister's voice, a tinge of nervousness in it. She was probably not accustomed to receiving phone calls at work.

"Tracy, its Bill." I said.

"Bill?" More worry now. "What's wrong? Are Mom and Dad okay?"

"They're fine." I assured her. "It's you I need to talk to."

"Me?" She said, "How come? And how did you get this number? I'm not supposed to be getting phone calls at work unless it's an emergency."

"The number's a matter of public record Tracy." I told her. "And it's the only way I could think of to get hold of you. Sorry I had to bother you at work."

"That's okay." She said. "But what's wrong?"

"It's nothing immediate." I said. "But I think that there's a chance you might be in, well, in some danger."

"Danger?" She asked, alarmed. "What do you mean?"

"It's probably not a good idea to talk about this while you're at work." I replied. "And like I said, it's nothing immediate. But can you call me tonight when you get off work? Give me a time and I'll stay by the phone."

"Bill?" She asked. "I don't understand. What do you mean I'm in danger? You're in Washington and I'm in California. How could you know anything from there?"

"Tracy, I'll explain everything when you call. Or at least as much as I can. Will you please do it?"

A sigh. "Yes Bill." She answered. "Be by the phone at nine tonight."

"I will." I told her. "Thanks Tracy."

At nine o'clock sharp I was positioned by the phone in the den. When it rang I picked it up before it had a chance to get half a second into the first ring.

"Hello?" I said.

The operator told me I had a collect call from Tracy and asked if I would accept the charges. I told her I would.

"Okay Bill." Tracy said to me. In the background I could hear music and the squeal and giggles of many girls. I concluded she must be on the payphone in the dorm. "Tell me what this is all about."

"Well." I said. "Do you remember when I told you before that you should not get into a car with a certain person on a certain day?"

"Yes." She answered quietly. I could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

"Some disturbing things have happened lately." I went on. "Some things that lead me to believe that you are not exactly out of danger from that."

"What do you mean?" She asked. "I didn't get in that car that night and what you said was going to happen, happened without me. How could I still be in danger from that? Believe me, I'm still not going to get into a car with David Mitchell."

"That's the thing Tracy." I told her. "You didn't get into the car that night and Barbie Langston DID. But Barbie didn't die in the accident. She's still alive."

"So?" Tracy, obviously uncomfortable with the discussion, asked.

"So," I told her. "Some other things have happened that make me think, well this is going to sound crazy, that you were SUPPOSED to die in that car and that since you didn't, things are trying to re-align themselves the way they are SUPPOSED to be."

"Billy," She said angrily. "That is nuts. That's absolutely crazy! What do you mean I was SUPPOSED to die? I didn't. And I'm not going to die."

"Just promise me something Tracy." I asked her.

"What?" She asked.

"Promise me you will never get into any car, with anyone who's been drinking. Especially not your boyfriend's. Are you still seeing him?"

"Yes I'm still seeing him!" She barked at me. "What does that have to do with anything? And I never get into a car with someone who's been drinking.

You should know that."

"I know Tracy." I said. "And that's what worries me. I don't know if the drinking part is a pre-determined factor in this. I don't know much of anything about the rules. I'm not even sure there ARE any rules."

"Rules to what?" She asked. "Where do you come up with these things Bill? You scare me sometimes."

"It's a long story." I answered. "A very long one. Does your boyfriend drink?"

"What?"

"Does he drink?"

"Yes." She said. "He's a college student. We all drink."

"What kind of car does he drive?" I asked next.

"A Corvette." She answered. This should have made me feel better. But it didn't. "Why are you worried about Darren? What does his car and whether or not he drinks have to do with anything? I didn't die that day Bill. Somehow, some way you knew about that. I don't know how. But it's over now. I'm still alive and nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing!"

"Tracy," I pleaded. "Just promise me you won't ever get in the car with him after he's been drinking. Promise me."

"Yes Bill," She recited. "I promise. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

Actually there was. I wanted to talk about Nina to her, get her feelings on the matter, get advice from her, tell her that she was right and I was wrong. But she didn't seem in the mood for it just then. It would have to wait.

"No Tracy." I answered. "I just want you to be careful. I worry about you."

"I can take care of myself Bill." She said shortly. "I've gotta go."

"Goodbye Tracy." I said. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Goodbye Bill." She answered. A second later there was a click in the earpiece.

I hung up Dad's phone and sat there for a few moments. I could only hope that I'd done some good. Because there was nothing else I could do.

The next day at school I was met first thing in the morning my some of Mike's fabrications and exaggerations. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to hear them.

"Dude," He said excitedly to me. "Guess what?"

"Hey Mike." I greeted. "Suspension's over?"

"Yeah," He nodded. "But that's not all. I'm back in ROP."

I breathed a silent sigh of thanks to Mrs. Compleigh. "Really?" I asked. "That's cool. How'd that happen?" I was actually sort of curious to see how it had transpired.

"Well, I guess the battalion chief over at the fire department really racked that asshole captain's ass for yelling at me and kicking me out of there. The BC told the counselor that he wanted me back like yesterday." He gave a self-satisfied grin. "At least HE knows what he's got going with me on the department."

"I guess so." I agreed.

"So anyway, they want me to go talk to the BC today and they're going to reassign me to a different station. Station 2 this time. They got a truck and an engine running out of there."

"No shit?" I said, gaining a lot of information from what he was saying despite his embellishments. Station 2, another downtown station, did indeed deploy a truck and an engine. It also was the home, at least in my when, of the battalion chief for that battalion. I figured they had probably decided to move Mike there so that more people, including the boss, could keep an eye on him. He wouldn't be trusted for a while, would in fact face a long, hard road in that endeavor. But at least he was back in.

"Yeah," He strutted. "I hear they're gonna bust that captain back down to engineer for all of this."

"Well," I answered. "That may be so Mike, but if I was you, I'd lay off the buds while I was at the work site. I don't think they'll let you back in if they catch you doing that again. Or even if they THINK you're doing it again."

"Yeah, I know." He said dismissively. "That's what the counselor told me too. I guess I can wait until I get home. So anyway, they tossed out the application for independent study. So I guess I'll hang out for the rest of the year after all."

"Glad it worked out Mike." I told him. "And if you want to keep coming over to have me help with your homework, I'm home the same hours."

"I'll be there." He said.

As I headed to my first class of the day I had a careful smile on my face. At least I'd steered Mike back to where he'd been. The rest would be up to him and if he blew it again I would be forced to concede the inevitability of his loser status. But for now he was back on track. Or back off track if you prefer.

When my alarm clock woke me up the next morning the first sound I heard upon shutting it off was the patter of rain against my window. I sighed as I pondered walking to school in a downpour again. As I listened to the precipitation against the glass I came to a decision on a matter I'd been mulling over for some time.

After showering I went down to breakfast and picked up the business section as usual.

"How are the stocks doing today?" Dad asked from behind the sports page.

"Up a little again." I told him, doing some quick calculations in my head based on some figures I'd added up a few days before. The latex industry was slowly climbing at this point but had yet to do anything dramatic. It would before too much longer went by. But in the meantime I was funneling all of my spare income into those stocks. The added capital plus the gains in the price added up to more than two thousand dollars of available income.

Not a fortune, but not bad either.

I flipped through the business section and found the classified ads. After five minutes of perusal I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

"Dad," I said. "Can you cash out six hundred dollars worth of my stocks today? Three hundred from each company?"

He slid his paper down and looked at me. "What for?" He asked.

"I need to buy a car." I told him. "I refuse to walk to school in the rain anymore."

We talked that matter over for a few minutes, as fathers like to do with their sons. He agreed to cash out the stock but made me promise to take him with me when I went out looking. He would keep me from being screwed he told me. Knowing that I didn't really need his help to keep from getting screwed but also knowing that buying the first car was one of those things that father's lived for, I agreed.

I was very excited about the prospect of going out car shopping on Saturday.

Excited enough to dampen the depression the rain had brought. But my mood was changed in an instant when Mom came into the living room.

Casually, she said to me, "Oh Billy, Anita called last night."

"Anita?" I said as tonelessly as I could manage.

"Yes." She nodded. "She wanted to know if you could swing by after school today and help her change the oil on her car before you go to work. I told her you probably wouldn't mind doing that."

"You did?" I said.

Mom gave me a strange look. "That's okay, isn't it?" She asked. "You're usually able to help her out when she asks."

"Uh…" I stammered, my mind whirring. "Well actually I have a lot of homework to catch up on today."

"Bill, its Friday." She told me. "Can't it wait?"

"No." I shook my head. "It's chemistry. If I don't do it right after school I, uh, forget all of the formulas and stuff."

Mom looked at me for a minute, her mother instinct probably being jigged by my words. But finally she shrugged. "Okay." She said. "But will you try to do it this weekend sometime?"

"I'll uh, see what I can do Mom." I said carefully.

"Thank you Billy." She answered, looking at me with a troubled expression.

Had I really believed that Anita was going to fade away that easily? I guess I had.

That night when I went to bed my testosterone got the better of me. There was only one way to relieve it and manage some sleep. I took myself in hand and began stroking, an action I'd performed thousands upon thousands of times before in my two lives. I thought of Nina as I did it, almost against my will. Never had a fantasy been so vivid, so real to me. It only took a minute or so before my fantasy Nina's job was complete and I was drifting off into a troubled slumber.

The next day, Saturday, Dad and I spent the late morning and early afternoon driving from place to place and looking at used cars. Dad showed me how to negotiate and how to check out a vehicle that you might buy. To my surprise he actually taught me a few things that I didn't already know. I was pleased with the vehicle we eventually settled upon. It was a 1976 Datsun B-210 with seventy thousand miles on it. The engine was in reasonably good shape although the paint job and the interior were in bad need of an overhaul. I paid five hundred cash for it and drove it home that day. That evening I took it to work with me. No matter what else happened, there would be no more walking to school in the rain or the snow.

A week went by and then another. Nothing changed between Nina and I. She continued to ignore me in class and to eat lunch by herself. I tried to talk to her a few times without any measure of success. I tried to tell her I missed her but she didn't listen. My hope for any future relationship began to dwindle. During this period I maintained my habit of jacking off once a day on average. I simply couldn't help it. Nina was always featured in these fantasies and most of them were not even about sex. Most of them just involved being in an intimate place with her, being together with her.

Anita continued to be a problem. She continually called my mother asking if I could come over to do little chores for her. I was fast running out of excuses for why I couldn't do what she asked and my mother, now quite plainly sensing that something was wrong, was running out of look-the-other-way-so-you-don't-have-to-address-an-unpleasant-truth. I knew that I was going to have to have another talk with Anita but I wasn't up for it yet. The memory of our first talk was still too fresh in my mind. I'd experienced emotions during that talk that I'd never felt before, not even during the divorce with my wife in my previous life.

On the following Friday night, while I was adding up my stock holdings after receiving my latest paycheck from the pizza joint, the phone rang. Dad answered it, listened for a minute, and then yelled my name. I walked into the kitchen and took it from him, figuring it was probably Mike.

"Hey Billy-Boy!" A familiar female voice haled. "How you been?"

Cindy! In all of the turmoil of the recent past Cindy had completely slipped my mind. Our album sessions had dwindled once she'd started college and had all but disappeared in the last two months. I hadn't seen or heard from her since then.

"Hi Cindy." I said carefully. If I'd learned nothing else over the past few weeks I'd learned that females that you thought you were having a casual relationship with were often not under the same impression. Was another bomb about to drop on me? Had I screwed up Cindy's life as I had Anita's? I honestly didn't know. In my previous life I'd lost track of Cindy after her and Tracy had stopped hanging out together. The last time I'd seen her had been at Tracy's funeral where she'd given me a sympathetic hug and had disappeared from my life forever.

"What's up?" She asked me.

We chatted for a few minutes. She apologized for not having contacted me lately and I assured her it was okay. She told me she had a new love interest and I was very glad to hear that. Even when she mentioned that he was a professor at her college who was 'kind of married', I maintained my delight.

"That's just great Cindy." I told her. "I hope things work out for you."

"Oh they will." She assured me. "They will. I'll see to it."

"I'm sure you will."

"Listen," She said. "The reason I called is that Maggie and I are moving into an apartment together. You remember Maggie, don't you?"

How could I forget her? She was Cindy's brunette friend that used to come over to 'study' with me on days that Cindy could not. Like with Cindy, I hadn't seen Maggie in quite a while. Was Maggie going to be the latest bomb?

"Yes." I said. "I'm familiar with Maggie."

Cindy giggled. "I'm sure you are." She said. "Maggie knows your album collection almost as good as I do. Anyway, we really need someone to help us move tomorrow. We have a truck but we need help getting our shit out of our parent's house and into ours. Could you be a sweetheart and give us a hand?"

"Is anybody else going to be there?" I asked.

"Just me and Maggie." She told me. "Everyone else is busy on short notice. And if you help us out, we might give you a real special reward."

"Special reward?" I said quietly.

"REAL special." She said. "So what do you say?"

I'd told myself that I was past my previous ways, that my days of fucking anything with a pussy were gone. I knew I should offer a sincere apology to Cindy and tell her I was busy. But I hadn't released my daily load for the day and I was feeling quite horny. The thought of Maggie and Cindy, of their tight, youthful bodies wormed its way into my mind and stuck there. I found my mouth opening and the words: "What time should I be there?" leaving my lips.

"My house." Cindy said. "Ten o'clock sharp."

"You got it." I told her.

"I'll be looking forward to it." She told me.

I hung up the phone feeling guilty about my actions. But I also did not have the willpower to call Cindy back and tell her I couldn't make it. I told myself that I would just help them move and that nothing else would happen. And I knew that I was lying to myself.

It was overcast the next day but not raining. I drove to Cindy's house, arriving promptly at ten, and met the two girls standing next to a medium sized U-Haul truck. They both gave me hugs for greeting and both gave my ass a discreet squeeze, making my dick, which I'd just releived only twelve hours before, pulsate in my pants. My morals wavered.

We spent about an hour moving boxes from Cindy's bedroom in her parent's house into the U-haul. We then caravanned to Maggie's house, where I'd never been before. It took an hour and a half to move Maggie's boxes from her room. Once the U-Haul was full we drove to a large apartment complex near the college.

Like Raisin's apartment complex, I knew this one from my previous life as a paramedic. We used to go to calls to it frequently, not because it was scummy, although there was a little bit of that, but because it was huge and because it was filled with college students. College students like to drink and take strange drugs and get into fights over things like parking space ownership and who drank the last beer. I'd been here for overdoses, for life-threatening alcohol ingestion, for countless assaults, for people on acid who'd convinced themselves that they'd forgotten how to breathe, and for the occasional stabbing or shooting. I remembered it mostly because each trip into its bowels was an exercise in celestial navigation. There were no maps in the front. The buildings had no numbers on them. Even the apartment numbers themselves were marked only with a four-inch set of black numbers on the brown background of the doors. I remembered driving around in the place for fifteen or twenty minutes looking for the right apartment every time I came, and receiving angry rebuffs from the drunken college students when I finally stumbled across the right one, as to why it had taken me so long to get there. I remembered thinking that there should be a law against places such as this.

Thankfully Cindy and Maggie had been to their apartment before. They found it after only ten minutes of driving around. The U-Haul was parked illegally in a red zone and the ramp was extended. The apartment was opened up and we began picking up boxes, each of which was marked either with a C or an M or an LR or a K, into the two-bedroom living quarters. Forty minutes later the U-Haul was empty.

We sat down on boxes in the cluttered living room and Cindy opened up an ice chest, distributing wine coolers to all of us. I popped mine open and took a long swallow, feeling the fruity, sweet beverage pass my gullet. Cindy then produced a joint that we all smoked from, getting us pleasantly stoned.

With each sip of wine cooler, with each toke from the joint, thoughts of Nina and fate and Julie and Anita went further and further to the back of my mind. By the time the roach was nestled safely in an ashtray and Maggie was plugging in a boom box and putting on some Sammy Hagar, my dick was stiff from looking at the two girls.

Cindy made the first move. She came over and sat next to me, her left hand dropping down to the crotch of my jeans where her fingers began making sensual patterns across the bulge of my cock.

"I've missed this." She said, looking down at the unnatural tightness of the denim. "That's one thing about the professor, he may be a nice guy and he sure knows how to treat me, but he doesn't know how to operate his piston very well."

"Maybe you should teach him." I said, with a voice that wasn't quite steady.

She popped the top button slowly and then gave a sharp yank, opening all the others. "Maybe I should." She said. "If he wants to keep me around he's going to have to learn a few basic skills anyway." She smiled. A smile I was very familiar with. "Maybe I should refine my teaching techniques a little."

"I'm happy," I said, watching her fingers fish through my BVDs, seeking my cock, "To offer my services as a learning tool."

"Good." She said, sliding off the box and sinking to her knees before me.

She tugged at my waistline and my jeans came down, allowing my hard cock to pop out into the light. With a quick glance at Maggie, who was sitting ten feet away and watching the developments, she lowered her head and took me into her mouth. Cindy hadn't forgotten a thing about cock sucking. She bobbed up and down, teasing and sucking at the same time. I sighed as I felt her talented mouth go to work on me.

Across the room Maggie watched us and I saw a familiar shine in her eyes. Her nipples began to poke out through her sweater and she began to rub her legs together. Finally she stood up and walked over to us.

"I must say," She said, grabbing the hem of her sweater. "This is very arousing. I never thought I'd get turned on watching Cindy suck someone's cock but it's strangely alluring all the same."

"Yeah?" I said, looking at her. She was a little chunkier than Cindy was but still very attractive. She looked like a future librarian, glasses and all. She was also, I knew from previous dealings, very well read and possessed a large vocabulary that she liked to show off. Maybe she would be a writer some day. Maybe she would write about his.

"Yeah." She nodded, lifting her sweater up and off, revealing her bra-clad tits.

While Cindy continued to work on my cock I pulled her to me, reaching up for the clasp on her bra. In a half second it was released and the bra dropped to the floor. She stepped forward, sticking her left tit into my mouth. I began to suckle the nipple while my hand stroked up and down the smooth flesh of her stomach. My other hand was in Cindy's blonde hair while Cindy's head continued to work my dick.

After a moment Cindy pulled herself free from me and stood up. "Switch!" She told Maggie.

Maggie slipped her tit out of my mouth and dropped down between my spread knees. A second later my cock disappeared into her mouth. Cindy pulled off her own sweater and then quickly dropped her bra. While I reached out and took a tit into each hand, feeling the flesh and the nipples, she kicked her shoes across the room and unbuttoned her pants. With a quick push of her hands she was naked, her blonde bush open for my perusal.

"Did you miss this?" Cindy asked, spreading herself open and gyrating her hips.

"Yes." I lied.

"I want to sit on your face." She told me. "Maggie, let the man up."

"Mmmmm. He IS up." Maggie said from around my cock.

The two girls giggled. While I shucked my pants the rest of the way and tossed off my shirt, Maggie did the same with her pants. A minute later I was naked and looking at four tits and two bushes, one blonde, one black as night. My dick was twitching with arousal. In all of the encounters I'd had since recycling and in all of the encounters I'd had before recycling I'd never had two girls at one time. I don't believe I could have resisted this is Nina had walked through the door at that very moment.

I lay on my back on the floor and Maggie dropped down again, taking my cock into her mouth. Her sucking continued while her hands fondled my balls. Her tits rubbed against my upper thighs. Cindy, her back to Maggie, eased herself down over my face, allowing her wet, juicy pussy to descend upon my mouth. I stuck out my tongue to meet it, tasting her tangy secretions and plunging in. Her pubic hair pushed into my nose as I lapped away at her, first plunging in and then going for the clit.

Meanwhile Maggie was trying her damnedest to suck a load from my cock. She drove her head up and down, sucking all the while, her hands frantically jacking. Maggie I knew, loved the taste of come in her mouth. She'd been known to come over just to give me a head job. Not that I ever complained about this of course.

About the time that Cindy began gyrating uncontrollably upon my face, drenching me with her secretions, I felt my own orgasm approaching quickly.

"Yesss!" Cindy moaned above me.

"Mmmmm!" Maggie moaned from between my legs as I began to shoot my come into her throat.

"Ahhhh!" I moaned, on sensory overload from all of the female fresh pressing into me.

Maggie licked my dick and balls clean, giving me the beginnings of a new hard-on. Cindy climbed off of my face and tapped her naked friend on the shoulder.

"I'll take over here." Cindy said. "Get yourself up there and get some tongue."

Maggie smiled. "If you insist." She answered, raising her head from my crotch.

She positioned herself as Cindy had, lowering her black bush and wet lips onto my face. I began eating her, both tasting and smelling the contrast between the two girls' juices. Maggie's clit was already hard so after only a brief period of licking and sucking her lips, I attacked it. Meanwhile Cindy continued to suck and slurp on my cock, bringing it back to full hardness.

Of course I couldn't see anything with Maggie's body perched on my face but soon I felt Cindy's mouth pull itself off of my cock. This was followed a moment later by the feel of her inner thighs straddling my outer thighs and the head of my dick being tickled by a nest of hair. Her hand grasped me and I felt myself moved through wet hair and into a warm set of lips. She rubbed me against her clit for a minute and then suddenly, without warning, I was engulfed in her tight body as she sank down on me.

"Ahhhhh!" I moaned into Maggie's cunt.

"Keep eating me!" Maggie panted from above. "I'm almost there!"

I dove back into her pussy, sucking her clit into my mouth once again and savaging it with my tongue. Maggie verbally registered her approval while Cindy began moving up and down on my cock, gripping it in that way of hers.

Maggie was both more violent when she came and more verbal. She screamed her orgasm out to the room using gutter profanity while her pubis battered my face until I was dazed. Cindy came again at the same time, dripping a stream of juices down to my balls.

Maggie got off my face and turned around to face Cindy, who was still bouncing away, her pretty tits jiggling up and down.

"My turn with the cock." Maggie proclaimed.

"Ohhh." Cindy whined, but she pulled herself off anyway.

Maggie lay down on the carpet next to me on her back, spreading her legs wide. "I like it this way." She told me. "Climb aboard."

I rolled over on top of her and sank into her flesh. While I fucked her Cindy sat in front of us, watching with a shine in her eyes and idly stroking her pussy with one hand. In all of my fantasies that involved two women at the same time, the two women always decided to try a little girl on girl action during the event. Apparently reality wasn't the same as fantasy. The two girls seemed to go to great lengths to avoid actually touching each other. But that was fine with me. It would have been nice to watch them go at each other but what I was doing now was nice enough even without it. Who was I to complain?

Maggie had another orgasm, again announcing it to the world in a much more violent manner than Cindy with screams of profanity and claws to my back. Figuring it was now safe to come again I began driving forward towards this goal. Cindy, still stroking herself, saw what I was doing and lodged a protest.

"No!" She yelled at Maggie. "You got to take the first load. I get the second one." She dropped down to the floor next to us, presenting herself in the doggy-style position. "Switch!"

Maggie, dripping with perspiration, panting, looked at me and said, "Fair is fair."

I shrugged, not really caring whose body I came into. I pulled myself out of her with a wet squish and raised up to my knees. I eased over behind Cindy and lined up. When my cock was in the right place I drove forward into her, immediately re-establishing the frantic rhythm I'd been using with Maggie.

As I fucked in and out of Cindy, using her hips for leverage, Maggie raised up to her knees and turned towards me. She leaned over and began kissing and licking the back of my neck and near my ears.

"Come in her." She whispered over and over again. "Come in her."

It didn't take long. With a cry of satisfaction I blasted my load into Cindy's hungry pussy, triggering an orgasm from her at the same time.

Satiated, I pulled my cock out of her pussy and let myself fall backward to the floor. Maggie curled up on my left side while Cindy flipped over and curled up on my right side. I put my arms around the two girls, feeling their wet, sticky skin.

"That was fun." Cindy commented, giving me a peck on the cheek. "We double-teamed you."

"I guess you did." I nodded, basking in the afterglow.

"But you got to come three times." Maggie protested lightly, aiming her comment at Cindy. "I only got to come twice."

"Not my fault." Cindy told her new roomate.

"Maybe," I suggested. "Cindy owes you an orgasm. What do you think Cindy, want to pay up?"

They both looked at me for a moment and then shook their heads.

"Don't be a pervert Bill." Maggie said. "You've been reading too many porno mags."

I shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

When I returned home that day I was sore and free of excessive testosterone but surprisingly and pleasantly guilt-free about my encounter with the two girls. Conversation with them afterword had assured me that neither one of them were following the path of Julie or Anita. Though I didn't know what path either of them had taken in my previous life since I'd lost track of Cindy and hadn't known Maggie at all, I received no ominous instinct that would lead me to believe I was pulling them away from their destinies. Chances are that Cindy had had an affair with her college professor before and that Maggie had moved in with her and had followed whatever path she was currently embarked upon. I was changing nothing with these two except for the occasional merger of my path with theirs.

And though I knew that Nina probably would not approve of what I'd done, would probably see it as further evidence of my assholery if she knew about it, I could not bring myself to feel guilt about this either. I wasn't supposed to be a freaking monk was I? Nina and I had no relationship at the moment to endanger. If I ever did manage to bring her around I hoped to have a more intimate relationship with her and of course I would have to refrain from having threesomes with attractive college students, but until then there was no harm being done as far as I could see.

I took a quick shower and then went to work. I sang happily along with the radio in my new car as I drove there.

I was awakened at 7:30 the next morning by Dad's pounding on my bedroom door.

"Bill?" He asked, opening the door and pushing his head through just as I was coming fully awake.

"Yeah Dad," I said blearily. "What is it?"

"There's a girl on the phone for you." He told me, "She says she needs to talk to you right now, in private, and that it's an emergency."

That was strange enough to bring me fully awake in an instant. I had a sudden bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked up at Dad and saw that he was worried about this also. He was probably figuring that some girl was calling to tell me that I'd knocked her up.

"Who's the girl?" I asked Dad.

"She didn't give her name." He said. "And I've never heard her voice before."

"All right." I answered, pulling myself out of bed. I threw on a pair of sweat pants and followed Dad downstairs. "Do you mind if I use your den phone?" I asked him.

"Sure." He nodded, waving me towards the room.

I went in and picked up the phone. "I got it!" I yelled through the closed door. A second later I heard the click of the other extension being placed back in its cradle.

I took a deep breath and said into the mouthpiece, "This is Bill."

"Hi Bill." A completely unfamiliar voice said to me. "My name is Linda. Your sister wants to talk to you."

"Tracy?" I said, confused. "What…"

"Hang on a sec." Linda said. A second later I heard her voice say faintly, "It's him."

"Thanks." My sister's faint voice replied.

There was a long pause and I heard the sound of a door shutting somewhere in the room where Tracy was. I figured that was Linda leaving the room to give Tracy some privacy.

At last Tracy's loud voice said, "Bill?" Her voice sounded haunted, scared.

What had happened?

"Yeah." I answered. "What's going on Trace?"

"I had Linda call for me so that Mom or Dad wouldn't know it was me." She explained.

"That's fine." I replied quickly. "What's wrong Trace? Are you all right?"

"How did you know Bill?" She asked, demanded. "How do you know the things you know?"

"What happened Tracy?" I asked. "Tell me why you called."

"Last night." She said, "I went to a party with Darren in the city. A frat party. There was a keg of beer there and everyone, me included, got pretty drunk."

My mouth suddenly dried up as I heard this. "Go on." I said numbly.

"When it came time to leave Darren insisted he was okay to drive. He told me he wasn't really drunk and that he was okay. My judgement was pretty screwed up by the alcohol I guess and I believed him. I believed him! We walked out to the car and I had every intention of getting into it with him.

I mean he seemed fine! He was walking okay, talking okay, everything!"

"Tracy, what happened?" I asked.

"When he went to unlock the car he had trouble getting the key into the lock. Just a little bit of trouble but he couldn't quite get it to fit in there." Her voice started to break a little. "Part of me tried to ignore this. I tried to tell myself that it didn't mean anything. But I remembered what you had said to me, how you'd warned me, and at the last second I told Darren that I didn't think he should be driving."

"And then what happened?"

"We had a fight. We yelled at each other out in the parking lot and he sounded so damn reasonable that I almost got in again. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't! So anyway he eventually got totally pissed off and drove off without me. I caught a cab home, bitching the whole time about you and your stupid warnings, about how I was going to have to pay twenty bucks to get home when a perfectly good ride had driven off without me, shit like that."

"And?" I asked, knowing there was more or she wouldn't have called.

"I got back to the dorm safely and passed out in my bed. When I woke up this morning I was told that Darren drove his car into San Francisco Bay on his way home last night."

There was silence on the line as I digested this, as shivers went up and down my body. "Tracy, Jesus." I said. "Thank God I talked to you. What happened to Darren?"

She sniffed a little. "He's fine." She told me. "He pulled himself out of the car without any problems. Of course he got arrested for drunk driving but other than that he's fine." She paused. "But I wouldn't have been, would I?" She asked me, almost accused me.

"I don't think so Tracy." I told her.

"What is going on here Bill?" She demanded. "I think I deserve an explanation! Is this going to keep happening over and over until finally I die?"

"Tracy, I just don't know." I said. "All I know is that you need to be as careful as you can."

"Christ!" She told me. "You're telling me that fate has got a hard-on for me, that I'm supposed to drown in a traffic accident! How can I live a normal life if I have to worry about this all of the time? Is there any way to stop this?"

"I don't know." I said in answer to both of her questions. "I just don't know."

"Tell me what you DO know!" She yelled. "I have a goddam right to this information! Tell me!"

"Tracy, I can't."

"Why not?" She asked. "You come up with all this mystical shit, mystical shit that just happens to be true. Shit you have no business knowing and you won't tell me how you're getting this information?"

She had a point there. "Are you coming home for Thanksgiving Tracy?" I asked her.

"I don't know." She said, semi-hysterically. "Is it safe for me to fly on an airplane?"

A legitimate question. "I think so." I told her, figuring that fate wouldn't kill several hundred people just to get at my sister. "Why don't you come home then. We'll have a nice family get-together and you and I will sit down and have a talk."

"And you'll tell me what you know?"

"As much as I can." I promised, although I wasn't sure just how much 'as much as I can' encompassed.

"And in the meantime?" She asked.

"And in the meantime stay out of cars with people who have been drinking. Stay out of cars completely if you can avoid it. Fate does seem to have a hard-on for you Tracy. So don't give it an easy mark. In a way the accident that your boyfriend had…"

"He's not my boyfriend any more." She spat. "You can bet your sweet ass on that."

"Right," I said, and then continued. "As I was saying, the accident that he had leads me to believe that certain pre-conditions have to be met. I don't know this for sure so be careful with everything you do, but it seems that the factors of a car, a drunk, and water all have to be met. Just to be safe, stay away from water too. Don't go swimming."

"And if you're wrong about these pre-conditions?" She asked.

How to answer that one. If I was wrong then Tracy was probably fucked. Fate would take her at its leisure. "Let's just hope I'm not wrong Tracy." I finally said. "Come home for Thanksgiving and we'll see what we can figure out."

"All right Bill." She said. "What else can I do?"

Chapter 7

Now I've gained some understanding

Of the only world that we see

Things that I once dreamed of

Have become reality

These walls that still surround me

Still contain the same old me

Just one more who is searching for

The world that ought to be

All the same we take our chances

Laughed at by time

Tricked by circumstances

RUSH

Okay, I'm going out on a limb with this chapter. Due to the specifics of the plot at this particular junction in the story, I am not able to provide a sex scene in this installment. It simply would not work and would run counter to the characterization. I thought I would put that right out front since this is, after all, a sex-stories newsgroup. If anyone does not wish to read this chapter because of this I will understand, but be advised that if you skip this chapter you most likely will not have any idea what is going on in the next chapter if you choose to read that one. My thanks in advance to all whom will bear with me for this chapter in which much is resolved but in which nobody gets laid. I would also like to thank Tony Tiger, a frequent corespondent of mine, for providing me with the nodal and cascading theories that appear here. Putting names to what I was thinking helped me immensely.

I went with Mom and Dad to pick up Tracy at the airport on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. For any of you that have ever been to a large metropolitan area's air terminal on such a date you can appreciate the chaos that results from having five times as many people in the building as the fire code probably allows. It was wall to wall people pushing from one place to the next, all of them dressed in winter clothing since an early snowstorm had decided to descend upon our fair city. The noise and the crowding were suffocating and Tracy's plane arrived nearly thirty minutes late.

But when we saw her walking out of the skyway towards us it made it all worthwhile. Unlike Mom and Dad, I had not realized how much I'd missed my sister until I saw her. Being younger I beat them to her and got the first hug of greeting.

Before Mom and Dad could reach us Tracy whispered in my ear. "You promised me a talk."

"Soon." I told her. "Soon."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we got home that night and all of us went straight to bed. There would be no talk that night. The next day relatives began to pour in from other parts of Spokane and from as far away as Sandpoint, Idaho and Moses Lake in the southern part of Washington. Mom made a huge turkey dinner that we all demolished and Tracy and I took our turns in the barrel having our cheeks pinched and being told how much we'd grown. By the time all of the relatives cleared out it was nine o'clock and we were all exhausted once more.

Mom and Dad had a long-standing tradition that they shared with another couple, the male half of which was a private pilot. Each day after Thanksgiving they would pile into a rented airplane and fly to Seattle to have lunch at the space needle. It was an annual event that they'd participated in for as long as I could remember. They'd even continued to do it in my previous life after Tracy's death. They'd offered, halfheartedly I might add, to cancel it this year since Tracy only had a few days with us before she returned to Berkeley, but both Tracy and myself insisted they go.

"Bill and I can find something to do." Tracy told them, looking sharply at me.

"Yeah." I agreed. "We'll keep ourselves busy."

So it came to pass that Mom and Dad piled into their car at eight o'clock on Friday morning for the trip to the small municipal airport from which they would depart. Experience had taught both my sister and I that they would not return until at least six o'clock that evening.

Their car couldn't have been more than a mile from our suburban house before Tracy got off the couch and headed up to her old room. I gave her a puzzled look that grew more puzzled when she returned carrying a twelve pack of beer in her hands.

"Okay," She told me, slapping the beer down on the coffee table. "I scored us a twelver of this imported shit back in California and brought it all the way here for this talk." She ripped open the package, which was green and contained a brand of beer I'd never heard of; something called Steinlager. She pulled out two bottles and popped the tops with a bottle opener.

"Tracy, it's only eight in the morning." I protested. "I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She smiled. "Little brother," She said. "If you want to be successful when you go to college you'd better learn to drink beer first thing in the morning. It's a requirement." She handed one to me.

I took it, surprised to find that it was icy cold.

"Something else you learn in college." She told me, taking a huge swallow. "If you want to keep your beer cold in the absence of a refrigerator, store it outside in the cold. I put this on the roof outside my window last night. Thank God it didn't get below freezing."

I took a swallow, finding the beer very tasty despite the early hour. "Not bad." I told her, drinking some more.

"Okay," She said. "Enough preliminaries. Let's talk."

I set my bottle down on the coffee table, struck by the strangeness of drinking a beer while still dressed in the clothes I'd slept in, my baggy sweats and a T-shirt. Tracy too was still dressed in her customary long T-shirt, this one with the University's logo on the front. Her legs were crossed Indian style on the couch, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I still had no idea what I was going to tell her, how much I should tell her.

"Why don't we start," I told her. "With what you DO know and what you think is going on here. Tell me that."

"Why do you want to hear that?" She asked.

"I just want to see how this whole thing looks to someone close to me."

She thought for a second and then nodded, taking another sip of beer. "Fair enough." She told me. "Here's what I know. I know that the day you told me about the accident I was scheduled to be in the first time, your personality underwent a radical change. One day you were immature little Billy, the next day you were hugging on me, telling me you loved me, and you weren't sure of the exact date. You got into a fight with a huge bully at school, something completely out of character for you, and you put him in the hospital. You came home that day and caught us smoking pot in the living room and you reamed us for it, the same way an adult would, but also different somehow. You also made Cindy's asshole boyfriend back down, and let me tell you, he doesn't back down too often.

"So I'm forced to conclude that whatever happened to you, happened on that day. Am I right?"

I nodded. "Yes. That was the first day."

"That night you came to my room and told me that creepy-ass story about the car accident. You gave me exact details, exact, about what would happen, who would be in the car, etc. You told me things you had absolutely no right knowing and they turned out to be true.

"About the same time you completely lost all of your shyness. One day I was wondering if my little brother was EVER going to get himself laid and the next day you're suddenly a male slut, bagging everything left and right and apparently, if my information was correct, doing a very good job of it.

"You also developed a sudden interest in the stock market and in finding a job. Your grades improved overnight. And I even heard that you put a few teachers in their places."

"Okay." I nodded, surprised at the amount of information Tracy possessed. Again I was forced to wonder just how much my parents knew or suspected. "So tell me, what do you think all of this means?"

"Well obviously something very strange happened to you on that first day." She offered.

"Such as?"

"I think you had some sort of well, psychic flash. I think you had some sort of Scrooge type experience while you slept that night. Something that showed you what the future was going to be like and was realistic enough that you were unable to simply discount it as a dream. That doesn't explain everything of course, but I think that's something like what happened to you. I don't know how such a thing is possible, or why you were chosen to have this knowledge, but somehow, you were shown the future, including my death, and you were able to stop certain things and start others. Am I close?"

"Kind of." I said, taking another sip, surprised to find that the bottle was now empty. I leaned forward and grabbed another one, opening it up with the bottle opener. "You are somewhat on track here but the truth is actually a little stranger than that."

"So what IS the truth?" She asked, grabbing a fresh beer of her own. "Like I said before Bill, I think I have a right to this information."

"And you do Tracy," I agreed. "You really do and I think that maybe with both of our minds working on some of the problems that have cropped up here, maybe something can be done. But there is one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I tell you what I know, what happened to me, you can never tell anyone else. NEVER. If you were to do that and word about what happened got to the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Mostly for me, but also for our family. There are people in the world that would literally kill in order to possess the information that I have. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"

"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."

She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"

"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."

She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.

"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"

"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.

I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."

"1999?" She said, with disbelief.

"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.

That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."

"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."

She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."

"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."

She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."

I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.

"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."

"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.

"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."

"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.

"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."

"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.

"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."

"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.

"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."

"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."

"No." I said. "I couldn't."

She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"

"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.

"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.

"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"Wow." She said.

"Do you believe me?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."

"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.

"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Yep." I agreed.

Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."

"I agree." I told her.

"You do?" She asked.

"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."

"Are you saying that you are not doing that anymore?" She asked.

"I'm trying not to." I said. "It's cost me a lot. I told you that Nina and I were no longer talking to each other."

"You did." She nodded. "I figured it had something to do with your extracurricular activities. I tried to tell you once that she loved you. And I was pretty sure that you loved her too. You didn't listen."

"I know. And you were right on both counts." I said. "Unfortunately I waited too long to realize it. I screwed around until Nina had her eyes opened to what I was like. She basically told me to fuck off and stay away from her. She won't even talk to me now."

"I'm sorry." Tracy said honestly. "I like Nina. I thought you two were perfect together. I still think that even though I now know you're actually seventeen years older than she is. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe." I said. "Or maybe not. In any case, Nina is part of why I called you at the bookstore with that warning. Nina and Mike and some other things have made me realize that fate has a pattern to it. A pattern that it keeps trying to put things and people into. You are part of what has fallen out of pattern."

"Because I didn't die on graduation night?" She asked slowly.

"Exactly." I nodded. "In a way I'm glad that these other things have happened. They allowed me to see what was going on, that fate was attempting to re-align things. When I saw that, I was able to give you that second warning and you were able to heed it when fate took a second shot at you."

She shuddered. "I still get the creeps when I think about how close I was to getting in that car with Darren that night. Jesus. What other things have you seen as far as these patterns go? Maybe if I know how strong this thing is…"

"Okay." I said. "There's you first of all. As you know, in my previous life you died on graduation night. In this life I prevented that. But I also knew Nina in my previous life, in school of course but also years later, and that Nina was not a pleasant person at all."

"What do you mean?" Tracy asked.

"In my first life Nina was a doctor in one of the emergency rooms. And she was a total bitch. She was the shining example of a big-time inferiority complex. If anybody did anything good in front of her, she would find a way to criticize it. If anyone did anything wrong, she would jump down their throats. She was a miserable person and it was quite plain to me why she was a miserable person."

"Because of the way she was treated in school." Tracy said.

I looked at her, smiling. "You know Tracy, you're pretty smart for a youngster."

She giggled nervously. "This is so weird." She commented. "Trying to adjust myself from thinking about you as my 'little' brother. You've got seventeen years on me now."

I snorted. "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser Tracy. Believe me. Anyway, when I came back I decided to eat in the cafeteria one day and I saw Nina sitting in there alone. That brought back memories of how bitchy she was as a doctor and led to the speculation as to its cause. So I, thinking I was the great superhero, the fixer of oppressed people everywhere, decided to befriend her and maybe change her personality a little."

"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.

"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."

"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"

"An asshole?" I suggested.

"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."

"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."

I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.

"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.

"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."

"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."

"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."

"You did?"

"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."

"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"

"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."

"What's that?" She asked.

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.

"Anita." I said softly.

Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"

I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."

"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"

"Because of me." I said.

"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"

I nodded shamefully.

"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"

"Yes." I said.

"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."

"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"

"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."

"God." Tracy muttered.

"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."

"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"

"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."

"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"

"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."

"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"

"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"

"But she hasn't?"

I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.

"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."

Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.

"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."

"It does?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"

"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."

"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."

"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.

"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."

"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."

"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.

"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."

"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.

"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"

"Yes." I said, "I do."

"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"

"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."

"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.

"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."

"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.

"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."

"And Nina?" I asked.

"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.

"The exception to the rule." I agreed.

"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.

"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."

"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.

"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.

I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."

"Very quickly." She affirmed.

"And you?"

She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."

"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"

She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."

Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.

Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.

Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.

Resolved to my task, I raised my fist and knocked on her door firmly.

It was less than ten seconds before it swung open and Anita herself, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt appeared to me on the other side.

"Billy!" She said, her face beaming. "Come in! I knew you'd come back."

"I'll stay out on the porch Anita." I told her firmly. "What I have to say won't take but a minute."

Her face clouded, trying to retain some of the hope it showed when she first saw me. "What do you mean?"

"Anita," I said. "I'll make this short and to the point. Our relationship is over. Over and done. I'm sorry I ended it so abruptly and I'm sorry I hurt you, but it is over. You need to stop calling my house and asking for me to come over and do chores for you."

"Billy, I was just trying to stay friends with you." She told me, fresh hurt marring her features. "Don't you want to still be friends?"

"You know that being friends after a sexual relationship is not possible." I told her. "That is not why you're calling. You're hoping I'll come over and resume where we left off. I will not do that. You need to stop it. You're making my mother very suspicious and if you push much harder the consequences are going to unpleasant."

She became indignant. "Well maybe your mother SHOULD know about what happened between us. Maybe I should just tell her."

I shook my head, disgusted with both her and with myself for bringing her to this point, this desperation. "Think about that for a second Anita." I told her. "Do you think that if you tell my mother about our relationship she's going to order me to come over here and marry you? Is that what you really think? Well I'm here to tell you that if you tell my mother anything it will be the worst mistake you'll ever make in your life. Mom will be very offended by it and she will not be directing her offense at me. You are the adult in this situation and in case you forgot, I am a minor.

"I imagine Mom would probably call the cops about this and you would end up with a criminal charge of some sort. You may not be convicted of anything but you would almost certainly have your children taken away from you. Is that what you want?"

Though the shock that overcame her expression was painful to watch, it was also a relief. I had managed to break through to her, to get a point across.

"Your mother wouldn't do that." She protested, but weakly.

"To tell you the truth Anita, I don't really want to find out. I didn't come over here to torment you and despite what you probably think, I don't hate you. I just need you to acknowledge that our relationship is at an end. That it's over. I don't want you to get into trouble Anita, I just want you to leave me alone."

She gulped, tears running down her face. "I'll leave you alone." She whispered, barely audibly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said I'll leave you alone." She nearly shouted. "Are you happy?"

"No Anita." I answered. "I'm not. But I'm glad you agreed with me."

This time I was able to get away before the sound of her sobs reached my ears.

Before she left Tracy was royally chewed out by my mother for not calling or writing more often. She left us with a promise to phone at least once a week. It had been three weeks since she'd left and so far she'd kept up with her promise well. As to how long that would last was anyone's guess.

I was home alone when she called on Wednesday evening, a week prior to Christmas vacation.

"Hey Bill." She said cheerfully. As before I could hear girlish revelry going on in the background. "Just making my obligatory weekly call so that Mom doesn't cut off my funding."

"Well, you wasted a call." I told her. "There out at Dad's school's Christmas party. They probably won't be home until midnight or so."

Tracy giggled. "And when they do get home, Dad will be drunk and Mom will be ragging on him about having too much to drink and swearing that she's not going to take him to next year's party."

"Gee," I mocked, knowing that Tracy was correct. "You sound like you've lived through this before."

"Oh, I might've witnessed something like that a time or two." She agreed. "So how's things with you?"

"Well," I said. "I think I have the Anita problem stabilized. She's not calling here anymore, hasn't since I had that little talk with her."

"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"

"But it wasn't terribly fun."

"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."

"Maybe." I agreed.

"How about Nina? Any developments there?"

"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."

"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."

"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.

"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"

"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"

"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.

I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."

"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."

"I do what I can." She said.

"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"

"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"

"I'll try Trace. I'll try."

They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.

It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.

"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."

I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.

"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.

"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.

I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.

"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."

"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.

To each their own I figured, dismissing this.

"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"

"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."

"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.

"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.

I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.

"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.

"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.

Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"

"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.

"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.

"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.

"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.

I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."

Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.

"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"

"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.

"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"

He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.

"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."

"Okay."

Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.

Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.

"Give me half of them." I told Brett.

With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.

"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.

He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.

"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.

Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.

I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.

"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."

She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.

"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."

She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"

"Well…" I shrugged.

"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"

I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."

I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.

"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.

"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."

"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.

When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.

"You're covered under the hospital's work comp." She told me. "They'll cover the hospital bill but, unfortunately, since you don't make any salary, there's nothing to compensate you for time off work. You should've dragged yourself to your paid job and pretended you did it there."

"I'll do that next time." I said.

"Anyway," She continued. "Why don't you head up to the ER so they can stitch you up? I'll call your parents for permission to treat and send up the authorization. Then I'll start the reams of paperwork you've just dumped on me."

"Right." I said morosely, thinking about the ER. This was the busiest hospital in the Spokane metropolitan area. It's ER alone dealt with over eighty thousand patients every year. Great. When I'd come here with the stab wound to the abdomen they'd treated me right away of course. But this was not a life-threatening problem. I would not be high on their list of priorities. If I was lucky, they might get around to stitching me up before the ten-hour deadline for suturing a wound expired. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day and part of the night sitting in the waiting room among the scrotes that this hospital attracted. It was too bad I couldn't go somewhere else to get my stitches. Any of the other hospitals could…

I stopped suddenly at that thought.

"Uh, Mindy?" I said.

"Yeah?" She asked, rummaging through her desk drawer now.

"Do I HAVE to get my stitches here?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Why would you go somewhere else?" She asked.

I explained about the eighty thousand patients, and the wait, and the deadline. "I think if I went to another hospital, say Holy Family, I would get treated a lot quicker."

"Holy Family?" She asked. "That's clear out in North Spokane. How were you planning to get there?"

"My car." I said. "I can drive myself there."

"Is it a stick-shift?" She asked.

"Oh no." I lied. "Automatic, all the way."

She thought for a minute. "Comp will still cover it." She said. "But I don't know if your parents are gonna go for that. Since you're a minor we have to do whatever your parents say."

"Let me talk to them." I said.

She shrugged and spun her phone around, offering it to me. "Dial nine before the number." She said. "And let me talk to them when you're done."

I called Mom since she was the easiest to get hold of during the workday. I assured her I was all right but that I'd had a little accident at work that was going to require some stitches. After the obligatory mother interrogation as to my health and well being, I told her that, although I was located downtown in the trauma center, I wished to drive to North Spokane to get my stitches.

"Why Billy?" She asked. "What's wrong with getting them where you're at? After all, they treated you pretty good when you had, well, your little fight that time."

"Yeah Mom." I said. "But they're pretty busy here. I could end up waiting for hours."

"Okay." She said. "But why Holy Family? There are other hospitals that aren't so far away."

"Well Mom, I thought maybe it would be nice to go to, uh, well, the hospital where Nina works."

There was a long pause, almost long enough for me to think I'd been disconnected. Finally Mom said, "I think that's a fine idea Billy. Sometimes Fate works in mysterious ways."

"You ain't kidding." I told her.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said. "My supervisor wants to talk to you. I'll head over to Holy Family and hopefully I'll be home before dark."

I quickly realized why Mindy had been concerned about the layout of my transmission. I hadn't even made it to the freeway before the gauze on my hand began spouting flowers of red from the action of operating the gearshift. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the suburban hospital my hand was throbbing and the gauze was stained with my blood.

I locked up my car and, authorization form in good hand, walked up to the emergency room entrance. The automatic doors led me into the emergency waiting area which, I was gratified to see, was not even a quarter full of people. I signed in somewhat clumsily since my right hand was my good hand and was shortly called up to a little room to be triaged. The nurse listened to my story impassively, took my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate. She examined my wound and then re-wrapped it in fresh bandages. I was then sent me to the waiting room.

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a look at the magazines lying around. They were outdated even for this when. I ignored them and began to wait.

It was less than five minutes before the door that led from the emergency room to the waiting room creaked open. My heart quivered in my chest as I saw who poked their head out. It was Nina. She was dressed in a pair of surgical scrubs that hid all the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. And she looked very pretty, very Nina as I looked at her. I knew then that I'd made the right decision by coming here. I only hoped Nina would too.

She had a chart in her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and then said to the room at large, "Matthew Miller?"

Across the waiting room from me a large blonde woman holding a crying baby with a runny nose stood up. The baby, who I figured was the Matthew Miller of whom she spoke, was tugging on his right ear obsessively. Matthew's mom carried him to where Nina stood and they all three disappeared, closing the door behind them. Nina had not seen me sitting there.

Twenty minutes passed. I sat there with my hand throbbing and my brain working on overdrive, trying to figure out what I should say to her, how I should say it, and how I could keep from saying the wrong thing. I passed a thousand scenarios through my mind, laying out a thousand scripts and rejecting them all. Finally I concluded that I would just have to take things as they came. That was one of my shining abilities.

When the door opened again Nina had a fresh chart in her hand. Her mouth opened to shout out a name as her eyes locked onto the paperwork before her, her lips beginning to form together to say the first name; William. Then she stopped. Recognition filled her face. Slowly her eyes left the chart and began to examine the waiting room. It was less than a second before they locked onto me sitting there.

I offered her a smile as she studied me, as she fought to compose herself. Finally, keeping her face neutral, her voice toneless, she said, "William, if you would follow me please?"

I stood up and walked over to her. She turned her back to me and led me into the emergency room.

The ER was almost exactly as I remembered it being on my many trips here as a paramedic. There were a few additions and coats of paint that they had yet to do, but otherwise I knew its layout fairly well. I even recognized a much younger version of one of the old biddy nurses that worked in there. Despite the relative emptiness of the waiting room, the treatment area, which only contained ten beds, was full. Several elderly people were being treated for breathing or cardiac type problems. Two children were waiting to be stitched up like I was, and of course there was Matthew Miller, who seemed to have an ear infection. Nina led me to an empty room, which was actually a hospital gurney surrounded by a yellow curtain.

"If you'll have a seat here." She said, waving me to the gurney. "The nurse will be in to see you shortly."

"Thank you Nina." I told her.

She looked at me for a moment. "Why did you come here?" She asked.

"Because YOU work here." I told her. "I wanted to see you, to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say to you." She informed me. "And we won't be speaking any further. Sorry you wasted your time."

As she turned to go I said, "I'm not giving up that easily."

She gave me one more glance and then marched out of the room. She made a point of staying out of my line of sight. But, as I told her, I wasn't giving up that easily. This might be my only chance. Though it had been more than eighteen years, I had once been an ROP ER tech too and I knew well what their duties were.

A nurse came in a few minutes later, gave my wound a cursory examination, and then told me what I already knew; that I was going to need some stitches. She told me the doctor would be in as soon as he could to do that. "Anything we can get you?" She then asked, "Some water or a blanket or something."

"I'm fine for NOW." I told her.

She left the room, slipping between the flaps of the yellow curtain. I knew that she would be telling Nina, the ER tech, to set up a suture kit in my room. It was part of Nina's job and she certainly would not be able to refuse to do it.

Sure enough, Nina pushed back through the curtain less than five minutes later, carrying one of the sterile suture kits, the sort of kits I assembled all the time in central supply at the trauma center, in her hands. She kept her eyes off of me as she walked over to the stainless steel wheeled stand next to my bed and set the kit down.

"Nina." I told her as she opened the un-sterile outer seal and folded it back. "I'm miserable without you. I miss you terribly. More than I ever imagined I would. I was an asshole before but I'm trying to change, I really am."

She looked at me impassively. "Don't touch any of this stuff." She told me.

"It's sterile and if you put your hands on it you might get an infection."

She smiled. "We wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?"

"Nina," I started again. "Do you remember when you told me…"

"I have work to do Sir." She said shortly. "You won't be seeing me again." She turned and headed out the door.

I sighed. How much time did I have before the doctor came in to stitch me up? Not much I figured. I sat quietly at my bed until I saw a nurse pass by outside.

"Nurse?" I asked, making her stop in her tracks and peer questioningly in at me.

"Could I possibly have some water? I'm awfully thirsty."

"Sure." The nurse nodded. "Just a second." She disappeared again.

Sure enough, a minute or so passed and then Nina reappeared in my cubicle, this time carrying a plastic cup of water in her hands. She walked quickly over and held it out to me.

"Your water." She said.

I didn't take it. "Nina," I said. "You told me once you had feelings for me. Do you remember?"

"Do you want the water or not?" She said testily. "I have lots of work to do."

"Tracy tried to tell me that once." I said. "Remember the time she and Cindy got you high? She tried to tell me that night but I didn't listen. I should have listened. I should have told you the things I'm trying to tell you right now at that moment. But I didn't. I was an asshole, I was stupid, and I regret that with all of my heart now."

She stared at me for a moment as I recited this to her. She then set the water down on another tray and left the room again.

Was this doing any good? It seemed it wasn't. But I was committed. All I could do was keep trying.

"Nurse?" I asked the next time one passed by.

"Yes?"

"I'm kind of cold in here. Do you suppose I could have a blanket?"

"Why sure." She said, disappearing.

A minute later Nina entered the room yet again. This time she carried a blanket in her hands. Her eyes bored into me. "Your blanket." She said.

"Nina, what I'm trying to say," I said. "Was that I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Since you've had your talk with me I haven't gone a day without thinking about what I screwed up with you. I miss our talks about books, about life, about everything. I miss being with you. I didn't realize how happy I was when I was with you; how good you made me feel, until it was gone. I NEED you Nina and I want you to come back to me. I'll accept any terms you want to offer. Anything. But please, come back to me.

Be with me again? You told me that you had feelings for me once. Are they completely gone? I realize now how deep my feelings are for you."

She was now chewing on her lip as she listened, the first break in her professional, neutral face. She still held the blanket in her hands. I sensed that she was about to throw the blanket at me and flee. It was time to lay down all the cards.

"Jesus Nina." I said. "I'm sitting here talking about 'feelings', just like you did that day. Why don't we cut the shit? You were right about me and you have absolutely no reason to believe what I say based on my past behavior, but I'm going to say it anyway. " I swallowed. "I love you Nina.

I love you deeply, intimately. You're all I can think about, you're all I want in this life. I waited too long to realize it, to say it, but it's the God's truth. I love you and I want you to be with me forever. I'll do anything you want me to in order to prove this to you but I love you. I LOVE you."

She stared at me, her lip quivering now. Suddenly she shook her head almost violently. "No." She said. "This has to stop. If you have feelings for me as you say then you'll leave me alone like I asked. Just leave me alone. Stop talking to me, stop thinking about me. I need to get you out of my life and keep you out of it."

"I'll do that if you do one thing for me." I said. "Just one little thing."

"What's that?"

"Look in my eyes and tell me you don't love me. If you can truly say that you don't love me, that you don't miss me, then I'll leave you alone forever."

She sighed, tossing the blanket on the foot of my gurney and wiping a tear that was forming in her eye. "I do love you Bill." She said. "If I didn't this would be a whole lot easier. I've loved you almost since the first time we started talking together. Don't you see that that is the problem? Love like that doesn't just die. You hurt me badly. You devastated me. You showed me how blind I could be about seeing certain things because of love. You showed me how much love could hurt me and how it could keep on hurting me long after I stopped talking to you.

"Don't you understand? I'm just now getting to the point where I can go for an hour or so without thinking about you. I'm just now starting to get you out of my system. And here you are telling me everything is all right and we should just go back to the way we were. I can't do that! I will not live through that hurt anymore."

"You won't have to Nina." I told her. "You won't have to. I'm not saying we should go back to the way things were. I want more with you now. I want to be with you always, don't you see? I am not the same person I was last month. I've changed. I will never hurt you that way again."

"Bill, if there's one thing I learned through all of this," She said, really crying now. "It's that love sucks. We weren't even going together, we never even kissed each other, and you were able to hurt me. How much more could you hurt me if we did start going together? How much more, Bill?"

"A lot more." I said honestly. "But I won't. I promise you that. I won't."

"How could I believe you? After all the girls you had, after all the girls you used and then tossed over your shoulders like a beer can, how could I ever trust you not to do that with me? What's going to happen when you get tired of me? How long will that take?"

"It'll take forever Nina." I said. "I will never get tired of you and I will never treat you the way I've treated other girls. When I was doing that I was being stupid and immature. I was being self-centered. But I've learned a few things. Getting your teeth kicked in by consequences does that for you. The most important thing I learned was how much you meant to me and how stupid I'd been to not see what you and I had together, to not seize it while I had the chance.

"I want one more chance Nina. Just one more. I've given you all the promises I can and you can take them for what they're worth. I can give you all the assurances I can and you can take them the same way. But what it comes down to is your choice. If you want me to, I'll walk away from you now and never enter your life again without permission. If you ask me to do that I will, and I'll be feeling the same hurt, the same guilt, the same feelings that you've felt, that you're feeling now.

"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."

She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."

"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."

"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."

"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.

"Nina," I said.

She turned to look at me.

"Thanks for listening to me."

She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.

The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.

It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.

"You know something?" She asked me quietly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."

"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.

She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."

"Nina I told you…"

"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.

"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."

I swallowed, blushing.

"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."

"Did it?"

She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."

I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"

Chapter 8

The best of times

Are when I'm alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We'll make this a world for two

All memories of yesterday

Will last a lifetime

We'll take the best, forget the rest

And someday we'll find

These are the best of times

STYX

I don't believe I ever looked forward to a simple lunch session in the school cafeteria as much as I did that Tuesday afternoon, the day after Nina invited me to join her. I hardly slept at all that night, tossing and turning restlessly as my mind kept screaming at me: Nina is back! Nina is talking to me again! Bleary eyed I drug myself off to school and experienced a near crawl of the time continuum through first period. When the bell rang I nearly sprinted to my second class, feeling like the teenager I was charading as for perhaps the first time since returning.

I took my seat and waited nervously while other students filed in, my eyes drawn to the seat next to mine, the seat that had been so recently occupied by a silent and reproachful Nina. That would be different today, wouldn't it? She hadn't changed her mind, had she? She was talking to me again, wasn't she?

When she entered the room her face was blank, expressionless. She walked to her chair and methodically removed her book and notepaper from her backpack before stowing it in under her seat. She arranged her supplies on her desk and sat down.

"Good morning Nina." I told her nervously.

For a horrible instant I thought that she was going to simply ignore me as she had in the past. Just keep her eyes facing forward, her psyche radiating a stern signal that communication was not desired. Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to wash her hands of me after all?

Finally she looked over at me, her expression remaining blank. "Good morning." She told me.

"Are we still on for lunch?" I asked her, dreading her answer but needing to hear it all the same.

A slight smile gave me hope. "Sure." She nodded. "If you still want to."

Relief and renewed hope washed over me. I returned her smile. "More than anything." I said.

Her smile widened, warming her face and making me feel giddy. She was smiling! At me no less! In that instant I blessed that idiot Brett and his carelessness at leaving the scalpel blade up in the tray. In fact I wanted to buy him a beer for doing that.

The entrance of the instructor and the initiation of that day's lecture brought our conversation to an abrupt end. I hardly heard a word that was said.

Third period offered us little chance to talk. By the time we found our seats in the classroom it was time for class to start. I barely heard that lecture too, so intent was I on the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock as it marched its way towards lunch.

Finally, lunchtime came. We walked in silence together to the cafeteria, unsure of what to say to each other, unsure how to begin. We got our food and then found seats at an empty table. I wasn't sure what I'd expected from this reconciliation but the awkward silence we were experiencing was certainly not it. We picked at our food, neither one of us able to make the first statement, both of us secreting nervousness as we secreted perspiration when hot. What was happening here? I'd never had trouble talking to Nina before. Why couldn't I say anything now? Was it because, for the first time, we were both aware of our naked feelings for each other?

Because we'd both used the word love in conversation? Because we both knew that our relationship depended absolutely on what transpired? Were we both deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing?

I wanted to reassure her that I loved her. I wanted to promise once more that I'd never hurt her again. I wanted to hear her say she loved me, only this time not in a break-up conversation or in anger. But none of that seemed right. I'd said my piece the day before and she knew how I felt. I knew I was on probation here, an extremely rigid probation. If I said or did one wrong thing, Nina would possibly disappear from my life, moving back to the fate which was still trying to claim her.

I looked at her, at the features of her plain face that were so beautiful to me now. I knew that SOMETHING needed to be said. She looked back at me, probably thinking the same, probably wondering what was going to come out of my mouth, probably wondering if she'd made a mistake in giving me a second chance. What had brought us together in the first place? What had made us love each other before? Could that be recaptured?

"What was the book?" I finally asked, speaking softly.

She continued to stare at me for a moment, her face taking on the expression of one that doesn't believe she's heard correctly. "The book?" She asked.

I nodded. "You said you read a book you were dying to discuss. What was the book?"

Her face warmed almost inperceptively and I knew I'd said exactly the right thing.

"It was called 'The Cider House Rules'." She said.

"By John Irving." I nodded, thanking whatever gods there may be that it was a book I was familiar with. This was not entirely a coincidence. Nina and I, we'd discovered earlier in our relationship, shared the same tastes in literature.

"You've read it?"

"Yes I have." I nodded. "A very astute analysis on the issue of abortion. Very good book, one of Irving's best I think. I particularly liked how well the characterization was done."

She sat up straighter. "So did I. My favorite character was Candy. I really liked the way she…"

We discussed the book together, hitting upon our favorite parts and characters and then opinionating on what the meaning of the story was. This then led to a discussion about abortion in general. Though we were talking together as we used to it was clear to both of us that there was a strain that had never existed before. Nina was very guarded, her smiles not as broad or genuine as they'd once been. It was as if she did not want to enjoy our conversation, did not want to allow herself to get too close to me too quickly.

By the end of the lunch period it was plain what the rules were going to be.

We would be moving slow and I was going to have to regain the trust I had lost. It wasn't going to be awarded to me by default. Those were my terms, firm though unspoken, and I was going to have to accept them.

I had put considerable thought into the problem of Anita. Though I had ended my relationship with her and though my second talk with her seemed to have brought this fact home to her, I still felt a considerable amount of guilt. Things were not right with Anita. She had been pulled from her destiny because of me. And because she had been pulled from her destiny, her children had been pulled from theirs. They were growing up without a father figure in the house, something they were not meant to do. The ramifications of this could only be guessed at. Maybe there would be no change in their future. But maybe there would be a catastrophic one. Anita, for many reasons, needed to be steered back to her destiny. The responsibility for doing this was mine alone.

My talk with Tracy and the run of my own thoughts convinced me that putting Anita back on her track was not only possible but should be reasonably easy at this point in time. Fate was, for once, on my side, my ally in this endeavor. All she needed, I theorized, was a little nudge. But the more time that went by, the harder that nudge would have to be. Since I was under a doctor's orders not to return to either ROP or my normal job, I took it upon myself to fill this idle time giving that nudge. Her and her intended needed to be put together. The question was how to do it?

I knew from my long relationship with her that Anita was a real estate agent specializing in single-family houses in the North Spokane area. Though I had never been there, I knew where she worked. I also knew that Jack Valentine, her destined husband, worked at the same office. What I did not know was what Jack Valentine DID at that office and I only had the vaguest impression of what he looked like. My only memory of his features came from my previous life. I needed to gather some information.

Being free from ROP after my first lunch with Nina, I climbed into my car and drove to North Spokane, parking three blocks down from Anita's office. It was located on a major street that fed to the freeway system. The street was lined with gas stations, mini-marts, and strip malls. The office itself was located between a dentist's office and a pizza parlor. A light snow was falling as I entered the side parking lot of the complex, moving with all the caution of an infantry soldier in enemy territory.

I had purposely dressed warmly and was fully prepared to wait in the parking lot until she went out on a showing of some suburban house. I was aware that it might take several days of observation before such an event happened. After all, winter was not the prime time for real estate sales. But, to my surprise and delight, my luck was in. Anita's car was nowhere to be seen after three circuits of the parking lot.

Gambling that she would not return in the short time that I needed to be in there, I walked quickly to the door of the office and stepped inside, blessing the orgasmic warmth that rushed over me from the building's heater.

There was a waiting area with several chairs and the inevitable outdated magazines. These faced a receptionist's desk where a pretty young woman was typing with machine-gun bursts. Behind her were ten or so desks, about half of which were occupied. One of the occupants I recognized as Jack Valentine, the only male present in the room beside myself. None of the desk workers paid me any attention as I entered but the receptionist gave me a suspicious look.

"Can I help you?" She asked, her voice not nearly as friendly as it would have been had an adult walked in. She probably figured I was going to ask to use the bathroom or something.

"Yes Ma'am." I said shyly. "My Dad asked me if I would stop by here and pick up something called a…" I paused as if trying to recall information, "A listing paper?"

"You mean a listing sheet?" She corrected, becoming instantly more friendly.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's it."

"Did your Dad tell you what range he wanted that for?" She asked patiently.

"Oh," I said, shaking my head as if disgusted with myself for not remembering. "I'm sorry. Seventy-five to eighty-five thousand."

"Why sure." She said, brightening even more when she heard that. She stood up and headed over to one of the desk people.

I took a moment to admire her legs, which were truly magnificent encased in dark nylons as they were. I then cast a nervous look outside, making sure Anita hadn't pulled up and was heading in. I could only imagine what would happen if she found me in there.

It took a minute but the receptionist returned with a sheaf of copied computer print-outs upon which all of the current houses for sale in the price range I'd specified, the upper end for that time period in that city, were listed. The existence of such a document was not something the average sixteen year-old would have known about since most sixteen year-olds have not purchased a house in their past.

"Here you go young man." She told me, smiling professionally.

"Thank you." I said, taking the papers and returning the smile. "And he also asked if I could have one of your brochures too?"

She picked one up from a stack on her desk. It was a full color pamphlet that listed the real estate agents employed by that office, their mission statement, and phone numbers. She handed it to me. "One brochure." She said. "Anything else?"

"That should do it Ma'am." I told her. "Thank you."

A moment later I was out the door. Five minutes after that I was sitting in my car, letting the heater run while I looked at the paperwork I'd acquired.

According to the brochure, Jack Valentine was indeed another agent, not a supervisor or a lawyer or something else, as I'd feared. Perfect. He was one of four males in an office staffed by eighteen.

I looked at the printout next, looking mostly at the addresses of the houses for sale. Eight years as a paramedic had made me more than passingly familiar with the layout of the streets in this, or indeed any Spokane County neighborhood. There were four listings in close proximity to the office. I started up my car and drove to the first of them, my eyes looking for the right combination of details. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all four of the houses as a matter of course but the moment I saw the second one I knew it was as close to perfect as I was going to get. A small city park was directly across the street, complete with rows of bushes and thick foliage. The house itself had two large trees in the front yard, trees which would serve to cut the view from inside the house. The driveway, which I looked at most carefully, was completely unobservable from the interior of the house due to it's positioning. Truly, for what I had in mind, it could not be much better.

After dismissing the last house and firmly settling my mind on the second, I drove to the freeway, heading for downtown Spokane, my mind full of shaky confidence that my crazy scheme could be pulled off.

The hall of records was located in the Spokane County Courthouse, a dilapitated building in the unfashionable part of downtown. After battling for a parking spot, fighting my way through three clerks who wanted detailed explanations of why I, a teenager, wanted to take a look at these supposedly open public records, and then pouring through tons of paperwork in the largest filing cabinets I've ever personally seen, I was forced to admit there was something I missed terribly from my old life. The Internet. In 1999 I would have been able to pull up this information, information that took me more than two hours to retrieve in the courthouse, in less than five minutes. God bless technology, despite the Unabomber's ravings to the contrary.

I finally found what I was looking for in an obscure file marked "Real Estate Transactions--1983", a file which was not, I might add, stored with Real Estate Transactions 1900 to 1982 as you would have thought it would be.

The file was more than an inch thick. I paged forward until I found the months of October and November. I began scanning through the columns of text and legalese, looking for two names in particular: Anita Browling and Jack Valentine. I found them eventually and copied down the names that were listed with them as clients.

Satisfied with my work, I returned the file to its proper place, signed out, and went home. I hoped this was all going to work. I'd been to a lot of trouble if it didn't.

That night I gave Mike a call.

"What's up?" He asked me, pleasantly enough.

"Not much." I told him. "You still coming over to study tomorrow?"

"Fuckin' aye." He agreed. "Got a test coming up in English and I need you to go over this modifier crap with me."

"You got it." I told him. "How's ROP going?"

"Bitchin." He said. "I'm diggin the new station. The BC has been hangin out with me a lot, you know, talkin to me and all. I think he likes me. He told me they'd probably be testing for hire in August this year. Looks like I might be getting paid to work there then."

"Cool Mike." I told him. "You'd better quit smoking and start running." I advised him. "I hear that physical agility test is a bitch."

"Yeah, that's what the BC told me too." He answered. "I thought maybe I'd start jogging at night before I go to bed. That'll probably help."

"Probably." I agreed, inwardly feeling very pleased to hear his words. It sounded like Mike was growing up a little. Strange but true. "Listen," I told him. "I was wondering if maybe you could do me a little favor before you head to the fire station tomorrow."

"It'd have to be a quick favor." He told me. "I don't want to be late."

"It'll only take a minute." I explained. "Just meet me at the payphone by the office after lunch."

"What for?" He asked.

"I need to borrow your voice for something."

"How is your hand healing up?" Nina asked me the next day at lunch, her voice still careful and guarded.

"I think I'll live." I answered, holding it up for her inspection. The stitches were still quite prominent but the skin itself was starting to knit back together. It didn't actually hurt anymore but it itched like mad most of the time.

She nodded quietly. "You ought to be more careful what you do." She commented.

"I'm trying to be Nina." I told her seriously. "I'm really trying to be."

This won me a smile. Not the best I'd ever seen from her, but it was getting there.

By the end of that lunch period she'd thawed a little more. Not completely, but a little more. She laughed a little. She offered looser comments. She even slapped at my shoulder playfully once, sending thrills racing through me at her touch. I began to suspect that things between Nina and I might just work out. Maybe even sooner than I'd expected.

I left the lunchroom happier than I'd been in quite some time.

Mike met me at the payphone just as I'd asked him to. The light snow of the day before had turned into heavier snow accompanied by an icy North wind. He was shivering when I found him there.

"God damn dude." He told me, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. "I was about to leave. I'm freezing my ass off out here. What took you so long?"

"Sorry." I apologized. "I was talking to Nina and time kind of slipped away from me."

"Nina's talking to you again?" He asked, feigning disinterest.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I guess you could say we made up."

"Cool deal." He told me wisely, speaking with his voice of experience. "I think she's got the hots for you man. You play your cards right, you might even get some off her like I did with Kathy the other night. Let me tell you, that bitch knows how to suck a…" He continued for more than five minutes, graphically detailing an encounter with this girl; someone I'd never heard of.

When he finished, I said, "Well that's cool. But anyway, can you make this call for me?"

"Sure." He said. "What do you want me to say?"

I explained what I wanted to him and we went over it a few times. "And be sure to deepen your voice a little, just a little, so you sound like an adult."

"And why are we doing this again?" He asked.

"It's a long story." I told him. "But you can rest assured it's for the betterment of all mankind."

He looked at me for a moment and then laughed. "Jesus Bill, you sure know how to come up with 'em."

I handed him a dime and he picked up the phone. As he plugged the coin into the slot he took a sheet of paper from me, scanned it for a second, and then punched in the number that I'd instructed him to dial. He held on to the paper after dialing so he could refer to the names and addresses I'd printed there.

I was worried that he would over-act but, to give him credit, he performed perfectly. He listened for a few seconds and then I could see by his face that the phone had been picked up. With just the right amount of deepening to his voice, he said into the phone. "Good afternoon Mrs. Browling. My name is Bob Hartley. I was referred to you by a friend of mine who purchased a house on Sallyport Way last month; Rick Whaling?"

He paused for a second and then gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know she was buying it so far.

"Yes," He nodded. "Rick loves the house and he recommended you if I should ever find myself in need of a good real estate agent. Well, as it turns out, my wife and I have been planning to buy a house for quite some time. After five years of saving we've managed to put aside eight thousand for a down payment." A pause. "Yes, that's right. Eight thousand. Anyway, we've been kind of looking on our own and we found a house that is listed with your agency out in North Spokane." Another pause. "Well it's at…" He read from the sheet. "Twenty-one nineteen Westbrook Lane." A pause. "Yes, Westbrook Lane." He rolled his eyes upward for a moment. "Why sure, I'll hold."

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "She's going to get the file on that house." He told me. "Who is this bitch anyway?"

"Maybe I'll tell you someday." I said cryptically.

He shrugged and went back to waiting. A minute or so passed. Finally he began to listen again. "Yes, that's right." He told Anita. "My wife and I would like to take a look at that house as soon as possible. Is there any chance you could show it to us, say today about one o'clock?"

He nodded, completely into the drama he was participating in. "Very good." He said and then listened some more. "No no, we know where it's at. How about we meet you there?" He listened some more. "That's right, one o'clock. See you there. Thank you very much Mrs. Browling."

He hung up the phone and looked at me. "Whatever you're planning." He told me. "You're dialed in."

"Thanks Mike." I told him. "I owe you one. You've been a benefit to oppressed people everywhere."

"Yeah right." He said. "Well I gotta go dude. Catch you this afternoon."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Hey Mike?"

"Yeah?" He said, in the middle of turning to leave.

"You got any buds? I've been itching to get stoned."

He looked at me strangely for a second. "I got some at home." He told me. "About enough for a joint, but I don't have any on me. You want to get stoned later?"

"Yeah." I said, hiding the grin that wanted to break out on my face. Mike had pot but he wasn't bringing it to school with him! For Mike, that was an accomplishment. "After we study today. I think we deserve it."

"Cool." He said, nodding. "Well, gotta jet."

"See ya." I replied, watching him go. He really was growing up.

Finally I turned back to business. I picked up the phone and put in another dime. Consulting my list I dialed a number. It rang three times and then a male voice responded.

"North Spoke Reality. This is Jack Valentine, can I help you?"

"Why yes, Mr. Valentine." I said, deepening my own voice. "You certainly can. You see, a friend of mine, Mark Vincent, recently purchased a house on…"

By twelve-thirty I was sequestered in the row of bushes in the park across the street from 2119 Westbrook Lane. Despite my overabundance of clothing I was shivering as the wind cut through my down jacket and snowflakes stuck to my cap. I was reasonably sure that I could not be spotted by anyone from the house even if they WERE looking for me, which they wouldn't be. The snow that was rapidly accumulating on me would do nothing but help with my camoflaugh.

I'd enticed the two real estate agents to this house by offering them dream clients, making my fictional customers almost too good to be true. It was something no agent would ever turn down; people that had apparently already decided upon a house and had large down payments in reserve in order to help finance it. They would show up, visions of large, quick commissions dancing in their heads. I only hoped that one of my suppositions was correct. If I remembered my real estate agents correctly, they always parked in the driveway if they could when meeting someone at the house. This allowed the customer to get the whole view of the house as they stepped out of their vehicle. The driveway was big enough for both Anita and Jack's cars to fit.

It would certainly make things easier and less dangerous to me if they did NOT park in front of the house. If I was wrong, and they did, there were at least the trees to give partial cover.

As it turned out my supposition was a correct one. Anita arrived first at twelve-fifty, fully ten minutes early. She pulled her car into the empty driveway, bringing it to a halt. Before she could even step out of her vehicle Jack pulled in, driving a late model (for that when) Buick. He parked it right next to hers.

They got out of their vehicles and looked at each other in surprise for a moment, holding a quick conversation. I couldn't hear them but I could guess what they were saying. What are you doing here? A client for this house? Oh really? One o'clock? What a coincidence. What's your client's name? Really? Well, I'll try not to step on you. Pretty weird, huh?

They spoke to each other as acquaintances, with no hostility that I could detect. I saw them shake their heads a few times as if wondering at the quirks of fate which brought both of them here at exactly the same time. Finally a comment was passed that had to have amounted to, 'why are we standing out here in the snow?'. They both headed for the front door.

Anita knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell a few times. In my planning stage of this I'd worried obsessively about whether or not the owners of the house would be home before I finally figured out that it really didn't matter. Ideally, they would be gone but if they weren't, the plan would still work. As it turned out, they were gone. Giving up on the doorbell, Anita walked over to the brass lockbox that was attached to the water pipe. She dialed in a combination and opened the box, pulling out a key. With the key, she opened the door. A moment later the both of them stepped inside, closing the door behind them.

My first thoughts that had led to this plan had told me that simply getting Anita and Jack into a house together for twenty to thirty minutes would be enough to push them together. Further reflection upon this, and the consideration that the occupants would be home, therefore breaking the mood, led me to modify that plan somewhat. Just putting them together might not be enough. I had to emmerse them into a situation together. Even that, I reluctantly admitted, might not be enough, but it was better than just throwing them together. An extension to the plan developed. An extension that now needed to be put into effect.

I acted quickly, extricating myself from the bushes and moving west along the perimeter of the park until I was out of view of the house. I crossed the street and began walking along the sidewalk, strolling casually towards the house, doing my best impression of a neighborhood kid out for a walk in the snow. When I reached the driveway, where the two cars were parked, I took a good look around me, searching for any neighbors that happened to be out and paying attention. There were none. It was time.

I dashed between the two cars, both of which were ticking as their engines cooled down, quickly putting myself between the garage door and the front of Anita's Chrysler. A quick look assured me that from here I was unobservable from any angle. I had changed the oil in Anita's car more than ten times, usually as a prelude to sexual activity, and I knew the engine compartment of it well. I knew, for instance, that you did not need to be inside the car in order to open the hood. My hand found the hood release, which was warm, and slowly pulled it until I felt a click.

Carefully, taking another quick glance for unwanted observers, I lifted it, wincing at the squeaking noise it made. When it was about a foot above the engine compartment I peered inside. Though, as I've mentioned before, I am not a mechanical genius, my thirty-four years on two different Earth's had taught me enough to know that an internal combustion engine could be quickly disabled by removing one particular piece of it. I reached in and grasped the coil wire, which led to the distributor cap. Without this wire, electricity could not get to the spark plugs and the cylinders could not fire. I gave a sharp yank and the wire was in my hand. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket and then eased the hood back down, giving it a firm push to latch it and wincing again at the sharp noise that resulted.

One more quick glance around for danger and I dashed back to the sidewalk. I headed back the way I came, crossed the street once again, and moved back into the park. A few minutes after that I was back in the bushes, observing the house. I began to wait.

It was twelve forty-five before they both emerged from the house. In the ensuing fifty minutes I'd seen both of them peer out multiple times, looking for their clients pulling up out front, clients that were figments of my imagination. When they left the house, carefully locking it up and putting the key back in the lock box, they were talking to each other and shrugging.

I wasn't close enough to read their expressions so I could not tell how cozy they'd gotten during the waiting period.

They conversed a moment more and then headed for their respective automobiles. Jack jumped in his first and fired up the engine before Anita was even settled. I had a moment's horror when it looked like he was going to back out and drive away before Anita even had a chance to crank her now-worthless engine. But thankfully, his mother had taught him some manners and he stood by, waiting for her to leave.

From across the street I could hear the grinding of her engine turning over without catching. She would grind it for about ten seconds, let it rest for five, and then grind it again. This went on for about four cycles before the abrupt cut-off of exhaust vapor from Jack's tailpipe signaled that he'd shut down his engine.

He stepped out and walked over to her door. She rolled down the window and a brief conversation ensued. She then opened her door and stepped out, allowing him to sit down in her seat. He cranked the engine a few times himself, as if the mere presence of A MAN behind the key would make it fire up. Finally, when it didn't, he walked around to the front and popped the hood.

The hood obstructed my view of the two of them while they peered inside but it was readily apparent that Jack knew his way around an engine compartment.

It wasn't sixty seconds before he stepped out from behind it, looking nervously around the street, peering up and down it, looking for the culprit that had taken Anita's coil wire. He spoke to her for a moment, pointed into the hood compartment, and then she too began to look around.

They quickly gave up looking for the culprit and turned their attention to looking under and around the vehicle, as if the coil wire could have just fallen off the distributor. When they didn't find it on the ground they searched the hood compartment. When they didn't find it there they began to converse again, this time with much shaking of heads and puzzled glances up and down the street. The conversation continued for a few moments and then Anita smiled at him, obviously thanking him. They walked to his car and he opened the passenger door for her (way to go Jack, I thought happily). She sat down and he walked across to the driver's side. A moment later his car started and they drove off.

Though I didn't know Jack at all, I know what I would have done in such a circumstance. I would have driven her to the nearest auto parts store and bought her a new coil wire, taking it back to the car and making a big show of installing it for her, making it look, of course, more difficult a job than it really was. I would then dramatically sit behind the wheel and fire up the engine, grinning sheepishly at the accomplishment of fixing the car for her. Hell Ma'am, it weren't no trouble at all. Of course she would be grateful to her knight in shining armor. Perhaps they would decide to go to dinner?

As they disappeared from my sight I extricated myself from the bushes and stretched, popping my stiff joints. I shook the accumulation of snow from my clothing and then headed for my car.

"The rest is up to you Jack." I mumbled to myself, smiling as I walked. "Take advantage of Fate."

Overnight the snowstorm we'd been experiencing developed into a full-scale blizzard. The wind tore through the Eastern Washington area, driving the snow before it. When I awoke Thursday morning it was still going strong. A look out my window, at the icy, covered streets, at the snowdrifts more than eight feet high in some places, told me that I would not be going to school that day.

My confirmation of this came when I went downstairs to breakfast and found Dad still in his pajamas and robe, his face unshaven. As a teacher Dad was probably even happier than the students were when they closed school for the day. After all, he still got paid for it. Mom too was lounging around in her pajamas, her work had apparently decided to make it a holiday as well. I was not as happy. That meant there would be no lunch with Nina that day.

"There's lots of good news today." Dad told me as I sat down at the table.

"How's that?" I asked him, digging into the bacon and eggs Mom had prepared in honor of the non-work day.

"Looks like you were right on the mark about the latex thing." He said, sliding a section of the newspaper over to me. "Take a look at this."

I picked up the section and looked where he was pointing.

FEAR OF AIDS LEADS TO NATIONWIDE GLOVE SHORTAGE read the headline. It was an Associated Press story, which meant that it had been printed in newspapers all over the country. The text of the story told of hospitals, fire departments, and ambulance companies all ordering large amounts of latex gloves in response to fear of disease and a federal OSHA mandate that all health care providers wear gloves on every patient contact. Every patient contact! This was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

"Out of sight." I said, grinning.

"So this is going to make you some money on those stocks, right?" Dad asked.

"This is going to be like hitting the lottery." I told him happily. "Actually like hitting it twice."

"Twice?" He enquired, putting his paper down.

I nodded. "There's two aspects of stock ownership in a case like this." I explained. "First of all there's profit. Selling all of those gloves is making a lot of money for the companies I've invested in. That allows me dividends because as a partial owner of the company, I'm entitled to a cut of the profits. The second aspect is the price of the stock itself. Now it's gone steadily upward since I first invested in it but not dramatically by any means. The increase merely reflects those wise investors who have taken the time to research the company and note the recent increase in profits. But now that this story has appeared in the paper, all that will change. Everybody and their mother will know that latex is going to go through the roof and they will all rush to buy stock in it. That is going to drive the price of the stocks through the roof, therefore making my holdings much more valuable."

Dad had long since learned not to question my wisdom on the workings of the stock market. After all he saw me researching it and studying it every day.

"So how much are we talking about here?" He asked.

"It would not surprise me," I said, "If the value of my stock doubled by the end of the year and tripled by the end of the following quarter. Plus I stand to receive a healthy dividend check."

"Amazing." He whispered. "And I thought you were throwing your money away."

"This also means that I need to start putting my income somewhere else, to find another trend that's about to take off."

He looked confused. "Why is that? Shouldn't you continue to invest in latex?"

"No." I told him. "As the stock goes up, putting further money in it will be futile. Remember that I now have to pay the inflated price for more of the stock. What I need to do is keep my assets in latex right where they are and let them go up. But my future income needs to be put into other places; places that are cheap now but that are likely to rise in the future.

That's what investing in the market is all about."

"So what are you going to do now?" He asked.

I smiled. "I've been planning this for quite a while now." I told him. "The money from the latex investment will probably peak about the time I'm ready for college. It should be enough to get me enrolled and carry me through the first year. From now on my paychecks will be invested in something with slower, but steady medium-term growth. Something that will rise considerably over the next few years instead of months. I'll continue to dump money into those until they rise to a point where they've reached their peak of growth. It'll build me up capital for the big move I'm planning to make in a few years."

He shook his head. "What do you mean? What are you going to invest in now?

And what big move are you talking about?"

"Right now I'm going to begin investing in the computer industry. Apple, IBM, and a chipmaker called Intel. Over the next few years I believe that computers are going to start appearing everywhere and they're all going to be made by a few companies."

Dad looked at me in amazement. "You think those three are going to make all of these computers and the chips? What about Atari and Commodore?"

"I think they'll be outmarketed." I said. "Just a prediction you understand, but they probably won't be able to hold their own when the computer revolution swings into full gear."

"I see." He nodded, looking at me strangely. "And this big move you're planning to make?"

"It's kind of complicated." I told him. "I'll know it when I see it though.

You see, every computer has to have something called an operating system; software that tells it what to do."

"Okay." He said, semi-following me so far.

"The company that gets in on that market will make billions, trillions even.

They'll quickly be able to dominate the software market if they make their move at the right time and in the right way." I grinned. "I imagine that there's someone out there who sees this as well as I do. I imagine that someone has probably got a company that makes software going right now, as we speak. And I imagine that someone is just waiting for the time to be right to introduce an operating system that will set the standard for all computers and make it damn near impossible to operate one without it."

"Bill, how do you know so much about this?" Dad asked me slowly.

I shrugged. "I read a lot Dad. And I'm blessed with above average reasoning ability."

He shook his head a little. "Right." He said. He considered for a few more minutes. "You know," He finally said. "I have some money from each paycheck that is just going into the credit union savings account."

I looked up at him. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Maybe I should put some of that in the stock market."

"Maybe you should." I told him.

By late afternoon the worst of the blizzard was past, leaving only flurries drifting through the air. The snowplows caught up with their work, clearing the roads of the city to something approaching passable. About six o'clock, after being cooped up in the house all day I was getting restless. I needed to get out and do something. An idea occurred to me. An idea that I couldn't get out of my head once it was in there.

Maybe Nina would like to go out and catch a movie with me.

It was probably too early in our reconciliation for this. It might seem I was being too forceful, pushing too hard. I might lose some of the ground that I'd gained. I probably shouldn't chance it, I finally decided.

And so thinking I went to the living room and dug out the newspaper, flipping through to the movie section. Maybe I would just go by myself. Yes, that's what I would do. I frowned as I read through what was currently playing. One of the problems of traveling back in time was that you inevitably had seen all of the movies before. I had another fifteen years to wait before something new, from my perspective, came out. I sighed.

I put the newspaper down and then picked it up again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ASK her. She wouldn't abandon me for that would she? But then again…

With a start I realized that I was acting like what I was; a teenager trying to work up the courage to ask a girl out on a date. I'd asked girls out on date a thousand times in my life. Chastising myself for being immature, I picked up the phone.

Thought I hadn't called it in a while, I knew Nina's number from memory. The phone rang more than eight times and I was about to hang up in frustration when it was finally picked up.

"Hello?" It was Nina. The very sound of her voice thrilled me inside.

"Hi Nina." I said. "It's Bill."

There was a very long pause. "Oh, hi." She said finally, in a voice that sounded decidedly weird.

"Nina?" I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Uh, sure." She told me. "Listen, can I call you back in a few minutes? I'm eating dinner right now."

"Sure." I said. "But…"

"Thanks." She said quickly and the phone clicked in my ear.

Slowly I put the receiver back in its cradle. What was that all about? Why had she sounded so weird?

With a worried mind I went back to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator.

It was another twenty minutes before the phone rang. My dad picked it up and yelled for me. I told him I'd take it in the den and locked myself in there.

"Hi Bill." Said Nina, her voice sounding much more normal now.

"Hi." I answered, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No." She said. "Why would you ask that?"

"You just sounded kind of funny on the phone."

"Oh." She said, and then, "Well, the fact of the matter is that it's probably not a good idea to call me here just now. I haven't told my parents that you and I are, uh, talking again."

"I don't understand." I told her. "Your parents liked me before. Just because we had a… well a fight and stopped seeing each other for a while, why shouldn't they like me? All teenagers do that from time to time."

"It's a little more complicated than that." She replied. "I don't really want to go into it right now. But please, don't call me at home just yet?"

"Okay." I answered, very troubled by this.

"So what did you want?" She asked brightly.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to think quickly. The don't-call-here speech had just taken the wind out of my sails, making asking her out seem a bad idea after all.

"Bill?" She asked. "Are you there?"

"Yes." I said, throwing caution to the wind. After all, I had to say SOMETHING. "I was wondering if maybe you'd, uh, well, like to go out to a movie with me tonight?"

"A movie?" She asked, her voice unreadable.

"Yes." I confirmed. "If you're not doing anything else, that is."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" She asked next, seemingly puzzled.

"Well, yes. I am."

She was silent as she digested my request. Finally she said, "It's a bad idea to do this so soon Bill."

I cringed, feeling stupid for asking, feeling ashamed of myself for pushing things. "Oh." I said. "Well maybe some…"

"But what the hell?" She interrupted cheerily. "I could stand to see a good movie tonight."

I was so overcome by the rejection that it took me a moment to process that I hadn't been rejected after all. "Really?" I finally said.

"Really." She told me and I could hear that she was smiling, I could see it.

"What did you want to see?"

"Anything you want Nina." I answered happily. "Anything at all."

"I'll borrow Mom's car and be over in a little bit." She said.

We hung up our phones and I sat there for a moment, basking in the glow of success. She was going to go out with me. On a date no less. Things really were looking up.

Finally I stood up and headed upstairs to take a shower and get dressed.

The movie we decided on was one that I really had no desire to see, Flashdance. But I didn't let this bother me. I would have gone to see a four-hour documentary on the history of the ice cube tray with her if that was what she'd wanted. We took my car, leaving her Mom's parked at the curb in front of my house.

We talked of inconsequential things on the way; the storm we'd experienced, our hopes for college scholarships, how our ROP jobs were going. It was the first time since we'd come back together that there was no strain in the conversation. Our words flowed easily out of our mouths, the friendship that we'd developed in the past finally manifesting itself once more. Nina giggled frequently as we chatted, even blushing a time or two at my remarks.

She seemed like she was regaining her old personality. It made me warm inside to look at her, to see her smile, to hear her laugh.

We took seats near the back of the nearly empty theater, setting down our popcorn and stowing our drinks. We reclined and munched and drank and waited for the movie to start. We talked of some of the things we'd done in the past. Going to the lake in the summer, studying during the school year, going skiing in the winter. The remember game. Just as the lights started to dim down in preparation for the ten minutes of previews that proceeded every movie, I turned to her.

"I'm glad you came tonight." I told her. "And I'm glad you gave me a second chance."

Her blue eyes stared at mine, her face forming a serious smile. "Me too." She told me.

About twenty minutes into the movie, while the dancers were dancing and the music was pounding from the Dolby system, I reached slowly out with my left hand, putting the palm over the back of Nina's hand. She looked at me for the briefest second, hesitation marring her face, and then she turned her hand over, grasping mine, hesitation turning to contentment. Her hand was soft and dainty, fragile in mine. After all I'd experienced since my return, after all the girls and women's bodies I'd enjoyed in every possible way, you wouldn't have thought I'd get excited over the simple holding of a hand in a movie theater. You wouldn't think so, but it was thrilling me to the core.

Later on she edged slightly closer to me, squeezing my hand a little. I was fumbling and unsure of myself, of how far to take this, but in the end I couldn't resist. I unclasped my hand from hers and put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened momentarily, probably in nervousness as opposed to hostility, and then she relaxed, allowing me to pull her against me. She gazed up at me dreamily for a second.

"I really love being with you Nina." I whispered to her.

"Thank you." She whispered back, nestling up against me, resting her head on my shoulder, making me happier than I'd ever been with any other person.

When the movie was over we walked hand in hand out of the theater into the frigid night. The sky had cleared of clouds, allowing the stars to shine in all their glory. The half moon drifted directly above us. Our breath puffed out before us and our cheeks turned red on contact with the air.

"Do you want to take a walk before we go back?" I asked her.

"Bill," She giggled. "It's freezing out here."

"Yep." I agreed. "So what do you say?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The theater was located in the downtown mall, near the river. We strolled off the grounds and towards the scenic bridge and the levee. Soon we were staring down at the running water, watching the moonlight shimmer off of it.

"Did you like the movie?" She asked me, nestling against me as we stood there, allowing me to feel her weight pushing at me through her heavy down jacket. I put my arm around her once again, drawing her closer. She came willingly.

Though I'd promised myself that I would always be honest with Nina, there were times when that promise could be broken. This was one of those times. "Oh yes." I told her. "It was a very good movie. That was a good choice."

She looked up at me, staring in my eyes. "Really?"

"Really." I assured her.

"I thought it sucked rocks." She informed me huffily. "We should've gone with 'All the Right Stuff'."

My jaw dropped for a second as I heard this and then I burst out laughing.

"What?" Nina asked, looking at me with amusement.

"I thought it sucked too." I told her. "I was just being polite because you picked it."

"I didn't pick it!" She said, laughing with me. "You did!"

"Only because I thought that was what you wanted to see."

"Why would you think I wanted to see that crap?" She asked, shaking her head in exasperation.

"Because every woman wants to see that crap." I told her. "It's a movie made for women."

She turned towards me, not drawing her body away, but pushing it against mine. We were zipper to zipper with our down jackets, eye to eye. She let her hands slide down until they were nestled in the large pockets on my jacket. "I'm not most women Bill." She said softly, pulling me tighter. "You should know that by now."

"I guess I should." I answered, with a voice that was no longer steady.

Our eyes were only inches apart, our faces close enough so that I could feel her breath against me. The vapor from our exhalations combined, swirling together before drifting off into the night. I put my arms around her, feeling the curves of her body somewhere beneath all of the fabric and duck feathers she was adorned with. Our legs were pushing together. My body was tingling with anticipation and nervous desire. I was almost giddy with it.

Finally I leaned forward, moving slowly but deliberately, and touched my lips to hers. She did not resist, in fact she leaned into me, meeting me halfway. Her lips were cold and dry from the icy wind, but never had a pair felt so good against mine, never had my body reacted as it was reacting to hers. We slid our lips together softly, the kiss lasting less than ten seconds before we broke apart. But worlds suddenly changed in that ten seconds.

We continued to stare at each other for a long time after our lips parted.

"That was nice." Nina finally said, barely above a whisper.

"Very nice." I agreed.

"We've crossed a line." She told me. "I told myself that going out with you was a bad idea. That if I did, I would fall right back in love with you the way I was before. You haven't proved yourself to me yet Bill. You haven't proved that you're any different. You could be just putting on an act. After all, you must have a lot of charm to do the things you've done."

"Nina, I…"

"Shhh." She hushed. "Let me finish."

"Okay." I said.

"In the end I simply couldn't stay away from you. Except for a few rumors from school, I have no proof that you're any different. I have no proof that you've given up your old ways. Your shining ability among the girls at school was your discretion. Your downfall was that it was they who were indiscreet.

"And I was right Bill."

"Right?" I asked.

"I fell right back in love with you. When you held my hand in the theater I almost melted. When you put your arm around me I did. And when you kissed me just now." He she took a deep breath, blowing a large plume of vapor into the night. "I love you Bill. I was starting to get over you but now I'm head over heels again. You tell me you're different now, that you've changed. I certainly hope so Bill. I certainly hope I'm not being played for a fool."

"You're not Nina." I answered her. "I swear you're not. I love you. I really do."

"You hold my heart in your hand now Bill."

I nodded. "Yes I do. And I promise you won't regret giving it to me."

"I'll hold you to that." She said, leaning forward for another kiss.

Al Steiner--July 16, 1999 Chapter 9 ->

Chapter 9

Tender is the night

When you hold your baby tight

Tender is the moment

Tender is the night

JACKSON BROWNE

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, to 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 Datsun's heater tackle the task of warming up the interior of the car. 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 told her.

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 answered.

"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 thirty-eight when she had me, my Dad was forty. 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 nodded. "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 that 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 told her, 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 that 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 told me. "And it's good to see snow on the ground. I'm so sick of rain all the goddam 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 told her. "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." I said. "Actually I am in a very good mood."

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

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

"Stitches." She nodded. "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?" She asked.

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." I replied.

"Do you think it worked?" She asked.

"Time will tell." I shrugged. "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 motherfucking 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 told me. "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?" She asked.

"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." Tracy 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 that was 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 nodded. "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."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob that 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 that 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 that we'd 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 the Raley's 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 that often led to arguments.

We had trouble talking together at times. She had no understanding for the bizarre hours that 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 that 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 that 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, that 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 that 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.

It was plain that she wished more also. I could feel desire radiating off of her in waves when we hugged or kissed each other. I could see the unmistakable shine in her eyes, feel the trembling of her body. But I could also feel her fear. Fear of emotions and feelings that she had never felt before, perhaps had never even suspected before.

Our slow pace meant that when we DID progress, the weight that each new act carried was doubled or even tripled when it was allowed to take place. That made each one special and allowed it to be burned forever into my memory as well as hers.

On Christmas Eve she came over in the early afternoon, wheeling her Mom's car to the curb in front of the house. Tracy was out visiting some old friends and my parents were out doing some last minute shopping (something that was somewhat of a tradition for my parents). Nina carried a small, wrapped package into the house with her.

"I figured that since we won't get to see each other tomorrow," She told me as we walked to the couch and sat down. "That I should give you this today."

I took the package from her. "You didn't have to get me anything." I told her.

"Now what kind of girlfriend would I be," She asked, "If I didn't buy you a Christmas present?"

I looked up at her, seeing that she was blushing strongly. That was the first time that she'd referred to herself in such a manner.

"Thank you." I said gently. "Can I open it?"

"What ELSE would you do with it?" She wanted to know.

I grinned. "My we're getting mouthy." I said, sliding my finger under the seam of the neatly wrapped package.

"Who do you think I learned it from?" She shot back.

I opened the package. It was a new leather wallet with my initials engraved upon it. A gift that had probably cost her thirty dollars at least; a small fortune for a teenager in that time period.

"Nina, you can't afford this." I admonished, unfolding it, inhaling the scent of fresh leather.

"I know." She said conspiratorially. "That's why I shoplifted it."

I laughed, reflecting again that there had once been a Nina completely incapable of telling a joke. "Thank you." I told her, "It's very nice, much nicer than the Velcro job I have now." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the corner of the mouth.

"Mmmm." She said, her eyes sparkling. "Maybe I'll go shoplift some more if this is what I get."

"Maybe you should." I answered, kissing her more firmly on the lips.

She kissed me back enthusiastically at first and then her circuit breaker kicked in. She pulled away, flushed. A brief moment of awkward silence ensued.

"Wait here." I finally told her.

I went upstairs to my room and opened my closet door. I rummaged around for a moment until I retrieved what I was after. When I returned, I handed a wrapped package to her.

"For me?" She asked with mock innocence.

"For you." I confirmed.

She took the package, which was the size of a paperback book, and hefted it a few times, testing the weight.

"Kind of light." She remarked, jokingly.

"But it's straight from the heart." I assured her.

She began to tear into the clumsy wrap job (wrapping presents is something I've never been able to do well, in either life), revealing the plain white box beneath. When the wrapping paper was a balled up mess on the coffee table she began working on the tape that I'd placed heavily over the lid. When, after considerable effort, the lid came loose, she began pawing through the tissue paper in the box.

At last she pulled a small object encased in clear plastic from the pile. It was a glass cylinder, slightly larger in diameter than a quarter, with metal threads on the bottom. She held it up to her eyes.

"It's…" She started doubtfully, her face scrunching in confusion. "It's…," A pause as she gathered her thoughts. "What is it Bill?"

"It's a forty amp fuse." I said proudly.

"A forty amp fuse?"

"Right." I told her, nodding enthusiastically. "With that baby in your household fuse box, you'll damn near have to burn down the house before it blows. You can hook up Christmas lights, a toaster, and a dryer all to the same circuit if you want."

She looked at me for a moment and then back at the fuse. "A forty amp fuse." She said slowly. "Well it's… uh…"

I was going to keep up the charade a little bit longer but I couldn't contain myself. I burst out laughing. Nina looked at me and finally realized I was putting one over on her.

"You asshole." She giggled, throwing the fuse at me. It bounced off my shoulder and clattered to the coffee table.

"I'm sorry." I said, still chuckling. "But you should have seen your face."

"How would you like it if I gave you a box of tampons?" She asked. "I could tell you that 'these babies will keep your flow contained for damn near six hours in an emergency'."

I looked up at her in stunned disbelief for a moment. That was, without a doubt, the raunchiest joke I'd ever heard her crack. My laughter bubbled up again, spewing from my mouth. She joined me, slapping playfully at my arm once. Finally I took her in my arms and gave her another kiss. The seriousness of the kiss cut our laughter off like a valve.

When we broke apart once again, both of us tingling, I reached into the pocket of my sweater and pulled out another clumsily wrapped package, this one only three inches square. This one was the REAL gift. As I'd predicted, my stocks had risen considerably after the news article about the glove shortage. They'd inflated enough for me to cash out a few and do some reckless spending.

"Here." I said, handing it to her. "This one might be a little more pleasing."

She took it, continuing to eye me for a moment. Finally she began to pull the wrapping paper off. The package beneath was a velvet covered, hinged box from a jewelry store. She lifted the lid and stared at what was inside.

"Oh Bill." She said softly. "It's beautiful."

Inside the box was a gold pendant in the shape of a heart. Its surface was studded with small diamonds. A gold chain was attached to it and stowed under the display partition in the box.

"I'm glad you like it." I told her seriously.

"Bill, this looks very expensive." She said, fingering it lightly.

"It wasn't too bad." I said dismissively. "I was glad to get it for you. Do you know why?"

"Why?" She asked.

"Because I love you Nina." I said.

She looked at me, her face melting, a tear forming in her eye. "I love you too Bill." She said softly. "More than anything."

We continued to stare at each other for a moment, neither of us sure what to do, both of us feeling the tingling of electricity that was building between us. I finally broke the spell by asking, "Why don't you put it on? See how it looks."

"Sure." She said, taking her eyes from me and concentrating on the gift in the box.

She extricated the necklace and pendant, gave them a quick look, and then handed them to me. "Can you put it on me?" She asked.

I took it from her and undid the clasp. She leaned forward towards me, grabbing her hair and holding it away from her neck. Our faces were less than six inches apart. Taking the ends of the chain in each of my hands I put my arms around her neck, resting my forearms on her shoulders. She gazed up at me lovingly as my trembling hands attempted to put the little clasp into the little loop. It was not as easy as it looked.

"Take your time." Nina said breathlessly, pushing herself closer to me.

I nodded, finally getting the two ends to fit together.

"There." I said, trying to pull away. But she dropped her hands from her hair and put them around my back, holding me firmly to her, refusing to let go.

"I'll look later." She said, pulling me against her.

Our lips met in a soft kiss and her arms squeezed me tight, allowing me to feel her chest pushing against mine. Instead of touching her lips to mine and then withdrawing as she usually did, she kept them there, pressing them, letting them taste me. For the first time since our first embrace by the river I felt the tip of her tongue reach out hesitantly, touching the underside of my upper lip. Her tongue was warm and soft, wet with her saliva as it touched briefly and pulled back into her mouth.

Emboldened by her first tentative move, she did it again, letting her tongue slide completely between my lips. I touched the tip of it with my own and our taste buds connected. At the touch she trembled in my arms, compelling me to pull her tighter. She pulled her tongue back again and then slid it in a little deeper, seeking and meeting mine, allowing them to swirl together for an instant. I gave her tongue a little suck with my mouth and she hummed against me, driving it further into my mouth.

We broke apart for a second and looked into each other's eyes. I saw wanting in hers, excitement, the excitement of new discovery.

"I always thought it would be gross." She said softly, her breath tickling the wetness of my lips.

"Gross?" I asked, leaning in and kissing her lightly, dabbing at her lip with my tongue, before withdrawing.

"Yes." She nodded. "French kissing. I always thought it would be gross. Touching someone else's tongue with yours. But it's not."

"I guess it depends on who the someone is." I said.

She leaned forward again. "Maybe that's it."

We resumed our kiss, letting our tongues glide together, holding each other tightly. Her hands came up to the back of my neck and began caressing me there, lightly rubbing with the fingertips, lightly scratching with the fingernails. The sensation sent chills down my spine and I felt myself becoming erect with frightening speed. I let my own hands drop down to her lower back, my fingers feeling the muscle and skin, the softness that existed beneath the material of her sweater.

We continued to do this for more than ten minutes, our tongues probing each other's mouths, our hands caressing. Nina seemed to relish it, to draw strength from it. She quickly learned what I liked and what I did not like and adapted her technique. She learned not to cram her tongue down my throat but to teasingly swirl the tip, gradually increasing the depth. I sucked gently on her lips for a moment, making them swell and then she did the same to mine.

My dick, which had been releived by nothing but my own hand since my afternoon with Cindy and Maggie, was straining in my jeans, begging to be released. It was accustomed to playing a more active role in the festivities once things reached this point. It ached to be ground into her body, to have her hand upon it. But this was not Cindy or Maggie, this was not Debbie or Steph or Anita or any of the other girls I'd bedded. This was Nina, who I loved and who I was not going to push anything upon. My pants would be kept firmly buttoned, at least until after she'd left.

When we finally broke apart a few minutes later I could feel the dull ache of blue balls in my groin. Nina looked up at me, her face still flushed, her eyes shining.

"Wow." She commented, straightening herself on the couch.

I nodded, trying to adjust myself in my pants by shifting my body back and forth. It was a poor job at best.

"So that was 'making out', right?" She asked me.

I chuckled. "Yes." I told her. "That was making out."

"Mmmm." She said clinically. "I can see why people like to do it."

"Yes." I nodded. "It is rather enjoyable, isn't it?"

"And now that we're, uh, together, we can do that whenever we want to?"

"We should probably wait until we're alone," I said. "But yes. Anytime."

She smiled. "Having a boyfriend is pretty cool." She said.

Nina left early the next morning to visit some relatives in Idaho with her parents. I would not see her for the next three days. When she returned we were only able to get together for a few hours on two different days. On one of those days we found the time and the privacy to 'make out' for a while but it did not match the passion of that first time. Not that it was disappointing you understand.

We made plans to get together on New Year's Eve, to see in the beginning of 1984 together. Tracy would be going to a party with some friends (and borrowing my car to do it so she wouldn't risk riding with a drunk driver) and my parents would be at a New Year's Eve party of their own. I had a twelve pack of beer that Tracy had scored for me and a joint of some good greenbud that Mike had scored for me. We planned to sit and watch all of the stupid shows that were on, smoke grass, drink beer, and maybe make out a little. Though it may sound unimaginably dull to some, I was looking forward to it greatly.

About six o'clock that evening, as Tracy and my parents were frantically scrambling around the house trying to get ready to go, Nina called me.

"Bill," She told me sadly, getting right to the point. "I can't come over tonight."

"You can't?" I asked, disappointed, feeling almost betrayed in fact.

"I'm sorry." She said. "My parents told me I couldn't go out tonight. They were very firm about it too." She sighed. "I don't know what's gotten into them. They've never treated me like this before. Never!"

I was silent for a moment. I knew what was happening and I had known that it was coming eventually. As I said before, you simply cannot hide your activities from those that you lived with. Especially not when you had been in the habit of staying home all of the time and then you suddenly developed the urge to go out for hours at a time every day. I'd tried to bring this up to her on a few occasions but her reaction each time quickly taught me that it was a taboo subject. I knew I was simply going to have to wait until the subject came to a head. Well now it seemed as if that had happened.

"Nina." I told her. "Did your parents ask you where you wanted to go tonight before they said no?"

"Yes." She told me.

"And what did you tell them?"

"That some friends from school were having a party that I wanted to go to. I told them I wouldn't drink and everything and they still said no. No matter how much I…"

"Nina." I interrupted.

"What?"

"They know about us." I told her.

There was silence on the line for a moment. Finally, "No Bill, they can't. How could they know? I never tell them where I'm REALLY going when I come over to your house."

"Do you think your parents are stupid Nina?" I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle, but wanting to get this point across.

"No!" She said sharply, "But I don't see how…"

"Think about it." I told her. "You're a shy girl all of your life until you meet me. Suddenly you start going out and doing thing all of the time. They like me at first so they allow it. But then we have a falling out because of, well, you know. Anyway, you stop seeing me and go back to staying in the house all of the time. They tell you that you are never to see me again. For a while you don't. And then all of a sudden you start having things to do once more. You want to borrow their car all the time so you can go visit someone. No matter what you are telling them when you come over here, I doubt if they bought it more than twice. They have common sense Nina. They know about us."

"They DO NOT!" She yelled angrily. "They're just afraid of me being out on a night when everyone's drinking. I was careful Bill. They don't know about us and they won't find out!"

"Nina…"

"I'm sorry I can't come over." She said shortly. "If you'd like me too, I'll try and come over tomorrow."

"Of course I do Nina," I said. "But you're going to have to face…"

"There's nothing to face!" She insisted. "Do you want me to come over tomorrow or not?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Yes Nina," I said, more gently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll give you a call." She said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear. Before I'd even had a chance to tell her I loved her.

And so it came to pass that I spent New Year's Eve alone in my parent's house. The beer did not get drank, the pot did not get smoked. I went to bed around ten o'clock. I was too miserable to even masturbate.

When I woke up the next morning I was not surprised to find my parent's car missing from the garage. It was a New Year's eve tradition with them. They would get totally trashed at the school faculty party and take a cab home. The next morning they would not get out of bed until at least noon, at which point they would spend the rest of the afternoon bitching about their hangovers and swearing they were never going to drink again. In the early evening they would pile into Mom's car and drive to wherever Dad's car had been left the night before to retrieve it. Let me tell you, anyone who thinks of teachers as stoic, sober, square people never grew up with one in the house. In my experience Dad was more the rule than the exception. He was by no means an alcoholic but he sure liked to party on special occasions.

Tracy was already up when I went down to the kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper. She was not hung over since she had not had anything to drink the night before. Nothing like having a death sentence from fate hanging over you to keep you from driving a car while intoxicated. Too bad there wasn't some way we could do that to those that were arrested for drunk driving. It would probably drastically cut down on the repeat offender rate.

She asked how my night had gone and I told her about my conversation with Nina. She listened with concern.

"A classic case of denial." She told me when I'd finished. "But understandable. Remember Bill, she's still, for all of her maturity and sophistication, a seventeen-year-old. Seventeen year olds are always right."

"I know." I said. "I'm sure that deep down she knows that I'm right. She just doesn't want to face it, doesn't want to confront it because she'll then be forced into a confrontation with her parents. She's very untypical of a seventeen-year-old in that regard. She worships her parents and she still thinks they're smarter than she is."

"In all except for this." Tracy agreed. "If I was you I'd brace myself. I think this thing might be about to explode."

"I think you're probably right." I agreed.

Tracy then turned the conversation around to her REAL goal of the morning. She wanted to borrow my car again to go to a football party. I had nowhere to go so I told her she knew where the keys were. Less than twenty minutes later she was out the door.

Nina called a few minutes later and told me happily that her parents had raised no objections to her going out today. She almost gloated as she told me this. When I hung up from her my mood was improved greatly. I would get to see her today. That always made me happy. And maybe I was the one who was wrong about her parents. Maybe they really HAD been concerned about her being out on New Year's Eve. After all, Nina knew her parents better than I did, didn't she?

I was about to head upstairs to shower when Dad came staggering into the kitchen. He was wearing his robe tied loosely around him. His hair was a tangled mess and his face was unshaven with eyes that looked downright painful.

"Ohhh God." He moaned, heading for the cabinet. As he passed I could smell the odor of stale booze around him; a smell my paramedicine career had made me intimately familiar with. "Never again."

"Little too much to drink last night?" I asked him as he fumbled a large tumbler out of the cabinet and almost dropped it.

"Uhhh!" He groaned, turning on the sink and filling the glass. "Don't ever drink Bill." He advised me. "Ever."

"I'll take that under consideration." I told him, watching as he downed the glass of water in three gulps. He refilled it and then went to another cabinet for some aspirin.

When I finished my shower and came back downstairs he was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around him, watching the first of many football games. He seemed semi-catatonic and I could not imagine that he was actually seeing anything on the screen. I smiled in amusement, reflecting that if I'd been a normal teenager I would have been struck with the screaming horrors at the idea of my girlfriend coming over while my Dad was in his bathrobe on the couch.

"Nina's coming over in a little bit." I told him, just to give him fair warning.

"Uh." He grunted, his head never turning.

When Nina arrived we went up to my room. This was not out of desire to make out or out of embarrassment at the state of my father but simply to keep the noise level downstairs, where both my parents were, to a minimum. They probably weren't in the mood for excessive chatter.

We sat on my bed talking while a Simon and Garfunkle album played on the turntable at low volume. Since my return I'd re-discovered the fact that most music from the eighties really sucked. This was probably due to the advent of MTV, which had made it necessary for a band to LOOK good on camera instead of to produce good music. Since I could not hear music from the nineties, when this fad had balanced out a bit, I had turned, in desperation, to listening to music from the seventies and sixties. To my surprise and delight much of it was actually pretty good and even deep. I'd even managed to get Nina interested in some of it.

We were discussing the track called "The Boxer" when the sound of the doorbell ringing from downstairs registered on my consciousness.

"So you see," I explained. "He's a musician that tried to make it in New York and failed the first time. That's what the lyrics basically say. It's the last verse that really sums it up, tells you that he was defeated but that he remains a fighter from the experience."

"It's actually like poetry." Nina, an aficionado of poetry told me.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's what any really good song lyric is like. That's what they should strive for. That's what a lot of the crap they're putting out these days is lacking in. They simply try to repeat the same phrase over and over while they dance and come up with a bitchin beat from their synthesized drums. That's not music, that just…"

I stopped suddenly, hearing the sound of raised voices drifting up from below. My Dad's was one of them. He was trying to patiently explain something to someone but the someone in question kept overriding his words. When the words 'where is she' drifted up from the owner of the other voice, Nina's ears perked up.

"Dad!" She said suddenly. "That's Dad!"

"Oh shit." I mumbled, hearing MY dad start to raise his own voice.

"What do we do?" Nina asked me. "What is my dad doing here?"

"I guess we'd better go find out." I said, already knowing. "Before our dads start exchanging punches with each other."

"Bill?" She asked, looking really scared now.

"C'mon." I said, standing up. "My dad is younger but your dad was in the war. I don't want MY dad to get hurt."

"Bill!" Came Dad's voice from downstairs. "Would you and Nina come down here for a minute?"

"C'mon." I told her. "The jig is apparently up."

"Oh God Bill." She said, shaking her head.

When we got downstairs we found my dad, still dressed in his robe, still unshaven and looking like shit, facing off against Nina's Dad, who was clean shaven and dressed in slacks and a sweater, over the threshold of the front door. When he saw Nina he took an angry step forward.

"Get your butt down here girl!" He yelled. "How dare you tell me you were going to visit a friend and then take our car over here to this slimy scumbag's house!"

"Dad!" Nina yelled back, not moving forward.

"Now just a minute!" Dad put in angrily. I could tell he was reaching the end of his fuse. "Where do you get off coming to my house and calling my son…"

"Your son is the scum of the earth!" Mr. Blackmore put in. "And you Sir, are the man who raised him with the values of a rutting pig. That makes you a rutting pig in my book and I have no further words to pass with the likes of you. I have come for my daughter before your son violates her in some god-forsaken way. I only hope and pray it hasn't happened yet. Nina, get over here now!"

"Dad!" Nina cried, tears on her cheeks now. "What are you doing? I love Bill!"

"Love?!" He screamed, turning to me. "You are the lowest form of life on this earth young man. Nina, NOW!" He commanded.

She opened her mouth to say something else but I spoke first.

"You'd better go with him." I told her.

"What?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd betrayed her.

"Nothing can be accomplished right now." I said. "This situation can only get worse. Go with him and try to talk to him. Tell him what I'm like."

"I KNOW what you're like." Mr. Blackmore told me. "I know exactly what you're like."

"Now you listen here!" Dad yelled, taking a step forward. "My son…"

"Dad." I said sharply, using my adult voice. "Let it go. It'll be all right."

Dad paused with his mouth open. He didn't look like he wanted to let it go and I was absurdly touched by this. My Dad, one of the mildest mannered people I knew, seemed on the verge of violence because someone was slandering his son's reputation.

"It's okay Dad." I told him again. "Let it go."

"Get out here Nina!" Mr. Blackmore said again. "Now!"

"Bill?" Nina asked again, looking miserable.

"Go Nina." I told her. "Talk to him. It's for the best. But wait until he's cooled down a little. And remember that I love you."

"Love?" He repeated. "You truly are…"

"Hey!" I barked, taking a step towards him, my eyes boring into his. It had the desired effect, he stopped talking and looked at me. "You have what you came for." I told him. "Nina is leaving with you, right Nina?"

"Yes." She cried.

"You don't need to stand here and continue to throw insults at me. Just go."

We stared at each other for a moment and I could see in his eyes that he was starting to glimmer that he wasn't dealing with an ordinary teenager. Finally he nodded. "C'mon Nina." He told her. "Let's go."

She gave me one last look and then followed her father out the door. She climbed into her mother's car while Mr. Blackmore climbed into his. A second later they were gone, leaving Dad and I standing in the doorway.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"Apparently Mr. Blackmore doesn't care too much for you?" He asked mildly.

I suppressed a smile. "Apparently not." I agreed.

He shut the door and looked at me for a moment. He rubbed his temples. "What are you going to do now?" He asked.

"Give it a few days." I said. "That's what I'm going to do. Hopefully Nina will be able to bring him around to at least tolerating me."

"And if she doesn't?"

I shrugged. "I love her Dad." I said. "I plan to marry her some day. I don't think her Dad is strong enough to keep us apart. One way or another we'll be together. Although I'd prefer to be with her with her Dad's consent. If she can't bring him around I guess I'll go over and have a talk with him. Maybe that will help."

"Or maybe he'll shoot you dead on his porch." Dad suggested half-seriously.

"Ahh Dad," I said. "At least that way I'd die poetically. In the name of love. Wouldn't that be glorious?"

Dad continued to stare at me, not even cracking a smile at my glory of love line. Finally he said, "Bill, don't you think it's about time you had a little talk with ME?"

"A talk?" I asked.

"A talk." He confirmed. "I should have brought this up before now and I really wish that the straw that broke the camel's back hadn't happened on a day that I was hung over, but I really think it's time."

"What are you talking about Dad?" I asked weakly.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." He told me. "It happened nearly two years ago now. One day you were Bill the underachiever. A nasty, typical teenager that didn't want anything to do with his parents, that hated his sister, that wouldn't listen to a word anyone told him. The very next day you were cleaning your room, improving your grades, making great strides to improve your relationship with Tracy, and…" He paused, "And you became somewhat of a hit with the girls. Much more of a hit than I've ever seen anyone be, adult or teenager. Something happened to you, something big, and it changed you completely. Sometimes you seem very adult in manner. VERY adult. In fact you almost seem like someone who has seen a little bit of everything. At the same time you've made frighteningly accurate predictions about the stock market and events in the news. So how about we start to talk about it?"

"Dad," I started, not sure what I was going to say.

"Bill." He told me. "It's time. I can't go on like this any longer. Tell me what happened to you."

I frowned, looking at him. What to do?

Finally I came to a decision. "Dad," I asked. "You ever smoke grass?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Don't give me the standard Dad answer." I told him. "Tell me the truth. You grew up in the sixties. You went to college during the summer of love. You used to attend anti-war protests. Mom told me you burned your draft card and got arrested for it. I've seen pictures of you when you were in college. You looked like a hippie. So tell me, have you ever smoked grass?"

"Of course." He told me. "I used to smoke it quite a bit in college. But what does that…"

"Meet me in your den." I told him. "And I'll tell you everything."

"But…"

"Just do it Dad. I have a joint upstairs. We need to smoke it together."

"You have a JOINT?" He asked sternly. "Bill, how dare you…"

"Dad." I said mildly. "As you pointed out, I'm not a typical teenager. If you want to hear what I have to say I think you're going to want to smoke some pot first. It's quite a story."

"I can hear your story just fine without smoking any pot, thank you." He told me. "And I want you to march right upstairs and throw away whatever marijuana you have in this house and never bring it in here again. What did you think…"

"Dad," I interrupted. "What I have to tell you is pretty mind-blowing, okay? You're going to need to put aside your parental attitude for a while.

You've mentioned that I act like an adult at times. Well this is one of those times. If I'm going to tell you this story you're going to need to speak with me as an equal, not a teenager. In order to speak with me as an equal we need to BE equal. Smoking pot with me will serve that purpose." I smiled. "Besides, it'll probably get rid of your hangover."

He stared at me for a moment, giving the extended version of THE LOOK. Finally he nodded. "I guess I'll do about anything to get rid of this hangover." He said. "Meet me in there quick before my better judgement makes me beat your ass and ground you."

"Right." I said, heading upstairs.

We closed ourselves in to Dad's den, locked the door, and I produced the joint. I lit it with a lighter, took a good hit, and then passed it over to Dad. He took it from my fingers and looked at it for a minute.

"Bill, this is nuts." He said. "I haven't done this in fifteen years. You're my son for God's sake. Fathers are not supposed to smoke Mary Jane with their sons."

"Buds Dad." I told him, exhaling my hit. "We call it buds these days. Take a hit."

He gave me one more doubtful look, sniffed a little at the joint, and finally put it to his lips. He inhaled, making the tip glow and then coughed a pungent cloud of smoke out.

"It tastes like a skunk." He complained. "Bill, I don't think…"

"It's supposed to taste like that." I told him. "That means its good shit. Hit it again. Slower this time."

He tried again. This time he managed to hold the hit for about fifteen seconds before he coughed it out. He passed the joint back to me and I quickly took another hit. When I gave it back to him he tried to refuse it.

"Hit it Dad." I insisted. "If you want to hear this story you gotta be stoned. That's the rules."

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He muttered but took the joint anyway.

By the fourth hit Dad was starting to mellow. He stopped trying to refuse the joint when I passed it to him. In fact he even began making jokes.

"Don't Bogart that joint my friend." He told me when I took an especially long hit. He then began chuckling.

"Wouldn't dream of it Dad." I told him, feeling the drug going straight to my head.

"Wow." He said after exhaling another hit. "They've certainly made some improvements in grass since I used to smoke it. It used to take us four or five joints to get to where I am now."

"The miracles of modern horticulture." I told him and he started cracking up hysterically. I joined him, marveling that he was right, it was pretty freaking weird to get stoned with your Dad.

When the joint was burned down to a roach and both of us were flying high, I turned to my father.

"Okay." I told him. "Are you sure that you want to hear this? What I'm about to tell you will change your entire opinion of me. You will no longer be able to see me as the son you've known."

He took a deep breath. "I don't see you that way now Bill." He told me seriously. "Like I said, you changed suddenly one day. I have to say it's been for the better, but you haven't been the son I knew in quite some time.

I still love you of course, don't get me wrong, but you weren't the same after that day. So give. Tell me what happened to you."

"If I tell you," I said. "You can never tell anyone else this story. No one, never! I would prefer you not even tell Mom although I would understand if you did. The consequences of anyone finding out what happened to me are potentially severe."

"The consequences?" He asked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I said, telling him the same thing I'd told Tracy, "That I possess knowledge that people would literally kill for. That they would stop at nothing to possess."

He raised his eyebrows a bit at that one.

"You're thinking I'm having delusions of grandeur, right?"

"It had occurred to me." Dad admitted.

"I'm not." I told him. "Remember the stocks Dad? Remember how I knew a particular stock that was going to skyrocket at a particular time?"

"Yes." He nodded. "Are you trying to tell me that you can see the future Bill? Because I'm not sure that I can really accept that."

"I'm not seeing the future Dad." I told him. "I have lived through the future."

He looked at me for a moment, blinking. "Lived through the future?"

I began to talk.

Chapter 10

Momma loves her baby

Daddy loves you too

And the sea may look warm to you baby

And the sky may look blue

But ooooh Baby…

PINK FLOYD

Our conversation lasted for nearly an hour. Dad listened to me with rapt attention, interrupting me only to ask questions when something I'd said required qualification. He didn't seem to have any problem believing my tale, leading me to believe that he'd suspected some vague version of the truth the whole time. When I got to the part about Tracy dying in the car accident and fate continually trying to reclaim her his face paled. He picked up the roach and held out his hand for the lighter. I handed it to him and he took a mighty hit.

Dad was strangely un-offended by the fact that I'd gone on a minor rampage among the high school girls.

"I can see how the temptation to do that would be overwhelming." He told me knowingly. "You're over that phase now? Except for Nina?"

"Yes." I told him. "Believe me, I've learned my lesson. Being dropped off in the middle of the hood will do that for you. And Nina's different. I love her. She may be seventeen but she's got the maturity of someone much older. Like I told you, I plan to marry her someday."

He was however, like Tracy, strangely offended by my affair with Anita.

"I can't believe you would do something like that." He told me, shaking his head. "And I can't believe SHE would do something like that."

"Dad," I said, "At the time I started the relationship with her I was thirty-two. Who else should I be sleeping with? And don't blame Anita for anything. I found her weakness and exploited it in order to seduce her. Remember, in my first life she never tried anything with me. Only when I pushed her buttons in the right way did she act."

"And she fell in love with you." He said. "So much in love that she didn't meet and marry her intended husband."

"Like I said Dad," I told him. "I've learned a lot since I came back. One of the things I learned was that I was not quite as mature as I thought I was. And that I didn't know nearly as much about love as I thought. But I'm learning."

"And Anita?" He asked. "What of her?"

"Hopefully," I said, "My little commando raid on her car did the trick. If not, I'll just have to come up with something else. Like I said, fate WANTS Anita and Jack to be together so my little nudge probably worked."

He nodded, looking at me. "And you told Tracy all of this?" He asked.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Do you think that was wise?" He asked me cautiously. "Tracy is only eighteen. Are you sure she fully understands the consequences of not keeping her mouth shut about this?"

"I think so." I told him. "Tracy is pretty smart in case you haven't noticed."

"Oh I have." He nodded.

"And like she pointed out, she had a right to the information. My most important goal from the very start was Tracy's survival. That remains my most important goal. I thought that she would probably heed my warnings a little better if she knew exactly what she was dealing with. That meant telling her. I still shudder when I think of her almost getting into a car with her boyfriend that night. She almost did that because she didn't know the source of the information I was giving her. I couldn't take the chance that would happen again. She needed to be told for her own protection."

Dad nodded soberly. "I guess you're right." He said, rubbing his temples again. "This is all pretty "mind-blowing", as you promised. It's hard to imagine that in some alternate time-line I've lost my daughter and I'm a victim's rights advocate. And what about that Bill?" He suddenly asked. "Is anybody going to suffer because I'm not doing that? Is any good that I did in the other life going to be left undone?"

I looked at him, knowing what he was going through. It was the same thing I went through when I first got back to 1982. Your mind tried to deal with all of the possible ramifications for your actions. Sometimes you had to make unpleasant decisions or conclusions. The loss of my daughter Becky was one such thing.

"I don't really know Dad." I answered. "After Tracy died and after the asshole that killed her was given a suspended sentence so he could play football, you and Mom turned your grief and anger into a full scale assault.

The group you joined helped increase the penalty for first time drunk driving, it helped raise the drinking age to twenty-one nationwide, and it helped pass mandatory sentencing laws in cases of vehicular manslaughter. Will all of that still get done without you?" I shrugged. "Probably. Like I told you, fate seems to try to keep things in line based on whatever pattern has been determined."

"But what if doesn't Bill?" He asked. "What if somewhere down the line someone dies because I haven't been a part of something that I was supposed to be part of? What if those laws don't get passed or they don't get passed at the same time and some drunk driver who otherwise would have chosen a different path or would have been in jail goes out and kills someone?"

"That might happen Dad." I told him. "And if it does there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. Nor should you blame yourself or me for it. If it's any comfort to you, you will probably never even know if such a thing does happen."

"But maybe I should join this group anyway." He said. "Maybe since I'm meant to do that I should go ahead and do it."

"Maybe." I agreed. "But it won't be the same. Being an advocate was a frustrating, agonizing process for you and Mom. Trying to get anything done was like trying to erode a rock by spitting on it. The only thing that kept you going year after year was your grief and anger over Tracy's death. Tracy is not dead Dad, and hopefully she won't be dead anytime soon. I doubt you can duplicate the drive you had without that factor thrown in."

"But…"

"Dad." I said. "I've learned that you can't change the world with this gift. All you can do is try to change a few things around you and even that is difficult and sometimes impossible. Our destiny has been altered because of my interference and we have Tracy when she should be dead. Fate will hopefully accept the consequences of that and adjust itself accordingly. I'm confident that that will happen, okay? If there are some minor changes from this interference there's nothing that you or I could do about them. I couldn't very well have let Tracy die just because there was a possibility that someone else down the road would get hurt or killed.

"I told Tracy not too long ago that I was not the type of person to carelessly hurt someone in my own self-interest just because I didn't know the person getting hurt. I stand by that statement but, unfortunately you sometimes have to take that risk anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, do you understand?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I think so."

"Look at it this way." I told him. "Remember the story I told you about the kid that was choking on the hot dog?"

He nodded. "The one that Nina wrote you up for saving."

"Right." I said. "I saved that kid's life in that timeline. He hasn't even been born yet but I'm scheduled to save his life. What is going to happen when that kid chokes on that hot dog and Bill, paramedic extradonaire, is not there to save him because Bill never became a paramedic in the first place?"

"I suppose some other paramedic will show up at the call." He said.

"Right." I nodded. "Now modesty aside, I was a pretty damn good paramedic. There were others at the company that were not as good at it. There were some that were damn incompetent in fact. Suppose one of them shows up. Suppose they do not clue in to the fact that the kid is choking and don't clear his airway in time?"

"Then he'll die." Dad answered.

"Maybe." I nodded. "But you see, I'm inclined to believe that this kid will live. No matter how incompetent the medic that shows up is, he or she will attempt to put in a breathing tube. When someone is not breathing, that is what you do. So even if the rest of the clues don't inform him or her that they are dealing with an airway obstruction they will still put a laryngoscope into the kid's mouth at some point and try to put a tube down. At that point they will not be able to help but see that there is a large piece of hot dog in his trachea and they will remove it.

"Now it is possible that the extra minute or so that this might take will mean the difference between life and death for the kid, but I doubt it. This kid is meant to live and he probably will. Those drunk driving laws were meant to get passed and they probably will. And if either of those things don't work out this way, all I can say is that I was acting as I thought was best. And that's what you should say too."

We sat quietly for a few minutes while Dad digested all of this. Finally he looked up at me.

"You were right about my opinion of you changing." He told me. "I'll be forced to think of you as an adult now. An adult with opinions and ethics based on years of learning. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm going to have to stop thinking of you as a son and start thinking of you as an equal. I don't have anything else to teach you."

"Dad," I said, "I still am your son. Everything that I am, everything that I was is based on the way you raised me. My moral code, my ethics, all of that is from you and Mom. Sure, some of it took place in an alternate time-line but it was still you and Mom and the part that really counted was the part I learned long before I was even a teenager. You're still my Dad and you always will be."

"I never thought I'd have a son," He told me, "Who was only six years younger than me."

I laughed. "And I never thought I'd sit down and smoke a joint with my Dad either. But there you have it."

"There you have it." He repeated.

"What about Mom?" I asked next.

"What about her?" He said.

"Are you going to tell her all of this? Or would you like me to tell her?"

He took a deep breath. "What do you think?" He asked.

"To be honest Dad, I really don't know. I'm not sure Mom would care too much for the knowledge that her son is only three years younger than she is.

She especially wouldn't care for the part about the teenaged girls or Anita."

"Oh she knows about the teenaged girls." Dad assured me. "You didn't really think you were putting one over on anybody, did you?"

"No." I said. "I gradually came to the realization that my actions were not as secret as I thought they were. What I meant was that she wouldn't care for the knowledge that her thirty-two year old son was doing those things."

"You're probably right." He said. "And I imagine she had more than just a simple suspicion about Anita and you. She probably didn't want to face up to it, but I'm sure she had her suspicions."

I nodded, feeling shame and embarrassment at the thought that my mother knew about my sexual exploits.

"How about this?" Dad said. "Why don't we keep your secret between us for the time being. I don't see any good that could come of telling her and I can think of several bads that could come of it. If, at some point in the future, a reason to tell her develops then we'll sit down and have a talk with her."

"Sounds good Dad." I told him and then smiled. "Did Mom used to smoke pot with you back in college?"

He chuckled. "You know your Uncle Dave, Mom's brother?"

"Of course." I said.

"The Uncle Dave that is the conservative republican lobbyist for the insurance industry?"

"Yes."

Dad smiled. "He used to sell us the pot back in college. Pretty good shit for that time too."

I did not hear from Nina over the next two days. She didn't call me, come over, send a carrier pigeon, or send up smoke signals. I had no way of knowing if she was making any headway with her parents.

The Saturday afternoon before the start of school Tracy flew back to California. We all gave her hugs and she was admonished by my Mother to keep in touch. Dad and I had discussed Tracy and had seen no real reason to tell her that Dad was in on my secret. As her plane climbed into the sky she still thought she was alone in her knowledge of her brother's special difference.

First thing Monday morning, the first day of school of 1984, I took up position near the front of the school where Nina's mother dropped her off. It was snowing once again, a light flurry with little wind, and I stood unobtrusively near some parked cars, my hood pulled tightly over my head. Kids, dejected to be back at school so soon, walked to and fro providing me with camoflaugh. Ten minutes before class started Mrs. Blackmore pulled her car to the curb and Nina, dressed in the same down jacket she wore on the night of our first kiss, hopped out. She gave a half-hearted wave to her mother and began heading up the walkway where Richie Fairview and I had met so long ago.

When Mrs. Blackmore pulled away from the curb I broke into a run, catching up with Nina in less than ten seconds, just as she entered the quad.

"Nina." I called, feeling nervous at the reception I was going to receive. Was she mad at me? Had her parents talked her into abandoning me?

She turned at the sound of her name and I slowed to a walk, my eyes searching her face.

"Bill!" She said happily, rushing to me. She threw her arms around me and we embraced tightly, right there on the quad, right in front of hundreds of students. More than a few of them gave us some strange looks but I didn't care.

"Oh God Bill." She told me, kissing my cheek and hugging me tighter. "I missed you so much. I'm so sorry for what happened. I'm so embarrassed that my dad came over there."

"It's okay Nina." I told her. "I'm just glad you still like me."

"Of course I like you Bill. I love you. Nothing is going to change that."

"I thought your parents might have, you know, soured you against me."

She snorted. "They tried Bill, believe me. I got even more speeches and lectures about 'guys like you'. To tell you the truth, I've been fighting with both of them since that day. Things aren't cheery in the Blackmore house, let me tell you."

We finally broke our embrace and began walking towards the lockers. "So am I to assume," I asked, "That you weren't able to make much headway with them?"

"Not an inch." She told me. "I talked to them until I was blue in the face.

I told them that you're different now, that you've changed, that I'm in love with you, that you're in love with me, but they are completely irrational on the subject. They think you're Lucifer Himself. " She shook her head in puzzlement and frustration. "And I have no idea why they're acting like that. It is SO unlike them. They're usually the calmest, most understanding people."

"So what happens now?" I asked her. "Will we be able to see each other at all? Except for school that is?"

"They've grounded me Bill." She told me. "Grounded. Me! I've never been grounded in my life. I didn't even know they knew how to ground someone! But I'm not allowed to leave the house after school at all. For anything!"

"Hmm." I nodded. "That does present a problem."

"During one of our arguments," She went on. "I told them that they could keep me in the house until I graduated if they wanted but that wouldn't matter. I told them I'd be eighteen soon and heading off to college. Then I could see anybody I wanted!"

"And they said?"

"They said you'd lose interest in me by then so it didn't matter." She replied. "But if you hadn't, if I still tried to see you that they would not pay for any college outside of Spokane! And that they would only pay for that if I came home promptly each day." She shook her head. "Bill, that's absolutely nuts! I can't believe they'd say something like that. I can't go to college in Spokane! There's no medical school here!"

This last statement brought home just how strongly Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore felt about this subject. Like Nina had said, it was nuts. It was not the outpouring of a mind that was working a problem through rationally. Nina was their pride and joy, all that they lived for. To threaten to take away all that she hoped for just to keep her away from a certain boy, a certain boy that they'd once liked immensely, was mad.

"Nina?" I asked. "You said they developed this, uh, strong attitude about me right after you told them about my, uh, transgressions, right?"

"Right." She nodded.

"And they've never acted this strongly about anything before?"

"Never." She assured me. "This is completely wacko behavior for them."

We had reached Nina's locker and I stood behind her as she opened it and stowed some of her books inside. My mind was reeling with something that was right on the tip of it. Some explanation for this problem that was simply eluding me.

"What year did your parents get married?" I asked Nina as some vestige of it finally broke free.

"What year?" She asked.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"1951." She told me. "Why do you ask?"

"Your Dad told me once, back before he hated me anyway, that he and your mom were high school sweethearts."

"They were." She said. "They dated all through high school. And then Dad dropped out to go to the war. They got married when he got back."

"But the war ended in 1945 Nina." I reminded her. "What happened in the six years after?"

She shrugged. "They told me that they kind of broke apart for a while and then found each other again. They never really explained it any further than that. I never really asked. Why?"

"But your Dad did come home right away after the war, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did." She searched her memory banks for a moment and then nodded more firmly. "Yes." She told me. "He did. I remember him saying that he worked construction for a while right after the war. He told me that once when we were driving by some of those ghetto houses on the south side. He told me he'd helped build them in '47 and that they were nice back then." She looked over at me. "What does all of this have to do with anything?"

"I don't think your parents really hate ME." I told her. "They hate people LIKE me. More than hate, they detest, they're disgusted by."

"What are you saying Bill?" She asked uncomfortably.

"There's something in their past." I said. "Something in those six years after the war. I'll bet anything that's it."

"I'm not sure what you mean." She told me.

"Neither am I." I said. "Neither am I. Your old man's a mailman now, right?"

"Yes." She said. "He's been doing that since just after he and mom got married. He's getting ready to retire soon."

"So he's probably got a pretty cushy route, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He does those nice houses out by the river."

"What time does he usually get home?"

"Why?" She asked suspiciously. "You're not thinking of talking to him are you? That would be a very bad idea Bill."

"What time Nina?" I asked.

"Bill." She shook her head. "Don't do it. Daddy will kill you if he sees your face. He won't listen to a thing you say."

"Nina." I told her. "I intend to marry you some day."

She froze in her tracks, staring at me. "Marry?"

"Yes." I said. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I think you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Am I wrong?"

She swallowed nervously. "No." She said simply.

"I'd rather do it with your dad's blessing. I NEED to talk to him. Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself. And don't worry about your dad, I won't hit him." I chuckled. "He'd probably kick my ass anyway. But we need to talk."

"Bill," She shook her head vehemently. "You don't know…"

"No I don't." I said. "But all the same, this is something that is going to need to be addressed. I need to talk to him. What office does he work from and what time does he get off work?"

She saw the determination in my eyes. To this day I don't know if she gave in because she had faith in me or simply because of blind hope. But finally she said, "The office on North Grant Avenue in River View. He's usually done around two o'clock and home by two-thirty."

"Thank you Nina." I said. "I'd better get to class before I'm late."

"Bill?" She said as I turned from her.

I paused. "Yeah?"

"Good luck."

"I'll need it." I assured her. "And I love you."

"I love you too."

My hand was now completely healed up and I was cleared to return to full work duties. That included ROP. On the way to the trauma center I made a brief stop at home. I pulled something from my closet and took it downstairs, depositing it in a closed, cool place. I then drove to the hospital.

"Hi Mindy." I told my supervisor when I walked through the door.

"Bill!" She greeted me happily, even going so far as to give me a brief hug.

"I'm glad you're back." She lowered her voice and whispered. "Now maybe we can get some damn work done around here."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her.

"How's the hand? All better?"

I held it up for her perusal. It bore a clean, sharp scar that is still with me to this day.

"Poor baby." She cooed. "I've reassigned you with Kelly. Hope you don't mind. I had a little talk with your instructor about the incident with Brett, as well as some others, and she agreed that maybe he would be happier in shipping."

"I see." I said, feeling a minor pang of sorrow for Brett. He'd really wanted to get hired. "Listen Mindy," I started.

"Oh," She said, smiling. "By the way."

"Yeah?"

"I've put your name at the top of the list for students I recommend for hiring at semester break." She told me. "And my recommendations are always followed. Congratulations."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her happily. "I don't know what to say."

"You already said it." She said. "And it's not in your interest, it's in mine. You're a damn good worker."

"That's nice to hear." I told her. "But…"

"But?" She asked, glaring at me. "I don't like to hear buts."

"Well," I said. "I do need to ask a brief favor."

"And what might that be?"

"I need to cut out at one-thirty today. Today only. I hate to ask on my first day back but…"

She scoffed. "Is that all? You've got it Bill. Cut out whenever you want."

"Thanks again Mindy." I told her.

"Welcome aboard Bill." She said as I headed off to the sterilization area.

I decided to take my hiring as a good omen for my later task.

The River View area of Spokane was and is one of the more exclusive parts of town. The streets here were lined with trees and had center dividers that had grass growing on them; grass that was lovingly maintained by an army of City-paid gardeners. Streets that did not have any liquor stores, pawn shops, K-Marts, or, God forbid, apartment complexes. It was where the elite of Spokane lived; the lawyers, the real estate developers, the movers and shakers. It was a part of town where I had to be genuinely worried that I would be pulled over by a Spokane police officer, a high seniority officer of course, on general principals when my Datsun was spotted cruising the streets. It was a part of town that I'd rarely responded into as a paramedic. Rich people simply didn't call for ambulances very often.

Even the post office was a miracle of modern architecture. It was a single story building with Spanish tile on the roof, tucked unobtrusively away behind a commercial complex. The snow was still drifting down as I pulled in at twenty minutes to two that afternoon and found a parking spot in view of Mr. Blackmore's car.

I waited, chewing on my fingernails in anticipation.

At five minutes to two I spotted Mr. Blackmore heading from the main building out into the parking lot. He was walking hunched over against the wind, his postal uniform upon his body. I opened my car door and stepped out, taking a final deep breath to gather my courage. I headed towards him on an intercept course.

"Mr. Blackmore." I hailed when he was less than ten feet from me.

He looked up, his face showing his age, his gray hair tucked beneath his cap. I was struck by the strong resemblance between him and Nina. It took him a moment to recognize me. When he did his eyes burned.

"You." He spat, glaring.

"Me." I agreed.

"Get away from me you slime." He told me. "How dare you come here."

"We need to talk Sir." I told him firmly.

"I have nothing to talk to YOU about." He said. "Get away from me right now or I'll call the cops."

"I don't think we need to involve the police in this." I said. "I don't think they'd be very interested. I just want to talk to you about your daughter."

"My daughter has been forbidden to see you."

"I know." I answered. "She told me that when I talked to her this morning."

"You stay away from her!" He yelled. "Do I need to call the school and talk to the principal about keeping you apart?"

"You could." I allowed. "And he might go so far as to separate our classes.

But that won't help. Your daughter and I are in love Mr. Blackmore. No matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, we will find some way to see each other."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." He proclaimed, heading for his car once more. "Stay away from her!"

"I can't Mr. Blackmore." I told him simply.

He turned back towards me, his face red, his hands balled into fists. I was forced to wonder if the flippant comment I'd made to Nina about him kicking my ass hadn't been so flippant after all. "You WILL!" He ordered.

"Come over to my house." I said, holding my ground, using my adult voice.

"What?"

"Talk with me." I offered. "Sit down with me and tell me why you think I should stay away from your daughter. Why you think you know better than she does what's good for her. There has to be a reason. You can tell me what it is."

"I can tell you the reason right now." He said. "It's because you are a lowlife scumbag who is only after one thing."

I held his gaze. "No." I said. "I'm not."

"You are." He insisted. "She told us how you were. About the girls at school. Well you are not going to add her to your list. You are not going to destroy her life."

"So you thought you would do it for her?" I asked.

"How dare you…"

"Did you tell her that you would only pay for college if she stays in Spokane?" I asked him.

"If that's what it takes to keep her away from you." He said.

"Think about that Mr. Blackmore." I said. "Step outside yourself and think about what you're saying. Nina wants to be a doctor. She's geared her entire high school curriculum towards getting into college and med school. There is no med school in Spokane. You are talking about taking away her dream just to keep her away from me. Does that sound like a person who is acting in his daughter's best interests? Does that sound like the workings of a rational mind?"

"You will lose interest in her by then." He said. "Once you don't get what you want from her…"

"I already have what I want from her." I said. "I have her love. And I will not lose interest in her."

"You don't have the slightest idea what love is." He spat. "And neither does she. You're just trying to make her think you love her so she'll give in to you."

"Believe me Mr. Blackmore." I assured him. "I know what love is. Your daughter has shown me. We're not ordinary teenagers and I am not the way you think I am. Look at me." I told him. "Do I seem like a typical teenager to you?"

He stared for a moment, his face showing the first signs of confusion, his mouth open to make a reply. Finally he said, "No. You don't."

"Come over to my house." I offered again. "Talk to me like one adult talks to another. You're not afraid to do that, are you? You're not afraid that you might be wrong?"

"Afraid?" He asked. "Boy, there is absolutely nothing about YOU that can scare me."

"Then prove it." I challenged. "Come over to my house. We'll have ourselves a little talk, like men, and if you can convince me that I'm hurting Nina in any way, then I'll leave her alone."

"And why should I believe you about that?" He wanted to know.

I shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"

He continued to look at me for a long time as his mind worked over what I'd said. Finally he nodded. "Okay Son." He said. "I'll meet you at your house and we'll talk. And when we're done talking I expect you to keep your slimy self away from my family."

I smiled. "Well that's a start Mr. Blackmore. I trust you know where my house is?"

When we arrived at my house it was of course empty. I sat Mr. Blackmore down on the couch and excused myself for a moment, going into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two of the beers from the twelve-pack that Tracy had bought for me. They had been in just long enough to be of the proper drinking temperature.

I carried them into the living room and handed one to Nina's Dad. He looked at me strangely.

"As I recall from the days when you liked me," I told him, "You're partial to a cold brew when you get home from work."

"You think I'm going to be impressed by your possession of beer?" He asked.

"I'm not trying to impress you." I told him. "Just talk to you, one adult to another. I've found that adults talk better, looser, over a few beers. Don't you agree?"

He looked at me, a full-blown version of THE LOOK. "You don't seem like a teenager at all." He whispered.

"Let's pretend there's no age here Mr. Blackmore." I said. "We're having a serious discussion with long-term ramifications." I popped open my beer and sat down in my Dad's favorite chair. "So for now, let's just be Bill and Jack, two adults talking over an important subject."

Mr. Blackmore seemed confused by my words. I sensed a softening of the barrier he'd thrown up and felt I'd finally broken through. And then his expression returned to one of angry determination. He shook his head violently. "You're good Son." He told me, accused me, "That's what I need to keep reminding myself about people like you. You can seem so damn nice, so damn reasonable, so damn adult." He stood back up, setting the beer down on the coffee table. "You took me in once when you first started hanging around my daughter. Shame on you. But you almost took me in twice just now. That's shame on me." He began heading for the door.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said reasonably.

"You're not going to nice your way back into our house." He said. "Stay away from Nina."

"There's someone like me in your past, isn't there?" I asked him.

He stopped suddenly, jerking his head towards me. "What?"

"Tell me what happened." I said. "Why do you feel so strongly about me? It has something to do with the reason you came home right after the war but didn't marry your wife, who was your high school sweetheart, until 1951, doesn't it?"

He was now staring at me, agape.

"Doesn't it?" I prodded.

"Who have you been talking to?" He asked me, horrified.

"Just my own common sense." I assured him. "Nina supplied me with the dates and I was able to draw conclusions on my own. Your reaction to me is irrational Mr. Blackmore. You've focused on an aspect of my personality, my success with girls, and you won't hear anything else, won't listen to your own daughter even. Something happened to you and your wife after the war but before you got married, didn't it? Something to do with a womanizer who talked sweet?"

He continued to stare in disbelief.

"Tell me about it." I repeated. "Like I said, if you can convince me that I'm hurting your daughter, I'll leave her alone."

"You want to hear about it?" He asked me, glaring.

"Yes." I told him. "Sit down, open your beer and tell me about it. I'm a good listener."

"All right Son." He said. "You want to hear why I don't like you, why I won't let you near my daughter, I'll tell you." He sat down on the couch again, making no move to pick up the beer.

"Mary and I WERE high school sweethearts, as you said. We met when I was a junior and she was a freshman. That was in 1942 right here in Spokane. Mary was the most beautiful, sweetest, most desirable girl I'd ever met in my life. I could talk to her about things I couldn't talk to anyone else about. I fell in love with her right away, maybe even before our first date. And she fell in love with me too."

I nodded, not speaking, picturing Mary, a.k.a. Mrs. Blackmore, as she must have been back then. She'd probably looked and acted a lot like Nina.

"By the time I started my senior year we were an "item" as we said back then. Oh, how I loved her, young man. I couldn't wait until the day when we were finally married. We were going to have a church wedding with hundreds of guests and then buy a house near the falls." He shook his head sadly. "Things didn't quite work out that way."

"I have my share of blame to take for the way things turned out. If not for me going off to fight in that stupid war…" He trailed off.

"Something happened why you were at war?" I asked.

He glanced up at me for a second, not answering my question. He sighed and finally picked up the beer bottle. He twisted the top off and took an enormous drink.

"Everyone wanted to go to war back then." He told me. "The soldiers were gods. They were fighting for this great arsenal of democracy we live in. Whenever you went to the movies and saw the newsreels you saw our fabled soldiers fighting those godless Krauts and Japs. You can't imagine how glorious they made war look."

I nodded. I could well remember how it had been during the Gulf War (or how it was going to be). You tell people enough that this war is worth fighting and that the soldiers are gods, they start to believe it. If it worked in the cynical nineties I could imagine how well it worked in the comparatively naive forties.

"Even when people I knew," Mr. Blackmore went on, "Started coming back crippled or burned, with arms or legs missing, even when I'd hear they had been killed and buried over there, it still didn't dissuade me. I wanted to go. I thought I wanted to go more than I wanted to stay and start my life with Mary. After all, Mary would still be waiting for me when I got back, wouldn't she?

"When I was a senior all of my buddies started enlisting. You could do that at seventeen if you had your parent's permission. So I asked my Dad if I could go and he let me." He shook his head. "To this day I still don't understand it. He let me drop out of school and go to war. I'd never seen him as proud of me as he was the day I asked him if I could. We went down to the recruiting office together and we signed the papers. I went through all of the induction physicals and testing and finally they gave me my ship off date. I raised my hand and swore an oath and I was a soldier.

"I wanted to get married before I left but Mary's parents wouldn't let her. They gave me all kinds of reasons why she couldn't. All kinds of reasons but the real one. Mary's Dad had been in World War I, a combat soldier. He knew what I was in for. He didn't want his daughter being a war widow at fifteen or sixteen.

"So we promised we'd marry as soon as I got back home. We promised we'd write to each other. We promised." He sighed. "And off I went. Of course merely being in the war wasn't enough for me. Oh no, I had to volunteer for the most dangerous job I could think of; the airborne infantry. Here was a division that had been known to lose more people in routine training than some regular infantry divisions lost in combat. That was for me. After all, when you're seventeen, you don't think you can die, right?"

I nodded solemnly at his words, remembering my own youth the first time around and remembering my feelings of immortality when I'd returned. Feelings that Richard Fairview had ended with a sweep of his knife.

"They took me of course." He went on. "I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. By my eighteenth birthday in late April of 1944, I was at a base in Southern England, training for the invasion of France."

"D-Day." I said, looking at him. I knew that the 82nd had been pummeled on D-Day and on many operations after it. This man had lived through all of that somehow.

He nodded. "Yeah, I was there. I'm coming to that."

"All the time I was in basic and in airborne training, Mary and I wrote letters back and forth. We told each other we loved one another. We promised to be true. I even wrote her love poems and put them at the bottom of each letter. I told her that I missed her and that I couldn't wait to get back so we could have that church wedding. Her letters said the same; she even used to tell me whom she was going to invite to the wedding and who she wasn't. You know how women are?"

Before I could answer that he looked at me sharply. "Oh yeah. You do."

I decided silence was the best answer to that comment. After a moment he went on.

"The rumors about losses in training turned out to be true." He said. "We lost a lot of people before I ever left United States soil. Parachute technology wasn't quite what it is today back then. People would go down and splat when their chutes didn't open for whatever reason. That's what we called it: a splat. Once an entire plane crashed on take-off during a training exercise killing the whole damn platoon inside. Forty airborne troops killed in an instant before they ever got near the war. Gradually I began to realize that I wasn't immortal. If Joe Hecklemeyer, another seventeen year old in my company and a good friend of mine, could die in something so stupid as a training accident, then so could I. I guess I was lucky in a way. I came to the realization that I was in a dangerous business long before D-Day. Those poor slobs in the regular infantry didn't come to that conclusion until the ramps of their landing craft dropped down on the beach.

"The letters from Mary made my day every time I got them. I would read them and they would make me feel better about what I was in for. I was fighting for Mary, for Mary's parents, for the children that Mary and I would someday have. It gave me something to live for, something to hope for. Mary was my reason for coming home, do you understand?"

"Yes." I said. "I do."

He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, not wanting to believe me. But he could see in my eyes that I was not putting him on. "Somehow I think you do." He said.

"The letters from Mary followed me to England when I went, although they'd sometimes take a little longer to reach me. But when late May rolled around I suddenly stopped hearing from her. I didn't know why. I thought at first that it was a screw-up with the mail but other guys were getting letters from home. Some of them were even from Eastern Washington. If they were getting their letters, why wasn't I?

"Before I had a chance to become seriously concerned about this the rumors began to fly through the division. We would be invading France soon and the 82nd and the 101st were slated to be the first in. I began to sense that the time to earn my money was coming soon.

"In the late hours of June 5, we were ordered to assemble. We were told that Eisenhower had given the order and the invasion was on for the next morning. We were a little surprised by this since it had been raining and windy for the past three days and was raining even then, but we were assured that a brief break in the weather would give us a window. My platoon, the forty men I'd trained with since my assignment, a mixed group of combat veterans and green soldiers like me, were assigned as part of a battalion tasked to take a bridge and hold it until the regular infantry, invading from the Normandy coast, could advance to us.

"At 12:30 AM, the morning of June 6th, we were loaded into the C-47s and off we went. I was in the front of the plane, near the pilots, and therefore would be one of the last to jump. I was loaded down with my pack, my rifle, my parachute and a picture of Mary I carried with me for good luck. I simply stood there with the rest of them, waiting for the signal. Finally it came. One by one we walked to the rear of the plane and jumped out, our static lines pulling open our chutes for us. Just before I went I took one last look at Mary's face, gave the picture a kiss, and then stowed it in my pack. Out I went into the night.

"There were five planes in our group and we were supposed to be dropped five miles from our objective. Our rally point was a clearing along the river. From there we were supposed to march in and assault the bridge, taking it by surprise." He snorted in disgust. "Apparently the lead pilot of our group was a little TOO good at his job. He dropped us right over the bridge itself. A bridge that was guarded by anti-aircraft guns and spotlights, a couple of tanks, and a company of German infantry with heavy and light machine guns."

"Jesus." I whispered.

"Jesus is right." He answered, drinking from his beer again. "They slaughtered most of us before we even hit the ground. People I knew intimately, people I'd trained with, my commanding officers, other greenies like me, were shot out of the air by flak shells and machine guns as we floated down. The spotlights would hit a group as they descended and tracers would arc up, blowing them to pieces. As I came down, near the rear of the group, I was forced to watch this in horror, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I saw hundreds of flashes from the ground as they shot us out of the sky like clay pigeons at a skeet range. Well over half of us were dead by the time our feet hit the earth. Most of our company that lived through this came down around the bridge. They were shot as soon as they landed, most of them before they could even get a shot off. Some of them drowned when they landed in the river. Some got hung up in the trestles of the bridge and were picked off there.

"I landed in a swampy area about three hundred yards from the bridge. It was dark where I came down and I got out of my parachute as quick as I could. Five other soldiers, others that had jumped with me from the fronts of the planes, joined me. Only one of us had combat experience, a sergeant from one of the other planes. He ordered us towards the bridge although even then he must have known it was hopeless. The machine gun fire had died down and had been replaced by the sound of rifles firing single shots. German rifles.

"By the time we got there the Germans had already killed everybody who'd landed near them. There were bodies everywhere, nearly all of them connected to the black parachute harness. German soldiers were walking around putting bullets in the bodies of those that were still moving. As I watched, a German soldier, obviously an officer, gave an order and a platoon of them began moving towards us.

"We bugged out as fast as we could, heading for our rally point since there was nowhere else to go. When we got there we found that well over half of our battalion had met a similar fate. Some were dropped in a swamp and drowned, some had been dropped in the middle of a town near the bridge and had been massacred as my company had. We had a mixed group of people from six or seven different companies with the task of taking a bridge that had already been alerted to our presence.

"The new commander of the battalion, a Captain who was the most senior officer there, ordered us to begin marching. We did.

"On the march to it all I could think about was Mary. I had love waiting for me when I got home. All I had to do was live through this war and I could claim what was mine. We hit the bridge at about 3:00 AM, going up against soldiers that were waiting for us. It was a vicious fight that lasted nearly an hour. The machine guns and the tanks cut down scores of us. Finally we pushed them away from the bridge and destroyed the tanks. When we finally stood on that bridge and started to dig in we were less than a quarter of what was originally tasked to take it. Somehow through all of that I'd lived. I didn't even have a scratch on me. I was years older than I'd been a few hours before, but I was alive.

"We were counter-attacked twice that night by German reinforcements. We fought them off each time but lost more and more people each time. We held that bridge for three days, all the time not knowing if we were fighting a hopeless battle, not knowing if the invasion had gone forward as planned or if it had been thrown back into the sea by Rommel's beach defenses. We held on and I thought of Mary and what was waiting for me when I got home; love and marriage and a family. I had to live, I simply had to.

"Finally, on June 9th at about three o'clock, our relief came. Regular infantry pushed forward from the beach and I'm ashamed to say that we actually fought a ten-minute battle with them before the both of us figured out what was going on. Ten people were killed in that friendly battle. But we were relieved. They took charge of the bridge and we, those of us that were left, were escorted back to safety. I was alive, for the time being anyway.

"The beachhead expanded and our troops finally broke out of Normandy. Understandably the mail was a little slow getting to us but as I waited at base camp day after day I figured that when the mail finally DID get through, there would have to be a letter from Mary in it. She'd never gone this long without writing before.

"When it finally got there I was handed three letters. Two of them were from my parents but one had Mary's handwriting on the front. I ripped it open before I even left the mail line. It was dated May 28th, 1944."

He gazed meaningfully at me. "To this day I still have the entire text of that letter memorized."

"A dear John letter?" I asked.

He sighed. "Dear Jack." He recited. "This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write in my life but I feel that I owe you an explanation. I know that we said we would love each other forever and that we would be married when you returned from the war. But we've been apart for a long time and I have grown up since you've left. I've grown up enough to realize that what I thought I wanted when I was fifteen is not really what I wanted. You're one of the sweetest, most understanding men I've ever met in my life but, unfortunately I've found true love in another while you've been gone. Bob Simpson and I have been spending a lot of time together lately and I've realized that it is he that I am in love with. I hate to give you this news while you are away at the war and it seems so impersonal to write it in a letter instead of telling you face to face but the fact is that I must tell you. Bob and I are in love and I feel that we will be getting married soon.

When you return from wherever you are Bob and I will most likely be married. I felt that I owed you this letter and I am truly sorry that I led you on before you left. Hoping you understand and with sincerest apologies, Mary."

He stared at me angrily. "YOU," He said, "Are Bob Simpson. And this time you're after my daughter instead of my wife. But this time you won't have her."

I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "Tell me about Bob Simpson." I said.

"What's to tell?" He asked. "He's you. Why should I have to tell you about the kind of person you are?"

"Obviously," I said, ignoring his categorization of me, "Mr. Simpson didn't marry your wife."

"Of course he didn't!" Mr. Blackmore yelled. "Mary was a good-looking, confused girl who's intended was away fighting the war. He wasn't interested in Mary's love. He was interested in her body!"

"Tell me about him." I repeated.

He swallowed the last of his beer and set the empty down on the table. "Do you have another?" He asked.

Wordlessly I got up, retrieved the empties and carried them to the kitchen. I tossed them into the garbage can and retrieved two more from the refrigerator. I carried them back to the living room and handed one to Mr. Blackmore. He popped it open and took a drink.

"Tell me about him." I said again, opening my own beer.

He sighed. "Bob Simpson was one of those kids that was real popular in school. He always said the right thing to whoever was talking to him, always said whatever that person wanted to hear. He was like a commission salesman, in fact that's what he became later on in life, selling used cars down at Zed Viermore's car lot. Did real well at it too.

"He was two years ahead of me in school. He graduated in 1942, when the war was really gearing up but he didn't enlist in the service. Oh no, not Bob. He stayed at home and took over the jobs that those who left to fight had vacated. He seemed to have no interest in going off to fight and the men in the town used to make fun of him, call him names about this but Bob paid them no heed. Bob had a high lottery number in the draft and just counted on the fact that the war would probably be over before they ever got around to sending him off.

"Bob you see, had discovered a situation that he could take to his advantage. He'd found that with the war going on there was a distinct shortage of men his age around while there was a distinct advantage to the amount of women that were lonely and scared. He used to make friends with them and eventually seduce them, leaving them like yesterday's trash once he got what he wanted from them. The same thing that YOU apparently discovered."

I had nothing to say to him. I couldn't deny what he was accusing me of.

"To tell you the truth, I used to envy Bob before I shipped off. It never occurred to me that he would one day be after MY girl and you couldn't help but be impressed by someone who could have the experiences that he was having. He never told anyone what he was doing, mind you, he was very discreet about it, but we all knew all the same. He did it with married women twice his age whose husbands were off in Europe or Japan. He did it with the fiances of younger men or even their wives after their husband's had shipped out. God knows how many he did but it was a lot. Some of them, usually the older ones, knew it was just a physical thing, a replacement until their husbands came home, but the younger ones sometimes fell in love with him. And he never tried to convince them that was a bad thing either. He broke more hearts than can probably be counted during World War II, marking off those he'd conquered on a little list somewhere."

"While I was off in England preparing to drop into France and witness the majority of my company getting slaughtered, Bob turned his attention to Mary. And why not? She was a beautiful, auburn-haired girl in the prime of her life. He worked on her for nearly a month, at first befriending her and then finally making her fall in love with him, all the time pretending he was in love with her. That was the thing back then you see. A girl would never consent to sex before marriage if she didn't think the guy was in love with her. There was no casual sex like there is these days. If you did the unthinkable and had sex before marriage, it damn sure meant you were going to get married soon. So that was Bob's scheme, he would turn on the charm and make them think he intended to marry him, he would make them think they were so in love that sex wouldn't seem like a big deal since they were going to get married eventually anyway.

"That's what he did to Mary. He seduced her over the space of about a month and finally got what he wanted from her. He took her virginity from her one night in his apartment building after telling her he loved her and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

"The next day, thinking that she was in love, thinking that she'd found what she wanted from him, she wrote me that letter.

"Bob continued to have sex with her for about a month, as much as he could get away with. When she finally started trying to pin down a date for the wedding, when she started asking too much about when she could tell her parents about the announcement, he dumped her. Of course being the person he was he had a speech already pre-planned. He gave it to her, telling her that he'd THOUGHT he'd been in love with her but that it had been simple youthful exuberance. She left his apartment that day knowing she'd been destroyed, knowing that she'd lost everything. She never even wrote me again after that. We never even communicated through the rest of the war.

"I jumped out of airplanes time and time again before Germany finally surrendered in April of 1945. I helped take bridgeheads, railheads, and every other kind of head in advance of the infantry troops. Friends were shot down left and right until I stopped making friends. I even jumped across the Rhine itself just before the end of the war. I didn't care whether I lived or died anymore. Mary was gone. What more did I have to live for?

"Somehow I made it to the end. A bullet or an artillery fragment never had my name on it. I came home in October of 1945 to Spokane to find my life destroyed, my hopes shattered by Bob Simpson."

He grinned a little. "Sometimes there is justice in the world. When I got home I found that someone like me had been there before me. A young man my age by the name of Jeff Zand had received a similar letter while he was fighting the Japanese. Jeff got himself a million dollar wound on Okinawa, shot in the knee, and they sent him home. His first act upon getting back was to find himself a pistol and shoot Bob Simpson to death in his apartment. He shot him twelve times, having to reload his pistol once in order to do it. Jeff was given the electric chair of course and he sat in it less than a year later. His last words were to the effect that it had been worth it."

"Not too many people turned out for Bob's funeral I heard, but there was damn near a thousand at Jeff's. I was one of 'em. I gave his coffin a sharp salute before they lowered it into the ground."

"But you and your wife did eventually marry." I said.

"Eventually." He told me, nodding. "I knew what Bob was like you see so I knew long before I got back that she wasn't gonna be Mrs. Simpson. But she was tainted you see, I couldn't take her back and she couldn't ask. Both of our lives were destroyed by what Bob had done to her. You see, despite his discretion, everyone knew what he was doing and everyone knew whom he was doing it to. It amazed me how so many women fell for him with the reputation he had; hell, even Mary had to have heard the rumors before she started up with him. He must've been one smooth talker indeed.

"Back then it was unthinkable for a woman to get caught having sex without benefit of the clergy. Once people knew she'd done such a thing, Mary was little more than a slut in everyone's eyes." He swallowed. "Mine included. An unfair way to think I agree, but that's the way it was. I couldn't have anything to do with her after that. I still loved her and I still thought about her, especially late at night when my hand found my organ, but I couldn't be with her because of what she'd done.

"The same applied to everyone else. Oh, men approached her all of the time but not with marriage in their minds. Mary learned her lesson from the first time and always sent them away but the damage, as they say, had been done. She got older and older and remained a maiden; a miserable maiden, living with her Mom and Dad.

"Myself, I tried to date some other girls and more than one of them hinted that marriage might be in the cards if I played them right, but none of them ever made me feel the way Mary had. None of them could compare to the way I'd felt when I was with Mary.

"The solution to the problem was so simple. It was staring me in the face the whole time but the thinking I'd been raised with kept me from seeing it.

Instead of finding a replacement for Mary, I needed Mary. In late 1950 I finally came to my senses. I decided to throw all of the unkind words, all of the nasty talk about her to the side. I went and found her and asked her if she would go out with me.

"She did and it was less than two weeks before we were talking about marriage. Of course everyone I knew told me I was making a mistake. My own parents told me to stay away from that slut. But for the first time in my life I stopped listening to what other people said and listened to what my heart said. The happiest day of my life was the day that Mary and I went down to the courthouse and said our vows to each other."

"As it turned out, I made the right decision back then. Mary and I have been happy together ever since. Many of the same friends who shunned me for marrying "a slut" ended up divorced from the "respectable women" that they married. To this day I still love her deeply and she still loves me and I sometimes still curse myself for wasting all those years.

"The only sour spot in our marriage was our inability to have children. We tried and tried and nothing happened. When we finally went to see the doctor he found that I had an unnaturally low sperm count. We were told that conception was damn near impossible and that we might want to consider adoption.

"Well, we decided against adoption for various reasons and just went about our lives. And then in 1966, long after we'd given up any hope for kids, Mary got pregnant." He snorted. "That brought back all of the slut talk of course. If there's one thing people love to do more than have sex it's talk about where everyone else is getting theirs. They figured Mary's "true colors" had come out once again. How else could she be pregnant? There was never any doubt in my mind about Nina's paternity. I live with Mary and I know her better than anyone on Earth. She could no more cheat on me than she could sprout a set of wings and fly.

"So you can see two things from this conversation young man," He told me. "One, why I dislike you so much and why I won't let you around my daughter. Two, why I care so much for my daughter and what happens to her. Nina's led a sheltered life with us, I'll be the first to admit it. It wasn't helped that she had a lisp as a child. Kids used to make fun of her, call her ugly, treat her like dirt because she was a little different." He shook his head sadly. "Kids can be mighty cruel you know. We sent her to speech therapy and got rid of the lisp but, like with her mother, the damage had been done.

"That's why we were so taken with you when you first started to come over. You seemed such a nice young man, intelligent, and you seemed to like Nina for who she was. You took us right in boy, right in."

"I do like Nina for who she is." I told him slowly. "You're wrong about me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Are you saying that you were not taking advantage of young girls at school? Are you saying that you didn't sleep with an engaged girl right before Nina saw you for who you were?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I did all of that and more. I discovered a near foolproof way to get girls into bed with me and I abused it. I didn't realize that there were consequences to my actions, I was selfish and self-centered, and my behavior was, in fact, despicable."

"I appreciate your honesty." He told me, somewhat taken aback by my words, "But how can you sit there, after telling me what you just did, and try to say that you are not like Bob Simpson?" He asked. "Maybe I'm missing something here."

"You are." I said. "You're missing something big Mr. Blackmore. You're missing the fact that I've never treated Nina like that. I've never tried anything with Nina, not even once. Nina is my friend. That was what she started out being and that was what our relationship has always been based upon. Your daughter is the best friend I've ever had in my life and that friendship has evolved into love. When we had our fight and she stopped seeing me, what did she tell you was the reason?"

"Because you were sleeping with every girl at school!" He almost yelled. "I thought we'd established that."

"Did she tell you that she loved me?" I asked next.

"Of course." He answered, exasperated. "That's what guys like you do to…"

"No Mr. Blackmore." I cut in. "That's where you're getting locked up. You're comparing what happened between me and Nina to what happened between your wife and this Simpson guy. But that's not what happened at all."

"Because she came to her senses before it could." He said.

"No." I shook my head. "She stopped seeing me because she loved me and I wasn't returning her love. She was in love with me during the period I was sleeping with all of these girls and I was in love with her but I didn't realize it. I didn't know that you could love someone you were friends with. By the time I realized it she had gotten fed up with my other activities. She'd gotten fed up with the pain that comes with watching someone you love play with someone else. She left because she figured that I would never love her and she would never have a relationship with me, not because I was trying to sleep with her.

"Once she was gone I realized my mistake. I realized how much I loved her and I felt physical pain that she wasn't with me anymore. When she ignored me at school it hurt Mr. Blackmore, more than I ever would have thought possible. I stopped my activities with other girls and I started concentrating on getting Nina back." I held up my hand so he could see it. "You see this? I drove a car with a stickshift all the way across town with this hand bleeding from a scalpel wound just so I could have a chance to talk to her, to say my piece to her. Does that sound like the sort of thing Mr. Simpson would have done? I love her Mr. Blackmore, I want to be with her always, do you understand? I feel the way about her that you felt about your wife when you went off to the war."

This comparison upset him. "You have no idea how I felt about my wife!" He yelled. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" I asked calmly. "And why is that? Is it because I'm so young?"

He didn't answer, simply looked at me.

"You were sixteen when you fell in love with your wife, weren't you?" I asked him. "About the same age that I am now, right? And your wife was only what? Fourteen, fifteen? A little younger than Nina is now. Why is it so hard for you to accept that your daughter might know what love is? Or me?"

"I just can't accept this!" He told me. "I can't accept your story that you're really a nice young man who's merely trying to court my daughter in the old fashioned way. You have a gift young man. Like you told me, you're a good listener and you give off a vibe that tells people you can be trusted. You do this so well that I came in here and told you a story that I've never told anyone before. Me, who hated your guts, told you this story." He shook his head. "I can see why the girls go for you and I can see why Nina fancies herself to be in love with you. But you're a scoundrel all the same. You use your gift for your own pleasure and I don't want my daughter to be one of your playthings."

I took a sip of beer again, trying to think my way through what he'd just said. Finally I asked him, "Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?"

"What?" He asked.

"Do you remember what it was like to be sixteen years old and to have hormones surging through you day and night. Do you remember being able to think of nothing but sex? What it felt like? When you'd get it? Who you'd get it with?"

He swallowed nervously and then nodded. "Yes, I do."

"That's what I'm going through right now." I told him. "About two years ago I figured out a way to seduce girls easily. Never mind how I did it, but I did. I found that I could have sex pretty much with whatever girl I wanted to. Now put yourself into the shoes of a fifteen year old and ask yourself if you would be able to disregard that gift if you had it."

"Of course not." He admitted. "But…"

"Nina was never a part of that." I told him again. "I never tried to use this on Nina. Nina is my friend, do you understand? Even now, when I'm deeply in love with her, I do not use this gift on her. To do so would cheapen the relationship, would make it less than it really is. I have done nothing more than kiss your daughter Mr. Blackmore and I've only done that at her initiation.

"But that's not all. I've given up this gift for Nina. I don't do it anymore. I have the same hormones surging through my body, I have the same desires as any other sixteen going on seventeen-year-old. I could pick up that phone right now and in less than an hour I could have some girl over here that would fuck my brains out. But I don't do it. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because of Nina." I said. "I love her Mr. Blackmore. I feel about her the same way you felt about your wife. I want to marry her some day, do you understand? I don't know how to make this any more plain to you than that, but that is the fact."

He set his empty beer bottle down on the table and sighed. "Like I said young man," He told me. "You SOUND very convincing. But how can I take the chance that you're what you say you are? How can I gamble with my daughter's life?"

"You're not really doing that." I said, finishing off the last of my own beer. "Nina is seventeen. She's an adult in all but legal status. She's decided that I am the boy for her. She loves me as much as I love her. One way or the other we're going to be together. One way or the other I'm going to marry her someday, and someday soon I'd imagine. You can try to keep us apart but it would be futile. Once she turns eighteen, and that happens in five more months, she can do whatever she wants to do. You can threaten her and try to intimidate her to stay away from me if you want. If you do that, one of two things will happen. She'll either listen to you and dump me or listen to me and dump you. Either way she is going to be filled with resentment. If she goes with me, she'll resent me for taking her away from her parents, if she goes with you she's going to resent you for taking her away from me. With either equation she loses.

"I'm not asking you to open your arms to me and welcome me into your family just yet. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that Nina has a say in this matter. Right now she's saying she wants to be with me. The same equation holds true here. If you allow it, or at least accept it, one of two things will happen. One, I'll dump her at some point in the future and break her heart. That's something I can do with or without your consent however. If it's with your consent, at least you'll have the luxury of saying, "I told you so" to her, right? At least you won't lose your daughter in the process. Or we can continue our relationship to the point where I know it's heading. We can get married someday, Nina can get her medical degree and I can get my business degree and we can have a pleasant relationship with our in-laws on both sides. That's what I want Mr. Blackmore.

"Nina's a big girl, let her make her own decision, for better or for worse, on her own."

He stared for a long time, his brain working over what I'd said. I hoped I'd given him the logic he needed to make the right decision. I had every intention of pursuing Nina to the conclusion of our relationship but, as I'd pointed out, the road would be much bumpier if decided to keep up the resistance.

"I'll let her see you." He finally said quietly.

It took a minute for that to sink in. When it did, a grin spread across my face. "Thank you." I told him.

"I don't know WHAT I'm going to tell Mary, but I find you make a good argument." He smiled a little. "I guess my little girl is growing up some and I guess it's time to let her spread her wings, for better or for worse as you say."

"I agree." I told him.

"But if you hurt her." He warned, pointing a finger at me. "I'll make what Jeff Zand did to Bob Simpson look like a mother's kiss compared to what I'll do to you."

I chuckled. "I'll consider myself duly warned." I answered.

Al Steiner-July 30, 1999 Chapter 11 ->

Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad Bill." He said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snowbank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" She yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about." She smiled. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." Her smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said. "It's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your Mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision." She admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She smiled and kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet." She said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" She asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your Dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about." I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" She asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it." I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose." She said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided that it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house; just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb.

There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go." She replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date." She told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No." She agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom," She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow." I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry." I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have NEVER fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't." I said softly.

"I couldn't Bill." She told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her. "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?" She asked.

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your Dad." I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart Nina. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your Mom and your Dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?

"Of course." She answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble." I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your Dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your Mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better Bill." She told me.

"I do my best." I told her. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right." She answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a Black Angus restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of "War Games". The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen "War Games" before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," She whispered in my ear. "Are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" She asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No Nina." I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why…"

"Then why won't you touch them?" She asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes." She told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think…"

"No you didn't." She breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked it's way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh Bill." She whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh." Was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie." She commented breathlessly.

"Yeah." I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house.

Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We exchanged "I love you's" and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on a BTO album that I'd found in my Dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina." I protested playfully, not pulling away from her. "We're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" She asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way." I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found it's way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Her's showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some REAL studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of." She told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough." I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterword, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples." She said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all." I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know." She answered, "But I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you." I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right." She answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." She said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later." She whispered, licking at my lips. "Your Dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing." She told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away." She said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that." He told me. "But I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that Bill?" He asked.

"Get into pizza delivery." I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be." I said, "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is NOT charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting Bill." He said. "But you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I NOT charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahh." I said. "That's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay Bill." He told me patronizingly. "Tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple." I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people that are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people that would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour that the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza.

That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice Bill." He said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that." I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street.

A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.

Dad too began investing. Like Tracy, once he knew the source of my information he had no problem acting upon it. He diverted all of the money that he had going into savings into the computer stocks. He also freed up some more money from Mom's paycheck and added that to it. When I explained the ramifications of the big play that was soon to come he became very enthusiastic, diverting every spare penny into the investments. Mom questioned this a little but Dad convinced her that I knew what I was doing without actually telling her how he knew this. Since she had seen me obsessively studying all aspects of business for the last two years she had no problem accepting the fact that my foresight was based only on my own common sense.

My new schedule did cut down on my time with Nina on the weekdays. Occasionally she would come over to my house after work and we'd spend a little time together either downstairs or in my room. These were nice times; all times were nice when I was with her, but there wasn't much of an atmosphere for intimacy. Even if my door was closed it felt decidedly weird making out while my parents were home. The most we ever managed was a few deep kisses and a slight dance of tongues.

The weekends however, were now completely free since I no longer had to work on Saturday and Sunday nights. Our ski trips became longer. We would head out early in the morning and drive to resorts further and further away from what we were used to. We trekked all the way up to the very northern fringes of the Idaho panhandle or to the western portions of Montana. We loved everything about these trips; the loading of the equipment in the frigid early morning air, the long drive as we shared coffee from my thermos, the standing in lines waiting for the lifts, the time in the lodge, but especially the long, tired drives home. We would switch off the driving chores but often as not, Nina would end up curled up on my shoulder as we approached Spokane, fast asleep, a contented smile on her face.

The ski trips are special memories of special times but we could not do them every weekend. Sometimes the weather would intrude upon our plans but usually finances did. Skiing is an expensive hobby and most of my money was tied up in my stocks, either growing with latex for college or growing with computer technology for my big move. But having fun does not necessarily have to cost money. Some weekends we would just go ice skating on the frozen lake, or we would take in a movie, or we would just hang around my house. We were in love and we didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

As the weeks went by Nina's complexion cleared up again, leaving her soft face unmarred. The pimples she'd had went nearly out of my mind. Her boobs continued to be sore for about a week and that too went away. Unfortunately I wasn't given much opportunity to touch them.

In late February we took a ski trip to western Montana and enjoyed ourselves so much that the sun was setting before we packed up and headed home. Nina volunteered to drive the first leg back and before she even got the car back onto I-90 I was fast asleep beside her, my hand resting on her knee.

The sensation of the car coming to a stop woke me some time later. I opened my eyes and saw that complete darkness had fallen outside. The stars were out and shining with a brilliance that can only be experienced at high altitude. Nina had pulled into a turnout beside the road, crunching over the gravel and finally coming to a stop behind a snowbank. From the other side the sound of traffic could be heard passing on the interstate.

"Where are we?" I asked, yawning, looking around outside. My ears popped as I yawned.

She turned off the headlights and pitch-blackness resulted, making the stars shine even brighter.

"We're in Idaho." She told me. "Up near the summit outside of Coeur d'Alene."

"Nina." I admonished. "You shouldn't have driven so far. Why didn't you wake me up sooner."

"I was okay." She told me, leaning back in her seat. "You looked like you were enjoying your little nap." She giggled. "You're cute when you're asleep. My eyes were starting to get a little tired though so I thought I'd rest. It's pretty here, isn't it? You can see all the stars."

"Yes." I agreed, looking around. It was a very pleasant spot. Even the sound of passing traffic added just the right amount of white noise. "Why don't you let me drive for a while. We're awfully late."

"I called Daddy from the ski resort before we left." She said. "He knows I'm going to be late. Why don't we just sit for a while? Enjoy the night."

I smiled, putting my arm around her and drawing her close. "If I didn't know better." I told her. "I'd think you were trying to put a move on me."

She snuggled up to me. "And what would you do if I was?" She challenged.

I shrugged. "Call the cops?"

"I don't think they'll hear you from here." She said.

"Well," I answered. "I guess the next best thing would be to give in."

We kissed, lightly at first, reacquainting ourselves with the taste of each other. Her arms went around my neck and mine went around her waist, inside of her coat. Before long our passion heated up and we were exchanging deep soul kisses, our tongues dueling back and forth. The gearshift and the parking brake lever were getting in the way so I finally pulled her over the top of them so she was sitting on my lap, facing me.

"I don't know about this." She said, bending her neck uncomfortable against the roof of the car.

"Here." I said, reaching down with my right hand and grabbing the seat lever. "Is this better?"

With a pull the seat reclined backwards until it was resting against the back seat. This put me almost horizontal and put Nina's body comfortably against me.

"Worlds better." She whispered, bringing her lips to mine.

We kissed contentedly for an unknown amount of time, our libidos shifting into high gear while the idling car engine kept us warm. The spring from the seat bit into my back and my left leg fell asleep because of her weight pushing down on my thigh but I was in heaven all the same. When she began rubbing her hips back and forth, putting pressure on my straining erection I groaned, letting my mouth find her neck.

"They're not sore anymore." She whispered to me.

"What?" I asked, kissing her earlobe and pulling her waist harder into me.

"My boobs." She whispered back, nipping at my ear. "They're not sore anymore."

Not needing to be hit over the head with a hammer, I slid my hands under her shirt. Her coat got in the way of this process so she impatiently sat up and ripped it off her body, tossing on the driver's seat. When she leaned back down the going was easier and my hands found her bare flesh.

"I like your hands on me." She said softly, kissing my eyelid.

"And my hands like to be on you." I assured her.

As I felt her under her clothing she sat up a little. I don't know who initiated the action but suddenly my arms pushed upward, hiking her sweater and her bra up to her shoulders. Her bare stomach and breasts were now exposed to me although it was too dark to see them in any detail. But my hands found them and began to touch them softly, feeling them unencumbered for the first time. As I've mentioned before, they were small, each hand covered a breast completely, but they were firm and very erotic to touch, the skin warm and moist from aroused perspiration. She moaned as I slid my palms back and forth across them, as my fingers gently touched and flicked her erect nipples. Her chest heaved as she panted with sexual excitement and the knowledge that she was showing a secret part of her body to me for the first time.

I let my hands slide from her breast to her armpits. I tugged gently upward and she slid forward. With a pull of my arms she leaned forward into me and her left breast was suddenly against my face, the nipple pushing into my cheek. I slid my tongue out and licked around the perimeter, finally touching the nipple, feeling the rough ridges of it. Nina jerked as if shocked at the contact.

"Oh Bill." She moaned.

I teased the nipple for the briefest instant and then gently sucked it into my mouth, suckling it as a baby would. It tasted divine against my tongue. I had sucked many a nipple in my two lives but never had one sent tingles through my body as this one did.

Nina's hands went to the back of my head and pulled me tighter against her chest. She moaned and cooed as I suckled, her fingers running spastically through my hair. I switched to the other nipple, bathing it with my saliva, my hand cupping the first. Nina's hips began moving in an involuntary rhythm on my abdomen as sensations that she was unfamiliar with assaulted her body.

I switched breasts again, allowing my hands to drop down to her stomach and flanks where my fingers slid slowly up and down upon the soft, sensitive flesh there. I could feel the gooseflesh that was covering her body beneath my fingers, hard, miniscule bumps of overheated skin.

And then suddenly she was pulling back from me, her fingers pushing off my shoulders, her nipple popping free of my mouth and leaving a trail of my saliva from it.

I looked up in confusion, my own arousal near a fever pitch. What was wrong?

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, near tears, her body trembling all over.

"What's the matter?" I asked breathlessly, still tasting the aftereffects of her flesh in my mouth.

"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.

"Nina?" I asked gently.

"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."

"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!

"You must hate me." She said.

"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.

"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."

She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.

"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."

She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."

We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.

"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."

She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.

Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.

It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.

"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"

I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.

"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.

I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.

"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."

I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.

He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."

"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.

"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"

"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.

"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.

I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.

"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."

"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."

"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.

"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."

"Good for you." I said, wondering if he really was a shoe-in like he claimed. It was possible. If he'd made a good impression as an ROP student, and he would have had to make a damn good one after the marijuana incident, the word would filter upward to the powers-that-be in the department. The powers-that-be would see to it that his name was among the next hiring group. The pitfall of this was that the same thing worked in reverse too.

My Mom and Dad, as I've mentioned before, loved to go to parties with their co-workers. It didn't matter the occasion, if there was a party, they were there. One such party was for the opening day of baseball each year. They were in the habit of traveling to one of Mom's fellow worker's house, a woman whose husband possessed a large screen television, for opening day each year. In truth my Dad cared even less about baseball than Mom did. It was simply an excuse to get together with friends, drink lots of beer, eat fancy appetizers and drink more beer.

They left the house at 9:30 that morning and I would have been surprised to see them home anytime before 6:00 that night, riding in a cab of course. Nina and I decided to take advantage of the situation. She came over at 10:00 that morning and by 11:00 we were making out on the couch, our passion accompanied by the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, one of my Dad's albums.

Since that day I'd put my mouth to her breasts we'd been very reserved in our affections. We kissed a lot but didn't tend to go much further than that, even if we were alone. Only once had my hands gone beneath her shirt since then and that had been only because she'd physically picked them up and put them there. I was determined not to push her too far too fast. As a result I was actually getting used to the sensation of blue balls.

But on this day Nina was extremely passionate. Her hands were feeling me all over. She slid them over my chest, under my shirt to my back, to my butt where she squeezed brazenly as our tongues dueled. She ordered me to feel her tits and I gladly put my hand beneath her shirt while my tongue continued it's exploration of her mouth.

As I felt and kissed her she suddenly pulled her mouth from mine. She looked at me, blushing furiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, worrying I'd gone too far again.

She licked her lips nervously and then said, "Wouldn't you like to take my shirt off?"

I stared at her, searching her eyes, trying to determine if she was doing this because SHE wanted to or because she thought I wanted to. I saw nothing but passion there, mixed with a little nervous anticipation.

"Yes." I said, stroking her face, feeling the heat coming from the aroused blush. "But are you sure you want me to?"

"Take it off." She told me. "Do to me what you did that night."

Surprised to find my own hands trembling I reached for the hem of her sweater. I lifted upwards and she raised her arms to allow me to pull it off. Her white bra was only a few shades lighter than the pale skin of her stomach, skin which had spent the winter firmly clad in clothing. The sight made my mouth water. I stroked the exposed flesh above her bra cups softly, raising goose bumps on her, and then let my fingers slide around to the back. We kissed as my digits began the process of unclasping her bra snaps.

In a moment I would see my beloved's bare breasts, a sight I'd fantasized about so many times.

The phone started to ring, shrill, annoying decibels, cutting through the air.

We broke our kiss and looked at each other, my fingers freezing in place.

"You gonna answer that?" She asked, pushing her chest into mine.

"Hell no." I said, shaking my head, leaning in to kiss her again.

We tried to re-establish the rhythm and the passion we'd just had but the telephone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I didn't attempt to take off her bra while the infernal noise was going on because I didn't want my first view of her breasts in the light of day to be marred by the distraction of a ringing telephone. I wanted to drink in the sight, to relish it, to assign the entire being of my concentration to it. How long could a telephone ring? I wondered. Don't most people give up after ten rings or so? If nobody answers after ten rings they can assume that nobody's home, right?

But not this person. That phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. We would pause at the end of each ring, relishing the brief silence, expecting that another one would not follow and that we could then get back to business. But after two seconds or so another ring would always shatter the calm of the living room. Finally our mouths broke apart.

"I'm ripping that fucking cord out of the wall." I told Nina, pushing away from her.

"Bill," She said, obviously as annoyed as I, "Why don't you just answer it? Whoever it is must have something important to say or they wouldn't have let it ring so long. Maybe there's some sort of emergency."

"They're gonna have an emergency if they don't have a damn good reason for this shit." I proclaimed.

I walked over to the phone and picked it up roughly, cutting it off in mid-ring. I put it to my ear. "What?!" I almost yelled.

There was a brief pause. Finally, "This is the AT and T operator. Will you accept a collect call from Tracy?"

Tracy? Goddam her! This had better be good. "Yes." I said shortly. "Put her on."

"Thank you." The operator said, probably sounding much huffier than her supervisor would have cared for.

"Bill?" Came my sister's voice hesitantly.

"Hi Tracy." I said impatiently, looking over at Nina, who was sitting on the couch in her bra, her nipples poking at the material. I could vaguely make out the shadow of her aureole through the cotton. My dick was throbbing with desire. This had better be good.

"Uh…" She said uncertainly. "Are Mom and Dad home?"

"No they're not." I said. "It's the first day of baseball." I knew that Tracy would need no further explanation than that.

"Oh yeah." She said, giggling, her tone telling me she knew damn well what day it was and that Mom and Dad wouldn't be home. "It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I told her. "So they're over at Janice and Ken's. You might try them tomorrow. Probably later would be better. They're bound to be hung over."

"Okay." She said. "Oh, did you hear about Cindy?"

This got my attention a little. "No." I said. "What about her?"

"I got a letter from her yesterday. Her professor boyfriend is divorcing his wife. Cindy has moved in with him. Can you believe it?"

"Actually I can." I answered. This news didn't surprise me in the least. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.

"She's dropping out of college too." Tracy added. "I guess she figures she got what she went there for."

"I guess she did." I replied, casting another glance at Nina, disheartened to see that her nipples were losing their erection. "Listen Tracy." I said.

"I was kind of in the middle of something."

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'll let you go and get back to it."

"Thanks." I said.

"Umm?" She said hesitantly. "There IS one thing I wanted to ask you while I had you on the line."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well," She said uncertainly. "The people that I hang out with here are having, well, a little baseball pool."

"A baseball pool?" I asked, exasperated. What the hell did she want to talk to me about this for?

"Yes." She answered. "For five bucks you can enter who you think will be in the World Series this year. If you're right, you win the pot in October."

"The World Series?" I asked, trying to glare through the phone.

"Yes." She said. "So I was wondering if maybe YOU could tell me who was going to be in the series this year? I know you have a real good head for this sort of thing Bill." She giggled knowingly.

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then cast a glance at Nina, who was looking at me expectantly, questioningly.

"Tracy," I told her honestly. "I don't have the slightest idea."

There was a long pause. Finally, pouting, "Bill, this doesn't hurt anything. How is this different than you taking advantage of stocks you know are going to go up? I could win twenty-five hundred bucks from this!"

"It doesn't Tracy." I said, lowering my voice a little so Nina couldn't hear. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She nearly screamed, pissed at my refusal to supply her with this information. "You've already lived through it! You know! You just don't want to tell me for some moralistic, bullshit reason."

The biting edge of her words cut through me like a knife, deflating my desire like a punctured balloon. "Tracy," I said carefully. "I really don't know. I'm not a baseball fan. I've never paid attention to baseball in my life, just like Dad. How the hell would I know who was in the series in 1984?"

"Because you've already been through it!" She cried. "You HAVE to know. You just don't want to tell me!"

"Tracy?" I asked, looking at Nina again, she was now definitely sensing that something was wrong. "Tell me who won the World Series in 1982."

"What?" She asked.

"You've already lived through it." I said, mocking her tone. "It's only been two years from your perspective instead of," I thought for a second, doing some quick mental addition, "Seventeen years from my perspective. So tell me, who won the series?"

"That's different!" She said desperately. "You're a boy. Boys know this shit!"

"This boy doesn't." I told her, feeling my own anger starting to rise now. "But let's put that aside. Let's ask you some girl shit. Who won best supporting actress in 1982?"

"What?" She asked, confused.

"You heard me." I whispered harshly. "That's girl shit if I've ever heard it. So who won it?"

There was silence on the line for a moment. "I don't know." She finally said.

"And I don't know who won the fucking World Series in 1984." I told her. "And if you call me back in October and give me the names of the two teams who are actually in the fucking thing, I still wouldn't know who won it. I don't watch baseball Tracy. I don't give a rat's ass about who was in it or who won it. You should know that. You're right, this information is harmless, and I would tell you if I knew, but I don't know. And I don't appreciate you screaming at me because of this. And I especially don't appreciate your indignant tone with me because of it."

The silence on the line was longer this time. "I'm sorry Bill." She finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Goddam right you shouldn't have." I said.

"I just thought that maybe…, well, you know."

"Tracy," I told her, calming a little. "You're going to be all right. You don't need to be so greedy. Isn't it enough that you're alive?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of our conversation took less than thirty seconds. When I hung up, Nina was looking at me quizzically.

"Your sister?" She asked carefully.

I nodded.

"You seemed mad at her." Nina said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle." I told her.

"Bill," She said softly. "What's wrong? You can talk to me about anything you know?"

"I know Nina." I answered. "And usually I do. But this is something of a family secret if you know what I mean."

"Like what my Dad told you?" She asked sharply.

"Kind of." I agreed. "But much more secret than that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She said, pouting a little.

The mood for the day was effectively broken. By the time my parents got home that evening Nina was long since at her house and I was long since releived of my testosterone by my own means. I spent the rest of the day with Mike, drinking some beer he'd managed to get hold of. It was fun but not as fun as what Tracy had interrupted.

It was late April when I went to Nina's house to pick her up one evening. It was Friday night and we had a date to go see the release of the movie 1984 based on the Orwell novel that had been the basis of the first conversation we had shared. I pulled to the curb at her house at 6:30 and stepped out of my car, heading for the front door.

I was no longer nervous about picking up Nina at home. The impasse with her parents was holding strong. Nina had told me that her parents had gone back to their usual relationship, as I'd predicted, but that I was never discussed in their household. It was taboo apparently. When she told them that she was going out with me they would give a small grunt in reply and question no further. That they weren't happy about her continued relationship with me was obvious but they never tried to stop her or talk her out of seeing me. She said they treated it as a phase she was going through, a phase that would eventually end. The fact that they still, after all this time, didn't trust me, that they still, after seeing the obvious happiness of their daughter, didn't trust my intentions, spoke volumes about how badly they'd been stung by the Bob Simpson episode. They really thought that I still intended to dump their daughter like a bag of garbage. All I could do was hope that someday they would come around. Didn't they realize what they were doing to Nina?

Because of this impasse, an unwritten set of rules had developed about my picking up Nina for dates. I did not enter their house or speak with them in any way. Nina would simply answer the door when I was expected and then leave upon my arrival. They, in turn, would be out of the room when I arrived, keeping us from even having to look at each other. I expected nothing different on this day. But something different was what I got.

I rang the doorbell and stood patiently, waiting for the door to swing open.

It didn't. I rang the doorbell again, pushing longer this time and finally was rewarded with the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and there stood Nina. She was wearing a robe tied tightly around her. Her hair was a frazzled mess, as if she'd gotten out of the shower and dried it but had not combed it. She most definitely didn't appear ready to go to the movies any time soon.

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, her voice worried. "I don't think I'm going to make it tonight. Daddy's sick."

"Sick?" I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She shook her head. "He says it's just the stomach flu but I don't think so. He was sitting in his chair after dinner and he started getting all fidgety. Then he started throwing up. He's all pale right now and sweaty and he looks like he's not breathing right."

"Sweaty?" I asked, feeling an instant return of my paramedic instinct. When people were sweaty for no good reason, something was usually very wrong. That in conjunction with "not breathing right" made me immediately concerned.

"Yes." Nina nodded. "I've seen people in the ER that look like he does now." She told me. "And usually they're very sick. I'm worried about him Bill. I've been trying to get him to let me take him to the hospital but he's being stubborn. He's scared, I can tell, but he won't go. I want to stay here in case something happens."

"Let me see him." I said suddenly.

"Bill," She shook her head. "I don't think…"

I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pushed past her and entered the Blackmore house for the first time in many months.

"Bill!" Nina protested.

"Where is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes scared, her own face pale. She pointed to the kitchen. "In the den." She said. "Through there."

"Come on." I told her, heading that way.

Mr. Blackmore's den was a room that had been built to house a bedroom. He had long since converted it to his own personal use. An oak, roll-top desk was the dominant piece of furniture. It sat against the far wall. It's surface was scattered with books containing lovingly placed stamps beneath plastic covers. On the wall above the desk a deer rifle sat in a rack. On either side of this were large racks taken from an elk and a deer. On a small love seat next to the desk was Mr. Blackmore.

"Jesus." I muttered, looking at him.

He looked worse than Nina had led me to believe. His skin was not merely pale but was gray and ashen. Sweat was glistening off of him, his shirt was damp with it. His mouth was open and he was breathing rapidly, seeming to struggle to get air in. His right arm was massaging his left shoulder.

"What are YOU doing here?" Mrs. Blackmore, who was sitting next to him, asked sharply.

I ignored her. "Mr. Blackmore." I told him, walking over. "You need to go to the hospital. Now."

He looked up at me. "Bill," He said, shaking his head. "I think you'd better leave. Sorry to have to postpone your little date." This last was said quite sarcastically.

I reached down and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"You will LEAVE this house immediately!" Mrs. Blackmore told me, ripping his hand away from mine.

"I know what I'm doing." I said forcefully, meeting her gaze. We stared for a second and she finally dropped her eyes.

I took his wrist back, finding his radial pulse. It was beating rapidly and irregularly, sometimes not pulsating for as long as six seconds. I noticed that when I could not feel the pulsations, Mr. Blackmore's breathing became more ragged at the same time. Though I did not have a cardiac monitor on me, I had a pretty good idea of why this was happening.

"Nina," I said. "Go call 911 and get an ambulance here."

"What?" Mr. Blackmore said. "I don't think…"

"Do it now." I told Nina calmly and with unmistakable command in my voice.

She gave a quick glance towards her father. "No Nina." He told her. "I'll be all right."

"Do it Nina." I said firmly. "Tell them he's having a heart attack."

Nina was convinced. She rushed to the phone. Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore were not. They called once after her but quickly realized it was futile. When she was gone they turned to me.

"How dare you come into this house and…" Mrs. Blackmore started.

"What do you think you're…" Mr. Blackmore started.

"Quiet, both of you!" I barked. It had the desired effect.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said, looking at him. "Are you having chest pain right now?"

"No." He told me. "Just some indigestion. She made some spicy food tonight and it didn't agree with me."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "Why are you rubbing your shoulder like that?"

"It's sore." He said. "What business is this…"

"Show me where your chest hurts." I told him. "Point with your finger."

Rolling his eyes upward he put a finger right in the middle of his chest. "Right here." He told me. "It's just indigestion."

"Indigestion doesn't hurt right there." I told him. "It hurts down here." I put my finger just under his rib cage. "And it doesn't radiate up to your left shoulder either. And it doesn't make you short of breath or sweaty. It doesn't make you throw up. And it most definitely doesn't make your pulse irregular. Have you ever had heart problems before?"

"No!" He said.

"You're having them now." I said. "You're having a heart attack Mr. Blackmore and a very dangerous one if I'm right about what I'm feeling in your pulse. You need to get to the hospital, now."

"What the hell do you know about it?" He asked angrily. "You're just a kid."

I smiled, gazing at him meaningfully. "We've had this conversation before." I said. "Do we need to rehash it? I think you're having a heart attack. Go to the hospital with the ambulance when it gets here. If I'm wrong, then you'll get to say I told you so."

Before he could answer Mary Blackmore spoke up. "Jack." She said softly. "Why don't you do what he says?"

I looked over at her in surprise. She was the last person in the world I expected to have as an ally in this thing. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. I think she knew that I was right and she was terrified that she was about to lose her husband. So terrified that she was even willing to listen to me.

"Listen to your wife Sir." I told him. "You want to see your grandkids someday don't you?"

"Okay." He nodded. "Once again young man, you've stated your case well."

"You can't die Mr. Blackmore," I told him. "Until you learn to get used to me dating your daughter. I won't allow it."

He actually chuckled at that.

From outside came the sound of approaching sirens.

Chapter 12

The paramedic and the EMT that showed up were both strangers to me. Probably they were people that had worked briefly in the field and then had gone onto other things; the fire department, the police department, nursing, medical school. They came in the door shortly after the fire engine crew had barged in. I was glad to see that the paramedic took Mr. Blackmore's condition as seriously as I did. I stood back and said nothing, feeling confidant he was in good hands.

While the paramedic went through the routine questioning, questions I was very familiar with, his partner hooked up the EKG machine. It was an older model of the device, a model I was unfamiliar with since it had been replaced long before my debut in the medical field, but the display was the same. I saw the rapid complexes of his normal heartbeat intermixed with frequent premature complexes; beats that were not perfusing much blood, beats that were the telltale sign of a very irritated heart. Worse still was the fact that sometimes Mr. Blackmore would have fifteen to twenty of these premature beats in a row. This was known as ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, in medical circles and it was very dangerous. It was, in fact, only a step above complete cardiac shutdown.

The paramedic, a young, blonde man whose hair was probably a little longer than was allowed, saw the display and tightened up almost inperceptively. He glanced at his partner for a moment and a look was passed between them; a look that the ordinary citizen would not have even noticed but which I was well versed in. It was a look that said "Holy Shit!".

"Set me up an IV." The paramedic told his partner calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal request. It wasn't. Usually IV's were not started on scene.

"Right." His partner nodded, going for their medical box.

"Put him on high flow oxygen." The paramedic told one of the firemen.

He went mechanically about the task of installing the IV line into Mr. Blackmore, speaking soothing words to him the whole time, telling him what he was going to be doing. On the other arm a fireman was taking his blood pressure. He shouted out the reading when he had it.

"Ninety-four over forty." He said.

The paramedic digested this, chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a second. That was not the greatest blood pressure in the world in relation to a cardiac event. Finally he plugged in the IV and taped it down.

He injected some lidocaine into the IV port and watched the display on the EKG. The lidocaine was supposed to numb the heart a little, making it less irritable and less likely to throw premature beats, go into V-tach, or, worst of all, go into fibrillation. The runs of V-tach slowed a little, becoming less frequent and shorter in duration when they did come. Not the best thing in the world but better. Hopefully it would be enough to deliver him to the hospital alive.

"Let's get him out of here." The paramedic said.

Mr. Blackmore was loaded up onto their gurney and rushed out of the house to the waiting ambulance. Mrs. Blackmore was placed in the passenger seat by one of the firemen. Another fireman climbed in the back with the paramedic.

Again this probably seemed routine to the average person and again it wasn't. A paramedic only took a fireman in with him when he thought that he might need an extra hand on the way to the hospital. In other words, when he thought there was a good possibility that CPR was going to need to be performed at some point. Runs of V-tach had a nasty tendency to degenerate into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.

"Bill," She asked me. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I hope so." I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"

She nodded and rushed into the house.

We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.

"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"

Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No." She said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."

"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.

She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."

I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.

It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.

He invited Nina's Mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain bespoke the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.

"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction." The doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."

"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.

"It's too early to tell." He said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."

"What do you mean?" She wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".

"Well," He explained. "A heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure.

"But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."

"There are?" She asked.

"Yes." He nodded. "There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."

"So he'll be okay?" She asked hopefully.

"With a little luck," He said, "Your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."

"When do you start?" She asked.

"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen…"

He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.

As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?

We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?

After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.

"Thank you." Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.

"No cream, one sugar." I said. "Just the way you like it."

She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"

I smiled. "Nina told me." I answered. "She takes it the same way."

She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.

Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.

"We think we cleared the obstruction." He told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."

He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.

By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.

"Thank you Bill." Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."

"I don't know about that." I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."

"You saved him Bill." Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" She asked sharply.

"Nina, I…" I started.

"Hush." Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"

Mrs. Blackmore swallowed nervously and then reluctantly looked at me. "She's right." She finally said. "You did save him. We owe you our thanks."

"I did what any decent person would do." I told her, emphasizing the word "decent". "I'm glad he's going to be all right and I was glad to help."

She nodded and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"So." I said at last, breaking it. "Why don't we see if they'll let you two visit him for a bit? You're probably anxious to do that."

Only one visitor at a time was allowed in the recovery room. It was a rule the staff was very firm about despite my attempts at intervention using my adult voice. Finally Mrs. Blackmore went in, leaving Nina and I alone in the waiting room. We sat together and I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, yawning with weariness.

"Sorry we couldn't go to the movie tonight." She told me.

"Understandable." I assured her, stroking her hair.

A minute went by. Finally Nina asked, "Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know Daddy was having a heart attack?"

I had been afraid of this question, though I knew it was coming. I didn't enjoy lying to her.

"I read a lot of medical texts." I told her. "It's kind of a hobby of mine. I thought about being a paramedic once so I went through their textbook and studied it. Your Dad was having textbook symptoms of a heart attack and he was displaying the common response to it. Denial. When I felt his pulse and noticed the missing beats I was sure. That's another textbook symptom."

"You knew all this from reading a textbook?" She asked, her tone unreadable.

"Yes Nina." I said. "I have a good memory for written words."

"I see." She said softly. And she said no more about it.

We sat and talked softly for more than fifteen minutes, me continuing to hold her and stroke her hair. A slight cough interrupted us and we both looked up to find Mrs. Blackmore looking at us, taking in the manner in which we were seated.

"Hi Mom." Nina said, somewhat embarrassed. She broke free of me and sat up.

"How's Daddy doing?"

She walked over slowly. "He's a little groggy from the medicine they gave him but otherwise he's okay. They're going to take him up to his room soon.

We won't be able to visit him anymore until tomorrow. Why don't you go in and talk to him real quick?"

"Okay." She nodded, standing. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She left the room leaving me alone with her mother. We looked at each other for a moment and finally she took a seat next to me. She sat stiffly upright.

"You didn't have to stay you know." She told me.

"I wanted to." I told her. "Besides, how else are you going to get home? You know how much a cab ride would be from here?"

"We could've handled it." She answered.

"Like I said Mrs. Blackmore." I replied. "I WANTED to stay."

Another uncomfortable silence developed. There was so much I wanted to say to this woman next to me, so much I wanted to explain, but this was not the time. Not when her husband, a man I knew she loved deeply, was in a hospital room after nearly dying.

But Mrs. Blackmore apparently DID want to talk about it.

"You're a very strange young man." She said, not looking at me.

I nodded. "I've been accused of that." I agreed.

"I like to think that I've got you figured out." She said. "That I know exactly what you're like, how you'll act, what you'll do. I tried to tell Nina this when she started seeing you again. But she didn't listen to me, wouldn't hear a word of it. I tried to tell myself that it was teenaged rebellion, that she knew I was right but that she wouldn't listen because she thought she was in love with you and because her Mom was telling her these things."

"But?" I prompted, looking over at her.

"But now I'm forced to wonder if maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time." She admitted.

"Really?"

"Really." She sighed. "You see, I've been waiting all of this time for you to toss my daughter aside like an old shoe. That's what people like you do I told myself. You get them to fall in love with you and then, once you get what you want a few times, you get rid of them. I have speeches all memorized for the day that you finally do that; speeches I'll recite to her as I'm holding her while she cries. I'll tell her that someday she'll find someone who REALLY loves her for herself, not for her body. I'll tell her about how I found a man like that and how he came back to me even though I made a horrid mistake once. I'm well prepared for the day when you finally show Nina that you are nothing but slime." She stared over at me, her eyes softening. "But that's not going to happen, is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it's not." I said. "I love your daughter Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."

She nodded softly. "You know something?" She asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside.

But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.

"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."

"Do you know why I feel this way?" She asked me pointedly.

I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.

"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" She said.

This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh…"

She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."

"Look, Mrs. Blackmore…" I started.

"Call me Mary." She said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"

This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?

"Bill." She went on. "You know about Bob Simpson, right?"

I nodded. "Yes." I answered.

"I appreciate your honesty." She said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me.

I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."

"Okay." I agreed.

"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"

"Yes." I answered. "I do."

"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."

"I know." I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina.

Never."

"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."

"And then she went back to you." Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."

"And the rest is history." I said softly.

She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about Bill." She told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"

"No." I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.

"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina IS my future Mary. Can you understand that?"

"That's just it." She said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.

"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"

I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have." I agreed.

"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."

"Me?" I asked.

"You." She nodded. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her." She said.

"Yes." I nodded enthusiastically. "I do. That's what I've been trying to say all this time."

"I recognize that now." She said. "And I realize that you are not exactly Bob Simpson. But you're close. And just because I recognize it doesn't mean I like it Bill. I'm willing to acknowledge that you and Nina are in love with each other. But I can't forgive you for what you've done in the past and I have no proof that you are no longer doing such things. I still believe that Nina is heading for destruction by being with you."

"That's fair enough." I told her. "You think that we're too young to know what love really is and that I'll give in to the temptation to stray away from Nina, right?"

"Roughly." She answered.

"We are young." I said. "But tell me this, do you think that Jack knew what he wanted when he told you he wanted to marry you before he went off to the war?"

"What?" She asked.

"He loved you back then. Very much from what I understand. And though he didn't have the, uh, experience that I do, he was pretty certain that you were the woman for him. So do you think he knew what he was talking about?"

"Yes." She nodded, seeing where I was taking this.

"That's the same way I feel about Nina. I know she is whom I want to spend the rest of my life with. My experience has done nothing but show me that sex is nothing but hollow pleasure if it's not with someone you love. I don't plan to repeat those experiences. I am committed to Nina now and I will remain so. I'm the same age Jack was when he fell in love with you. Nina is older than you were when you fell in love with Jack. She's older than I am in fact since I got to skip second grade. Why do you think that you, of the previous generation, have some sort of all-knowing lock on what love is and that those of us in this generation are clueless?"

THE LOOK was strong upon her face. She smiled. "You are certainly a remarkable young man Bill." She said. "I'll give you that. Like I said, I'm not quite sure you're right for Nina and I'm not quite sure you are my idea of the perfect suitor. But there's little I can do about it. You've proved yourself worthy of my giving you a chance. So for Nina's sake I would like to extend you a welcome into our house for as long as you and she are together. Maybe someday I'll learn to love you. Or maybe I won't. But until we know for sure, you no longer have to hide on the porch when you come over. You're welcome in our house."

"Thank you Mary." I answered, touched by her cynical words. "I'll take you up on that. And be assured, you're not going to get rid of me."

"Time will tell Bill." She answered. "Time will tell."

Two days later Jack Blackmore was transferred to the hospital that I worked at in order to undergo bypass surgery. He was installed in a private room on the seventh floor. His spirits were reported to be high by Nina, who visited him daily after school, usually joining her mother there. I had not had opportunity to see him since the night he'd been taken away.

On the Tuesday following his heart attack I had a brief chat with my Dad before I headed off to school.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" He asked me, nearly appalled by what I was suggesting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it wise." I agreed. "But it's not dangerous. After all, the man's undergoing a bypass tomorrow. What can it hurt?"

Dad shook his head. "I'll concede to your greater medical knowledge." He told me. He did as I asked.

After work that night I went out to my car and put a few things into a plastic bag. I then went back inside. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and headed for the ICU where Jack was being stashed. Visiting hours were soon coming to a close and Nina and her mother had already gone for the night. I was unquestioned as I walked past the nurse's station. The surgical scrubs I wore saw to that.

I entered his room and stood in the doorway for a moment. Jack Blackmore was dressed in a standard hospital gown. IV's were installed in his arm and connected to a pump. Wires snaked from beneath the sheets and his gown and fed to a monitor on the wall above his head. He was sitting in the bed, which he'd adjusted to a chair position, watching a baseball game on the television. He looked over at me as I entered, his eyes taking a moment to realize that I was not just another hospital worker coming in to take his blood pressure or to get him to piss in a jar.

"Bill." He nodded when he recognized me. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I told him, coming in and closing the door behind me. "How are YOU?"

"Hanging in here." He said as I took a seat. "I never did get a chance to thank you for talking me into going the other night." He lowered his voice a little. "The doc tells me I might've died if I hadn't of come in."

"I was glad to help." I assured him.

"As much as I hate to admit it." He said. "I owe you one."

"Maybe I'll collect someday." I said. "But in the meantime, I brought you something you might like."

"What's that?" He asked.

I reached into my bag and withdrew two dripping, icy cold bottles of beer. Beer that my Dad had bought for me that morning and which had sat in an ice chest in my car all day. It was his favorite brand. His eyes lit up as he saw them.

"I can't drink that." He told me, his voice far from virtuous.

"Sure you can." I said. "You're probably sick of Jell-O and powdered eggs about now. You're probably even sicker of powdered orange juice. Have a brew. You're going in for bypass surgery tomorrow. What can it hurt? Hell, they ought to be feeding you bacon and eggs and greasy tacos tonight. The cholesterol can't hurt you now."

He licked his lips for a moment and then said. "You have a gift for putting things into perspective young man. Give me the beer."

"Better pour it into your cup." I instructed. "If the nurse comes in and sees it, she'll kill me."

He gave me a shrewd look. "We wouldn't want that now, would we?" He asked.

We poured the beer into the little plastic cups that are only found in hospitals and stashed the bottles away.

"To good health." I offered, holding up my cup.

He nodded. "To good health."

We clinked them together, well, not really, plastic doesn't clink, but you get the idea. We drank. The beer was like nectar on my parched throat. It probably tasted even better to Jack Blackmore, who had just faced death in a much different way than he had in World War II.

"Mary tells me that you had a talk with her." He said after the first drink.

I looked at him for a moment and then nodded. "We did." I said.

"Uh huh." He grunted. "She also tells me she invited you into our house."

I swallowed nervously, wondering if Mr. Blackmore was about to veto this decision. If he was about to tell me that he would see me in hell before he saw me in his house. "She did." I said.

"Well," He said, sipping out of his beer again. "I guess I'll have to agree with her then."

It took me a moment for what he said to filter through, so much was I expecting the "see you in hell" speech.

"You agree with her?" I finally asked.

"Young man." He told me. "You alone have caused more turmoil in my household than anything since Bob Simpson himself. I've fought with my wife, my daughter, sometimes both at the same time over the subject of you. That last thing I ever thought I'd do was invite you into my house. But I'm forced to admit that much of the turmoil and arguing that you've caused was because of the preconceived notions that Mary and I had about you. Notions that, like Mary pointed out, are apparently wrong."

"I'm not inviting you over because you saved my life, although I'm grateful for that. I'm inviting you over because I think I was wrong about you. You're not Bob Simpson. You're an offshoot of him, but you're not him. And I think that maybe you're starting to get out of that stage. My daughter adores you Bill, absolutely adores you. But I also realize that maybe you feel the same way about her. That maybe you were telling me the complete and honest truth that day I came over to your house. If that is so, I apologize for not believing you and ask that you understand why I didn't."

"I do." I said. "I probably would've reacted the same in your shoes."

"I suppose you would have." He said. "I'm not sure I like you yet. I'm still holding judgement on that matter, but I'm going to give you a chance. Just like any father gives any suitor their daughter brings home."

"Thank you." I said.

"You asked me the other day if I wanted to live to see grandkids."

"Yes." I said.

"I do." He nodded. "And I assume that you intend to provide those grandkids?"

I swallowed nervously again. "Yes." I finally said. "I do."

He nodded slowly, taking a long drink from his beer. "Be sure you treat my daughter right Bill." He said. "She's the only one I got. I intend to live long enough to kick your ass if you ever hurt her. Do you understand?"

"I do." I told him. "And you're gonna have to live a long time to see that Mr. Blackmore."

We stared at each other for a moment. Finally his expression softened. "Who do you like?" He asked, jerking his head towards the television.

"Like?" I asked.

"In baseball?" He clarified, as if I was an idiot. "You're from Spokane so I assume you like the Mariners."

"Well to tell you the truth Mr. Blackmore…"

"Jack." He said. "Call me Jack."

"Jack." I said, the name sounding strange on my lips. "To tell you the truth I'm not much of a baseball fan at all. In fact I don't really follow sports at all."

"You don't watch sports?" He asked, looking at me as if I was some sort of communist radical.

I shook my head. "No."

"If you're going to be my son-in-law Bill, we're going to have to change that."

The next day Jack Blackmore went under the knife for a triple bypass operation. They cut open his leg and removed arteries from it. They then split open his chest, stopped his heart and installed those arteries in his heart, bypassing the occluded vessels. They restarted his heart and sewed him back up. The procedure took nearly five hours to complete from anesthesia to recovery room. Nina and Mary spent the day there, hanging around in the surgery waiting room, reading old magazines, drinking coffee, and worrying.

I spent the day in school and at work, doing some worrying of my own. At the front of my mind was the fact that I'd most likely pushed fate off of it's path once more. Mr. Blackmore, Jack, was supposed to be dead in all likelihood. But now he wasn't. Was fate going to work swiftly to reclaim him? Was he going to die on the operating table, a victim of reaction to anesthesia, improper procedure, or some other malady? Was he going to die of a post-op infection? A thousand things could go wrong, any of which a vengeful fate could seize upon in order to take the wayward Jack Blackmore out of the picture.

Since he was in the hospital where I worked I stopped up to see how things were going at every opportunity. I popped by upon arrival to find Nina and Mary still in the waiting room, waiting anxiously. I hugged Nina and told her it would be all right. She wiped a few tears away as she heard this. The words felt almost like a lie on my lips. By my second break he was out of surgery but not allowed any visitors yet. I offered more words of encouragement before heading back to my station. By my last break they'd both been in to see him. Their moods were better and they were more relaxed. He'd come out of surgery just fine, they told me, though he was in considerable pain.

I went back up when my shift was done and found them both in the private room that he'd been moved to. They were sitting in the chairs by his bed, just watching him as he floated in and out of consciousness. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that he'd been heavily medicated.

"How's he doing?" I asked the two women in his life.

Before they could answer, Jack himself spoke up. "Like shit." He said thickly, his eyes turning to me.

"Not good huh?" I asked him, stepping closer.

"It feels like someone chopped my goddam chest open with an axe." He said.

"Jack." Mary admonished automatically. "Your language."

He gave her a look, a look that only people that have been married for thirty-three years can pass.

I stayed with them until visiting hours were over. They seemed to have no problem with my presence there. Nina and I held hands as the conversation went back and forth and as Jack went in and out. He tried explaining the finer points of the Mariner's strategy to me but the Demerol or whatever they were giving him made him continually forget what he was saying.

When we finally left him for the evening I rode the elevator down with Mary and Nina and we walked out to the parking lot. Their car was parked in the visitor lot while mine was parked in the employee lot. I walked them to their car and it was time for me to make my leave.

Mary walked around to the driver's side of her car while Nina and I stood at the passenger door, looking awkwardly at each other.

"Well," I said, "I'll see you tomorrow. Are you going to be here?"

"Only in the late afternoon." She said. "Since Daddy's doing fine I'm going back to school and ROP."

"Oh." I nodded, casting an eye at Mary, who was watching us, refusing to get into the car. "Well, I'll see you at school tomorrow then and I'll probably stop by here after work."

"Good." She smiled hesitantly. "Well…"

"Well…" I repeated. We continued to stare at each other, casting nervous glances at her mother.

"Oh for Christ's sakes." Mary suddenly announced. "If you want to kiss each other go ahead and do it. I've seen you do it enough through the curtains."

With that she huffily got into the car.

Nina and I looked at her and then at each other, astonishment and embarrassment on our faces.

"You heard Mom." Nina told me, smiling.

"Yep." I said, leaning in and kissing her.

The next day Nina went back to school, as she'd said. She would not be able to visit her father in the hospital until at least four o'clock. Jack was continuing his recovery and was reported to be doing well. Mary Blackmore was holding vigil at the hospital.

I reported to work as usual, not stopping upstairs. At my first break I stood hesitantly outside the central supply department. Finally I pushed the elevator call. When it arrived I rode upstairs.

When I entered the room Mary and Jack were talking softly about something. They both looked at me strangely as I entered. We stared at each other, nobody wanting to talk, neither of them wanting to ask me what I was doing there without Nina.

Finally I stepped in. "Jack?" I asked. "How are you doing?"

He hesitated for a moment, continuing to look at me. At last he said. "A little better. Not much, but a little."

"Good." I replied, going over and grabbing a seat.

Jack stayed in the hospital for two weeks. He suffered no post-op infections and in fact made what was termed by his cardiologist a "remarkable recovery". During this time I made it a habit to head upstairs on breaks and check on him, to pass a few words with the elder Blackmores. It was only two days before they stopped looking at me strangely and started greeting me with something approaching warmth. And of course I visited after work when Nina was there.

Understandably Nina and I had little time or place or mood for physical affections. Our brief kiss as we parted at night as Nina climbed into her Dad's car, Mary climbed in her car, and I climbed in mine became an accepted ritual with her mother but there were no rendezvous at the empty house, no making out, no dates.

When Jack was released he was still in pain, particularly when we moved his chest or took a deep breath, but he was much better. He was instructed to get up every day and walk or perform some other form of exercise. He was instructed to change his diet, to avoid alcohol, and to avoid everything else that was the least amount of fun. He would be off work for at least another month before he would be allowed back on light duty for another two months. If all went well he would be able to resume his route about the time that Nina and I left for college.

Two days after Jack went home, I went to work as usual. The first thing that happened was Mindy greeting me at the locker room door as I emerged dressed in my scrubs and sterile cap.

"Hi Mindy." I said, somewhat surprised to see her there. "What's up?"

"Hi Bill." She greeted, smiling. "I got a question for you."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Since you're my favorite employee," She said. "I thought I'd ask you first.

My husband and I bought tickets for "Fiddler On The Roof" on Saturday night down at the theater. But the asshole went and got himself a promotion at work and has to go to Seattle for a training session over the weekend."

"Really?" I asked, immediately interested.

"Yeah." She said sourly. "Anyway, I'm trying to get rid of the tickets now.

I paid twenty apiece for them but if you're interested I'd be willing to let them go for ten apiece." She smiled a little. "Of course they won't let you have the complimentary glass of wine, but hey? So what do you say?"

"I say, will you take a check?" I asked.

Nina was delighted to go to the theater with me. She'd never been to such a thing before, had never even seen the movie version of Fiddler On The Roof. She was a little nervous about having to dress nice for the occasion, rarely did we go someplace where a dress code was in place, but she was excited about it whenever I talked to her.

She called me up Saturday afternoon about one o'clock.

"Mom and Dad want to know if you'd like to come over for dinner with us before we go?" She asked me.

"You're kidding." I said, feeling a little nervous myself at the prospect. Though the Blackmores had warmed to me during Jack's stay in the hospital I still had not been inside their house since the day of his heart attack. To me it didn't seem we were quite ready for that step despite the invitations from them.

"Not at all." Nina replied. "She's making her roast chicken."

I had enjoyed Mary's roast chicken once before, in the days before our break-up, back when they'd still thought I was a suitable companion for their daughter. It was truly a work of art.

"Well," I said doubtfully. "What do you think?"

"I think you should come." She said softly. "They're trying Bill, they're trying to accept you. I think you might do some damage to that if you refuse."

I sighed. "What time then?"

"Four-thirty."

"Tell your Mom and Dad I'd be honored to accept their invitation."

I had just hung up the phone and was heading for the bathroom when it rang again.

"You got that?" I heard Dad yell from the other room where he was watching a nature program on PBS.

"Yeah." I called back. "It's probably Nina again."

He grunted something in reply and I picked up the phone. "Hello?"

It was not Nina. "Bill Stevens please?" A gruff voice demanded more than asked. I was immediately on guard just hearing it.

"This is Bill." I said slowly. "And who is this?"

"Mr. Stevens." Said the voice. "Sergeant Matt Cable, U.S. Marines. How are you today?"

U.S. Marines? What the hell? A part of me wondered if this had anything to do with the Beirut bombing that I'd tried to stop. Was Sergeant Cable from intelligence? If so, he wouldn't have called on the phone, would he? "I'm just fine, uh, Sergeant. What can I help you with?"

"Well Mr. Stevens." Cable told me forcefully. "The question here is what I can help YOU with."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you planning to go to college?" He asked next.

"Yes." I said. "Uh Sergeant, perhaps you could…"

"Good." He went on, not even hearing me. "And have you thought about how you're going to pay for college?"

Suddenly I got it. He was a recruiter! He was trying to get me to join the Marines. How the hell did he get my phone number? I didn't remember any recruiters calling me at home in my previous life. But even as I thought this a vague edge of a memory surfaced, more a sense of deja vu. Maybe they HAD called me and I'd just dismissed it.

"Uh, yes Sergeant, I have college expenses all taken care of. Thank you very much for asking. Now I'm kind of busy and…"

"Ahh." Cable went on again. "But did you realize just how expensive college really is? The average cost today for a four-year degree is approximately thirty thousand dollars. Do you have that kind of money?"

"I will." I said shortly. "Listen, I appreciate your calling and all, but I'm really not interested in joining the Marines. How did you get my number anyway?"

"The high schools in the area provide us with a list of graduating seniors." He said absently. "But really Mr. Stevens, I think you should give some thought to the Corps. It will give you four years of discipline and maturity. You'll get to serve your country in the most honorable way imaginable, and you'll make over forty thousand dollars for college while you're doing it. You can also learn valuable job skills…"

"Like charging machine gun nests?" I asked.

"What?" He said, confused. He was obviously not accustomed to having his sales pitch interrupted.

"Valuable skills you said. Is charging machinegun nests and jumping out of landing craft onto a hostile beach a valuable skill? What if I get killed? Can't really go to college then, can I?"

He paused for the longest time. Finally he said… "You misunderstand Mr. Stevens. Not everybody in the Corps does that. There are many support positions that require skilled individuals. We will train you in those skills. For instance, computer science, an up and coming field. We can train you in it. By the time you get out you'll possess a valuable civilian skill and you'll have money to go to college with to expand upon it. Not only that, you'll have had the satisfaction of serving your country."

"Uh huh." I replied. "And suppose I take the ASVAB and it tells you that I'd make a lousy computer tech? Suppose it tells you that I'm not good for much of anything besides shooting a gun and charging out of landing craft? The ASVAB is taken AFTER I've signed my name, right? So if it tells you I should be a grunt and I've asked for computer science, where am I going to end up?"

This threw him completely off guard. "Uh… well," He stammered. "The fact of the matter is…"

"The fact of the matter is that you just want me to sign my name on the line and you don't care what happens to me after that. You don't care because you got whatever points they've given you for signing up another stupid kid so your cohorts can train me to love the idea of dying for my country in some conflict over oil supplies or something equally worthless. Do you believe in honoring your father Sergeant Cable?"

"Well, of course." He answered, reeling from what I'd just said. He didn't have enough sense to gleam the fact that I wasn't interested and end the conversation.

"Well my father didn't charge machine gun nests or fight VC. He braved hostile police and National Guard soldiers so he could smoke dope and burn his draft card. If I was to join the Marines after he went through all of that, it would be an awful betrayal, don't you think?"

He didn't answer that one, there was only silence on the line.

"So if it's all the same to you," I finished. "I'll just go to college with the money I have, study well, and leave the machine gun nest charging to those too stupid to see through your used car salesman speech. And hopefully we'll have ourselves a nice war sometime and they'll reinstate the draft so I can go to protests and smoke dope and burn MY draft card and honor my father in a manner that he so deserves. Good day sir, and please lose this phone number."

I clicked down the phone, smiling to myself. That was the most fun I'd had without Nina in quite some time.

The day was a glorious example of spring in Spokane; perhaps the nicest time of the year in our city. Unlike Western Washington, we don't get near the rainfall and cloud cover in the eastern portion of the state. At ten minutes to four, when I headed over to the Blackmore house, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was a deep blue, the trees were blooming with fresh leaves and fruit blossoms, and the temperature was a pleasant seventy-two degrees.

I was actually sweating a little in my suit and tie, both from the warmth upon my thick clothing and from the nervousness of having dinner with Nina's parents. I wheeled to the curb, took a few deep breaths to gather my courage, and then headed to the door.

Nina answered it and she quickly made me forget about her parents. She was wearing a pretty black and white dress complete with nylons and high heels. Her face was made up and her hair was styled attractively. I felt my eyes widen as I took in the sight of her, as I saw her blush at my perusal.

"I've never worn anything like this before." She said, embarrassed. "Mom helped me pick it out."

"It's beautiful." I told her, leaning forward and giving her a peck on the lips. "Your mother has good taste."

"Thank you." Mary Blackmore said dryly from just inside the doorway. It was my turn to blush.

"You look very nice too Bill." Nina squeaked, standing aside to allow me entry.

I stepped inside to find her mother, wearing a pantsuit and a cooking apron, appraising me. We looked at each other for a moment.

"How do you do Mary?" I asked politely. "Thank you for inviting me over."

She nodded, her face forming the slightest hint of a smile. "I told you that you're welcome in our house Bill." She said. "And Nina's right. You DO look very nice. Are you hungry?"

"Famished." I assured her, telling the absolute truth.

"Well good." She said, turning and heading for the kitchen. "Because I've made enough for an army."

While her mother went to finish dinner Nina led me into the living room where Jack was sitting in his recliner, watching television. The Mariners were battling the Blue Jays and apparently getting the shit kicked out of them. Jack seemed in a foul mood because of this.

"Hi Jack." I said nervously, seeing the scowl on his face.

"Goddam bunch of pansies!" He yelled at the TV as a Mariner hit into a double play. Beside him a glass of lemonade sat untouched so long the ice was melted.

"Jack, your language." Came drifting out of the kitchen.

He shot an irritated look in that direction for a moment and then turned to me. "There's no hope." He told me.

"No?" I asked carefully.

"None." He assured me. "Well don't just stand there. Have a seat. Watch this pathetic excuse for a game with me until dinner. Maybe you'll learn something."

"Okay." I said, heading to the couch. Nina came with me. When she sat down she did it inexpertly, since she was not used to wearing a dress. It hiked all the way up to mid-thigh before she shifted and pulled it back down. It took every ounce of my willpower to keep from gazing at this directly, instead of with my peripheral vision. Somehow I managed.

Jack saw my struggle, I know he did. I think I gained a point or two with him.

He continued to explain the finer points of baseball to me as we sat there, while Nina looked bored. His conversation was peppered with the occasional "goddam", which was always answered by an admonishment from Mary in the kitchen, no matter how softly he muttered it. Each admonishment was met with an irritated stare back towards the kitchen.

When Mary called us to dinner we sat down at the table, Nina seated next to me. We dug into delicately basted and roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, and homemade biscuits. It was all as wonderful as I remembered it. Many boys, when taking dinner with their girlfriend's family for the first time make the mistake of only eating one helping for fear of looking like a pig. I did no such thing. I ate until I was stuffed, refilling my plate three times. It wasn't hard to do. I knew I'd earned some brownie points with Mary for doing so.

We pushed away our plates at last and Jack stifled a burp, an action that earned him a sharp look from his wife but no verbalization.

"Great dinner Mare," He told her affectionately, patting his stomach. "Up to your usual standards."

"I agree." I put in. "Your chicken was divine."

"I'm glad you liked it." She said tonelessly, though obviously pleased with the praise. She stood up. "Let me start clearing the table."

While she began picking up the dishes Jack turned to me. "Chicken is good." He told me. "Especially the way Mary does it, but there's nothing like fresh meat you've brought down yourself. You like venison?"

"I don't know." I told him. "I've never had it."

He looked at me in disbelief for a moment. "You've never had venison?"

"Never." I told him. "My dad doesn't hunt."

"So you've never had elk either?" He asked next.

"Never."

"Boy," He said. "You've lived in Spokane all of your life and you've never had venison or elk?"

I shook my head.

"Amazing." He said, staring. "So you don't have a hunting rifle then?"

"I've never fired a gun in my life." I told him.

"Bill." He said seriously. "You and I are going to have to take a little trip one of these Octobers over to the panhandle. You're not one of those goddamn animal rights activists are you?"

"Jack." Mary warned from the sink.

"No." I told him, wondering if he was really offering to take me hunting. Was this the same man who had stormed my house on New Years Day? "I suppose I've never been hunting before because my Dad has never been hunting before.

There was nobody to show me how to do it. I'd really like to learn how if you'd teach me." I told him.

He nodded, smiling. "The first October you have free, you come see me." He said. "We'll get you a rifle and a license and we'll head up. I'll show you what it's really all about."

"That'll be cool." I answered truthfully. "I'll be looking forward to it."

"I think Mom and Dad are actually starting to like you." Nina told me as we drove towards downtown and the theater building.

"Yeah." I agreed, resting my hand on her nyloned knee. "Weird, isn't it?"

"They're starting to see you as I do Bill." She told me. "Especially Daddy."

I looked over at her. "I'm not gonna have to kiss him, am I?" I asked.

She chuckled. "Who knows?" She asked. "Maybe he's a good kisser. He's certainly done it more than I have."

"Well maybe we'll play a little catch-up tonight." I suggested slyly.

"Maybe we will." She answered back, just as slyly.

We both enjoyed the play immensely. Nina because it was the first time she'd seen a live play and because the story was both romantic and tragic, elements she loved in her art. Me because it was one of my favorite productions and because I was seeing it with Topal, the Russian Jew who played the part in the movie, cast as the lead character, something I'd never been able to see in my previous life. The acting and singing were magnificent and by the end Nina had tears streaming down her cheeks as the Jews were forced from their village. I myself had to stifle tears despite having seen the play and the movie multiple times before.

We joined the throngs exiting the theater and made our way to my car, walking hand in hand, talking about what we'd just seen as we went. Nina went on and on about the story, the plot, the acting, the thrill of seeing it live. I was glad that I was there to share this first experience with her, to hear her reactions to it.

When we reached my Datsun I opened the door for her and she sat down. Her skirt rode up again as she did this, reaching well above mid-thigh. This time there was no father to think about and my eyes drank in the sight of her legs, clad in dark nylon and spread just a tad. I felt warmth spreading to various parts of my body as I witnessed this.

Nina saw where my eyes were glued and she smiled, pulling down her skirt demurely. "What were YOU looking at?" She asked teasingly.

"A work of art." I told her, making her blush.

I got into my side of the car and started it up, heading for the freeway. My hand dropped to her left knee, leaving it only to shift gears.

"It's still early." Nina told me, glancing at her watch.

I looked at mine, seeing it was shortly after ten o'clock. "Kind of." I agreed.

"It's a nice night." She said next, looking at me, her own hand dropping to my thigh.

"That it is." I answered, suppressing a smile.

Silence developed. Finally she said, "So why don't we go find a nice place to sit for a while and just look at the stars and the moon?"

"The stars and the moon?" I asked lightly.

"Yes." She said firmly. "They're very pretty tonight. I'd like to look at them. Surely you know a place where we can look at them alone."

I grinned, nodding slowly. "I think I know such a place." I said, putting on the gas a little.

"I thought you might." She said.

The place was a little used park near the falls, almost directly across the river from the larger park where the high school students liked to have their keggers. As a matter of fact we could hear the faint hoots and howls and drunken laughter mixed with the indecipherable sounds of car stereos drifting over the roar of the falls towards us. A kegger was going on as we sat there.

I had long since removed my tie and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. I'd also thrown my jacket in the back of the car. We walked over to a picnic table and sat on the surface of it, our feet resting on the wooden seat, looking out at the falling water, smelling the mist. Our hands intertwined gently and we simply looked for a while, not speaking. There was a light breeze, warm enough to keep us from shivering and the sound of thousands of crickets chirping came from behind us. The stars and the moon were shining in the sky.

"It really is a beautiful night." I offered, edging a little closer to her.

"Yes." She agreed, letting her head fall to my shoulder. "It's too bad we don't have a blanket or something so we could lie on the ground and really look at the stars. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"I have the blanket in my trunk from when we went on the picnic last month." I offered, thanking whatever gods there was that I was a lousy housekeeper.

Nina gulped and then raised her head back up. "Really?" She asked.

"Really." I said seriously.

"Break it out." She told me.

We spread it about fifty yards away from the car, near the cliff that led to the river below the falls. When the wind blew right a fine spray of mist would hit us delicately. We lay down on our backs, about a foot apart, our hands together, our heads looking upwards.

"Do you like astronomy?" She asked me, her thumb tracing circles around the back of my hand.

I shrugged. "I've read a little on it." I told her, only semi-lying. In my previous life I'd taken an astronomy course in college as a science elective. That had been in my pot-smoking days. There's nothing like getting stoned and heading up to the college's observatory in the middle of the night. I got an A in the class.

"So have I." She told me. "I bet I can name more stars than you."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "What's the bet?"

"Loser has to kiss the winner until they say to stop." She offered.

I nodded, feeling my penis stir in my suit pants. "You've got yourself a bet."

She pointed to the most obvious. "Polaris." She said.

I pointed to another. "Regula." I told her, pulling out my big guns.

"Amateur." She scoffed, pointing again. "Betelgeuse."

"Not bad." I allowed, pointing again at a fuzzy blur. "You see that one?"

"Which one?" She asked.

Gently I took her face in my hands and pointed it in the direction I was looking. "That red one over there about ten degrees west of Cassiopeia."

"I see it." She said, looking at me instead of the star.

"That's Mars." I said firmly.

"No it's not." She told me. "Mars is a planet and the planets are all in the ecliptic. Besides, Mars isn't visible right now."

"It's not Mars?" I asked innocently.

"No." She told me.

"Bummer." I said. "I guess I lose then."

We stared at each other in the moonlight. "I guess you do." She told me, angling her face towards mine.

There was no slow build up to our kisses, our tongues found each other in the first two seconds while our arms and hands pulled our bodies together. I felt the scratchy material of her dress beneath my hands, the outline of her bra straps bulging from beneath. Her hands yanked the back of my dress shirt out of my pants and then plunged beneath it, her manicured nails scratching at my back.

I rolled her onto her back, pressing my body to hers and began to kiss her neck, inhaling the perfume she'd applied, working my way down to the hollow of her throat. She arched her back as I kissed her there, licking lightly with my tongue, tasting her delicate skin.

"I've missed this so much." She told me breathlessly as my hand slid up her flank and across the bulge of her right breast.

"Have you?" I muttered, nipping at her skin lightly, my fingers coming to rest on the silver button at the front of her dress. It was cool to the touch, round, and I swirled around it, playing with it.

"Yes." She nodded, kissing the top of my head, her hands pulling free from my shirt.

Slowly I undid the button, leaving a gap in the front of her dress. She smiled, arching her back a little more. My fingers dropped to the second button. In the moonlight I could now make out the top of her bra and the upper swell of her breasts. I leaned my head down and kissed her chest, just above this, running my tongue down to the top of her bra. She shivered in delight, pulling me closer. I undid the remaining buttons, spreading the dress wide open, so her entire bra was visible to me.

I let my mouth travel between her breasts, feeling the cotton material pressing into my flesh and then I began to kiss her ribcage below the bra cups; teasing, soft kisses punctuated with licks. Nina moaned softly at the sensation, her fingers finding my hair. I worked my way back and forth beneath her breasts, my mouth kissing every inch of the exposed skin of her chest. Occasionally I would rub my cheek across her bra cup and feel the material and the protrusion of her nipples sliding across.

Finally my hands slid behind her back and found the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick it was undone. I slid my hands back around to the front and pushed upward, moving the now-loosened bra off of her breasts, baring them. I looked at them in the moonlight, seeing the rigid nipples, seeing how they heaved up and down with her excited respiration.

"They're beautiful." I told Nina softly. "I'd like to kiss them."

"Ohh." She groaned, pulling my head down.

I took the right nipple in my mouth, sucking on it gently, as I had in the car that night. I swirled my tongue around it, suckled it, kissed it, made it stand out proudly before I switched to the other one. Nina held me firmly to her as my hand dropped down and landed on her knee, where it began squeezing and caressing through the nylon. Slowly I began to slide my hand upward.

I was ready to halt the exploration of my hand at the slightest sign of protest but I received none. Her legs slowly parted, encouraging further travel. I shifted to the inside, my digits trailing over the smooth nylon and tight muscle of her thigh. I reached the hem of her dress and slowly continued onward. She opened her legs wider. I squeezed her inner thigh, marveling at the feel of her legs in pantyhose and then the back of my hand reached the junction of her legs; the panty portion of the hose. I felt dampness against my knuckles and Nina drew in a sharp breath, pushing her crotch into me.

Continuing to suck her breasts I let my hand turn over so my fingers were now touching her. I felt the wet material and the outline of her swollen lips. I pushed slightly, making circles around the area, memorizing the feel of this moment, making out the bulge of her clit through the thin layer of clothing.

"Oh God." Nina moaned, her hips bucking a little. "That feels so good."

I raised my head from her breasts and moved it back up, so I was staring in her eyes. They were shining and very excited.

"It's not supposed to feel bad." I whispered to her, bringing my lips to hers once more.

Her tongue plunged into my mouth, attacking mine viciously, her lips sucking it into her mouth. Her hand slid down to my crotch and began to squeeze my erection through my dress pants, making my own hips begin an involuntary rhythm.

My fingers left her junction and continued upward, across her lower stomach, seeking and finding the top of her pantyhose just under her belly button. I slid one finger beneath the elastic, touching her bare stomach, letting it slide back and forth along the edge.

"Yes." She whispered into my mouth, sucking my upper lip, running her tongue along my teeth.

I pushed downward once again, this time beneath the pantyhose, my fingers feeling the soft flesh of her lower stomach and finally encountering coarse, curly hair. I pushed onward and she spread her legs even more. I touched warm wetness and smooth lips, felt the erect clit and then my middle finger was resting against her lips. Her crotch began to push upward against my hand, demanding more, so I gave it to her. My middle finger slowly slid into her tight warmth, her membranes clutching at me greedily. It slid in easily, lubricated by her copious juices. She was tight, tighter than anything I'd ever felt before, tight enough that I worried if intercourse was even possible with her.

"Oh Bill." She moaned, squeezing me extra hard. Suddenly her fingers were fumbling with my belt. She pulled the end free of the loop and gave a sharp yank, freeing the buckle.

"Nina?" I asked, panting.

"I want to feel it." She told me, nipping at my neck.

I nodded and her fingers popped open the button on my pants. She yanked the zipper down and plunged her hand inside, diving beneath my underwear. Suddenly her cool, eager fingers were around my cock, feeling it, touching it, moving harshly over it while her hips continued to move up and down under my own fingers.

She was inexpert at the job but that didn't matter. The feel of her hand on my bare flesh was thrilling enough, the thought that she was touching me intimately driving me on. I let my finger slide out of her a little and I began pushing against her clit, rubbing my hand in circles.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her own hand becoming erratic and finally dropping away from me. "Yesss Bill!" She cried, grabbing my forearm and pulling it harder into her. Her hips were now blurring up and down, moving with instinctive force. Her juices were soaking me as I rubbed her clit and slid my digit in and out.

She lost the ability to speak coherently. She only moaned and said things like, "Ohhh yess, ohhh Bill, ooooh."

Finally she arched upward and all of her muscles tightened. Her fingernails bit into my forearm painfully and from her lips came: "Mmmmmmm!"

I continued to rub her until she relaxed once more, her butt dropping back down to the blanket. A relaxed sigh escaped from her lips and she looked up at me. Slowly I pulled my hand from her crotch. It was dripping wet and I resisted the urge to put it to my nose, to inhale her special scent for the first time.

"Wow." She muttered, taking deep breaths.

"Are you okay?" I asked gently, a little worried that I'd overwhelmed her.

"Yesss." She breathed. "That was the most incredible thing I've ever felt. Having you do it is much better than…" She stopped suddenly, realizing what she was saying.

I must say that I was shocked by her words. "Better than what?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Though it was very dim lighting I could tell she was blushing again. "Well," She said, giggling a little. "You know? After our other, uh, sessions, I had to do something to get myself to sleep at night. There's nothing wrong with it you know."

No there was nothing wrong with it. In fact the mental image of Nina laying in her bed and masturbating herself was so powerful and erotic that I nearly came just thinking about it. For some reason I just hadn't considered the possibility that she was doing that, although my first act upon returning home was a quick session with my five best friends.

"I think that's very sexy." I told her.

She giggled again. "Now you know one of my secrets. You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Of course not." I said, laughing. Who would I tell? Her Dad? Her Mom?

"It's just embarrassing." She said, her hand touching my cheek. "But it was nothing like it felt when you did it to me just now. I mean, wow." She shook her head.

"I'm glad I could help." I said, kissing her lips.

"What about you?" She asked. "Do you ever, you know?"

"Masturbate?" I asked teasingly.

"Well, yes." She nodded.

Now had I been a normal teenager I wouldn't have admitted it under torture. I would have claimed that I'd never so much as laid a finger on my penis, not even to pee, not even to wash it. Teenagers have a horror of being discovered masturbating. But I was not an ordinary teenager and I knew that women were as turned on by the thought of a guy jerking off as guys were thinking about women doing it.

"All the time." I told her. "Especially after one of our sessions. Especially then."

"Really?" She asked, her eyes shining with arousal again.

"Really." I nodded. "After we make out I HAVE to. You see, when I'm uh, turned on for a long time without uh, relief, it actually causes pain if I don't."

"You mean blue balls?" She said clinically.

I laughed. "Nina, you never fail to surprise me." I told her. "Yes, that's what I mean."

"So every time you and I have made out you've gone home and…"

"Whacked off." I confirmed.

"Wow." She whispered, licking her lips. "What do you think about when you do it?"

"You." I said. "Making love to you."

She gulped, her eyes drifting down to my dick, which was still protruding through my pants, as erect as it could be. "So you're going to do that tonight when you get home?" She asked.

"First thing." I answered.

She hesitated for a second. "Maybe I could, you know, do it for you?"

"What?" I asked, my dick giving a twitch at the thought.

"You did it for me." She said, sliding her hand over my chest. "The least I could do is return the favor, right?"

I swallowed. "Well." I said. "If you really want to…"

"I do." She whispered, pushing me onto my back. "Just tell me how to do it."

She reached out and grasped me once more, encircling my shaft with her fingers.

"Do I move it up and down?" She asked, doing just that.

"Yeah." I breathed, lost in the sensation of her hand upon me. I directed her to move it upward a little more and to increase her speed and loosen her grip. Eager to learn, she complied. Her hand stroked me softly, finally gaining speed as my hips began to move up and down.

"Involuntary action of voluntary muscles." She said, watching this phenomenon. She speeded up, increasing the pressure.

"How much will come out?" She asked me, just as I started to feel the tingles running up my spine.

"A lot at this point." I groaned, actually humping her hand.

"Yeah?"

"Yeahhhhhh!" I breathed. "I'm gonna…"

She watched intently as orgasm assaulted me and my dick began to spurt jet after jet of pent up semen from the head. I groaned in pleasure, the exquisite feeling of relief, doubled by the fact that it was not my hand that was providing it. It shot straight up and landed on my stomach, my pants, my shirt. It covered Nina's hand, running down the back of it, sticking to her fingers. The blue ball sensation, which had been building in my testicles, was releived in an instant.

When the last bit dribbled out Nina removed her hand and looked at it. "Wow." She said. "That was very sexy Bill. Can we do that again sometime?"

"You bet." I agreed, basking in the afterglow.

It took a few minutes to clean ourselves up. There was a hopeless stain on my dress pants that would require a dry cleaner to remove but Nina had somehow managed to only wrinkle her dress and run her pantyhose in one spot.

It was high on her thigh, probably a result of my hand being in there and her mother would most likely not notice it.

When we were composed we kissed each other one more time and carried the blanket back to my car. From across the river the sound of the kegger continued. I smiled as I thought that I'd just had much more fun than most of them would have and that I wouldn't wake up with a hangover as a result.

We talked of inconsequential things on the drive home, both of us still glowing from the experience we had just shared, both of us realizing that things were moving forward in our relationship. I gave her a long, luxuriant kiss goodnight at her front door, not even caring that her mother was probably watching, and then watched her until she was safely inside.

I drove home to a darkened house, my parents already in bed. I went directly to bed, smiling as I fell asleep.

Chapter 13

Graduation night came at last. We put on our dress clothes and then covered them with gowns. We put stupid looking hats on our heads and filed into the school auditorium where our parents were assembled. We listened to a bunch of boring speeches by the principal, a guest speaker, and the school valedictorian, Carrie Founder, who had an appointment with a good-looking loser and an overdose of anti-depressants in her future. She rattled on and on so long that she began receiving catcalls from her bored peers. At last we filed across the stage where the principal read our names from a little card that we each discreetly slipped to him and he then handed us a fake roll of paper with a ribbon attached to it. Our real diplomas, we were promised, would come in the mail in a week or so. Flashbulbs exploded from the audience like strobe lights.

Nina, Mike, and I hung together through all of this, passing the occasional comment under our breaths, Nina and I holding hands for much of the night. We got our fake diplomas and returned to our seats, watching, catatonic, as the rest of our class marched through one by one. Why are these so-called "great memories" that people go on and on about; graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, so damn dull while you're actually sitting through them? Most of the students, myself included, were looking forward to what came AFTER the ceremony.

The school was of course sponsoring a graduation party. It was to be at a local community center and was touted as a fun-filled celebration with dancing, music, and food in a safe, alcohol-free environment. Of course no one but the geekiest planned to be there although many had claimed to their parents that was where they were going. The REAL party was to be at the falls where three kegs were being brought in for the occasion. Marijuana sales had also gone through the roof in the proceeding two days.

When the ceremony was over everyone headed out to the parking lot. Hundreds of students and parents hugged each other, slapped each other on the back, shook hands, posed for the obligatory pictures, and generally congratulated each other on surviving the Spokane Public School System with their lives and sanity intact. Then the parents began to drift to their cars, leaving the students to their own devices. Of course the memory of Lisa Sanchez's untimely death on the previous graduation night was strong among the parents. Admonishments to be careful, and not to drink and drive, and other worried comments echoed through the parking lot followed by the reassurances of those that thought themselves immortal.

Even my Dad, knowing what he did about me, was worried.

"You'll be okay tonight Bill?" He asked as we stood next to his car.

"You bet Dad." I told him. "I'm going to be the designated driver tonight. I'll get everyone home safe."

He nodded slowly and then climbed into the car, Mom beside him. They drove off and I returned to Nina, who was standing with her own parents.

"Congratulations Bill." Jack told me, holding out his hand. I shook it and then received a surprise when Mary, repeating his words, actually stepped forward and hugged me.

"Thank you." I told both of them, giving Mary my best hug before she released me.

"Where are you two going tonight?" Jack asked next.

"Oh, just to a party." Nina replied vaguely.

Jack gave her a knowing look. "And will there be drinking at this party?" He asked.

Nina hesitated and was probably about to give him a pathetic lie. Nina was not a very good liar, particularly to her parents. But I jumped in.

"There certainly will be." I said.

Nina looked sharply at me, her expression disbelief. Jack and Mary also seemed surprised.

"It's graduation night." I went on. "I believe that the law states you MUST drink on graduation night. But have no fear. I'm driving and I take that very seriously. I'll get Nina home safely, I promise."

"You're not going to drink?" Jack asked, skeptical.

"Maybe a beer or two at the beginning." I answered. "But I'll be sober when it's time to come home. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." Jack told me, his eyes boring into me. "Remember what I told you about my daughter. She's the only one I got."

"And remember what I told you about your daughter." I shot back. "She'll be safe with me. Won't you Nina?"

"Of course." She said softly, watching the exchange and realizing it was taking place on a level she was not a part of.

Jack and Mary finally climbed in their car and drove off. Nina and I went to find Mike, who was explaining to his parents how he was going to the school sponsored party where no alcohol was allowed. His parents were reassured by this and were smiling as they entered their own car. When they were gone we all looked at each other.

"Let's go." I said.

"Fuckin aye!" Mike put in happily.

We climbed into my car and headed for the falls.

I must say that it was very eerie being at the party. You see, I'd attended it before when I'd graduated the first time in my previous life. The only differences were the presence of Mike, who had not graduated before, and Nina, who had not been a member of the party-group before. Aside from that, everything was the same. Everything.

The kegs were scattered throughout the parking lot as they had been before, lines of people, still dressed in their dress clothes winding their way to the tap to fill their cups. The same cooperative effort with the car stereos had occurred, with everyone agreeing to tune them to the local rock station and not to play any tapes. The music of Van Halen, Foreigner, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, and others marched by and I was almost able to predict which song was coming next. The conversations were the same and though I hadn't memorized them on my first trip through, hearing them as I went by it was uncanny how much my subconscious had absorbed seventeen years before. It was a little like being in the middle of a dream, one of those dreams you have of prior events in your life, but never had the sensation of deja vu been so strong.

Nina, Mike and I paid our money and had our hands stamped. I quickly drank down three beers, giving myself a pleasant, non-dangerous buzz. The alcohol was able to dampen the sensation a little but not completely. It was very disquieting.

Mike of course was hitting the keg as fast as he could, filling his cup and then walking immediately to the back of the line. By the time he reached the tap again, his cup would be empty. He then repeated the process. He also had several joints with him, which he shared with those in line around him. It was less than an hour before he was hopelessly wasted. This was not surprising.

What was surprising was the fact that Nina was sticking with him and doing the exact same thing. She was drinking beer like water and hitting every joint or pipe that was passed her way. I'd never seen her do anything like this before.

"You might want to slow down a little." I suggested to her as she came staggering over to me after her latest trip through the keg line. She was weaving and unsteady on her feet, spilling some of her beer on her arm.

"Fuck it!" She said, giggling. "I'm having a good time tonight. How many times in your life do you graduate?"

I nodded. "Good point. But be careful. If you keep up this pace you're going to be unconscious before too long."

She reached down and grabbed my cock through my pants, making me jump and look around to see if anyone had seen it. A few had, and they turned away, smirking.

"Nina!" I admonished, pushing her hand away.

"I'm not gonna pass out until I get what I want." She grinned, taking a huge drink of her beer.

Apparently Nina wasn't the only one whose inhibitions were being destroyed by alcohol. Every time she walked away from me some girl would come up and strike up a conversation. Most of them were girls that I'd bedded before during my "male-slut" period. Most of them made no bones about what they wanted.

I'd run into this before of course. When I stopped making my rounds and committed myself to Nina a lot of the girls continued to approach me for a while. They always used the line that I was used to, that they needed help "studying" and had heard that I was an awesome tutor. I would tell each one the same thing, that I had a girlfriend now and that my tutoring days were over. It hadn't taken long before the grapevine had informed all but the most aggressive that I was out of circulation. Even the most aggressive gave up after a while. But the party atmosphere and the alcohol had renewed a lot of the aggression. I believe I gave up more sex that night than I ever would have thought possible.

One girl, Jessica Round, was especially persistent. She would not take no for an answer. I remembered her well. A redhead that was a member of the elite, she'd been well versed in sexual technique before I ever got to her. She had been one of my favorites both because of her staggering good looks and because of the fact that she was on birth control pills, which made a condom unnecessary. She had been one of the longest holdouts when I'd dropped out of circulation.

Three times she approached me when Nina was getting her beer refilled or heading off to the porta-can to pee. On the third time she became nasty in her suggestions.

"C'mon," She pleaded, burping a little as she sipped from her beer. "I haven't had my pussy eaten with any skill since I came over to your house that time. Ditch that little lisping, skinny chick you're with and take a walk with me." She grinned. "You WON'T be sorry."

I bit back my anger for a second and took a deep breath. An idea came to me.

"Listen Jess." I said softly, conspiratorially. "Nina and I are pretty much committed now so I can't really do that."

"Nina." She scoffed. "What does that…"

"But." I said.

"But?" She asked hopefully.

"Well, I couldn't really take myself out of circulation without finding a suitable replacement, could I?"

She looked at me fuzzily. "What do you mean?"

I pointed at Mike, who was standing among a group of guys near the keg. They were all looking at the passing females with admiration and probably explaining to each other which one's they'd fucked, how they'd done it, and when they'd done it. A joint was being passed around while they conversed.

"You see Mike Meachen over there?" I asked her.

"Yeah?" She asked confused.

"He's even better at it than I am."

"Mike Meachen?" She asked, scowling.

"I've lectured him on the proper study techniques so that my name could live on. You get him to go for a walk with you and you won't be sorry."

"Mike Meachen?" She repeated again.

"Trust me on this Jess. He's good. All you have to do is tell him EXACTLY what you want him to do, and he'll do it. Be specific, he doesn't mind. He aims to please."

She appraised him for a moment. "Well," She said, "He IS kinda cute."

"Would I steer you wrong?" I asked. "Sensual pleasure is just waiting for you." I winked. "And of course, he's just as discreet as me. So go get him."

She smiled drunkenly. "Okay." She announced. "Thanks Bill."

She headed off in his direction. Nina returned a moment later, carrying a fresh beer. Her gait was very unsteady now and her eyes were glassy.

"What were you talking to Jessica for?" She asked with distaste and more than a little suspicion.

I shrugged. "She's kind of aggressive." I told her. "So I directed her attention elsewhere."

"You've, uh, done her before?" Nina asked.

"Nina…" I started, uncomfortable.

"I only ask because she used to come up to me all the time and ask what the deal was with you. And then she started asking me if I liked the "vacuum cleaner" treatment. She's a ho."

"I agree." I said. "And I'm sorry you had to deal with her. She's from a previous life Nina."

"Okay." Nina nodded, kissing my cheek. Her breath smelled of beer. "What's she doing over there with Mike?"

"Watch and see." I said happily, taking the cup out her hand and taking a quick drink.

It didn't take long, less than thirty minutes in fact. I couldn't hear what was being said but suddenly the attractive redhead joined the group that Mike was a part of. The other guys tried to flirt with her of course but she only had eyes for Mike. Within ten minutes she was rubbing against his arm. Within fifteen she was pushing her breasts into his back and shoulder.

Within twenty he accompanied her to the keg and refilled her glass. There was one more whispered conversation and the two of them walked off into the woods, holding hands, carrying their beers with them. Even from my vantage I could tell that Mike was nervous. Again I found myself wondering if he'd ever actually been laid before. Oh well. He was about to be laid now.

"How did you do that?" Nina asked me, weaving a little.

"I can do anything I set my mind to." I told her. "Anything."

She leaned forward and kissed me again. Then she looked up. "I'm very drunk Bill."

"I know." I said. "But you only graduate once, right?"

Mike and Jessica emerged from the woods about forty minutes later. Both were staggering and holding onto each other, their hair mussed up, their clothes wrinkled. Both were smiling. That was a surprise. Had Mike done a good job on her? Maybe a combination of her drunkenness and her instructions to him had done the trick. She seemed happy, which hadn't exactly been my goal, but so did Mike. They hit the keg again and then split up, Jess heading over to a group of her friends, Mike heading over to his. It wasn't a minute before he began his description of what just happened to him. By morning her reputation would be shot. Cruel? Maybe. But so had been the way she'd talked about Nina.

By this time Nina had gone back to the keg herself and was having difficulty standing. She giggled at everything and her words were slurred. She rubbed her body against mine shamelessly, pushing her breasts into my arm, grabbing my butt.

"I think you'd better lay off the beer Nina." I told her carefully, holding her up.

"Everything is starting to spin a little." She admitted. "But I'm having such a good time."

"When things start to spin," I suggested, "That should be your warning sign that you've had too much. Believe me, you want to quit."

"Then take a walk with me." She said. "Let's go into the woods like the other couples have."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I told her.

"Why?" She burped, nearly falling. "I want to make love under the stars. Come on Bill," She kissed my neck, nipping at it. "Let's go."

"Not tonight." I insisted.

"Don't I turn you on anymore?" She pouted.

"Very much." I told her. "But I want your first time to be special. Doing it in the woods on a bunch of pine needles while you're drunk would not be special. Do you want your life-long memory of your first time to be, well, nothing? Because believe me Nina, you won't remember anything that's happened tomorrow."

She looked at me for a moment and was about to say something else when her face suddenly soured. "I'm gonna throw up." She said matter-of-factly.

She was right. I led her over to the edge of the woods, out of sight of everyone else, and she began vomiting up great gluts of beer. It went on for several minutes and I held her up while she did it. For the first time I began to worry about what her parents were going to think when I brought her home. Her Dad would kill me.

I led her over to my car and placed her in the passenger seat.

"Sit right here." I told her. "And if you need to throw up again, just do it outside, okay?"

She groaned in reply, but it was an affirmative groan. I headed back to the party to try and collect Mike.

Mike wasn't in much better condition. He was sitting on one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed, concentrating intently.

"You okay Mike?" I asked him.

"I feel sick." He told me. "I'm trying not to barf."

"C'mon." I told him, grabbing him by the arm. "Let's get you back to the car. I'll help you."

He leaned heavily on me as we walked.

"Guess what dude?" He burped, tripping and nearly falling.

"What?"

"I fucked Jessica Round tonight."

"Yeah?" I asked, knowing I was hearing a true pussy story for once from him.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I ate her pussy and everything. That bitch was hot for it. She kept tellin' me what she wanted me to do."

"Did you do it?" I asked.

"Goddam right." He affirmed. He then went on to describe the encounter in greater detail. By the time we got to the car I had the high points.

"Oh dude," He moaned as we reached my trunk. "Take me home."

"You need to do something for me first." I told him.

"What's that?" He slurred.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"What?" He demanded, holding onto the trunk to keep the world from spinning out from under him.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"That'll make me throw up!" He cried.

"Right." I acknowledged. "You're going to do it anyway so you might as well get it over with here instead of in my car. Besides, you'll feel better. Trust me."

"I don't know man." He said doubtfully.

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced him. He staggered over a few paces, got down on his knees, and stuck his finger down his throat. A moment later he was regurgitating beer all over the place. While he did this I went to check on Nina. A fresh puddle outside the passenger door told me that she'd had another bought of vomiting. She was currently curled up in the seat, her head against the doorframe, asleep. I elected not to disturb her.

When Mike finished I loaded him into the back seat and buckled him up. I buckled up Nina and then started up the engine. I headed back to the city.

Mike was easy to get home. A few quick shakes in front of his house and a helping hand getting out of the car and he went staggering up his walkway, giving me a slurred farewell. He had some trouble getting the door open but finally figured out he was using the wrong key. Once this was rectified, he was inside. I drove off towards Nina's house.

The Blackmore house was darkened as I pulled to the curb and shut down my engine. I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Maybe I could get her inside without awakening her parents. Beside me Nina was unconscious, snoring softly. I began to shake her gently, trying to wake her.

"Nina." I called, using a louder and louder voice. "You're home."

She stirred a little but would not open her eyes. She batted at me once when I shook her a little too hard.

"Shit." I mumbled.

I began patting down her pockets, looking for her keys. Feeling the tell-tale bulge in the right front of her pants, I put my hand in, having to force it the pants were so tight, and finally felt the cold metal of the keys. It took a few moments of stern yanking before they popped free. Using the dome light I searched through the ring and finally identified a likely house key.

I got out of the car and walked up to the door, quiet as a mouse, and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock. It wouldn't turn. With a curse I pulled it out and searched through the ring again, locating another prospect. This one did the trick. I released the bolt and pulled the key free. I then tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked too. Using the first key I unlocked that and gave the knob a quick turn to make sure it would open. Knowing that Nina had a cat that was not supposed to be outside, I did not open the door just yet, although that would have made my task easier.

I quickly returned back to the car and opened the passenger door. I shoved the keys back into Nina's pocket and then reached down and picked her up, cradling her like a baby. This was easy since she only weighed about a hundred pounds or so. Even in her stupor her arm automatically went around my neck.

Tiptoeing I walked up to the door and, after considerable twisting and stretching, managed to get my hand on the doorknob. With the layout of the Blackmore house in my mind, giving me the fastest route to her bedroom and back out, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, prepared to make the dash.

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

My eyes looked up to the lighted box next to the front door. An alarm code box. As soon as I heard the noise and saw the box a memory came to me, a memory of the days before our breakup, when Nina's mother used to drive us to this house after school to study. I remembered either Nina or her mother punching in a code as soon as the door was unlocked. A code that shut off the infernal beeping before the alarm would start to ring. How in the hell had I forgotten about that?

I shook her up and down, trying to rouse her. "Nina." I whispered frantically into her ear. "What's the code for your alarm?"

"Huh?" She croaked, her glassy eyes creaking open a quarter of an inch or so.

"What's the damn alarm code?" I asked desperately.

She giggled. "That's funny." She went back to sleep.

"Nina!" I barked louder.

A bedroom door opened from down the hall. A light clicked on.

"Nina?" Came Jack Blackmore's voice. "Turn off the damn alarm! What's the matter with you?"

Footsteps began to approach. Mary's voice spoke up. "Jack? What's wrong? Why is the alarm going off?"

I could only stand there as Jack came around the corner. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and was shirtless, the surgical scar on his chest standing out like a zipper. His eyes locked onto me standing there and holding his unconscious daughter in my arms.

"Christ Almighty." He muttered, tromping over. He punched in a code and the beeping fell silent.

"Jack?" Came Mary's voice from the bedroom. "Is everything all right?"

Jack looked at me carefully for a moment and then at Nina, who was snoring drunkenly again. I wondered if he was going to go get his hunting rifle and blow me away right there or if he would at least give me a running start.

"Is she okay?" He asked tonelessly.

"Uh…" I stammered.

"She smells like a damn brewery. Is she okay?"

"She had a little too much to drink." I finally admitted.

Mary came around the corner. She was dressed in a long cotton nightgown and pulling a robe around her body. She took in the scene before her and walked carefully into the living room.

"What's wrong with her?" She asked.

"Too much to drink." Jack explained.

"I tried to get her to slow down." I offered weakly. My arm muscles were starting to cry out as I stood there. I wondered if we were going to end right back up at step one again because of this?

"And you?" Jack asked me. "Have you had too much to drink too?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "I only had three beers all night, and those were when we first got there. I told you I take driving very seriously."

He nodded. "You seem sober enough." He pointed out. "Well don't just stand there. Go put her in her room. Mary, can you take care of her once she's there?"

"Of course." Mary said, shaking her head sadly and looking at her intoxicated daughter with something that looked almost like affection. Strange.

"C'mon." Mary told me, leading the way.

"Aren't you guys mad about this?" I finally had to ask.

They both stopped and looked at me. "Mad?" Jack asked. "Why would we be mad? You got her home safely just like you said."

"Yeah." I stammered. "But…"

"You mean because she's drunk?" Mary asked next.

I nodded.

They looked at each other for a moment and chuckled knowingly.

"Bill." Jack told me. "We'd be about the biggest hypocrites in the world if we got mad over this. Why back in our day I drug Mary home many a time carrying her just like you're carrying Nina there."

"And I've dragged Jack into the house more than my share too." She added.

My mouth was agape as I tried to picture what they were saying.

"Drinking is a part of every young person's life." Mary said, reaching out to stroke Nina's hair. "She's free and eighteen and if she wants to drink until she vomits, that's her prerogative. Did she vomit?"

"Uh, yeah." I nodded.

"You were a lot more responsible than we used to be." Jack told me. "Why we used to go out to parties and when it was time to go we decided who would drive by whoever had to carry the other. A couple times we woke up the next morning and the car was in the garage and we had no idea how we'd gotten home."

They looked at each other affectionately again. "It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves back then." Mary said nostalgically. She turned to Jack. "Remember that time we woke up in someone's house in the morning and we didn't know where we were?"

Jack laughed fondly. "Oh yeah." He nodded, turning to me. "It was back in the late fifties or thereabouts. We went to this Christmas party and got drunk out of our minds. The next thing we know, we're waking up the next morning in chairs at someone's dining room table. Never seen the house before in our lives."

Mary actually giggled, to my astonishment. "And the kid!" She said. "Remember the kid!"

"Oh yeah." He repeated. "There was this kid eating breakfast at the table. A bowl of cereal. We'd never seen him before, had no idea who he was. He just kind of looked at us and said hi and then went back to eating. Were we hungover? Oh boy I guess we were. Our car was out front so we got into and tried to drive home but we had no idea what part of town we were in or anything."

"It took us about twenty minutes to find a street we were familiar with." Mary laughed.

That this story would be one of their fond marital memories seemed strange at first but I finally realized I was dealing with the alcohol generation here. In their youths alcohol use did not have the stigma it would develop in mine. Drinking was a part of every social function and was seen as a rite of passage almost. The Blackmores seemed almost proud of their daughter for having her first vomitus trip through the land of intoxication.

"This is very weird." I couldn't help commenting.

They offered no comment to that. Mary led me to Nina's bedroom where I gently laid her down on her bed. She shoed me out and closed the door while she began attending to her comatose daughter. When I returned to the living room, Jack was holding two bottles of beer in his hands. He handed one to me.

"Since you didn't get to drink at the party tonight," He said. "I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home."

I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest.

"You're not supposed to drink, are you?" I asked lightly.

"Screw those doctors." He told me. "If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn't have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me."

"I won't insult you by saying no." I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.

Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn't quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.

Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn't a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80 degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.

The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He'd picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks proceeding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn't be mailed to him for a week, he KNEW that he'd passed. I couldn't doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was "Congratulations". His score was ninety-one percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o'clock the afternoon of June 20.

I didn't believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I've mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner's muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence that he would do so.

The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he'd gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o'clock, that something was wrong.

It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.

"I didn't pass dude." He told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.

"What happened?" I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I'd failed the same test before of course but I hadn't wanted it as badly as he did.

He sighed, shaking his head. "My legs and my endurance were fuckin' top rate." He said. "I lit into that course like you wouldn't believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat, it didn't even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledge hammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn't even winded and my time was pushing the record." He gave me a bitter look.

"And then what?" I asked gently.

He scowled. "I'm tellin' you man." He said. "I've spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that's the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren't working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom." He sniffed a little. "Automatic disqualification."

I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I'd never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I'd taken it I hadn't worked my arms either. But I'd also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position. Actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.

"I'm sorry Man." I told him. "I know how much you wanted this."

He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. "That kinda shit happens." He told me. "Oh well. There's always next year, I guess. I'll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then."

We smoked the joint together but it didn't improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn't like seeing him that way.

As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice; the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina's time was taken up by much of the same process.

But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my Dad's boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He'd purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it's engine broken, it's paint faded, it's hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.

I myself had owned a small boat in my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I'd finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts.

But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I'd gotten Dad's tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could.

I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.

And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the "engine doesn't work" problem that my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.

He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we'd installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.

"Head gasket is blown." He told me happily.

"Okay." I said, not knowing what that meant. Like my old man I knew next to nothing about the internal combustion engine. "Can we fix it?"

"Are you serious?" He asked, shaking his head.

"What do you mean?"

"I can do it in a day for less than a hundred bucks." He told me. "The head gasket is the seal between the head and the engine block. If it's blown it fucks up the compression and lets oil and shit spray out. That keeps the engine from running or from cooling right. If that's all that's wrong, we'll have this thing up and running next weekend."

"No shit?" I asked, impressed.

"No shit." He answered happily.

So the next Saturday he came over at nine in the morning and we went to work. First we visited the auto parts store where he requested the appropriate parts and I paid for them. We took them back to my garage and he opened his toolbox. We went to work, me very much in the apprentice mode.

I had noticed that he was preoccupied with something else throughout the day but I didn't broach the subject. Mike was not the kind of person you tried to draw out. If he wanted to tell you what was wrong, he would do it. If he didn't, you weren't going to get it out of him.

It was after we'd removed the head and placed it on some newspapers on the garage floor along with all of the other parts, as he was scraping the old gasket off, that he finally spilled it. Our hands were grimy and greasy and both of us were dripping sweat from the high humidity. We were both drinking cans of beer that my Dad had supplied us with.

"I'm thinking about joining the Air Force." He told me, scraping away with a razor.

That one sentence sent chills through my body, even before my mind completely processed it. The Air Force? I could almost feel fate pulling at Mike, could almost sense it as a hostile, aware presence in the garage with us, a cloaked figure with a satisfied smile on it's face.

"What did you say?" I asked quietly, hoping I hadn't heard him right, or that he was merely joking with me.

"The Air Force." He repeated, grinding away at a stubborn piece of gasket. "I got a call from this recruiter guy the other day and I talked to him about twenty minutes. He was a really cool guy."

A really cool guy. Not surprising. Recruiters were, after all, salesmen. A good one would have gone out of his way to learn the lingo of his target group and would talk just like a teenager, even if he was a fifty year old man. They were paid to seduce the young and they were good at it.

"What did he say?" I asked, my mind in overdrive trying to think of a way to counter this situation.

"Well we talked for a little bit." He said. "And I told him that I was interested in firefighting. He says that every Air Force Base, everywhere in the world, has a fire department. They handle all of the medical aids and fires on the base housing. They also get extensive training in aircraft fires and rescue. If I spent four years in doing that it would almost guarantee me a job when I got out. Think of how that would look on my resume, being trained in aircraft suppression, HAZMAT, and with four years of practical experience doing it."

I realized two things as I listened to him. One, was that he was repeating, almost word for word, what the recruiter had thrown at him. Mike would never have said anything like "resume" or "practical experience". The second thing was that he was seeking my approval of his plan. Whether he was doing it unconsciously or consciously, he was running his idea by me hoping I'd say it was a great one. This gave me hope that I could divert him from what I was sure would be a destructive path. I had no illusions about what would happen if Mike joined the Air Force. But I needed to do it carefully. If I pushed too hard, my words would have the opposite effect that I intended.

"Did he tell you that you could go into the fire department?" I asked.

"He said that I could put that in as my request for skills and they would try to place me there." Mike said. "It sounds like a pretty good deal."

"Yeah." I nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like one."

"I made an appointment to talk to him tomorrow." He said.

I chewed my lip a little, knowing that the recruiter had every intention of getting Mike to sign his name to the line tomorrow, knowing that Mike would most likely do so if left to his own devices. What to do?

I picked up my beer, which was warm at that point and tasted like shit but I took a big drink of it anyway.

"I've looked into the military a little bit." I told him.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I affirmed. "It could be a good career move under certain circumstances, but there's a few things you have to realize."

He scowled a little bit. "What do you mean?"

I took a deep breath. "Well," I said. "First of all there's the recruiter. You have to understand what his purpose is. In our country we have a volunteer military. There's no draft in place so they have to staff everything with people who have signed their names of their own free will. In order to do that, they have to make the military look attractive to their prospects, to draw them away from civilian life. That's where the recruiter comes in. He probably sounded like he was your best friend, right?"

Mike shrugged, scraping away a little more gasket. "Yeah, he was pretty cool."

"That's because he's a salesman. His job is to sign up people for the Air Force. He wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't good at it. So he'll pretty much tell you anything in order to get you in there. He'll go on and on about how great the Air Force is but he won't tell you the unpleasant parts because that might put you off a little. So the first thing you need to realize is that the recruiter is not really your friend. He has a job to do, and his job is to sign you up."

"Yeah," Mike scowled further, "But…"

"Now hold on." I interrupted. "I'm not saying the military is a BAD idea. I'm just trying to get you to see that the recruiter can not necessarily be trusted to hold your best interests in mind. Can you see this?"

He thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah." He agreed. "I see where you're coming from."

"For instance," I said. "Did he mention the ASVAB to you?"

"The az-vab?" Mike asked.

"Armed services vocational assessment battery." I translated. "The ASVAB. It's a test they give you once you're committed. It's a general knowledge exam designed to get into your mind a little and see what makes you tick. Psychologists and so forth have designed it and it measures what your strengths and weaknesses are. From that, they determine what job you're going to be assigned to once you're in."

"But he told me they'd put me into the Firefighting School." Mike protested.

"No no." I corrected. "You yourself just told me that they would put that in as a request for skills and TRY to assign you there. He didn't actually say that you would be put in there, did he?"

Mike thought for a moment. "No." He finally said. "He didn't. But still, my request will be in. Why wouldn't they put me there?"

"Lots of reasons." I explained. "First and foremost your ASVAB might say you wouldn't be a good firefighter. If that's the case, then you won't get it no matter what. If your ASVAB says you'd make an excellent, oh, missile technician in some silo in North Dakota, then that's where you're going to go. But even if your ASVAB says you'd make a good firefighter, there might not be any openings for that skill. I imagine that firefighting and MP skills are taken up pretty quickly."

"If they don't give me what I want." Mike said firmly. "Then I won't do it."

"That's the catch." I told him. "You take the ASVAB after you've signed your name and committed yourself. You would have taken the oath at that point. You can't back out after that. You'd be in for four years, doing whatever they wanted you to do. If they wanted to send you to Germany to clean out shithouses, you'd be doing it. Once you sign your name, you're government property. The only way out at that point is some sort of discharge that would be other than honorable. It could be medical, psychological, dishonorable, but no matter what it would be, it would destroy your chances of getting on with any fire department anywhere."

He had stopped scraping the gasket and was looking at me. I could read his face and could see that a part of him wanted to be angry with me, to storm out of my garage for telling him something he didn't want to hear. But another part of him, the part that was becoming an adult, was also there. That part was carefully considering what I'd just said.

"Are you sure about all of this?" He asked me.

"You don't have to believe me." I told him. "You have an appointment with the recruiter tomorrow. Ask him all of this. Ask him directly if what I've just told you is true. He'll hem and haw and try to convince you that you'll almost surely be put in the firefighter class but he won't give you any sort of guarantee in writing and he won't be able to say, "Mike, you WILL be in that firefighting class". I'm not wrong about this Mike. You need to be wary of making impulsive decisions that can erase four years of your life."

He nodded, not speaking.

"If you don't join up." I told him. "You can take the Spokane test again next year. Or you can start applying at other departments around here. Someone, somewhere is always hiring. Seattle Fire hires twice a year I hear and they pay quite a bit more than Spokane. Put in your interest cards everywhere and fill out the applications. Take the tests even if it's some bum-fuck Egypt department that you'd never work for. It's good practice. In the meantime, sign up for the fire science classes at the community college."

"College?" He asked, never having considered that concept.

"Why not?" I enquired. "It's cheap and it gives you something to do. When you go to the interviews you can tell them that you're working on your degree in Fire Science. They love that shit. Once you get hired you can drop out if you want. Or you can continue. My point is that just because you missed one test the first time, you don't have to do something rash like joining the military. If you do that there's a good chance you might regret it later and have no way out. If you stick it out for a while you might get hired somewhere else or you might get hired at Spokane next year. If none of that works out, then maybe you can give the military a try. But there's no hurry is there? The Air Force will still be there in a year, won't they?"

"I suppose so." He told me.

"Just don't let the recruiter seduce you tomorrow. Be on guard and ask the right questions. Remember that the recruiter can act like your friend, he can make you believe he's your friend, but he's not your friend. He exists to get you to sign your name. He doesn't give a fuck about you."

Mike nodded. He didn't commit himself one way or the other but I knew I'd given him a lot of food for thought. I hoped it was enough.

The conversation soon turned to other things. We worked for another three hours and finally the engine was back together.

"Okay." Mike told me, standing near the back of it. "Fire it up."

I turned the key and it roared to life, sounding exactly like an eight cylinder, gas-guzzling engine should. Mike proclaimed the boat fixed. Of course it still had to have it's registration updated but we made tentative plans to take it out the following weekend.

I thought about reminding him of what we'd talked about as he headed home but decided not to. I could only hope his maturity would win out over his other side.

I didn't get a chance to talk to Mike for a few days. The day after the boat was fixed Nina and I spent the day together downtown, catching a movie and then having dinner together. We made out a little in my car at a deserted park but did nothing fancy. My mind was preoccupied with a thousand things, as was hers. We said our good-byes at her doorstep at ten that night, exchanging a demure kiss. I then went home and wanked myself to sleep.

Monday and Tuesday were my normal routine. I got Dad to go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and re-register the boat. He did so grudgingly, he hated DMV as much as anyone, but he was proud of the accomplishment of getting the old boat running again. I told him my plans to take it out the following Saturday and he quizzed me once more about my experience with driving a boat and driving a car with a boat trailer attached to it. I assured him that I knew how to do it. One of the advantages of having my Dad in on my secret was that he didn't question things like that too heavily and that I didn't have to lie to him. It was nice.

During this time period I almost called Mike a half a dozen times. I was worried that the recruiter had somehow gotten to him. I wouldn't have even put it past one of those slime to outright lie and tell him that of course he'd be placed in the firefighting program. After all, by the time he found out to the contrary, it would be too late wouldn't it? And if his complaints somehow landed on something other than deaf ears, the recruiter could always deny it. I hoped he'd taken my speech about putting things in writing seriously.

He finally called me on Wednesday, just before I left for work. It was maddening as he talked of inconsequential things for five minutes and part of me wondered if he knew what hell he was putting me through and enjoying it. Finally the subject of the meeting with the recruiter came up.

"You were right Dude." He told me. "That asshole was a piece of shit."

"Yeah?" I asked, suppressing a shout of joy. "What happened?"

"I asked him the questions you told me to ask." He said. "He went on and on about how I would most likely be placed exactly where I wanted to be, even in the city I wanted to be in, but that he couldn't ACTUALLY guarantee it. He told me the ASVAB was just a formality and that it didn't mean much but he wouldn't break out anything in writing to put me in the firefighting program. He kept trying to smooth talk me and get off the subject of where I would end up. He started talking about college, and money for college, and serving my country, and a bunch of shit like that. Finally I told him to fuck off and left."

"That's fuckin cool Mike." I said, unable to suppress any longer. "You made the right decision."

"Yeah." He said. "Thanks for clueing me in about that asshole. I owe you one."

He had actually thanked me! Unbelievable. "No problem man." I told him. "That's what friends do."

"We still on for Saturday?" He asked next. "I'm ready to try water-skiing."

"We're on." I told him. "You and me and Nina. We'll head out about nine."

"Cool." He said, then paused for a second. "I'm not gonna be in the way or anything with you and Nina, am I?"

"No." I assured him. "You need three to water-ski anyway. Someone has to be the observer."

"That's cool." He told me. "You're lucky. You got a girlfriend to take with you. I seem to be fresh out of women at the moment. I tried to call Jess Round but she's not even speaking to me. She told me to fuck off when I got hold of her."

"Fuck her." I told him. "She's a ho. We'll find you someone else."

"Think you can do it by Saturday?" He asked jokingly.

"I'll get right on it." I said, just as jokingly.

It was Thursday morning and I was at the local AM/PM pumping gas into my Datsun. I wasn't thinking of much, just reflecting upon the fact that I missed the convenience of just sliding my ATM card into a little slot and pumping my fill without ever having to actually go inside the store and pay in cash. It was one of those things that would appear in the next few years that I had to live without. Such a little thing, the ATM card and the interlinked networks, but something that once you got used to, you felt the sting if it wasn't there anymore.

ATM machines themselves were just starting to make their appearance to the world. At the moment, my bank did not have any of them. When I wanted money I had to physically go inside and cash a check. I had to be sure to do this between nine and five on a weekday or I was shit out of luck in the money department. I reflected, as the numbers on the pump clicked off dollars and cents, that the American public in general was probably spending a lot less money than they would in a few years. Right now you had to go to the bank to get cash and cash was basically the only way to acquire anything small. In a few years you would be able to go to any machine anywhere and deplete your checking or savings account at any hour of the day. It would be no longer mandatory to take out a supply of money in order to survive the workweek.

I was wondering if this was a bad thing or a good thing when I detected a presence moving in on me. My instincts flared, thoughts of Richie Fairview coming for his final revenge crossing my consciousness. Adrenaline flooded me in an instant as my body prepared to fight or flee. I turned into my aggressor, my arms coming up in a defensive posture and suddenly I was enveloped in a pair of female arms, a warm, soft body pressing heavily into me.

"Bill!" A familiar voice squealed at me. I felt the press of breasts against my chest as I was pulled into my attacker.

"Maggie?" I asked, taking in the form and instinctively returning the hug.

She gave me a wet, sloppy kiss on the cheek. "Did I scare you?" She asked teasingly, pulling back to look at me.

"No." I lied. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting gas." She told me, finally releasing me from her embrace. She was dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a half-shirt. She looked very pretty.

The endlessly horny part of my brain remembered what that body looked like naked, how it felt moving beneath (or above) mine. "What else does one do at a gas station?"

"Good point." I allowed. "How have you been? What have you been up to?"

"I'm still going to college." She said. "Working on my pre-recs for nursing school. Hopefully I'll be able to transfer over to State next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed."

"Good for you." I told her, knowing what was going to come soon from her lips. An offer to get together with her for a little fun. Fortunately she'd allowed me an opening to derail her offer before it came. I seized upon it. "My girlfriend is going to be getting those pre-recs too. She wants to go to med school."

"Girlfriend?" She moaned sadly, but good naturedley. "Don't tell me you're out of circulation?"

"Afraid so." I confirmed.

"Well that sucks the big one." She giggled. "I was hoping you and I could get together, you know, for old times sake." Her tone heavily implied that this would still be a possibility, girlfriend or not.

"Sorry." I said, smiling. "But if I was ever tempted…" I winked.

We chatted for a minute, her catching me up on the whereabouts of Cindy. "That bitch moved in with the college professor and left me holding the lease for our apartment. If I wouldn't have found another roommate right away they would've had to evict me. She's such a blonde."

"Are they still together?" I asked.

"Oh yeah." She nodded. "They're gonna get married as soon as his divorce is final."

"Go Cindy." I said.

"So who's the lucky girl that snagged you?" Maggie asked me. "She must be a hottie."

"Nina Blackmore." I told her.

Her brow crinkled in confusion. "Nina Blackmore?" She asked. "Really?"

"Really." I confirmed, knowing the source of her confusion. Though Nina was pretty and though I longed for her body as well as her mind, she was not exactly in the category of "hottie".

"Well congratulations." She told me. "But if you ever break up with her…"

"You'll be the first one I call." I promised. "But I don't think I'm gonna break up anytime soon."

"Pretty serious huh?" She asked.

"Very." I confirmed.

She sighed. "That's what I need." She told me. "Someone to be serious with. Having different boyfriends every month used to be fun but it's getting kind of old. And now with AIDS and all that shit, well, you know?"

I nodded and then an idea suddenly hit me. It was an impulsive decision, one that I did not have time to think out carefully, but I went with it.

"Hey Maggie," I said. "Do you like to water-ski?"

She looked at me, wondering what this was about. "I've done it a few times." She said. "It's fun."

"I just fixed up my Dad's ski boat." I told her. "Nina and Mike Meachen and I are taking it out on Saturday. You want to come?"

She grinned knowingly. "Are you trying to fix me up with Mike Meachen?" She asked.

"No." I protested. "I just thought you'd like to come, that's all. What's wrong with Mike anyway?"

A giggle. "You are." She accused. "There's nothing wrong with him I guess.

He's kinda cute, but he's younger. I don't go for younger guys."

"You don't have to go for him." I said. "I just wanted to know if you'd like to go skiing with us."

She considered for a moment. "Okay." She finally said. "What time?"

That evening after work Nina came over for a visit. We did the obligatory time chatting with my parents and then we went out front to sit in the porch swing with our arms around each other, watching the sunset while we rocked slowly back and forth. I told her that I'd invited Maggie to go boating with us and felt her tense up.

"Maggie Bartlett?" She asked carefully. "You invited HER to go?"

"Yeah." I answered, wondering suddenly if it had been such a good idea after all. "I ran into her at the gas station. I thought that maybe her and Mike might hit it off a little."

She looked over at me. "She's very pretty." Nina said.

I shrugged. "I suppose."

"You've uh, done it with her before." She said. It was not a question.

"Nina that was the past." I said. "And it was a long time ago." Which wasn't exactly true, Maggie and Cindy had been the last two girls I'd slept with after all, but I didn't think that little fact needed to play a part in this discussion.

"Bill…" She started worriedly.

"Those days are over." I told her. "I promise you that. I'm committed to you completely. Maggie is just a friend and I thought that maybe her and Mike would maybe make a good couple. Mike needs a girlfriend and Maggie needs a boyfriend. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If you want, I'll call her up and tell her we cancelled the trip."

She considered this for a moment. "No." She said finally. "Let her come. It's very nice of you to try and fix Mike up. It's just weird to think that I'll be spending the day with someone that you used to… you know?"

I nodded. "Are you sure?" I asked.

"I'm sure." She told me. And then softly, "Was she good at it?"

I nearly choked. "What?"

"Was she good at it?" Nina asked. "In bed?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "Terrible."

Nina smiled a little. "You're not a very good liar Bill."

My mother was still not in on the secret of my recycling and so she naturally questioned my Dad's decision to allow my friends and me to take out the boat. I can see her point of view well. Somehow, how I know not, Dad convinced her that it would be all right. She didn't like the idea but she consented to it. And since she'd consented to it she made it her mission to make sure we were suitably supplied for a day at the lake. She packed a picnic basket with enough fried chicken, homemade potato salad, chips, and pork and beans to kill us all. She filled up a large ice-chest with soda. After a stern, motherly warning to be careful and to bring back her silverware, we were allowed to proceed with the loading of the boat.

Things were a little awkward at first. Maggie was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt over her bikini top. Nina was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans too. They were pulled over her one-piece bathing suit. The two girls sized each other up for a few moments, exchanging only polite pleasantries with each other, both of them wondering what I saw in the other.

Mike was also surprised, although pleasantly so, to find Maggie there. I'd decided that the best course was not to tell him beforehand. If there was chemistry to be found between the two of them, then so be it. I did take one step in order to help the chemistry along.

"What's she doin' here?" Mike asked me when we were out of earshot.

"She's an old friend of mine." I told him.

"She's fuckin' hot." He proclaimed. "I used to see her at school."

I nodded. "Don't get your hopes up." I told him. "She's got a boyfriend. She's just along for the ride."

"She does?" He asked, disappointed.

"Sorry dude." I told him. "She's off the market."

"That's the shit." He pouted. "Oh well, she's nice to look at anyway."

"You got that right." I nodded.

By telling Mike that he didn't have a chance with her I figured that I was actually giving him his best chance. If he knew that she was available he would have been hitting on her like mad and I knew his lines and techniques would have been immature enough to drive Maggie away. But if he thought she was already spoken for he would tend to be much more like himself. That was what I wanted.

Mike and I, shirtless for the occasion and wearing shorts, finally picked up the tongue of the trailer and placed it on the hitch on my Dad's car. I was gratified to see that Maggie was taking in the bulging leg muscles of Mike as we did this. I suppressed a grin.

We connected the wires for the trailer lights and, with a last farewell to my parents, pulled out into the street and headed for the freeway. We got on I-90 heading east for Idaho, Nina and I in the front, Mike and Maggie in the back. My plan was working so far at that point. The two of them were talking easily in the back, discussing the merits of Spokane's community college. In the front, Nina rested her hand on my bare thigh and occasionally gave me a little squeeze.

Our first stop was a grocery store just outside of Coeur d Alene. The drinking age in Idaho was nineteen years old at that time. In a few years it would be raised to twenty-one thanks to the efforts of the group that my Mom and Dad were supposed to be part of.

"Okay Maggie." I said, handing her the cash that we'd pooled. "Go do your stuff."

She smiled sweetly and stepped out of the car. "You wanna come?" She asked Mike. "I'll need help carrying everything."

"Sure." He barked, stepping out with her.

While they were inside Nina and I went back to the boat and opened up the ice chest. We took out all of the soda my Mom had placed in there and tossed it into the trunk of the car. When Maggie and Mike returned they had three twelve packs of Olympia and two bags of ice. This was placed in the ice chest and we headed North.

Lake Pend Oreille, our destination, is a huge lake, the third largest West of the Mississippi. We paid our money and pulled into a launching facility at the south end of it. The facility was crowded with other boaters out to take in a day on the lake and we had to wait in line for about twenty minutes. The air was festive as we watched people scurry here and there, watched the sun beat on the blue surface of the water, and listened to the gunning of boat engines. Finally it was our turn. It had been a while since I'd done such a thing but I managed to back the boat into the lake without breaking or hitting anything. We detached it from it's trailer for the first time in years and I parked the car while Mike held the boat to the dock with a rope.

We climbed into the boat, Nina sitting next to me in the front while Mike and Maggie sat directly behind us. The engine fired up at once and I took a moment to praise Mike's mechanical skills.

"You fixed the boat?" Maggie asked Mike, her eyes shining at him. It seemed she was warming up to the possibilities he represented.

He nodded suavely. "Yeah." He confirmed. "I know a little about engines and stuff."

"Don't be modest." I said as I backed the boat away from the dock. I turned to Maggie. "We wouldn't be out here today if it wasn't for him. He's a goddam mechanical genius."

Mike blushed at the praise and Maggie smiled. "You know?" She said. "My car's been making a funny sound lately. Maybe you could take a look at it sometime."

"Maybe I could." He nodded. "What's the sound?"

While Maggie described the ticking noise her car was making I throttled up a little and began to ease the boat out towards the buoy. Nina dropped her hand to my knee again and smiled at me. I was able to read her thoughts. She was thinking that bringing Maggie along was a good idea after all.

Conversation became impossible once I passed the buoy and throttled up the engine to full. It screamed with horsepower, driving the boat along at 45 MPH, the bow bouncing over the chop on the surface of the water, tendrils of spray occasionally wetting us. It was thrilling to be on the lake again, to be at the controls of a boat after all that time. I felt the thrum of the engine beating through my chest, felt the bow bouncing up and down in the waves, felt the sun beating down on my shirtless body, felt the hand of my beloved on my thigh.

I headed in a NorthWest direction, hoping to find a reasonably deserted portion of the lake so we could do some skiing and maybe find a nice island to hang out on. I looked at Mike at one point and mimed the act of drinking with my hands. He got the idea and fished in the ice chest, pulling out a frosty can of beer for me. While I opened it he pulled out three more and distributed them. Nina, who had recently sworn off alcohol opened hers and took a huge drink.

Finally finding an empty spot I throttled down the motor and let the boat drift.

"Who wants to ski?" I asked.

Nina and Mike had never done it before so Maggie volunteered to be first. She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto her seat. Her bikini top was red and was very brief, allowing her large breasts to bulge out the side. I tore my eyes away from the appetizing sight of this and looked at Mike instead. His eyeballs were nearly bugging out.

She put on the life vest and then jumped into the water.

"How is it?" Mike asked her.

"A little chilly." She admitted, suppressing a shiver. "It's making my nipples hard."

I looked over at Nina to see if this statement would offend her but she only giggled and took another drink from her beer. Mike, on the other hand, was staring agape. This made both of us laugh even more.

Maggie smiled up him. "The water might make Nina's and my nipples hard," She said, "But wait till you see what it does to you and Bill. Does the word "shrinkage" mean anything to you?"

We all laughed at this and Mike, trying to compose himself, finally picked up the water skis and put them in the water for her.

"Thanks." She said, gazing at him. While he blushed she began the process of putting them on.

She fumbled around in the water for a few moments and finally mangaged to get the skis on her feet. Mike tossed the rope to her next and I instructed him to face backward and watch her carefully.

"No problem." He assured me, watching her legs bobbing up and down.

"And tell me if she falls." I added.

"Oh yeah." He nodded.

I throttled up a little until the rope was tight and pulling Maggie forward.

She got into position and then gave me the thumbs-up. I throttled up more and she was pulled neatly out of the water where she began sliding across it's surface, a huge grin on her face.

Maggie turned out to be quite an accomplished skier. I turned left and right and she hung in there, turning gracefully behind me, maneuvering herself so that she went back and forth across the wake. Finally I turned a little too sharp and she hit the wake at the wrong angle. She went down in a tumble of arms and legs, her skis flying free.

"She's down!" Mike screamed, much too loudly.

I throttled down and circled around to pick her up while she swam after the skis.

"You asshole." She yelled at me when I got close. "You turned too sharp."

"If you can't hang…" I said, smiling. "You wanna try again?"

"No." She said, shaking her head. "Let someone else have a chance."

She tossed the skis in the boat and climbed up the ladder. Her body was dripping with lake water and when she pulled the life vest off I noticed, uncomfortably, that her bikini top had pulled down from her collision and the upper half of her aureole was showing. I dragged my eyes away from this but Mike didn't.

"Like what you see?" Maggie asked him sweetly, slowly reaching down to pull her top back into position.

Mike suddenly found something to look at in the sky, his face reddening even more. "I didn't see anything!" He protested.

Nina and I both suppressed laughter at this while Maggie kept the amused, interested expression on her face. "It's okay." She said. "Accidents happen." She handed him the life vest. "Let's see how you do Mr. Mechanic."

Mike gulped and then began to put on the vest. He did it quickly and jumped into the water. But not before everyone had seen the fact that his shorts were definitely bulging outward.

We spent the next two hours skiing back and forth across the portion of the lake we were on. Mike did badly at first, continually falling the moment I tried to pull him out of the water. He was making the typical beginner's mistake of trying to pull himself up instead of letting the boat do it. This let the line develop slack which, when it was unslacked inevitably pulled the skier sharply forward. Maggie gave him helpful hints from her position as observer and finally he was able to get up without falling. Once he figured this out he was unstoppable. He had a keen sense of balance and soon he was out-skiing Maggie.

Nina had no trouble gaining her feet but she had a lousy sense of balance. It was quite a while before she was able to keep from falling whenever I turned. While she skied and while Maggie continued to serve as observer I taught Mike the basics of piloting the boat. At last, when Nina came dripping inside it was my turn. With Mike at the helm I skied back and forth for a while, reacquainting myself with the pleasure of sliding along the water. While Nina sat backwards, watching for me to fall, I couldn't help but see that Maggie and Mike were sitting quite close together in the front. Just call me Cupid.

We were all buzzing pleasantly from the beer and absolutely famished with hunger when I finally pulled myself back inside and threw down the life vest. We opened up another beer and then went to find a place to eat.

I found a small island to park at. It was about an acre or so and had some scrubby looking trees growing on it. We pulled the boat onto the shore, tied it to a tree to keep it from drifting away, and then grabbed our picnic blankets. We spread them in the shade and opened up the food my Mom had packed for us. The next twenty minutes were filled with contented chomping and chewing and the slapping at bees and flies that had been drawn by the smell of fried chicken. Out on the water an occasional boat shot by, most pulling skiers behind them, but for the most part it was peaceful and quite.

After we stowed the food away and got rid of the trash we lounged on the blanket. I sat up drinking a beer while Nina laid down on her back with her head on my lap. She seemed very contented to be there. Maggie looked at us for a moment and then at Mike.

"That looks comfortable." She said and then patted his bare leg. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." He croaked, shifting his position to give her room.

With a smile she stretched out and put her head in his lap. He seemed as if he was in ecstasy and a look was passed between the two girls. A knowing look.

The conversation went back and forth, varying on subject as we sat there. Mike was strangely quiet through all of this.

"I have to pee." Nina finally said, lifting up her head.

"Go do it in the lake." I suggested.

"That's disgusting." She told me. "You don't do that do you?"

"Of course not." I lied, suppressing a smile.

"I hope not." She said. "I had my head on those shorts."

"Don't let him fool you Nina." Maggie said. "Men are pigs. They pee anywhere." She raised her head off of Mike's lap. "Come on." She told her. "I need to go too. Let's take a walk to the other side of the island."

"Okay." She said, slipping into her sandals and giving me a brief kiss on the lips. "We'll be back."

Maggie gave Mike a saucy look and the two girls then tromped off, disappearing into the trees.

Mike and I looked at each other for a moment. When he was sure they were out of earshot he said, "Are you sure she's got a boyfriend? She's been flirting with me all day."

"That's what I heard." I shrugged. "Maybe I was wrong. It sure seems like she likes you."

"It does, doesn't it?" He nodded, obviously unaccustomed to the sensation.

When the girls returned the flirtation continued, gearing up a little. She fawned over his red shoulders and offered to rub lotion on them. Watching the way her fingers slid over his skin, massaging in the lotion, I knew he had to fighting to maintain control of himself. I knew from experience that Maggie could do wonders with her hands.

"Do you want to go swimming?" Nina asked me, giving me a look that said they wanted to be alone.

"Sure." I nodded, standing up.

"We'll just stay here." Maggie said, putting some more lotion in her hand.

Nina and I splashed out into the water, holding hands as we went. The water was a bit biting but it wasn't icy and we quickly got used to it. We went out until we were almost completely submerged and then began to move along the shoreline. In a matter of minutes, Mike and Maggie were out of our sight. I mentally wished him luck and then diverted my attention to Nina.

We played in the water for a while, splashing each other and romping around.

Gradually our playfulness turned to caresses and hugs. While still standing in shoulder deep water I pulled her tightly to me and we kissed; a long, sensuous kiss that made things stir a little down below.

When our mouths parted she looked at me. "I'm glad you invited Maggie along." She told me. "It would've been kind of awkward without her here."

"That's what I figured." I answered. "Did she tell you anything when you went off to pee?"

"Just that she thought he was kind of cute. And that he seemed very, you know, inexperienced."

"Does that bother her?" I asked.

She smiled knowingly. "No." She said. "In fact she kind of seemed to like the idea. I think she wants to teach him a few things."

"Oh?" I grinned. "What kind of things?"

"These kind of things." She said, leaning in and putting her mouth to mine.

We stood there kissing hotly, our hands gliding up and down each other's backs while the waves gently lapped against our bodies. We quickly heated up despite the cold as we rubbed against one another under the water. There is something intrinsically erotic about making out in a lake. Maybe it's the water, maybe it's the thrill of doing it outdoors, or maybe a combination of both. Whatever it was we both felt it, both responded to it.

Her hand slid down my chest and across the front of my shorts, her fingers squeezing my turgid erection.

"Nina." I said with feigned shock at her naughtiness.

"Just checking for shrinkage." She told me, licking at my lips, sucking at my tongue. "It doesn't seem to be a problem here."

"No?" I asked.

She nibbled on my ear. "Well, there's only one way to be sure." She said.

Her fingers found the button on the top of my shorts and undid it. Next she found the zipper and slowly slid that down. Her cool hand reached inside and wrapped around me, squeezing and sliding up and down. I let my head fall onto her shoulder and my hands slide down to her ass, which I began stroking through the material of her shorts.

She stroked me to a near frenzy while I fondled her ass and kissed on her neck and shoulders. At last she pushed downward on my shorts, sending them down my leg and freeing my cock.

"I don't think this is a good idea." I whispered to her.

"Shhh." She whispered into my ear, her hand grabbing me once again. "I want to make you come again."

"But…"

"Shhh." She repeated, silencing me by putting her mouth to mine. She kissed me for a second and then said, "Take off my shorts."

"Your shorts?" I asked, wondering uneasily what she had in mind. She didn't want me to make love to her here, in this lake did she? That certainly wasn't the first time of love with her that I'd envisioned. We also had no protection. "Nina, I think we should stop and think about what we're doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing." She told me, giving my cock a few strokes. "Now take off my shorts."

The demanding tone of her voice drove me to action. Too aroused to fight anymore I reached down and unbuttoned her. I slid down her zipper and then pushed the shorts down her legs. She kicked them free and they floated up to the surface next to her. With her free hand she grabbed them and tossed them onto the shore where they landed with a wet plop. She was standing before me only in her bathing suit now. Her face was flushed with excitement.

"Now come here." She told me, pulling me towards her by the cock. She pulled me until I felt the head touch the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She slid it up and down a few times and then the top of my shaft was touching the material that covered her crotch. She let go of my cock and pulled my groin into her, closing her thighs around it. I felt the soft, baby smooth skin of her upper legs engulf me while the top of my shaft pressed firmly against her mound through the bathing suit.

"Ohh." She sighed, gyrating her hips a little, obviously enjoying the pressure in her nether regions.

I certainly was. It wasn't as pleasurable as being inside of a vagina, but it was very nice indeed. I moved my hips back and forth a little and her thighs rubbed the sides of me, sending pleasure radiating upward. Nina began to move back and forth too, increasing the pressure on her mound while her hands pulled at my ass, driving me into her.

We were both panting as my hips moved, driving my cock between her thighs. She kept them just tight enough against me to generate a pleasant friction but not so tight that abrasions would result. Her hands squeezed and fondled my ass and my hands did the same, dropping down and grabbing her cheeks, my fingers sliding beneath the elastic and touching bare flesh.

I had never done anything like this with anyone before, in either life and I found it blackly exciting. Especially when I considered that the woman who had initiated this was Nina who, though I loved her deeply, I'd figured to be a bit sexually repressed due to her upbringing and history. I guess I was wrong about that.

"Do you like it?" She breathed, her eyes shining as she watched my face.

"Yeah." I panted back at her. "Where did you learn this?"

"I read a lot." She told me, giving my ass an extra hard squeeze. "And some of the stuff I read is not exactly what my mother would approve of."

"I guess not." I answered, kissing her neck.

"I want you to come." She told me, whispering in my ear. "I want to feel it."

I didn't answer her, just continued to thrust in and out against her thighs, against her nylon-covered sex. Her tongue dipped into my mouth again, finding and attacking mine, her lips sucking obscenely at me. Nina had learned the lessons of kissing well. Finally I could take it no more. My hips began to blur as I drove in and out of her thighs.

"Yes." She told me, breaking the kiss for an instant, leaving a string of saliva stretched between our mouths. "Come. I want to feel it."

"Ahhh." I groaned, feeling the sensation beginning. I pulled her tightly to me and pumped like mad, my body out of control as the spasms began. She kissed me hard and squeezed my ass with all her might as I began to shoot between her legs. My semen shot out and splattered against her thighs, against her crotch. Some of it floated upward in the water, sticking to her swimsuit. It went on and on, seemingly forever before I finally relaxed in her arms.

We stayed that way for a moment and then finally I looked up at her. She was smiling. "That was interesting, wasn't it?" She asked me playfully.

"You never fail to amaze me Nina." I told her. "Tell me about this book you read this in."

A giggle. "Let's just say that you'd be surprised at what kind of things you could find at the public library."

I reached down and pulled my shorts back up, tucking myself inside and fastening them. I suggested we move a few feet from where we were.

"How come?" She wanted to know.

"Because the evidence of our indiscretion is floating all around us in the water." I said. "A lot of it is stuck to your swimsuit."

She looked around and saw the little stringy globules floating everywhere. The sight gave her the giggles, especially when she saw it sticking to her suit in various places. "What would my mother think about that?" She asked, moving with me out of the danger zone.

I spent a few minutes splashing water over her to get rid of the residue and then dropped my hand down between her legs.

"What are you doing?" She asked, making no move to stop me.

"Just making sure you're clear down there." I said.

She was, but I made extra sure, running my hand all over her thighs and the crotch of her suit. One of my fingers slid deftly inside, touching hair and the swell of her vaginal lip. She jumped a little at the contact.

"You know." I told her. "It seems the least I could do is return the favor you just did for me." I slid my finger between her lips, pushing the crotch of the suit further aside. Despite the fact that she was under water her passage was slick with her juices.

"If you insist." She breathed.

It didn't take long. She held tightly to me as my fingers moved in and out and my hand made circular motions across her clit. When she came her pelvis humped up and down on me and her teeth bit lightly into my shoulder.

We spent a few more minutes kissing and holding each other, just enjoying the touch of our bodies together. Finally we decided we should start working our way back. She went and retrieved her shorts from the shore, washed the dirt off of them and then put them back.

We made sure to make enough noise as we headed back to the boat so that Maggie and Mike would not be caught in an embarrassing situation. Our ploy worked. When we trodded ashore we found them lying on their stomachs, very close together. Their eyes were shining with the glow of new discovery.

We spent the rest of the day at the lake, either lounging on our island or going out for skiing runs. We had to refill the gas tank on the boat once, it really was a gas-guzzler, but otherwise it ran perfectly. By the time the sun started to set we piled in the boat once more and began heading at a sedate pace towards the launch ramp. As we idled along slowly, watching the sun sink towards the mountains, watching the light fade from the sky, feeling the warm summer breeze caress our exposed skin, Nina cuddled up beside me. Behind us Mike and Maggie were also pretty chummy. He had his arm around her shoulders and they kissed frequently. You could almost taste the romance in the air.

There was of course a considerable line of boats waiting when we reached our destination and we had to wait until well after full dark before we could pull up to the ramp and put the boat back on the trailer. We didn't mind. We sat with our arms around our respective companions and watched the brilliance of the stars as they came out, even seeing the occasional satellite as it passed overhead.

Knowing that I would have to drive home I'd quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.

I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they'd connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He'd probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don't believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn't know, couldn't predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn't happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?

I couldn't have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.

My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o'clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn't think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.

He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.

"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.

"It's Tracy." Dad said hollowly. "There's been an accident."

Chapter 14

Those four words: "there's been an accident" brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father's tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it's presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I'd won? Why hadn't I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.

"Is she…" I asked my Dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't speak the word.

"She's alive right now." Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. "We don't know a lot about how she's doing."

By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.

"What do you know?" I asked him. "What happened?"

"We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police," Dad said.

"South Lake Tahoe?" I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.

He nodded. "Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don't know what happened yet, or at least they're not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down."

"Jesus," I muttered. "And Tracy?"

"She didn't drown," Dad told me. "She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn't know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn't hurt too bad they said."

"They don't know anything about her injuries?" I asked.

"Nothing," Dad said. "I tried calling the hospital she's in but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything."

"What time did all of this happen?" I asked him, feeling guilt that I'd been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.

"We got the call a little over an hour ago," he told me. "The accident happened about an hour before that. They had a little trouble identifying her because she apparently had a fake I.D. on her. Only after they searched through her things did they find her real driver's license. I guess she was up there for a little gambling trip."

"Jesus," I said again.

"There's a red-eye flight out of Spokane in two hours," Dad told me. "It doesn't go to Reno but it stops in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours away by car. Your mother and I are going to be on it."

"Me too," I said quickly.

"Bill," he started. "There's nothing that you can…"

"I'm going Dad," I told him. "I'll pay for the ticket myself."

He looked at me for a moment. "You don't have to do that," he said. "Why don't you get the boat put away so we can get ready to go?"

Obviously a damper had been put on the end of what had been a very pleasant day. Mike and Maggie, after hearing the story of Tracy, offered condolences and then quickly slipped away. I was not so far out of it that I didn't notice Mike climbing into Maggie's car even though he only lived around the corner. Nina offered me some soothing words and a hug and then she too left, making me promise to call her and let her know what was going on. I promised.

I showered quickly and packed a few things. Soon we were on our way to the airport.

We took off on time, heading Southwest for Sacramento. The flight took forever. I spent much of it staring out the window to the darkness below while Mom and Dad held hands quietly next to me. Around us the lights were dimmed down and most of the other passengers were asleep in their seats. I was exhausted from the day I'd just spent and the droning of the engines was soothing white noise but I couldn't sleep. Not while my sister was maybe already dead somewhere, maybe sitting in the refrigerated section of the county morgue in Reno, a little tag tied to her toe.

Sometimes having knowledge of how a medical system works is not a good thing. This was one of those times. I could perfectly envision Tracy being taken into some hospital room, possibly the trauma resuscitation room, possibly the emergency operating room. I could see a team of doctors working on her, mechanically following written protocols as they cracked open her chest, or cracked open her skull, trying to save her but knowing it was useless. Doing it only because their training dictated they try. I could see a technician squeezing a bag attached to a breathing tube to supply her with oxygen while the efforts were going on. The technician would probably be checking out her tits as he did it, admiring them, thinking lightly that it was a shame they were going to be taken out of circulation soon.

At some point the doctor in charge would decide enough is enough. The time would be noted and all of the devices would be taken off of her. She would be zipped into a body bag which, by protocol, would have already been placed beneath her before she'd even arrived. The doctors, nurses, and technicians would all go onto other things, treating patients, stitching wounds, writing orders, fetching blankets, reflecting sadly for a moment how it was a shame that someone so young had died that way.

But none of them would shed a tear for her. None of them would slam their fists into the wall, cursing the insidious nature of DEATH, the mortal enemy. They would go about their tasks, eat their lunches, and the next day none of them would even remember her. Except maybe the technician who had admired her tits. The zippered bag would be moved into a storage room somewhere and a phone call would be placed. Soon a white van from the coroner's office would arrive and the bag would be placed on a small gurney and taken to the county morgue. The next day a pathologist would rip open her body, saw open her skull, take out her internal organs and weigh them, and then finally stuff everything back inside and crudely sew her up.

I could not get this vision out of my head no matter how hard I tried to think of other things. As our aircraft slowed and began to descend into Sacramento we passed within sight of Reno. I could see it's lights shining up from the pre-dawn darkness and the vision became almost overwhelming. Tracy was down there somewhere. Was she still drawing breath? Not if fate had had it's way.

We touched down normally at ten minutes after four in the morning. The Sacramento airport was almost completely deserted, the few passengers from our plane it's only customers at the moment. Mom went to go secure a rental car while Dad and I headed directly for a bank of pay phones. He dialed a number that he had written on a slip of paper. The number for Washoe Medical Center in Reno, where Tracy was (if she wasn't in the morgue, a nasty part of my brain insisted upon reminding me).

Dad fought through at least five different people, said Tracy's name at least fifteen times, and was placed on hold at least ten. It was maddening watching this, waiting for someone to tell him something. Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes he managed to get hold of someone who knew something.

"She is?" he said softly.

She is what? I wondered, wanting to rip the phone out of his hand. She is dead? She is alive? What?

Dad, sensing what I was going through, held the phone away from his mouth for a brief moment and told me, "she's in surgery right now." He then spoke into the phone again. "What kind of surgery? Can you tell me how bad she is?"

He listened, his face souring. "What do you mean you don't know who I am?" he shouted into the phone. "I'm her father and I'm very worried about her. Please tell me what's going on!"

He listened some more, his expression darkening. "But I'm in Sacramento!" he yelled. "I'm more than two hours from there! Are you really going to let me go the next two hours wondering? Just tell me how bad she is! What kind of surgery she's having!"

He listened for another moment and then slammed the phone down angrily. "Fucking asshole!" he shouted at it loudly enough for his words to echo through the terminal. A few people glanced at him uneasily and then went about their business.

He turned to me, shaking his head. "They won't tell me anything about her condition." he told me, "because they can't verify who I am. Who the hell else would call up and say they were her father?"

I sighed. "You're dealing with bureaucracy at it's finest when you're dealing with a hospital," I told him. "And remember, the accident happened in California, law suit capital of the world. They probably have lawyers who call up and pretend to be family members in order to get information. It happens all the time, even in Spokane."

"That's disgusting," he proclaimed.

"That's lawyers," I said. "At least we know she's still alive."

"Yeah," he breathed. "Let's go find your Mom and get headed up there."

Mom had procured a Toyota Corolla for us. Dad updated her with what he knew as we walked to the rental car pick-up. Fifteen minutes later we were roaring away, Dad at the wheel, Mom in the passenger seat, me in the cramped back seat, reading the map we'd been given and navigating. There was little talk as I directed Dad down Interstate 5 to I-80 East. We passed through the darkened city of Sacramento and it's suburbs and were climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the sun made it's appearance in front of us.

It was shortly before eight in the morning when we entered the Reno city limits. I navigated Dad through the city, past the towering casinos, until we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. We practically rushed inside and spent twenty more minutes finding someone who could tell us something. Was Tracy dead? Was she alive? Was she horribly crippled? Was she on a ventilator awaiting permission from the parents to pull the plug? The tension was so thick between the three of us that it was almost palpable in the air.

We were directed to a small waiting room on the third floor of the hospital.

It was empty when we arrived. This time my knowledge of the medical system was an asset. I smiled happily as I read the sign and saw what part of the building we were in. Hope showed itself for the first time.

"We're in orthopedics," I told Mom and Dad happily, my voice conveying the message that this was good news.

They looked at me cautiously, waiting for me to explain the ramifications of this.

"We're not in neurology, which would be bad," I told them. "That would mean she had some sort of neurological damage. You know, brain injury, spinal injury, paralysis, something like that. Orthopedics is bones. They put you here when you have broken bones, and only broken bones."

They became cautiously hopeful but I could tell they were awaiting a final word. It was understandable. I was too. About ten minutes after we arrived a young doctor came into the room. He was dressed in scrubs and I had an eerie flashback to waiting for the prognosis on Jack. He introduced himself and we all stared for a moment in disbelief as we heard him say his name.

"Did you say Dr. Quack?" Dad finally had to ask.

He smiled the smile of one who has explained this many times before. "It's spelled with a KW," he said, "but yes, you have the pronunciation right. But have no fear. My name does not reflect my skill, although I had to put up with quite a bit of teasing in med school and residency. Anyway, I'm an orthopedic surgeon and I'm in charge of Tracy's case."

"How is she?" I blurted before anyone else had a chance to.

"In considerable pain," he told us. "And she'll be in a wheelchair for a few months, but other than that, she's doing fine. I expect a complete recovery."

It took a few moments for that to sink in. I almost thought I hadn't heard him correctly. Doing fine? Complete recovery? Had fate been thwarted again? Beside me Mom and Dad breathed great sighs of relief. Dr. Kwack smiled at us for a moment and then explained her injuries.

"From what I hear," he said, "Tracy was seatbelted into the right rear of the taxi. The driver was making a left turn and was struck by a shuttle van right where your daughter was seated. The impact was considerable and the taxi was spun around to where it rolled off of an embankment into Lake Tahoe, landing upside down in the water. Fortunately Tracy was able to extricate herself from her seatbelt and get out of the car before she drowned. This is a remarkable feat I must add since her injuries were undoubtedly caused by the initial impact. It must have been horribly painful for her to drag herself out of the car but somehow she did it."

"And what are her injuries?" Mom asked.

"Her pelvis is broken in four places," Dr. Kwack explained. "Her right femur, that's the long bone in the leg, is broken in two places. She has two broken ribs on the right side and had a partially collapsed lung when she was brought in. A chest tube down in the ER took care of that. She also has a nasty cut on the right side of her head. That's been stitched up. I operated on her leg and her hip and put pins in to help set the bones back together. She's going to have to go through some physical therapy and she'll probably always walk with a little limp since her right leg is going to be about an inch shorter than her left. And she'll probably set off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life. But she's alive and doing well."

"When can we see her?" Dad asked, tears in his eyes as he heard the news. It was understandable. There were tears in mine too.

"She's just been moved to her room," he said. "And she's pretty doped up on pain medication, but you can go see her now if you wish. She may not be capable of talking to you, but you can see her."

We did. And Dr. Kwack was right. Tracy was flying high. She was lying in a hospital bed, her body covered by a gown. Her entire pelvis and right leg were encased in a fiberglass cast. Her ribs were taped on the right side and the plastic hose of a chest tube snaked out from beneath it. Her face was deeply bruised, the right cheek an ugly purple color, her right eye swollen shut. Some of her hair had been shaved away and a neat line of stitches was visible on her scalp. There was also the inevitable catheter hose protruding from beneath the sheets and ending at a plastic bag with urine in it. The other end of the hose would be threaded through her urethra and into her bladder. Remembering my own experience with such a thing I pitied her.

Mom wept openly at the sight of her, stroking her hair and trying to get her to talk. Tracy opened her eyes a few times to Mom and Dad's voices but seemed to have no awareness of what was going on around her. When she tried to speak it was only in nonsensical grunts. We stayed for nearly an hour before a nurse finally suggested we leave for a little bit. She would probably be like this for the next twenty-four hours we were told.

We found a hotel room in one of the downtown casinos and fell into immediate sleep within minutes. It had been a long night.

The next day Tracy, though in pain, was awake and alert enough to talk. She told the story of what had happened to her both to Mom and Dad and I and to the investigator from the South Lake Tahoe Police department.

Her and one of her girlfriends from college had ridden a Greyhound bus up to the casino area to do a little weekend gambling and drinking. Tracy, I knew, did not like to ride in a car with anyone but she had no problem with airplanes or buses, figuring that fate would not wipe out an entire vehicle full of people just to get to her. Since you had to be twenty-one to gamble or drink in Nevada, Tracy and her friend had secured fake ID's from a reputable dealer at the college. She declined to name just who this person was to the cop, although he did ask. The Greyhound had dropped the two girls off at one of the casinos on Friday night. They'd spent a few hours gambling and drinking and then, finding the room rates at the casino a little more than they could afford, rode a shuttle bus to one of the motels on the California side of the town and got a room there. Early the next morning they rode another shuttle bus back to the casinos.

The two friends spent all day on the strip and Tracy managed to get ahead more than a hundred bucks. Her friend was down about the same amount. Feeling fatigued, Tracy elected to head back to the motel to take a nap for awhile. She tried to find a shuttle bus heading in her direction but discovered that none were scheduled for more than an hour. Wanting badly to sleep, she'd gone out to the taxi stand and hopped in a cab. After all, she was ahead of the game and she could afford it.

The last thing she remembered was driving down the boulevard of South Lake Tahoe in the back of the cab. The next thing she knew, she was in horrible pain in a helicopter, looking up at a trauma nurse in a blue jumpsuit. Things were very spotty from there.

She was questioned several times about the accident itself but she said she could not remember anything. Nobody disputed her on this point. Amnesia is common among accident victims.

The cop filled us in on a few details that had been uncovered.

"According to the witnesses," he explained, "the cab made a left turn against across traffic and was struck by the shuttle van, which was moving about thirty miles an hour. The van driver was slightly injured, as were six of the passengers, although that's probably just what we call Jacoby and Myers pain around these parts. Anyway, your daughter and the cab driver were the only one's with any significant injury. The fault for the accident lies directly on the cab driver. No question about it."

"The driver of the cab was drunk," he said. "From what we've learned he's a hopeless alcoholic. We found an empty pint of vodka under the seat in the cab. Vodka and gin are the favored beverages of those alcoholics that are trying to function on the job. It doesn't leave much of an odor on the breath although it does leave a little. Our officers smelled it right away when they questioned him. They took a blood sample from him at the hospital. He registered point two-one percent. That's more than twice the legal limit. He has two previous convictions for driving under the influence. One in Nevada, one in California. He'll be charged with felony driving under the influence this time."

Tracy, who had remained very composed through all of this, listening respectfully, suddenly turned angry. "Why," she asked the cop, "was this man still driving a cab if he had two DUI convictions?"

The cop gave a cynical look. "Don't ask me," he replied. "If it'd been up to me the asshole – excuse my language – would have had his license yanked forever the first time he got convicted. Unfortunately, it's not up to me. You don't get much around here for DUI. A little fine, a little lecture from the judge not to do it again. Sometimes I think those Iranians have the right idea about that problem. They give 'em the death penalty. A little harsh maybe, but they don't have pretty young girls ending up in hospital beds because of drunk cab drivers."

Though my parents were screaming liberals and routinely canonized the efforts of groups such as the ACLU, they didn't dispute the cop's argument. Nor did I.

"Anyway," he went on, "I think this time he'll at least do a little time in county. He'll also have his hack license taken away. I wish I could promise you that he'll never do it again but you know alcoholism is a "disease" and it's not really his fault. That's what they tell us anyway." He looked at Tracy meaningfully. "Are you SURE you don't remember anything?"

She shook her head, the effort obviously painful. "Not a thing," she said quietly, her eye, the one that was open, flitting away from the cop's face.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Doesn't matter," he finally said. "I'm glad you're gonna make it all right. You probably won't even have to testify. I'm sure a plea bargain will be worked out." He said the words "plea bargain" the way other people say "venereal disease".

We stayed at the hospital for a good portion of the day. Mom brought Tracy some flowers and Dad brought her a large stuffed bear with it's leg in a cast. Her friend Linda, who had accompanied her to Lake Tahoe, stopped by also and we all got to meet her. Linda was a cute blonde, very nice, though a little on the shy side. She was a business major and a member of the young republican's club. She'd apparently gone through quite a bit of turmoil of her own during Tracy's accident. She'd returned to their room expecting to find Tracy there and didn't. She was only slightly worried at that point, figuring her friend had slept and then gone back to the casinos.

But when she still hadn't returned the next morning she became seriously worried. She began calling the cops and the local hospital. The local hospital of course hadn't heard of her since she'd been taken to Reno and whomever she'd talked to at the police department didn't recognize Tracy's name in relationship to the accident. She became frantic when the time for their return came and went and Tracy still hadn't shown up at the room. Another call to the cops was made and someone finally was able to make the connection and let Linda know where Tracy was and that she was alive.

Linda didn't stay long, just long enough to assure herself that Tracy was fine, exchange a hug or two, and let my sister know that she'd retrieved all of her belongings from the motel and would keep them for her. She told us all that she was pleased to meet us and then disappeared.

When Tracy received her latest pain shot and drifted off to sleep we decided to disappear also. We piled into the rented Toyota once more and headed back to our hotel room.

Mom laid down herself and fell quickly to sleep. Dad, claiming he was too wired to sleep, decided that he would go downstairs for just a little bit and maybe have a beer. I gave him a knowing look as he went.

I tried to lay down myself but found sleep impossible. There were many unanswered questions going through my mind. Finally I got up and crept out of the room, catching the elevator to the lobby. Dad was not in the bar but this did not surprise me. I began wandering through the casino, dodging the occasional security guard to keep from being ejected. I walked past jingling slot machines, beeping poker machines, and hundreds of people, finally finding Dad sitting at a two-dollar blackjack table. He had a beer and a stack of five-dollar chips before him and was hitting on a fourteen when I put my hand on his shoulder.

He looked up and gave me a guilty smile. The dealer, oblivious to my presence, slapped down a five on top of his fourteen. He took a quick look and then tucked his cards under his bet.

"Doing a little gambling?" I asked him with mock sternness.

He shrugged. "As long as we're here," he said, "I thought I'd try my luck a little. It's funny. Your mother looks at this whole thing as a tragedy and of course it is, but I know the real tragedy that was supposed to happen. It was supposed to happen on her graduation night and it was supposed to happen the other day, wasn't it?"

"It certainly seems a little more than a coincidence," I told him, keeping my voice low to avoid having the other players gleam what we were talking about. I didn't really have to worry. They were all watching the dealer who was admonishing an ancient man at third base for touching his bet after the cards were in play. "All of the elements were there. Drunk driver, car, water. Somehow Tracy dragged herself out of there though. She didn't drown. That goes against everything I thought I understood about this whole thing."

"Yeah," Dad nodded. "And it makes me feel guilty to feel good about the fact that my daughter was merely injured. We got lucky Bill. Somehow we did. So I figured I'd come down here and see if maybe some of that luck is still floating around."

"And is it?" I asked him.

Before he could answer me the dealer, finished with her gentle reaming of the third baseman, resumed play. With a ten showing she flipped up her down card. It was a five. She gave herself another card, a six, and the table groaned. With a sorrowful look she collected all the bets.

"As you can see," Dad told me, "the theory's flawed. I'm losing my ass." He put another five-dollar chip on the table. "What brings you down here?" He gave me an evil smile. "Pity you're in Reno and too young to gamble, eh?"

I laughed lightly. "You gotta take the bad with the good. But anyway, I wanted to borrow the car," I told him, "I need to talk to Tracy."

He turned serious. "You don't think she's telling everything she knows, do you?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I don't think she's lying about anything but I just wanted to be able to talk to her alone, to see if she tells me anything else if you and Mom aren't there. She doesn't know that you know after all."

The dealer gave him two aces. She herself had a four showing. Dad smiled and picked up another five-dollar chip, splitting his bet. "That's a good idea," he told me, watching as he was given an eight and a nine to go with each of his aces. He looked at this in satisfaction for a moment and then reached in his pocket and withdrew the car key while the dealer attended to the other players.

"Thanks," I said, taking it from him and pocketing it. "I won't be too long."

"Who knows?" Dad said. "Maybe I'll win so much while you're gone I won't have to worry about things like stocks and investments."

At the table the dealer flipped up a ten to go with her four. She dealt herself a two and then a five. Another apologetic smile to the groaning crowd and she began to collect the money. Dad looked at this in disbelief. Two of the other players got up and left.

"I wouldn't go cashing in any stocks just yet," I told him, chuckling to myself as I headed for the door.

Tracy was awake when I entered her room. She almost looked as if she was expecting me. I took a moment to marvel at the condition of her face. Two and a half days after the accident now it was very swollen and a spectacular array of colors had erupted upon it. Hues of purple, black, blue and yellow competed for billing, centering around her right eye, which was still swollen tightly shut. Though I'd spent eight years looking at people that had been battered with everything from baseball bats, to steering wheels of cars, to crowbars I had never had much opportunity to observe these injuries after they'd had time to swell and discolor. I now knew why police photographers liked to wait twenty-four hours before they snapped shots of assault victims. It was hard to believe that in a week or so her face would be back to it's normal, pretty self as Dr. Kwack had assured her.

"How bad is it today?" Tracy asked. "They won't give me a mirror."

"It's pretty bad," I admitted. "But you're alive. It'll get better."

She nodded, wincing a little as she did so. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah," I answered, coming over and grabbing a seat next to the bed.

"I thought you might come by alone," she said. "I was kinda hoping for it."

"Oh?"

"I lied to the cop Bill," she told me, her voice hitching, tears running from her good eye as she began to cry. "I remember everything that happened. Every last fucking thing."

She broke down completely, sobs pouring out her, her chest heaving up and down. I got up out of my chair and sat on the edge of her bed. It was awkward with the cast and the pulleys and the IV line but I managed to get my arms around her and her head pulled against my shoulder. She cried hysterically for the better part of five minutes, her tears burning my chest and wetting my shirt. I soothed her the best I could, patting her on an uninjured part of her back and speaking soothing words to her. Finally her sobs quieted down and she got control of herself again. She raised her head from my shoulder and looked at me, sniffing.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't ever do things like that. I don't ever cry."

"It's okay Tracy," I told her. "Sometimes you have to. Do you feel better?"

She smiled a little, a weak smile at best. "A little," she said. "Can you get me some water?"

I released her and stood up, picking up her glass from the tray next to the table and pouring some of the water from her plastic pitcher. There was a flexible straw in the glass, bent at a ninety-degree angle. I handed the glass to her and she took a long sip. Figuring that the immediate crisis was over I sat back down in the chair again.

"You know something?" she asked. "The day of the accident I was in the sports bar in Harrah's. Linda and I were having a beer and, you know, checking out the guys and I happened to see that they were taking bets for the football season. You could put down money on who you thought would be in the Super Bowl, just like our pool for the baseball season that I asked you about that time."

I nodded. "I really didn't know," I told her, wondering what this had to do with anything. "I still don't, although with Nina's Dad's help I'm actually starting to like baseball a little bit."

She smiled. "But I thought that you did," she told me. "I thought you just didn't want to tell me because you didn't want me taking advantage of your knowledge. I was pissed off at you Bill, I almost hated you because I thought you were depriving me of something that I had a right to."

"Tracy," I started, seeing that a tear was flowing from her eye again.

"Let me finish," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.

I nodded.

"When I was in the sports bar and saw the football thing I thought about calling you again. I was going to yell at you and demand you tell me who was going to be in the Super Bowl this year. It's supposed to be held at Stanford stadium this year and that's only an hour from Berkeley. I wanted to get tickets, go watch the game and then catch a bus up to Tahoe and collect my money. I figured I had a right to that information. I was gonna call you up and law down the law with you. I was gonna threaten not to…"

She sobbed a little and took a deep breath. "Not to speak to you anymore if you didn't tell me." She sobbed some more. "I'm sorry Bill. I can't believe I was such a bitch, that I was thinking things like that. I was actually telling myself that you didn't love me very much if you wouldn't kick down a little information to me. The only reason I didn't call you was because when I was talking to Linda about wanting to make a bet on the Super Bowl she told me that my fake ID wouldn't hold up for something like that. But I was prepared to do it Bill. I was really going to."

"Tracy…" I started again and then trailed off. I honestly didn't know what to say, what to think about what she'd just told me.

"I just can't believe I was like that," she cried. "I was actually thinking you didn't love me, that you were trying to keep me down or something. I'd completely forgotten that I was still alive because of you, that you'd already showed me how much you loved me by saving me, not once but twice. And how do I repay you? How do I return your love? By trying to get you to exploit what you know against your morals. By calling you up and trying to get you to tell me about a baseball game and then getting pissed at you because you don't know. By wanting to threaten you if you didn't tell me about a football game. By thinking you're some kind of moralistic…" She broke into fresh sobs again. "Oh God Bill!"

"It's okay Tracy," I soothed, holding her hand. "At least you like me now, right?"

She composed herself a little but continued to squeeze my hand almost painfully. "I've had a lot of time to think in here," she told me. "A lot of time. And I realized that I was having a lot of bad feelings for you. I told myself it was because of you withholding knowledge from me. You were on your way to getting rich but you weren't including me in it. Like I said, I felt I had a right to get rich off of you, and do you know why?"

"Why?" I asked, though I suspected the reason.

"Because I was blaming you for this death sentence I have hanging over my head. I realize now how irrational that is, you didn't cause it, you just told me about it. But somehow, in my mind, I thought it was your fault. You were the one that screwed around with fate and caused this. Never mind that fate would've taken me on graduation night if not for your interference, you were the one that put all this in motion and therefore you were the one to blame for it. So then part of me figured that if I got stinking rich all of this would just go away. I wouldn't have to worry anymore about riding in cars. Do you know how damn inconvenient it is to NEVER get in a car with someone? That was all your fault Bill. That was what I thought, what I brought myself around to believing. And then you wouldn't help me get rich to compensate for it. When I went up to Tahoe this weekend, I was a very bitter person."

I nodded, not talking, understanding the source of her feelings a little. I can imagine what it's like living every day wondering if fate was finally going to catch up with you. She probably felt a little like soldiers in a war feel after a while.

"Sometimes I would feel paranoid beyond belief. Like I didn't dare even step outside the dorm room because fate was waiting for me out there. It would send a drunk driver along to run over me and knock me into the duck pond or something just to get at me. Other times I'd think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, that I could climb into a car with Ted Kennedy and be perfectly safe. I can't even go to counseling about it. Can you imagine how the counselor would react? And I can't tell my friends about it either, although I must admit that sometimes, after Linda and I had a few beers, I was tempted to tell her what happened to you. Something kept me from doing that. The only person I could really talk about it with is you, but I didn't want to talk to you because you were trying to keep me down and you had caused all of this in the first place."

"But through all of that I stayed away from the situation that I knew fate wanted me to get into. I never got in a car with anyone else driving. I rode my bike when I wanted to get somewhere close by, even if it was pouring rain. If I needed to go to The City for something I took BART or the city bus. I was very careful not to give fate an opportunity.

"A few times though, I got into cabs. I didn't really like doing it but I also didn't think it was that dangerous. Cabs are public transportation aren't they? It never occurred to me that a cab driver would be drunk."

"You've ridden in cabs before?" I asked, surprised.

She nodded. "A few times. I only did it as a last resort but I never had a problem before. Sometimes we even drove right along the Bay too. I figured cabs were reasonably safe. In truth I didn't ride in them much mostly because they're expensive. And then I got in the one at the casino."

"What happened then?" I asked.

"I knew something was wrong almost right from the start of that trip."

"What do you mean?" I asked, fascinated, eager to hear this story.

She swallowed nervously. "It was the eeriest thing. I'd been drinking at the casino and was pretty buzzed, feeling kind of good you know? I was up a hundred bucks and ready to just go back to the room and crash. As soon as I closed the door in the cab and it pulled away I started to get nervous. I didn't know why at first. I didn't equate fate with any of it. I just felt twitchy, uncomfortable, like I didn't really want to be there. I thought it was the cab driver. He didn't seem drunk at all, that really would've made me nervous obviously, but there was something about him I didn't like. Something about his face, which looked kind of old and gross looking. He was talking about how good the tips were in his job since he usually only drove people who'd won big. Kind of hinting, you know? He asked me if I'd won big."

She breathed deeply, wiping a tear from her eye. I could see that she was trembling.

"He turned his head towards me when he asked me that," she went on. "When he did that I smelled it. Alcohol on his breath. Like the cop said, it wasn't much, just a faint whiff of that odor that people have when they've been drinking. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Oh yeah," I affirmed softly. As a paramedic I'd smelled that odor thousands of times and knew it well. When I'd been new and had worked the night shift in downtown Spokane that odor had been on nine out of ten of my patients.

"As soon as that hit my nose and I realized I was in a car with a drunk driver at the wheel I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. The buzz that I had went away like that." She snapped her fingers. "I almost panicked, especially when I glanced over to my right and saw that we were driving alongside the lake. It was dark but I could see the water less than twenty feet away, just down a small incline. I could imagine perfectly being under that water, trapped in my seatbelt, not able to breathe, drowning. I could see Mom and Dad and you at my funeral, crying while they lowered my coffin into the ground.

"The cab driver was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question. Everything was moving in slow motion. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going and he was drifting into the other lane. That broke through. I yelled at him to watch where the hell he was going and he jerked his head back, steering back into his lane. He said something like, "Jeez lady, I wasn't gonna hit nobody" and looked offended. But I was still terrified.

"I told him to stop right there and let me out. He said, "what are you talking about, your hotel is still a couple a miles away?" and I told him I didn't care, to let me out right there. We argued for a minute about it and he just kept driving down the road, telling me that we were almost there and that he couldn't let someone out before they were where they were going. Finally I screamed at him to stop the fucking cab now.

"Things got really slow motion at that point. He was pissed off and said "fine, walk if that's what you want". But instead of simply stopping and letting me out he tried to pull into a parking lot on the other side of the street. He did it without looking to see if anything was coming first. Something was. It was one of the shuttle vans that take people from the motels to the casinos. He pulled right in front of it. It didn't even have time to put on the brakes. I didn't even have time to yell. In that second, while I was looking at it's headlights less than five feet from me, I knew that fate had finally caught up with me. I knew that I hadn't listened to you as much as I should have. I knew that I was going to die. I KNEW it!

"When it hit, glass sprayed all over me. I felt something like a sledgehammer hit me all over my right side. I felt the doorframe hit the side of my head. The noise was incredible Bill, I never heard anything like that. I felt us spin around and then start to tip over. Just as I became upside down there was a splash and water was covering my face. I couldn't breath and my body actually felt a little better, less pain when the cold hit me. I felt the seatbelt holding me in place just like I'd imagined. I was trapped underwater and I was going to die. And it felt RIGHT. I knew that if I just sat there for a minute or two it would all be over. Something inside of me told me just to do that. Just to wait there until everything went black. I wouldn't be in pain. I wouldn't have to worry anymore. It would just be over. It was a calming feeling Bill. The thought of just dying actually got rid of the panic.

"I sat there upside down, not breathing and I saw the roof of the car hit the bottom of the lake. I saw a bunch of bubbles go floating up. I saw a bunch of muck get stirred up and obscure everything outside. It seemed trippy to me. I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking, "so this is what it's like-this isn't so bad". I even saw the cab driver get out of his seat belt and swim out through his window. He'd had it open and he just squeezed his way out. His arm was bleeding and leaving little trails of blood in the water and I tripped off of them for a second. I knew that he'd swim to the top and that he wouldn't try to come back for me. I knew it.

"I didn't feel any pain right then. I was relaxed. Just waiting to die. Just waiting to do what I was SUPPOSED to do. It didn't feel bad at all. It actually felt kind of nice."

"Jesus." I mumbled, staring at her. She hadn't said that with nostalgia, but with horror.

"I was just starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to just suck in a bunch of water and get it over with. I was SUPPOSED to die, so why prolong it? That's when I thought of you." She soured a little. "It wasn't a nice thought. I thought, "that'll teach Bill not to tell me what I want to know, not to keep me down anymore. Now the asshole can just cry his ass off at my funeral." It was that thought that got me moving. I actually saw you next to my grave, tears running down your face, wondering why I hadn't listened to you. The fact that you could cry for me told me that you really did love me, that you would be…" She broke a little. "Be disappointed in me."

"I sat there upside down, underwater, not able to breathe and all these thoughts going through my head. Was I really going to just die in order to get back at you? You'd fucked over fate time and time again and I was going to let myself die just to prove you were wrong? What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn't I at least TRY to get out of here?"

"I didn't think I was going to make it. I really thought I was going to die anyway because I was supposed to but I decided to at least try." She shook her head. "It was absurdly easy to get out of there. I've been wondering why the Tracy in the other time-line found it so difficult." She glared contemptuously at me, directing her glare to the "other Tracy" whom she obviously had little respect for. "That Tracy simply drowned. She wasn't injured like I was. I found the clasp on my seatbelt and pushed it, expecting that it would be jammed or something but it wasn't. It came right apart and I dropped slowly onto the roof of the car. My right leg was pinned a little bit between the front seat and the door that had been hit. It hurt when I pulled it but it came out without any problem. I was free but I was still in the car.

"Everything was calm and cool. I was considering myself as good as dead so I didn't worry too much about what would happen if I failed to get out. What did I have to lose by trying? I had time and presence of mind to actually consider the options of escape before I gave it a shot, that's how calm I was. I looked at the driver's side window, thinking I could swim out through there. But it was rolled up and the glass hadn't broken. I knew I wouldn't be able to break it. I looked at the window where the van had hit us. The glass had broken but the frame had been smashed in and I didn't think I could squeeze through it. So finally I looked at the window where the driver had gone out. There wasn't a partition between the front and the back seats like the cabs in Berkeley have so I decided that was the way to do it. I twisted myself around and pushed myself into the front seat.

"I noticed I was running out of air at that point, that I badly needed to take a breath, but that still didn't worry me. The worst that could happen was that I could die, right? All I was doing was trying. I didn't even think about how long I'd been under the water. So I pushed myself through the window. As I did that I felt some pain in my hip and in my leg but it wasn't bad, it was distant. Once I was free, I just let myself float up to the top.

"When I broke the surface and took the first breath of air, everything changed. I saw the stars outside, I saw the cab driver pulling himself onto the shore while other cars had stopped and people were starting to run over to the edge of the lake. I tasted the air as it went into my lungs and that was when I realized that I was still alive and that I could stay alive."

She looked meaningfully at me. "That's when it came home to me how precious life was and how close I'd just come to losing it. That's when all the pain hit me and I realized that it wasn't over yet, that I could still drown. Only then, I didn't want to drown, I didn't want to die. Pain went shooting through my whole body, centered on my right side from my face to my feet. It was agony Bill, absolute agony. I started to sink in the water and my face went under. I sucked in a bunch of water before I could force my head back up and started coughing. The coughing made the pain worse.

"I started flailing around in the water, really panicking now and then I noticed the cab was not completely under water. The back wheels were sticking up. I grabbed hold of one and held on as tight as I could. I've never hugged a tire like that before. I tried to put my feet down on the bottom and stand up but as soon as they touched, pain went shooting through my leg and my hips. Horrible pain. So I just held on and let my feet float. I coughed some more, thinking I still had water in my throat and a bunch of blood came shooting out. That's when I realized that I couldn't breathe very well. Every breath was hurting in my chest and it didn't feel like I was getting enough air. I also noticed blood dripping from my head down into the water. I was hurt bad. I started to wonder if I was going to die from the injuries.

"Through all of this nobody on shore noticed me. There must've been sixty people gathered at that point but they were all gathered around the fucking cab driver, may he rot in hell. He'd collapsed on the embankment and some people had pulled him up. They were all fawning over him, asking him a bunch of questions, and nobody was seeing me down in the water because I was on the other side of the cab hanging onto the tire. I tried to scream at them but as soon as I sucked in breath to try it made my chest hurt and made me cough up more blood. Meanwhile it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

"I was out there for almost five minutes and things were starting to get kinda gray and fuzzy. I was thinking that I was going to die anyway, just lose consciousness and slip into the water. It was like one of those dreams where you're trapped and in trouble and trying to call for help but nobody can hear you. You ever have those?"

"Yes." I nodded, surprised. They were a common stress dream for me though I wasn't aware that Tracy, or anyone else for that matter, had them too.

"I would've thought that it WAS a dream except for the pain and the trouble breathing," she went on. "Finally a cop car showed up. The cop waded through all the people and looked at the cab driver for a minute. Then he shined his flashlight on the cab, probably just to see it, and his light caught my face. The next thing I know he was splashing into the water and coming after me. He asked me how I was but I couldn't even talk by then, I was concentrating everything just on getting in the next breath. So he dragged me to the shore.

"He tried to pull me up the embankment but that hurt so bad that I DID manage a scream. So he decided to leave me down there. He stayed with me until the firemen put me on a backboard and pulled me up. A paramedic cut off all my clothes and stuck an IV in my arm. I was hurting so bad and was so scared that I wasn't even embarrassed to be lying naked in front of all those people. They gave me some oxygen and that helped a little, but not much.

"While they'd been working on me I heard a helicopter land and felt a bunch of dust and shit blow over me. A few minutes later a nurse in a jumpsuit came over and looked at me for a few minutes. She told me she was going to make it easier to breathe and then she jabbed a needle right into my chest."

"A chest decompression," I said. "I've done a couple of those."

"Whatever it was, it hurt like hell," Tracy told me. "But there was this pop in my chest and I heard a bunch of air come hissing out and all of a sudden I could breathe again. It made the pain from the needle worthwhile. So anyway, the next thing I know a bunch of firemen picked me up and put me into the helicopter. A few minutes after that we took off.

"What I told the cop was the first thing I remember was actually the point that things got kind of fuzzy on me. Everything is jumbled after that. I knew I was hurt bad but I didn't feel like I was going to die anymore. The clarity went away. I barely remember landing and being taken out of the helicopter. I remember all kinds of doctors and nurses poking and probing me, jabbing needles into me, and I definitely remember someone sticking their goddam finger up my ass. What the hell do they do that for?"

I smiled a little, sensing the old Tracy returning a little. "If you have an orifice," I told her, "they're gonna stick something in it. They leave no hole un-probed."

"Assholes," she mumbled. "So when they got done with the poking and probing and all that, they gave me something in my IV. Everything got really hazy after that. I have a vague memory of a doctor cutting into my chest and sticking a tube in there. I remember it hurt but that's the only clear thing until I woke up the next day and you and Mom and Dad were there."

We sat in silence for a minute, her words hanging in the air. She took another sip out of her water and then handed it back to me to set down on the table.

"So do you hate me?" Tracy asked finally. "I wouldn't be surprised if you did."

"Hate you?" I asked. "Why would I hate you?"

"Because of the way I treated you, the way I was thinking about you. I was being a bitch Bill. A total, unthinking, unfeeling bitch."

"I could never hate you Tracy," I said gently. "And I'm sure that what you were feeling was a natural tendency considering what you were going through."

"A natural tendency?" she asked.

"Well, I don't believe that there have never been any extensive psychological studies on the effects of having a family member return from the future to let you know that you have a death sentence from fate hanging over you. The target group is probably rather small. But I can understand the need to blame someone, something for what was happening. It's human nature and fate is not an easy target to discharge your frustration upon. I came back and told you something that profoundly affected your life. It's only natural that you wanted to punish the messenger for the bad news. I understand, I really do."

"You're not just saying that?" She asked, another tear trailing down her face.

"Of course not," I said, standing and giving her another hug. "I'm glad you're still alive, ecstatic about it. Remember, my number one goal since the day of my return has been to keep you alive. That was all that ever really counted." I shook my head angrily. "I didn't realize how close it had been until you told me your story just now. Christ Tracy, I should have warned you. I'd seen some signs that fate was still at work and I didn't even equate that with you."

"Signs?" She said softly. "What kind of signs?"

I told her about Mike and how he had come to me, telling me he was thinking about the Air Force.

"That's it?" Tracy said. "That's the sign you were talking about?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Don't you see, I should've at least called you and…"

"Bill," she interrupted. "You couldn't have prevented this. If you would've called me up with that story about Mike and the Air Force I would've laughed at you. I would've asked you if you were going to start reading the entrails of chickens next. Then I would've tried to get you to steal someone's invention or tell me about the Super Bowl. It wouldn't have made any difference. I still would've gone to Tahoe and I still would've gotten into the cab that night. You're not to blame for any of this. You've saved my life three times now because of what you know, what you've told me. If I hadn't of thought of you, of all you've gone through while I was upside down in that cab, I would've just drowned. It was thinking of you that got me moving, that got me out of that cab. I owe you my life and I promise I'll never forget that this time. I promise."

There were tears in my own eyes now as I listened to her. I was unable to say anything for a moment. Finally I looked at her.

"San Francisco and Miami," I told her.

She looked confused. "What? What are you talking about?"

"The Super Bowl," I said. "It's going to be the Forty-niners and the Dolphins. The forty-niners are going to win."

She looked surprised, "You DO know?"

"I didn't know about the World Series," I told her. "And I wouldn't know about any other Super Bowl. But I have a memory attached with this one. My first trip through I was at the community college working on my history degree during it. I remember specifically that it was my first year of college. Some friends that I was hanging out with had a Super Bowl party and there was a girl that I knew was going to be there. I was trying to get into her pants and had received some hopeful signs that the party just might be the clincher.

"Back then I was just getting over my shyness and learning that girls weren't the mysteries that I'd always thought they were. Everyone else at the party liked the Niners but Terry, that was her name, liked the Dolphins.

I didn't really give a shit about football one way or the other so I braved the contempt of my peers and allied myself with her on the subject of the Dolphins." I smiled. "It worked. After the Dolphins lost the game we went to her place and consoled each other."

Tracy laughed. "You know," she said, "it just figures that the reason you would remember something like that would be because of sex."

I shrugged, laughing with her. "Unlike most guys, I know where the real priorities lie."

"And so do I," Tracy told me, turning series. "So thanks for telling me and if there's a pool at college, I suppose I'll get in it. After all, who could resist? But I think I'm going to have a new outlook on things from now on. I won't call you up and bug you anymore about your knowledge, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "But remember, nobody's a saint. If I happen to remember anything non-dangerous, I'll be sure to clue you in. And when you get some free money, I happen to know of some good stocks to invest in."

It was three more days before Tracy was able to travel. We stayed in Reno, visiting her every day as much as we could. I'd called Mindy at the hospital in Spokane to let her know what was happening and that I would not be in to work probably all week. She commiserated and told me she would say a prayer for my sister. I thanked her. Mom had a similar conversation with her employer. Dad, being a teacher, was off work for the summer and had no such concerns. I also updated Nina on how things were going and she was pleased to hear that Tracy was going to be all right. She told me she loved me. I asked her is she'd heard anything about Maggie and Mike. She hadn't.

With less to worry about I silently wished them luck.

Tracy was unable to fly on a commercial airline due to her cast so a medical transport plane was suggested in order to get her home. We were delayed an additional day because the insurance company that covered Tracy did not want to pay for such a thing because they felt it was unnecessary. I had a little talk with them while Mom was out of the room, mentioning things like lawyers and lawsuits and media coverage. They listened to me and eventually saw it my way, making the arrangements, not just for the plane but for ambulance transportation from the Spokane Airport and for a hospital bed and visiting nurses at our house. I thanked them politely and hung up.

Tracy said goodbye to the nurses that had cared for her and to Dr. Kwack. An ambulance picked her up and drove her to the airport where they loaded her onto a twin-engine prop plane that was designed just for such things. It was staffed with two nurses in addition to the pilot. Mom rode with her after giving the small plane more than a few nervous glances. Dad and I had a flight back to Spokane in another two hours on a commercial jet and would actually arrive home first. We watched the small plane climb into the sky and disappear into the clouds.

I'd told Dad about my conversation with Tracy and he was shocked to hear of her greed and feelings before the accident but also pleased to hear about her apparent conversion after the accident. As we waited in the lounge before our flight was called, Dad drinking a beer, me drinking a soda, he asked me about what I thought the meaning of all this was.

"So the accident that Tracy was supposed to have has happened," he said, taking a sip. "But she's still alive. What does that mean?"

"I've been thinking about that," I told him, envying the beer he had. "And the answer is, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure."

I shook my head. "I can see it both ways. For one, all of the requirements of the accident were allowed to come together and it occurred. Though Tracy didn't die, probably because she had forewarning of the accident, it has happened. So maybe it can't happen again. But on the other hand, Tracy was supposed to die in the accident. But she didn't. Will fate keep trying to get her? Will it try to arrange another accident? Maybe, maybe not. Again I believe that the basic premise still holds. The longer Tracy stays alive, the more likely it is that fate will accept her being here. What confuses me however is the fact that she's been in taxi-cabs before without any problem."

"What do you mean?" Dad asked.

"She's been in the exact same circumstances before in Berkeley and nothing happened to her there. She told me that they even drove along the Bay a few times. Part of me wants to think that there is no fate and that everything is just random chance. But I can't believe that since the accident was almost exactly the same as it was supposed to be. It just doesn't make any sense that earlier, when the pull to put things right was stronger, that fate didn't seize the opportunity on one of her cab rides. How much of this IS random? Can fate send a cab driver that is drunk when Tracy hails a cab?

Or does it have to wait until a drunk one just happens to cross her path? Before, I would have thought that if Tracy tried to get into a car as a passenger that fate would automatically have arranged to have a drunken cab driver there. Remember, it wants to put things right. So if fate was trying to get her and all of the conditions had been met, why hadn't…" I trailed off, a thought suddenly coming. ALL of the conditions?

"What?" Dad asked.

"Jesus." I said softly. "Could it really have been that simple?"

"What do you mean?" He repeated.

I told him what I was thinking. He raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.

"Interesting," he muttered. "Sounds like you need to ask Tracy about this, but maybe you've hit upon it."

"Wow," I said, shaking my head, thinking that Tracy was going to be pissed if that was the truth.

Tracy was installed in a hospital bed in my Dad's den since her old room was upstairs and moving her up and down would have been damn near impossible. Her chest tube and her IV had been removed before leaving Reno and she was given strong oral analgesics in place of the Demerol that she'd been taking.

The catheter remained and Mom was given instructions by the nurse on how to empty it and how to keep an eye on the output. She was given a supply of bedpans for her other bodily functions. The nurse was scheduled to stop by twice a day to check on her, give her a sponge bath, and to make sure she was healing up. Arrangements were made for further treatment at a local hospital and later, at a local physical therapy facility.

We moved in a TV, a stereo, and her record collection, putting all of it in easy reach. We brought in books, magazines and everything else we thought would make her comfortable in her little prison. She was obviously not happy to be bedridden but her spirits seemed high as she settled in. She fell into an exhausted sleep shortly after dinner so I never had a chance to be alone with her, to ask her what I suspected.

Though I was tired myself I was also going into withdrawal from not having seen Nina in nearly a week. I called her up and she came over. We spent two hours on the porch swing just talking, occasionally sharing a kiss. She went home around ten o'clock and I went by Tracy's new room on the way upstairs. My sister was snoring the snores of those on narcotics. I went upstairs and fell asleep the moment I was undressed and in bed.

The next morning was Saturday. Mom prepared one of her famous, high cholesterol though nearly as good as sex breakfasts. Dad and I ate at the table while Mom ate in the den with Tracy. After all of the dishes were done and put away Tracy said she was going to read for a while and then maybe catch a nap before the nurse showed up to check on her. Her morning medication was working strongly upon her and she seemed quite cheery.

Mom and Dad flipped on the TV and went about the task of reading the newspaper. I wandered out of the room and into Tracy's. She was lying awake in the bed, a book open on her chest, the radio playing the local rock station softly.

"Book no good?" I asked her.

She smiled. "I don't know," she said. "This medicine they gave me has got my mind a little fuzzy. I read two pages of it and then realized I couldn't remember a single thing I'd just read. Music is a little better, much better in fact." She raised her eyebrows and I noted that I could actually see her right eye a little now. "In fact, I think a little Pink Floyd would go nicely with this stuff. You think maybe I could borrow a few of your albums?"

"What's mine is yours," I told her. "I'll go get them in a minute. Do you mind if I sit down for a second?"

"Sure," she said. "What's up?"

I grabbed Dad's desk chair and pulled it over next to the bed. "I've been thinking about all of this fate stuff," I told her.

"Yeah," she said, disgusted. "Fucking fate."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah," I said. "Anyway, I was kind of thrown for a loop by the fact that you'd been in cabs before in Berkeley and you never had any problems with that. In light of what happened to you, doesn't that strike you as a little strange?"

"As a matter of fact," she said, "it does. I've been wondering about that myself. I didn't see cabs as a threat so I willingly climbed into them more than once. If fate was out to get me then why didn't it go for me earlier?"

"We thought we had all the pre-conditions for your accident worked out," I said. "Water, drunk driver, automobile. We thought that was everything. But what if that wasn't everything?"

She looked confused. "What do you mean? What else could there be?"

"On those other times you got into the cab," I asked her, "had you ever been drinking on any of those times?"

"Drinking," she asked, "what does that have to do with anything?"

"Were you?" I repeated.

"I don't think so," she answered after a moment's thought. "Usually it was when I was heading for the airport to go home on the holidays or returning from the airport. You know, when I had luggage and shit with me? Why…" Her eyes widened as she realized what I was saying. "Holy shit."

I nodded. "In my previous life, when you were killed on graduation night, you had a blood alcohol level of point oh nine. The papers made a big deal about that in their article about teenaged drinking. David Mitchell's attorney made a big deal of it at his trial, as if the fact that you were drunk too excused the fact that he'd killed you and abandoned you in the water. When your boyfriend at college drove into the Bay in the car that you were supposed to be in, you had been drinking. And when you got into the cab in South Lake Tahoe you'd been drinking too."

"Oh my God," she exclaimed, sitting up a little in the bed. Her book tumbled off and fell to the floor. "Are you saying that I had to be drinking too in order for the accident to happen?"

"I don't know," I told her. "You tell me. Were you drunk or had been drinking on any of your other cab trips? Or on any other time you'd gotten into a car with someone since graduation?"

She thought long and hard about that, her face scrunched in concentration. "Only once," she finally answered. "The night that Darren had his accident, the accident I was supposed to be in, I took a cab home instead of riding with him. I was drunk then. But other than that, never."

"Hmm," I said thoughtfully. "That fits. On the night of Darren's accident, fate had already arranged something for you. All of the conditions were met but you didn't get in the car. You got in another car. The fact that you were drunk was probably cancelled out by the fact that you hadn't gotten in the car you were supposed to have gotten in. Interesting. Are you sure there are no other times you got into a cab or another car while you were drunk?"

"Well, another car yes," she told me. "Quite a few times. But never while the driver was drunk too. And I never got into a cab while I was drunk at all. After you told me about graduation night and especially after Lisa Sanchez died, I made sure that I never got in a car with someone who was drunk. If Cindy and I went out, one of us would always stay sober, I made sure of it. When I went to college but before Darren's accident, I did the same thing. I made damn sure that if I was drinking someone else who had not been was doing the driving. On all of the cab rides I took before except for that one, I was stone cold sober since they were usually to or from the airport. Jesus Bill, do you mean to say that I could have been riding in cars all of this time as long as I wasn't drunk?"

"It kinda seems that way, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Fuck me," she muttered, shaking her head.

"But again Tracy," I qualified, "we don't know the exact rules here. I could be wrong."

"Doesn't it feel right to you?" she demanded.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Fuck me," she said again.

Mike stopped by for a few minutes the next day. He asked about Tracy and was glad to hear she was doing okay. He told me he couldn't stay long because he and Maggie were going downtown to catch a movie.

"You and Maggie are getting along pretty good huh?" I asked casually.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes beaming. "She's great. We've been out every day since the boat trip, doing something. You were wrong. She doesn't have a boyfriend at all. Hasn't had one in a while in fact."

"Cool," I nodded. "Guess my information was wrong then."

"Guess what else happened while you were gone?" He asked.

"What?"

"I got a job at the fire department."

"A job? What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna be what they call the courier. The position was open and the battalion chief at the station where I was at called and asked if I wanted it. I'll start next Monday. I'll drive around in one of their little trucks delivering the inter-station mail and the supplies. It's five days a week, about four hours a day and it pays five-fifty an hour."

"That's cool Mike," I told him, pleased. I guess the battalion chief had liked him after all.

"Yeah," he nodded. "And the best thing is that it keeps my foot in the door at the department for the next time they test. Keeps my face known and all that, especially since I'll visit all the stations on all three shifts. And the guys at the station where I was at told me I could use their weight room whenever I wanted to help build up my arms for the combat challenge." He gave me a determined look. "I'm gonna ace that motherfucker next time I take it."

We talked a little bit more and he eventually climbed back in his car and drove off to go get ready for his date with Maggie. Talking with him had put me in a great mood.

Nina came over for dinner that night. After eating my Mom's ham we spent a little time talking to Tracy in her little cave. The two of them chatted on and on, mostly ignoring me as Nina asked question after question about college life and Tracy answered them. We were at the stage where we were waiting for either the acceptance or the rejection letters from UWS and Nina told her how she waited every day for the appearance of the mailman and was disappointed every day when the letter wasn't there. Tracy said she remembered well what that had felt like. Finally, with her pain medication kicking in, Tracy started to nod off a little.

"We'd better let you sleep," I told her, standing up. "You got your appointment tomorrow at the hospital."

"Yeah," she mumbled sleepily. "What a nightmare that's going to be. Another ambulance coming over to wrestle me onto a gurney."

We said good night to her and headed out towards the porch, passing Mom and Dad who were in the living room watching television. Mom was working on some of the paperwork from her job that she'd missed while she was gone. She didn't plan to go back to work until Tracy was better so she was completing some of her work at home. Dad was going over some bills. My parents rarely watched the television, they just liked to have it on while they did other things. They both grunted to us as we went out the front door, closing it behind us.

We sat on the old porch swing and Nina leaned into me. The sun had just set and the few clouds in the sky were tinged with red as the sky steadily darkened. The evening star was the only one out.

"How come an ambulance has to come and get Tracy?" Nina asked me.

"Because she's in that lower body cast and she can't bend. She won't fit in the car so they have to put her on a gurney, take her to the hospital for the appointment, and then bring her back again. That's how they're gonna have to do it for the next five weeks until the cast can come off. Then she'll start physical therapy until she's able to walk again normally."

"Poor Tracy," she said sadly, snuggling a little closer to me. "Are you going with her tomorrow?"

"No," I said. "Just Mom and Dad. I imagine it'll degenerate to just Mom after a few times."

"What time does she go?"

"The appointment's at nine," I answered. "But the ambulance will be here at eight-thirty. Why?"

"Oh, just curious." She said innocently. Maybe a little too innocently.

We talked and swung gently back and forth as the last of the light faded from the sky. The kids that had been outside playing all drifted back in as their mothers called them. Other stars appeared and the sound of the crickets began.

I pulled her a little tighter and she turned her face up to me to be kissed.

I put my lips to hers, feeling her tongue dart out to taste me. My tongue answered back for a moment as I relished the feel of her mouth against mine.

I broke the kiss and tried to pull away but her arms went around my neck, pulling me gently against her. Her tongue shot back into my mouth insistently, hungrily. I kissed back enthusiastically for a moment, aroused by her aggression. I allowed my hand to drop to the skin of her bare thigh.

"Nina," I said breathlessly when our kiss finally broke. "My parents are right inside."

"So?" she asked, licking across my upper lip with her tongue. "They know we kiss don't they? Besides, I don't think your parents are the type to watch us."

"Yeah," I said, "But…"

"I missed you while you were gone Bill," she told me. "I missed talking to you, being with you, hearing you. I got to catch up on that yesterday. But I also missed touching you and having you touch me. I missed kissing you." She sucked my upper lip into her mouth and let her tongue slide inside my mouth again.

I gave in, surrendering to her kisses, my hand rubbing up and down on her thigh, feeling the skin beneath my fingertips, feeling my penis come to full staff in my shorts. After five minutes of this Nina let her hand slide slowly down my chest and stomach, her fingernails scratching at me through my shirt. Her hand continued downward and was suddenly resting on the bulge in my shorts. Her fingers, which were quickly becoming expert at the task, began to squeeze.

"Mmmmm, and I missed this," she said softly against my lips.

As much as I enjoyed the feel of her caressing hand on me I had to reach down and gently remove it. We were on a front porch on a suburban street. And though it was dark, it wasn't pitch black and anyone could have wandered along at any time. My parents also might have wandered out to the porch for whatever reason.

"Prude," Nina accused playfully, giving me one last squeeze but taking her hand away.

"Sorry," I chuckled.

She gave me another kiss and then moved her lips to my ear. She licked at the lobe briefly and then whispered, "I guess I'm gonna have take care of myself again tonight."

She had found one of my weak spots and she knew it. The thought of Nina laying in bed and rubbing herself was almost more than I could handle. I groaned in frustration.

"Unless," she continued to whisper, "you'd maybe like to take a little walk with me? Didn't you tell me once that you and Mike had a spot over at the school? A private spot? A spot that we could maybe put to a little better use than smoking pot?"

"Let's go," I said, standing quickly up.

She giggled and stood, taking my hand in hers. We started to walk.

It was very dark as we crept our way into the back of the school. There were no light poles or building lights nearby. The only illumination came from the stars and the half-moon that drifted above us. The crickets ceased their chirping as we found a spot under a tree and sat on the ground, our backs against the trunk.

"There," Nina told me, pushing her body against mine. "Nice and private. No parents, no people out for a walk. Nice place you have here Bill."

"Thanks," I said softly, pulling her to me and kissing her again.

Our kisses were frantic, deep, without a hint of gentleness as our tongues dueled in each other's mouths. Our hands slid up down each other's bodies, grasping and groping. I slid my hand beneath her shirt, under her bra, taking her bare breast in my palm and feeling it. Her hand slid down the back of my shorts, feeling my ass.

"Kiss my neck," she commanded, letting her head fall back on her shoulders. "I love it when you do that."

I complied, letting the back of my tongue trail across her cheek to her throat. My free hand slid up the inside of her bare thigh to the edge of her shorts. She opened her legs for me. I slid my fingers under the leg of the shorts, which were loose and baggy upon her. They moved upward until I reached the crotch of her panties, which were soaked with her excited secretions. Two fingers wormed their way beneath the cotton to her swollen lips. She moaned as my digits penetrated her.

It was awkward and my hand and forearm quickly got sore from the angle, but I brought her to orgasm as I slid my fingers in and out of her body. She thrust her pelvis rapidly into me and began to whine as she came. I silenced her vocalizations by putting my mouth to hers.

She relaxed against me, her tongue continuing to flit in and out of my mouth. I pulled my fingers free, again resisting the urge to smell them, to put them in my mouth and taste her.

She broke the kiss and looked at me in the darkness, her hand dropping down to the button on my shorts. "Your turn," she told me, unfastening it.

She unzipped me and then began to tug on the shorts and underwear. I lifted my hips a little, allowing her to drag them down to mid-thigh. My erection popped out and she took it in her hand, moving it slowly up and down as I'd taught her that night near the falls. I moaned while she kissed my neck, her hand continuing it's work.

"Does it feel good?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I moaned.

"Would it feel better," she asked quietly, "if I put it in my mouth?"

"What?" I asked, startled.

"I want to suck it," she told me, "would you like me to?"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" I asked, trembling with desire at the thought but not wanting to push her into doing anything too soon.

"Yes Bill," she said, kissing me again, squeezing my cock. "I want to make you come with my mouth, I want to feel it when you shoot. Can I?"

I nodded. "Yes Nina, oh yes."

She gave me one last kiss and then slowly shifted her legs so she had room. Still holding it in her hand she lowered her face to my lap. Her mouth opened and she put it on the head, allowing me to feel the wetness of her tongue against me. I jumped a little and groaned at the contact. I'd had many a mouth on my dick before but this was Nina doing it and the sensation was doubled, tripled by my mind, by the thought that she was actually doing this to me. She sucked only the head for a moment while her hand slowly moved up and down on the shaft and then she sank down slowly, taking as much as she could.

I looked down and saw her brown hair in my lap, saw her head moving up and down. I felt her tonguing and sucking as she moved. I felt her other hand gently caressing my balls, feeling them, testing their texture. It was obvious that she had never done this before. Her actions were tentative, hesitant, new. But at the same time she was doing it well. She was moving in a way that I liked without instruction. She was sucking while moving her head up and down and continuing to use her hand at the same time. She tried to deep throat once but had to withdraw as she gagged a little.

"Sorry," she said, raising her head up for a moment.

"It's okay," I squeaked back.

She dipped back down and resumed where she'd left off, increasing the speed of her movements as she gained confidence. I felt my hips started to rise up and down a little as my body instinctively began to move with the rhythm.

I felt myself getting closer and closer to the edge as she went faster and faster.

I took my right hand, the hand that had probed under Nina's shorts a few minutes before and put the fingers to my nose. I inhaled her scent, the strong, womanly musk of arousal and the thought that I was smelling the essence of Nina brought me over the edge. I felt the familiar tingle running through my body, felt the machinery of orgasm kicking into gear.

"I'm gonna come," I groaned to her, expecting her to pull her mouth away and finish me off by hand.

She didn't. She increased her pace and the strength of her grip on me. Waves of pure pleasure shot through my body, spreading from my groin outward. My hips raised off the ground and I began to shoot into her mouth.

Her mouth moved spastically upon me as she swallowed my offering but she kept up the motion, bobbing her head and sucking until the last spurt had come out and the jerking of my body finally came to a halt.

All of my muscles relaxed and I leaned back against the tree with a sigh. Nina sucked and licked my now-deflating penis for a moment and then raised her head up to me. She licked her lips a little.

"How was that?" she asked me.

"Beautiful," I told her, pulling her to me. I kissed her, catching a faint taste of myself on her tongue but not minding. Obviously this turned her on.

"So I did it right?" she asked.

"Perfect," I assured her. "You're a very erotic person Nina, did you know that?"

"Thank you," she said, kissing me again. "You're not bad yourself. I read how to do that in a book called "The Sensuous Woman". I was dying to try it. I'm glad they told me how to do it right."

"You read how to do that in a book?" I asked, laughing.

"Same place I learned to do what we did at the lake," she said seriously. "That was under suggestions for sex when you're on your period if your partner doesn't like to do it then. I adapted it to the situation. There's all kinds of other stuff in there too. Even stuff about orgies."

"Orgies?" I asked, incredulous, unaware that Nina had even known that word, let alone it's meaning.

She giggled. "For instance," she explained, "did you know that it is considered poor etiquette to attend an orgy while you are menstruating?"

I cracked up completely. "No," I said. "I didn't know that. The things our parents don't teach us."

"So keep that in mind," she said, "if you ever invite me to an orgy. Be sure to have me check my calendar first."

We laughed together in the darkness. Eventually I pulled my shorts back up.

We sat for a few more minutes, just holding each other. Finally we stood up, brushed each other off, and started walking back to my house.

Chapter 15

My suspicions were correct. Nina had been just a little too innocent in her inquiries about what time Tracy left for her appointment. At 8:50 the next morning, less than ten minutes after the ambulance carted my sister away with Mom and Dad following in the car, the phone rang.

"Care for a visitor?" Nina asked me playfully.

"I don't know," I responded, "I had plans."

"Plans?"

"Yep," I answered firmly. "I need to go over my stock certificates and calculate my net worth. Also, Sesame Street starts in ten minutes."

"I LOVE Sesame Street," she told me.

"I'm sure you do," I replied. "But watching Sesame Street is meant to be a transcendental, solitary experience, wouldn't you agree?"

"I would," she chuckled. "But do you think that maybe just this once you could make an exception?"

I sighed, exaggerating the sound. "I suppose."

"See you in ten minutes," she told me.

I smiled as I hung up the phone, feeling warm inside as I contemplated the prospect of Nina and an empty house. Usually on workdays I didn't shower until about 11:00. But something had told me that an earlier shower might be a good idea on that day. I was already squeaky clean and dressed in shorts and a tank top.

When the doorbell rang exactly ten minutes later my warmth kicked up a few notches as I saw her standing there. She was dressed in a light yellow summer dress that came down to just above her knees. Her legs were bare. It was readily apparent by the way her small breasts jiggled beneath the dress that she was not wearing a bra. Her face was made up lightly and her brown hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were twinkling as she stepped into my arms, giving me a soft, very erotic kiss on the lips.

"Mmmm," I said, letting my hand slide slowly across her chest, confirming the suspicion I had about her brassiere.

She slapped at my hand. "I didn't tell you you could do that," she teased.

"I think we've gotten to the point," I teased back, "where they are now possessions of mine and I can touch them whenever I want to."

"Is that so?" she giggled, breaking free of my embrace and walking inside. I had a Rolling Stones album playing softly on the turntable and the voice of Mick Jagger was telling us about how we should have sympathy for the Devil.

"Yes," I nodded, admiring her legs, the way they moved beneath the hem of her dress. They were tanned and toned from our frequent excursions outside and very pretty to behold. "Did your mother see how you were dressed when you left?"

"Are you kidding?" she asked, sitting on the sofa. The hem of her dress rode up considerably. She made no effort to push it back down. "I had a bra on when I left the house." She smiled seductively, "but it was really uncomfortable, you know. So I just left it in the car." She patted the sofa next to her.

I sat down, letting my fingertips touch her exposed thigh. "If I didn't know better," I said, "I'd swear you have evil intentions."

"Me?" she asked. "I'm young and innocent."

"Uh huh. Did you leave anything else in the car?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she said indignantly. "I did not leave my panties in the car if that's what you were implying. What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"Bummer."

She leaned over and kissed me softly on the ear. She whispered, "I didn't leave them in the car because I seem to have forgotten to put any on this morning. How absent-minded of me."

My penis, which had been semi-erect from the moment I realized she had no bra on, suddenly stiffened to a diamond cutter. Realization struck me. With it, sexual excitement and doubt. She was completely naked under her dress! She hadn't come over here to merely fool around a little. She had an agenda. Were things moving too fast?

"Nina?" I said, trying to concentrate, to think this through as she ran her tongue up and down my neck, leaving wet trails of saliva. Concentration was difficult. Nina, despite her inexperience, had learned volumes about the art of pleasuring my flesh with her tongue.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered to me. "Let's enjoy our time alone together. We don't have much time before you have to go to work."

I gulped. "But what about… you know… uh… protection?" I asked her. "I don't have any… uh… condoms." Actually I did. There was still a small stash of them in my Bible along with a joint that Mike had given me at some point. But I didn't want Nina to know that because I wasn't sure how she would react.

Her hand slid down my chest, coming to rest on the bulge at the front of my shorts. It began to twist slowly back and forth, putting delicious pressure on me. "You don't need any condoms," she said, still whispering in my ear, letting me feel her breath on me. "I'm on the pill."

The pill? I turned my head sharply at her. "You're what?"

A smile, a very wicked one came to her face. "I went to the family planning clinic way back in January. After the first time we made out. I knew back then that we would eventually work our way to this point. They give the pill to minors you know, without telling their parents."

I was speechless as I stared at her. She seemed to be enjoying the reaction she was giving me.

"You remember the pimples?" she asked, "the sore boobs? That's why I had those problems. It takes a little while to get used to the hormones in the pill. But I wanted it to be safe when we finally made love. I wanted it to be perfect. And today is perfect. We have the time, we have the place."

"Wow," I finally muttered. "You never fail to surprise me."

"And hopefully I never will," she smiled.

"But are you sure you…"

"Oh for Christ sake Bill!" she shouted, exasperated. "Why do you treat me like a child sometimes? I'm older than you are. I'm more than ready. I'm more than willing. I've been ready for a long, long time. Do you remember the day you first asked me to come over to your house to study?"

I looked at her, confused. "You mean, the very first time? Back in eleventh grade?"

"Yes," she nodded. "It was the first day of eleventh grade and you asked me to come to your place and study." She gave me a shrewd look. "I KNEW what it meant when you asked a girl over to study. I KNEW the kind of studying that went on at your house. We've already been over that point, right?"

"Uh… yes," I said slowly.

"And you'll recall that I said I would come over. I thought you were asking me over to STUDY with you. And I said yes. I wanted to STUDY, wanted it bad." She laughed, shaking her head. "Of course, the joke turned out to be on me when it became clear a few minutes later that you just wanted to study with me. To REALLY study."

"I… uh… well," I stammered, "back then I was still…"

"Hush," she told me, leaning in to give me a kiss on the mouth. "That's the past and the past is forgiven. My point is that I've been ready to feel you inside of me since then. The reasons I want to feel it have changed, and changed for the better, but I still want it. I want it today. I want it NOW. So quit trying to be gentle and considerate. Quit trying to protect fragile little Nina from the evil world. Show me the evil world Bill. Take me upstairs and fuck me. Right now!"

She stood, pulling on my hand, beckoning me to rise from the couch. I got to my feet obediently, still shocked but also terribly turned-on by what she was saying. She began to lead me to my room.

As we mounted the staircase she turned to me and said, "but first, you've just got to show me what the vacuum cleaner treatment is all about."

"That can be arranged," I told her.

We went to my room, which was spotless and neat, the bed neatly made, all of the rock music posters and other teenage memorabilia long-since removed from the walls and replaced by tasteful but cheap paintings and photographs that I'd acquired here and there since my recycling. I paused long enough to flip on my stereo and quickly tune it from the rock station it usually was set on to a college classical music station. Mozart was playing and I thought it fitting for the occasion. We turned and looked at each other.

"Love me," Nina said softly and I stepped into her arms.

We kissed standing up, her arms dropping down to my ass, feeling the cheeks through my shorts while my hands slid slowly down the back of her dress until I encountered her bare thighs. I stroked the skin softly for a moment, relishing the feminine feel of her legs, and then I began to slide them upwards, under the hem of her dress.

She had not been lying when she'd told me she had no panties on. My hands slid up her legs until they were moving across the smooth skin of her naked buttocks. I squeezed gently, pulling her body tighter into mine, caressing her, letting my fingertips dig lightly into her flesh. Her breathing quickened as she felt me touching her intimately. Her own hands slid upwards, under the back of my shirt.

"Take it off me," she commanded. "Make me naked."

I nodded, speechless and backed up a step. I moved my fingers from her rear and grasped the hem of her dress, lifting upward. She raised her arms to assist me. A quick pull upward and it was over. The dress was dropped indifferently to the floor at our feet and Nina stood naked before me.

I will always remember that moment, no matter how long I live, no matter how many lives I inhabit. The first moment my eyes feasted upon the sight of Nina in the flesh, in the bright daylight. I had undressed many a girl before, had looked at many a naked female form, but never had it been so sweet, so anticipated, so fulfilling. She was beautiful, all I ever wanted, her treasures revealed completely at last. I realized that I'd been waiting a long, long time for this experience and I savored it.

Nina's body was the type that looks it's most alluring unclothed. Her bra and her pants and her shirt tended to hide her curves, hide the swell of her breasts, hide the smoothness of her skin. Girls like Cindy and Maggie and the many others that I'd bedded tended to look better in clothing, their charms accented by under-wire support, tight denim, tight sweaters. They made you fantasize about what they looked like naked but when you finally removed their clothing you would always find that reality was not quite as good as the fantasy. Their boobs would sag, their stomach would have a pooch to it. But Nina's body was the exact opposite. Freed of restraint, her attributes were shining. Her stomach was smooth as silk, without a line marring it anywhere. Her breasts stood proudly revealed, their small size guaranteeing not a millimeter of sag. Her lower curves were starkly outlined, making a distinct hourglass shape. And her pelvic region was without the slightest hint of bulge, her tuft of brown pubic hair accenting the pouting lips of her vagina, which were barely seen.

"Nina," I said, in awe. "You are truly beautiful."

A shy smile from her. She looked as if she wanted to cover herself with her arms and hands, wanted to hide what I so desired from my eyes, but was restraining herself. "Thank you Bill," she said quietly. "I'm all yours."

I put my hands to her shoulders and slowly let my fingertips move downward, across her upper chest to the swell of her breasts. They glided across the nipples, swirling around each for one revolution before continuing onward, over the bottom-swell and down to her lower rib cage. I passed over the slight protuberance of her ribs, across her smooth stomach to her navel, where the fingertips touched each other for a brief second before separating and continuing south to her hips. They then slid around to her buttocks once more.

"Come over to the bed," I told her.

She gave me a nervous smile and let me propel her to my bed, lying her on her back near the middle, her head resting on my pillow. She kicked her sandals off as she lay down. She kept her legs tightly together, depriving me of a good view of her sex but this did not concern me in the least. I traced my fingertip from her knee to her crotch, letting it pass slowly through her pubic hair on its way to her breast. I eased myself down next to her, dropping my head to her right breast.

I licked from the bottom upward, working my way quickly to her pencil-eraser sized nipple, which I took into my mouth and began to gently suckle. It grew considerably in my lips and her hands came up to the back of my head. My hand began to slide up and down her thighs, right in the space where they came together. After a moment they parted slightly and I began to catch whiffs of her aroused odor in my nose.

I kissed downward, licking and sucking my way over her stomach, paying particular attention to her navel, which I plunged my tongue into, making her squeal in ticklish delight. I continued downward, kissing her lower stomach, moving more slowly now, tasting the soft skin with both my tongue and my lips.

When my chin touched the top of her pubic hair, felt it tickling me, I diverted to the side, kissing my way down her hip, to the outside of her thigh. I bathed her upper leg with my lips and tongue, moving downward to her knee. She continually tried to pull me back upward but I resisted her tugs, moving undaunted at my own pace. When I reached her knee her legs had spread of their own accord. I began moving back upward again, this time kissing the skin of her inner thigh, interjecting my body between her legs.

I could see her sex now as I homed in on it. I could see her lips pouting outward from the curtain of pubic hair, could see her clitoris, erect and waiting for me, bulging from its hood. Her lips were glistening with moisture, secreting her scent into the air. Her legs opened wider, her hands at the back of my head tugging harder, more insistently. I felt her calves and feet rubbing against my flanks.

I kissed all the way up her inner thigh, until my tongue was licking in the crease between her leg and her crotch. Her odor was powerful in my nose, making me giddy, making me want to rip off my clothes and drive ruthlessly into her body. Instead, I let the tip of my tongue lightly slide through her nest of hair and track up the side of her lip. I tasted the faint bite of her secretions on my tongue.

"Bill!" she begged, her legs opening wider, her hands pulling on my head.

I quit the teasing and went to work, sliding my tongue between her lips and licking, gathering her juices, feeling the sexy slipperiness of her inner membranes.

"Ohhhh!" she moaned at this first contact.

I licked up and down, staying away from her bulging clit and then began to slowly probe into her with my rolled up tongue, forcing my way inside. She was very sensitive to this treatment and her hips began to rise and fall the second I made contact.

"Yesss!" she groaned. "Oh yess!"

I lapped at her more rapidly, drenching my face in her juices, feeling her thighs rubbing on my cheeks. I probed in and out as if I was fucking her with my mouth. Finally I began to lick softly around the perimeter of her clit. Her hip motion became more rapid as I did this so I began to apply soft licks to the surface of her most sensitive area. The motion began to lose conscious control. Her moans increased in volume, became higher in pitch. I looked up the length of her body, across the heaving breasts to her face, seeing that her eyes were tightly closed, her faced scrunched in the grimace of ecstasy.

I began to gently suck upon her clit, at the same time probing between her moist lips with a finger. Her clit grew in my mouth, her motions losing all semblance of control. My finger could only penetrate a short way before coming to the barrier of her maidenhead. I could have pushed past it if I'd wished but I didn't want to, knowing that another part of my body was tasked for that job and looking forward to it.

Her orgasm started slowly, building tempo as it hit her. Her hips rose and fell so fast that I had trouble maintaining the lock I had upon her. Her thighs squeezed painfully into my neck, threatening to cut off my blood supply. Her whine became increasingly high-pitched, eventually inaudible to my ears. Every muscle in her body tensed as I continued to suck on her, as her pubis continued to mash into me, wetting my face. Her fingers pulled at my hair, ripping some from my head but I barely noticed as I brought her to her peak and she began to slide back down.

I continued sucking softly until her body relaxed and a sigh escaped from her lips into the air, until her fingers relaxed and untangled from my hair.

Her legs dropped from around me, coming to rest on the bed. Slowly I raised my head from her crotch, seeing her lying there with her legs spread, her vagina drooling juices onto my bedspread, her lips red and swollen, her nipples standing proud and erect, her eyes shining with lust. She was panting.

"My God," she proclaimed breathlessly. "I've never felt anything like that before."

I gave her a weak smile, wiping some of her juices away from my lips with the back of my hand. "I try," I told her.

"Get those clothes off," she ordered. "Get them off and get inside of me. Do it Bill."

I stood quickly and ripped my shirt free from my body, tossing it across the room. It landed on the stereo. I was just reaching for the button on my shorts, ready to rip them and my underwear down, intending to be naked in less time than it took for me to take my next breath.

From downstairs the telephone began to ring. I stopped, everything stopped.

Call it ESP, call it intuition, call it whatever you want, but there are times in everyone's life when you simply know that the ringing of the telephone is a signal for important information. It could have been Mike calling to shoot the shit. It could have been Nina's Mom asking her to pick up some milk on the way home from my house. It could have been one of Tracy's friends calling to check on her. It could have been a friend of one of my parents. But it was none of those things and I knew it by the time the second ring came drifting up the stairs. I simply knew it.

Nina looked at me, I at her. She knew the same thing I did, that whatever information was waiting on the other end of the call was going to mean an end to our encounter.

"Alexander Graham Bell was an asshole," I told her.

Still panting, still flushed with arousal, she asked, "are you going to get it?"

"I don't want to."

"I think you should," she sighed in frustration. "Try to get rid of whoever it is."

"Right." I said, heading downstairs.

My precognitive flash, or whatever it was, was strengthened by the fact that by the time I made it downstairs to the phone it was well into its eighth or ninth ring. Whoever was on the other end wasn't giving up easily.

"Hello?" I asked, fighting to make my voice sound pleasant.

"Hi," said my Dad. "Took you a while to get to the phone."

"Sorry," I mumbled, anything but.

"I figured if I let it ring long enough, you would answer. Sorry to uh… bother you."

"That's okay," I said, wondering if my Dad somehow knew what I'd been doing.

"What's up? Is Tracy okay?"

"She's fine," he assured me. "But the doctor can't complete his examination of her until he gets some recent X-rays. She was supposed to go over to the radiology clinic for that but the radiology techs are in the middle of some sort of labor dispute and they're having a sick-out today. So basically, this whole morning was a waste of time and the ambulance guys are putting her back in for the trip home right now."

"Right now?" I asked, glancing upstairs.

"Right now," he confirmed. "We should be home in about fifteen minutes or so. Just thought I'd give you a little… uh… warning."

"Okay," I said, feigning nonchalance. "Too bad for Tracy. I'll see you when you get here."

"Right," he said, hanging up the phone.

I set mine back down, feeling frustration, feeling my erection wilting in my shorts, but most of all feeling relief that my Dad had some foresight and common sense. He must have strongly suspected what I was up to or he never would have called. Dad was not the type to drop friendly little warnings that he was on his way home. I could only imagine the embarrassment for all concerned if they had come home while Nina and I had been engaged upstairs. Would we have heard them come in? Seriously doubtful.

Time was short so I rushed back upstairs.

"Who was it?" Nina asked, sitting up on the bed, still naked.

"My Dad," I told her, "they weren't able to complete Tracy's appointment. They're on their way home right now."

"Right now?"

"They'll be here in fifteen minutes," I nodded.

"Damn," she exclaimed, standing quickly up. "Stupid interruptions."

"I know," I said regretfully, looking at her naked body, knowing I'd been less than a minute away from finally entering it.

"Oh well," she shook her head sadly, as frustrated as I was, probably more so. "The best laid plans and all that." She took a good look at herself, at her dripping body. "I need to get cleaned up before they get here. I can't go home smelling like this."

"No," I said, paling as I thought about Mary Blackmore getting a whiff of the odor of sex on her daughter. Sure, she probably suspected that Nina and I were intimate with each other, that was one thing. But to have physical proof of it was quite another. "That wouldn't do, would it?"

"I need to use your shower," she said, gathering up her dress. "I'll be out before they get here. Can you go out to the car and get my bra?"

"You bet." I said. "And I probably oughtta brush my teeth too."

She giggled. "Probably oughtta," she agreed, heading for the bathroom, her dress trailing out behind her.

By the time the EMTs dragged Tracy back into the house and deposited her in her bed Nina was dried off and dressed once more, her bra properly in place.

Everyone greeted her warmly, not expressing any surprise at her presence. I did notice a few knowing looks from both Tracy and my Dad however. If they had anything to say, they kept it to themselves.

Nina and I chatted with Tracy for a while and then Mom and Dad, who had assumed their places before the television set. I kept up my end of the conversation but I couldn't recite a single thing we talked about. My teenaged hormones were surging through my body and I was having a difficult time keeping my erection from returning as I thought about Nina just sitting there, talking normally, while under her dress she had no panties on. My balls were aching fiercely.

We went up to my room about a half-hour before I needed to start getting ready for work. This was nothing unusual, we often spent time up there alone. Usually we did nothing more than kiss.

"Got blue balls?" Nina asked me, a smile on her face.

"In the worst way," I nodded.

"I'm sorry," she told me, sitting on the edge of my bed once more. "I really meant to let you make love to me. I wanted it Bill. I still do."

"I know," I told her. "It's okay."

"I guess fate just doesn't like you for some reason."

I had to laugh at what she said. Fate like me? Probably not. "No," I said, "I don't believe that fate likes me at all."

She gave me a puzzled look for a moment and then her eyes took on a little shine. "So what are you gonna do about the blue balls?" she asked. "Play with yourself after I leave?"

"Probably before your car even starts," I confirmed. "I can't go to work like this."

"Maybe I can help," she said softly. "Come over here."

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

She reached out and grabbed the waistband of my shorts, tugging me to her so I was standing between her legs. Her mouth was right at the level of my crotch. "You ask too many questions," she told me, reaching for the button and undoing it.

"Nina," I said, feeling myself coming to full erection once again, "my parents…"

"Would never come in without knocking," she put in. She unzipped me and pushed my shorts down. Another push to my underwear and my cock was waving in her face. "Just be quiet and let me do my work."

"If you insist," I croaked as her mouth slid over me.

My mom was in the habit of leaving me a plate of whatever she'd cooked for dinner that night in the refrigerator so I could heat it up when I got home from work. That night was no exception. I was gobbling up a large bowl of her beef stew and turning a thought that I'd been having over in my mind when the doorbell rang. I heard my Dad answer it and a moment later say, "he's in the kitchen." A few seconds after that, Mike came in, wearing a T-shirt from the fire department.

"What's up Mike?" I greeted, putting my thoughts on hold for the time being. "How's the new job?"

"It's cool," he answered, grabbing a seat. "I spent most of the day filling out the forms and all that crap. Then one of the captains that works days took me out in the truck to show me what I'd be doing. I'll start tomorrow on the normal route."

I offered him some of Mom's stew, there was plenty in the fridge, and he declined. While I finished up he continued to tell me about his new career.

When I was done eating and had put my dishes in the sink, we went out front.

"I'm off the buds now," he told me seriously once we were out of my parent's earshot.

"You?" I asked, raising my brows, "off the buds? What's up with that?"

He shook his head sadly. "I'll be driving a courier truck for the fire department. They have a policy. If anybody driving any vehicle gets into any accident of any kind, they have to get drug tested. It's some lawyer shit they have there. I wish I would've known about it a few weeks ago. I smoked some the other day with Maggie. Now I have to hope and pray I don't have some asshole crash into me in the next six weeks."

"Hopefully fate will be kind to you," I said, suppressing the joy I wanted to express. When I made my crack about fate I hadn't even been worried about it. Mike had already beaten fate. He had been forced to choose between marijuana and a career and he had chosen the career with hardly a second thought. Remarkable when you consider what had happened to him in his previous timeline, when he'd continued to smoke pot knowing that he would eventually be drug-tested and caught. He just hadn't cared. Now, at eighteen, he was much more mature than "the other Mike", as Tracy would have put it, ever was or ever would be. "Are you gonna miss it much?" I asked him.

"Oh yeah," he admitted, nodding. "There's nothing like getting stoned. Well, almost nothing. But I'll live. I hope Maggie understands. She likes to smoke a little bit with me. But I don't think it'll bother her that I quit. And the minute I make captain and don't have to drive anything anymore, I'm gonna go score me a fuckin' ounce and smoke it all in one night."

I grinned. "Be sure and invite me over," I told him. "How's it going with you and Maggie anyway?"

"It's goin' great," he assured me. "If she wasn't at work right now I'd be over there instead of bullshittin' with you." He grinned lasciviously, "I'm tellin' you Bill, that chick really knows how to fuck."

"What?" I asked, surprised at his words although I really shouldn't have been.

He nodded knowingly. "And she can suck dick like you wouldn't believe too. The other night she finally gave it up for the first time. Goddam she was hot. We started out in her living room. We were watching some TV and then we started kissing a little. She let me feel her tits, she has nice tits, and then she unbuttoned my…"

"Mike," I interrupted.

"What?" he asked, looking confused, wondering why I was intruding upon his sex story.

"Have you told anybody else about this?" I asked him.

"About fucking Maggie?" he asked. "No, you're the first. Why?"

I shook my head. "Don't take what I'm telling you the wrong way," I said, "I'm telling you this in friendship and to help you, just like when I told you about the Air Force recruiter, remember?"

"Yeah, but… what are you talking about?"

"Don't tell people about what you do with Maggie," I advised sternly. "Don't tell anybody a damn thing. Not even me, not even if they ask. Keep it to yourself. I know it's hard to do, I know that a guy's instinct is to share his conquests with everyone, to let other guys know he's a man. But it's a bad idea. A very bad idea."

He looked at me strangely. I could see the old immature hostility at being contradicted wanting to come forth. "I'm just telling you," he said. "Maggie doesn't know. And she wouldn't care anyway."

"Wrong." I said. "Now I don't know Maggie as well as you do, but I know women pretty well. And I know guys pretty well. If you tell me, you'll tell others. But even if you don't, you can't even trust me. Suppose I passed on what you said to Tracy. Tracy might run into Cindy, who is her friend. Cindy is also a friend of Maggie's. Suppose Maggie hears from Cindy exact quotes from what you just told me. She wouldn't be very happy. Her unhappiness will increase with each person that the story passed through before it got back to her. It really is a small world and if you are in the habit of blabbing your exploits to people, word will get around and get back to her. Women will break up with you in an instant if they find out you're telling people about what you do with them in bed. Worse than that, any other woman that the story has passed through will not have anything to do with you because they know you'll tell everyone. Are you following me?"

He looked a little shell shocked by my words. "Yeah, I see. But you won't tell Tracy anything."

"You can't know that." I told him, "You can't know that about even me and I'm your best friend. All it would take would be a few beers with Tracy, a little loosening of the tongue, and then out pops the story. You definitely can't know that about other people. Trust me on this. Keep you mouth shut about it if you want to keep her. Fuck the shit out of her at night. Enjoy it immensely. But don't tell a soul about it. Why even take a chance on her finding out? What's more important Mike, continuing to get the pussy and not having anybody know you're getting it or getting it a few times, letting everybody know, and then losing the pussy because you blabbed? Myself, I gotta go with continued pussy every time. No contest."

He was looking thoughtful at my speech but didn't say anything.

"Besides," I went on. "After it becomes known that you and Maggie are together, everyone is gonna know you're fucking her anyway. They'll know you're a man, they'll know you're taking her home and boffing the shit out of her. So why provide them with details? Let them just think about what you're doing with her and they're not. Let the fuckers be envious."

He nodded a little, brightening to what I'd said. "I see what you're saying."

"So if I come up to you and say, "Mike, you been fucking Maggie or what?", what are you gonna say?"

He smiled. "I'd say this:" He shrugged, "Maggie and I are just good friends."

I grinned. "You're learning Mike. You're learning."

"You know where I learned that line from?" he asked me.

"Where?"

"From you," he told me.

"From me?"

"Over the last couple a years," he said, "I used to see you with girls from school all the time. They used to be around you at lunch, around you after school, around you before school. Whenever I'd ask you about one of them, that's what you'd say. That you were just friends."

"And friends were all that we ever were."

He shook his head in wonder. "You sly motherfucker," he said respectfully.

The next morning, shortly after breakfast, Tracy and I were playing a game of cribbage in her cave. Tracy was not a happy person being eternally trapped in a den of her parent's house. She was suffering from a full-blown case of cabin fever and was very cranky at best. I was twenty points ahead of her and had just slapped down a double card run, fouling her mood even more.

"You lucky asshole," she said in disgust, throwing her cards at me. "This is a stupid game."

"And I'm about to skunk you at it," I added. "Which means you'll owe me fifty cents instead of a quarter, plus double points."

"Fuck you and deal," she told me. "And please turn off whatever crap that is you've put on the turntable. It reminds me of taking car trips with Mom and Dad when we were little."

"It's the Beatles," I told her. "This is the most classic rock and roll there is. How can you not like it?"

"It's old fogey music. Put on one of my albums, they're much better."

"Eighties music is an atrocity. You can't compare the freakin Thompson Twins to the Beatles. It's not even the same category."

"I LIKE the Thompson Twins," she said. "And I HATE the Beatles. And I'm the one that's injured and you're the one in MY room. So put on the fucking Thompson Twins."

"All right," I gave in, setting the cards down and heading for the stereo. Just then the phone started to ring.

"You got that Bill?" Dad yelled from his perch in the living room. Mom was off at work.

"Yeah," I said, changing course and heading for the phone. "Hello?"

"Bill?" It was Nina and she sounded very excited. "Have you got your mail yet?"

"I don't think so," I said, already intuiting what she was talking about. "Nobody's gone out to get it anyway. Why? Did you get a letter from the college?"

"Acceptance and full academic scholarship!" she squealed happily. "I'm in Bill. I'm in! And I'll be able to afford to go!"

"That's great Nina," I said, getting excited myself. "Let me go check the mail and see if mine's there. Here, talk to Tracy." I handed the phone, actually tossed it, to my sister and rushed out of the room.

Still wearing my sweat pants and no shirt I rushed by my Dad, who looked at me curiously, and out the front door. I went directly to the mailbox by the curb, throwing open the door and peering inside. There was a stack of mail in there. I grabbed it, shuffling quickly through the envelopes, magazines, and junk mail, looking for a return address from the University of Washington at Seattle. I found it near the bottom.

Standing there, holding it in my hand, I was suddenly scared, suddenly afraid to open it. Inside was either a yes or a no. If it was yes, Nina and I would be going to college together. If it was a no, who knows what would happen. I took a deep breath. With hands that were shaking, I finally tore open the envelope. One quick glance told me all I needed to know. I returned to the house.

I tossed the rest of the pile of mail at my Dad as I rushed by him once more. I went back into the den and ripped the phone out of Tracy's hands.

"Me too!" I said happily to her. "Acceptance and full academic scholarship!"

We talked for a few minutes excitedly to each other about our plans, about our excitement, about how much we loved one another. During this, Tracy seemed to actually cheer up and Dad wandered into the room to see what was going on. When I finally hung up Tracy was the first to congratulate me. She gave me a big hug and even a little kiss on the cheek.

Dad was next. "Congratulations," he told me. "I'm very proud of you."

"Thanks Dad," I said, still trying to accept the fact that everything was working out for me.

"Be sure and call your mother right away and let her know."

"I will," I promised. "I'll do it right now."

"It seems," Dad said, "that the mail is full of good news today." He handed me a small folding piece of paper, an announcement. On the front of it was a picture of two bells clanging together.

I opened it and read what was inside. The text was written in tastefully printed calligraphy.

THE STEVENS FAMILY: YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE BLESSED NUPTIALS OF JACK JACOB VALENTINE AND ANITA LYNN BROWLING SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1984 AT BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH, SPOKANE WEDDING CEREMONY 1:00 PM FOLLOWED BY RECEPTION AT ENDERS HALL PLEASE COME JOIN US IN THIS CELEBRATION OF LOVE

It was that evening, long after work, shortly after Mom had gone to bed. Tracy was in the den sleeping the sleep of narcotic intoxication. Dad and I were sitting in front of the television, each of us drinking a beer, the coffee table littered with empty bottles. This was something we did with fair frequency since I'd shared my secret with him and I valued these talks with him. Being treated like an adult by your father, with all of the respect due from such a relationship, is something that I believe every boy strives for whether unconsciously or consciously.

"So what do you think about Anita's wedding?" Dad asked me, taking a sip out of his fourth beer. We were making short work of the twelver he'd purchased the day before.

"I'm so happy about it," I told him, feeling my own buzz loosening my tongue, "that I could shit. Do you know what this means? It means that I was right. That I actually did something right. That one of my plans actually worked. Wouldn't that make you happy?"

He nodded wisely. "It would," he said, "but sometimes I think you sell yourself short. You have a keen head for hatching schemes and putting them into motion. You have a gift for it. When you told me all the trouble you went through just to get them together," he shook his head. "You did good Bill. You should be proud of yourself. But what I wanted to know was if you thought we should go to the wedding. Your mother and Anita haven't really spoken in quite some time. I think you know why."

"Yeah," I nodded. "My fault. And I'm sorry for that. I wish I could tell Mom how sorry I am that I hurt one of her friendships."

"Don't worry about it," he told me. "From what you've said, the relationship pretty much died after they got married anyway, didn't it?"

"Yeah," I said. "It did. Anita left the area and never looked back. I'm glad she's back on track."

"And the wedding?" he persisted.

"I want to go." I told him. "Whether you and Mom go or not, I still want to. It'll give me closure to this whole thing with her."

"Closure?" he said, puzzled.

"Sorry," I chuckled. "Buzzword from the nineties. I used to hate it then but here it is slipping from my mouth now. It means that once I see that Anita is happy, that she is content with her husband, I'll be able to put the episode with her behind me once and for all. To close it."

"I see," he nodded. "Closure. I like it."

"Don't like it too much," I told him. "It'll be horribly overused and you'll hear it so much you'll want to puke eventually."

"I'll take your word for it," he said, draining the last of his beer. "And I'll feel your mother out about going to Anita's wedding. But for now, I think I'm gonna call it a night."

"Me too," I said. "Oh, and by the way, can you do me a favor tomorrow?"

"What's that?"

"Well, earlier tonight, after dinner, I was going over my net worth. Do you know that I now have more than twenty thousand dollars in stocks?"

"Not bad," Dad said, impressed. "Almost like you were psychic, huh?"

I chuckled. "Almost. Anyway, I figure I can afford to cash out about six hundred dollars worth."

"What for?"

I told him.

He listened carefully to me, not speaking.

"I think that's a good idea Bill," he finally said. "I'll do it as soon as I get up and around."

The next day at work I told Mindy my good news. She expressed sadness that she would be losing me as an employee come August 30 but was very happy for me. I asked her if she would give me a letter of recommendation and by the time I left that night she handed me five copies of the most glowing, syrupy letter you could ever hope to read. According to her words, a hospital would be committing financial suicide by not hiring me as an employee. She assured me that any central supply supervisor would hire me on the spot once they read it. I thanked her and went home, filing the letters away.

The next day I went to the bookstore and bought copies of the two major Seattle newspapers. I began pouring through the want ads, looking for central supply tech positions. I found two. I called the numbers listed and gave my address. They promised me that applications were on their way to me.

The day after that I took the money that Dad had cashed out for me and went to downtown Spokane. It took me three hours but at last I found what I was looking for. I still had more than three hundred dollars left over. Some instinct told me not to put it back into stocks. I listened to my instinct, stashing the money in my checking account instead.

On the Fourth of July Nina, Maggie, Mike, and I took Dad's boat out to Lake Pend Oreille again. We left early in the morning, stocking up with two cases of beer and another onslaught of food courtesy of my mother. The lake was very crowded and it took us nearly an hour to launch once we hit the boat ramp. We spent the day water-skiing, drinking beer, hanging out on various islands, and generally just enjoying each other's company.

Maggie and Nina seemed to lose the awkward relationship they had with each other and worked their way to chatting happily about school, future careers, and even female problems. They had a long, drawn-out conversation about the pros and cons of birth control pills, which eventually led to the discussion of period cramps and water retention. Mike and I put in the obligatory male chauvinist pig comments when they seemed required but basically just kept out of the conversation. I was glad to see Nina developing a friendship with another girl. She had so few friends.

As the sun started to sink in the sky we loaded up the boat and worked our way northward on the lake, heading for the resort town of Sandpoint, which had a fireworks display each Independence Day that drew observers from all over the Pacific Northwest. Nine o'clock anchored us about a half mile offshore amid hundreds of other boats. At ten o'clock the fireworks began.

It was truly a spectacular show and I'd chosen our observation platform well, maybe a little too well. They burst right over the top of us for more than twenty minutes. The explosions were loud enough to hurt and the debris rained down all around us, instilling a sense of danger to the show. When it was finally over we began heading back towards the south end of the lake, a trip of nearly thirty miles.

It was well after midnight before we pulled the boat from the water. Like before, I'd ceased drinking more than three hours before so I'd be sober enough to drive home. Like before, everybody else was asleep before we even reached I-90. As I drove us towards home I remembered the last time we'd taken the boat out, the news that had awaited me when I got home. Irrationally, I worried as I drove, wondering what bad news would be there when I arrived.

But there was none. My house was darkened when we pulled up to it at 1:30 the morning of the fifth. We parked the boat and everyone went home. Well, almost everyone, Mike decided he would see Maggie safely back to her apartment. And so ended a perfect day.

Nina and I had no real opportunities to be alone long enough to do what we so badly wanted to do. Tracy had her appointments but they always seemed to be during my work hours. Sure, we could have torn one off on the boat trip, Maggie and Mike had, taking "a little walk" on our island and disappearing for an hour, but both of us, by unspoken agreement, wanted our first time to be in an actual bedroom.

She never left me with blue balls when we went out. She became quite accomplished with her mouth and hands whenever we went out to the movies or on some other date. I received several blowjobs from her while parked in my car at the local make-out spot near her house. Once she even wore a dress and I was able to return the favor, eating her to orgasm in the back seat while Journey played on the tape player. But as for intercourse, we bided our time, knowing that eventually the perfect day would come.

I was sent the applications for the central supply tech from the two Seattle hospitals and I filled them out, sending in an impressively constructed resume that Maggie, who had a flair for such things, had done for me along with copies of my letter from Mindy. It was the University of Washington Medical Center, the hospital that Nina would eventually train in, that responded first. They offered me an interview on July 23 at 11:00.

I didn't want to drive to Seattle for the interview since it was four hours by car so I looked into plane tickets. I was quite appalled by how much a round trip across the state cost on the cheapest airline.

"I'd better get this fucking job," I muttered, mostly to myself as I reserved a seat on an airliner. Dad, who had been nearby, overheard me and asked me what the problem was.

I told him how much I was spending for the ticket and grumbled about the goddam airlines for a moment. He looked kind of thoughtful for a second, and then said, "why don't you give Ron a call?"

"Ron?" I said, knowing whom he was referring to. Ron Valet was the private pilot who worked with Dad and a good friend of our family. It was Ron and his wife Karen that Mom and Dad went to the space needle with every day after Thanksgiving. I'd been up in the plane with him several times during my life, although not since my recycling. He happily jumped on every opportunity to display his skills.

"Why not?" Dad asked me. "He's off work for the summer, just like I am. If you paid for the gas I'm sure he'd be happy to fly you down there and back. Hell, he'd probably even pay for the gas if you couldn't afford it. He was bitchin to me the other day about how he hasn't done any flying lately."

"That's a good idea Dad," I told him. "You really don't think he'll mind?"

"If he's not doing anything else, he'll be more than happy," Dad assured me.

Unfortunately, when I talked to Ron, it turned out he WAS doing something else. "Sorry Bill," he told me with genuine regret. "Karen and I are purchasing some investment property up in Idaho and we have an appointment that day to sign all the papers at 11:30. I wouldn't be able to fly you back."

"That's okay Ron," I replied. "It was just a thought."

"I'd be happy to fly you down in the morning," he told me. "And if you didn't mind staying overnight or something, I'd even be happy to pick you up the next morning. Still might save you some money."

I considered for a moment, my mind going over the figures in my head. I could rent a motel room in Seattle for about forty bucks. The cost of gas for four flights would be only about fifty bucks. That was still quite below what the cost of a round trip airline ticket would be. "I think that's a good idea Ron," I finally said. "Are you sure you won't mind?"

"It would be a pleasure," he assured me with complete truth.

I was flipping through the latest copy of the Seattle newspaper later that day, looking for something to occupy myself with during my overnight stay there. I'd considered and then rejected the idea of asking Nina to come along with me. As much as her parents were growing to like me I did not think they liked me quite enough to allow their daughter to accompany me on an overnight trip. It was as I was perusing the sports page that I happened across a couple of advertisements that got my attention. I looked at them carefully, considering what I was thinking about. Was it possible to take care of two things at once on the Seattle trip?

I made a few long distance phone calls, putting my name down for reservations and promising I'd have checks in the mail the very next day. If my plans didn't work out I could always renege on these promises. I called up Ron again.

"Would it be a big problem," I asked him, "if you picked me up in Seattle around six o'clock at night instead of in the morning?"

"None at all," he assured me. "Got some plans?"

"Something like that." I said. "And would there be any problem with a passenger on the way up and back, and with, oh, say forty pounds of cargo or so for the return leg?"

"None at all," he repeated. "That's well within the weight limit of the plane. What do you have in mind?"

I told him and he assured me again that there was no problem with anything. Smiling, I hung up and then dialed Nina's number. Jack answered the phone and recognized my voice immediately.

"I'll get Nina," he said.

"No," I told him, "it's you I wanted to talk to."

"Me?"

"Yes," I explained. "Jack, you're on light duty right?"

"Yeah."

"Any chance you could take off the 23rd and the 24th of this month?"

He snorted. "All they have me doing is busy work. Besides, I've been there for thirty-three years. I can take off whenever I damn well please. Why do you ask?"

"A friend of my family is flying me to Seattle that day for a job interview," I told him. "And I'll be forced to stay overnight for various reasons. Now I was flipping through the paper and happened to notice that the Mariners are playing the A's on that day at four o'clock. I've managed to get my hands on a couple of home plate tickets. Interested?"

"You want to take me to a baseball game in Seattle?" he asked, surprised.

"Not only that," I went on, "but I also have a couple of reservations on a deep sea fishing boat that leaves the waterfront at 6:30 the next morning and stays out for eight or nine hours. I know you like fishing so I thought that maybe you'd like to come along. Ron, that's our friend, will pick us up at the airport at six o'clock that night and have us home by 8:00."

There was a long pause. Finally, "Bill, why didn't you ask one of your friends to do this with you?"

"I did Jack." I replied.

A slight cough. "Bill," he said, "you've got yourself a traveling companion. Thank you for inviting me. Of course you'll let me pay for…"

"Negative," I interrupted. "It's all on me. I can afford it. Just be packed and ready to go at 7:00 that morning."

"Thank you," he repeated, seemingly touched.

Of course, being me, I DID have an ulterior motive.

I picked Jack up at his house at 7:00 AM on the morning of the 23rd. He carried a small suitcase with him and seemed quite excited to be going on the adventure. Nina accompanied him out and gave me a hug and kiss before we drove off to the small, private airport.

When we arrived, we found Ron already there, performing the pre-flight checks on his small Cessna. Ron was sipping a cup of coffee and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Aviator sunglasses were perched on his nose. He was a short, terminally joking man and I'd always liked him. He'd given me fifty bucks as a graduation gift.

The introductions were made and Ron noticed that Jack was giving nervous glances at the aircraft.

"Not afraid to fly are you?" he asked Jack gently.

"I was a paratrooper in the war," Jack replied. "The last time I flew it was over Berlin and I had a parachute and an M1 on my back."

"Well have no fear," Ron assured him. "I go along with the smart pilot's credo. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. I've been flying for more than twenty years, including a stint in A-1 Sandies in Vietnam. I've logged thirty-six combat missions and more than six thousand hours total. You are perfectly safe with me at the stick."

"That's good to know," Jack put in.

We roared into the sky shortly afterword, Jack sitting in the front next to Ron, me sitting in the back. The two older men exchanged tales of their war experiences as we soared over the gentle rolling hills of Eastern Washington and finally over the Cascades where the unstable air bounced us around quite frightfully. We landed perfectly normally at nine-fifteen that morning and caught a cab to the motel where I'd made reservations.

I changed into my suit and caught another cab to the medical center, arriving twenty minutes early. The interview went well, outstanding in fact. I was all but assured that the job was mine if I wanted it.

We went to the baseball game and spent a pleasant four hours just shooting the shit and drinking beer and eating hotdogs. Jack bought my beer for me and no one ever questioned the fact that I was drinking it. The Mariners, despite horrible odds to the contrary, beat the A's 4-3, coming back with a two run homer in the eighth just when things seemed hopeless.

We went back to our motel room and crashed hard, Jack in one bed, me in the other. Jack, I found, snored like a chainsaw.

A wake-up call at 5:30 the next morning got us up and around. The day was beautiful for fishing, with no clouds and no rain. Summer is the best part of the year in Seattle. We scored some coffee and a light breakfast from the motel restaurant and then caught a cab to the waterfront. I had a large ice chest with me, the same one I took on boat trips, and we filled it with ice and beer. We obtained our one-day fishing licenses, rented our equipment, and at 6:40, the seventy foot fishing boat headed out of Puget Sound for the open water.

The sea was very rough, with fifteen-foot swells bobbing us up and down like a cork in the Pacific Ocean. There were sixty fishermen and women on the boat and well over half of them became completely incapacitated with seasickness. Bodies were laying everywhere, on every bench, on every table.

The bathroom was flooded in vomit, it overflowed the toilet and ran across the floor.

Jack and I did just fine. Both of us had been deep-sea fishing before, Jack many times throughout his life, me on five consecutive years as part of a company function in my previous life. Of course I didn't tell Jack this and he admired my stamina. Those of us that remained un-sickened managed to catch the limit for everyone else that was unable to fish. We no sooner dropped our lines in and let them sink to the bottom than we were pulling them up with three fish on the hooks. I caught twelve rock cod and Jack caught ten. He also managed to hook a lingcod, an ugly, dangerous looking fish, which the first mate gaffed and drug aboard with a long pole.

Jack and I basked in male bonding throughout that day, becoming closer and closer to each other, becoming friends despite the differences in our ages (which wasn't quite as great as Jack thought it was). We drank beer and ate the sandwiches we'd bought at the waterfront deli before departure. We gave contemptuous glances and comments to those that were too sick to fish, even though their non-participation was a blessing because we rarely got our lines tangled with another fisherman.

By the time the all the lines were pulled in for the last time and the boat began heading back towards the protected water of Puget Sound, we were pleasantly exhausted, sunburned, and sore all over. We found a relatively clean spot near the stern of the boat and sat down, both of us cracking open a fresh beer. Jack surprised me by producing a couple of cigars from his belongings. He offered one to me and I took it, seeing with pleasure that it was a genuine Havana.

"These are illegal in this country," I said with mock sternness. "And you, a government employee, has them in your possession."

He burped, firing his up with a disposable lighter. The fragrant smoke drifted off behind the boat. "Yep," he commented, unconcerned that he was violating a federal law. "A buddy of mine makes a trip up to Calgary every couple a months and picks me up some. That little shitpot country ain't good for much but goddam do they know how to make a cigar."

I took his lighter and, after considerable work in the wind, managed to get mine burning. I'd never been much of a cigar smoker but Jack was right, there was something about a good Cuban. I had a sudden vision of offering him a few tokes off of the illegal smokeable that I had stored in my bible and the image of Nina's father getting stoned was so amusing that I had to suppress a grin.

We smoked in silence for a few minutes, feeling the stern of the boat go up and down, left and right in the swells, watching the sea sick people that were still laying out on every available surface. I was gathering my courage to bring up the subject that I wished to talk about. Jack, perhaps sensing my mood, simply sat there.

"Can I show you something Jack?" I asked him finally.

"Sure," he told me, tossing his empty beer can into a garbage can six feet away; a fairly remarkable shot I might add.

I reached into my pocket and took out a small box that I'd carried with me the entire trip. Inside of it was what I'd purchased downtown the other day. Wordlessly, I handed it over to him. He looked at the felt-lined box for a moment, his eyes narrowing. Finally he opened it and beheld the diamond ring that sat inside.

"That's an engagement ring, isn't it?" he asked, snapping the box shut and handing it back.

"It is," I agreed.

"I'm already married," he told me. "And I don't think I'm your type. But I'm flattered."

I laughed nervously. "I think you know who the ring is for," I told him.

"I guess I do," he nodded, opening the ice chest. "Why are you showing it to me?"

"Because I'm asking your permission to marry your daughter," I said. "A little old-fashioned maybe, but I know how much she means to you and I thought I owed you this."

"You're asking me permission?" he asked, considering this while he pulled two beers from the ice and handed me one. "And suppose I say no? What are you going to do then?"

"Are you saying no?" I asked, cracking open my beer.

"I'm not saying anything just yet," he answered. "I'm just curious as to what you're going to do if I say no."

"Ask her anyway," I admitted. "I think you know that."

He chuckled. "Then I guess this whole conversation is pretty much meaningless then, isn't it? No matter what I say, you're still going to do it."

"But I'd feel better about doing it," I explained, "if I had your permission, which would necessarily include your blessing. It also would make you a co-conspirator when we tell Mary."

He laughed harder. "Mary scares you a little bit does she?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Good," he nodded. "Maybe that fear will keep you in line." He looked meaningfully at me. "I'd be proud to have you as a son-in-law Bill. You have my permission and you have my blessing." He held out his hand to me.

I shook with him, feeling relieved that this conversation had gone well. "Thanks Jack, thanks a lot."

He nodded, puffing his cigar. "But those threats I made to you that one day, remember those? They still apply. Even more so now."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"When are you going to ask Nina for HER permission?" he asked next.

"Soon. Very soon."

Chapter 16

Saturday, the 28th of July, 1984. Dad and I dressed in our suits and climbed into the car for the trip to Blessed Sacrament church. Mom stayed behind, her official reason being that someone had to stay with Tracy. This was only an excuse and everyone knew it. Tracy's cast had been removed and she was now able to hobble around on the braces that had been installed. She was starting physical therapy the following Monday and would no longer need an ambulance to take her places. Tracy would have been perfectly fine by herself but no one questioned Mom's decision. If anyone had, perhaps the REAL reason that she wasn't going would have come flying out of her mouth and with it, an entire can of worms. Nobody wanted that.

So we drove in silence, stifling in our suits, alone in the car. We arrived at Blessed Sacrament and were led to the bride's side of the church by an usher. Blessed Sacrament is perhaps the nicest church in the Spokane area. It is an impressive, gothic structure with expensive stained-glass windows and a towering ceiling. It has an actual belfry. Anita's wedding in my previous life, for reasons that I could not fathom, had not been held there, it had been held at a park. I wasn't much of a church going person, never had been, never would be, but I'd been inside it a few times before recycling on calls. People had a strange tendency to pass out during church services, don't ask me why, but any paramedic can attest to this. We used to joke that maybe the person was having a moment of religious doubt and a vengeful God had showed them the error of their ways in dramatic fashion.

It looked much more festive on that day than it ever had when I'd come to revive someone. Flowers were everywhere, filling the air with their perfume. An organist was playing religious hymns at soft volume, keeping everyone in the proper mood. Photographers and a man with a video camera moved here and there, snapping and filming away. The pews were about half-filled, mostly with people we didn't know. I recognized a few of the real estate agents from my trip to Anita's office and hoped that none of them would recognize me. I didn't think they would. If I'd left an impression at all on any of them it would have been as a boy bundled in a down jacket and wearing a ski hat. I doubted they would equate that image with the nicely dressed young man they saw before them now.

The ceremony began. The organist kicked up the volume a little and Jack Valentine made his entrance accompanied by his best man. They were dressed in matching tuxedos and he looked very distinguished, very worldly as he marched down the aisle and took his position near the minister.

And then Anita made her entrance. She was truly beautiful in her flowing white dress and veil, her hair done just right. Her father, I knew, was no longer a part of this Earth so in his place she was accompanied down the aisle on the arm of Ryan, her young son who was dressed cutely in a tuxedo of his own. Her maid of honor and bridesmaids trailed behind her. Her daughter held the trailing edge of her dress.

Like graduations, weddings are usually much more fun to anticipate than they are to actually witness. The minister went on and on for nearly twenty minutes about love and respect and nurturing before he got to the wedding vows. These went on for nearly ten minutes though they were admittedly well written. Another ten minutes of talking, lecturing, and praying occurred before we got to the good part; the part that ended with, "you may kiss the bride". Jack did and we moved on to part two, the reception.

Enders Hall was a large, multi-purpose building that had been designed with wedding receptions in mind. Tables were scattered throughout it with pink tablecloths adorning them and little cards with the names of the guests printed on them. A four-piece band played softly in one corner of the room.

An open bar was set up in another corner. In yet another corner was a large table where the wedding gifts were being stacked. We placed the punchbowl set that Mom had purchased on the table and then went and found our seats.

Dad got himself a beer and me a coke while I chatted with our table companions, two of Anita's co-workers, one of whom had been present the day I'd visited the office. She showed no sign of recognizing me. When she asked how I knew Anita I told her I was a neighbor that used to cut her lawn and watch her kids on occasion.

We all took our turns kissing the bride and shaking the hand of the groom. When Dad and I approached, Anita made the introductions tonelessly, without the slightest hint of what I had once been to her. As I kissed her cheek I remembered the days when I used to kiss her everywhere, when I used to make love to her on her bed, in her shower, when I used to put my head between her legs. Anita had still never been topped in the bedroom department. I knew Jack was a happy man.

"Congratulations Anita," I told her sincerely. "I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you Bill," she replied, her eyes meeting mine. "I'm very happy too."

Champagne was poured, toasts were made, the band kicked up the volume and the pace. Dancing was started. Anita danced with Jack, with Jack's best man, with her son, with several others. Finally she approached me and grabbed my hand.

"Care for a dance with the bride?" she asked lightly.

I looked at her for a moment and then said, "of course." I stood and we went to the dance floor.

We grabbed each other's hands and began to move to the music, swinging our hips. Around us, other combinations of couples were doing the same. Anita was smiling at me nervously and I wondered just why she had done this. A part of me was afraid she was going to ask me to resume our previous relationship despite her marriage.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to you," she said quietly, "since that last day. That day you came over to my house."

I nodded carefully. "I thought it best if we didn't."

"And you were right," she told me. "I wanted to tell you I was sorry for the way I acted on those last few weeks. That I'm ashamed of what I said to you, what I did, how desperate I was. Very ashamed. And I appreciate your discretion in keeping your mouth closed about it all of this time. When I look back on those times…" she shook her head sadly. "I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you did and why you did it, from the very first day we… you know, to the very last day when you had to come and explain the facts of life to me."

"You don't have to apologize or explain anything Anita," I told her. "It's me who is very sorry for doing such a sleazy thing in the first place. I've grown up since then and I'll never do that to anyone again. I'm glad you met someone to love, who loves you."

She offered me a strange smile. "Yes," she said. "Jack and I seemed meant for each other. We're very happy." A pause. "But something bothers me."

"What's that?"

"You knew his name," she said. "On our last night together, you asked me about him. You asked me by name. How did you know Bill? How did you know?"

We continued to dance while I considered my actions. "I can't tell you Anita. It's too difficult to fathom anyway. Let's just say that you and Jack were fated to be married and that I almost screwed that up by interfering. But now things are right and I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you," she said.

I led her over to the edge of the dance floor and positioned my body so that nobody could see what we were doing. I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew a wrapped package. It was long and skinny, the box originally designed to hold a set of drumsticks. I handed it to her.

"What's this?" she asked, taking it.

"I was going to slip it into the wedding gifts," I said. "The card simply says it's from "fate". It's something I thought you might like to have. You can do with it what you wish of course but after talking to you, I think you deserve to get it personally."

She looked at me for a moment, her mouth open to ask another question. She closed it, the question unasked, and began to open the wrapping paper. She slid the box out and lifted the lid, peering at what I had for her. She stared for a long time, her eyes wide.

Inside the box was the coil wire I'd taken from her car on the day I lured Jack and her to the house. I don't know why I kept it. I should've just thrown it away, its job done. But I hadn't. I'd taken it out of my jacket pocket and put it in my closet until the day before.

"Is that…?" she asked slowly.

"A coil wire," I confirmed.

"Then you were the one…" she stared at me, eyes wide. "You?"

I shook my head. "Not me. Fate. And only fate Anita. Enjoy your marriage. I wish you all the best. I really do."

I walked away from her with a smile on my face, leaving her to quickly shove the coil wire back into the box and hide it. Shortly after that, Dad and I left. Anita moved away from her house after returning from her honeymoon. A rental company took over management of it. I never saw her again. But I'd achieved closure to that part of my life and that was what was important.

When we got home Mom was listening to the radio and working on some paperwork. Though she'd worked at home during her absence from her job during Tracy's recuperation, she was apparently still far behind. Rarely did we see her without a sheaf of papers and computer printouts before her. She asked us about the ceremony and seemed genuinely interested in our answers. I asked where Tracy was, since I had not seen her in her room, and was told that she was in the back yard, practicing her walking.

I went upstairs and changed out of my suit, replacing it with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I finished and emerged from my room, Mom and Dad were both missing, their bedroom door tightly shut. Like most kids I pained myself not to speculate too much on just what they were doing in there but like most adults I realized the effect that attending weddings tended to have. I was feeling such an effect myself.

I gave Nina a call, hoping we could get together for a bit but this idea was shot down the instant I got her on the phone. An aunt from Moses Lake was visiting for the day, had come specifically to see Nina and give her a late graduation gift. Nina was trapped at home for the foreseeable future. With a sigh I helped myself to one of my Dad's beers and wandered out to the back yard where Tracy was before I was forced to hear any noise drifting out of Mom and Dad's room.

Our back yard was typical for the period in which our house was built. Considerably larger than what tract houses come with today, it was landscaped with the bare essentials. There was a large lawn, an elm tree that was large enough to climb in if you wished (and that dumped an incredible amount of leaves to the ground each fall), some brick flowerbeds that my mother had rose bushes planted and growing wild in. There was a small cement patio with a cover over it. A barbecue and some simple patio furniture sat upon it. Dad had often talked about installing a swimming pool and a hot tub but had never become quite financially irresponsible enough to actually do it. A pity.

Tracy was wearing a college T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Her right leg was clamped into a set of metal braces that looked like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. A large, metal cane apparatus was attached to her right arm and helped support her weight as she ambled along. She was dripping sweat, her face running with it, her T-shirt stained with it, and her face was scrunched in a painful expression as she hobbled in what appeared to be a circular course around the old elm tree where Mike and I had once built a tree-fort thirty feet above the ground.

"How's it going Trace?" I asked her, grabbing a seat at the table and setting my beer down next to a glass of ice water that Tracy had put there. A fly had fallen into the water and was struggling weakly between two ice cubes.

"Hey," she hailed, changing course immediately and heading my way. "This hurts like hell. But not as much as when I first tried it. I'm getting better I think. But I'm ready for a break now. More than ready." She wiped sweat from her brow, moving her damp hair from her forehead. "How was the wedding?"

"Boring," I answered, "like all weddings. But I was glad to go. It's nice to see that Anita is happy. We also had a chance to have a little talk."

"Oh?" she said, hobbling over and sitting down, unclipping her cane and putting it aside. It slid down the length of the chair and clattered to the cement loudly. She gave it an irritated look and then chose to ignore it. She reached for her glass and spotted the fly. Her face wrinkled in disgust. "Gross," she declared.

"I'll get you some fresh water," I offered, standing up and picking up the glass.

"I'd rather have one of those beers," she told me.

"Have this one." I slid mine across the table to her. By the time I returned from the kitchen with a fresh one for myself, half of it was already empty. By the time I finished telling her about the wedding and my conversation with Anita, it was completely empty.

She burped in an unladylike way. "So you actually gave her back the coil wire you took?" she asked me wonderingly. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't even know why I kept the thing in the first place. Some impulse."

"Impulse huh?" she smiled cynically. "I think you just like to be dramatic."

I didn't dispute that this might be the reason. We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the butterflies attacking Mom's roses.

"So will you be ready to go back to school in September?" I enquired.

"I'm going whether I'm ready or not," she said firmly, with determination. "I need to get back on track if I'm going to get my undergraduate degree in three years."

I nodded. "That's what Nina's intending to do too. I'm gonna give it a shot, after all, most of the general Ed classes should be pretty easy, but I'll also be working. If it's too much, I'll drop back on the pace a little."

"Not me," Tracy said. "Full steam ahead for me. I plan to take the BAR exam in 1989, 1990 at the latest."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't worry. Corporate America will still be there whenever you finish."

She looked at me for a moment, her face serious. She picked up her beer bottle as if to take a drink and then saw it was empty. She set it back down. I was about to go get her another when she said, "I'm going to change my focus off of business and corporate law."

"To what?"

She sighed. "I've had a lot of time to think while I've been recuperating from this. More time than I've ever wanted. What the hell else is there to do? I've been thinking about fate and consequences and free will and drunk cab drivers." She shook her head angrily. "And it's the drunk cab driver that keeps coming back to me. He was out there driving a goddam cab after two DUIs. He was licensed both by the State of Nevada and the State of California to do that. For what he did to me he's getting ninety days in jail. Ninety fucking days Bill! What kind of shit is that?"

"It's just life, fate, the American way?" I answered. "Whatever you want to call it. I'm just glad you lived through it, that you're still here to bitch about the injustice of it."

"Fuck that," she said. "Fuck fate and fuck everything. That asshole should NOT have been driving anything, especially not a taxi. Our system allowed this to happen and it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"Yes," I agreed, "it is."

"So I'm going to focus on criminal law," she said. "I want to try and put some of these assholes in jail. I want to do everything I can to try to stop things like this, or worse things, things like what was SUPPOSED to be, from happening time and time again. Not just drunk driving, although that will have special attention from me, but every other crime that's under-treated by the system, that's allowed to perpetuate itself because of apathy."

I felt a chill going up my spine as she spoke. She was talking about becoming a victim's rights advocate. Did she realize this? There were ramifications here, serious ones. I took a long drink of my beer. "That's uh…, very uh…, noble Trace," I managed to say.

"I've had a life-changing experience," she said softly. "I'm still alive when I should be dead, even after having the accident I was fated to have." She looked at me. "I can see that some of the thoughts I've been having about fate are occurring to you too."

She did realize the ramifications. No slouch was my sister. "Sometimes," I said, "this whole thing just scares the crap out of me. Before I came back I was pretty much an atheist. I didn't believe in anything. But now, I'm forced to concede that SOMETHING is at work behind the scenes here. I don't know if it's the Christian God, or Allah, or Buddha, or something that nobody has even conceived of before, but there is a definite power at work here."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. When I decided to go into criminal law and to fight for victims, when I actually DECIDED that, it was almost like I felt something click, like I felt some gears that had been out of alignment sliding back in. I imagine I'll be doing whatever it was that Mom and Dad were supposed to do but didn't, or won't be I should say. I feel like things are, if not exactly RIGHT, at least copacetic. The accident has happened and as a result of it someone is getting involved in victim's rights. The stress on the system is releived."

"So you should be reasonably safe?" I asked.

She chuckled a little. "I still won't be getting into any cars with drunk drivers if it's all the same to you, but yeah, I feel like I'm safe."

We watched the butterflies for a few minutes, me finishing off my beer.

"What about Mike?" I asked her. "He's on a completely different path, so am I for that matter. Anita is back where she should be, Nina is still going to be an emergency room doc, albeit a decidedly less bitchy one, so there's no great stress on the system in those cases. But what about Mike and I?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, like I told you before, I believe that fate is nodal, which means that the longer the insult to it has gone on, the more likely it is that it will be tolerated. I think the evidence we've seen so far seems to confirm that theory. From what you've told me, Mike is completely off of his former track. He doesn't even smoke grass anymore. Like you said, he's matured to the point that he's no longer capable of making the mistake that led to his former life. He's graduated from school, he's signed up for college classes, he has a job, he has a girlfriend. Fate has apparently accepted the new Mike and allowed for him. It probably would have done the same in my case eventually but I was a much stronger stress to the system and stumbled into the right set of circumstances. Fate seized the chance to correct things. The accident relieved the stress on the system as well as it could without actually killing me."

"And me?" I asked. "What about me? I must've stressed the shit out of the system. I'm not in the career I'm supposed to be in, I'm not marrying the person I'm supposed to, I'm not having the child I'm supposed to, and, if all goes well, I will be much wealthier than I'm supposed to be. How does all that fit in?"

She rubbed her ribcage a little, massaging away the tenderness that still plagued her from the accident. "You're a special case," she said.

"How so?"

"You've never had any inclinations at all to stray back onto your previous path, have you?"

"No," I said. "None."

"No strange urges to go to paramedic school, to major in history in college, to dump Nina and go find, what was her name?"

"Lisa," I answered. "And no, nothing like that."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I believe that you probably stressed the system so badly and so rapidly just by the mere fact that you came back to 1982 with your knowledge intact, that it was forced to simply accept your presence. In effect, it simply gave up on trying to divert you since it was basically hopeless. It could try to divert the other paths that you intersected, but not you. It wouldn't be possible for you to deliberately make all of the same twists and turns along your way, particularly when the consequences were unpleasant."

"That makes sense," I told her, marveling at her insight into this metaphysical subject. "It makes a lot of sense."

"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked, "that this might not be your first trip back to 1982 and beyond?"

"What?"

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she smiled. "You were fated to meet the old man on that day, the day before you came back. What was it you said to him when he asked what your greatest wish was?"

"To be fifteen again, knowing what I know now," I answered, not quite getting her.

"Suppose you hadn't answered that way," she suggested. "Suppose you'd simply answered, "to be fifteen again", leaving out the last part. That's a perfectly natural response to that question under those circumstances, wouldn't you say? In fact, adding the last part is a little bit strange if you think about it. So suppose you did just say, "fifteen again". Boom, you would've found yourself a teenager again with no idea of your former life, with no knowledge of your future mistakes or my impending death."

Another shiver went up my spine as I considered this. It was a frightening thing she was suggesting.

"You would have caused absolutely zero stress to the system," Tracy went on, "and you simply would have continued along as before; marrying Lisa, grieving for me, having Becky, getting divorced; until eventually you would have come to the convalescent home and the old man again with nothing changed. You would have responded the same way and been sent right back again, starting over. For all we know, you might've been doing the same seventeen year stretch of your life over and over again for the past ten thousand years."

Frightening became staggering as I envisioned my poor self endlessly living through the same events, some of them quite tragic, over and over again without memory of it each time. Was such a thing possible? Of course it was. At least as possible as Mr. Li sending me back in the first place.

"Wow," I said softly. "But why would this time have been different?"

"Maybe there are little things that fate can't control," she answered. "Maybe some part of you was aware of what was happening, some part buried deep in your subconscious and it caused that little add-on to slip out at the moment of truth. The cycle gets broken. You could also have wished for world peace or a million bucks or something like that. Thankfully for me, if that's what the case is, you didn't. You added, "knowing what I know now". That's what made everything possible. You get to move on past 1999 now."

"That's a truly bizarre and terrifying thought," I told her, trying to shake off the feelings that this discussion had given me. Leave it to Tracy to make you think that you might be ten or twenty thousand years old and had barely escaped from some eternal feedback look in the time-space continuum by the addition of five little words on the end of a sentence. "Well, if it's true and I'm free at last, at least I'll finally get to see how all the Y2K crap is going to come out."

She looked at me strangely. "Y2K?"

"It's not important," I said. "Just be sure to keep your computer system updated come the late nineties."

She seemed about to say something else but didn't. We watched the butterflies again.

"Where are Mom and Dad anyway?" she asked me. "Dad usually comes to check on me fifty or sixty times a day."

I gave a sour look. "They're uh…, in their bedroom."

"In their bedroom? Doing what?"

I gave her the look that one gives someone when they've asked an incredibly stupid question. "Well I don't know Tracy, they didn't clear their itinerary with me. But the door is closed."

A comical expression of disgust came across her face. "Oh my God, you mean…," she shook her head violently. "I'm not gonna think about this. I'm changing the subject. How's Nina?"

I grinned, amused by her discomfort. "Nina's fine except for being trapped at home by an aunt. As a matter of fact I wanted to talk to you about that very subject."

"Oh?"

"I bought her an engagement ring."

Tracy registered absolutely no surprise at this revelation. "Is it a nice one?" she asked.

"Reasonably," I assured her.

"When are you going to offer it to her?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I need a good, female perspective on this. You see, the first time I got married, you know, before, there was no proposal. We simply decided it made good financial sense."

"That's sad," my sister commented.

"Yeah," I replied, "it was. Lisa didn't get an engagement ring until about six months after we were married. She only wanted it because her wedding ring looked "lonesome" without one. So we went down to a jewelry shop together, bought one with our joint checking account, and had it soldered on. Not very romantic."

"No," Tracy agreed wholeheartedly.

"I want this to be different. I want it to be something she'll always remember, something she'll tell her friends, our kids, our grandkids about. Do you see?"

She was beaming. "Oh yes," she replied, "I know exactly what you're talking about. Let me think." She thought for a minute. "Well of course you simply have to drop the ring into a glass of champagne."

"A glass of champagne?" I asked, wondering if Tracy's perspective was the right one to tap after all. "Isn't that cliche?"

"No," she said firmly, "it's what we all want. Trust me."

"I'll give it some thought," I said doubtfully.

"But for the set-up for it," she said next, "consider this: A hot-air balloon ride."

That actually sounded a little more interesting. "Go on."

"They have champagne balloon rides outside Coeur d' Alene. You can book private flights where there's only the pilot. When you break out the champagne up at six thousand feet, you can make that your moment." She shivered a little as she considered it. "That would be the ultimate."

The balloon thing seemed like a good idea at first and I mulled it over for the rest of the day. I considered things like whether or not Nina was afraid of heights (I'd never bothered to ask her this), whether the presence of the balloon pilot would intrude upon the atmosphere of the occasion, and what would happen if I accidentally dropped the ring out of the balloon from six thousand feet over some farmer's back forty. I decided that more research was in order.

The next day Nina, Mike, Maggie, and myself went on another ski trip, this time to Coeur d' Alene Lake which, while smaller than Pend Oreille was considerably closer. I managed to get Maggie to myself for a little bit about halfway through the day, while Mike was dozing on a picnic blanket and Nina was off trying find a private place to pee. I posed my question to her as we waded in waist-deep water near the beached boat, drinking cans of beer.

"You're gonna ask her to marry you?" she squealed happily.

"Christ Maggie," I scolded, "you think maybe you could yell it a little louder? The people on the golf course across the lake didn't quite understand you."

"Sorry," she said, "but it's so exciting. Congratulations." She stepped forward and gave me a hug, allowing her wet, bikini-clad breasts to push into my bare chest. There was no overt sexuality behind it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't pleasurable.

"So what do you think?" I asked her once we'd broken apart. "What's the most romantic proposal scheme you can come up with?"

She smiled sexily. "Well, a traditionalist would suggest putting the ring in a glass of champagne."

"Again with the champagne," I muttered.

"But I'm not a traditionalist," she continued. "I think the best way would be to take her out to a nice dinner in a romantic restaurant. You know, a dressy place with wine and a snooty maitre 'd and all that. Order some expensive food, some expensive wine, set up the mood. But don't give her the ring there."

"Not there?"

"No," she shook her head, "that's just the set-up. After dinner, you find someplace to be alone. You know, ALONE?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Then you start kissing her. You kiss her lips, her cheeks, you nibble on her ears, you kiss your way down her shoulder and across her arm. Ideally she would have on a strapless dress for this occasion. If you could arrange that, so much the better."

"Of course."

"So, anyway, you continue down her arm, just kissing and making her generally hot." She gave me a knowing look, "I KNOW you know how to do that.

When you make it to her hand, her left hand, you surreptitiously remove the ring from your pocket or whatever and slip it into your mouth. You kiss her fingers and then take the ring finger and start sucking on it. Then, using only your mouth, you put the ring on her finger." She sighed as she thought about this. Uncomfortably, I could see that her nipples had hardened. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" I asked, "that gave me a hard-on just hearing you tell about it."

"So it's a good idea?"

"I'll consider it," I told her. "I'm not sure that's quite right for Nina, but I'll mull it over."

"You do that," she said. "Trust me on this. It'll be erotic beyond belief.

She'll remember it forever."

Just then Nina came tromping back out of the woods beside the lake. We hushed up our conversation and Maggie said, "I'm gonna go wake up Mike. After that conversation I'm gonna have to have someone go with me when I pee, if you know what I mean."

She headed out of the water, flashing Nina a pleasant grin. A minute later her and Mike had disappeared the way Nina had come. But that was okay. We found something to occupy ourselves with while they were gone.

The next day at work I brought the question up to Mindy. Since my days there were numbered, Mindy was pretty much letting me get away with whatever I wanted. She encouraged me to come in late (which I never did), to leave early (which I sometimes did) and to take long breaks. When I told her what my intentions were and asked her for advice on the matter, she took me aside and talked to me for more than thirty minutes on the subjects of women, romance, intrigue, mystery, and various other topics. She gave me no actual suggestions but listened carefully to those that I'd already received. After talking to her I was able to formulate a plan that incorporated elements of both Maggie's and Tracy's suggestions.

The next day I went to work on the plan. The first step was to talk to Nina. I gave her a call and asked her if maybe she was up for a nice dinner on the following Saturday night.

"A nice dinner?" she asked. "How nice? Would I have to dress up?"

"Yes," I told her. "That dress you wore to the play would be appropriate. So what do you say?"

"Where did you have in mind?" she wanted to know.

"You'll see it when you get there," I said cryptically. "So are you in?"

"I'm in."

When I hung up I began making phone calls, referring to a list I'd made after considerable research. I made the necessary arrangements, writing everything down so I wouldn't forget it. The final phone number was one that did not involve research. It was here where everything could fall apart. But it didn't. The recipient of this phone call was more than happy to help me out, especially after I told him what my intentions were.

I hung up the phone with a smile. Everything was in place. Well, almost everything. I went to see Dad.

"I need you to cash out some more stocks for me," I told him.

He nodded, taking a sip out of his coffee. "It'll be nice when you're finally eighteen and able to cash out your own damn stocks," he said good-naturedly. "How much?"

I told him.

"That much?" He asked, surprised.

I told him what it was for and he smiled.

"I'll do it today," he told me.

Saturday, September 3, 1984. A day that will live in infamy.

I woke up early, very early, six o'clock in the morning type of early and was unable to sleep any more. My date with Nina was still nearly nine hours away, the moment of truth considerably more than that, but I knew there would be no more sleep for me. I drug myself out of bed and went downstairs to watch some television. I knew the day was going to drag on like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

I was right of course. I spent much of it lounging around in my shorts, watching television, picking at my breakfast and my lunch. I talked with Tracy, with my Mom, with my Dad, all of whom were in on my intentions. They made comment after comment about my nervousness. I denied that I was nervous but knew that I was lying.

At about two-thirty, absurdly early, I began getting ready. I took a shower, washing myself thoroughly. I dressed myself in my best suit, fixing my tie so it was just right. And then I waited for it to be four o'clock, time to go pick up Nina.

I restrained myself from leaving the house early. It would have screwed up the schedule I'd carefully planned. Finally I made one last check of my possessions to make sure I had everything I needed. I had the ring, I had the roll of twenty dollar bills that was so thick it looked like a pimp's flash money. My family wished me good luck and I headed out the door, climbing into my faithful Datsun and heading off to Nina's house.

Jack and Mary met me at the door, inviting me in. Nina was nowhere to be seen.

"She's putting the finishing touches on," Mary told me, offering me a seat. The interrogation began.

"Kind of early for a simple fancy dinner," Nina's mom commented, handing me a glass of iced tea that I hadn't asked for.

"We'll probably be out for a while," I told her, sipping out of it.

"This date wouldn't have anything to do with that little present you showed Jack on the fishing trip now, would it?" Mary asked pointedly.

"Mary…" Jack started but was silenced by a sharp glance from her.

I licked my lips nervously, unable to think of an answer.

"Does it?" she persisted.

"Yes," I answered. "It does. It has everything to do with that. I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me tonight."

She stared hard at me for a moment and then her face softened a little. "Do you have something special planned? Something she'll remember?"

I looked down the hallway toward Nina's room, seeing that the door was still shut. I gave Mary a brief summary of what I had planned, leaving one part out of course. Mary listened to me carefully, her eyes boring into me.

"That's very romantic," she finally said, her face breaking into a smile. "Can I see the ring?"

Another quick glance and I pulled the ring, free of its box, from the inner pocket of my jacket. She stood and sat next to me on the couch, taking it from my hand. She appraised it for a moment, looking at the gold band, the diamond protruding. She nodded, handing it back to me. I returned it to its hiding place.

Mary continued to stare at me for a moment. "You know how I used to feel about you Bill," she said. "We won't rehash that. But I'm glad to find, after getting to know you, that I was wrong. As wrong as a person could be.

I wish you luck tonight and I'd like to be the first to tell you, welcome to our family." She leaned forward and gave me a hug. Surprised, I returned it.

"Of course you won't do anything stupid, like eloping, will you?" This was more a command than a question.

"No," I said quickly. "I promise."

"Good," she said, a tear coming down from her left eye. "Because I want Nina to have a big wedding with lots of guests. I want to help her plan it, I want to help her make out a guest list. You'll let me do that, won't you?" More tears were coming down now.

"I promise Mary," I told her, giving her another hug. "We'll get married in Spokane and we'll let you plan it. I promise."

"Thank you."

"Of course this whole discussion is meaningless if Nina tells me no," I put in.

Mary broke the embrace and looked at me in much the same way I'd looked at Tracy when she'd asked what Mom and Dad were doing in their room. "You don't really think that's a concern, do you?"

Mary had herself under control and Nina sensed nothing amiss when she emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later. She was not wearing the dress she'd worn to the play but an entirely new one, a dark blue and white one. It was not strapless, as Maggie had suggested it be, but that was not important. She looked ravishing in it.

"You look VERY nice," I told her, standing up and giving her a hug and kiss.

I took a quick look at her left ring finger, which was bare at that moment but would hopefully be adorned with my ring later that evening. "New dress?"

"Mom helped me pick it out," she affirmed. "You look very nice too. So where are we going?" The anticipation was killing her.

"You'll see," I said. "I think you'll like it."

We said our good-byes to the elder Blackmores. Mary, I could tell, was stifling tears as we left. Nina noticed this too and asked her mother what was wrong.

"Nothing dear," she said. "It just pains me sometimes to see how grown-up you've become. When you wear a fancy dress like that it hits me hard."

I held the car door open for her and then stepped around to my side, strapping in and firing up the little four-cylinder engine. I pulled away from the curb and headed for the freeway.

"Mom is so weird sometimes," Nina commented.

We made idle chitchat until I hit the freeway onramp. I'm sure that Nina was expecting me to head for downtown. I didn't, instead taking the opposite direction. She looked at me suspiciously.

"Bill, where are you going?" she asked. "Why are you being so mysterious?"

"I'm a mysterious person," I told her, refusing to say further.

It took us about ten minutes to get to our first destination. By the time I pulled in the front gate it was apparent to Nina where we were going.

"Why are we at the airport?" she wanted to know. "What's going on? Bill, tell me!"

"Well," I said, pulling into the parking lot of the private airfield and stopping. "I wanted to take you someplace REALLY nice. Nicer than we have in Spokane. In order to avoid a long drive, I enlisted the services of a family friend."

"We're getting on an airplane?" she asked.

"For a bit," I allowed. "He's the same guy that flew me and your Dad to Seattle. You're not afraid to fly, are you?"

"I've never done it before," she said. "Where are we flying to?"

"Seattle," I said, "All the nice places are there. I have reservations for us at what is reputed to be the nicest restaurant in the entire state of Washington. I will get you there, wine and dine you, and have you safely back in your own bed tonight."

"We're going to Seattle?" she said in disbelief. "What's the occasion?"

"Just because I love you Babe," I told her, calling her by that term of endearment for the first time. "Just because I love you."

Ron had of course been the unpredictable part of my plan. Would he volunteer to fly us there and back? Would he be free to do so? The last thing I wanted to do was impose upon a family friendship and make someone do something they didn't want to. But to my delight, he'd jumped upon the suggestion, especially when I'd told him my intentions. He'd offered to stand by at the airport until the next morning if that was required. I'd gratefully accepted and told him that a few hours should be all that was required. We'd talked over his portion of the plan and, once briefed in, he'd proved to be a godsend. His experience as a pilot had allowed me to time everything down to the minute. He also had some connections in Seattle that helped save me some money for phase two. When Nina and I walked across the tarmac, past rows of Cessna's and Pipers and the occasional Lear, we found him waiting beside the plane, its engine on, its propeller turning, its pre-flight check already completed, the flight plan already filed.

Introductions were made and Ron told Nina how lovely she looked and how much he'd enjoyed her father's company. He soothed her nervousness about the small plane, speaking loudly over the noise of the engine. He offered her the co-pilot's seat and helped her inside after I'd been stowed in the back.

Less than five minutes after my car had pulled into the parking lot we were taxing across the field. Less than five minutes after that, Ron, ignoring me completely, asked Nina, "you ready?"

"I think so," she answered nervously.

"Then push that throttle all the way to the front. Do it slowly so we don't stall the engine."

Nina reached out with a hand that was trembling slightly and grasped the throttle lever. She pushed it forward as instructed and the engine wound up to full. The plane began to move down the runway, moving faster and faster.

When it got to take-off speed Ron pulled smoothly back on the stick and we rose into the air, an audible bump sounding as the wheels broke contact with the ground.

We soared into the bright blue sky, Ron turning the plane until we were heading West. He took us up to our assigned altitude of seven thousand, three hundred feet, leveling us off and engaging the autopilot. By the time he did this Nina had lost her fear and was staring at the ground with awe, picking out sights that she recognized.

"There's the falls Bill," she told me, pointing. "And there's the river stretching off. I never knew it was that crooked before."

Ron kept silent as we plowed westward at a hundred and ten knots. Nina kept looking at the ground. I sat back and thought about all the things that could go wrong with this day and all the things that could go right.

Nina turned to me and said, "How are we getting from the airport to the restaurant?"

"You'll see," I told her.

About halfway to Seattle, just as the Cascades were starting to become visible in the distance, Ron checked his watch and concluded that we were a little ahead of schedule. He cited a tailwind as the reason.

"Care for a little flying lesson Nina?" he asked, winking.

"Why the hell not?" she replied with determination.

Now it was my turn to be terrified as Nina took the stick and, with Ron's instruction, began subjecting us to a series of turns and dives in the clear air. He'd done this with me before, back when I was about fourteen or so, and I knew it was basically harmless. But still… My stomach knotted as we moved up and down, left and right, as the horizon bobbed like it had on the fishing boat while Nina tried to get the feel of the rudder and the stick. She was almost as terrified as I was but definitely loving every minute of it. Her face showed nearly the same ecstasy as it had when I'd eaten her to orgasm. At one point she over-corrected for a bank, giving way too much left aileron. I thought I was about to die a horrible death for a few moments as I found myself looking out my side window directly at the ground. Nina, almost panicked, jerked her hands from the stick and screamed. But Ron, calm and cool, without the slightest bit of concern, simply chuckled and took the controls. Within four seconds he had us straight and level once more.

"Well that was exciting, wasn't it?" he asked us.

Both of us were trembling too badly to speak.

He played with the autopilot for a moment and then we were back on course. "Time's a wastin'," he said. "We'd better end our lessons for now and get ourselves to Seattle."

Once again the air over the Cascades bumped us around violently. It was like driving a car with old shocks across a four-wheel drive trail at sixty miles an hour. Neither Nina nor I got much more than a mild adrenaline rush from it. Nina's time at the stick had prepared us for anything and the serene expression on Ron's face soothed our nerves.

We circled in and landed with a thump at a small airport near downtown. Ron taxied the plane to the tarmac and parked it in a slot that had been assigned to him over the radio. No sooner had the engine been shut down and the doors opened up when phase two happened right on schedule. A sleek, white limousine came gliding in from the parking area. It circled around and stopped right next to the plane.

"Bill," Nina asked, her eyes shining. "Is that for us?"

"Yes," I affirmed. "They have nice taxis in Seattle, don't they?"

"I've never ridden in a limo before," she told me as the driver, an older man dressed in a white uniform, got out and stood by the back doors. "Bill, you can't afford this."

"Not as a regular means of transportation I can't," I allowed. "But for this one day, don't worry. I can cover it. Don't fret about money today, okay?"

She hugged me quickly. "This is like a dream-date."

"Is it?" I asked, giving her a quick kiss. "Why don't you go hop inside? I'll be there in a minute."

She did so. The limo driver smiled, introduced himself to her, and opened the door. While she got in and began gawking at the interior, I turned to Ron and thanked him. I gave him some money for the landing fee and for fuel. He didn't want to take it from me but I finally won the battle of insistence.

"What are you going to do while we're gone?" I asked him.

He shrugged, "Probably hang out in the pilot's lounge. Watch some TV, read some magazines, talk to other pilots. Don't worry about me. You just go out and have yourself a good time. I'll be here when you get back, no matter what time that is."

"Thanks Ron," I told him. "I owe you two now."

The driver introduced himself as Paul. He shook my hand and then politely brought up the subject of the bill. He ordinarily wouldn't have done that I was sure, but he was probably a little concerned about my age. Understandable I guess. I peeled off the required amount from my pimp's wad and handed it across to him. He at least had the class not to count it in front of me, simply pocketing it instead.

"I understand we're going to Fullers at the Sheraton, is that correct sir?" he asked me.

"That's correct," I answered.

"And that I'm to pick you up at ten o'clock out front?"

"Again, correct."

"Very good Sir," he said, opening the door for me.

"Hey, uh, Paul," I asked, "what is it that you do while you're waiting for ten o'clock to roll around?"

He looked at me strangely. I wondered if anyone had ever asked him that before. "Well usually I just go find something to amuse myself," he told me. "Sometimes I go home if I'm nearby. I go get gas, I go take care of errands. I'm on hire for the customer so I can't assign myself to another customer, although if the boss could figure out the timing you could bet he'd give it a shot."

"So basically you have nothing to do?"

"Right."

I peeled off two more twenties from my wad and handed it to him. He looked surprised although he didn't hesitate to take the offering and make it disappear.

"When you drop us off at Fullers," I told him, "come back here and pick up Ron there." I pointed to Ron, who was fiddling with something inside the cockpit of the plane. "Take him anywhere he wants to go and then bring him back here when he wants to come back."

"Of course sir," the driver nodded.

I sat down in the back of the car, next to Nina and Paul closed the door on us. The inside of the limo was nice, with plush seats, a small mini-bar complete with ice bucket, a stereo system, and a bank of controls that moved the seats back and forth and the sunroof and windows up and down. Nina was playing with these controls like a little kid, her eyes shining with excitement.

"I can't believe all this," she told me, giving me another hug. "Sometimes you are just too much."

"I hope not," I mumbled, pulling two glasses from the bar. "Would you care for a drink?"

"I'd love one," she answered. Meanwhile Paul had buckled himself in and was putting the car in gear. We pulled away from the tarmac and started heading for the street.

"What would you like?" I asked.

She smiled, "Surprise me."

I made us a couple of seven and sevens and we sipped from them as we drove along the major arteries and into downtown Seattle. We cruised between large high-rises, catching occasional glimpses of the blue-gray water of Puget Sound. We saw the distinctive outline of the Space Needle poking up into the sky far to our north. We watched the occupants of cars around us and pedestrians on the downtown streets trying to stare into the tinted back windows of the limo, to spot who we were. We held hands and leaned against each other, feeling closeness, feeling love. My doubts about the outcome of the evening began to drift away.

The Seattle Sheraton, where Fullers is located, is a thirty-five story building about six blocks from the waterfront, right in the heart of downtown. Our limo received no notice as Paul drove it into the turnaround near the front lobby entrance. There were several other limos already there. He hopped out and rushed around to open our door for us. We stepped out, leaving our glasses behind and thanked him. He nodded politely and told us he would see us at ten.

"Ten?" Nina asked, looking at me knowingly. "Why ten? How long does it take to have dinner in this joint?"

"Not that long," I answered. We began walking towards the lobby doors.

"So what else have you got planned?"

"You'll see," I told her.

The lobby alone was enough to make Nina and I, both middle-class products, feel slightly out of our element. It was spacious and seemed to ooze class.

Well-dressed men and women walked to and fro amid well-dressed hotel staff. We moved quickly to the elevators.

We rode up to the thirty-fifth floor and stepped out, following the signs to Fullers. The maitre d' was almost a stereotype of what you see in bad movies. He had it all, the balding head, the snooty French accent, the little mustache. I found myself wondering if it was all an act because that was what people expected to see when coming to such a place. Maybe he went home each night and ripped off the little mustache and then talked to his wife in a Texas accent or something. He eyed the two of doubtfully as we approached his little table.

"May I help you?" he asked, not terribly politely.

"Yes you may," I told him. "We have reservations for two for Stevens at seven o'clock."

"Well let's check into that," he told me, giving a condescending smile. He perused his book for a moment. "Oh yes, Mr. Stevens." He tapped it with his pencil. Without even bothering to check his seating chart he said, "unfortunately your table is not quite ready yet. It may be a few minutes. Perhaps you'd like to wait in the bar?"

I smiled, a very adult smile, staring into his face. I reached into my jacket and withdrew two twenties which I slid into his palm. "I would prefer to be seated immediately," I told him, "at a table with a view."

He glanced down at what I'd pressed into his palm and his expression changed instantly to one of respect. "Of course Mr. Stevens," he told me, picking up two menus. "If you and your guest would follow me please?"

It was amazing what a forty-dollar bribe got you. We were placed at a secluded table next to the large picture window. Puget Sound was plainly visible, as was the sinking sun. Sailboats and motor boats, and a large freighter could be seen moving across the surface of the water. The table was covered with a tasteful white cloth. Two candles burned near the center next to a complimentary plate of goose-liver pate and crackers. Our seats were held out for us and we sat down. We were assured that our waiter would be right with us.

"How did you know to give him money?" Nina asked me, trying a bit of the pate after putting her napkin in her lap.

"Universal language," I told her. "If I wouldn't have given him something we would have sat in the bar until about eight or eight-thirty before being sent to a seat near the kitchen door and receiving horrible service from the waiter all night. By now, the maitre d' is telling the waiter that I know the rules. I imagine the service will be pretty good."

Nina shook her head in amazement. "Why can't everyone just do their jobs like they're supposed to, without worrying about the money?"

"What are you?" I said lightly. "Some kind of communist? Everyone do their jobs without worrying about money? That's un-American."

As predicted, the waiter arrived promptly and was so polite it was almost sickening. He read off the house specialties to us and named the market price for such things as the lobster or Alaskan king crab. He asked us if there was anything he could get for us while we perused the menu.

"Yes," I told him, nodding. "We'd like a bottle of Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon."

He looked at me for a moment, giving a little cough. "Begging your pardon sir," he said quietly, "but I'm sure you're aware that the legal drinking age in Washington is twenty-one. You don't exactly look that old."

I smiled, reaching into my wad and pulling out a twenty. "I assure you I'm of age," I explained, slipping him the twenty. "Here's my identification."

He took a look at the denomination for a moment and then nodded, slipping it into his pocket. "Thank you sir, everything appears to be in order."

When he left Nina asked me, "just how many of those twenties do you have anyway?"

"Enough," I answered.

The dinner was excellent. I decided to go for broke and had the live Maine lobster. Nina, after several reassurances not to worry about the price, went with that also. We sipped our Cabernet throughout, putting a respectable dent in the bottle. We talked between bites about anything and everything; the ease of conversation had always been the strong point between Nina and I. Just after the dinner dishes were removed I stood up and excused myself, telling Nina I needed to use the facilities.

It took me less than a minute to find our waiter. He had just carried someone's MasterCard to the cashier and was waiting for it to go through.

"Excuse me," I said to him.

He looked up at me questioningly. "Is everything all right sir?"

"Perfect," I assured him. "But I was wondering if you could do me a little favor?"

We talked for a moment and I handed him Nina's engagement ring along with another twenty-dollar bill. He agreed to do as I asked.

I returned to the table where Nina was watching the sunglow against the offshore clouds. She commented on how pretty it was.

"Yes," I told her, reaching across and taking her hand, "it's nice this time of year here. Of course we're probably going to hate it during the winter, spring, and fall."

"Maybe," she said, going back to her examination of the water and the sky.

The waiter came a moment later carrying a dark green bottle and two glasses.

He set the glasses down before us and then showed me the bottle he had. It was Dom Perignon and it would add sixty-eight dollars to the bill. I nodded.

"What's this?" Nina asked as the waiter made a show of putting the bottle down and popping open the cork.

"I thought a little champagne would be nice," I explained.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" she asked brightly, letting me know that she wasn't adverse to that if that was my intention.

"Something like that," I nodded.

He poured a dab of the champagne in my glass and then stood by, waiting for me to complete the ritual of tasting it. Where did this ritual start anyway? Had anyone ever tasted the wine or whatever and then said, "this swill tastes like shit, take it away"? I was sure that somewhere, someone had done that. I picked up the glass, actually quite curious as to how Dom Perignon would taste since I'd never had it before. To my disappointment it tasted only slightly better than Brut, which sold for two bucks a bottle. Oh well, the champagne wasn't there to taste good. I nodded my approval of it and he picked up my glass to pour it full.

After setting my glass of bubbling champagne down he picked up Nina's. He had obviously done such a thing before. He was so smooth about it that even I didn't see him slip the ring into the glass before he poured. For a moment I actually thought he was ripping me off, that he'd look puzzled when I asked him where the ring was. Ring? What ring? You didn't give me a ring. But when he set the glass down before her, there it was, sitting on the bottom, little bubbles clinging to the gold band and the diamond. Nina didn't notice it.

The waiter put the bottle into an ice bucket and then beat a hasty retreat, giving me a "good luck" look as he went. Nina grabbed her glass, holding it by the stem, her thumb and forefinger hiding the ring from her view. Perfect.

"Shouldn't we toast?" she asked me, gazing at my face. "That's what you're supposed to do with this, right?"

"By all means," I said, picking up my own glass. I gazed back at her, knowing the moment of truth had come, knowing it was too late to back out. "To a long life together," I said, "filled with love and understanding."

She smiled. "That's sweet Bill," she said. We clinked our glasses.

She put hers to her lips preparing to sip out of it. Her eyes widened as she got a look at what was sitting on the bottom of the glass. She stopped, just staring, the glass hovering against her face.

"Bill," she said slowly, without moving, "there's a ring in my glass."

"What do you know about that?" I said softly. "It kind of looks like an engagement ring, doesn't it?"

She finally lowered the glass, her face suddenly nervous, her eyes searching mine. "Did…, did you put that in there?"

"Not personally," I told her. "But I arranged for it." I leaned forward. "Will you marry me Nina?"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked from my face to the ring to my face again. She started to say something and then stopped. Her hands began to tremble, making the champagne bubble more, obscuring the ring. The tension in the air was very thick, at least from my vantagepoint. I momentarily lost track of time. How long did she sit there, not speaking, not answering, leaving me hanging? How long? A minute? Thirty seconds? An hour? Would she say yes? Would she throw the glass of liquid at my face and tell me I was some kind of madman if I thought she would marry me? Would she say she'd love to but that we were too young?

"Nina?" I finally spoke, breaking the silence. Had she even heard my question?

"You're asking me to marry you?" she asked breathlessly. "You're really asking me that? This ring is really for me?"

"Yes Nina," I nodded, "to everything. I want you to be my wife. I've asked your father and he's given me both permission and blessing. But all of that's meaningless without you. So now I'm asking you formally. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"

"You asked my father?" she asked.

Christ, she was killing me with anticipation. Couldn't we talk about her father after she said yes or no? "Yes Nina," I told her. "When we went fishing. I also talked to your mother tonight."

"Mom and Dad know where we went, what you were going to do?"

"They do," I nodded. "So does Ron for that matter." I took a deep breath, "now I don't want to rush you or anything and if you're not sure right now just tell me, but…"

"Oh God Bill," she said, her face breaking out into a huge, happy smile, "what do you mean "if I'm not sure right now"? Of course I'm sure, of course I'll marry you. Do you know how many times I've fantasized about this day? How many times I've lain awake wondering if you were ever going to ask? How you would ask if you did?"

"So that's a yes then?" I said, pretty sure it was, but wanting to confirm it.

"Of course it's a yes!" she said, leaning forward and kissing my lips, my nose, my cheek. Tears were now running from her eyes. "Do you have any idea of how happy you've just made me?"

A great sense of relief flooded me at her words, at her actions. At the tables around us I could see that some of the other diners had gleamed what was going on and most were giving us looks of happy approval. "About as happy as you've made me." I told her.

We broke apart and she looked in her glass again, eyeing the ring. "How do I get this thing out of there?" she wanted to know.

"The only way to do it without violating etiquette is to drink the champagne down and then reach in."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, the twinkle in her eye becoming mischievous.

"Yeah."

With a smile she put the glass to her lips and upended it. The champagne poured into her mouth and was swallowed in less than two seconds. Her eyes began to water profusely from the effects of the carbonation but she reached in and pulled out the ring. She held it triumphantly before her.

"Would you like to put it on me?" she asked, handing it across.

I took it and she offered me her left hand. I slid the damp ring onto her third finger, seating it in place. The fit wasn't perfect, it would have to be sized when we got back to Spokane, but it looked at home there.

We drank the rest of the bottle of champagne, sipping at it while we discussed what we'd just agreed to do. Now that the question was out and answered favorably I became almost giddy, feeling elation like I'd never felt before. She was going to marry me! Nina too was blushing and giggly. Part of that was the wine and the champagne we'd consumed, but a good part of it was simple happiness and excitement I'm sure.

The waiter came by once to offer coffee or desert. We declined. He also offered his congratulations to us as he spied the ring on Nina's finger.

"I promised your mom that we wouldn't elope," I told her. "She wants to plan your wedding, help you with the guest list, all that crap. She's very adamant about it." And of course I knew why. My first talk with Jack Blackmore had made that clear.

"But when?" she wanted to know. "When can we do it?" She giggled a little, "get married that is."

"I'm not much for long engagements," I told her. "If it was up to me, we'd be man and wife before we climbed back in that airplane with Ron. But under the circumstances, we're kinda stuck by the fact that we're going off to college next month. Also, I'm still seventeen until February. That creates additional paperwork."

She pouted a little. "So when?" she asked.

"Next June," I told her. "Near the end of the month. That lets us be home from college for the summer long enough to get back into the swing of things, go to all the rehearsals, and all of that. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like a plan."

I paid the bill and left a generous tip for the waiter. We walked arm and arm back to the elevator and, when it arrived, found ourselves alone in it. As it began plunging downward we shared a kiss, a very deep kiss that involved a brief dance of tongues. When our lips parted she looked into my eyes.

"You know what would make this night absolutely perfect?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"Making love," she answered.

I took a glance at my watch, seeing that it was five minutes after eight. Right on schedule. "Funny you should mention that," I told her.

"Oh?" Definite interest showed upon her face. "Have you made other arrangements?"

"It just so happens," I told her, "that I have a reservation for a suite in this very hotel. All I have to do is check in at the front desk, pay my money, collect my key. I hear the rooms are VERY nice."

Another look of astonishment. "You reserved a room, HERE? At this place?"

"I hope you don't think that too forward of me," I said.

"But we have to be out of here at ten," she said. "You want to pay God knows how much for a room that you're only going to use for two hours? Bill, that's insane!"

"Isn't it? So what do you say? Care to join me for a bit in the executive suite?"

The elevator ground to a halt at the fifteenth floor. The doors slid open and a middle-aged couple dressed for a night on the town stepped in. We moved back to give them room. They eyed us carefully for a moment, as if trying to decide if we were dangerous, and then turned their backs to us. The doors slid shut and we began descending once again.

Nina and I looked at each other. She whispered, "Go get the key."

We rode to the lobby and less than ten minutes later we were riding back up to the thirtieth floor, key in hand, one hundred and seventy-five dollars lighter. I considered it money well spent.

Even though I'd lived in two lives (at least) and had been around a combined, remembered total of nearly thirty-five years, I was still impressed by the executive suite. As I said before, I was strictly a product of middle-class upbringing. My idea of a nice hotel room had always been a single bed in a small room with something of a view. I considered it classy if the bedspread actually matched the carpet.

The sheer amount of square footage in the room was staggering. There was a sitting room with plush furniture and a bar. There was the bedroom that was nearly four times the size of mine at home and featured a king-sized bed with frilly covers and a twenty-seven inch TV. The remote control was not even bolted to the nightstand. The bathroom had a huge shower, a separate bath, and a sunken Jacuzzi big enough to hold six people. The water was roiling and steaming in it and a small sign assured us that the water was fresh for our visit. The window did not face Puget Sound unfortunately but did look out to the north, giving an impressive view of the Seattle high-rises and the Space Needle in the distance. A complimentary bottle of White Zinfandel sat in a bucket of ice.

"Wow," Nina muttered, taking in all of the opulence, wandering from here to there, looking at this and that. She stared for the longest time out the window.

"You like it?" I asked, coming up behind her and encircling her waist with my arms. She leaned back into me.

"This has been the most incredible night of my life Bill," she told me. "I'll remember it forever."

"That was the plan," I said, squeezing her to me.

She craned her face upward, resting the back of her head on my shoulder. Her left hand, the one with her new ring on it, reached up to caress my face. "Give me some more memories," she told me.

Our lips came together in a kiss; a hot, passionate exchange of tongues. She squirmed her body around so that she was facing me, her breasts pushing into me, her arms around my neck. By the time it broke I was erect, knowing that nothing could stop us now, that this was finally the hour. No one knew where we were. For obvious reasons I had briefed no one in on this particular part of my plans for the evening. There would be no phones ringing to stop us. For the next ninety minutes we were in splendid solitude. Not an eternity, but at the same time, it was.

Nina reached up and pulled the knot out of my tie, loosening it. She pulled it off my neck and tried to let it drop to the floor. We both laughed as it hung stubbornly to my chest, suspended by the tie tack. I disconnected it and tossed the tie, tack and all, into the corner. I shrugged off my suit jacket and let it fall to the carpet.

Nina kicked off her high heels and then stepped back into my arms. "Undress me," she said. "Undress me and make love to me. Make me yours Bill."

I led her by the hand over to the bed and we stopped there, her facing it, me standing behind her. I slid my fingers over the material of her dress to her neck, touching the skin for an instant before grabbing the small zipper.

Slowly I slid it downward and the dress parted, showing me the skin of her back, the straps of her bra. I leaned forward and kissed the back of her shoulders while my hands pulled the dress off of her arms. Gravity did the rest, letting it fall to her feet. She stepped out of it and turned into me once more, her chest bare except for her bra, her silky white slip hanging to mid-thigh on her pantyhose covered legs.

I kissed her again, letting my hands touch the slip, to feel the soft material. I gently pulled on it and it came free, dropping, as the dress had, to her feet. Again she stepped out of it, this time kicking it away from us. My hands traveled across her back, across her butt, pausing to give a quick squeeze through the panty portion before continuing down to the back of her thighs. I stroked her through the nylon, pulling her tighter against me, inhaling her perfume as our tongues continued to dance.

I reached upward and found the clasp on her bra, undoing it, releasing her breasts from their confinement. I stepped back, breaking our kiss, my eyes devouring her as I pulled the bra free and tossed it to the floor. Her nipples were turgid, standing out like sentinels, begging for my mouth to kiss them, my hands to touch them. I didn't resist their call, I leaned forward and took one between my lips. Nina cooed as I sucked first one and then the other.

I let my fingertips slide into the elastic waist of her pantyhose, right against her hips. Slowly, I dropped to my knees before her, so her crotch was less than six inches from my face. The material of the panty portion was semi-transparent, allowing me to see the darkness of her pubic hair contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. I could see the dampness across her lips outlining their shape. I could smell the aroma of her juices mixing with the nylon, creating a powerful scent that made my mouth water, my penis pulsate.

"Take them off Bill," Nina panted from above me.

My fingers were still in the waistband and it was only a matter of applying downward tugs. Slowly the top of her pubic hair came into view, then her glistening lips, then the tops of her thighs. I leaned forward and slid my tongue between those lips, licking her while my hands continued the work of removing the pantyhose. She cried out softly, pushing her crotch into my face, her knees wobbling. Her hands dropped down to my head, partly for balance, partly to pull me harder into her.

When the pantyhose were completely off and she was naked, I pushed backwards on her, forcing her to sit on the edge of the bed. Her legs opened up, giving me better access to her slit, her legs went around my shoulders, her body lay back onto the bed.

I slid my hands up and down her thighs for a moment as I licked her lips and teased around her hardened clit. But this was not my main goal, just the warm-up. I pulled my hands free and, keeping my mouth on target, began to undo the buttons on my shirt. I had to tug it out of my pants in order to get the bottom ones but finally I was able to shrug the dress shirt off. I then tugged upward on my T-shirt, having to remove my face from Nina's slit in order to do so.

She looked up at me from her position on the bed, her eyes glazed with lust and a little fear. "I'm ready Bill," she said. "Very ready."

"Me too," I told her, standing up.

She watched me while I unbuckled my belt and unsnapped my pants. I kicked off my own dress shoes and then let the pants drop to the floor, leaving me standing only in a pair of socks and a tented pair of BVDs. Two quick kicks with my feet and the socks were gone.

"Come on," she panted, spreading her legs wider, opening herself to me.

I pushed my underwear down and off, letting my erection free. Nina looked at it and shivered a little as if she was fully realizing that it would soon be inside of her body, thrusting within her. I climbed onto the bed, positioning myself with my head near the pillows. Nina scooted up until she was next to me.

I took her in my arms so that we were both lying on our sides, facing each other. We kissed while our bare chests, our bare legs slid flesh to flesh. My erection was pushing into her upper thigh. My hands felt her nakedness, sliding up and down her body, over her butt, down her thighs, back up to her back and shoulders. Her hands did the same, paying particular attention to my ass, which she seemed rather fond of.

I rolled her onto her back and then slowly positioned myself atop her. Our faces were inches apart, her nipples barely grazing my chest, her inner thighs touching my outer thighs, my hard cock resting in her wet pubic hair.

Her eyes were locked onto mine, so close I could see the individual flecks that made up the color of them, that I could see the minute contraction and retraction of her dilated pupils. Her hand was suddenly grasping me, squeezing deliciously, pulling me towards the center of her.

"Do it Bill," she whispered, "put it in me. I want to feel it."

"It'll hurt a little," I said softly, kissing her eyelid.

"I know, but do it anyway."

I replaced her hand with my own and then gently put the head against the moist wetness of her velvet lips. She gasped a little just at that contact, her body twitching. I slid up and down through her slit, wetting the head and feeling the warmth of her. I slid the shaft through her groove, wetting it. Thanks to my tongue and her fevered excitement, she was quite saturated with wetness. Gently, ever so gently, I put the head against her opening.

"Yes," she moaned, pulling at my ass with her hands. "Oh yes."

I pushed forward slowly, feeling her tight lips spread apart, accepting the head and a small amount of the shaft before fetching up against her hymen. She jumped a little as I touched it. I paused for a second.

"C'mon!" she cried, nipping at my neck with her teeth, her hands pulling on my ass, her body trembling all over with excitement and fear, "do it Bill, do it!"

I pushed forward, firmly but slowly. At first I didn't think it was going to work. I felt my dick trying to bend, felt the first warning pangs of pain moving upward as receptors in my nether regions tried to warn me that I was about to break something. But finally I broke through with absurd ease.

There was no noise, no ripping sound, no flurry of trumpets, only a sensation of something giving way. Nina let out a soft cry of pain, wincing, and suddenly, instead of only having the head in, I was inside of her well past half-shaft. I could feel her tightness around me, gripping me. I stopped, not wanting to hurt her anymore.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She was panting, her face flushed and sweaty. She nodded rapidly. "It wasn't that bad," she said. "Just a little burning. It's gone now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she nodded, kissing me. "You're inside of me now Bill, you're fucking me. You're finally fucking me after all this time."

"Yeah," I said, feeling her tight walls gripping at me again.

"So finish the job," she said, pulling at my ass once more. "I want to feel you come in me. I want to feel it."

I began to move in her, slowly at first as I concentrated on just getting myself all the way in. It took quite a few strokes before her tight, virginal hole adjusted to having something inside of it. I stroked in and out, pushing further with each thrust until her wetness coated me, easing the passage and at last I was able to push forward until our pubic hairs met.

"That feels sooo good," Nina sighed, pulling me against her. "Faster now."

I let my hips rise and fall, pistoning my cock in and out of her, sliding along on the lubrication of her juices, feeling her grip at me, feeling her hips begin to rise slowly to meet each of my thrusts. We kissed each other as we moved, switching from mouths to necks to ears. I dipped down and took one of her nipples between my lips for an instant.

"Yess!" she cried, "this feels so good. Keep fucking me."

"Yeah!" I agreed, picking up the pace, hearing the wet squish of our union, smelling the thick odor of our combined juices rising into the air around us. Her legs wrapped around my butt, her calves sliding up and down. Her fingernails scratched and dug at my back. Sweat formed on my face and dripped down on to hers. It formed on our bodies, giving a sensual film of slipperiness between us.

Never had an act of sexuality seemed so perfect, so right to me. This was more than just physical pleasure, much more. This was an emotional giving, a sharing of mind and soul. It was as if we were two halves that had wandered aimlessly all of our lives, not realizing we weren't complete until we'd found each other and joined. There was a rightness to this act that I'd never felt before, a feeling that transcended anything else, that made even the best sex I'd ever had seem like nothing more than a quick jerk-off in a bathroom, a quick release of a biological build-up. I felt every inch of her body against mine, every nerve ending aware and I felt her soul, her essence against mine. It was at that moment, in that hotel room, not at our wedding ceremony nearly ten months later, that Nina and I became man and wife. We wedded each other in spirit, in mind, if not in legality, as I thrust within her and she thrust back at me, as I filled her body and she accepted me.

Like during the terrifying moments after I'd asked her to marry me but before she'd answered, time seemed to slow, to stop. I didn't have any idea how long our act of love continued, how long I slid in and out of her tightness, how long we sweated and groaned, joined at the crotch. At one point she moaned and bucked uncontrollably beneath me, her legs tightening, her fingers scratching, her voice becoming the high-pitched whine I was starting to be familiar with. I continued to buck against her until her orgasm passed, her body relaxed and then I felt my own impending release coming on strong.

"Nina…" I groaned against her sweaty neck, her damp hair.

"Yesss!" she encouraged, thrusting back harder against me. She already knew the signs to look for. "Come for me Bill, come IN me."

It hit me like a freight train, starting in my pubic area and exploding outward like seismic waves from an epicenter. Pure pleasure assaulted me, had its way with me. My hips began to pound more forcefully, with less control. My mouth opened, my head arched backward. And suddenly I was pouring myself into her, feeling spurt after spurt of my hot seed blasting from my body and into hers. It went on and on, much longer than what I considered to be normal. But at last I dropped atop her, spent, exhausted, feeling the cooling wetness our juices, feeling the sharp cold of excited sweat beginning to dry on my flesh.

We kissed softly, just touching tongues, playful kisses. We held each other tightly, my softening cock still nestled in her warmth. Nina looked at me.

"I never knew it could be like that," she said.

"Me either," I answered. "Me either."

I would have expected her to express disbelief with this statement since she knew of my past history. I suppose it sounds phony as hell, what someone would say in the moment after bagging a virgin but before he slipped out the door, never to be seen again. But it wasn't phony. It was the truth and I meant it with all my heart. Nina didn't question it. She knew I spoke the truth, she knew it. She simply pulled me tight to her and kissed me.

"I love you so much Bill," she said, tears from her eyes wetting my face.

"I know Nina," I said, tears of happiness coming from my own eyes. "And I love you."

And so it was Ron who became the first of our Spokane friends or relatives to find out officially that Nina and I were engaged. She proudly displayed the engagement ring for him as we climbed into the plane for the return trip. He offered congratulations to us both, giving us warm friendly hugs. I was glad that we'd had time to utilize the large Jacuzzi in the hotel room before we left in order to wash the smell of our act of love from our bodies (of course the Jacuzzi itself led to another act of love that was shorter in duration but no less passionate). Though Ron probably suspected what we'd done, after all, he had to know it didn't take three and a half hours to simply eat dinner and propose, I didn't want him to confirm any theories he had by catching a whiff of us in the cramped space of the plane.

It was just after ten-thirty when we lifted off, heading east for Spokane. Nina sat in the back and fell quickly asleep, her soft snores reaching my ears even before we leveled off. Ron and I sat in silence, him monitoring his gauges and instruments, me looking out the side window, seeing the lights of Seattle slipping behind us. We would touch down a little after midnight, be home a little before one. I didn't think that our houses would be darkened when we got there. In fact, I imagined that both the Blackmores and the Stevens were anxiously awaiting the official word on the night's activity.

I was lost in my own thoughts as we flew, thinking of all the things that I'd done since my return from 1999. Had I made the most of my gift? Maybe, maybe not. Had I abused my gift? Definitely, but that was human nature I supposed. Had I chosen my gift wisely when it was offered to me?

I thought long and hard on that one, considering everything that I might have asked for at the moment that Mr. Li enquired as to what my greatest wish was. Had I chosen wisely? Was there anything else I could have said that would have made things easier?

I looked back at my sleeping fiance, at her lovely face, at her gentle form. I had found love because of what I'd said. I thought of Tracy, of my sister still being alive more than a year after she'd been fated to die. Tracy was alive because of what I'd said. I thought of Mike, my loser best friend. Mike was now on a career path, had a girlfriend, had every indicator of developing a normal, happy, productive life. Mike was matured and respectable because of what I'd said.

Sure, I hadn't been able to save the marines in Beirut. I probably wouldn't be able to stop the Persian Gulf War or the Challenger disaster or the Oklahoma City bombing. But what of that? Those things would happen anyway, with or without my interference.

My former life had been filled with stress, irresponsibility, uncertainty, grief, and occasional despair. I would probably not escape all of these things in my new life but I could not believe that they would be as deep seated, as constant. Mr. Li had given me a chance to correct my past mistakes, to put things into a new order, to change fate on a small scale.

Had I chosen wisely?

I'd been feeling stressed that day, the day I encountered him. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect I had to conclude that it was perhaps the wisest thing I'd ever said.

Epilogue

If Nina and I hadn't been such good friends, if we hadn't been so deeply in love, I don't believe our relationship would have made it through our first few years in Seattle. There was no conflict between us during this time, don't let me lead you to believe there was, but we simply had a very limited amount of time together. We spent our first year there in the college dorms; seeing each other only on nights that I didn't have to work and on the occasional weekend. When we did get to see each other we were usually tired and confined to public places. Nina was carrying twenty-one units, I was carrying eighteen. Our days went by in a haze of lectures, notes, homework, stolen kisses between classes, and the occasional date to a cheap restaurant.

We were drawn closer together during this period by the fact that we were unable to establish any real friendships with other students. Neither of us developed any sense of camaraderie with those that shared our majors. I was majoring in International Business because that was the subject that would prepare me to take the greatest advantage of my pre-knowledge. Unfortunately the only people that majored in this subject, beside myself, were aspiring future businessmen of the type that represented everything I always found distasteful about capitalism. They were all clean-cut, conservative, right wing spouting members of the young republicans. They were the people who would one day make the sorts of decisions that would destroy the lives of thousands and then go on to a three-martini lunch to celebrate. They all wanted to be millionaires by thirty and would stop at nothing to achieve this goal. They were young men and women in the process of selling their souls.

Nina's classmates were of two different varieties. There were the rich elite, those that had had their money handed to them all of their lives, who had gone to private academies and had grown up in the lap of luxury. They were the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of plastic surgeons, cardiac surgeons, and family practitioners to the elite. Their snobbery, Nina complained, was so entrenched within their personalities that they wouldn't even talk to you unless you had a last name that they could recognize. The second group was the super-smart nerds, the kids that had damn near aced their SATs but that had been scarred by persecution in grammar and high school. They were the kids that used to have their books knocked out of their hands, that used to be the favorite victims of the Richie Fairviews. They were better than the elite was but not much. Many of them had an inferiority complex a mile high and were so competitive that they were incapable of friendship. Nina spoke sadly of them in her discussions, not even realizing that she had been fated to be one of them.

But we had each other and that was enough. We could talk together, share our fears and frustrations together, congratulate each other, and occasionally, very occasionally that first year, make love to one another. It was always sweet.

We went home for the summer and quickly became immersed in our wedding plans. Mary proved to be a fabulous planner, taking to her task with a zeal I'd never seen or suspected. We were married on June 28th, 1985 before more than seventy guests. It was the happiest day of my life, either life, to that point. After the reception we climbed on a plane and flew to Los Angeles where we boarded a cruise ship for a seven-day trip to Mexico and back. For the first time in our relationship we had all the time in the world to enjoy each other's bodies. We missed two of the three ports of call and probably spent more time in our cabin than we did on deck.

When we returned to Spokane after the cruise we were faced with the bizarre situation of not having anyplace to stay besides either her parents house or mine. We both agreed that it was less weird to stay with mine. Less weird, but still weird. Sleeping with your new wife in your old bedroom while your parents were in the house is strange no matter how you slice it. We found ourselves making love on the floor when the urge struck us because we didn't want Mom or Dad to hear the bed squeaking.

Ironically, the best example of my business skills came our sophomore year in college, long before I picked up my degree in it. We had to rent an apartment in Seattle; there was no way we were going to stay in the dorms another year; but we needed to protect our capital from taking a serious ding from this. In order for my first major move to be successful, I needed to have as much of the twenty some-odd thousand dollars in stocks and bonds available at that time. I could not let it whittle away bit by bit paying for living expenses.

I constructed a paupers budget that had us eating Rice-a-roni, hotdogs, and bologna sandwiches a lot but that served to use up my hospital salary, the interest on the bonds, and the growth of the stocks in such a way that we were still making more than we were putting out. Our apartment was less than six hundred square feet and you practically had to do an armed reconnaissance before you dared to venture out to the car or the bus stop but we got by.

Both of us kept up our maddening pace at school, sacrificing time together in the early years because we knew it would be returned to us when we were older. We somehow managed to keep our spirits high, to keep our love strong. The best part of those years were the nights after I'd returned from work, when I would find Nina just putting her studying aside, her body clad only in a long T-shirt. We always kept a bottle of cheap white wine in the refrigerator and we would often share a glass of it before retiring to the bedroom for a lovemaking session before dropping off to sleep.

In 1986 the day I'd been waiting for since my return finally came. The business section of the Seattle newspaper announced that Microsoft Corporation would have an initial public offering of stock. The price was twenty-one dollars a share. I called my father, I called Tracy, I called Mike, I called Jack, all of whom had begun investing at my advice. I told them what they should do. I myself was probably among the first to buy when the market opened that Monday. I took everything I could spare, all my bonds, all my stocks that were simply holding money, nearly twenty-three thousand dollars worth of capital and bought Microsoft with it at twenty-one a share. That was nearly eleven hundred shares of what would eventually become the staple of the computer industry. By the end of the day that price had already risen to twenty-six a share. In less than eight hours I'd already made more than five grand. And it would do nothing but go up and up.

I continued to shove my money into Microsoft exclusively until the price rose into the forties per share. Then I began to concentrate on other IPOs that were just coming to bear.

In June of 1987, only three years after her first day of college, Nina finished her undergraduate degree. She was consistently on the honor roll and had no problem securing both admission and a student loan for the medical school. She began her classes there in September of 1987.

In January of 1988, a semester earlier than most of my classmates, I graduated with honors with a bachelors degree in International Business. Before I'd even been given my degree I was offered a job with one of the more prestigious investment firms in the Seattle area. They were impressed with my honor roll placement, my interview skills, and most of all, my portfolio. I was singled out as a rising star, going to work in a place that usually only hired those with family connections. The starting salary was forty-eight thousand a year; a considerable amount for that time period.

Nina and I stayed in our apartment, paying five hundred and twelve dollars a month in rent and stashing most of my salary into more rising stocks.

I hated every minute of it while I worked there but I learned much. I was considered somewhat of an eccentric, a square peg, but they were very impressed with the witchlike feel I had for the stock market and for picking out trends in it. It wasn't hard to do when you had knowledge of how the system worked coupled with knowledge of future events. I learned to research and invest in small, unheard of stocks that were about to benefit from some technological or sociological advance. Things like the latex glove industry in the face of the AIDS crisis.

Not surprisingly most of my brilliant insights were in the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, I knew from my previous life that there would be a big push to equip every major fire department engine and truck company in the country with semi-automatic defibrillators. So, using the skills I'd learned, I would research which companies made those things and direct my clients to invest their money there. Invariably I was right and my clients made money. My reputation grew and I began to develop contacts; the most important thing in that business. The fact that I couldn't stand most of my clients didn't matter. I learned to put that aside. My clients were my ticket to freedom.

By 1990, just as Nina was starting her third year of medical school I had both the contacts and the impressive reputation I needed. I resigned my position with the firm and Stevens Investment Consulting was born. My price was high, higher than anyone in the Seattle area. I did not advertise in any way shape or form. But I had more clients than I could handle. Word of mouth had spread that if you wanted to make some guaranteed money, you went and saw Bill Stevens. I rented a spacious office near downtown. I hired an attractive secretary to staff the front desk. And I dispensed killer advice that never, as far as I know, cost anybody a dime in losses. Amusingly enough, a good portion of my clients were the investment counselors that I'd worked with at the firm. After all, who knew better than they how accurate my predictions were. None of my clients ever knew that I lived in a pauper's hovel in South Seattle and drove an old Datsun to work. None of them knew that I was cramming every spare penny into the same stocks I was recommending to them.

Our net worth climbed past the million-dollar mark about the time that Nina started her fourth and final year of medical school. We celebrated by making a few purchases. I bought my wife a Volvo with all the bells and whistles. I bought myself a BMW with all the bells and whistles. I bought the both of us a three-bedroom house in one of the middle-class suburbs, putting down twenty percent and assuming a thirty-year loan at seven and a half percent. The real estate agent that sold it to us thought we were mad once she got a look at our credit report and earnings sheet.

"But sir," she'd nearly pleaded. "This house is only two hundred and twenty thousand. With your income and assets, you qualify for well over nine hundred thousand. Why would you want to…"

"Ma'am?" I'd interrupted, "this is the house we want. Are you going to sell it to us or not? If not, I'll be happy to find another agent who will."

She sold it to us of course. She certainly did not want to lose her commission. We moved into our first house on September 18, 1991. We made love in the bedroom that first night before we even began to unpack.

Nina Stevens became Doctor Stevens on June 3, 1992. My parents, her parents, Tracy, even Mike and Maggie flew up for the ceremony. After they all returned home Nina was left with four weeks before her residency in emergency medicine began. I took a vacation from work, it's easy to do when you're the boss, and I rented us a condo on the leeward side of Maui. Except for our honeymoon it was our first real vacation. We spent three and half weeks relaxing on the beach, eating in restaurants, sightseeing, and making love at least twice a day; sometimes in our condo, sometimes on a deserted stretch of beach as the sun went down, and once in the bathroom of a sightseeing dinner cruise boat. That last one was not exactly making love, it was pure lustful fucking, through and through. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

When we returned to Seattle the hell of residency began for Nina. She would work thirty-six hours at a stretch at least three times a week, learning the finer points of treating medical and traumatic injuries in the busiest emergency room in Washington. If she was allowed to get any sleep there at all it was typically less than an hour at a time. When she was home she was exhausted. Many was the time that she drug herself into the house at some forbidding hour and tried to tell me about her shift but fell asleep in mid-sentence. I would carry her to bed like a child on these occasions, undress her, and tuck her in.

I concentrated on my own work during this period, spending hours at my computer terminal in the office or in the den of my house, researching companies, finding out what they made, how they made it, what kind of raw materials they used to make it with. I spent even more hours on the phone with my clients, advising them to buy this, to sell that. My reputation continued to grow to the point where I had to turn down clients because I simply didn't have the time to consult with them. And of course, under the rules of capitalism, my price went up along with the demand for me. I received so many offers of employment at outrageous salaries from large firms that I lost count of them. I had so many rich pricks offer to partner with me that I had to develop a standard speech for turning them down.

I suppose it was inevitable that one day two gentlemen in suits entered my office and approached Darla, my young secretary. They spoke a few words to her, showed her some identification, and a second later my phone was ringing on my desk. She told me about my visitors and I instructed her to let them in.

"Mr. Stevens," said the taller of the two, his eyes flitting around my office, looking for something incriminating. "I'm Special Agent Talon, FBI."

He flipped open a little leather case, displaying his credentials. "This is Agent Sparks from the Federal Trade Commission." Sparks displayed his own credentials. "Would you mind if we had a few words with you?"

"Not at all gentlemen," I said, suppressing my nervousness at the appearance of a couple of feds, "please sit down." I waved them to the chairs before my desk. "Can I have Darla bring you some coffee or tea? Maybe some bottled water?"

"No thank you," Talon answered for both of them. They took their seats and spent a moment just looking at me.

"What is it I can help you with?" I asked.

"Word among the investment community," Sparks said, speaking for the first time, "is that if you want to make some guaranteed money in the market, you go see Bill Stevens at Stevens Consulting."

I gave a small smile, "glad to know that my reputation proceeds me."

"Uh huh," Sparks continued. "We did a little checking on you Mr. Stevens. When we hear something like that it makes us a little curious. Guaranteed money? In the stock market? There is really no such thing. The stock market, as you surely know, is little more than a respectable form of gambling. Some have a flair for it, some do not. But nobody has the reputation that you have. Nobody."

He leaned forward, his gray eyes burning into mine. He was trying to intimidate me. "You charge nearly three times what other investment consultants do," he said. "There is no reason or justification for such an outrageous fee in a business such as this. None at all. But somehow you not only get away with it, you have more clients than you can handle. We sent one of our agents to try and sign up with you just to check you out and he was turned away, not because he's a fed but because you have no time to take on new clients, you're that booked."

"Is there something illegal about that?" I asked, starting to get a little angry.

Sparks ignored my question. "We've talked to many of your clients. It seems that you have quite the ability to spot and exploit trends in the market. An almost spooky ability. Time after time we were told how you advised them to put their money in this stock or that stock, usually something obscure that they'd never even heard of, and then low and behold, that stock begins to go up and up. Not one person we talked to complained about their stocks going down. Not a single one. Not one of them bitched about the fee you charged. Not a single one. Do you find that a little strange Mr. Stevens? Because I surely do."

"My clients TALKED to you?" I asked, appalled. I don't know why that surprised me but it did.

"Oh yes," Sparks smiled, perhaps sensing a little uplifted corner of my persona that he could pry at. "They were quite willing to talk to us once we implied to them that something illegal might be going on and that they might be implicated. Most of them happily showed us the records of their buys and sells. They sold you out in an instant at the mere suggestion that they themselves might be in danger."

"Figures," I muttered, seething at this knowledge. I recovered myself quickly. "But I'll ask you again gentlemen, have I done anything illegal?"

"I don't know Mr. Stevens," Sparks asked me, "have you? From everything we've learned it certainly looks like a fair amount of insider trading is going on here. Somebody is feeding you information, probably several somebodies inside of these corporations."

"Are you serious?" I asked, feeling myself on a little firmer ground. "You're suggesting that I have contacts inside of more than a hundred corporations that are feeding me inside info? Do you really believe that? It would have to be that many because that's how many companies I routinely advise my clients to invest in. I'm sure you know that if you've checked on me like you said. That's an awful lot of inside information, isn't it?"

"So you say you're doing nothing wrong?" Sparks asked, "that you're just very adept at picking the right stocks time and time again. So adept that you never guess wrong?"

"Basically, yes." I nodded.

"Would you mind if we took a look through your files?" Sparks asked next.

I laughed out loud, not able to help myself. "Let you look through my files?

Are you mad?"

He gave me a reasonable look. "If you have nothing to hide Mr. Stevens," he said, "then why should you mind letting us take a look?"

I shook my head at them. I'd had about enough of this. "Gentlemen," I asked, "this is the United States of America, is it not?"

"Yes Mr. Stevens," Sparks nodded.

"Good. Then I'm protected by a little document called the constitution am I not? A little addition to that document known as the fourth amendment? If you want to look through my files than you go get a judge to give you a warrant allowing you to do so. But you can't do that, can you? Because you don't have any probable cause that I've committed any crime. You're just here on a fishing expedition, hoping that I'll break down in front of you and bust open some international inside trading conspiracy. Well sorry to disappoint you gentlemen, but that's not going to happen. There is no conspiracy and you will not be looking at any of my files."

Talon took a deep, angry breath. "Mr. Stevens," he said, "I have some very good friends at the Internal Revenue Service. I can make a few phone calls and you would find yourself under very intense scrutiny every time you filed your taxes."

"You're threatening me?" I barked, laughing. "You've got to be shitting. You know damn well you've already had your buddies at the IRS look into my background. You could probably recite my net worth as well as I can. You want to have them audit me every year? Go ahead, bring it on. They'll find nothing. I pay every penny of capital gains tax and income tax that I'm responsible for. I take no questionable deductions. I'm sure my clients have told you that I'm somewhat of a weirdo in that regard. When they bitch about their capital gains tax I always tell them they should be proud to pay it, that there is not nearly enough distribution of wealth in this country. I tell them I think the tax should be greater than it is, that the rich should be hammered with taxes. Bring on the audits guys, you can't threaten me with that."

They both stared for a moment, feeling the balance of power shifting on its axis. "Mr. Stevens," Talon started again.

"Gentlemen," I said, standing up. "I'm a very busy man and I have work to do. I think the time has come to put an end to our discussion. If you wish to talk to me again, please call in advance and set up an appointment. I'll be sure to have a lawyer present. Good day."

Despite my bravado in the face of the feds, the encounter disturbed me greatly. They might not have known what they were dealing with but the fact remained that I had been noticed. I did not like to be noticed. I went home that night and found Nina in the bathtub, fragrant bubbles covering her body as she soaked after an exhausted sleep. She was due back at the hospital at six the next morning.

I leaned next to the tub and gave her a kiss. Somehow my hand just happened to drop into the water and land against her slippery thigh. The kiss deepened and two minutes later I was naked in the tub with her. A considerable amount of water splashed onto the carpet in the next fifteen minutes.

After, as we lay in our bed naked, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around I told her about my visit from Talon and Sparks. She was very alarmed by it.

"Feds?" she asked, looking at me. "You're not in any trouble are you Bill?"

"No," I shook my head. "They were just harassing me. They thought my record was a little suspicious and were trying to see if I was doing anything wrong."

"But you haven't been," she protested sternly. Nina was well aware of my prowess at picking stocks. She used to express doubt that I was committing so much of our net worth to a particular issue but she'd long since learned to trust my "instincts". How could she argue with constant success? If she had any suspicions about where my knowledge was coming from, if she ever thought it was more than just my own common sense and thorough study, she never mentioned it, either directly or indirectly.

"No," I said, "I've always gone out of my way to be on the up and up. I've never cheated so much as a penny on our taxes. We have nothing to worry about in that regards but at the same time I think it's time for a change."

"What kind of change?"

I told her. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. By the time she left for the hospital a decision had been made. I put it into motion the very next day.

On November 16, 1993, at the age of twenty-six, with a net worth of 1.9 million dollars, I retired from work. I was free.

I didn't spare a thought about the clients I was abandoning. After all, those assholes had talked to the feds about me, had shown them records. I could understand that. But not a single one of them, not one out of the forty or so the feds talked to had bothered to give me a little call and let me know that the FTC and the FBI was sniffing at my ass. Fuck them. They'd paid me their money and I'd advised them well. Our relationship ended right there.

Darla was another matter. The closing down of Stevens Consulting left her without a job. I'd lured her away from a job that she'd hated by offering her a handsome salary. This had been in the days before sexual harassment became the issue that it is today and Darla had been expected to offer special services to her previous boss as a condition of continued employment. Naturally she'd been prepared to offer those services to me when I hired her and had been quite surprised when I didn't request them. I had changed her view of the world as she knew it.

She became a very loyal employee, a secretary that other businessmen and women could only dream about. She also became a friend during the many hours we spent alone in the office. She was very attractive and I can't say that I hadn't enjoyed looking at her nyloned legs on occasion as she typed on her computer or answered the phone, but I never once considered bedding her. I told her the news of the closure of Stevens Consulting and she broke into tears.

Her tears dried up when I gave her her severance package. I gave her a check for twenty thousand dollars and a lifelong offer to consult in investment for her free of charge. If she played her cards right she would never have to work again and she knew it. She gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an unspoken offer to continue the affections in my office. I gave her an unspoken denial and we parted.

Though Nina was still locked in the rigors of residency, I had nothing but time on my hands now. Using my computer I could monitor and adjust our investments, dispense advice to my few clients: Maggie and Mike, Jack and Mary, Mom and Dad, Darla, Tracy; by checking my computer and spending less than two hours per week before it. Our net worth had reached the point where it could only get bigger as long as I kept shifting it from rising stock to rising stock. I began to spend a little on self-pleasure.

During the last two years of Nina's residency I learned to fly an airplane and purchased a Cessna that could hold four people. I learned to sail on Puget Sound, even venturing into the open water of the Pacific Ocean and learning the finer points of open sea navigation and handling. I learned to play golf, bringing my handicap from an initial twenty-six all the way down to a nine.

I learned to hunt for deer and elk, my father-in-law taking on the responsibility of teaching me. I purchased a Winchester 30-06 and fired it at a range until I could hit a target the size of a quarter from two hundred yards. My first trip to the Idaho panhandle in October I brought down a four point buck. The next October Jack and I climbed into my Cessna and I flew us to the most remote airstrip in Northern Wyoming that we could find. We spent a week camping out, drinking beer, and basking in maleness. We both bagged an elk on that trip and had to arrange for the meat to be shipped home via ground transport because it's sheer weight would have overloaded my plane.

I kept myself amused by my many pursuits during those days, never recklessly spending money, but gratefully abandoning my miserly ways at the same time. We remained in our simple three-bedroom house, our neighbors never knowing or suspecting that we were multi-millionaires. In fact, since they knew Nina was a doctor in residency, they kind of figured that I was some sort of unemployed loser that had latched onto her. I never bothered to correct this impression.

As the end of her residency began to come into view we began to talk about what was next. Where we would go, what we would do. It wasn't a long discussion. Both of us longed to leave Seattle behind. We hated the weather, we hated the bustle of living in such a large city. We both wanted to go home.

Three things happened in the last six months of her residency. The first was that Nina began looking for a position in a Spokane emergency room. The trauma center expressed immediate interest in her and the employment process began. I flew her back and forth for interviews three times and she was offered the position. Her starting date was to be two weeks after she passed her final boards.

The second thing occurred directly because of the first. I began to scout out locations for our future home. We had long talks about our dream house during this time. I assured her that we could afford whatever it was that we came up with and that I would make it happen. We both listed what we wanted and compared the lists. Eventually we came up with a master plan. I searched out and eventually found a good architect. He flew with me to Spokane and we began scouting out land for sale in the region. It didn't take long to find exactly the plot we were looking for. I started the legal process of purchasing the land while my architect began the process of planning the house we wanted. Construction began three months before we were to leave Seattle.

The third thing that happened had nothing to do with houses and jobs. Well, almost nothing. Nina and I had several long discussions and finally, two months before we returned to Spokane, a month after our new house had begun the process of being built, Nina threw away her birth control pills. October 18, 1995, the day she started her first day as a staff physician in the emergency room of the trauma center, she was two months pregnant.

We spent our first six months back in Spokane living in a house we'd rented in the River View section while construction on our dream-house was underway. Nina swoll up with pregnancy, her breasts edging into the territory of the C-cup for the first time in her life. She continued to work and I continued to oversee the construction, making sure everything was just right.

Our house was being built on four acres of shoreline property on Lake Pend Oreille. It was a very rural part of the lake, accessible only by a twisting, two-lane road. Our land was covered with evergreens and brush. No water or electricity ran there and we had to arrange to have it; as well as a septic system; put in. The location was exactly forty-two miles from the Spokane City Limits; forty-eight miles from the trauma center. Nina assured me that she didn't mind the commute. It would take her just under an hour both ways but since her schedule was only three twelve hour shifts one week and four the next, it wasn't a terrible hardship. After the horrors of internship the schedule, including the commute, seemed almost serene.

I was able to watch the land change from forbidding forest to a nice plot overlooking the lake. The house itself is nearly six thousand square feet. It has seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large family room, two dens, a game room, and a wine cellar. It has a built-in swimming pool that looks like a tropical lagoon (Nina's idea). It has a tennis court and a par three golf hole (my ideas). It has a large, redwood deck in the back with access from the master bedroom and the living room. The deck contains a covered hottub capable of holding eight adults in comfort. Forty-eight steps lead downward from the deck to a private dock and a huge boathouse. These days the boathouse contains a forty-foot cabin cruiser, a ski-boat, a small bass boat, and a couple of jet-skis. Real water enthusiasts are we Stevens'.

One month before Nina's due date the finishing touches were finally completed and we moved in. We kept up with tradition and made love before the boxes were even unpacked.

Laura Stevens entered the world on June 18, 1996, a tiny, red-faced infant, nearly bald, that looked so much like her mother that it was difficult to believe that I had anything to do with the conception.

Since then we've had two others. Jason, born September 20, 1997, also looks like Nina though there is at least a hint of my facial features in his form.

Megan, born October 3, 1998 is the baby of the family. God help her, she looks just like me. There's no denying paternity there.

I spend my days watching these children, caring for them on the days that Nina is at work. My life is happy. There is little else I'd rather do. I go fishing at least once a week. I go hunting once a year. I go to Mariners games in Seattle at least three times a season. I've replaced my single engine plane with a twin engine capable of holding ten. Trips to Las Vegas or Reno occur frequently.

I spend about three hours a week monitoring my investments. I was able to take huge advantage of many initial public offerings, especially over the last four years. I got in on America Online, Amazon.com, E-bay, and many other Internet stocks that went through the roof. The Stevens' family holdings have nearly tripled in the last five years. On the day I type these words our net worth is just a hair over eleven million dollars. A good thing because I've now reached the point where my pre-knowledge has run out. Obviously I've gained considerable knowledge of stocks and investments so I'll keep some money in the market but I'm planning to begin shifting the bulk of our holdings over to CDs, Mutual Funds, Treasury bonds, and other safe, quiet storage vessels.

Nina works her shifts and is a very popular doctor among the staff and her coworkers. But at the same time her superiors consider her somewhat of a pain in the ass. She doesn't work any of the many overtime shifts that are offered to her. She doesn't write papers for publication in the hospital journal. She doesn't participate in the education or training of the area's paramedics. She goes to work, does the job that she loves, and then comes home to the family that she loves.

Mike took the test for the Spokane Fire Department in June of 1985. By then he had a year of being their courier and two semesters of Fire Technology classes from the community college under his belt. He'd worked out obsessively throughout the year in fire station workout rooms and his body was an efficient, well-honed machine. He passed the written test in the high nineties but it was the physical agility test, the combat challenge, that was his shining moment. He didn't just break the previous record, he shattered it by more than eighteen seconds. His oral boards were just a formality at that point.

Early that August, while Nina and I were still sharing my old bedroom prepatory to heading back to Seattle, Mike entered the fire academy. On November 3 he was given his first assignment; an engine company very near where a girl named Julie had once thrown me out of her car. It was the busiest station in Spokane and he spent eighteen months there.

Once his probation period was up he began taking more Fire Tech courses. He collected his associate's degree in 1987 and then transferred to State College. By 1990 he held a bachelors degree.

He continued to date Maggie throughout the year prior to his hire. Unfortunately when he made the discovery as a rookie firefighter of how damn easy it was to get laid when the public adored you, he gave Maggie the old, "I think we should see other people" speech. I heard all of this from Nina, who corresponded in letters and phonecalls with Maggie. It was very apparent that Maggie did not take the speech well.

I felt sad for both of them, part of me wondering what Mike was thinking – it was obvious how he felt about her – the other half knowing exactly what he was thinking and what organ he was doing it with. Mike went on something of a rampage, very similar to what I'd done upon my recycling with exactly the same sort of blindness. I didn't interfere, didn't try to talk him out of what he was doing. I knew he wouldn't listen to me. I only hoped he would catch himself before it was too late.

Maggie was in her first year of nursing school when they broke up. She grieved for a while and then carried on, beginning to date again after a few months. She drifted back into her pattern of changing boyfriends as often as she changed her socks for about six months. She then began to date a radiology tech that she'd met during her hospital time.

They became a couple. Maggie wrote letters to Nina telling how happy she was. I read the letters and had to agree with Nina's assessment that they sounded entirely too cheery, too forced. They sounded like Maggie was trying to convince herself that she was happy.

The radiology tech asked Maggie to marry him a week before she graduated from nursing school. He didn't put a ring on her finger with his mouth, nor did he put one in a glass of champagne. In fact, he didn't even HAVE a ring when he conversationally brought up the subject of marriage to her.

Maggie said yes to him immediately. Two days later they went and picked out a ring together. The one that she liked cost more than he cared to spend so he asked her is she would mind pitching in a little for it. After all, money was tight, the republicans were fucking up the economy, etc. She pitched in. She tried to make the whole thing sound romantic in her letter but the underlying bitterness and disappointment were plainly visible between the lines.

She told Nina about their plans. They were going to get married as soon as possible, as soon as she secured employment as a nurse. He was going to quit his job and start a medical billing business that he could operate from their home.

Neither Nina nor myself had ever met this radiology tech but it certainly sounded to us like he was someone looking for a free ride. We wondered how Maggie could not see this too. Nina briefly mentioned this possibility during a phone conversation and Maggie blew up at her, slamming the phone down in anger. They made up a few days later but Maggie made it clear what the rules were: no more talking about her radiology tech.

I was forced to wonder if Maggie was following along her fated path. I hadn't known her at all in my previous life, nurse or not a nurse, she hadn't worked in any of the ERs, but I rather suspected that she was.

It was two weeks after the engagement notice, a week after her graduation, when Mike called me at our small apartment. He was in tears. We talked for more than an hour and he poured out his heart to me. He told me how much he loved Maggie, how stupid he'd been, and how he'd now lost her because he'd realized this too late.

I calmed him down – believe me, I was able to sympathize – and told him that he might be right, that it might be too late. I also told him that he didn't have a hair on his ass if he didn't at least TRY to get her back if that was how he felt about her. Even if he were still ultimately rejected he would at least not have to spend his life wondering if he COULD have. He asked how he could go about doing that.

"Do you want to marry her?" I asked him. "Is that what your goal is?"

"Yes," he answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Then in order for you to have any chance at all you're going to have to move quickly. Very quickly. You're going to have to be aggressively romantic."

"Aggressively romantic?"

I explained what that meant. We discussed a few different approaches to the problem and eventually Mike arrived at a course of action.

"Good luck," I told him after the details were worked out.

"What do you think my chances are?"

I didn't like to lie to my friends but in this case I made an exception. "About fifty-fifty."

Armed with information that I'd taken out of Maggie's latest letter to Nina, Mike was waiting for her when she emerged from a job interview at Holy Family Hospital – interestingly enough the same hospital where I'd performed a similar mission for Nina. Perhaps it was fitting. He proclaimed his love for her right there in the parking lot. He told her how wrong, how stupid he'd been. Finally he dropped to one knee and offered her an engagement ring. He told her that he would marry her that night, that hour. It was a very risky move on his part but it paid off.

She didn't accept his ring right there. She didn't gush all over him and go off into the sunset with him. But she also didn't slap his face. She left the parking lot that day by herself, her mind very troubled. But the next day she called him up and agreed to have lunch with him. By the end of that day they found themselves at Mike's house, in bed, her newest ring on her finger.

The next day she broke the news to the radiology tech. He did not take it very well. He screamed and yelled and cussed and Maggie was forced to flee in terror, honestly fearing for her safety. The words "bitch" and "cunt" and "whore" followed her to her car.

Mr. Radiology then made perhaps the worst mistake of his life. After Maggie left he went to Mike's fire station carrying an aluminum baseball bat and intending to express his displeasure with Mike in dramatic fashion. It was pretty dramatic all right. He'd failed to take a few things into consideration before launching his attack. One was that Mike was in exquisite physical shape as a result of his passion for working out. Another was that there were two other firemen in the station and firemen are fiercely loyal to each other.

The scuffle lasted approximately forty-five seconds. Radiology did not land a single blow with his bat or anything else. The Spokane Police arrived in force less than three minutes later. They charged in with their batons out, just itching to thump upon the person who had dared to storm a firehouse (the cops are VERY protective of firefighters and paramedics). What they found was their aggressor lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding from multiple places on his head and face. Radiology went to jail after a two-day stay in the Spokane Trauma Center.

The last thing that he did not take into account was that assaulting fire personnel is heavily frowned upon by the legal system, even if a deadly weapon is not involved, which in this case it was. The proverbial book was thrown at him and he ended up spending a year in the county jail which, of course, resulted in the loss of his job.

Neither Mike nor Maggie was ever bothered by him again. Less than six months later they were married. Nina and I both drove to Spokane to attend.

Did they live happily ever after? Does anybody? They are still married today and have two children that are a few years older than mine. Mike was promoted to engineer in 1989. He made Captain in 1991. He's being pressured from above to apply for Battalion Chief these days but he insists he just wants to be a Captain forever. He has his own station, his own crew, and he still gets to run into burning buildings once in a while.

Maggie went to work at Holy Family hospital, moving from department to department for a few years until she found her niche in labor and delivery. She's been there ever since and is now the dayshift charge nurse.

As a couple they are considerably more wealthy than the upper-middle-class status that their income alone would have provided. Since his first year on the fire department Mike has been taking investment advice from me. He's never committed as much as I have but the net worth of the Meachen family is currently around 1.8 million dollars. They have a large house, paid for, in the River-View area of Spokane. You can see the falls from their bedroom window and their deck.

They remain our best friends. We get together either at our house or theirs no less than twice a month, sometimes more. We spend every New Year's Eve together partying the night away. We go on skiing trips, boating trips, Vegas trips, and the occasional cruise together. We couldn't ask for better friends.

Tracy, like Nina, pounded out her undergraduate degree in three years. She was accepted into the UC Berkeley law school and graduated with honors in June of 1989. She could have had a job with any number of prestigious firms as a litigator. Instead she applied and was instantly accepted at the Spokane County District Attorney's office as a deputy DA.

She moved back home in early July of 1989, saving me the bother of warning her about the impending earthquake that was going to strike the bay area in October of that year. She has been with the DA's office ever since and she has made quite a name for herself as the prosecutor that doesn't like to plea bargain. This has made her butt heads with her superiors on more occasions than she cares to count but they can't argue with her conviction rate, which is impressive indeed. She is particularly fierce when she gets her hands on a manslaughter case and even the judges seem to fear her when this happens.

It was in July of 1994 that she went to work one morning and was handed a new case file by her boss. The suspect in the case was one Dennis Castleton. He was a first sergeant in the United States Army home on leave for two weeks. The cops had filed a charge of second-degree murder against him but it was expected that the charge would be reduced to manslaughter. Sergeant Castleton was not an ordinary soldier but a member of the elite Army Rangers that had seen combat in the Persian Gulf War. The victim of the crime was a two-time loser that had been recently paroled from state prison after serving six years for armed robbery. The victim's name was Richard Fairview.

Apparently Sergeant Castleton had been leaving a bar with his wife when Fairview, a methamphetamine addict that was out of product and desperate for more, spotted what he thought was an easy mark. He approached Castleton, pushed him roughly up against a car, and demanded all of his money. Fairview had no weapon (if he'd had a gun he could have sold it for crank) and was relying solely on his intimidating size to get what he wanted. Why not? Castleton was only five foot eight and a hundred and forty pounds or so. I guess Richie hadn't learned much from his encounters with me back in high school.

When the cops arrived they found Richie Fairview dead on the pavement. An autopsy would reveal multiple skull fractures from having his head bashed repeatedly into the side of the car and a crushed trachea from having a hand chop brutally into it. Sergeant Castleton was without so much as a scratch on him.

Tracy reluctantly had herself removed from the case on the grounds that the victim had once stabbed her brother. The case eventually went to trial but the jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of acquittal. The DA elected not to re-try it and Sergeant Castleton was released. He was given a court martial by the military and ultimately reduced one grade in rank. He would go on to fight another day. I only wished I'd had the opportunity to buy him a drink at some point.

Tracy, like many of my friends and all of my family, is considerably wealthier than her colleagues thanks to her wise choices in investments. She owns a large house not terribly far from Mike and Maggie's. She vacations in some new, exotic place each year. She's actually been to Russia, to Africa, to the Middle East, and even did a brief stint on a very expensive Antarctica tour in 1993. She always returns from her vacations refreshed and ready to get back into the fray of the Spokane County justice system.

In addition to her DA duties she is also active in many victims rights organizations. MADD is chief among them, although she is not a mother. She is very radical on the subject of DUI laws. Sometimes I think the Iranians would think her a tad radical on that subject.

Her personal life could use a little improvement. She is driven by her job and her relationships with men reflect that. She's been married twice now, both marriages conceived in passion and haste, both dissolved after less than two years. No children were produced either time. Most men have a hard time with her aggressive, pushy nature, not to mention the long hours that she works at her job and her volunteer work. Husband number one was a fellow prosecutor and you would have thought he'd have understood. He didn't. Number two was a detective sergeant with the Spokane Sheriff's department. He hadn't understood either. Both I think were drawn to Tracy by her good looks and strong personality and then driven away when they found that personality was stronger than they'd thought.

But there's hope for my sister yet I'm starting to think. She attended my birthday party five months ago and there met Brent Hartley, a colleague of Nina's and one of our family friends that we've developed. Brent had recently been utterly fucked in a divorce settlement and at times seemed on the verge of suicide. Tracy and he began chatting together and before the night was over both were smiling and being very chummy with each other. They've been dating ever since and they seem to be happy together. Who knows? Maybe something will come of it.

Mom and Dad have done well for themselves. Dad has been listening to my investment advice ever since I lived at home and as a result he was able to retire comfortably in 1990, fully five years before he retired in my previous life. Mom retired shortly after this. Their house is now paid off but they refuse to move out of it even though they could easily afford something quite nice if they wished. They love their house, have many memories attached with it and plan to die there. The longer I live in my own house, the more I understand their feelings.

What they've done instead is buy a large (and I mean LARGE) motor home which they use to tour North America with. They are often gone for months at a time, several times a year to parts as distant as you can get without leaving the continental landmass. They have taken their motor home to Alaska, to Florida, to Maine, to Arizona, and to many places in between. They are planning a trip to Cabo San Lucas later this year.

I arrange to have their place looked after while they are gone and to pay their bills in their absence. I make sure their lawn gets mowed, their Northwest Electric gets paid, and their water pipes don't freeze. I'm glad to do these tasks for them. They seem very happy in their retirement.

Jack and Mary Blackmore are still hanging in there and show no signs of stepping out anytime soon. They too have made use of my stock knowledge and are quite wealthy. Unlike my parents, their desire to move someplace very nice was stronger than their desire to stay in their house for nostalgia's sake. They live in a nice lakefront three bedroom on the shore of Lake Coeur d' Alene. When Nina and I need a babysitter it is usually they who are the first to volunteer.

Jack, Mike, and I have become frequent companions. Jack fits in with us very well and sometimes we completely forget that he is more than forty years older than we are. We all go hunting together each fall, finding the most remote airstrip we can to stage from, always spending at least a week out in the boonies somewhere, tromping around in camoflaugh gear, packing hunting rifles, drinking beer, sleeping in tents. We go fishing together several times a month on either Jack's lake or mine (usually Jack's, he's got a bitchin bass boat). We fly to Seattle for Mariners games at least four times every season. We have an annual deep-sea fishing trip that we take on a chartered boat.

Jack drinks as much beer as he always has and he's had no further heart problems. He was seventy-three years old on his last birthday but looks fifty due to frequent exercise and outdoor activities. When Viagra first came out I asked him jokingly (after several beers on the fishing boat) if he wanted me to ask Nina to write him a prescription for some.

He looked at me lecherously and said, "I certainly don't need any of THAT shit youngster. I ain't that old."

So that's how our lives have gone, how things turned out differently with pre-knowledge. I didn't change the world, just a few lives in it. Fate has seemingly accepted us, made allowances for us. We have left a wake of passage in the smooth fabric of what was supposed to be but, as I've seen, the wake has mostly closed up behind us leaving only a few ripples to mark our passage.

Only a few ripples.

On a beautiful April afternoon in 1998 I had to drive to Spokane to pick up the new fish-finder I was planning to get Jack for his birthday. Laura, who was almost three, and Jason, who was seven months, were with me since it was a day that Nina worked.

As always when I found myself in Spokane on such days, I stopped at the trauma center for a brief visit. Nina, as well as her co-workers, enjoyed seeing the kids for a few minutes and I enjoyed seeing my wife doing her job. I got the most enjoyment when we snuck in while she was in the middle of a procedure and I got to observe her at work. It was then that I could contrast the Nina that was with the Nina that should have been. It was then that I could feel how I'd thwarted fate, how I'd defied it in the control of a life.

We spent about twenty minutes in the doctor's lounge, the kids sitting on their mother's lap. Laura was babbling about something or other, using her fifty or so word vocabulary while Jason and I were munching on some chips from a dip tray that someone had brought in. Most of the crumbs from Jason's chip were tumbling down the front of Nina's scrub shirt, which was just starting to bulge outward at the abdomen from the presence of the as-yet-unnamed Megan, who was four months along in her belly.

Finally a nurse poked her head in.

"Nina," she said, "we got an ambulance three minutes out with a twenty mile an hour auto-ped. Positive loss of consciousness and repetitive questioning. Obvious tib-fib fracture too."

She sighed, "Thanks Jen," she said sourly, handing the kids over to me. "Oh well, duty calls."

We exchanged kisses and I took the kids and went outside to the ambulance bay, hanging out until the ambulance of which they'd spoken backed in.

I looked at the ambulance with nostalgia, as I always did when I found myself in such situations. It was amazing how much I remembered from my former career, how much I missed it at times. The ambulance was the 96-240.

I remembered that it was the rig with the bizarre electrical problems that sometimes caused the radios, the power windows, and the power steering to just die until you shut off the engine and started it again. The EMT that jumped out of the driver's seat was Rob Forehand, an aspiring fireman that had been my partner for a short time once. The paramedic that jumped out of the back was Jim Corgan, one of the oldest employees that we'd employed. He was number one on the seniority list and always had his choice of shifts when we bid for them. He was also cursed with a chronically sore back, a hazard of the business, and typically took off four months of every given year on work comp. I knew these two well but they had no idea who I was.

I smiled as they gave me a disinterested glance, probably figuring I was the family of a patient out for a smoke or something. They pulled their patient out of the rig. He was a street person dressed in scraggly clothes and smelling strongly of alcohol. He was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar around his neck, two IVs plugged into his arms. They started to move him towards the entrance doors.

"Hey Rob," I said to the EMT, smiling. "Hope you get hooked up with the fire department soon."

He looked at me strangely, trying to place my face, trying to figure out if he knew me.

Before he could say anything I turned to his partner. "How you doing Jim? Good to see you. How's the back treatin' you these days?"

He gave me the same expression, finally answering, "Uh, it's okay."

"Good," I nodded, shifting Jason in my arms and grabbing Laura's hand once more. "I'll let you get back to your work."

I disappeared back to my Toyota four-runner, leaving their puzzled expressions behind me. Sometimes I just couldn't resist doing things like that.

We left the trauma center and headed for better parts of town. We picked up the fish-finder and I decided to treat my two children to some greasy fast food from a drive-through. Nina would most definitely not have approved but Jason couldn't talk yet and Laura lacked the vocabulary or the memory to rat me out.

We took our contraband to a nearby city park. Had I known something was going to happen? Had I been led there by fate for unknown reasons? Maybe. Maybe not. If so, fate does have its kind side.

The park was one that I'd once taken my daughter Becky to when she was young. Did I stop there out of nostalgia? Did I stop there because I remembered it was a good park to take kids too? I honestly don't know. I don't remember the vision of Becky coming to my consciousness at all in the decision to stop there. Thinking of Becky always made unpleasant feelings of guilt and loss to surface so my mind worked hard to keep those thoughts suppressed.

But whatever the reason, Laura, Jason, and I soon found ourselves sitting at one of the picnic tables beside the playground area. Ten or so kids of various ages and sizes were playing on the monkey bars, on the swings, on the slides, while their parents, mothers only for the most part, sat at benches or tables and kept an eye upon them.

The kids chowed down their chicken nuggets and french fries. They slurped their orange sodas dry. Finally Laura headed off to play on the jungle gym with the other kids. I carried Jason over to the swings and installed him in the baby swing. His little fists gripped the chain tightly but his face was all smiles as I began to push him in ever increasing arcs.

Then it happened.

"Swing me Mommy, swing me!" A girlish voice demanded from behind me.

I froze, waves of gooseflesh traveling up and down my entire body. I felt myself go clammy. I knew that voice, knew it well. It had been more than fifteen years since I'd last heard it. I had fought hard to keep it out of my conscious thought. But I never doubted for an instant, even before I turned around to look, that the voice was Becky.

I let my head pivot on my shoulders until I was looking at the little girl. She was about three years old, her dark hair tied into pigtails that bounced up and down as she skipped towards the swings. She was wearing a pair of blue jean overalls and sandals. It was Becky, no doubt about it, none whatsoever. Her face was slightly different than it had been, different in only the subtlest ways, ways that probably reflected the difference in paternity. But she had the same brown eyes, the same brown hair, the same upturned nose that she'd inherited from her mother. I was inundated with stark feelings of merging realities, with a horrid sense of deja vu unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

This feeling was intensified when I saw Lisa coming up behind her. She looked exactly the same as she had when I'd last seen her. Exactly. She was wearing a light summer dress that came to her knees. It was white with blue patterns upon it. I remembered that dress, had seen Lisa wearing it many times when we'd switched off Becky according to our custody arrangement.

Becky came running up at full speed and jumped onto the swing next to mine, one of the big-kid swings, landing on her stomach. Her feet came up off the ground and her forward momentum set her swinging in that position. She didn't even notice the man next to her, staring at her, not breathing as he did so, his mouth agape in surprise. Was her name still Becky? I knew that it was, I simply knew it.

Lisa noticed me staring at her daughter and quickened her approach, her eyes looking at me suspiciously. Parents do not like to see complete strangers looking at their children in that manner. I forced my mouth closed, forced myself to commence breathing once again, forced my eyes off of the small child, forced a pleasant, non-threatening smile onto my face. My hands returned to Jason's swing, picked up the task of keeping him in motion. Lisa continued her approach, keeping a wary eye upon me, keeping her distance in case I proved to be dangerous.

I looked at her, keeping my smile upon my face. "Hi," I greeted.

"Hi," she said carefully.

"Sorry I was staring," I told her. "Your little girl there looks and sounds just like my niece. It kind of startled me for a moment when I saw her since she lives kinda far away."

This seemed to put Lisa's mind at ease a little. "That's okay," she said, "no harm done."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I assured her, giving Jason another push and trying to keep my eyes off of the little girl swinging back and forth next to me. "The resemblance was kind of startling at first. I guess I'll have to tell little Belinda she's got a twin in Spokane."

Lisa smiled for the first time as Becky climbed off the swing and then held her arms out to Lisa to be picked up, "swing me mommy, swing me!" she demanded again.

Lisa dutifully picked her up and placed her on the swing in the proper fashion. Becky grasped the chains and her mother began swinging her up and down, her rhythm matching that I was setting with Jason. As she pushed I noticed that there was one thing different about Lisa, one feature that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen her. This Lisa was wearing a wedding ring.

"Higher mommy, higher!" she demanded, giggling.

"If I swing you any higher Little Beck," Lisa replied, "you're going to go catapulting across the park."

I felt another chill as I heard Lisa use the nickname we'd routinely called Becky. I suppressed any outward display of how weird I was feeling.

"How old is yours?" Lisa asked me as she continued to push.

"Jason here is closing in on eight months," I answered, "I have a three year old over there by the monkey bars too. And yours?"

"Just turned three," Lisa answered. "We're finally out of the terrible two's thank God."

"Yeah," I nodded with genuine sympathy, "us too, at least until Jason here gets into them."

We began to talk, the polite conversation of two parents that meet in a park. At least at first that's how it was. By the time the kids got tired of swinging, by the time Becky moved off towards the monkey bars and the jungle gym, we were conversing like old friends. I could tell that Lisa was surprised by how easy I was to talk to, by how our two personalities seemed to click to a certain degree. We moved over to one of the benches that sat next to the play area, me carrying Jason in my arms, and sat down. We talked of the rigors of child-rearing in this day and age.

"My husband and I both have to work," Lisa told me, "but child-care is SO expensive. So we try to keep our schedules as opposite as we can. We don't see each other as much as we'd like to but at least Becky doesn't spend much time in daycare."

"What does your husband do?" I asked, seemingly casually.

"He's the manager of the grocery store where I work."

I knew instantly whom she was talking about and felt another little chill. In my previous life, just as Lisa and I had started flirting with each other during my many trips to her line for sandwiches, she'd been bothered by her store manager, a man named Nick Morse who obviously wanted to date her. He'd been flirty with her ever since her initial hiring at the store but had become persistent after she'd broken her ankle in the fall. Since a relationship had seemed to be developing with me, she'd shunned his advances during this time period. It eventually got to the point, just after we'd began officially dating, that she had to threaten him with a charge of sexual harassment if he didn't back off. Back off he did. Eventually, in that life, he began to date another girl that worked in the store and married her about the time that Becky was born.

But without my presence in the picture Nick had apparently been successful in his courting of Lisa. I had not asked her name during our conversation, but I would have been willing to bet my net worth that it was Lisa Morse. The little girl, my daughter, and yet not my daughter, had to be Rebecca Morse. The fact that she was still married to him a year after my marriage with her had dissolved in divorce told me that she'd found the right person, or at least a person more right than I was. There was a twinkle in her eye when she spoke of her husband, a twinkle that I'd never seen when I had been married to her.

What did all of this mean? Lisa was now with someone she actually enjoyed being married to. I was with someone that I enjoyed being married to. This had occurred because I hadn't followed the path that I was fated to follow. I had been fated to marry her, to have Becky with her, and to be unhappy with her. She was fated to be unhappy with me. By altering fate we'd both ended up happy instead of sad. We'd both ended up finding soul mates instead of finding each other. What kind of fate had arranged for the previous pattern? What kind of fate had WANTED us to not find the person that matched? Was fate cruel, or just indifferent? Who or what had written these patterns? How much damage had been done by altering them?

I didn't know. I still don't.

I never saw Becky again. It was quite enough to know that she was simply alive.

I began searching for Mr. Li shortly after Nina and I moved back to the Spokane area. I had a thousand questions to ask him, a thousand things I wanted to know about him. How had he come by this power that he had? Why had he picked me? I also felt I owed him a large debt of gratitude for what he had done for me. I wanted to make sure that he did not end his life dying in a shitty convalescent home. I wanted to try to prevent his getting terminal cancer in the first place if I could. Depending on where the cancer had started, that was surely possible.

But Mr. Li proved impossible to track down. My source of information was Tracy, who, as a deputy DA had access to a nationwide computer network of known people. This should have done the trick. Unfortunately, I did not know enough information about Mr. Li. All I knew was his last name and his age approximated to within ten years or so.

When I'd first met Mr. Li on that fated night in 1999 I didn't know that he would have a very profound impact upon me. I'm surprised I was even able to remember his last name by the time it became apparent what he'd done. When I'd gone to bed that night Mr. Li had been nothing but a vague memory of a sad event, an event that I'd been forced to stand helpless before. Paramedics train their minds not to think about such things. If we grieved for every person that died before us, if we allowed ourselves to feel saddened by all of the human suffering we saw, we would all go mad very quickly. A paramedic's mind is accustomed to purging all information the moment it is no longer relevant.

According to Tracy's computer work there were nineteen hundred and four people with the last name of Li in the State of Washington that were between the ages of fifty and eighty. And that was only in Washington. Who was to say that Mr. Li even lived in Washington back then? My task seemed quite hopeless.

But as the years rolled closer and closer to 1999 and as my hopes of preventing Mr. Li's death from cancer decreased, I knew that I could at least keep the man out of the convalescent hospital. I could have him put up in a private home with around the clock nurses and premium medical care. Hell, I'd even spring for daily blowjobs if that's what he wanted. I was determined to see that old man die in comfort, to repay him for what he'd done for me.

I made contact with several people in the administration of that particular con home in mid-1998. I passed several envelopes full of twenty-dollar bills and extracted promises that I would be called immediately the moment anyone named "Li" was admitted to their facility. I promised more little envelopes when the information arrived to me. I checked back frequently with them, more than once a week when 1999 began.

But a strange thing happened, something that I could not figure out. As 1999 wound onward towards the 7th of July, the date that I'd met him and come back, no Mr. Li appeared. He had to have been there for a while before I'd encountered him, hadn't he?

By July 2nd I was very confused. Still no Mr. Li in the con home. The man was going to die in five days, had to be wracked with cancer at that very moment. Where the hell was he? Had I imagined the whole thing? That certainly wasn't possible. How else could I have had so much knowledge of what had been unless I'd really lived through it.

July 4th came. The Stevens' family and the Meachen family celebrated by taking our cabin cruiser out onto the lake and watching the fireworks near Sandpoint. It was an annual tradition. We all got drunk and poured ourselves into bed later that night, Nina and I in our room, Maggie and Mike in a guest bedroom, Jack and Mary, who had watched our children, in another guest bedroom. The next morning, still hung over and feeling like shit, I'd called the con home once more. Still no Mr. Li.

Nor was there an admission on the 6th of July under the name Li. Very strange. Would the anniversary, the sacred date, the date of his death pass by without my ever contacting him? It seemed it would. And there was nothing I could do about it.

The 7th of July was a hot, sticky, typical Eastern Washington summer day. I went out to get the mail about 10:00 that morning, the same time I always did. Our mailbox was out on the main road in front of our plot and it was a considerable walk from the house itself. I took Frank, our two-year old German Shepherd with me like always. He tagged along my heels, sniffing this, peeing on that as we went. I reached down and petted him a few times, talking to him as a man does his dog.

I hadn't been thinking of much of anything as I opened the mailbox and pulled out the pile of envelopes and advertising circulars that were inside.

I was flipping through them, sorting what was important from what was not when a voice called my name.

I jerked a little, startled by the voice in the stillness and looked towards its source. Our little stretch of the world was typically pretty deserted and having someone else out there when I picked up the mail was so unusual as to be unheard of. Frank barked once and then began to growl menacingly, his eyes locked onto one of the pine trees that guarded our driveway.

A man stepped out from behind it. I did not recognize him at first. He was Asian and very short. He was dressed in a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. His face was rugged and ageless. His appearance there coupled by the fact that he knew my name, put me immediately on guard.

"Can I help you?" I asked with a voice that was not quite steady. Beside me, Frank continued to growl.

The man smiled, continuing his approach. "You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked.

I didn't say anything, just continued to watch warily.

"Not surprising," he nodded. "The last time you saw me I looked considerably worse than I do now. But I know you've been looking for me for a long time." The smile widened. "I didn't want to be found by you, didn't want to cause you undue worry. But today the time has come for you and I to have a little talk."

I stared, wondering if what I was thinking was correct. "Mr. Li?" I asked in disbelief.

He chuckled. "The one and only."

I stared in disbelief at the vision before me. He was not emaciated in the least. In fact, his body appeared to be in tip-top physical shape. His calves were muscular, his stomach flat. His face was unlined, his eyes bright and inquisitive. He had no respiratory problems, in fact seemed to be breathing quite a bit easier than I was at that moment.

"But…" I started, "you're supposed to be…"

"Dying?" he asked, smiling at me.

I nodded.

Another chuckle. "There's a lot of things that have happened in the last seventeen years that weren't supposed to happen, eh? And a lot of things that WERE supposed to happen that didn't. You've led me on a very strange journey Mr. Stevens, a very strange one indeed. But the time has come for you and I to have a little talk together, to hash out a few details." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "This is my address.

It is imperative that you show up here tonight, alone. I believe your wife Nina is off work today, is she not? Childcare for your three lovely children should not be a problem."

"Mr. Li…"

"Take the paper," he told me, offering it. "Be there tonight at six o'clock.

Be sure you are not late. Do not tell Nina what you are doing. If you care for the life that you have built over the last seventeen years, you will do as I say."

Numbly, I took the paper from his hand. I glanced at it, seeing the address: 123 Lakefront Drive. I shivered as I read this.

"Yes," Mr. Li told me. "I live less than three miles from where we now stand. I jogged over here as a matter of fact. I'm sure you've noticed my house a time or two as you sat out on your back deck. It's the brown one you can see across the bend of the shore."

"But, how…"

"Tonight," he said, turning from me and stretching his legs a bit. "Everything will be answered tonight. Just be sure to be there."

He began trotting off down the road, his legs pumping as he ran. In less than thirty seconds he'd disappeared around the bend.

I spent that day very troubled, very uncommunicative with my wife. She commented upon it a few times and finally dismissed it as a case of PMS on my part. She retreated to her private den to study some medical journals, leaving me to keep an eye upon our brood.

I mechanically made lunch and then dinner, serving everyone about five o'clock. I only picked at my food. After Nina began doing the dishes I told her that I had to go into town to take care of some business. I don't believe that she bought the lie that I gave her but she didn't question me.

I climbed onto the Honda motorcycle I'd bought a few years before and headed off, arriving before Mr. Li's house less than ten minutes later.

It was more modest than ours was but definitely expensive. A single story, four bedroom or so with a swimming pool. I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell with a trembling hand.

Mr. Li answered the door before the echo of the doorbell even faded away. He was dressed in a pair of sweats and was shirtless, his stomach and chest without an ounce of fat upon it.

"Bill," he nodded, stepping aside. "Come in please."

I stepped in and he showed me around his house. There were indeed four bedrooms, two of which were empty. Pictures of an Asian woman were in every hallway, on every wall. She was pretty and the pictures were from various points in her life. He made no comment upon them. His den was what interested me the most. It had an expensive roll-top desk and a modern computer upon it. The window looked out over the lake and my house was plainly visible from there. A large telescope sat next to the window.

Mr. Li led me back to the living room and offered me a seat upon his couch. He disappeared for a moment and then came back holding an icy cold bottle of my favorite brand of beer. This didn't surprise me at that point, I simply took it from him and gulped down half the bottle in less than ten seconds.

"So you remember what you did for me?" I asked, although it was not a question as much as it was a statement.

"Yes," he nodded, sipping out of a bottle of Chinese beer. "I remember everything."

"How did you do what you did?" I asked. "What powers do you have?"

"Powers?" he scoffed, "I have no special powers at all. None except for one special gift that I'm allowed to pass on at my moment of death. I passed my gift on to you Bill. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. What has allowed you to do what you have done was the result of a miscalculation of thinking on a dying old man's part. An old man whose judgment was severely impaired by the effects of enough narcotic painkillers to kill an average person. An old man who'd been consumed by loneliness and loss but who should have known better. When I think of what might have happened, what could have happened, I still shudder to this day."

I stared, unable to comprehend exactly what he was saying.

"I am descended from ancient Chinese royalty," he told me. "My family has been instilled with this gift, the granting of a single wish, for the past sixty generations at least. The gift is intended to go to the first born grandchild of each recipient. It is intended that no one else but that grandchild even know about the gift. Don't ask me who gave it to us, why we have it, what entity powers it. We have this gift, I know not why. Only the bare essentials of it were explained to me when I received it for reasons which will become clear in a moment. The gift must be passed on by each holder upon his death or it is lost forever." He looked sternly at me. "I had no one to pass the gift on to, at least no one I would have trusted it to. I'd spent the years of my life thinking that it was finally going to die when my cancer took me away."

"You have no kids or grandkids?" I asked.

"My only son is dead. I have no daughters. My only grandson lives in Seattle. He is a greedy, shallow man who is only interested in himself. It is he who had me sent to that horrid place when my cancer finally reached the stage that I was unable to care for myself. If I had given the gift to him, God only knows what horrors might have occurred. I'd decided long before you were even a part of this earth Bill, that he would not receive the gift. I decided to let it die with me before he would have it."

"You were given this gift?" I asked, sipping from my beer, trying to comprehend.

"By my grandfather," Mr. Li nodded. "It was 1938 and I was nineteen years old. This was in Nanking, in Manchuria. We were under occupation by Japanese troops and it was not a gentle occupation. The Japanese were running wild in the streets, killing men at random, especially service-aged men such as myself. They were raping any women they could get their hands upon, even the elderly and children, often killing them afterward. They burned houses, temples, dug mass graves, slaughtered thousands.

"All of my family died that year at the hands of the Japanese," he continued. "I was not the one intended to receive the gift, I had two older brothers and a sister. I was the baby of the family. My oldest brothers were both killed in the army, fighting the Japanese. My parents and my sister were killed in Nanking on a night that I had been out visiting the girl I was courting. Even in the horrors of war some things still go on. Love is one of them. I was taking a great chance by leaving the safety of our family house to go see her. Had any soldiers seen me I most likely would have been shot on the spot, maybe even tortured first."

"It is perhaps ironic that I had been the one taking a huge risk in leaving the house but that while I was gone on that day, it was the house that became a deathtrap. A squad of soldiers had wandered by while my sister was out getting water. They took a liking to her and followed her back home. There, they held my family at gunpoint while they took turns raping her in front of them. Then they shot everyone, leaving the bodies there to rot while they continued about their business.

"When I returned home I found all of them dead in the living room, my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother, all except for grandfather. Can you possibly begin to imagine the horror of finding such a thing? Can you imagine it Bill?"

"No," I answered honestly, shaking my head.

"Grandfather had been shot twice in the chest," he continued. "He was covered in blood, both his own and that of grandmother who had been shot in the head while she'd been sitting next to him. He was dying fast but he was awake when I came in, he was alert. And he was staring at me, beckoning me over to him.

"I was still trying to deal with the knowledge that my entire family had been slaughtered like pigs, worse than pigs actually, people didn't torture pigs first. I was looking at their corpses, their beloved faces that were now dead and locked in screams of terror. My sister was lying naked in the middle of the room, her legs spread wide, bruises on her body, a hole in her throat from a bayonet. Father had died trying to protect mother with his body, he was lying atop of her, more than twenty bullet holes in his back. The bullets had simply traveled straight through him and into mother.

"I wanted to scream. I wanted to go find a rifle and start killing any Japanese that I saw. I wanted to attack their headquarters in Nanking personally, seeing how many of them I could kill before they cut me down. I wanted revenge Bill.

"I knew nothing about the gift that grandfather had for me; I wasn't the one whom it was intended for remember, but grandfather knew my state of mind at that moment and he also knew his time was very short.

"The gift can be a very dangerous thing. Extremely dangerous if it is used improperly. It is customary for the giver of the gift to act as advisor to the recipient long before the time comes for the passage. It is imperative that the gift be used wisely and not for the purposes of achieving power or influence. Grandfather did not have much time to convince me of several things. One that the gift existed in the first place, two, that I should not use it to either wish for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, which I probably would have done happily considering my state of mind, or to have my family back alive again. I must not do either of those things he told me as blood ran out of his mouth and he gasped for every breath. Do you know why he told me these things Bill? I suspect that you do."

"Fate," I answered. "You would have been tampering far too much with fate. If you had wished for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, who knows what could have happened, what sort of world would have resulted. Even though the major events of World War II hadn't happened yet, it would have altered the entire historical timeline."

"Yes," Mr. Li nodded. "Grandfather explained that was not a wise choice for that very reason. And as for wishing my family back alive,"

"It would have been basically useless," I finished for him. "They were fated to die. If you had brought them back alive then they simply would have been killed again the next day or the next week."

"Correct," Mr. Li said. "Grandfather told me that the use of the wish had to come from my heart and had to be a wish aimed at personal betterment. He was going fast, reaching the end of his strength when he asked me the question at last. What was my greatest wish?"

"What was it?" I asked, fascinated.

"Song, my love, the girl I'd been out to see that day, was the only thing I had left. The only thing. I wished for her and myself to survive the war unharmed." He told me. "A very simple wish, just as yours was, but one that had far-reaching implications, just as yours did."

"Song and I left Nanking, sneaking out past the occupation zone in the dead of night. We were never seen, never challenged. Of course not, we were guaranteed to survive the war unharmed. We made our way to Chinese controlled territory and we got married. The next day after our wedding I joined the army. For the next six years I fought the Japanese, killing as many of the bastards as I could get into my rifle sight. I charged machine gun nests in order to drop in grenades. I cleared paths for other soldiers across dangerous territory. I always took the point when out on patrols. Bullets whizzed around me so close that I could hear them. Artillery exploded all around me, sometimes close enough to knock the wind out of me, but never was I struck by anything. For those six years I was basically immortal. Then the Russians invaded Manchuria to help drive out the Japanese. The Americans dropped a couple of atomic bombs. The Japanese Empire was destroyed in the way it was fated to be destroyed and the war was over at last. The limits of my wish had run out.

"I returned home to find Song and the now five-year old son that I'd sired before heading off to fight waiting for me. It was time to start our life. It wasn't long however, before another war started, the civil war between the Communists and the old regime. I was loyal to the old regime but I wasn't protected in that war as I had been in the previous one. My immortality had ended. I did not fight. My family was among the first to flee to Taiwan. It was during the trip across the straights on a freighter that I finally received firsthand knowledge of how cruel, how vindictive fate was capable of being.

"We were strafed by a communist plane about halfway across. It came out of nowhere and only made one pass. Song was hit in the chest by a piece of metal that had been thrown from an exploding fuel tank on a jeep that had been hit. The piece of metal, no bigger than your thumb, missed every major organ but severed her spinal cord. She was left paralyzed from the chest down. She spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She was never able to give me any more children."

"We only stayed on Taiwan for a few years before we were allowed to immigrate to the United States. We settled in San Francisco and raised our son there. I found a job at the Port of San Francisco unloading ships. It was hard labor but it paid well. I did that until my retirement in 1980, working my way up to management eventually. Song remained my faithful wife but her health was always poor. She died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia in 1977.

"My son, Chang, attended Stanford University, obtaining a law degree much like your sister. He joined an exclusive firm and worked there for many years. He became fully Americanized, changing his name to John Lee instead of Chang Li. He sired one son before his marriage was dissolved in divorce.

He might have been worthy of the gift had he survived, but he didn't. In 1980, after years of eighty hour workweeks at the firm, he developed a bleeding ulcer, what is known in medical circles as a "GI bleed" I believe. He bled to death internally one night at the office when he ignored the persistent vomiting and diarrhea filled with blood, passing it off as a case of the flu.

"That leaves only my grandson, who is now thirty-eight years old. He too went to Stanford University but his major was business. He is an evil, corrupt man and I have nothing to do with him. His interests are in money and power and mostly in his own advancement. He works in Seattle as a high-ranking corporate officer for Pacific Healthcare. He makes more than two hundred thousand a year, plus stock options. He has a wife, three children, and two mistresses at my last count. His children are exact clones of him. The whole lot of them make contact with me as little as they can get away with, which is fine by me.

"It is here Bill, that we encounter dual realities. In the first reality, the one in which I met you for the first time in 1999, I was living in San Francisco in my old house I'd purchased my second year working at the port. I was a tottering old man, without much to say to anybody, without much to do. I watched the television, I played golf on occasion, but mostly I sat at home and did nothing. I was sedentary and cared about little. Perhaps I'd begun to become a little mentally unstable? I think that possible.

"In early 1997 I began to notice that it hurt whenever I urinated. Sometimes there would be a brown tinge to my urine. Finally it began to hurt a lot and the urine was consistently the color of fresh apple cider, that dark brown. When I finally dragged myself to the doctor to be examined it was discovered that I'd had prostate cancer. I say "had" because by the time I got checked, it had moved past my prostate and into my bladder and kidneys. It was making its first attacks on my colon and liver. It was much too far-gone for me to live much longer. Even radiation and chemotherapy only slowed it down a little. My days were numbered.

"When it got to the point in January of 1999 that I was unable to care for myself anymore, my grandson, who was listed as my beneficiary, pulled a few strings within his corporation and got me admitted to that concentration camp in Spokane. It was far enough away from him in Seattle and most of all, it was cheap. He sold my house in San Francisco and pocketed most of the money. He sent lawyers out to visit me to make sure my will was updated. He made sure that my doctor brought up the "do not resuscitate" order and made sure it was initiated. He sat by simply waiting for me to die so he would have one less inconvenience to worry about. Very American attitude, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," I nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. I'd been in every convalescent home in Spokane County at one time or another during my career. Of the forty or so that we have, perhaps three could be considered a quality type of place. The remaining thirty-seven were basically warehouses that people stashed their elderly relatives in to die. They were sentenced to those hellholes the moment it became inconvenient to care for them. And the vast majority of the residents of these places were not the relatives of the poor, they were not the relatives of ethnic minorities, they were the relatives of good old, white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class Americans. Mr. Li's presence in one had been an anomaly. One did not often find Asians in con homes. Asian culture has a much greater respect for the elderly than American culture.

"So there I laid," Mr. Li continued, "for more than six months. Getting worse every day, getting weaker, my mind and judgement deteriorating. Sometimes I was delirious, sometimes I couldn't even keep track of which day it was. And then came the final day, the day I met you. All that day I felt myself becoming more and more aware, more alert than I'd been in years.

The time of my death had come and the clarity that went with the gift was manifesting itself. The clarity was there, but my judgment was impaired severely. No offense Bill, but I never would have given you what I did if I'd been in my right mind. Never.

"But I didn't think of such things as the consequences of my actions. I didn't think about how dangerous a thing I was doing, I only thought about how, after the year I'd spent seeing the worst of America, seeing myself dying in that concentration camp, someone had finally come along that possessed some basic human kindness, some empathy. Someone who treated people with respect. I decided to take a chance on you and I offered you my gift. I had no time to explain the ramifications to you; it was an impulsive decision in the last few seconds of my life. I still had the ability to withdraw the offer if you had wished for world peace or immortality or something like that. Something that would have had dire consequences to fate and the world.

"But you didn't. You asked to be fifteen again, knowing what you knew at that point. That seemed almost noble to me. You obviously didn't believe anything would come of it but you used the gift for personal betterment. That was what it was intended for. I honestly didn't see the consequences to fate that might have occurred if you had been a less moral person than I thought you were. Thankfully my instincts were mostly right about you.

"At the moment of truth, at my dying seconds, I thought it had all been for nothing. When my grandfather passed the gift on to me in that house in Nanking, I'd felt a definite power shifting from his body to mine. It was the gift. I'd felt it enter me, felt it as a presence in me ever since that day. I knew at that instant that my wish had been granted and that the gift was now mine to pass on. I knew it."

"I didn't feel anything like that when you died," I told him, confused. "Nothing like that at all. To tell you the truth Mr. Li, I didn't think much about you at all once I wrote the paperwork and left the hospital. It was my nature. I could not allow myself to get involved in the tragedy I witnessed for my own sanity. And I never felt anything enter my body. If I have the gift with me now, I don't feel it at all."

"I understand your feelings at my death Bill," he told me. "I was in war and I probably understand them better than you do. I saw human suffering and loss during the war on a scale that you probably can't even imagine. So don't feel sorry for forgetting about me after you left. But as for the passing of the gift, you didn't feel it pass to you and I didn't feel it leave me because it involved time travel. Your wish was granted but it set up a paradox. Two people cannot possess the gift at the same time. It was not passed to you because by granting your wish I was left alive. That was why I thought it didn't work.

"I remember dying. It's not an unpleasant experience I might add. In fact, it feels almost blissful when your body finally accepts its demise. I'd never felt more at peace, more free of pain. I remember grieving absently that the gift had died with me. Everything finally went black. I was at rest.

"And then, seemingly seconds later I woke up in my small house in San Francisco and it was 1982 again. My body was functioning properly, my brain was functioning properly, and I had every memory of what had just happened. I was horrified by what I had done, by what I had put at risk. I could have destroyed the world Bill if you had wished for the wrong thing or if you had treated your gift differently once you were sent back."

"I knew that I was going to have to find you immediately and keep a close eye upon you." He cast a smile, "It's a good thing that you wore a nametag with your first and last on it or I might never have found you. You never told me your name.

"I moved to Spokane, leaving my small house in the hands of a real estate company. I located you as a teenager and I've been keeping an eye on you ever since, making sure you didn't put anything at risk." He gazed at me meaningfully, a little apologetically, "I'm sorry to say that I was prepared to arrange your death if you started to go too far off the path of morality."

I was shocked. "My death?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I would have done it without hesitation if you were putting the fabric of existence at risk. You came close a few times. I must say you were not very moral when you first returned. You put at risk more than twenty relationships by your philandering. You tried to stop an historical event from happening in Beirut."

"You knew about Beirut?" I asked, astonished, "how?"

"You had copies of your letters in your house, did you not?" he asked mildly. "I simply entered it when no one was home and took a look."

"You were in my house?!"

"Bill," he said, "I don't think you realize even today what was at stake with your wish. What you wished for was something I had no right granting. It put the entire world at risk. Of course I was in your house. I was in it more than a hundred times over the years, snooping through your things, trying to see what you were up to. I've been in the house that you share with Nina now at least fifty times. I've been watching you obsessively through my telescope. I needed to make sure that you've stayed on the straight and narrow. I don't think you realize the responsibility that I feel for empowering you in this way. You could have destroyed the world by utilizing your gift in the wrong way. Literally destroyed it. I was obligated to keep an eye on you."

"Jesus," I muttered, wondering at the fact that this man had been watching my every move for the last seventeen years. It was a spooky feeling.

"It was touch and go with you for a while," Mr. Li went on. "You teetered on the very brink of temptation those first few years. Thankfully I discovered the same thing that you and Tracy did, that fate tends to keep things in line despite your interference."

I looked sharply at him, "You know what Tracy and I talked about?"

"Your house was bugged," Mr. Li said. "I had transmitters in your telephones and in every room of the house. I listened to everything that you said to anybody." He gave me a stern, disapproving father look, "I heard every one of your "study sessions". I listened when you told Tracy about your gift. I listened when you told your father about your gift. I listened to your father and Tracy when you weren't there to see if they would tell anyone else about it. I couldn't monitor Tracy at Berkeley from Spokane unfortunately but I was able to bug your father's office. He kept the knowledge to himself and so, apparently, did Tracy.

"You gradually realized the proper use of the gift, for personal betterment.

You found love, which is perhaps the greatest thing on this earth. You did use the gift for money and you are very rich now, but you've never used it for power or influence. You've chosen well Bill. Only one time was I obligated to interfere in any way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, still trying to grapple with the knowledge that Mr. Li probably had logs of every time I'd taken a shit over the last seventeen years.

"Stevens Consulting," he said. "A very good idea. A wise use of the gift I might add. I used your service myself by working through an agent of mine. A man named Dean Stockwell."

"Dean Stockwell?" I gasped, remembering that he'd been one of my clients.

"Oh yes," Mr. Li grinned. "He accessed your services at my instruction. By then I was reasonably wealthy from my own insight but I wanted to make sure I was using an expert. Someone with the base knowledge to take full advantage of the knowledge we shared. But towards the end I sensed some greed in you. You had more than enough money to comfortably live out the rest of your life but you wanted more, you didn't seem to know when to stop.

I figured that you would need a little nudge to push you back on the path.

So I made an anonymous phone call, several of them as a matter of fact, to the FTC. They landed on you within days. Shortly after that, you retired."

"YOU did that?" I asked in disbelief.

He nodded. "I did. Sorry if that offends you. Anyway, while I've been monitoring you all of these years, I've also grown moderately wealthy. I've broken all contact with my son and his family. I went to see a doctor in late 1996 and they discovered the bare beginnings of prostate cancer in me. A single course of radiation and chemo and it was gone forever. I'm something of a health nut these days. I run forty miles a week. I've participated in five marathons. I have a resting heart rate of fifty and a blood pressure that is consistently in the nineties. I could probably live another twenty years at this pace." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't Bill."

"What do you mean?"

"I mentioned a paradox a few minutes ago. One has been created. The gift cannot belong to two people at once. When I woke up in San Francisco after dying in Spokane I could still feel the gift with me, could still feel it inside of me. I'd given it to you and your wish had been granted, but the gift itself had not been passed on because I remained alive as a result of the gift. That is the paradox. It is a paradox that will correct itself in a few minutes."

"Correct itself?"

He nodded. "If nothing is done, when the time of my death in the previous life occurs, everything will go back to the way it was. I will be dead, taking the gift with me. You will return to your previous existence with no memory of what has happened. You will simply wake up in bed in your apartment in Spokane as if nothing had ever happened. Your wife will once more be an unpleasant doctor married to a neurosurgeon. Your sister will be dead. The kids you've had with Nina will have never existed. The correction will have occurred."

That was the most horrifying thought that my mind had ever entertained. I would lose everything in a few minutes? Even the memories of the life I'd built? That couldn't be! It couldn't! I couldn't even speak, my horror was so complete.

"Before you ask," Mr. Li told me, "yes, I'm sure about this. We have less than twenty minutes now by my calculations. I have twenty minutes to live no matter how healthy I am, no matter what steps I've taken. Reality will simply go back to the way it was."

I shook my head in denial, in fear. Twenty minutes? Would I never see Laura or Jason or Megan again? Would I only see Nina as an enemy, not as a woman I loved, that I knew intimately? It couldn't happen, I couldn't accept it!

"But there is a solution," Mr. Li said softly.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The gift," he said. "I still have it. I can still pass it on to you."

I looked at him, not comprehending on the surface, but catching his meaning somewhat lower in my psyche. "But in order for you to pass on the gift, you have to…"

"Die," He nodded. "I'm going to be dead in twenty minutes anyway, one way or the other, no matter what happens. I cannot tell you what to wish for Bill, you have to decide for yourself, but there is a wish that you can make that will break the paradox. I've struggled over the years trying to decide if your family, which will be based upon your moral code, is worthy of having the gift transferred to or if I should simply let it die with me." He shrugged, "I don't know if I made the right decision or not but I like you Bill. I know you better than I've ever known anyone before, even my wife when she was alive. I think you deserve the chance. I will give you the gift tonight, right now and I want you to promise me that you will use it as it is intended, that you will follow the tradition, that you will teach your descendants the responsibility. Will you do that?"

"Mr. Li," I started, my body charged up. Was he talking about suicide? Right here in front of me? For the purpose of breaking the paradox? Was that really what he was talking about?

"Will you promise Bill?" He insisted, staring at me.

I continued to stare, feeling an incredible mix of emotions surging through me.

"Bill?"

"I promise," I finally said.

He smiled, nodding seriously. He picked up his beer and then took a swig of it. "Do you know what to wish for?" he asked me.

"I think so."

He reached into a pocket in his chair and pulled out a pistol. It was a chrome plated, semi-automatic. Its hammer was back. He looked at it for a moment, his hands trembling.

"Mr. Li," I said, shaking my head. "I can't go through with this. I can't sit here and watch you shoot yourself. I can't."

"Be strong Bill," he said. "It'll be over soon. Don't call anybody afterward. Just go home. The maid will find me tomorrow and start the machinery."

I was crying now, actually crying with fear. How could I sit there and let someone shoot himself? I couldn't.

"You can do this Bill," Mr. Li told me. "Remember, I'm going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. Save your family. Write your existence as it is now into the pages of fate. I've lived a full life. My last few years have been lived with good health and considerable comfort instead of dying and in pain. You've done me a favor. Now it's time for me to do you a favor."

I was trembling, crying, unable to leave, unable to stay. I've never felt so confused in my life as I did at that moment.

"There will be a few moments of clarity right before I die," he said, putting the barrel of the pistol under his chin. The contact kept his hand from shaking. "That goes with the gift. Be sure to take advantage of it Bill. Be sure to ask the right thing."

"I will," I choked, watching paralyzed as he held that gun to his chin. "I will."

The gunshot was flat and undramatic. The ejected shell casing flew across the room and landed with a clink on the fireplace bricks. A small spray of blood shot from the top of his head and his body slumped over to the left, the pistol falling forgotten to the floor at his feet. His eyes remained open, staring at me.

"Jesus," I muttered, watching blood pour from the hole in the top of his head, watching his left pupil begin to dilate. "Oh Jesus."

Mr. Li's dying lips began to move. There was blood in his mouth. Words began to form. They were choked and very liquid but perfectly understandable. "What… is your… greatest wish?" he asked me.

I took a step towards him, keeping my eyes focused on his face. It was difficult to do through the haze of tears. My own mouth opened, "I want everything to continue on as it has been." I told him.

He nodded, more blood pouring out of his mouth. "Excellent." he muttered and then his eyes began to glaze over as awareness left them. He slumped further over and his breathing began to become agonal in nature, very irregular. This went on for nearly five minutes. I kept my eyes upon him the entire time. At last he drew in a breath, let it out, and then didn't pull in the next one. His mouth became still.

At that moment I felt it. The power, the gift, leaving the dying vessel of Mr. Li and entering my body, my soul. I cannot describe exactly what it felt like. The closest thing I can come up with is the sensation of runner's high, the feeling of well being that creeps over you about two or three miles into a run as endorphins are released from glands in your body. A sensation that seems to start at the top and quickly work its way throughout, spreading from place to place, energizing you. That was the closest I could come to the sensation but that does not do it justice. All of a sudden I was empowered, I felt it take up residence in me, felt it nestling in. It was a sensation that I would carry with me always, until that moment when it was time to pass it on.

I stood there looking at Mr. Li, feeling the power in me for an unknown amount of time. Finally the sensation receded, leaving only a small core inside me. I felt like myself physically but at the same time I could feel the power tucked away, just waiting for release.

"Thank you Mr. Li," I finally said to his body. "Thank you for everything."

He had no answer for me. I left his house a few minutes later and climbed onto my Honda. I didn't head for home right away. Instead I took a long drive.

It was after midnight when I finally parked my motorcycle in the garage and carried myself into the house. My mind seemed clearer than it had been, more focused, more in perspective. I was beginning to grasp the depth of the gift I'd been given, the responsibility that went along with it. Just beginning mind you, I had a lot more growing to do, a lot more maturity to acquire.

I tossed my helmet on my workbench and forced my way between the cars and into the house. It was darkened, as you would expect at that time of night, everyone asleep, no one with any idea of how close they'd come to being simply erased or put into an alternate path.

I checked on Laura. She was three and a half years old, her face so much like her mother's. She likes to throw the covers off along with her pajamas as she sleeps. I found her curled in a ball in her room, her little butt sticking up, her thumb tucked into her mouth, her body shivering in the air conditioning. I put the covers back over her knowing it was an exercise in futility. Twenty minutes later they'll be off again.

I checked on Jason who was almost two. He is the opposite of Laura. He has covers piled thickly atop him. He has a collection of Hot Wheel cars that he can never keep confined to one place. I stepped on them in my bare feet as I gazed upon his sleeping form, as I listened to his soft breathing.

A short trip down the hall brought me to Megan's room. She was nine months old, almost ready to begin walking and talking. The first and only child to adapt my facial features. She is an aficionado of stuffed animals and they cover her bed, sometimes making it difficult to find her in there. She is also a poor sleeper, waking at the slightest noise. She hears my entrance into her room. She creaks her brown eyes open and gazes at me sleepily. I kiss her, hug her, tell her everything is okay and she drifts back to sleep.

I went to my own bedroom where Nina was sleeping soundly on her side of our King sized bed. Like Laura, she's not a big fan of either clothing or covers when sleeping. She's dressed only in a pair of panties, her breasts bare, her pillow hugged tightly to her face. In the dim light I could see the stretch marks on her stomach and the single line of scar that marks Megan's entrance into the world via caesarian section. Megan had been in the breach position. I looked at my wife with love, with deep feelings of gratitude towards Mr. Li, who made all of this possible.

I continued to stare at Nina, at her firm breasts, her bare thighs, her scarred but still flat stomach. We are happy together, still deliriously in love after more than fourteen years of marriage. We make love at least twice a week, often more. We sit together on the couch or in the bed or on the deck outside after she gets home from a day at the hospital and we do what we have always done best, we talk. Nina is still my best friend but she is still ignorant of the secret that I carry. She had no idea that a cosmic clock had nearly ticked away our life together. And she never will.

As if sensing my thoughts she mumbled in her sleep, rolling to one side, kicking the last vestiges of the covers off of her body. Her eyes opened and she saw me standing in the doorway, looking at her.

"Bill?" she asked sleepily, stifling a yawn, "what's the matter?"

"Nothing Babe," I told her reassuringly, "I was just checking on the kids. Go back to sleep."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

I gave her a smile. "Perfectly okay," I assured her. "Everything is just fine."

AN id=title>

Chapter 1

"I wanna go back and do it all over, but I can't go back I know I wanna go back cause I'm feeling so much older but I can't go back I know" – EDDIE MONEY

I was feeling stressed that day. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect it was perhaps the wisest thing I've ever said in my life.

I picked him up at a convalescent home in suburban Spokane; a withered, emaciated ninety year old. His race was indeterminable, he was so withered by time but his name on the bank of paperwork the con home staff had given me identified him as So Li, which, I was reasonably sure, made him Chinese. He was suffering from cancer, not just to one particular body part but throughout his entire body. I took one look at him and knew he wasn't long for this world. His breathing was ragged and irregular, his skin pale and feverish. His body probably weighed about seventy-five pounds if he was lucky. There was absolutely no muscle in evidence upon his bones and his flesh hung loosely from every extremity. Despite all of this he was mentally quite aware of his surroundings, something else I recognized almost immediately.

"How are you doing Mr. Li?" I asked him, bending over his form on the hospital bed.

"Can't…" He puffed softly. "Breathe." He finished.

I nodded, taking the stethoscope out of the leg pocket of my jumpsuit and putting it in my ears. I listened to his lungs, hearing nothing but bad news. He was barely moving any air at all. I'd been a paramedic for eight years but even a newbie could have seen that Mr. Li's survival on the trip to the hospital was in question. He needed a breathing tube placed in his lungs to help him.

The nurse (and I use that term loosely) was the epitome of white trash. Bleach blonde, sixty or so pounds overweight, and chewing a large wad of bubble gum as she peered at us. She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him LESS oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in the con home. My partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to our portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Li a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated." I said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" The nurse yelled, startling me. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Li gave her a contemptuous glance and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Li, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel NOT to use advanced life support measures to save their life. After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Li back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing me of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" I asked her pointedly.

She dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. I looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the Doctor's signature were all present. "Okay." I said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future." I advised the nurse. "Mr. Li can hear everything you say."

She scoffed at this, giving me a condescending look. "He's a gork." She told me, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And a gook on top of that. What's the big deal?"

I turned away from her in disgust. As hardened as I've become doing this job, it never fails to amaze me how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses can be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working THERE.

I returned to my patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Li?" I asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"

Looking in my eyes, he nodded his understanding.

"Is that your wish Sir?" I asked him. "For me NOT to do anything?"

He smiled slightly. "Yes." He panted. "It's… " A pause to breathe. "My time."

"As you wish." I told him

We loaded him onto our gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back I hooked him up to my EKG machine in order to allow me to watch his heart rate. I put my pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Li was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.

"Mr. Li?" I addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at me.

"I'm gonna start an IV on you." I told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to, you know, help you with the pain and the discomfort."

He smiled, nodding at me.

I went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile that I was forced to use the smallest needle that we carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. I threaded it in slowly, cognizant of the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.

"I'm sorry Mr. Li." I told him when I finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."

"Thank… " A pause. "You."

"No problem." I told him.

While I adjusted the drip rate I noticed him staring at me, a queer smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.

"You're a… good boy." He said, panting. "You treat me… with… respect… where… others don't."

"I'm just doing my job." I told him, returning his smile.

He shook his head. "Been taken… before… " He said. "Not all… like you. Not at… all".

"Well." I shrugged. "I try."

"What… " He asked. "Is your… greatest… wish?"

"My greatest wish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. He nodded.

I laughed, thinking of my life. I was a thirty-two year old private paramedic that had been doing the job too long. I wasn't a dirtbag by any means but I wasn't at the pinnacle of success either. My job was constantly in jeopardy of being taken away by the Spokane Fire Department, who were just itching to get into the ambulance business. Like many fire departments around the country, they had initiated so many fire codes and regulations over the years that they no longer had any fires to put out. They knew that it wouldn't be long before the tax-payers started wondering just what they were paying these guys for anyway and, as such, their mission for the next century it seemed, was a take-over of the medical aid business. Private ambulance companies, who didn't have the political clout or the hero reputation to exploit, had already fallen to them in cities and counties all around the United States. It was a nationwide trend. Spokane FD had already tried twice, getting voted down by the city council once and then, having the same body approve them later, they were stopped by a superior court judge. At my age, I was too old to get picked up by them when they were eventually successful and I didn't know how to do anything else. I had an ex-wife and an ex-kid to pay money to each month. In short, I was in a rut that I saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as I'm prone to doing, that shift. For that reason I answered Mr. Li the way I did.

"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"

He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.

I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.

Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.

I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.

Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?

I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.

I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?

A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.

"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."

School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.

"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.

"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.

"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."

This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."

"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"

The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"

"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."

She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.

Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!

I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.

I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).

"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.

I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."

He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.

I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.

As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.

"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.

I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."

She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.

"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.

There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.

She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."

"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."

"What?!" She said, amazed.

"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"

"Huh?"

"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"

She gaped at me, not answering.

"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"

"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."

I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"

"What do you… "

"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.

"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"

I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.

"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."

"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.

"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.

By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?

Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.

SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. AT amp;T BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.

I finished up my breakfast and found, after some searching, my backpack which contained all of my schoolbooks and papers. If my fifteen-year- old self was true to form, I knew my homework wouldn't be done and my assignments wouldn't be read. That was something I would have to rectify, I figured. One of the things I regretted later in life were my poor high school grades and study habits, which precluded me from getting into a top-rated college. How hard could the work possibly be now?

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of Mike Meachen, my best friend back in high school. Mike was a year older than I and had always been the dominant member of our friendship. From Mike I learned how to smoke marijuana, how to drink beer, how to smoke cigarettes, how to cut school. Mike would drop out in the eleventh grade and work a few menial jobs for a few years before taking his GED and joining the Air Force where he was eventually dishonorably discharged for marijuana use. I hadn't talked to him in years but the last I'd heard he was still living with his parents. Could I steer Mike onto a different path? I wondered as I went to the door and bade my family farewell.

Though I was expecting it, it was still startling to see him as a sixteen-year-old again.

"Sup?" He muttered to me, his version of 'what's up?'.

"Not much." I told him, careful to give no hint of the startling change in me just yet. I closed the door behind me and we started the two-mile walk to our high school.

I was surprised at the immaturity of his conversation as we trodded to school. It centered on his phony sexual exploits with girls I'd never met, which girls at our school he'd like to fuck, and other adolescent posturing. I had to remind myself that my conversation back then had been pretty much the same and that I now had seventeen years of maturity over him. I nodded and responded to his statements with appropriateness. He noticed no change in me. I'd always been quiet anyway.

As we got close to the school feelings of unreality washed over me again. I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in years. But I was seeing them as they were then, not as my mind was telling me they should look now (I had to keep reminding myself that NOW was THEN). They were in ones, two, and even groups of six or more, heading for school. Boys and girls both. I saw Steve Johan, who would join the Army after graduation and be killed in a helicopter crash. I saw Nina Blackmore, a skinny, nerdish, friendless girl who would go to medical school and work as an emergency room doctor at Spokane's trauma center. She would also acquire good looks early in college as her body filled out and marry a rich neurosurgeon. I saw Carrie Founder, one of the best looking girls in the school giggling with some of the other elite. Carrie I knew, would marry a loser and pump out four kids before divorcing. During that period she would put on nearly a hundred pounds. Eventually, she would end up living in a trailer park with some other white-trash loser. As I paramedic I would one day pick her up for overdosing on anti-depressant medicines and pretend I didn't know her. I saw lots of others that I hadn't thought of in years and others who's faces I recognized but who's names I could not come up with.

I would be lying if I said that my attention was not distracted by the girls. Like many men there was a special place in the part of my mind that controlled lust that was obsessed with the idea of bagging a teenager. It was no doubt because they were forbidden. It was something I'd never done or attempted to do before, knowing that the risks were not worth the benefits. But things were different now, weren't they? A horny part of my mind asked me. I was a teenager now! I could do it legally!

I had been shy back in high school, a phase I'd gotten over later in life. But as a result of this shyness, I did not manage to get myself laid for the first time until I was a senior in high school (and to be honest, it was late in the year at that). But I wasn't shy now, was I? My eyes began tracking through the crowds, taking in the lean forms of the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old girls, their tight asses, their firm breasts. I began to imagine the possibilities and my fifteen-year-old dick began to stir in my 501s. Although I intended to do as much good with the gift I had been given; there were so many things I could change or prevent now that I had pre-knowledge of it; it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a little fun; would it? Of course not.

My musings were interrupted by Mike.

As we came to the front of the school he jerked my arm, pulling me backward. "We'd better go around the other side." He said, alarmed. "Richard Fuckface and his asshole friends are standing over there."

I looked where he was indicating and saw a real blast from the past. Richard Fairview was one of many bullies at our high school. He was about six feet tall and about as dumb as a person could get while still remembering to draw breath every couple of seconds. He'd been one of the terrors of our school, his scam, when he wasn't beating people's ass for the fun of it, to post himself at an entry point and rip off lunch money from arriving kids that were dumb enough to approach him. As always he had five or six companions lounging there with him. They were all smoking cigarettes and eyeing the approaching throngs, looking for targets. I'd had my ass beaten by him a time or two. Had that happened yet? I wondered, unable to place just when those occurrences had taken place.

A smile formed on my face. In the ensuing seventeen years I'd learned a lot both about psychology and physical combat. Bullies, I knew, relied mostly on the complacency of their victims. They relied on their size and intimidation to get what they wanted. Very few of them actually knew how to fight. I, however, had worked for years at a job where physical assault by one's patients or one's patient's family members was an almost daily happening. Though somewhat of a wimp in high school, life had taught me a thing or two about hand to hand fighting. The most important thing I'd learned was that, while getting hit by a fist was painful, it wasn't THAT painful.

"C'mon." I told Mike, smiling still, heading directly towards Richard and his co-horts.

"Are you high?" Mike asked me. "He's got his friends there. I could kick his ass any day one on one but his friends will jump in."

"No they won't." I told Mike confidently. "Just watch. Stand back and don't do anything. His friends won't get in on anything."

"Bill?" He said, alarmed, but I strode purposefully forward. Reluctantly, he followed. I had to give him credit. He was loyal, willing to back me up in the face of these six guys.

"Trust me." I assured him. "Richard's about to fall from grace, big time."

As we approached the gang of bullies Richard himself eyed us and stepped forward, blocking our paths. To our right were the chain- linked bike racks. To our left was the school's perimeter fence. It was Richard's kind of tactical situation all right, blocking his victim in.

"Hey Billy-fag." He hailed, his gray, stupid eyes boring into me. "You got change for a dollar?"

I stared back at him, barely able to suppress a smile. "Yeah." I told him, my voice full of mocking contempt. "But you ain't getting' it."

He looked at me in shock, almost stepping backwards at my boldness. I think that he would have backed down right there except for the fact that a group of junior and senior girls were happening by at that particular moment and, hearing my words, stopped to see what would transpire.

"What did you say you little fuckin' pussy?" He enquired toughly, in disbelief.

I had to search through my memory banks to come up with a statement that was suitably insulting to a high school bully from the eighties. After a moment I came up with one. "I said, why don't you suck my dick asshole, if you're not too tired from fuckin' your momma all night."

His friends, as well as the group of teenagers gave a collective gasp. "You gonna let him say that shit to you Richie?" One of them asked, goading him.

"You're dead motherfucker." Richard said, advancing towards me, his fists clenched and raised in a pseudo-boxing stance.

I snorted contempt, which again almost gave him pause. He threw a haymaker right at my face, which, had it impacted, probably would have broken my nose. But it didn't. I easily sidestepped to the left, allowing his fist to whiz through thin air and spin his body around. Once he was turned away from me I stepped forward and drove my right elbow into his back, right above the kidney, as hard as I could. There was a solid thump followed by the whooshing of air being ejected from his lungs and a startled, painful cry from his lips. His hands dropped instantly down and he staggered forward two steps, holding his back.

I raised my right foot off of the ground and slowly placed it against his ass. With a hard shove of my leg, he was propelled into the chain link of the bike racks, making a musical jing as the metal was struck. He bounced off and landed on his ass on the grass, a stupid expression of surprise on his face.

While his friends gaped, unmoving at this development, the girls all erupted in fits of derisive laughter, pointing at him. As I'd planned, this infuriated him. He leapt to his feet and charged me, meaning to grab hold of me and take me to the ground, I was sure. But he hadn't learned from his first attack. He threw his weight forward and, once again, I easily stepped around him. As he passed I kicked his feet out from beneath him. He became horizontal for a brief second before crashing to the pavement, scratching up his hands and knees.

As he tried to get to his feet I hooked my foot forward, as if I was performing a kick-off in a football game, and connected directly with his face. There was an audible crunch as his nose was shattered along with several teeth. I pulled my foot back and watched as blood began to pour onto the ground from his face. He seemed quite dazed, frozen in place, so I stepped forward and kicked once more, this time connecting with his rib cage. I felt the crunch of ribs fracturing this time and Richie finally collapsed unmoving to the ground, guarding his side.

I looked at his friends, who were staring at me, mouths agape in disbelief. They could have stomped me to death in less than a minute had they wished but, as I'd figured, they didn't. I locked gazes with them, putting on the meanest expression I could call up. "You guys want some of this too?" I asked toughly.

None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.

"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.

I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.

I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.

From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.

"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.

"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."

We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.

"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.

I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."

"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"

Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.

"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"

"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."

"I thought so." I said.

Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.

"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.

I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"

"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.

I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.

"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."

"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"

I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."

"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.

"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"

"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.

"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."

"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.

"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."

He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.

While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.

"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."

She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.

"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"

"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "

"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"

"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "

"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "

"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.

She blinked at me in surprised respect.

"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."

"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"

She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "

She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?

The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.

"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.

"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.

A minute later, the class began.

I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.

My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.

Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.

"Now we've been discussing the circulatory system for several days now." She said at one point. "So can anyone tell me the complete route a blood cell takes through this system?"

Obviously she was expecting no hands to go up. It was almost, but not quite, a rhetorical question. She was met with blank looks from her class of thirty or so until I, deciding to have a little fun, put up my hand.

"Yes Billy?" She asked impatiently. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

I smiled at her shyly. I knew she was expecting nothing from me beyond that. I'd flunked her class. "No." I told her. "I was going to answer your question."

Her eyebrows went up. "YOU know the route a blood cell takes through the circulatory system?"

The class was looking at me now, obviously expecting me to make a joke of some sort, although I was not even known for that sort of behavior.

"I think so." I said softly.

She gave a patronizing smile. "Well do tell." She said.

"Okay," I began. "Why don't we start with an oxygenated cell as it leaves the heart. Is that a good starting place?"

She raised her eyebrows higher. "Sure." She finally said.

I nodded. "Okay. An oxygenated cell will be pumped from the left ventricle, through the aortic valve, into the Aorta, which will then branch into the descending and ascending Aortas. Of course at this point it may be sent to the coronary arteries but let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is not. From the aorta the cell will be pumped through the arteries into the arterioles and finally into a capillary bed somewhere where it will then give up it's oxygen molecule to a cell and pick up a carbon dioxide molecule for transport back to the lungs. At the point of transfer the capillaries will become veinuels. The cell will pass through these into veins, eventually making its way to either the superior or inferior vena cava, depending upon what part of the body it just oxygenated."

Mrs. Crookshank was obviously in shock, as if she'd seen a monkey suddenly start to talk. "Go on." She said numbly.

I nodded. "The vena cava lead, of course, to the heart. Specifically the right atria. The cell will enter the right atria and will then be pumped to the right ventricle. From there the cell will be pumped through the pulmonary valve to the pulmonary artery, which, I might add, is the only artery in the body to carry unoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery will take the cell into the pulmonary capillary system where it will drop off its CO2 molecule, which will then be exhaled by the lung, and pick up another oxygen molecule from the alveoli in the lung. From there the now oxygenated cell with pass through the pulmonary vein, the only vein in the body that carries oxygenated blood, to the left atria. The left atria will pump the cell into the left ventricle and the process starts all over." I smiled. "Takes a little over a minute I hear."

The class was completely silent, staring at me. Finally Mrs. Crookshank spoke. "That's exactly right Billy." She said. "Very good."

"I read a little bit on it." I said, casting my eyes back to my desk.

At lunchtime it became quickly apparent that I'd altered history, as it was, a little already. As I waited in the snack bar line, and as I found an empty seat on the quad, I could see that people were pointing at me and looking at me. When I would turn to look at them, they would cast their eyes away. I figured the word had spread about my fight with Richie. People were probably in disbelief. I could almost hear the conversations they were having. Him? That little wimpy guy? Kicked Richie's ass? Sent him to the hospital? How? Does he know karate or something? He must!

I didn't mind. Obviously the word on the fight had not leaked to the wrong set of ears. If it had, I probably would have been pulled into the principal's office to talk to the cops. After all, what I'd done was felony assault. Not that I was worried about that either. Would the cops really believe that I'd done such a thing?

Finally someone came over to ask me about it. It was one of the hard- core stoner crowd; a group that I'd sometimes hung out with but had never really been a part of. I remembered smoking grass with the guy, who was a junior, on occasion, but I couldn't remember his name. He had long, unkempt black hair and the beginnings of a mustache on his lip. I wondered if he knew how ridiculous it looked. He approached carefully, as if I might suddenly lash out at him.

"What's up dude?" He asked me.

I shrugged. "Not much. What's up with you?"

"Nothin'." He paused. "I heard you got in a fight with Richie Fairview today."

"You could say that." I agreed.

"I heard you put him in the hospital."

"Wouldn't know about that." I replied. "But I doubt he'll be rippin' off people for a while." I smiled. "And if he does decide to go back into business, he might just think twice about who he fucks with."

The stoner who's name I couldn't remember grinned. "You know karate or somethin'?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Just a little about psychology and life."

His eyes widened. "Trippy." He finally said, reminding me of a phrase I hadn't heard in a while. "Listen, me and Raisin and Debbie are gonna blow this scene and head over to Raisin's house. Smoke some buds and listen to some AC\DC. You wanna come with us?"

I didn't have the slightest idea who Raisin might be, but I knew who Debbie was, even without a last name supplied. She was a cute, though skanky redhead that hung out with the stoners. She always kept close to whomever possessed the little baggie, hanging all over them and flirting with them. But, if I remembered correctly, she very rarely gave up any pussy. The polite term for her would be cock-tease. And no matter how many times they failed to get laid by her, they still fell for it every time. Thinking of her made my dick stir a little in my pants again. She was older than I was, sure, but I was definitely more experienced. Could I seduce her? And even if I couldn't, the thought of smoking a little grass was appealing in and of itself. As a paramedic we were drug tested. I hadn't smoked any pot in the last seven years.

"I'm in." I told him, standing up and throwing the remains of my burrito in the nearest garbage can.

Apparently Raisin was the one with the pot. I remembered him when I saw him. He was a short, bleached blonde who, like many short people, had adapted humor as his defense. He was one funny motherfucker. We climbed into his car; an early seventies Ford Falcon. My as-yet- unnamed friend and I climbed in the back. Debby climbed in the front with Raisin, who was looking real hopeful about his chances.

As he screeched out of the school parking lot Debbie giggled. "Fire up a joint NOW Raisin." She said. "C'mon. Getting stoned always get me horny."

"Can't Baby." Raisin replied, turning a corner at near-suicidal speed. "Don't have any rolled yet. Just hold your titties for a few. We have to get some papers."

She feigned a pout at his words and I took a moment to appraise her. She really was pretty good looking in a future trailer trash sort of way. Her red hair appeared natural, her tits firm and jiggly. As was the style of the eighties, she had on too much make-up. But I felt I could live with that. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, fresh no matter how skanky she appeared. I was determined to bag her. I thought I knew how.

Raisin pulled the Falcon into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. He backed into a spot near the back corner.

"Okay, here's the deal." Raisin told my back seat companion and me. "Bill, how much money you got?"

I shrugged. "About three bucks or so."

"Good." Raisin said. "You go up to the counter and buy a candy bar or something. Lonnie," He turned to my now-named companion. "While he's got the clerk distracted, you swipe a pack of papers from the display."

"Man, I hate doing this shit." Lonnie whined. "Why don't we just use a toilet paper roll or somethin'?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' barbarian?" Raisin enquired. "I refuse to smoke out of something that used to hold paper that I use to wipe my ass with. Just get the fuckin' papers."

Lonnie exited the vehicle, still whining, and I exited with him.

"Why don't we just buy the papers?" I asked, following behind him.

"Cause," He explained, as if I was an idiot. "They won't sell 'em to kids."

"As far as I know it's not against the law to buy papers." I opined. "Let me handle this."

Lonnie was doubtful but obviously agreeable to anything that didn't put him in harm's way. I pushed through the door of the store, making a little bell chime. The clerk was smoking a cigarette and watching a small television set. He was about twenty or so and looked as if he'd been rolling up some herb himself. He eyed us suspiciously as we entered.

I pulled out my money and then pulled a pack of zig-zags from the display and put them down on the counter. The clerk looked at them for a minute and then looked at me.

"How old are you kid?" He asked, taking a puff off of his smoke.

"Fifteen." I said.

"Uh huh. And what are you going to do with those? Let me guess, they're for your father."

"Nope." I said simply, shaking my head. "They're for my friends and myself. You see, we just scored some killer bud and now we want to smoke it. That requires papers, as I'm sure you're aware. So, how much?"

The clerk stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

"Now come on." I said reasonably. "Would you rather we came in and tried to steal them? That would be counter-productive for all concerned, wouldn't it? We're not asking to buy cigarettes, just papers. They're not controlled substances are they?" I smiled. "C'mon, didn't you used to cut school and get stoned? Help out the younger generation here."

He stared for another instant and then began to chuckle. "Fuckin' classic." He said, shaking his head. He picked up the pack of zig-zags and rang them up. "Seventy-nine cents." He said.

I started to hand him a buck and then paused, my eyes looking at a display behind him.

"Oh," I said. "And how about givin' me a three pack of those Trojans there? The unlubricated ones." I winked at him. "We got a girl with us too and I think I might find some use for them."

"That was fuckin' radical." Lonnie proclaimed as we left the store. "Totally!"

"Let me tell you somethin' Lonnie." I told him. "I've found that you'll get a lot farther in life using that approach then tryin' to sneak around the issue. Keep that in mind."

"Trippy." He said again. "But why'd you buy the rubbers? You don't think you're gonna get into Debbie do you?"

"You never know." I told him. "It's best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Avent-you-what?"

"Never mind." I said, opening the back door. The condoms were in my pants pocket. The papers I tossed to Raisin. "Let's go get stoned." I told him.

As I suspected she would be, Debbie was putty in my hands. We went to Raisin's house, which was actually an apartment. I'd been in the apartment complex many times as a paramedic on calls. It was populated with various varieties of unemployed trash living off of welfare. It was strange being in them in a way. They looked exactly the same as they had\would in my when. Raisin's mom, a single mother, was employed and spent the day at her job. This made Raisin's apartment a favored locale for school cutting, pot smoking teenagers. The apartment was cleaner than most I entered on calls, but not by much. It was a two bedroom and there were dishes scattered everywhere but at least the laundry was picked up and there were no roaches in evidence. The entire place reeked of stale cigarette and pot smoke.

Raisin put on an AC\DC album, Highway to Hell, and cranked up the volume. He then went about the task of rolling up a fat one which he lit and passed around. Predictably Debbie sat next to him on the couch, cooing at him and flirting with him. By the time the third cut on the album was playing, we were all pleasantly stoned; me probably more so than the others since I'd been away for a while.

"Isn't Bon Scott the greatest fuckin' singer on earth?" Raisin asked the room at large.

Lonnie gave a concurring opinion and even Debbie agreed, although it was easy to read her face and see that she didn't give a rat's ass about Bon Scott. I tried to remember who teenaged girls had been into back in the early eighties and drew a blank.

The conversation traveled around the room for a few minutes, long enough for me to be appalled by its immaturity. Both Raisin and Lonnie were trying like hell to win Debbie's favor but their attempts were pathetic at best. Lonnie was talking about how many push-ups he could do. Raisin was talking about how many beers he could drink before he puked. Had I been like this once? I feared that I had. No wonder I hadn't gotten laid until I was nearly eighteen. It was time to liven up the conversation a little.

"Have you guys ever considered," I asked. "How much religion has fucked up our views on sex?"

That got their interest. They all looked at me, wondering if I was telling a joke.

"What?" Debbie finally squealed.

"Think about it for a second," I explained, knowing that when you were stoned it was real easy to 'think about it'. "The drive to reproduce is, aside from food and water, the most powerful urge in the human body. We want to have sex; we NEED to have sex. It's programmed into us, into our genes and chromosomes. If a species didn't want to have sex, which after all is for reproduction, it could not perpetuate itself."

"Per-what?" Lonnie, his eyes open less than a quarter inch, asked.

"It could not keep the race alive." I termed it. "If we were not programmed with the urge to screw each other, we would have died out long ago. So, the urge to screw is given to us by God or chance or whatever, so that we will survive forever. It's a natural urge that serves a basic function, right?"

"Yeah." Debbie said, her eyes twinkling a little. Lonnie and Raisin had to agree with my logic too.

"Now we all feel these urges. I myself feel them very strongly." I gazed meaningfully at Debbie as I said this. She blushed a little but held my gaze. "Sometimes it's all I can think about. It's a bitchin' thing really. For the most part, guys want to put their dicks into a girl's pussy. Girls want to have a dick put INTO their pussy. Am I right?"

"Fuckin aye!" Lonnie nodded.

"Hell yeah." Raisin agreed.

Debbie refused to comment, she just giggled.

"But then you got religion fuckin' us all up." I went on. "There's some other social factors in there too, but religion is the biggest one. Here you have a natural urge, the urge to reproduce. It's a function of your body. But you got religion tellin' you that it's dirty. They make people feel guilty for these urges which occur through no fault of their own. They tell you that sex is wrong. They tell you to NEVER do it before marriage, and then they tell you that it's okay to do it when you are married but not to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you're sinning."

"Yeah!" Lonnie put in. "That's fucked up."

"And if that wasn't bad enough." I went on, watching Debby carefully now. She was staring with rapt attention. "Religious influence throughout our history has led to the passing of laws against certain types of sexual acts. Did you know that in the State of Washington it is illegal for a man to eat a pussy."

"What?" Debbie and Lonnie said together; Debbie blushing a little.

"Yep." I nodded, picking up the roach in the ashtray and taking another hit. I was really rocking now. "And it's also illegal for a woman to suck a man's dick. Its called oral copulation in the penal code and it's listed as a crime. Now here we have an activity that people enjoy doing to each other." I paused, smiling at Debbie. "At least I know I enjoy the shit out of eating a nice pussy. An activity that hurts no one but that if fact brings a GREAT deal of pleasure to people. At least when I do it anyway. But, thanks to religious assholes back in our history, it's illegal. I could be arrested for, say, eating out Debbie there. And she could be arrested for giving me a BJ."

"You've never eaten a pussy before." Debbie giggled, her eyes shining.

I looked at her meaningfully. "Debbie, I'm an expert at eating pussy. I bet that I could make you come in less than ten minutes using only my tongue upon your gorgeous body."

She swallowed nervously. "Oh really?"

"Really." I said. "Come here a second." I patted my lap.

"Why?" She challenged. Lonnie and Raisin were both speechless, watching this development.

"Just come here and let me give you a little sample of what my tongue can do for you." I chuckled. "Unless you're scared that is. Afraid I might make you lose control."

"You talk pretty bold little boy." She informed me nervously.

"Come here." I whispered, staring lustfully at her. "Let me show you a sample."

She hesitated for another second or so and then curiosity got the better of her. She stood and walked over to me. I patted my lap again.

"Sit down." I told her, reaching out and touching the side of her right leg. The denim of her jeans was tight. Tight enough to let me feel the muscle of her leg beneath it.

She sat on my lap, turning her face towards me, her eyes transfixed upon my face. "Well?" She said.

I reached up and took her face in my hands, feeling the soft skin of her cheeks. I pulled her forward, drawing her lips to mine. She came willingly, parting her lips. I kissed her softly, feeling her puffy lips meeting mine. I darted the tip of my tongue forward slowly, touching the inside of her lip and running it back and forth, tasting the smooth membranes and feeling the back of my tongue rubbing against her top teeth. I withdrew my tongue for an instant and then darted forward with it once more. Her tongue shot out to meet it this time. I swirled the tip of mine with hers, marveling at the fact that I was making out with a sixteen year old girl. My cock jumped to full attention.

I gave her my best kissing, sucking lightly on her tongue and lips, nipping a little at them. It was undoubtedly a far cry from what she was used to, which was probably some brute ramming his tongue down her throat. I used my tongue like an instrument, tasting her young mouth, and arousing her. She pulled herself closer to me, forgetting that two other people were in the room. Her sweater clad breasts pushed against my chest.

I kissed across her cheek to her neck, licking and sucking on it softly, working my way upward, nibbling at her soft flesh. When I reached her earlobe I nipped at it and then slid my tongue softly through the hollow of her jaw. I blew lightly in her ear and then began to whisper to her.

"Have you ever been kissed like this before?" I asked.

"No." She groaned, her hands moving up and down my back.

"Do you like the way my tongue feels against your skin?"

"Yes." She panted, trembling all over now.

"Imagine this tongue and this mouth sliding all over your beautiful body. Imagine it suckling your nipples like a newborn baby. Imagine it kissing your tummy, your legs, sucking on your toes, and finally going between your legs and licking you there. Eating you until you come in my mouth."

"Ohh." She squeaked.

"You want that, don't you?" I whispered in her ear. "You want to come in my mouth, don't you? Has anyone ever made you come before?"

"No." She shook her head as I nibbled her earlobe again.

"I can." I told her. "I can make you come until you beg me to stop. I can make you come until you scream. Would you like me to?"

"Oh god." She whined, loud enough for the other two to hear.

"Would you?" I repeated.

"Ohhhh." She was now trembling all over, her skin flushing.

I ran my tongue across the side of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, until it was teasing the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. I sucked a little and then raised up and kissed her again. Her tongue eagerly sought out mine, sucking it into her mouth a little harder than I liked, almost painfully. That was okay. I knew I had her.

I pulled her tighter against me, feeling her breasts push into my chest. They were firm and oh so young. My instinct was to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted her to ask me, to beg me to take her there.

I put my lips back near her ear and began to whisper to her again. "You're getting hot from my mouth, aren't you Debbie?"

"Yessss!" She hissed, breathing rapidly. "I've never…, ohhhh!"

"I've gotten you this hot by just kissing your face and your neck." I whispered. "Imagine what else I can do for you. I can give you pleasure you've never dreamed of before. All you have to do is ask me. Ask me to show you."

"Ohh God." She moaned again, grasping me tighter against her. She was approaching the edge of control. I knew that she was now mine, that if I stood up and led her to the bedroom, she would come. But I wanted her to ask me.

"Just ask." I told her, nibbling her ear again. "Just ask me to show you and I will."

"Please?" She said immediately. "Show me. You have to show me!"

I smiled, breaking the kiss. I gave her butt a little pat, indicating she should stand up. She did so, ignoring Raisin and Lonnie, just staring at me with glazed, lustful eyes. I stood too.

"Hey Raisin," I asked, smiling. "You mind if I borrow your room for a while? Me and Debbie have to talk."

He was speechless, just staring at me. Though I didn't want to, I could see that he'd sprung a woody watching the two of us.

"I'll take that as a yes." I said, grabbing Debbie's hand and leading her there. She didn't even look back.

Raisin's room was suprisingly pretty neat. His bed wasn't made but the floor was free of laundry and there was little debris lying around. I led Debbie inside and then shut the door. It was latched less than a half a second before her mouth slammed into mine and her tongue was probing for my tonsils. She pulled me tight against her, grinding her crotch into mine, rubbing her hips in circles.

"Oh god," She said, breaking the kiss and licking at my neck. "I've never been this fuckin' turned on before. I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I have that effect on women." I said, kissing her back and leading her over to the bed.

We sat down on the foot of it and I kissed her again, running my hand up under her sweater. I felt her smooth stomach and the cups of her bra for a moment before pushing upward, lifting the hem of the sweater over her head. She raised her arms to allow me to remove it. I tossed it to the floor next to the bed.

I began kissing her smooth shoulders while my hands slid around her back, finding the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick of my fingers the clasp was undone, allowing the bra to sag free. I pulled it off of her and tossed it to the floor next to her sweater.

I leaned back and stared at her chest for a moment. Her tits were almost more than I take. I had to restrain myself from simply attacking them. Though large for a teenager, they were firm, unaffected by years of gravity pulling on them. The nipples were small but erect, standing out proudly. The flesh was slightly paler than the surrounding skin. Sixteen year old tits! My mind screamed at me.

She saw my gaze and flushed deeper, covering them with her arms. Obviously my eyes upon her embarrassed her.

Gently I reached out and pulled her arms back down. "Don't cover them up." I said softly. "They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

She was nervous, not saying anything but giving me a slight giggle.

I reached out and stroked them softly with my fingers, running the tips around the perimeter, feeling the young, springy flesh, testing the weight of them. She sighed a little as I did this. Again, she was probably expecting me to maul them as a normal teenager would. I let the tip of my fingers circle inward, finally just flicking her nipples. She shuddered at the contact.

She was actually trembling as I leaned forward and began planting kisses on her bare shoulder. I let the underside of my tongue slide downward along her flesh, across the top of her heaving chest until I encountered the swell of her tit. I began sucking and licking the delicate skin there, giving the occasional soft nip with my teeth. Her hands landed on the back of my head, trying to push me down to the nipple. But I refused.

I kissed and sucked my way all over her right breast, moving from top to bottom, running my tongue over the underside and her lower chest, relishing the taste of her young skin, driving her nearly crazy with my teasing, but avoiding the nipple. Finally I repeated the process on her left breast. I then slid my tongue between the two, feeling them pushing into my cheeks on either side. She was now whimpering, almost crying in her desire.

At last I moved my mouth to the right nipple. I flicked at it with my tongue, tasting and feeling it's texture. At the contact she pushed her chest forward, trying to force it into her mouth, but I backed away at the same rate she advanced, frustrating her. I began sliding my tongue around the perimeter of the nipple, making it swell further. Finally I took it in my mouth and began suckling it gently, just as an infant would do.

"Ohhhh." She moaned, her fingers running through my hair. I pushed her to her back on the bed and went to work in earnest.

I worked on her nipples for more than ten minutes, moving from one to the other, tasting them, sucking them, loving them, until her hips began to move up and down. As I did this I reached down with my hands and pulled off her shoes, letting them fall to the floor. Her socks followed this.

Once she was barefoot, I began kissing my way downward, paying particular attention to her flanks, which I'd realized in my mid- twenties was a powerful erogenous zone on women when a tongue and mouth is applied to them with the right pressure. When I reached the waistband of her jeans I kissed along it, heading for her stomach, darting under the hem with the tip of my tongue. Her tummy was a work of art in and of itself. It was as smooth as the proverbial baby's butt, unlined by stretchmarks or any other signs of time. I reached her bellybutton and teased it for a moment, making the muscles in that part of her body go into seizure. I then trailed the back of my tongue downward again, until I reached the top of her jeans.

She was wearing button-fly jeans. I reached up and slowly undid the first button, revealing just a hint of her lower stomach. The flesh there was even paler than that of her breasts. I kissed and sucked that which was revealed for a second and then undid the second button, repeating the process.

When I undid the third button the top of her panties came into view. They were sparkling white, a sharp contrast against her skin. I captured the cotton material in my teeth for a second, pulling them lightly away from her body briefly before releasing them. As I did this I caught the first whiff of her odor. It was fresh and musky, the scent of a teenager, and only touched my olfactory senses for an instant. But it was enough to make me pick up the pace.

I ripped open the rest of her buttons and disengaged myself from her, so that I was kneeling at the foot of the bed. I put my hands in the waistband of her jeans and began tugging.

"Raise your hips." I commanded.

She instantly obeyed, obviously eager for me to get on with what I'd promised her. I pulled the jeans downward, struggling a little but finally removing the tight material from her body. They joined the sweater and the bra on the floor, leaving her lying before me in only her white, cotton panties.

I paused long enough to take off my own sweater, leaving me bare from the waist up. She stared at me lustfully as I did this, her legs twisting this way and that, unable to come to a rest. They were very pretty legs, smooth as silk, lightly tanned. Looking between them I could see that the crotch of her panties was wet, sucking lightly into her pussy. My mouth began watering as I captured her legs and placed them on my shoulders.

I reached forward and grabbed the waist of her panties. She raised her hips without instruction this time and I pulled them off, tossing them to the floor and returning her legs to my shoulders. I was now looking at her pussy. An actual sixteen year old pussy. The lips were swollen and inviting, her clit peeking out of its hood. There was a growth of reddish-brown hair, thick on the top, sparse around the lips. Her odor was now strong in my nostrils, making me giddy, the smell of a teenager in heat.

"Have you ever been eaten before?" I asked her, letting my finger lightly slide between her wet lips, parting them.

"Yes." She panted, still trembling. "Once."

"How was it?" I asked.

"It was okay." She said. "Please, do it now?"

I smiled. "Okay? Did you come?"

"No." She shook her head and then repeated. "Please?"

"Then you were just licked before." I told her, sliding my finger into her about a half an inch, far enough to feel that she was TIGHT. "Prepare to be EATEN."

"Ohhhh." She moaned as I moved my head forward.

I licked between those wonderful lips, tasting her nectar, feeling her smooth membranes with my tongue. I probed in and out, lapping like a cat a bowl of milk. She moaned as I did this, spreading her legs wider. I ran my hands up and down her smooth thighs while I continued to lick at her.

Her pubic hair tickled my face as I sucked each lip in between probes with my tongue. When her hips began gyrating on the bed I began making stabs at her clit. The stabs took her breath away, made her squeal in delight with each one. I ran my tongue around her erect clit for a few moments and then finally took it between my lips and began to suck on it gently.

"Ohhhh!" She screamed. "What are you…? Ohhhhh!"

I increased the suction on it, stabbing rapidly with my swirling tongue as I did so. Her hips began moving up and down rhythmically. Her sexy legs wrapped around my back, pulling me closer.

"Ohhh Yesss!" She cried. "Ohhh Yesss! Oh God!"

Shortly her clit sucked back into its hood and her hips and pubis began slamming into my face. It became difficult to keep my lips where they belonged but I had experience reading the rhythm. I plunged two fingers into her, feeling that tight sheath contract around them. I almost came in my pants right there when I felt that tightness. Oh how good that was going to feel when I got my cock in there.

With a long, high-pitched scream she came in my mouth, her hips battering me nearly senseless and then finally slowing to a stop. But I wasn't done yet. I pulled my face away from her but continued to finger-fuck her. I looked in her eyes as I did it. Her eyes had a mad glint in them; an expression she wasn't supposed to wear for another five years or so. She was panting and licking her lips, her tits heaving up and down.

"Did you like that?" I asked her, driving my fingers in and out. Her hips already were picking up the rhythm again.

"Yess!" She hissed. "Oh god, I never knew anything could… " She couldn't finish. She simply closed her eyes and humped back at my hand.

I smiled and then lowered my face to her crotch once more.

"Again?" She cried. "Ohh God!"

It only took two or three minutes to pull the second orgasm from her. The third took even less time. By the time I pulled my face away and stood up, she looked nearly insane.

"Are you ready to get fucked now?" I asked her, opening the fly on my own 501s.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her eyes glued to my crotch.

"Answer me." I told her. "Are you ready to get fucked?"

"Yes!" She yelled, nodding vigorously. "Oh yes!"

I kicked off my shoes and socks and then dropped my pants, pausing long enough to pull one of the condoms from the pocket. I tossed the condom on the bed by her feet and then dropped my underwear, letting free my straining, fifteen-year-old cock. It wasn't quite as long and thick as it would eventually be but Debbie didn't seem to mind. She spread her legs wider.

"C'mon!" She told me. "Let's do it."

I picked up the condom and ripped the package open, letting it fall to the floor. I rolled it over my cock expertly, giving it a tug to make sure it was on correctly. It was. Debbie watched this all with aroused curiosity. It was obvious that she'd never seen anyone put on a rubber before, though I was sure, due to the lack of a hymen, that she'd been fucked. I understood. Teenagers didn't give a shit, didn't think about consequences. But I did.

I climbed back on the bed and positioned myself over the top of her. Our lips came together again, our tongues swirling back and forth once more. Her firm tits were against my chest and my outer thighs were against her inner thighs. I grabbed my cock in my hand and put the head against her wet lips, sliding it up and down a few times, wetting the condom.

"Do it!" Debbie yelled, pushing her hips upward.

Slowly I pushed forward, allowing the head of my cock to slide inside of her. Her tunnel grasped me tightly, feeling as if a hand was gripping me, and I could slide no further. I pulled out and pushed again, gaining a little more ground with each thrust. Finally I was all the way inside the tightest box I'd ever imagined, let alone been in. This was what fucking was supposed to be like.

I began to thrust in and out, feeling her clamping on me as I slid back and forth. After a few moments she loosened up a little, allowing me to pick up the pace. I then began to slam in and out with practiced strokes, being sure to grind my pubic bone against hers with each thrust. She moaned and clawed at my back with her nails as I fucked her, her hips rising and falling counter to my own. Her skin began to perspire heavily, making our bodies slide exquisitely together, as if greased. She kissed on my neck and my ears, her tongue strokes copies of what I'd done to her earlier.

I suddenly got up to my knees, putting her legs on my shoulders while I continued to fuck her. I was able to look down upon her supine body, to watch my cock sliding in and out her slit, to see her sweaty tits bouncing back and forth, to see her face, to watch the rapture in her eyes. I stroked her legs up and down, kissing on her calves for a while and then I began feeling those beautiful breasts, squeezing them a little rougher now. I slammed harder and harder into her, making her grunt and moan. When she came again she pulled me back down to her and thrust her tongue back in my mouth.

I was at the end of my rope by then so I went for the final push. I fucked as hard as I could, sweat dripping off my face, that tight pussy gripping and releasing me. I felt the sensation of pure pleasure starting in my groin and spreading quickly throughout my body from there. I began to groan myself, losing control of my thrusting rhythm, only battering her like an animal. The pleasure of orgasm assaulted me, had its way with me, completely took my body over for an indeterminate amount of time. It was pleasure on the purest level. My God, I could not remember when orgasms had felt like that. It made the ones I had as an adult feel like a little spasm in comparison. I shot blast after blast inside of her (inside the condom actually), continuing to pound away until I fell exhausted atop of her.

We kissed each other for a moment and then looked in each other's eyes. Hers were full of confusion and doubt.

"Wow." She whispered finally. "That was… that was awesome. Totally bitchin'."

I smiled, kissing her nose and pulling myself out of her so the condom wouldn't come off in her pussy.

"Thank you." I said, rolling to my back next to her.

She was still looking at me. "It was almost like…, I dunno." She shook her head.

"Like what?" I asked, grabbing the condom and pulling it off neatly, not spilling so much as a drop.

"Like you were, oh, I dunno, older or something. It didn't seem like I was doing someone younger than me."

I stared at her for a moment, holding the slick condom between my fingers. I chuckled. "I'm just wise beyond my years baby. That's all."

She looked at me doubtfully as I tied a knot in the condom and stood up. "What now?" She asked. "Are we like, going together now?"

Going together? I thought, accessing my memory again for what that term entailed. Finally I remembered. Boyfriend/girlfriend type of thing. Not supposed to date anyone else. I certainly didn't want that. "No." I told her. "We were just two stoned friends having a little fun together. That's all. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?"

Relief was evident on her face. She didn't want to 'go' with anybody either. "I guess it don't." She answered, then she soured. "But I guess I'll be the school slut for a while." She looked at me as I picked up my clothes from the floor. "You know, it was worth it though. Where did you learn how to, you know, like that?"

"Oh, here and there." I answered. "But there's no reason why you have to be the school slut you know. I'm not gonna tell anyone what we did."

Her smile was cynical beyond its years. "Sure you won't." She answered. "You won't tell anyone that you're the one to bag Debbie Walker."

"I won't." I said, pulling on my pants. "For what purpose would I do that? So all of you girls can talk about what a fuckin' blabbermouth I am? How will I ever get any pussy that way? No girl's gonna fuck a loudmouth. However, if you have the reputation as someone that can keep his mouth shut no matter what… well, where do you think I learned how to do what I did?"

She looked hopeful for a moment, wanting to believe me. But then she shook her head. "Even if you do keep your mouth shut, which I doubt, Raisin and Lonnie know what we did. They won't keep theirs shut."

I shrugged. "I'll tell them you wouldn't give it up. I'll call you a fuckin' cock tease when I tell them about it, kissing on me and lettin' me feel your tits a little through your sweater, but not lettin' me go any further. They'll believe it."

"YOU are going to tell them THAT?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd just explained that there really was a Santa Clause and an Easter bunny.

I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Sure." I told her quietly. "You can trust me for that. You really can. I promise. And you don't even have to trust me. Just say you didn't do anything with me but kiss me. If I'm lying and I blab to everyone, how much worse off are you anyway?"

"I suppose." She said doubtfully.

"But do me a favor." I said.

"What?"

"Well, I know you don't believe me now, but when a few weeks go by and you find out that I kept my promise, just keep me in mind the next time you get a little horny. I can be very discrete."

"Discrete?" She asked.

"Never mind." I said, pulling on my shirt. "Just keep me in mind. And if you and some of your friends ever get to discussing things like sex with each other, and if one of them ever happens to express frustration that she can't get herself fucked without the whole school knowing about it." I smiled. "Maybe you could just mention my name to them. If you know what I mean."

She stared at me for a second and then started giggling. "Are you SURE you're only fifteen?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "The best age of your life Debbie. Believe me."

Chapter 2

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all" – PAUL SIMON

Raisin dropped me off at home about 2:30 that afternoon. It was more than a half an hour before the time I was SUPPOSED to get home from school, but I knew that both my Mom and Dad would still be at work. Debbie had already been dropped at her own house. She was walking a little funny as she headed for her front door. We all watched her ass as it retreated. The moment she was out of earshot the interrogation began.

"How was she?" Lonnie asked, nearly slobbering with excitement. "Man, I can't fuckin' believe you scored with Debbie. "

"Yeah," Raisin grinned. "What a slut. Wait'll everyone hears about this shit!"

"Fuck that bitch. " I grumbled, sinking in my seat. "She wouldn't give it up. "

"What?" They said in unison.

"But we heard you in there. " Raisin protested. "She was moanin' like a fuckin' freight train. "

I shook my head. "She's a good actress. " I told them. "All she let me do was feel her tits a little through her sweater. Every fuckin' time I tried to put my hand underneath it she'd slap it away. Fuckin' cock-tease. "

"You didn't fuck her?" Lonnie asked, crushed. "What were you doing in there all that time?"

"Just makin' out. " I said. "Believe me, I tried but that bitch is harder to get into than Fort Knox. "

They were looking at me in confusion. The rule of teenaged boys of course is that even if you didn't fuck them, you told people that you did. I could almost see the wheels of irrational logic turning in their heads. If I said that I hadn't fucked her when I could easily have claimed that I had, I therefore must not have even come close to fucking her. The thought that I might actually have bagged her and was keeping it secret was so foreign a concept to them that they were able to ignore the overwhelming evidence before them and draw the conclusion I wanted them to draw. They probably figured I was even lying about feeling her tits since some embellishment was mandatory.

"That's too fuckin' bad man. " Lonnie commiserated. "I really thought someone was gonna bag that bitch this time. "

"Nope. " I said. "The same old shit. Why do we even try?"

"Some day," Raisin vowed with all the dramatics of Scarlet O'Hara proclaiming she would never go hungry again. "That bitch is gonna give it up. "

"I doubt it. " I offered. "She's good at giving blue balls though. The cunt. "

They bid me a sad farewell as I exited the car and soon the Falcon was roaring down my street, belching huge clouds of black, stinking exhaust from its tailpipe. As they disappeared I sighed with the kind of satisfaction that only a man who has just gotten laid can display. I headed for the house thinking that being fifteen again was all right. I'd wished well.

I was appalled by what I found inside. When the door opened the sound of Van Halen cranked at top volume hit my ears. The smell of marijuana hit my nose. Tracy was sitting on the couch with Cindy and a football player from school that I recognized as Cindy's boyfriend, although I could not remember his name. Cindy and the football player were kissing each other in heated passion while Tracy was flipping through a teen magazine and pretending to ignore what was going on. A plastic bong sat on the coffee table next to a paper plate with pot in it. Pepsis and a bag of chips were sitting next to this. The bong still had tendrils of smoke curling out the top of it.

They didn't even hear me come in the house, the music was so loud. I remembered that Tracy had been busted for just such a thing during her senior year when my mother had come home from work unexpectedly and had walked in on just such a scene. God, my sister was a stupid teenager too.

I kicked the plug out of the stereo system, causing "Ain't Talkin' About Love" to wind down and die. The three people on the couch jerked almost painfully in alarm. Cindy and her boyfriend separated so fast that it looked as if they'd burned each other. Cindy's boyfriend made a grab for the pot on the table. They all stopped when they saw that it was only me. They relaxed a little.

"You scared the shit out of us!" Tracy yelled at me. "You little asshole! What the hell are you doing home now anyway?"

Cindy's boyfriend was giving me a hostile look, a look that made me wonder if another Richie type encounter was brewing.

"The same thing you are. " I told her mildly, kicking the door shut. "Cutting school and smoking weed. " I looked around the room, shaking my head sadly. "However, I'm a little smarter about the way I do it than you idiots are. "

They all gaped at me. It was an expression that I was starting to get used to. I was starting to think of it as THE LOOK.

I stared at Tracy. "What if I'd been Mom coming home from work a little early because she didn't feel good or something? That kind of shit can happen you know. Do you think Mom would call the house to let someone know she's coming home? Why would she do that? Nobody's supposed to be here. You got the music turned up so fuckin' loud you didn't even hear me open the door. The damn door wasn't even locked. You guys are a freakin' bust waiting to happen!"

Cindy and Tracy just stared at me in shock. Like I said, I had always been shy before and to them my personality would have appeared to have changed radically overnight. The old Billy would, upon interrupting their session, have simply blushed and muttered a brief apology before slinking out of the room. They did not know what to say or what to think about what I'd said. But the football player reacted as his personality instinctively commanded him to.

"What the fuck is it to you?" He asked me, glaring.

"Shut your ass ball boy. " I shot back at him. "You're in MY house and I wasn't talking to you. "

His face reddened with rage. He stood up suddenly. "What did you say to me you little pussy?"

"Jeff, leave him alone. " Cindy spoke, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back down.

He shook her arm off angrily, "Say that again to me faggot. " He challenged. "I fuckin' dare you. "

"You fuckin' dare me?" I answered mildly. "Okay. " I nodded. "I told you to shut your ass. I then made a derisive remark aimed at your meager football skills. Did you hear me that time?"

"You're dead kid. " He said, starting to move towards me.

"Jeff!" Tracy spoke now. "Leave him alone!"

Jeff continued to head towards me. He was actually planning to beat me up in my own living room in front of my sister who had invited him in there. Christ why was everyone so violent? No wonder the human race fought so many wars. "Richie Fairview told me I was dead too. " I told him. "Right before the ambulance picked him up and took him to the hospital. Would you like to join him there asshole?"

He stopped. Apparently he'd heard that story. His eyes showed immediate doubt as he stared at me. I stared back.

"Go sit your ass down. " I told him. "Before you get hurt. "

He licked his lips nervously, sparing a glance at the two girls.

"I think you'd better do what he says Jeff. " Tracy told him. She was hiding a smirk as she said it. I suddenly realized that Tracy didn't like Cindy's boyfriend too much. Interesting. Was there hope for her yet?

"You're lucky they stopped me. " Jeff finally blurted. A pretty pathetic face-saving measure I'm sure even he would agree. He returned to the couch and sat down.

"Yeah, I guess I'm lucky. " I agreed, turning to Tracy. "If I was you I'd open up some windows in this house before Mom and Dad get home. The whole place reeks of pot. Do you guys do this sort of thing a lot?"

"No. " Tracy told me, obviously lying.

"Well it's amazing you haven't been busted yet. " I told her, casting my eyes on Cindy, who was looking at me as if in awe. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose fitting sweater. I'd forgotten how pretty her eyes were. They were a deep blue, the kind of eyes you could melt in. Currently of course, they were very reddened and only about half-staff and her honey-blonde hair was in disarray from Jeff's fingers. Her neck was marred by a red hickey; Jeff's territorial mark. I supposed it was better than peeing on her like a dog with a fire hydrant. I wondered about the possibilities of Cindy. Could I do it? It would be more challenging than Debbie had been.

I gave her a seductive smile and she blushed deeply. Jeff saw it and fumed at me but didn't make a move. Finally, without another word, I headed upstairs to my room, closing the door behind me.

My room was a filthy mess. I was offended by it. During my adult years I'd lost my teenaged sloppiness and had become something of a neat freak. Though I was still feeling the effects of the marijuana I'd smoked earlier and desperately wanted to lie down and take a nap, I began picking up the room.

It took me nearly two hours to get it clean, but it was a fascinating two hours none-the-less. I came across many objects and possessions that I had not seen in years. I found places for them and by the time I finished it was quite a startling change. But there was one thing missing.

While I'd been cleaning I'd heard the sound of my father coming home. I sincerely hoped for Tracy's sake that she'd cleaned the house well enough. I guessed that she had since she and Cindy were in her room, looking through some magazines as I passed by. Jeff of course, was long gone. Both girls watched me as I went by, shutting up with whatever they'd been talking about. I smiled, especially at Cindy, who returned it weakly.

Dad was sitting in his chair and drinking a bottle of beer. The television was on, showing an early edition of the local news. Again I found myself staring at him, marveling on how young he looked, how thin. He wasn't much older than I was in a way. He caught me staring at him and looked at me.

"You okay Bill?" He asked, concern in his voice.

"Oh sure Dad. " I nodded. "I'm cool. I was just tryin' to picture you with gray hair. "

"What?" He chuckled. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, Grampa has gray hair doesn't he? It stands to reason that you will too doesn't it? I was just trying to picture what you would look like. "

"That's kind of depressing. " He smiled, sipping out of his beer. "What brought you to that subject?"

"Oh, uh, we were studying genetics in Anatomy the other day. That's a dominate trait you know?"

"I've heard that. " He answered. "What're you up to?"

"Just getting the vacuum cleaner. "

Now he really looked at me strange. "The what?"

"The vacuum cleaner. " I said. "I just got done cleaning my room and now I need to vacuum it. "

"You cleaned your room?" He asked in disbelief. "You?"

"Yeah. " I nodded. "It was pretty dirty. Why did you guys ever let me get away with being so messy anyway?"

"What?"

"Never mind. " I said, moving towards the living room closet. I opened it and the vacuum was there. "I'll bring it back in a minute. "

While I carried the appliance upstairs his puzzled look followed me up.

After I stowed the vacuum back in its closet I went back upstairs to lie down. Though I was exhausted I could not sleep. For one I was afraid. What if I went to sleep and woke up back in my other life? Was that possible? I surely didn't know. What I was dealing with here was way beyond my limited range of knowledge. My very existence back in 1982 was something I'd thought impossible but here I was. Somehow that dying Chinese man had done this to me. How I knew not. Were there any rules? I could conceive of being only allowed one day. It seemed possible that I was only allowed one waking period back here. I was not ready to return yet.

But there was also the possibility that I was stuck here for good. I had to consider that too. In fact I considered that the most likely scenario. There were many ramifications to that possibility and I needed to think them through carefully. How much did I dare to change? How much could I change?

What would happen if someone found out about what had happened to me? There were people in the world that would do almost anything to get their hands on me if my situation became known. Governments wanting to know about the next seventeen years, business people wanting to know about stock trends. I could envision my family being held hostage to get me to do their bidding.

My initial thought had been to confide in Tracy. But I wondered if that was so wise. Tracy was after all, a teenager full of teenage stupidity as my earlier discovery graphically pointed out. I no longer thought that she could be trusted with a secret of this magnitude. But at the same time I needed to make sure that she did not get in the car with that college student on her graduation night. I had vowed to myself that I would prevent her death even if I could change nothing else on my return trip. That conviction was as strong in me as ever. Tracy would NOT die that night. One way or another I would see to it.

But that brought me back to the one night theory. If I couldn't tell her my secret, but if I was only allowed one night here, how could I make sure of her survival? I thought about that one for a while and finally I came up with something.

That left me to ponder the other questions in my mind. Suppose I was here for good. What else could I change? And how could I better myself and my family? I certainly did not want to end up right back where I was in seventeen years. I wanted to do things differently this time. But how? What could I do?

I reluctantly admitted to myself that I would lose Becky, my daughter in the process. This thought hurt me more than anything ever had before, but it was simply inevitable. Becky had been a very pleasant side effect of a brutal mistake that I'd made in my previous life. I simply could not, no matter how much I loved my daughter, repeat that mistake. I couldn't. I told myself that I wasn't killing her. She would just never exist in the first place. My mind was able to draw a distinction between those two things; a shaky one, but a distinction.

I lay there for more than two hours, until my mother called me down for dinner. I had a rough plan of sorts in mind by then. It was a plan that would be extensively modified and revised, but it was a plan. I felt better just having one.

Dinner was my mom's tacos. They were fried in grease and would be politically incorrect by today's standards. Each one had to have at least a hundred grams of fat. But God they were delicious. I chowed down five of them, shoveling in mounds of rice and beans as accompaniment and then washing the mess down with two Coke's from the refrigerator. The only thing that would have made them better would have been a pitcher of margaritas but I figured mom probably wouldn't whip up a batch for me.

She seemed gratified to see me eat so much. It probably put her worries about drugs aside for the moment. I remembered that I was living in the midst of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" era and that my mom had had her drug worries fueled by the little pamphlets that this era produced. The pamphlets always had "warning signs" that your kids were on drugs printed in them. I remembered how bizarre those so called warning signs had seemed to me even on my first trip through fifteen. A big one had been "loss of appetite". What was up with that? Maybe if you'd moved all the way through marijuana and had worked your way to a two hundred-dollar a day cocaine habit you would have a loss of appetite. But most teenagers simply smoked pot. Loss of appetite was most definitely not a symptom of marijuana use. They should have put "greatly increased appetite" instead. They should have put in "excessive use of Visine" as well.

I also remembered that the pamphlets had so called terminology for drugs. The theory was that parents would overhear their kids using these terms and would therefore know they were on drugs. Right, as if the kids would talk about drugs in front of their parents. I remembered having big laughs with my friends as we read these pamphlets, usually while we were stoned. Those that had used drugs in the previous generation had obviously transcribed the terminology. They said that common terms for marijuana were: Tea, Mary Jane, leaf, wonder green, and other such nonsense. None of the terms were current. In my age they called it pot, buds, herb, smoke, KGB, greenbud, and weed; none of which were listed in Nancy's pamphlets. I could imagine the laughter that would have resulted in the eighties if a kid had asked someone if they had any Mary Jane or tea for sale. I was forced to wonder if there had ever been a case of some kid being drawn off the path of drug abuse as a result of those "informational" pamphlets.

Dinner was consumed and another awkward moment occurred when Mom asked me a question just as we were about to start clearing the dishes from the table.

"Billy," She said, "Did you clean Anita Browling's windows yesterday like you told her you would?"

I looked up at her, searching my memory banks again. I came up with who Anita Browling was easily enough. She was a divorced neighbor in her late twenties that lived two houses over. She'd split with her husband sometime around the time I was twelve or so and I remembered Dad giving vague explanations about how Mr. Browling had 'found someone else' and left her (for some reason my parents had assumed that Tracy and I would be upset by their DIVORCE). My parents had, for whatever reason, kind of adopted Anita after her husband left her. She used to come over for dinner once a week. She had two small children that Tracy was volunteered to baby-sit frequently. I was always volunteered to mow her lawn for her since she professed not to know how to run a mower, or to do other small tasks such as cleaning her windows. Both of us were forbidden to take any money from her for our services, a point of resentment that had drawn my sister and I together a little in our teens.

The image in my mind of her was of a slightly chunky woman with large breasts. She was a brunette with short hair and long legs. She would meet another man at about the time of my high school graduation. About the time I moved away from home she would marry him and disappear from Mom and Dad's lives. I remembered thinking back then that I wouldn't mind doing her. But she wasn't so attractive that you could admit to your peers that you would do her, if you can dig that. I also remembered how she used to watch as I mowed the lawn, always dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. I remembered catching glimpses of her bra-clad tits when she'd bent over to pull a weed or something. My adult mind, which hadn't thought of her in years, suddenly realized that she'd been displaying herself for me. Had she been hoping for a little action from a teenaged boy?

Before I could follow that train of thought too far I came back to the original question. Had I cleaned her windows yesterday? I had no freaking idea if I had or hadn't. My mother was looking at me, awaiting a response.

"Uh… " I started, trying to think this through. Had I cleaned her windows?

"Bill?" Mom said, deepening her voice. "I told you the other day they were getting really dirty after the windstorm we had. You TOLD me you'd do it before it snowed again. "

"Uh," That gave me a little more information. I was a horrible procrastinator as a teen. Chances are I hadn't done it the first time I'd been asked. "Uh, no Mom. " I finally spat out. "Sorry. I forgot. "

"You forgot?" She asked.

"Sorry. " I squeaked.

"Billy, that is just so typical of you… " She began. Her lecture went on for nearly two minutes. I gave her uh huhs, and okays in all the right places, amazed that I still had the ability to do that after all these years. I sincerely promised that my first stop after school would be Anita Browling's house. Mom seemed satisfied. I found myself hoping that Anita would be home. I knew something that the other Billy didn't.

After dinner I went up to my room. I opened my backpack and pulled out my Algebra book. I found some blank paper and a pencil and then opened the book to the first chapter. I began studying.

Tracy had gone out somewhere after dinner and I heard her return about 8:30.

I continued to study as I heard her go to her room and slam the door. Downstairs the television was on as Mom and Dad watched whatever sitcom was on in the eighties. I could hear their sporadic laughter drifting up from time to time as well as muffled comments that I couldn't understand but were probably commentary on how TV wasn't the same as it had been a few years ago. I had managed to get a basic concept of the Algebra in the past few hours, working my way to the test questions of Chapter 2. The homework that had been assigned I'd finally figured out and completed.

With a headache behind my eyes I closed up my book and stowed it in my backpack. I still had assignments to complete in my other classes but I decided to catch them up tomorrow. I was studied out.

I changed into a pair of sweat pants from my dresser, wondrous at the fact that I was donning a piece of clothing that would not have even come above my thighs the day before my legs had\would get so much bigger. I put on the longest, baggiest T-shirt I could find and then walked downstairs, passing the living room without even drawing a glance from my parents. A moment of searching led me to a bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen cupboard. I grabbed three of them and then opened the refrigerator. I pulled out one of my father's bottles of Budweiser and stuffed it down the front of my sweats. The coolness chilled my skin but I ignored it. The T-shirt covered the large bulge the bottle made in my crotch. I dashed back upstairs and went to the door of Tracy's room.

Music was playing from inside. Rick Springfield this time. Jessie's Girl was the cut. Good old Rick. The former soap opera star turned singer who went after the easiest market to impress; teenaged girls, leading the way for Bon Jovi and other such musical travesties. Within two years, I was gratified to remember, he would fade into a land that was even beyond obscurity. The world would be better off for it I knew. I knocked on Tracy's door.

"What?" Came a voice from the other side.

Instead of answering I knocked again, not wanting to draw the attention of our parents.

The music turned down and the door creaked open about six inches, enough to allow me to see Tracy's impatient face. She was dressed in a long T-shirt that showed off her legs. Her auburn hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders. For the first time I marveled that my sister was very attractive. No wonder the college student had gone after her.

"What?" She hissed disgustedly at me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute. " I told her. "Can I come in?"

"About what?" She asked. "About that crap you were spouting today in school?"

"Yeah. " I nodded, seeing in her face that she was fearful about talking on that subject. "About that. "

She threw the door open. "Come in. " She said finally.

Her room was a pretty neat for a teenager. The bed was made, her books were all stowed in their proper places. Her dresser was cleaned off; all of her makeup in a little tray. The only clutter was the Rick Springfield album cover, which sat next to her stereo and her rumpled clothes that she'd recently removed. She shut the door behind me as I entered.

"Can I sit down?" I asked her as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She waved me impatiently to the chair next to her dresser. The same chair she'd been combing her hair at this morning. I pulled it out and planted myself in it. I pulled the beer out of my pants and set it on the desk. With an expert spin of the cap, it was opened. The three Tylenol went into my mouth and were washed down by the glorious taste of the cold beer. I sighed at the first swallow and quickly took another. Tracy watched all this without speaking, without even asking why I had one of Dad's beers.

"Say your piece and get out. " She told me. "I wanna listen to the rest of this album. "

For the second time that day I interrupted her music by unplugging the stereo. Rick managed "I wishh IIIII haaaaaaaad JJ… " And then stopped, his voice deepening to silence.

"You dick!" She proclaimed. "Why did you… "

"Tracy listen to me for a minute. " I interrupted. "I know you're expected to act a certain way in the presence of your younger brother. You're expected to treat me with contempt in order to show how superior you are. I concede your superiority, okay?"

"What?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Your friends are nowhere around and I won't tell them that you actually allowed me in your room, allowed me to shut off your precious Rick Springfield album. You can go back to treating me like shit as soon as I leave here but for now I need you to listen very carefully to me and to remember what I'm about to tell you. If you could drop the snotty attitude for a few minutes I'd appreciate it greatly. "

She stared. Finally she asked, "What's happened to you Bill? You've been acting strange all day. It's like you're a different person. "

"Never mind that. " I told her. "Tracy, do you remember when we were little kids?"

"Yes. " She answered carefully.

"We were very close back then. We were playmates. We used to conspire together. You used to call me 'little brother' and I used to call you 'big sister', do you remember?"

"No. " She shook her head, but casting her eyes aside in a way that told me she was lying.

"Well you did. " I told her. "We were best friends until about the time you started junior high school. From then on I was the object of your scorn. I understand that Tracy, I really do. You discovered boys, you discovered peer pressure. You grew out of me. It's a natural thing. And I developed interests of my own too. But the fact is, we're still brother and sister and some day we'll be close again. Can you understand that?"

She seemed about to say something snotty once more. Something like, 'as far as I'm concerned you'll be a piece of shit until you die'. But she paused at the last second and her eyes softened. "Yes Billy. " She answered. "I guess that some day we will be. "

A small triumph but a triumph in any case. "Good. " I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Now here's a harder one. Despite our fighting with each other do you realize that we actually love each other as brother and sister?"

She opened her mouth. This time I was sure she going to say something foul.

"Again," I said before she could. "No one else is here in the room and I'll never tell anyone what you say. We don't have to get into any deep philosophical discussions. I just want an acknowledgement that, as brother and sister, we love each other. We may not always LIKE each other, but we love each other. Right?"

She licked her lips nervously. "I suppose. " She finally allowed.

"Okay. " I nodded, taking another drink of my beer. "On that note I want you to listen to me very carefully for a minute. I'm going to tell you something very important. The most important thing you will ever hear in your life. Please don't ask me to explain. I can't do that right now. You probably will think I'm nuts but that doesn't matter as long as you REMEMBER what I'm about to say. Remember it well. "

"Okay. " She said carefully.

I took a deep breath, downing another large drink of beer. I passed the bottle to Tracy and she looked at it for a second and then took a swig. I took faith in the fact that she didn't pause to wipe off my saliva first.

"Now hopefully I'll be able to explain this thing further to you before the time comes. " I said. "But there's a chance I won't. There's a chance I'll be the same old Billy you're used to tomorrow. If that is the case I want you to remember this. "

"Billy, what are you… "

"Shhh. " I hushed her. "On the night you graduate from high school you will tell Mom and Dad that you are going to a party at Cindy's house. That will be a lie. What you will be doing instead will be going to a frat party at the university. "

"Billy, what?" She cried, her flesh breaking out in goose bumps.

"Listen. " I admonished. "I can't explain further right now. I don't even know what the best way of telling you this is. But you have to listen to me. A guy named David Mitchell will want to take you to this frat party. He will be driving a 77 Camero. He will be a football player at the college and very good looking. Now you will meet him about a month before graduation but it's graduation night you need to worry about. Do not, under any circumstances, get in that car with him that night. No matter what you have to do, no matter what lies you have to tell, do not do it. Your life depends upon this Tracy. Don't do it no matter what. "

"Billy, you're kinda scaring me. " She said.

"Good. " I answered. "That's my intent. Lisa Sanchez will be part of the group that gets in that car. Her boyfriend will be another college student named Rick Manchester. "

"Lisa Sanchez?" Tracy asked. "She's a cheerleader. I don't hang out with her. "

"You will. " I told her. "I'm giving you the names of all the people in the car so that you'll know when the time comes, that my information is accurate. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep you out of there. If you can keep Lisa out of there too, so much the better, but the important thing is that YOU do not get in that car on that night. "

I was gratified to see that she was scared shitless by what I was saying. Good. I figured she would obey me even a year and half later when all of the circumstances that I described came together. At least I hoped she would.

"What happens if I get in the car?" She asked me.

"Dave will be drunk that night. " I said. "He will drive the car into the Spokane River from the levee road near the falls and you and Lisa will drown before you can get out. " I took a deep breath, tears forming in my eyes as I remembered my mother coming to my bedroom at four o'clock in the morning in tears, waking me up to tell me that there'd been a horrible accident. Please, let me be successful here. There was more to the story of course. Dave would be charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. His sentence would be suspended and he would go on to play football in college, prompting my parents to become victim's rights activists; a pursuit they'd still been active in at the time of my recycling.

Tracy was looking pale as she tried to digest what I was telling her. "Bill, how can you know this? Where did you get this information? Did you have a psychic flash or something?"

"I can't tell you now. " I told her. "It's too early. I'll tell you later if I can. "

"But… "

"Tracy, just remember. " I said. "Just remember and don't get in that car that night. "

"I won't. " She promised.

I smiled and nodded. If I was only here for one day then I'd done the best I could do. If I woke up tomorrow back in 1999 then Tracy would probably still be alive. That would be the best purpose of the gift I'd been given.

Although getting laid had been nice too.

I made sure my alarm clock was set for the proper time and turned it on. I then lay down and turned out the lights. For the longest time I still couldn't sleep, fearful of what I'd find upon awakening. But at last my mind was able to shut down and I drifted off.

CLICK. "So if you're tired of the saaaaame old story. Ohhhhh, turn some pages. I'll be here when you are ready, to roll with the changes…" Came the voice of Kevin Cronin from my clock radio the next morning. REO Speedwagon. Another blast from the past. A song I hadn't heard in years. My eyes opened and I saw the now familiar confines of my teenaged bedroom. I was still here! I felt like shouting with joy. Still here!

Tracy was looking someone haggard as she combed her hair at her desk. Her face was pale and her eyes had bags beneath them. She looked up at me as I headed to the shower.

"Morning Trace. " I told her.

"Morning. " She said slowly, her eyes trying to read my face.

"Sleep well?" I asked her.

"No. " She told me. "I was awake most of the night. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares. "

I nodded. "I'm sorry about that. " I said. "They'll pass. Just remember what I said. "

"I will. " She told me. "I don't think I could ever forget it. "

"Good. " I muttered, walking to the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

Dad, as usual had the newspaper before him at the breakfast table. As I slurped down my cereal I asked him if I could see the business section.

"The business section?" He asked, raising his brow again.

"Yeah. " I told him. "I'm just curious about something. "

He shrugged and handed it over, going back to his perusal of the front page while I opened my section to the stock market report. I scanned through the list of publicly traded stocks for a few minutes, happening across several that seemed good prospects but, most importantly, not seeing the one that would be an absolute killer investment. I smiled to myself. So it wasn't on the stock market yet. Good.

"Find what you were looking for?" Dad asked as I sat the section back down in his pile.

"I think so. " I told him. "Have you ever considered investing in the stock market?"

He lowered his paper and looked at me, his eyes taking in my face, finally concluding that I wasn't joking. "Not really. " He answered. "I have my pension plan from the school district. The stock market seems like kind of a gamble. "

"In a way it is. " I agreed. "But if you could pick the right stocks and invest heavily in them, you could really make some money, couldn't you?"

"Ahh," He said. "But that's the trick. You have to pick the right stocks. If you pick the wrong ones, your money is down the toilet. It would take either someone with a lot more market savvy than I have or a genuine psychic to make a killing in the market. "

"A genuine psychic huh?" I smiled. Tracy, who had been silent during this exchange, gave me a sharp look.

"But as far as I know, such creatures are rare. " Dad said.

"I suppose. " I said. "But if someone DID have knowledge about which stocks were going to go sky-high in the future, that someone COULD make quite a bit of money. Couldn't they?"

"Well sure. " Dad answered. "It's a nice fantasy. Suppose you knew that say, oh, AT amp;T was going to go through the roof next year. If you knew that, you could invest every penny you had in it. When it skyrocketed, you could sell it off at enormous profit. But unfortunately, we don't know that information, do we?"

"I guess not. " I said, my mind whirring a mile a minute. "But it IS a nice fantasy. "

"So where were you yesterday dude?" Mike asked me as we walked to school that morning. The snow on the ground was almost completely melted and the sun was high in the sky. It was still a little cold but on the whole it was a beautiful Eastern Washington late winter day.

"Oh I met up with Raisin and Lonnie. " I said absently. "We went over to Raisin's house and smoked some buds. "

"Yeah?" He asked, obviously hurt that he hadn't been there.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Debbie was there too. I got to make out with her a little. "

"With Debbie?" He asked. "The cock-tease?"

"That's her. " I affirmed. "She cock-teased me damn near to death. "

He asked for details and I provided him with the story. I knew that would serve to reinforce the story that Lonnie and Raisin would pass around and therefore protect Debbie's reputation.

When I was finished he said, "It's too bad you didn't get to fuck her. " He put on a sophisticated look. "I fucked her once you know. "

"Oh really?" I asked, as if I believed him.

"Yep. At a party at Nick Costigan's one night. I had some weed and she wanted some. I told her she wasn't getting any until she gave up the puss. "

He then went on to describe his mythical session with her. Of course he'd made her come six or seven times until she'd begged him for more. He'd then fucked her up the ass, making her come an additional three or four times before he finally 'shot my wad' in her ass. After that she'd always wanted a repeat performance but he'd always turned her down. She was nice in a pinch he told me.

"How come you never told me about this BEFORE?" I asked, unable to help myself.

He blanched for a minute. I'd just asked a forbidden question. When you were told a pussy story you weren't supposed to question its validity. They might not listen to YOUR pussy stories if you did that.

"She asked me not to tell anyone. " He answered. "She didn't want anyone knowing she fucked. "

"I see. " I nodded. "So why did you tell me just now?"

"Well," He stammered. "It's been a while and I know you won't tell anyone. "

"Ahhh. " I nodded. "I get it. "

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Finally I asked, "Mike, do you ever think about what you're gonna do AFTER high school?"

"What?"

"After high school?" I repeated. "It's gonna end some day you know. What are you gonna do with your life?"

"You sound like a fuckin' school counselor. " He informed me, almost angrily.

"High school ain't ever gonna end man. It's a fuckin' prison. "

"In a way. " I allowed. "But some day you'll be freed from it. You ever think about what comes next?"

"No. " He said, his tone telling me to drop the subject. "I don't. "

Mr. Achmed was surprised to see me hand in homework to him that morning. He was even more surprised to find it was correct. He expressed his pleasure with my work and made a point of calling on me during class. Most of the time I managed to come up with the right answers to his questions. Instead of making me happy however, it kind of pissed me off.

Now that I was supplying the right answers to his questions he was paying attention to me. But before, when I was flunking all of his tests and getting an F or a D in his class, I was simply ignored. The same was true for my other teachers. Now I'm not a screaming liberal that likes to blame everyone but the person responsible, but there is a certain amount of responsibility instilled in a teacher isn't there? Why hadn't I been helped along before this? Why had I been allowed to simply sit in class and flunk without even a single pulling aside by a teacher? Cynicism was the answer of course.

It was the answer, but it wasn't an excuse. I had been a paramedic and, except for cops, you would be hard pressed to find a more cynical group of people. I had been called out for so much bullshit in the course of my career that I assumed everyone was full of shit until proven otherwise. People called us for hangnails, for colds, for ear infections that their kids had. And they reported these things as finger amputations, difficulty breathing, and head injuries. But never had I acted upon this cynicism. If someone said they were having chest pain, then they were having chest pain and I treated it appropriately even if they were twenty-five year olds only trying to get out of work for the day. If someone said they were short of breath than they were short of breath, even if they were speaking in complete paragraphs. If you acted on your cynicism you would be right probably ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But that one time you were wrong would bite you in the ass hard.

My teachers obviously assumed that trying to reach a disinterested student was a waste of time. Most of the time it probably would have been. But sometimes it wouldn't have been. Shouldn't they have been extending at least a little effort when someone like me simply sat in their classrooms and paid no attention? How many people that might have been turned around had just been allowed to sink into the abyss because the teachers assumed they were lost causes and directed their full attention to those that showed an interest in their subjects?

I was surprised by how strongly I felt about this subject and was quite pissed off by the time I left Algebra and headed for American History. My feelings were reinforced when I explained to the teacher that I didn't have my homework that day but that I would turn it in tomorrow.

"Fine Billy. " She said absently, moving onto the next student, obviously not believing that I was going to turn in anything the next day. Granted I did not make a habit of turning in the homework but had she ever talked to me about this? No. Had she ever called my parents and talked to them about it? No. To her I was a lost cause, unworthy of her attention. She would expend no efforts towards me unless I showed HER that I was interested in her subject. Why wasn't she trying to GET me interested in her subject? Why was she simply letting me sit there every day? What system was encouraging this?

Her lecture that day was on the role of Southern abolitionists in the beginnings of the drive towards the Civil War. She portrayed them as saintly people, dedicated to the cause of abolishing the evil institution of slavery. She implied to the class that they were right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in American History. About halfway through I could take no more. I raised my hand.

She ignored it for quite some time but finally was forced to call on me.

"Yes Billy?" She said. "Do you have a question?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I'm just curious about something. You just told us that the abolitionists used to use protests to influence those southern slaveholders. Exactly what kind of protests are you talking about?"

She gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said, "Well, they used a variety of methods. Boycotts of services and that sort of thing. "

"That sort of thing?" I said. "Isn't it true that they used to attack slave holders and their families in the middle of the night? Burning down their houses and hacking the men and even the women and children to death?"

She nearly choked but she composed herself quickly. "Well, there were some cases of the more fanatical elements doing things like that of course. But that was rare. Usually they used the other measures I talked about. You have to understand that these people felt very strongly about anti-slavery. About it's wrongness. It's only natural that some of them went off the deep end as it were. "

"Really?" I pressed further. "I actually read that grotesque violence was more the rule than the exception. I guess I must have read wrong. But to answer your other point about them feeling that it was wrong. Don't you think that these abolitionists were motivated more by economic factors than religious or moralistic ones?"

She was now speechless.

"I mean think about it. Who were the southern abolitionists? Poor whites for the most part, right?"

"Well yes," She nodded, "But… "

"Poor whites without jobs. How could they compete with slave labor? They couldn't. Isn't it true they also used to kill the slaves when they would attack a plantation? Hardly sounds like people that are just interested in freeing the slaves now, does it?"

"Well again Billy," She said firmly. "What you are talking about was the exception, not the rule. There were SOME incidents as you described but usually they used economic measures like boycotts to achieve their ends. And many of them were imprisoned or killed by the corrupt southern system for their efforts. "

"Well of course they were. " I snorted. "They were destroying valuable property and threatening a near-perfect economic system. The plantation owners ran the law after all. I imagine they came down rather hard on them when they caught them. "

She was actually flustered by what I'd said. "Well that's a very interesting point of view Billy. " She told me. "But I think we've discussed it enough now. If you don't mind, I'll get back to the lecture now. "

"Sure. " I smiled.

"Okay," She said, "Now back in 1858 there was a group called… "

Though I had no homework for Mrs. Crookshank either, she did not ignore me in class as she usually did. She remembered my dissertation on the blood cell the previous day and began probing at me to see if it was simply a well-studied joke on my part or not. Her lecture was on the major arteries of the body and she fired her first shot less than two minutes into it.

"Now can anyone tell me the name of the arteries that feed the kidneys?" She asked and then, without waiting for anyone to put up his or her hand, turned to me. "Billy, maybe you can tell us?"

She thought she had me I'm sure. I'd been doing what I usually did in her class; watching her alluring form move back and forth and not looking as if I was paying the least bit of attention to her words.

"Mesenteric. " I said in a bored voice, causing her to give me THE LOOK.

"Yes. " She nodded, obviously taken aback a bit, and then went on.

She called on me multiple other times during the lecture, making the questions harder and harder. We covered the carotids, the circle of Willis, and all of the coronary arteries. Some of the questions I knew were not even part of her lecture, were not even part of high school curriculum. I came up with the answers every time, spouting them out in a monotone voice with an expressionless face. It quickly became clear to the entire class that some sort of battle was going on between Mrs. Crookshank and I. Finally, bored, I conceded the battle, telling her I did not know the answer to a question she asked. The look on her face was of weak triumph and more than a little relief.

She wrapped up her lecture just before the bell rang and assigned us our homework for the next day. As the class filed out she called, "Billy?"

I turned to her questioningly.

"Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?"

"Sure. " I said, walking over.

Her eyes looked me up and down as I stood before her desk. "You seem to have quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy and physiology. " She almost accused.

I shrugged. "I like to read. " I said.

"Really?" She said. "What books have you read?"

"Oh the usual. " I told her. "Gray's Anatomy, A Physician's Guide to A amp;P, stuff like that. "

"You've read them?" She found this hard to believe.

"Yep. " I nodded. "Fascinating reading. I've even read your textbook a little. It's not bad but it oversimplifies things a little, wouldn't you say?"

She swallowed deeply, took a deep breathe, and then said, "Billy, I majored in Biology in college and I have an extensive background in A amp;P. I asked you questions today that are well beyond high school level knowledge and you answered every one correctly except one. "

"I only pretended I didn't know that one. " I told her. "I felt you were, shall we say, singling me out, and I wanted you to stop. " I smiled cynically. "Kind of unprofessional for a teacher wouldn't you say?"

She dismissed the subject of her professionalism, or lack thereof, with a shake of her head. "I see. So you're telling me that you've known the answers to my questions all of this time, but that you haven't answered any of them, either in class or on your tests or in your homework until yesterday?"

I shrugged again. "What can I say?"

"What can you say?" She asked, getting a little angry now. "This makes no sense. Why would you do such a thing?"

"Well Mrs. Crookshank," I told her. "I'm what's known as a classic underachiever. That means I have above average intelligence and good reasoning ability but that I am bored to death by high school because the curriculum is so scaled-down that the work is not challenging to me. This sets up a vicious cycle in which I stop listening and doing the work and therefore get far behind and fail many classes. It's mostly my fault of course, but the system itself is also partially to blame since it sets such absurdly low standards in the first place in an attempt to pad the statistics. I mean, when regional test scores are low, what do you people in the education business do? Do you beef up the learning or reevaluate your teaching methods? No. What you do is scale down the curriculum and lower the standards for passing, therefore making it easier for those "struggling" students to pass, but boring the crap out of those of us who would probably benefit from harder, more challenging classes. What then happens is that many of what could potentially be your best students simply don't give a damn while many of the less intelligent and less worthy ones have their good grades spoon fed to them by teaching them with Dick and Jane methods. "

She gaped at me. I knew I'd hit upon the very subject that line teachers like her had bitched about for years to their administration. In a few years, after several lawsuits about people graduating at a functionally illiterate level while promising students were actually dropping out, education reform would hit the State of Washington like a sledgehammer, improving things remarkably. I almost wished I could tell her that. She would still be teaching when it occurred. But I didn't.

"I read psychology too. " I told her instead, heading out the door.

I ran into Debbie at lunch. She giggled over to me and smiled. I greeted her, looking her up and down, remembering what her young body had felt like naked beneath mine.

"Word has it I'm the biggest cock-tease in the school. " She told me.

"Well what do you know about that?" I smiled. "Better than being the biggest slut, isn't it?"

She nodded, giggling again. "All the girls are asking me why I made out with you. "

"Yeah?" I grinned. "What you tell 'em?"

"That you were a totally awesome kisser. The best. "

"Thanks. " I said gratefully, wondering how long it would be until one of the other stoner girls decided to try for herself. "How are you today?"

She smiled shyly. "I could use another 'kiss' myself. " She said, blushing.

I chuckled. "I got something to do after school today, but why don't you give me your phone number? Maybe I'll give you a call on Saturday. "

She handed a piece of paper over to me. She'd already taken the time to write her number down. "Call me ANYTIME. " She said, walking away.

Period four, which I hadn't gone to yesterday, was Driver's Education. I was gratified to see that at least they took this subject very seriously. The information, though very familiar to me, was not the least bit scaled down. Period five was PE. It was spent learning the finer points of basketball. And though I enjoyed seeing all of the high school girls jumping around in their school sweats and T-shirts, I was no better at sports than I had ever been. I did enough to get by and let the rest ride.

As I dressed in the locker room some of Richie Fairview's cronies were in there. Usually they were the terror of the locker room. They eyed me nervously and came nowhere near me. When they started to approach some poor freshman slob, probably intending to make him cry just for the fun of it, I gave them a glare and they immediately found something else to do. I smiled to myself. Maybe I couldn't change the world, but I was doing a little bit at least.

Period six, the final period of the day was English. The subject was paragraph writing. I listened blandly and noted down my homework. I kept my mouth shut. When the bell rang I shouldered my backpack, found Mike, and headed for home.

Shortly after arriving home I gathered up a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Tracy had been lying on the couch flipping through a rock music magazine and had only grunted a reply to my greeting when I'd come in the house. However when she saw me heading out the door with the cleaning supplies she favored me with a pitying look.

"Going to clean Anita's windows?" She asked me.

I nodded, putting on a look of resigned disgust. "Yep. You know how it is. "

"Yeah," She nodded. "I know how it is. I gotta watch her little brats on Saturday night. " She shook her head in disgust. "Saturday fucking night! Can you believe the nerve of Mom and Dad? Volunteering me for that shit on Saturday night. And do you know why she needs a babysitter that night?"

"Why?" I asked, pausing in the doorway.

"Because she's going to a party. A party! Well what the hell do they think I was gonna do? I'm tired of them springing this crap on me at the last minute. I have a life too. "

I smiled. "Yes you do. " I told her. "Let me talk to her. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing anything Saturday, maybe she'll let me baby-sit instead. "

"You?" Tracy asked with horror. "You can't baby-sit. "

"Why not?" I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.

"Because you're a boy!"

"So? What's that got to do with anything? Why do girls automatically make good babysitters while boys are untrustworthy?"

"Well," She tried to come up with something and failed. "Just because. Boys aren't as responsible as girls are. "

"Oh we're not, are we? Why is that?"

"Because," She said, "If a boy was left alone in a house he'd do all kinds of things. "

I started laughing.

"What?" She asked.

"When you were babysitting her kids," I asked, "Did you ever drink her booze?"

"No. " Tracy said indignantly.

"Oh come on Tracy. " I chided.

"Well maybe once or twice. " She admitted.

"And did you ever have your boyfriend over to her house?"

"Well, yes. "

"And did you ever smoke weed over there and make out on the couch? Or maybe use her bedroom for a little… "

"All right!" She yelled, laughing. "You made your point. At least to me anyway. But Mom and Dad and Anita are never going to buy it. "

"I'm just offering. " I told her. "I'll float the idea by Anita while I'm over there. And Mom and Dad will go along if Anita does. Don't worry, I'm good at talking people into things. And if it doesn't work, you're no worse off are you?"

"I guess not. " She answered, her demeanor brightening. "Well thanks Bill. I hope you can talk her into it. " She chuckled. "It's kinda hard to picture you babysitting though. "

"Kids love me. " I assured her, "And I love them. I'll be fine. " I headed for the door and then paused, "By the way, what are her kids' names anyway?"

Anita Browling's house was a single story with a small lawn and small back yard. Like all the houses in the subdivision, it had been built about 1970 or so, during a major growth spurt for the Spokane area. Like many of the other houses on the block, the paint was peeling off due to the extremes of the weather. I knew that at some point in the near future I would be volunteered to paint the house for her. Was that this coming summer? I figured it would be. I knew, looking at the paint that it hadn't been done yet and I also knew that I'd done it before Tracy's death. It had\would take me nearly two weeks in the hot sun to complete.

Anita was home when I knocked. I remembered that she worked early in the morning, Tracy often had to get up at 5:00 AM to go baby-sit on vacation days, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was she did. She was wearing a pair of dark slacks that hid the form of her slightly large hips and a button-up blouse that showed off her large breasts nicely. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She smiled warmly as she saw me standing there with my cleaning supplies in hand.

"Billy. " She greeted, throwing open the door and allowing me entry. "Did you come to do the windows today? You're such a sweetie. "

"No problem. " I said, smiling back. "I'll have 'em squeaky clean in no time. "

Her two children (Ryan and Jennifer, Ryan and Jennifer, my mind repeated to me), were coloring in books at her coffee table. They both looked up at me for a moment and then went back to what they were doing. The living room was a little cluttered with toys and so forth but remarkably neat for a woman with two children. The television was turned off and the stereo was turned on. Barbara Striesand was singing about love, how it was ageless and evergreen, whatever the hell that meant.

"I really appreciate you doing this for me Billy," Anita was saying. "They get so dirty during the winter and I have such a hard time climbing on the ladder you know. "

"I'm happy to do it. " I assured her, "Where should I start?"

I got the ladder out of her garage and began doing the outsides first, moving from one to the other, scraping and wiping off the accumulation of dirt, grime, road salt, and all of the other shit that floats around in our air or is blown forcefully through it during the winter. Anita stayed in the house for this portion although I caught glimpses of her through the windows when she happened to be in a room that I was cleaning. I watched her whenever I saw her, checking out her form and imagining the possibilities. Though she was slightly chunky, there was nothing in the world wrong with that. Her skin looked soft, her face pretty, and she had beautiful breasts that bounced nicely when she walked. Sure, a teenager wouldn't admit he desired her, such were the commandments of peer pressure, but an adult would have no problem with her whatsoever. And I was most definitely an adult.

She waved at me whenever she happened to catch me looking in at her, or smiled at the very least, but there was no overt flirtation. I began to wonder if my mind was remembering things correctly. Was I confusing my previous masturbation fantasies with reality?

When I went in the house to do the inside of the windows it was only a minute or two before I got my first clue. I was up on the stepladder doing the living room window and she came up to offer me a soda to drink. As she handed it to me I was looking down at her. She had undone the top button of her blouse, allowing me to look straight down the front of it. I could see the mass of her white breasts contained in a flimsy, lacy bra. I was certain that the top button had not been undone earlier and I was also certain, as a fifteen year old would NOT have been, that she was well aware of the view she was giving me. She was showing herself to me. But for what purpose?

"Thank you. " I smiled, taking the soda and swigging out of it. I then handed it back to her. "Could you set it over there for me?" I asked, pointing at a coffee table next to the ladder.

"Sure," She replied, taking it from my hand. When she bent over to set it down gravity pulled her breasts away from her body, as well as pulling the blouse away from her tits. This allowed me a fine view indeed. She caught me looking as she stood back up and I turned my head away, as a teenager would do. There was no sense tipping my hand, was there?

As I moved from window to window I grew more and more certain that she was deliberately showing herself to me. Why was she doing this? I wondered. Was she just teasing a teenager? Or did she desire something more? I didn't know. Though my memories of her little shows were correct I also remembered that she had never made any attempt to actually seduce me. What should I do next? How could I find out safely?

As I cleaned I also chatted and talked to her two kids, remembering my promise to Tracy. Jennifer was four and Ryan was six. I truly do love children and they were cute ones. I applied all of the skills I'd picked up in my thirty-two years charming them. The responded to me well, obviously impressing Anita with my rapport.

"Your kids are really cute. " I told her at one point, and she beamed at me.

But the kids also prevented me from seeing how far she was willing to go with her little game. She was an attentive and responsible mother. I knew instinctively that she would do nothing while they were awake. That thought led to a plan.

"What time do you and Jenny have to go to bed?" I asked Ryan playfully.

He pouted. "Eight o'clock on school nights. " He said. "And we're not even tired then!"

"That's a bummer. " I told him, marking the time in my head. "Your mommy's a real meanie, isn't she?"

"Yeah!" They agreed together, giggling and making their mommy giggle too.

While I cleaned her bedroom windows she was folding her laundry on the bed and chatting with me about this and that. She asked about school and I had to search my mind for answers since I'd only spent two days in the place. As far as I know I said nothing inappropriate. When I finished the window I stepped down from the ladder and spied the doorway that led to the master bathroom. That would be HER bathroom.

"Do you mind if I use your restroom?" I said, nodding towards the door.

"Sure. " She said, waving me in that direction.

I went inside and closed the door. After emptying my bladder into her toilet I buttoned up my pants prior to flushing. When my pants were secure I pushed the handle and used the noise of the toilet to cover the sound of me opening up her medicine cabinet. I took a look inside, quickly flitting my eyes over the shelves full of Tylenol, old antibiotics, old codeine, and various over the counter remedies. I spotted what I was looking for on the bottom shelf. A square plastic case with little white pills and occasional rows of pink ones, which were sugar pills I knew, imbedded in it. Each of the pills was in a spot marked with the day of the week. I picked it up for a second, seeing both that she was current and that she was not due for her period for more than a week. I smiled. I would have had to come up with another plan if she had not been on some sort of birth control. And being able to predict her period was a bonus I hadn't counted on.

When I emerged from the bathroom she was putting her clothes in the dresser.

"Anita?" I asked her as I folded up the ladder.

"Yes. " She asked, turning towards me.

"You have Tracy coming over to baby-sit on Saturday, don't you?"

She creased her brow a little. "Yes," She nodded. "Your mother said she would. "

"Well," I said, carefully, "The fact is that Tracy had plans for that night and my mom kinda ruined them by volunteering her to baby-sit. "

Anita's face immediately turned to distress. "Oh my goodness. " She said. "I had no idea that Tracy had plans. If I'd of known that I never would have asked your mother. " She shook her head. "Your mother told me that she'd be happy to baby-sit. "

"Yeah," I agreed, "Mom's like that sometimes. "

"Well I'll just cancel my plans. " She announced. "I don't want to make Tracy miss her party. Especially after all she's done for me in the past. And you kids never accept any money for what you do. "

"Well, you don't have to cancel your plans. " I told her. "I talked to Tracy about it and I don't have anything to do on Saturday. I thought maybe I could take her place. That way both of you could go to your parties. "

"You?" She said doubtfully.

"Why not?" I said. "I like your kids a lot, and they like me. I can take care of them all right. We'll have fun. "

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced her. Shortly after that I went home. But I wouldn't be home for long.

When I walked in the door Mom and Dad were both home. Mom was cooking up something in the kitchen. It smelled like steak. Dad was watching the news on television. I gave him a quick hello and headed directly for mom. She would be the authority on the subject I was about to discuss.

It took ten minutes and a phone call to Anita but I secured her permission to baby-sit Anita's kids in Tracy's place. She was doubtful about the plan and I knew she would probably call every ten minutes while I was over there, but I was able to wear her down.

With a smile on my face, I headed upstairs. I paused at Tracy's room and gave a knock on the door. From behind it came the sound of Rick Springfield again. The music turned down and the door creaked open. She looked at me.

"Looks like you're gonna be partying on Saturday. " I told her.

"You convinced them?" She asked in disbelief.

"Putty in my hands. " I assured her.

"Oh thank you!" She squealed, pulling me to her and giving me a big hug. She drew back and looked at me. "You know Billy," She said. "Sometimes you're not such a little asshole after all. "

"I'll take that as a compliment Trace. " I told her, walking away.

I entered my room as happy as I'd been in a while.

After dinner I went upstairs and took a shower, cleansing my body and making sure to brush my teeth and use plenty of mouthwash. I put on the tightest pair of pants that I could find, a pair that hugged my lower body like a second skin. I put on a clean sweater and combed my hair. I checked my watch. 6:40. Almost an hour and a half to go. I pulled out my books and began studying.

At 8:30 I had completed all of my homework and stowed it neatly away in my backpack. I went to Tracy's room and knocked on the door. She opened it.

"Can I use your phone a minute Trace?" I asked.

"Sure. " She said, waving me inside.

She had been doing her homework I saw. Her Biology book and a spread of papers were scattered on her desk. She was dressed in her jeans and sweatshirt still. Her Rick Springfield album was still playing on the stereo.

Earlier I'd looked in my mom's phone book and found Mike's phone number which, of course, I did not remember. I picked up her phone and dialed it.

His mom answered and I asked for him. A moment later he came to the phone.

"Hey dude," I said, "I'm telling my parents I'm coming over to your house tonight for a while. So don't call me. "

"You got it dude. " He assured me. "What's up?"

"Oh, I'm just going out for a while. "

"Doing anything cool?" He asked, fishing for an invitation.

"Naw. " I assured him. "Just gonna fuck off a little. "

"Whatever. " He said, disappointed, sulking a little, but at least I was safe from being busted via a telephone call from him. "See ya tomorrow. "

When I hung up Tracy looked at me questioningly. "Where are you going?" She asked.

"Out. " I told her.

"Just out?"

"Just out. " I said, my tone telling her she should mind her own business. I headed downstairs.

"Mom, I'm going over to Mike's for a little bit. " I said as I passed through the living room.

"All right dear. " She said absently, her attention riveted to the television. "Be back by ten. "

"I will. " I told her.

Three minutes later I was in front of Anita's house. I could see the light was on in the living room and the faint blue glow of a television screen shining through. I found myself nervous as I contemplated what I was about to do. Was this really wise? If I had misread her I could get into a lot of trouble. I might even end up talking to a shrink or something. But my little head told me I was doing the right thing. Even at thirty-two I still listened to him probably more than I should. I walked up her driveway. After another brief, fearful pause at the front door, I knocked.

The sound of her voice came drifting through the door. "Who is it?" "It's Billy. " I said, speaking only as loud as I thought I needed to in order to be heard.

"Billy?" She said, confused. A moment later the door crept open about six inches, revealing her. She was wearing a robe I saw, pulled tight around her body. Her face was void of makeup and a towel was over her head, allowing a few damp strands to peek out.

"Hi. " I said, embarrassed, not even faking it. "I was wondering if I could uh… well, talk to you about something for a minute?" "What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned. "It's kind of personal. " I told her. "Could I uh… come in?"

"Uh… " She hesitated for a second, leading me to believe I'd made a terrible mistake. Then she said, "Sure. "She opened the door, allowing me entry. I stepped into her living room and she shut the door behind me. Her living room was now absolutely spotless. The television was on showing a news program. A half-full wineglass sat on the coffee table near the couch. A glance into the kitchen revealed a half-empty bottle of white wine. My hopes perked up. She'd been drinking. "Sit down. " She said, looking at me. "Can I get you anything to drink?" "Oh, no thank you. " I told her, heading for the couch and planting myself near where she would sit.

She came over and sat down next to me, her robe riding up a little in the process and allowing me a brief glance of her milky white thighs before she pulled the hem back down. She picked up her wineglass and had a sip before using the remote control to turn down the volume on the television.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" I asked her nervously.

"Not at all. " She said, shaking her head. "I was just watching the news before Dallas comes on. What's wrong?" "Well," I started, "It's kind of embarrassing you know, but… " "Billy, what is it?" "Well," I continued, "You've been a good friend to me and I feel like I can, you know, trust you. " "Of course you can trust me. " She said. "But you're also friends with my mother. " I said. "I really wouldn't want to have her find out about what I have to ask. " "If you don't want me to tell her, I won't tell her. " Anita assured me. "Think of me as a doctor. "I paused for a moment, as if I was thinking it over. Finally I said, "Okay, well, you're younger than my mother and you're a girl and all, so I thought maybe you'd understand. " "Understand what?" She asked. "I've got a girlfriend!" I blurted. She smiled. "Well good for you. " She said happily. "What's her name?"

"Debbie. " I said, pulling out the first name to come to mind. "We've been going out for a while and… " "And what?" She asked. "And well," I took a long pause, considering my words. "And it's getting to the point where she wants to, you know, do things with me. "She raised her eyebrows, blushing a little.

"Do things?" "You know," I said. "Like uh… sex. " I squeaked.

"Sex?" She said, blushing harder now. "Yes. " I nodded.

"Billy," She said sternly. "Don't you think you're a little young to be thinking about sex?"I looked at her confused. "Anita," I said honestly. "Sex is pretty much ALL I think about. How old were you when you first, you know, did it?"She licked her lips a little. "Okay," She said, smiling a bit. "I see your point. So you're saying she wants to have sex with you?" "Yes. " I nodded. "And do you want to have sex with her?" "More than anything. " I answered. "But you see, I uh, well, I've never had, uh, sex before. " "And has she?" Anita asked. "I think so. " I nodded. "That's the problem. I don't know how to do it. " "Well I'm sure if she loves you… " Anita started. "Love?" I interrupted. "Love doesn't have anything to do with it. I don't love her, she's just my girlfriend. She expects me to do it with her and I've told her I've done it before. " "You lied to her?" "Yes. " I said. "Do you have any idea what would happen if people found out I was a virgin? I'm in high school. You have to be a stud or people think you're a fag!"She took a moment to digest this, perhaps thinking back to her own high school days. When it was processed she nodded a little, licking her lips again. "I suppose you're right. " She told me. "So what is it you want from me?" "Can you tell me how to do it?" I asked, looking hopefully at her. "Please?" "Tell you how to do it. " She said to herself, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. "Yeah. " I said, nodding. "So I'll know how to make it seem like I've done it before. Like, you know, how do I treat her boobs and all? And how do I, you know, put it in? How are you supposed to move once you're in? They don't teach you this stuff anywhere! Debbie's a blabbermouth. If I don't do it right, the whole school will think I'm a virgin by the next day. You gotta help me!" I pleaded, seemingly near tears. "Billy," She said. "I appreciate your fears but you can't just TELL someone how to do it. The only way to learn is, well, to do it a few times.

It comes naturally, you'll see. " "But I told her I've done it before!" I said. "She'll know! Can't you at least tell me a little bit about how to do it? What about foreplay?" "Foreplay?" She asked. "Yeah. " I said. "I heard you're supposed to do foreplay. I don't even know what that is!"She looked at me in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing. I flushed as if deeply embarrassed.

"Forget it. " I said angrily, standing up. "I'll just go home. "

"No, no. " She said, stifling her outburst. "I'm not laughing at you, just at what you said. I'm sorry. "Slowly, I put myself back down in the chair, noting the gleam forming in her eye. For the first time I felt I was making some headway. I noticed she'd let the hem of her robe creep up a bit, showing me her flesh up to mid-thigh. She'd also let the top open a bit, revealing a bit of cleavage and confirming my suspicion that she had no bra on under the robe. Perhaps I hadn't made a mistake in coming here. "Listen. " She said. "There's a lot involved in making love. It takes a lifetime to learn it all. But you just want to seem like you've done it before, right?" "Yes!" I agreed. "Okay. " She said, downing the rest of her wine and setting the glass down. "Let me see what I can do. " "Thank you!" I blurted. She took a deep breath. "Tell me," She said. "How far have you gone before?"

"Well," I said, "We've kissed a lot and she's let me feel her boobs through her shirt a few times. " "Okay. " Anita nodded. "And one time she let me put my hand UNDER her shirt. But she wouldn't let me put it under her bra. " "And that's as far as you've gone?" "Yes. " I nodded. "But she's hinted that she'd like for you to do more soon?"

"Uh huh. " I said. "That's why I came to you. " "Okay," Anita said. "If I tell you this, it has to remain here, do you understand? You're mother, your friends, nobody can ever find out about what I've told you. Can you do that?" "Yes," I said, sensing the kill coming. "I promise. " "Okay. " She smiled, leaning back into the couch a little. "I'll teach you the basics on how to have sex with a girl. " "I knew you'd help me Anita. " I grinned, feeling an erection starting already as I saw the shine in her eyes increase. Her nipples were hard. I could see them poking through the fabric in her robe. And she kept shifting her legs back and forth while she sat there. She was showing unmistakable signs of arousal. Signs that a fifteen-year old wouldn't be able to pick up upon, but signs that were very familiar to a thirty-two year old. "I'm glad to help. " She told me. "Now the most important thing in the early stages is to be gentle. " She told me. "Girls don't like it when you maul them. If she lets you feel her breasts, don't squeeze them hard, caress them. " "Caress them?" I asked. "Yes. " She nodded. "You need to touch them gently, as if they were a delicate egg or something. Remember that. Don't break the egg. Just glide your hands over them and don't attack the nipples. Just run your fingers over them for a few minutes. Touch them lightly. That really gets girls hot. " "Wow. " I said. "Like this?" I held up my hands and roughly moved my thumb and index finger back and forth.

"No no. " She said, shaking her head. "You have to… " She paused, thinking.

"Well," She said softly. "I suppose it would be easier to show you instead of telling you. " "Show me?" I asked, feigning confusion but feeling my cock leap to full life. I'd done it! She was going to SHOW me. "Yes. " She said. "Again, you can never tell anyone, but in the interest of education, I suppose I could volunteer as a test subject. " "What do you mean?" I asked naively. Slowly she put her hands to her robe and opened it at the chest, revealing her silky skin and freeing her braless tits. They were glorious, sagging only a little, the size of softballs. The large nipples were standing out proudly, just begging to be touched and sucked. "Here. " She told me. "Give me your hands. "Slowly I reached out and put my hands in hers. She took them and placed them upon her tits, allowing me to feel the soft, springy flesh, the hard points of the nipples pressing into my palms.

"Now caress them. " She said softly, her eyes shining. "Pretend I'm Debbie. " "Okay. " I said, faking a stutter. I began to squeeze and caress them, running my fingertips over the soft flesh, twirling around her nipples, which were easily the diameter of dimes. I hefted their weight in my hands, testing them, before going back to caressing. Her eyes softened as I did this, her breathing quickening.

"Very good. " She said, pushing her chest forward into my hands. "You're a quick learner. " "Cool. " I muttered, continuing my actions. I looked below her tits as I did this, seeing her stomach. The skin was tanned and looked soft although there were a few creases and stretchmarks. Her belly button was large and had a faint fuzz of black hair leading downward from it. I could almost make out her crotch but her robe was still closed over that portion of her body. "Wouldn't she want me to, you know, suck on them?" I asked Anita. "Girls like that, don't they?" "They love it. " Anita breathed, twisting her shoulders into me now. "But it's another thing that you have to do carefully. " She explained. "You have to treat a nipple like a baby does. Pretend you're sucking on a bottle when you suck a tit. Don't go after it like a shop-vac. " "Can I try it?" I asked her. "Just to make sure I'm doing it right?" "I suppose. " She allowed, reaching up and putting her hand to the back of my head.

She pulled my face to her left breast and my lips contacted the soft skin just above the nipple. I kissed and sucked for a second and then moved down, taking her large nipple in my mouth. As I began to gently suck she moaned, her fingers twining through my hair. I put my hands on her stomach, sliding them around to her back and pulling her tighter to me. I lapped and slurped at her nipple, tasting every square millimeter of it before switching to the right one. I took that nipple in my mouth and gave it a similar treatment. I raised my head from her chest. "Is this what foreplay is?" I asked her.

"Yesss. " She hissed. "But if you really want to master foreplay, there's one thing you want to know how to do. " "What's that?" I asked, licking her nipple once more. "How to eat a woman, er, a girl. "

"You mean… "

"You need to know how to eat pussy. " She told me.

"Can you teach me?" I asked, looking up at her flushed face.

"Yes. " She nodded, putting her hands to the top of my head and pushing me downward. Her robe parted and her chunky legs spread before me, revealing her crotch. It was covered with a mat of thick, curly, black hair. Her pink lips, swollen with her excitement, protruded from the center of her bush. Her clit was peeking from its hood near the top. Her thick, clean smell rose up before me, driving my desire, making me long to bury my face between those soft legs. I gave up all pretenses and dove in to her, attacking her slit with my tongue.

"Ohhhh!" She squealed in surprise as I drove my tongue into her body, plunging it in and out, lapping up her juices. She tasted so good. There is nothing like eating a pussy that is attached to a woman that has just emerged from bathing. Nothing!I licked up and down, in and out, while her hands pulled me closer and her bare legs wrapped around my back. I felt her legs as I ate her, admiring the silky softness of them. When she started to buck back at me I went for her clit, licking it and then finally sucking it into my mouth. Her moans were so loud I feared that the neighbors would hear. Not that I stopped because of this though.

She came after only a few minutes, a loud screaming orgasm that splashed my face with her fragrant juices and made her rip several strands of my hair from my scalp. When she finally calmed down I looked up at her, my face wet, hairs sticking from between my teeth. Her expression was of total disbelief.

"Was that how you do it?" I asked her, sliding my finger through her slippery slit. She nodded, speechless.

"Can you tell me how to fuck now?" I asked, taking off my sweater and throwing it to the floor. A minute later I was completely naked and climbing between her thick thighs. I ran my fifteen-year old cock up and down her slimy slit for a moment and then she grabbed my ass with her hands and pulled. I slid inside of her easily, feeling her grip at me, feeling my pubis mash against hers. Though she was looser than Debbie, she was certainly more experienced. Her hips rose up to meet me and she clenched her vaginal muscles expertly. She had been married after all, and knew how to fuck. She did it well I quickly discovered as I began pounding in and out. Her soft stomach pressed against mine as my pelvis moved to her rhythm. Her soft thighs slid against mine, quickly building up a sheen of sweat upon which to glide. I leaned down, feeling those tits push against my chest. My mouth found hers and our tongues began a desperate duel as we pleasured each other with our nether regions.

"Oh fuck me!" She cried, squeezing my ass cheeks. "It's been so long. Fuck me!" "Yeah. " I said, slamming harder, feeling her rise up to meet each thrust.

She broke our kiss and stared directly into my eyes, taking in my features. Her hands left my ass and began gliding over my legs, my back, my arms, playing with my armpits. Her expression was of exhalted disbelief, leading me to believe I was fulfilling a fantasy of hers. She'd WANTED to fuck a fifteen-year old and now she was getting her fantasy.

"Harder!" She commanded. "Fuck me harder!"

I pounded her mercilessly and soon her hips and her fingernails on my back told me she was coming again. She screamed out her pleasure as it hit her. "Now come in me!" She commanded breathlessly. "Oh come in me! Let me feel your fresh come squirting in my body! Oh God, please? Come in me!" "You want it?" I asked her, holding back for the moment. "Yesss!" She answered, pounding her hips and grasping my cock with greater force. "Let me feel it. Let me feel your come!" "You like fifteen year old boys?" I asked her, slamming and slamming. "You like to feel their come shooting in you?" "Ohhhhh!" She moaned, sticking her finger in my ass and moving it in and out.

"Do you?" I asked. "Tell me. Tell me what you like and I'll come. " "Oh God," She moaned, adding another finger to my ass, nearly causing me pain, but causing me great pleasure at the same time. "I love it. I've always wanted a teenager! I've always wanted to fuck you! Now please, come innn meeeee!" "Here it comes baby. " I told her, increasing my thrusts. I felt the surge running up my spine. It was going to happen now, it was inevitable. My hips became a blur and waves of pure pleasure ran through my body as spurt after spurt shot from my cock into her grasping pussy.

"Yessssss!" She screamed, feeling me shooting. Even after my thrusts slowed to a stop, hers continued. Finally we both slowed to a stop.

We kissed each other for a few moments, swirling our tongues together in the afterglow of great sex and then she looked up at me, her eyes showing shame and confusion.

"You were great. " I told her, giving her left tit a friendly squeeze. "Absolutely great. " "What have I done?" She asked, more to herself than me. "Oh my god. "I leaned down and kissed her again, licking at her lips a little. "You've done nothing Anita. " I said. "Nothing at all but give your friend Billy a little friendly advice for his girlfriend. "She shook her head violently. "No. " She told me, pushing me off of her. I slid off with a wet slurp. Her legs were still wide and a big glob of my sperm drooled out of her slit. She closed them quickly. "God, what have I done?"I rolled over and sat up. "Had a good time?" I asked, stretching a little. "I can't believe this!" She said, near tears. "You're Margaret's son! And I've, I've, taken advantage of you!"

"You did no such thing Anita!" I told her.

"I did!" She insisted, tears running down her face now.

"No," I told her. "You didn't. I took advantage of YOU. "

She shook her head, pulling her robe around her. "That's nice of you to say Billy, but you're a fifteen year old kid and I'm an adult. You came to me for help and I… I took advantage of that because it's been so long since I've had sex. I let my horniness get the better of me and I've done something awful. I… "

"Anita. " I said, still sitting there naked, her juices and my sperm drying on my dick. "There is no Debbie. "

"What?" She asked.

"There is no Debbie. " I repeated. "I made that up as an excuse to come over here. I've also had sex before, several times. Couldn't you tell while I was making love to you?"

She looked confused. "I did think you were doing it rather well for a teenager. " She admitted. "But why would you do that?"

"Because I wanted you. " I told her. "Do you know that I lie in bed at night thinking about your body while I masturbate?"

"You do?"

"Yes," I said. "Constantly. I've wanted you for such a long time now. And I've thought that maybe you were attracted to me a little, that maybe if I, you know, set it up right, you would maybe do things with me. I came over here hoping that what we did would happen. I tried to engineer it. It's me you should be mad at. I lied to you. I was conniving. And I'm sorry you're upset by what we did. You were more than I ever hoped for. "

"I was?" She asked, her eyes shining.

"Yes. " I nodded. "Can you ever forgive me for tricking you like that?"

"Of course Billy. " She said. "But I still shouldn't have done that. Do you understand how serious this is? I can be arrested for what we did. "

"I'll never tell anyone. " I told her. "I swear. "

She smiled a little, wiping her face. "Fifteen year olds swear lots of things. " She told me. "And they very rarely understand the consequences of breaking those swears. "

"Anita," I said, "I'm not an ordinary fifteen year old. I DO think about consequences. I think about them obsessively. Would you like to hear an example of how I think about them?"

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"While I was over here earlier I was already planning this episode. But I was worried about the possibility of getting you pregnant. I did not want to do that. So I looked in your medicine cabinet to make sure you were on birth control of some type. I was looking for a diaphragm case or birth control pills. Only when I found your pills and assured myself that you were current on them did I decide to come over here tonight. "

"You did that?" She asked, staring at me. Giving me THE LOOK.

"You are currently eight days from your period. " I told her.

"My God. " She said, looking at me with confused respect.

"Does that sound like a typical teenager to you? I like to think things through before I do them, eliminate all of the possible dangers that I can. So what would I have to gain by telling anyone this? A few minutes of celebrity if I told the story, which my friends wouldn't believe anyway, they would only pretend to. That certainly does not balance out the loss of you as a friend. " I leered at her. "A very special friend. "

"Wow. " She whispered, staring at me. "I don't know what to say. This is the most confusing moment of my life. "

"I'm sure it is. " I told her. "But did you enjoy what we did?"

"Well… " She started.

"Did you?" I asked.

"Yes. " She admitted. "Immensely. " She blushed again. "I've laid awake at night masturbating while thinking about YOU. But I never thought for a minute that we'd actually, you know. " She shook her head. "You are a sneaky little bastard, you know that? You played right into one of my fantasies, almost word for word. "

"I'm pretty perceptive they say. " I agreed.

"I'll say. "

"So why don't we mark it down as a pleasant experience for all concerned?" I asked her. "I enjoyed making love to you, you enjoyed making love to me. Both of us had fantasies fulfilled. I will never tell anyone about it. Nobody even knows where I am tonight. What we did will remain secret forever. I promise. "

"Okay. " She nodded, smiling again now. "But we shouldn't do this anymore. " She qualified. "It's still wrong. "

"If you wish. " I agreed sadly.

"I think that would be for the best. "

"All right. " I paused. "But is it still okay for me to baby-sit on Saturday? I'd hate to disappoint Tracy. "

"Oh sure. " She said. "Perfectly all right. "

"Good. " I stood up. "Is it okay if I use your shower before I go home?"

"My shower?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I wouldn't want to go home smelling like sex. That leads to unwanted questions from parents. "

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head in amusement. "Very good thinking Billy. " She told me. "You know where it's at. "

"Thanks. " I told her, picking up my clothes.

I made it about ten steps towards her bedroom before her voice called me. I turned to look at her. She was standing up, her robe was flapping loosely, allowing me to see her breasts and her bush again. I felt my penis give a little twitch.

"Maybe I should go with you. " She offered, smiling sexily. "Just to make sure you get nice and clean. "

My dick took a bigger lurch. "By all means. " I answered.

Chapter 3

Take away my inhibitions

Take away my solitude

Fire me up with irresistance

Put me in the mood

Storm the walls around this prison

Leave the inmates, free the guards

Deal me up another future

From some brand new deck of cards

BOB SEGER

The next day at school, nothing terribly eventful happened. I turned in all of my completed homework to some very surprised teachers and, having done that, they began to truly notice me for the first time. They began to call on me in class, seemingly pleased when I supplied them with correct answers to their inquiries. In the classes where I'd already made my new self known, things mellowed out. Mrs. Crookshank asked me occasional questions on various anatomical topics but there was no longer a sense of challenge in them. She stayed confined to the current subject at hand and called on me no more than she did the other favorites in her class. The disinterested students like my former self, she continued to ignore. My history teacher on the other hand, seemed almost afraid of me. She didn't call on me a single time but eyed me nervously whenever she was discussing a controversial topic about the Civil War that was being scaled down into black and white, good and evil for the 'tender young minds' she was instructing. I know she was expecting me to pop up with another mini-lecture to counter hers. But I kept my peace, remaining in my seat quietly, mostly lost in my own thoughts, knowing that there was nothing that she was going to teach ME about history.

That night was Friday night; the night that Mike's parents allowed him to use the car. He told them that we were just going to drive around downtown; cruising he called it. It was, I remembered, the same thing he told them every weekend and every weekend they bought it. What we actually did was drive to a secluded park near the falls where a kegger was being held. For two bucks a head you could drink all the beer you wanted.

The night was brisk, as it always is in Eastern Washington in late February, but the good weather was holding. The stars were out and a full moon hung in the sky, providing scant illumination to the darkened family picnic area.

The atmosphere was festive as we arrived, paid our money, and filled our first plastic cups with Olympia from the tap. Kids ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen were everywhere, lounging near cars, sitting on the picnic tables in groups of three, four, eight. Music blared from at least ten different car stereos and at least five different boom boxes, most of it conflicting with each other.

I took a moment to stare at the falls, watching the white, foamy churning of God knew how many millions of gallons of water rushing over the cliff. I could hear the roar of them even over the car stereos. It wasn't very far from this spot where Tracy had an appointment with destiny. An appointment that I sincerely believed I'd cancelled. I took a drink of beer in her honor and then joined the party.

I drank beer after beer, getting pleasantly buzzed. I took a few hits off of joints or pipes that were passed my way, increasing the buzz to blissful intoxication. I listened to the conversations around me, which, admittedly, were not terribly stimulating. The talk was of rock bands, cars, drug experiences, fights, who was a bitch, who wasn't. It was peppered with unnecessary profanity, particularly the word 'fuck', which was the favored modifier among this age group.

It was less than an hour before a girl named Stephanie found me. She was skinny and bleached blonde, but attractive. She was also a junior and nearly two years older than I was. She chatted with me for few minutes and then brought up the subject that had led her to me.

"I heard you and Debbie got a thing goin'?" She asked, taking a drag off her cigarette. "Is that true?"

"No." I answered. "She's just a friend of mine."

"A friend?" She giggled. "I heard you were more than friends. I heard she threw herself at you over at Raisin's house the other day."

"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, sipping from my latest beer.

"Lonnie." She said. "He said you were pretty smooth about it too."

I smiled at her, staring into her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about." I said. "Debbie and I flirted a little but nothing more than that. You know how rumors are around here."

"Yeah." She nodded, tossing down her smoke and crushing it under the toe of her tennis shoe. "I do. Some people just can't keep their mouths shut about things."

"Yep." I agreed. "But some people CAN."

Less than an hour later we were 'taking a little walk' into the wooded area around the park. We sat against a tree, watching the falls, the sound of the party distant in our ears. We started kissing, which led to my hands beneath her jacket and sweater, which led to me taking off her pants and eating her pussy on the cold, damp ground. I pulled two orgasms from her and then extricated a condom from my pocket. A minute later my pants were off, my dick was capped, and I was thrusting within yet another tight, teenaged pussy. After, we returned to the party, walking together as friends out for a nature walk, the discarded condom marking the spot of our indiscretion.

"Where have you been?" Mike, who was quite fucked up, asked me when I rejoined him.

"Oh," I said casually, "I was bullshittin' with some of the guys over there."

"Oh." He nodded, and then went back to his graphic description of the time he'd bagged a girl AND her sister at a similar kegger party. The rest of the guys listened respectfully to his tale. They then tried to top it.

I took a moment to be nervous about driving home with Mike as we twisted and turned along the levy road at high speed. I had no seat belt on; it simply wasn't done back then; and I was thrown from side to side as he drunkenly hit 20mph curves at around forty-five or so. But I took comfort in the fact that I'd done this dozens of times in my previous life without a second thought and nothing had happened then. I already knew that I was scheduled to live to at least thirty-two. In a way I was kind of immortal, wasn't I? Well maybe not immortal, but at least invulnerable.

I was cheered by this thought as we went on our way at 11:30 that night (we were both required to be home by midnight). That made being tossed from side to side by centrifugal force kind of fun. Even when the back end of the car slid a little on a sharp curve, bringing us dangerously close to the edge, I didn't get an adrenaline rush. I simply cheered Mike's skill with the car and asked him if he had any more weed on him.

Saturday was a good day. I woke up only slightly hung over from the beer, knowing that if I'd drank as much as I had the previous night as an adult I would have been nearly incapacitated the next day. God youth was great.

It was shortly after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away (my parents had no dishwasher, an appliance they would not acquire until shortly before I moved out) when the telephone rang. Tracy answered it.

"It's for you Bill." She told me, being very polite for Tracy. A cynical part of me informed me it was simply because I was doing a favor for her tonight and she wanted to stay on my good side. But a more hopeful part wondered if she was simply calming her attitude towards me a little.

"Hello?" I said, expecting it to be Mike.

It wasn't. It was Debbie. "Hi Bill." She said. "How you doin'?"

"How'd you get my number?" I asked her, knowing that I hadn't given it to her.

"Oh, I've got my sources." She said mysteriously. She then got right to the point. "My parents and my sister are going out of town for the day." A brief pause. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to, you know, come over?"

"To your house?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." She said. "If you're not doing anything else that is."

"Nothing planned." I told her, a smile forming on my face. "What time should I be there?"

I used my charms on Mom to score a few bucks off of her, though I had to endure one of her lectures as the price. Soon I was heading out the door. I stopped at a convenience store and bought another package of condoms. Twenty minutes after that I was in Debbie's house.

We didn't bother much with preliminaries. Less than ten minutes after my arrival we were in her bedroom stripping off our clothes. She begged me to eat her again like I had at Raisin's house and I teased her a little, saying I didn't want to break the LAW or anything. Finally I buried my face between those thighs and went to town. I then fucked her, after donning a condom of course. I then taught her the finer points of giving a blowjob, stopping her before I actually came in her mouth because I wanted to fuck her again. I showed her the female superior position and she caught on quickly, finding that if she rubbed herself in a certain way, she could bring herself off.

"See," I told her, after I'd finally blown my second load into the condom. "You can do that with any guy and you don't have to rely on his skill in order to get yourself off. As long as you can keep him from coming for the length of time it takes you to rub yourself to orgasm on his cock, you can be satisfied."

Her naked, sweaty body was collapsed across mine, her ample tits pushing into my chest. My hand was idly stroking her firm ass. "But how," She asked. "Do I keep them from coming? I haven't done it with many people besides you, but every time I have, the guy comes in less than a minute or so."

"Suck him off first." I advised her, knowing that I was making some future lover very happy. "Use those tricks I taught you when you were sucking me. Take the load and then demand he eat your pussy. Tell him he gets nothing else if he doesn't return the favor."

"Wow." She whispered, her tongue licking at the sweat on my neck.

"While he eats you," I continued, feeling myself stirring again already. God the wonders of youth! "He'll get hard again, but it will take him longer to come since he'll have just done it. You should be able to keep him active long enough to give yourself a good come." I patted her ass, rolling her over and beginning to kiss her again. "Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She breathed, thrusting her tongue at me.

I went home mid-afternoon and fell fast asleep. My balls were aching in a very pleasant way; the way that tells you that they were happily overused. I'd taken a shower before leaving Debbie's house so I had little to do before my babysitting assignment that night. When I awoke I only had to put on fresh clothes, comb my hair and, of course, brush my teeth, expunging my mouth of the smell of teenaged pussy.

As I headed out the door Tracy was getting ready for her party. She was dressed in her tightest pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She smiled as I went by.

"Heading to Anita's?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "Have a good time tonight."

"I will." She said. "And thanks again."

"Anytime Trace." I replied, heading downstairs. "Anytime at all."

Anita was dressed in a red dress that showed off her natural attributes, her tits, nicely. Her chunky legs were covered with dark pantyhose. She saw me looking as I entered her house and blushed a little.

"You look VERY nice." I told her lecherously. "Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?"

She giggled like a teenager. "My presence is quite expected." She told me. "Besides, the kids are awake anyway."

I nodded. "Of course." I said, and turned to the kids, who were playing on the floor with a collection of Hot Wheels. They saw me and squealed, heading for me.

"But sometimes," Anita said thoughtfully. "A girl gets a little ill and has to come home early; say around nine o'clock."

"Really?" I asked, smiling, wondering if my dick could perform after my earlier session with Debbie.

"Really." She nodded and then turned to the kids. "Gimmee kisses." She told them. "Mommy's going bye-bye."

She returned at ten after nine, just after the kids had been put to bed. After brief inquiries about their health and well being, she walked over to me and took my hand. She traced her manicured nails over the back of it and then guided it under her dress, sliding it along over her nyloned thighs to the junction of her legs. I could feel dampness and musty heat emanating from her crotch.

"Do you feel how wet I am?" She asked, grinding her thighs together, pulling on my wrist to put pressure on her sensitive regions.

"Yeah." I nodded, my mouth drying a little.

"That's from thinking about you and all the things I'm gonna do to you tonight." She told me.

"Cool." I gasped.

"Why don't you take these pantyhose off of me?" She asked, kicking off her shoes. "I could use a little air."

I kneeled before her and pulled off her pantyhose, as requested, and, while she stood there before me, she threw the hem of her dress over my head. Her bare legs and crotch were directly before my face, the silky material of her dress billowing over my back. The smell under there was rich with musk; her pussy lips were oozing moisture. She widened her stance a little, spreading her legs and bringing her pussy near my mouth. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and pulled it forward, into her wetness.

I ate her to orgasm as she stood there, though her knees became quite wobbly as she came and she had to hold onto my shoulders for support. She then pushed me to my back on the floor and pulled my shoes from my feet and my pants and underwear from my body. She spread her dress around my hips and lowered herself onto my straining, very erect cock. Slowly she sank down upon me, engulfing me in her wet snatch and then pumping her hips up and down.

I must say that she gave me one of the best fucks I've ever had, before or after recycling. I wondered why her husband had divorced her. He couldn't have found someone better in bed. Better looking maybe, but not better in the sack.

I staggered home about ten-thirty that night and fell immediately into bed. My crotch was throbbing with the beat of my heart and my dick had a raw, used feeling to it. I had a smile on my face as I fell into sleep, thanking God for Mr. Li and for the fact that I hadn't been in a jovial mood that night and wished I was an Oscar Meyer wiener or something. Never in my life had I had so much sex in so short a period of time. And with three different girls too! My last thought was what tomorrow would bring.

It didn't bring much. My body was aching and sore. Since it was Sunday, the Lord's day after all, I spent the entire twenty-four hour period without leaving the house. It was a day of rest. There was school tomorrow.

The poor weather returned for Monday's walk to school. The temperature was in the thirties, the sky was cloudy and spat intermittent flurries of snow down upon Mike and I as we walked to school. Mike was telling me what a great kegger it had been on Friday and that I should have gone to the one on Saturday night as well.

"I'm tellin' you man, there was bitches everywhere." He proclaimed.

"Yeah?" I replied, brushing a snowflake out of my eye and pulling my hood tighter against the cutting wind.

"Fuck yeah." He said. "I met this bitch from Spokane High and we got all fucked up together. After a while we went off to the trees and she gave me a fuckin' blow job."

"A blow job huh?" I asked, as if interested, wondering if Mike had ever really been laid at all.

"Yeah," He leered. "She could suck start a Harley, I'm tellin' you. You shoulda come. I bet you coulda got laid too."

"I'm waiting for Miss Right." I told him.

He looked at me strangely for a moment and then, finally figuring it was a joke, started laughing.

I didn't laugh back and we walked on in silence. Mike bothered me. I knew the path that he was on but every attempt I made to even talk about steering him off of it had failed. I wanted to help him, to keep him from ending up a thirty-three year old loser living with his parents and never having held a job for more than a year in his life. Didn't he want to marry, have children, raise a family? Didn't he want what everyone else in the world did? Surely the life he would end up with was not what he desired, was it? But I had no idea how to even begin to steer him. His facade was of the tough, independent person, streetwise, never needing advice or help from anyone. How could you reach such a person? Especially when they'd spent their entire life as the superior member of the friendship. I was clueless and hoping that some answer would come to me. But the answer, for the moment, eluded me.

"Well look who's back." Mike said as we approached the school.

I looked where he was indicating and saw Richie Fairview standing with his cronies in their accustomed spot near the bike racks. The same spot where I'd engineered his downfall and his trip to the hospital. Even from this distance I could see he had a bandage on his nose. Though he had a heavy coat on I was reasonably sure that his chest was taped up beneath it. I'd felt a definite crunch when I'd kicked him the other day.

"Well well." I smiled, already turning that way.

"You gonna fuck him up again?" Mike asked, a little fear in his voice, but not as much as before.

"Only if he wants to go the hard way." I said, heading directly for him.

You have to understand that Richie was more than just Richie to me. He was the epitome of bullies, the sum of all large, stupid aggressors that had picked on me since grammar school. He encompassed bullies that would pick on me after Richie would eventually graduate or drop out or whatever. As a shy, easily malleable kid in school I'd been easy fodder for them throughout my school years. And they had left an impression that was deeper than I'd realized until I'd seen Richie on my first day back. Richie represented all bullies that had ever said an unkind word or had laid an unjust hand upon me. By besting him at his own game, I was besting demons that had helped shape my previous life. I intended to make him suffer, to bring him down as far as I could, to expose the lie that all bullies represented; that they were gods, unchallengable.

His friends tittered nervously as I approached, whispering some things to him, him nervously whispering some things back. The very fact that he was standing at the head of them despite his earlier defeat told me a lot. He'd undoubtedly told them that he was going to repay me for the sneak attack on him the first time. They were anxiously awaiting his revenge. I was pretty sure there would be no revenge. The Richies of the world don't generally think things through very carefully.

"Hey Dickwad!" I yelled directly at him when I was close enough. "How was the hospital?"

"Fuck you motherfucker!" He yelled, taking a few steps closer; again telling me volumes about his intentions. Had he been meaning to fight me, he would have waded right in. But he didn't. He took a few steps towards me, obviously hoping I'd cower and back down. When I didn't (and why he thought I would, after our last encounter is a mystery to me), he slowed down, his mind re-evaluating what his strategy was. In that moment I knew I'd won the confrontation.

"That's some pretty insulting shit you're talking." I told him conversationally, walking closer. "I suppose you think that your friends here are impressed by it." I shook my head sadly. "They're not. Talk is cheap faggot, action is where it's at. If you wanna impress your friends and restore your reputation as a badass you're simply gonna have to kick my ass. Isn't that what you told them you were gonna do?"

"I AM gonna kick your fuckin' ass!" He roared, taking a tentative step forward.

I laughed. "Are you now?" I asked. "Well go ahead and do it." I made a 'come-on' gesture with my fingers. "Kick my ass. Let's see you do it."

He stood still, his face fuming, infuriated with shame and anger. He wanted to, that was obvious, but he also remembered what had happened last time.

"I'm waiting." I said impatiently. "When are you gonna kick my ass? It's sitting here right in front of you. Start kicking."

He remained motionless, his body trembling with rage, rage I was oh so pleased to see. This was even more satisfying than besting him in the first place.

"Yeah." He finally said. "So you can rat me out and have me arrested or something."

"Oh please." I scoffed. "Having someone rat you out never bothered you before. Why don't you just admit it? You're scared of me. You wouldn't take a swing at me if I dropped my hands and closed my eyes, would you? It HURTS to get the shit kicked out of you, doesn't it? It's an experience you don't care to repeat, is it? You know that if you take a swing at me, or make any move at all towards me, you're gonna be riding in an ambulance again, don't you?"

"Fuck you!" He yelled, near tears now, on the brink of collapse.

I shook my head again. His friends were staring at him, nervous fear in their faces.

I spat, the wad landing on his shoe. "You fuckin' disgust me." I told him. "If you want to fight you come and find me." I said. "We'll have ourselves a fight. But keep in mind, that if you start any of your 'fuck you' and 'I'm gonna kick your ass' bullshit with me again, I'm not gonna be so generous. Like I said, talk is cheap. If you want some action, look me up.

If you don't want some action, keep your fuckin' mouth closed when you see me."

I turned my back to him and walked into the school, Mike in tow. I knew I had nothing to fear by turning my back to him. I knew it.

Lunchtime. In my previous life I'd always eaten pretty much alone since Mike had a different lunch schedule than I. But now I found myself the center of some attention. People kept coming up to me, just wanting to talk about this and that. I was becoming popular I realized, not sure I liked it. And again, I was thirty-two years old, not fifteen. The conversation I was offered was not terribly stimulating.

After only five minutes the combination of the cold and the endless litany of pussy stories, car stories, or drug stories drove me inside to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was the domain of the preppie students, those college bound overachievers. The air was warm and scented with the aroma of spaghetti. It was filled with the babble of conversations and the clanking of plastic trays on simulated wood grain tables.

I stood near the doorway surveying the scene, seeing the gathering of cliques at various tables, trying to find a place to sit down. Many of the students in there were those that were in my classes. They'd always ignored me since I wasn't quite one of them and I had no desire to strike up friendships with them now. With burrito and soda in hand I scanned around the room and finally locked onto a solitary figure sitting by herself near the back of the room.

It was Nina Blackmore, the future emergency room doctor. Like always, she was by herself, eating out of her tray and reading a book. Nina, in addition to being a high school classmate, had been a junior high and grammar school classmate as well. She'd appeared at our school when I was in the third grade, a new student from somewhere or other. That, in combination with a lisp that she'd had at that time had doomed her to the role of unpopularity. She'd been the butt of jokes since forever, although they'd been particularly bad in grammar school. Third, fourth, and fifth graders can be unusually cruel to kids who were somewhat different.

I myself was as guilty of this as everyone else. I'd done my time chanting teasing rhymes at her back then, deriding her, calling her ugly, making fun of her lisp in as cruel ways as fourth grade minds could conceive. Though she'd gone to speech therapy until well into junior high and lisped no more, the damage was done to her. She was an outsider, belonging to no clique, doomed to be by herself until probably college where she would show up the vast majority of her classmates by working her way into a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year job.

But even then the mark of her school years would be forever upon her. I would know her as a paramedic, would frequently transport patients to the emergency room where she was employed. She would have a reputation as a cold hearted, vindictive bitch among the paramedics and nurses that she dealt with. She was the kind of doctor that would question a paramedic or RN's every decision, no matter what the outcome of the patient. And she'd always reserved her most scathing comments for me. I'd always known that this was because I'd gone to school with her and had once, in grammar school, been one of her tormentors.

A typical example of her wrath is something that occurred nearly a year before my recycling, on a frigid January day. I'd been dispatched to a call for a child with seizures in a middle class section of the city. Child seizure calls are generally nothing that gets paramedics terribly excited. Usually the child either has a history of seizures or is having them because of a high fever. Seizures are not usually life threatening.

However, when I walked into the house that day with my partner and the crew from a Spokane Fire Department engine company, I took one look at the kid in question and knew that I was dealing with something more than a seizure call. The kid, who looked to be about ten years old, was lying on the carpet near the sofa. His skin was blue; as blue as a police uniform, and he was not breathing. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, bugging out. He was lying still.

There was a brief second of pause while we all clicked into 'this is really an emergency' mode. And then every eye in the room (except for the kid) turned to me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

"Start bagging him." I barked to one of the firefighters and she rushed into action, opening their bag and pulled out the equipment.

I kneeled down next to the kid and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but it was weak and very slow. What the hell was going on? I'd wondered, trying to think. Ten year olds did not just suddenly collapse and die from a seizure. There was something I was missing.

The mother was, understandably enough, absolutely hysterical but, while I opened up my airway bag and began setting up to put in a breathing tube, she was able to tell me that she'd heard a strange noise and had entered the room to find her son seizing on the couch. It had gone on for a considerable time and then he'd simply stopped just before we'd arrived. His breathing hadn't started again. She told me he had no known medical problems. He'd had no fever, had in fact been perfectly fine when she'd talked to him less than ten minutes before she found him seizing.

While I pulled out my breathing tube and a laryngoscope, a lighted instrument used to peer down someone's throat prior to placing the tube, the firefighter began bagging the child, forcing air down his throat and into his lungs. While she did this my partner had hooked the child up to our EKG machine. I took a quick glance at the reading. His heart was only beating thirty times a minute and was slowing further with each passing beat. What the hell?

The firefighter that was bagging seemed to be having trouble. "The air won't go in." She told me. "It just blows out the side."

Armed with that information I took another look around the room. The television was on, tuned to a cartoon show. A half-eaten hot-dog was sitting on a plate on the coffee table. The light bulb suddenly went off above my head.

"Was he eating?" I asked the mother.

"Yes." She sobbed, wringing her hands. "I'd just given him his lunch."

"Shit." I muttered, everything falling into place.

"Stop bagging him and let me in there." I told the firefighter. She stepped aside and I picked up my laryngoscope. Lying on the floor near his head I inserted the blade into his mouth and lifted the tongue out of the way. A lightbulb on the end of the blade illuminated his airway for me. It was blocked solid by a chunk of pink hot dog.

"Matt, give me the Magills." I told my partner.

He slapped a long set of forceps into my hand, an instrument designed specifically for removing foreign objects from airways. I'd never used them before, true choking calls are rare, but they worked just exactly as I'd been promised. I grabbed the chunk of meat and pulled it free, revealing his vocal cords and trachea behind it. I gave him a second to see if he would start breathing on his own. When he didn't, I picked up the breathing tube and slid it through his vocal cords. The firefighter attached her bag to the top of the tube and began forcing pure oxygen down into his lungs.

By the time I got the tube secured his skin had pinked up considerably and his heart rate had increased to more than a hundred. By the time we loaded him into the back of the ambulance his eyes were open and he was gagging violently, no doubt upset to wake up and find a large tube in his throat. By the time we got to the hospital I'd been forced to remove the tube and he was breathing well on his own. He was a little confused and dopey but awake and able to talk. When we brought him in to Nina's emergency room I was positively glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done, convinced that out of all the times I'd been needlessly called, for once I'd actually been NEEDED.

And what did Nina, the good doctor have to say to me after she heard the progression of the call?

"You're supposed to try abdominal thrusts on an unconscious choking victim before you resort to the Magills." She said icily. "Did you miss that part of the class back in ambulance driver school?"

She actually wrote me up for this, making me answer to our county emergency medical services authority. I was given a written reprimand in my file for failing to try a less invasive method of clearing the airway first. The medical director, to give him credit, was at least apologetic as I signed it. He mumbled something about how the ends don't justify the means and then explained that "certain doctors" seemed to have a problem with the whole world.

Though I'd been pissed at her, she'd after all turned one of the high points of my career into a disciplinary procedure, I'd understood even then that I was partially responsible for what had happened. I understood even better looking at her now in the cafeteria, sitting alone and reading a book while she picked at a plate of cafeteria spaghetti. After all, the experience with Richie was fresh on my mind. Had what she'd done been much different than what I'd done? We'd both attacked visible symbols of past torment. We'd both given in to basic human nature.

Was it too late for Nina? I wondered, looking at her. Was the damage to her already done?

I took a deep breath and headed her way.

"Okay if I sit here?" I asked her when I arrived.

She looked up at me with suspicion plain in her eyes, perhaps wondering if I'd come to renew the teasing she'd been so familiar with in grade school. While waiting for an answer I looked at her, marveling over the power of suggestion. Nina had been called ugly since the third grade. It was an accepted fact among everyone that she WAS ugly. But the funny thing is, that she really wasn't. She was skinny and had small breasts; a late bloomer as I've mentioned before. Her face was without any make-up but it was smooth and actually sort of pretty. Her brown hair was unstyled but looked just like everyone else's hair all the same. She was called ugly and probably felt ugly because we'd all agreed back in third grade that she WAS ugly.

It was also assumed that she was dumb, a natural conclusion based on the fact that she never said anything to anybody. It had been assumed of me on my first trip through school too. Obviously she was far from dumb. One did not make it through four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency if one lacked intelligence. Could there be meaningful conversation here perhaps? I saw the book she was reading, 1984 by Orwell, a very deep book.

"Please?" I asked again, "I won't bite you."

Her eyes softened a little, as if to say that she was reserving judgment for the moment. "Sure." She finally said.

I took the bench across from her, setting down my food, drink, and napkin. "That's a good book." I offered, nodding at the cover. "I've read it quite a few times. Very thought provoking."

She nodded, not saying anything, keeping her eyes firmly on the page. Suspicion was radiating off of her in waves. Maybe it was too late, I wondered.

"Its also," I went on, "The most depressing book I've ever read. Is this your first time reading it?"

"No." She said softly. "I've read it five or six times."

"Then you probably know what I mean." I said. "I mean the thought that everything is controlled. Everything. The entire war is just a production to keep the masses from bettering themselves. The entire writings of history are rearranged on a regular basis to control the way people think. Even the resistance doesn't really exist. When you get to the point that they are captured and you find out that they'd been known about the entire time." I shook my head. "It's just a depressing thought, a depressing book.

But also one of my favorites."

She was looking at me now, confusion and a little curiosity shaping her features. "It's one of my favorite books too." She said carefully, as if expecting me to start laughing at her or speaking in a fake lisp.

"Have you ever thought," I said, "That all of that stuff in 1984 could actually be happening now? That we, as proles, wouldn't even realize it? I mean, think about it, with today's technology how hard would it be to re-write history, or to control the media, or to keep track of everyone?"

"Not very hard at all." She said, putting the book down for the first time. Careful interest was visible now. "Sometimes I swear that it's really happening to some degree or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm sure most intelligent people know that you can't possibly know what's REALLY going on, how things REALLY work. I'm pretty certain that they don't really work the way we're taught in government class though."

She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth. Strange I'd never noticed that before. Probably because I'd never seen her smile before. I wondered if anyone else had.

We continued to talk about 1984 and other books by Orwell. The only other one that I'd read was Animal Farm but she'd read them all. She explained the basic plots of them and the underlying message with animated clarity. Once she started talking to me I found her conversation intelligent and her insights well thought out. I almost forgot that I was talking to a teenager. Before I realized it lunch was over and it was time to head for the next class.

"Nice talking to you Nina," I told her with frank honesty as I stood.

"Thank you." She squeaked, her face blushing, her eyes confused.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." I told her and smiled. "It's nice to talk to someone who thinks like you do, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'll be here tomorrow if you want to, you know, talk some more."

"I'd like that." I said, giving her a wave and heading for the door.

I was cheerful as I walked alone through the crowded halls, making my way through kids in groups, heading for driver's education. I was thinking that maybe Nina could be softened a little bit after all, and I'd truly enjoyed talking to her. What was that they said, still waters run deep? It seemed that was true in her case. If only I could figure out a way to reach Mike. If only meaningful conversation could be the key to derailing him from his path.

My thoughts were sidetracked as I found myself walking behind Richie Fairview. He was with two of his cronies and was trying, in his idiotic way, to strike up a conversation with a group of cheerleaders that were walking the same direction. The cheerleaders were trying there best to ignore the trio of thugs and Richie, deciding to up the ante a little, began reaching for their skirts, trying pull them up.

At the sight of this all of my anger at Richie and bullies in general came flooding back. He didn't know I was behind him but he was about to find out. I kicked out my foot, catching his back leg just as he was stepping forward. He stumbled forward and crashed to the hallway floor, scraping up his elbows and hands and sending up a chorus of delighted giggles and laughter from the cheerleaders.

Richie rolled over and jumped to his feet in an instant, his fists raised, an obscene epitaph on his lips. And then he saw who had tripped him. He stopped.

"You oughtta be more careful asshole." I told him conversationally, continuing to walk by. "You can get hurt falling down around here."

I didn't look back at him, just continued to walk down the hall towards my class. Behind me the cheerleaders were still chuckling. I wasn't attacked from behind. I knew I wouldn't be. A smile was on my face as I found the right classroom and went about the task of learning to drive a car.

The next day as Mike and I entered the school there was no Richie Fairview positioned out front, nor were there any of his goon squad. It seemed they'd finally learned the lesson. So I'd succeeded in clearing out a threat to helpless freshmen and sophomores everywhere. Richie would probably fade into joking obscurity, I figured, robbed of his most potent weapon, his reputation. In a way I was somewhat disappointed. I had actually been kind of looking forward to another confrontation with the dumb slob.

Oh well, there were plenty more bullying assholes I could deal with. I was actually starting to see myself as some sort of superhero, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, battling the forces of evil, my very name revered by all. I wondered if I could force Richie to start paying back the kids he'd ripped off. I could picture it, ordering him to give a dollar a day to every kid he'd ever robbed. And if he ever gave them any shit, they could come to the GREAT BILLY for help and justice.

I was standing at my locker, Mike beside me, running these amusing thoughts through my brain when my instinct alerted me to danger. Perhaps it was my peripheral vision, catching just a glimpse of a dark figure moving towards me, maybe it was my ears, hearing the advance of a footstep, perhaps it was some sort of sixth sense, but suddenly all of the instincts I'd developed from my years on the streets told me something was coming from behind me. I reacted quickly, but not quickly enough.

I turned, raising my hands into a defensive posture just as Richie Fairview swung at me. I raised my arm to protect my head, automatically assuming that's where he would strike me. Because of that the blow that was aimed at my body struck home, hitting on my left flank and driving the wind from me. My first thought upon being struck was that it hurt, but that it wasn't that bad. I was still standing and it was time to play some catch-up.

His right hand pulled away from my body and prepared to move forward for another blow. I stepped forward and grabbed at his wrist just as he started the second swing. I caught his wrist neatly in my hands and started to pull it forward, intending to spin him around and push him against the lockers where I could batter his vulnerable back and kidney region. Maybe I could put the fucker into renal failure. But as I started the maneuver that would have put this plan into motion I looked down for an instant at his hand, the one I was holding.

The hand wasn't empty. There was a buck knife in it. The blade, which was about five inches long, was stained with blood.

The implications of this hit me immediately. I'd been stabbed in the abdomen! How bad was it?

Mike, noticing at about the same time as I did that Richie was playing for keeps, stepped behind him and threw his arm around Richie's neck, choking him, pulling him off balance. His other arm pulled at the knife hand, keeping it well away from me. The priority of the battle had just changed. The goal was no longer to beat the crap out of Richie, it was to get the knife out of his hands and end the confrontation as quickly as possible. I'd been stabbed!

I saw the best way to do it right before me. Richie, off balance and struggling against Mike had his legs spread wide in an attempt to keep his feet beneath him. I let go of the wrist, trusting Mike to keep the knife away from me and stepped forward, bringing my knee up into his crotch with all the force I could muster. I kneed him so hard that pain went shooting up my leg from my kneecap.

Richie squealed so loud that I'm surprised nearby windows didn't break. He began choking and gagging, the knife dropping forgotten from his hand, clattering on the cement floor of the hall. Mike, seeing the knife drop, kicked it clear and then let go of Richie, who dropped to the ground in a most ungraceful manner, curling immediately up into a ball. He began vomiting.

I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.

"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.

"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.

"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?

"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.

"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!

"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.

"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.

"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"

"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"

"What are you… "

"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."

"But who… "

"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"

That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.

The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.

But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.

But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?

As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."

"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.

"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"

"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."

The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."

A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.

"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.

I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.

"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."

Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?

Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.

"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."

Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?

"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"

"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."

It took me a few minutes to come fully awake and they gave me some Demerol to take the edge off my various pains. A doctor filled me in. Apparently the knife had severed a couple of minor veins but other than that, had touched nothing important. My spleen, kidney, and lung were all fine. My large and small intestines were fine. I was, in short, very lucky, suffering little more than a flesh wound. I would be kept in the hospital overnight for observation and released the next morning. After a week or so of taking it easy, I could go back to school. He then suggested I stay away from knives.

"You're parents and your sister are outside." He told me. "But before they come in the police would like to speak with you for a few minutes."

"Okay." I told him, nodding, examining the catheter protruding from beneath the sheets with distaste. How long until they took it out?

The police officer was older. I didn't recognize him. Probably he'd retired before I made my debut on the streets of Spokane where I would, over time, get to know most of them on a first-name basis. He was wearing a uniform that would be changed in a few years and carrying a thirty-eight in his holster, a gun that would be exchanged for nine millimeters soon. He looked me up and down for a moment, his gaze telling me that he'd seen it all and heard it all. I was familiar with the gaze. I'd acquired it myself.

"So Billy," He said, opening a notebook. "Suppose you tell me what happened today?"

I knew what he was expecting. He was expecting me to say that I had no idea who had done this to me or why. That I hadn't so much as caught a glimpse of the person responsible. That I couldn't identify them in a line-up. In short, he expected me to act like a typical teenaged victim.

"Well officer Morgan," I said, reading his nametag. "I was stabbed by a kid named Richard Fairview."

"Really?" He said, looking at me.

"Really." I nodded. "He came up behind me at my locker and just as I turned around, he stuck a buck knife in my side. I fought back and managed to keep myself from getting stabbed twice. In fact, I kneed the motherfucker so hard in the balls that I think I dislocated my knee in the process."

Officer Morgan chuckled. "Well well." He said. "This is different. So tell me, why did Mr. Fairview stab you?"

"Because he's a piece of shit thug and I've been screwing with him for the last few days."

"Screwing with him?" He asked, making a notation on his pad.

"I'm sure you've got reports of his little trip to the hospital the other day." I said. "He's a shake-down artist at the high school, ripping off kids as they come in. Perhaps your department has had dealings with him before?"

"Oh yes." Morgan nodded, looking at me as if he was seeing an optical illusion. "We have quite a file on Mr. Fairview. Are you telling me you sent him to the hospital the other day? Because if you are, I think you might want to get your parents in here and have me advise you of your rights. What happened to the gentleman the other day was a felonious assault."

"He tried to rip me off." I said. "And when I refused to give him money he tried to assault me. I simply took defensive measures. Very stern defensive measures."

"I see." The cop nodded, looking at me now with something like respect. "Please go on."

"Well, after that I've been making a point to tease him every time I see him." I shrugged. "I guess I went a bit too far and he decided to take action."

"That's a delicate way of putting it." He said. "It's hard to believe a little guy like you did all of that damage to that big asshole."

"I know a little karate." I said. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." The cop said. "I ran your record and Fairview's record while I was waiting to interview you. Fairview has got multiple arrests for everything from assault to drugs to attempted rape. He's a pukebag in the making. You, on the other hand, come from a middle-class family, have no arrest record whatsoever, in fact you're not in our system at all. All of the witnesses, and there was a surprising amount willing to talk about this thing, say that Fairview came up from behind and struck you with the knife and that you were acting in complete self-defense. Your friend Mike confirms your story. Fairview's story is among the most ridiculous I've ever heard. He says that you attacked him with the knife as he walked by, he took it away from you and stabbed you in self-defense." The cop gave me a sly smile. "He's a couple of rooms over you know."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yep." Morgan nodded with satisfaction plainly visible on his face. "Don't tell anyone I told you but you seem trustworthy. The docs say he might lose those testicles, you got him THAT hard. Even if he don't lose 'em, it's doubtful that he'll ever have kids." The cop looked to the heavens. "Imagine that, that little shitbag won't get to breed more little assholes. Goddamit sometimes there IS justice in this fucked-up world." He gazed at me. "So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write up your story pretty much as you told it. But I would suggest highly that you profess ignorance to the little incident the other day. You're the only one that's told me about it. Even Fairview himself didn't mention it. So, to avoid complications, how about we just leave that little tidbit out of the story? Makes things much easier for everyone. You don't know WHY he attacked you by your locker, he just did. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed, fascinated by the way he was talking to me.

"Good." Morgan nodded. "I'm gonna charge him with assault with a deadly weapon. In light of his previous record he'll get a year or so in juvie. It goes without saying that he'll be expulsed from school. So congratulations hero. You got rid of one first class, A-number one dirtbag.

I might put you in for a goddam public service award."

He took another twenty minutes or so to interview me thoroughly about the incident. He thanked me again and then left the room. A few minutes later my parents came in with Tracy in tow. Mom looked as if she'd been crying. So did Tracy I saw. Even Dad looked as if he'd aged since I'd seen him that morning. I felt sorrow and shame for having put them through this ordeal.

"Billy?" Mom said, coming forward and stroking my hair.

"Yeah Mom?" I asked. "I'm all right, really."

She gulped. "This isn't because of, well, drugs is it?"

So that is how I spent the one-week anniversary of my recycling in a hospital bed. They kept me doped up throughout the night but I still found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to the fact that I'd been stabbed in this life but that I hadn't been stabbed in my previous life. The implications of that were starkly frightening. I was not invulnerable. All bets were off. I could just as easily be killed here as I could have in my own when. I could die before I turned thirty-two!

Since I'd come back and changed things from their natural order anything could now happen. Anything. The risks I'd taken so far now gave me the shivers. Riding in Raisin and later Mike's car without a seatbelt on with an intoxicated driver at the wheel. Playing games with dangerous bullies at school. Even playing mind games with my teachers. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have really thought that I was safe? Had I actually been thinking of myself as a superhero before Richie had struck me?

I made my second solemn vow since returning. I vowed that I would be careful. I was having too much fun to die.

"Are you SURE you'll be okay Billy?" Mom asked me for perhaps the fiftieth time. "We can still cancel our plans."

"No, no Mom." I insisted once more. "I'm healing up just fine. I get to go back to school on Monday. Really, I'll be fine."

It was Saturday night. I'd been home from the hospital for a week and a half, bored out of my mind, unable to leave the house or do much of anything besides lie in bed and let my wounds heal. Mom had taken off work to take care of me and had fawned over me for the past nine days. I had soup and sandwiches delivered to me in bed, I had sodas brought to me whenever I wished. I was surprised I was allowed to go to the bathroom by myself. I love my mother dearly, I really do, but after nine days she was starting to get on my nerves. Saturday night was the night of her company's annual awards banquet, an event that she and dad attended every year and would usually come home from in the wee hours of the morning in a cab they were so drunk. The last thing in the world I wanted was for them to stay home. I needed a little peace.

"Well," She said doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely Mom." I nodded from the couch. "Besides, Tracy's here." I nodded in my sister's direction. "If there are any problems, she can handle them."

"Yeah Mom." Tracy readily agreed, too readily some would say. "I can take care of him."

She seemed satisfied. She headed upstairs and began to get ready. Two hours later her and Dad were out the door.

"Thank God!" Tracy said once their car had disappeared from sight. "How the hell could you stand it having her home all the time?"

"Mom's all right." I said. "It's just parental authority that gets old."

She smiled, not bothering with THE LOOK. By now Tracy was used to my odd sayings. "Whatever." She said. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course." I told her, offended that she felt the need to even ask that.

"Cindy scored some killer buds." Tracy told me. "She's gonna bring 'em over and we're gonna get stoned while we watch Saturday Night Live. If you can keep your mouth shut, maybe she'll share with you."

I smiled, knowing that I'd made great progress with my sister since returning. I'd never even been aware that she smoked grass in my previous life. Now she was offering to get stoned with me. Sure, it wasn't exactly a blood oath of loyalty, but it was a start. "Suppose I told you I COULDN'T keep my mouth shut." I asked. "What would you do then?"

She gaped at me for a moment and then laughed. "You're an asshole Billy." She said, shaking her head. "Do you want to get stoned or not? I've never done it with you before, you should think of it as a privilege."

"It sounds like a plan Trace." I said. "And it is a privilege."

Cindy came over at nine o'clock. She was wearing the obligatory tight 501's and a sweater that accented her pert tits nicely. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled. My loins stirred at the first sight of her, my dick threatening to harden by visual stimulation alone. I'd found over the past week that, injuries aside, my libido was that of a fifteen-year old. I NEEDED to have an orgasm at least once a day. I seemed to go into physical withdrawal symptoms if I didn't. I'd jacked off so much there were actual abrasions on my dick. And Cindy had been a star player in many of the fantasies.

I was heartened by the fact that, after a quick greeting to Tracy, she rushed over to my spot on the couch and planted herself next to me. My dick stirred again as I smelled the scent of her perfume. It was heavy upon her skin but it was feminine and went right to my brain.

"You poor thing." She said with syrupy sympathy. "How are you doing?"

I smiled. "Everything that's important still works." I told her.

She giggled. "I guess Richie Fairview can't say the same." She replied. "Can I see where you got stabbed?"

"Sure." I told her, while Tracy stared in disbelief at her friend. I raised up my shirt, showing her the jagged wound. The stitches had been removed leaving only a healing line on my side. A similar wound, where they'd done the lavage, was just below my belly button.

"Ohhh." She crooned, looking at it. "You poor thing. Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad." I told her.

"Well here." She said, kissing her finger and then touching it to my bare skin, just atop the scar. "That'll make it better."

My flesh jumped at her touch, feeling the slight wetness of her saliva transferred from her fingertips to my side.

"You missed one." I told her, pointing at the surgical incision. She gave me another smile and then repeated the procedure for that one.

"Hope that makes them feel better." She said, eyeing the bulge in my sweat pants.

"It does." I assured her. "It really does."

Tracy seemed in shock as she watched her friend openly flirting with me. When they walked into the kitchen to fill the bong with water I saw a quick, whispered conversation that ended with Tracy glancing at me and then shaking her head in disbelief. I was in disbelief as well but fully prepared to take advantage of the situation. Why was Cindy acting this way with me when she'd treated me with quiet contempt before? I didn't really care but I was curious.

"You like to smoke buds?" Cindy asked me as she pulled a small baggie from her pocket.

"I LOVE it." I told her, staring into her eyes hard enough to make her blush.

Tracy looked at us uncomfortably.

She began loading up the bong, which I insisted, in the interests of safety, that we take out into the garage to smoke from. I knew that the smell of pot lingered in a room for hours and I'd recently learned very graphically that all bets were now off. I was being careful. The girls whined a little at my suggestion but finally agreed to it. So we got stoned amid my father's tools and boxes of motor oil, in the unheated garage where we could see our breath misting into the air.

"Now don't you feel safe?" I asked the two of them once we were back inside.

"If Mom and Dad come home unexpectedly now, all we have to worry about is pretending we're not stoned. We don't have to worry about them smelling it in the house."

"Mom and Dad never come home early." Tracy scoffed, taking a swig from a Coke. "You're just paranoid Billy."

"Tracy," I told her. "If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's to expect and plan for the unexpected. Sure, they probably won't come home early tonight, but it's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? If you work to eliminate all risks you'll usually be pretty safe. If you go through life assuming the worst will never happen, someday you're gonna get fucked." I stared directly at her as I said this and it was clear she got my message. Her arms broke out into visible gooseflesh and she trembled uneasily for a second.

"I guess you're right Bill." She allowed carefully, no doubt thinking about the conversation I'd had with her not too long ago.

"That's some pretty deep shit." Cindy said, scooting herself a little closer to me. "Is there anything to eat here?"

While Tracy was heating up some frozen burritos in the microwave, Cindy and I continued to sit on the couch.

"So where's your boyfriend tonight?" I asked her.

"You mean Jeff?" She shook her head and made a sour face. "I'm not going out with him anymore. He's an asshole."

"I could've told you that." I said.

"I made out with him a few times and he was telling everyone he was screwing me. Do guys really think that we won't hear about it when they say shit like that?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure what they think." I replied. "I think that 'think' is probably too strong a word for what they do. It seems to me that girls should stick to a general rule when deciding who they are going to, well, have fun with."

"Oh?" She asked perkily.

"The more a guy talks about having gotten pussy, the less pussy he's actually got. Now Jeff probably told you he'd screwed plenty of girls, right?"

"Oh yeah." She said. "As if that's going to impress us."

"Exactly. On the other hand, the guys that never tell pussy stories are usually the ones getting all the pussy. You see, they are smart enough to realize that discretion is the better part of valor. It's a pleasant cycle.

You don't talk about it, you get more of it, you get better at it. Your best lovers are gonna be those guys that have never told a pussy story in their life."

"Like you?" She asked, twirling a lock of her hair with her finger.

"Perhaps." I agreed. "But of course there's only one true way to find out how good someone is in bed."

"Really?" Cindy smiled. "And what is that?"

"Extensive personal research." I told her, letting my fingertip glide over the back of her hand. "Do you like to research?"

Tracy's return kept her from replying. She had plates of burritos and fresh cokes in her hands. Her eyes saw my fingertip caressing Cindy's hand and she shot another puzzled look at her friend. I could understand the source of her confusion. Cindy had always gone for the football player types. The good looking, rich boys from good families, and always older than her. Now she was shamelessly flirting with ME, her brother, who was not only not rich, not a football player, and not blessed with the rugged good looks of a Ken doll, but was two years younger than her as well. To Tracy it was probably as if the fabric of existence had suddenly developed a tear.

I got up to go take a leak (and to adjust my hard-on a little, it was bent at an uncomfortable angle). When I returned I could see that the two girls had been discussing something. Cindy was batting her eyes at me and Tracy was staring at me, as if she was seeing a completely different person.

When Cindy got up to go pee a few minutes later, Tracy waited until the bathroom door was closed and then turned to me almost angrily. "Do you know what Cindy told me?" She asked.

"What?" I said mildly.

"She heard that you screwed Steph Massie over by the falls last week. Is that true?"

"No." I shook my head. "We took a walk is all that happened. Talked a little. I was trying to get somewhere with her but she wouldn't go for it."

"That's not what Cindy heard." Tracy accused.

"Oh?" I asked. "And what did Cindy hear? And what does she care about Steph anyway? They don't exactly hang out together."

Tracy scowled at me. "Who do you think Cindy got the buds from you idiot? Everyone knows that Stephanie's brother is the biggest pot dealer in school."

"Oh," I paused, reaching back in my memory. Now that she mentioned it I DID remember that little piece of trivia. "Well, what did she hear?"

"Steph told her that you took her into the woods and gave her the best lay she's ever had." Tracy shook her head in disgust. "And believe me, that bitch has had quite a few lays. Did you really fuck her?"

"No." I said. "I didn't."

"Well why would she be telling people that you did?"

I shrugged. "She's just telling dick stories. You know how women are always doing that."

"Dick stories?" Tracy asked. "Girls do NOT tell dick stories!"

"Tracy," I finally asked. "What possible concern is this of yours?"

"What?"

"Why are you grilling me about this? What business is it of yours?"

"Because Cindy thinks you're some kind of great lover and she wants to, you know? That's why!"

"Wouldn't that be Cindy's business?" I asked.

"I just think she should know the truth." Tracy said indignantly.

"Okay. Tell her. Get her alone and tell her that I said I've never fucked Steph or anyone else. Tell her I'll deny fucking anyone, anywhere, at any time to my dying day. I'll go to my deathbed swearing that I'm a virgin." I smiled. "Maybe that will get her to back off."

Tracy opened her mouth to say something and then stopped, staring at me, her mind turning over what I'd just said. Her exasperation with me slowly turned into something else. It was the same change of expression I'd seen on the cop's face in the hospital. The expression became one of respect.

"You see Trace." I continued. "I might TRY to get somewhere with Cindy tonight. I might even get her to come to my room with me. But I won't get anywhere with her. Even if we're up there for an hour. Even if Cindy comes down and tells you I fucked the shit out of her, that I was the best lover she'd ever had, it would only be a lie. I will never get anywhere with anyone to hear me tell it. I guess I'm doomed to just keep trying forever and ever."

"Wow." Tracy whispered, in awe. "Do you know anyone else like you?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, no." I replied. "All of the guys I know get pussy all the time. I should know, they tell me about it."

"A shame." She commented as the bathroom door opened and Cindy emerged again.

"Have you guys been talking about me?" She giggled, seeing the serious expressions on our faces.

"No." We both answered together.

"We were just talking about brother/sister stuff." Tracy added.

We went out to the garage and smoked a few more bowls. When we resumed our places on the couch, Cindy proclaimed she was cold and asked if there was a blanket we could cover up with. Tracy retrieved a large blue comforter from the linen closet and threw it over us. Under the cover of the cover I went to work.

While we watched TV my hand found its way to the tight denim of Cindy's leg.

I caressed it for a few minutes and, when she didn't object, began to slide it upward. My fingers slowly traced over the material between her legs and continued to the waistband. I deftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of her jeans and slid my finger in the gap this created, the pad of my finger touching the soft skin of her lower stomach. She settled into the couch a little more, opening her legs for me.

I undid the rest of the buttons and slowly slid my hand into her jeans, my fingertips gliding over the silky material of her panties, staying on the outside of them. I probed further down while she spread her legs even wider. Beneath my hand I could feel the cushion of her pubic hair and, further down, the outline of her lips and dampness seeping through the cotton. I found the spot just below her clit and began to apply pressure, rocking my hand back and forth.

Though I kept my eyes on the television and my face expressionless, I heard definite change in Cindy's breathing pattern as I caressed her. I wondered if she'd ever been stimulated like this before. Probably not. The first instinct of a guy when getting his hands down a girls pants is to drive his finger into the pussy and thrust it back and forth. Now there's a time for doing that of course, but the beginning stages of foreplay are not it. Females like a slow build-up to passion, a gradual rise in excitement.

Cindy's hand came sliding across my lap. Her fingers closed around the bulge of my cock through my sweat pants, feeling the length. She gave a little coo as she felt me and I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. She was, to my pleasant surprise, pretty good at what she was doing. My dick was straining, eager for release and the touch of a female hand upon it felt heavenly.

Next to us, Tracy continued to stare at the television, either oblivious to what we were doing or pretending to be. It didn't really matter. I slid my hand upward a few inches and then let my fingers slide beneath the waist of Cindy's panties. My fingertips felt soft, feminine skin and then kinky, curly hair. I continued downward, having to push harder now, until my fingers were sliding across wetness and slippery warmth. My middle finger curled downward, sliding between an unseen set of lips that gripped eagerly back.

"Ahhh!" Cindy uttered, jumping a little at the contact.

Tracy glanced over at her, a knowing expression on her face. "You okay Cindy?" She asked sweetly.

"Yeah." Cindy answered, a little breathlessly. "Just a, Oooh," She shivered a little as I began to move my finger, "A hiccup."

"I should get those kind of hiccups." Tracy commented and then went back to the TV.

Soon her hand crept under the waist of my sweats and was digging through my underwear. Her cool, soft fingertips closed around my shaft and began to glide up and down. It felt great, to be gripped by a hand other than my own, but she was doing it with such enthusiasm that the comforter was noticeably rising up and down. Tracy couldn't have helped but see it, though she said nothing and pretended not to notice. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist and forced her to slow down a little.

I continued to finger her, feeling my hand get wet from her juices, feeling her jack my aching cock up and down. I was trying to think of a way to get her up to my room when I received help from an unexpected source.

"TV sucks." Tracy suddenly proclaimed. "It's more than an hour until Saturday Night Live comes on. Let's listen to some music."

"Uh, okay." I nodded, not caring if she wanted to put on a polka album at that point.

"You just bought the new Foreigner album a few weeks ago, didn't you?" She asked me.

I looked at her. Had I? I supposed I had if she'd brought it up. "Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Well why don't you go up and get it for us?" Tracy asked. "I've been dying to hear it."

"Uh, why don't you go get it?" I asked.

"I don't want to go in your room." Tracy explained, smiling. "How about you get it. Maybe Cindy can go help you look for it. She can pick out some of your other albums that she wants to listen to later." She turned to Cindy. "He's got a great collection."

"Okay." Cindy said immediately, her hand shooting out of my sweats so fast it was like it had never been there. She extricated my hand from her pants and buttoned back up, making no particular effort to hide what she was doing from Tracy. When her pants were fastened she stood up. "C'mon Billy, let's see your albums."

"And take your time." Tracy said. "Look at them all REAL carefully while you make your decision."

"You bet." Cindy said, heading for the stairs. She looked over at me, "You coming Billy?"

I looked at her seductive smile and started to rise, stopping when I realized that my sweats were probably poking out before me.

"Well Billy?" Tracy asked, looking at me. "Are you COMING?"

I looked in my sister's eyes and saw only amusement there. "Yeah." I said, throwing off the covers and standing up. Tracy's eyes dropped to the tent at my crotch.

"Looks like you dropped something in there." She smiled. She then gave me a meaningful look. "You owe me one." She whispered.

"I suppose I do." I agreed and then headed for the stairs. "Even though I won't get anywhere."

Cindy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She took my hand in hers and led me to my own bedroom. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean it up.

Had it been its former self, the encounter might have ended right there. We entered and she closed the door behind her, she then turned to me. Despite her aggression, her eyes were showing nervousness; her body trembling a little.

"You're very beautiful." I told her, my eyes roaming up and down her form, knowing that I'd be kissing it and tasting it soon.

"Thank you." She said softly. "I can't believe I'm up here with you."

"Do you want to leave?" I asked.

"No." She said, stepping forward, putting her arms around me. I returned her embrace, already giddy at the feel of her against me. She leaned her mouth towards me. "I want to stay."

Knowing I had a reputation to live up to now, I gave her my best. I was helped by the fact that she was a girl I'd often dreamed about, both in my first trip through school, and after my return. I stood near the door with her for more than five minutes, just kissing her, letting her taste my tongue, letting me taste hers. She was a good kisser, much better than I'd expected, although not quite as good as Anita. But she excited me more than Anita, aroused my hunger more. As I began kissing her neck and her ears and undoing the ponytail to let her blonde hair cascade free, she put her hands into the front of my sweats again, grasping my cock, fondling it urgently.

"Come on." She said eagerly. "Let's do it!"

I nipped at her nose and then planted a soft kiss on her eyelid. "Patience." I told her. "This is an experience to be savored." Little did she know that it was taking all of my willpower to keep from throwing her to the bed, stripping her pants off, and pounding away like an animal.

Instead I led her to the bed, or she led me I guess since she refused to remove her hands from my cock.

"Do you want me to blow you?" She asked, kissing on my face, squeezing my cock.

"Sure." I nodded, kicking off my shoes. Although I hadn't planned on that, I certainly wasn't going to refuse it. And if she could make me come it would give me more staying power for my later work.

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of the bed, dragging my sweats and underwear down as she went. My cock popped free, slapping her across the cheek as it was liberated. She giggled and then slowly ran her tongue up the shaft from the base to the head.

"Ahhh." I groaned, pleased at the sensation. I was even more pleased when she took me into her mouth and deep throated me, her lips slowly sliding down until they were nestled in my pubic hair. With exquisite slowness she pulled back up, applying suction as she went. "Goddd." I breathed. "Where did you learn that?"

"You like that?" She said, planting little kisses. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

She took me back in her mouth and began to bob up and down on me. Her hand locked around the shaft and began to jack with the rhythm of her head. Her tongue swirled round and round, wetting me and sending saliva dripping down into my hair, her mouth applying a pleasant amount of suction. My hips began to rise and fall immediately from the bed. My god it felt good. This seventeen-year old girl KNEW how to give a blowjob. I would put her up against a twenty-year whore in that department.

She slurped and sucked and made little grunting noises for only a short time before the first orgasm came straining up my spine.

"I'm gonna come Cindy." I warned her, in a voice that wasn't steady.

"Mmmmm." She moaned around my cock and picked up her pace.

I began to ejaculate a large, pent-up load into her mouth. Her hand continued to jack at me throughout it and her mouth sucked my come from the head. She gulped and gulped, swallowing every drop. When she pulled her face from my crotch, my dick was wet and shiny but clean as a whistle. She smiled up at me, licking her lips.

"You're not the only one who has some talent you know." She said, standing and pushing me back onto the bed. "Now what are you gonna do to repay me?"

"I'll think of something." I said, pulling her face to mine and putting my tongue back into her mouth.

I pulled off her sweater and then her bra, baring her gorgeous breasts. There is something sensuous and indescribable about a set of tits that belong to a seventeen-year old. They are so fresh, so firm, so visually stimulating. Could there be anything on earth more appealing? I had to taste them so I rolled her over on the bed and took one into my mouth, working the nipple, teasing it, making her sigh in pleasure. I worked on the other nipple for a while and then stood and reached for her waistband.

She watched me, her face flushed as I unsnapped her jeans and pulled them from her body. Her legs were long and lean, smooth to the touch, with just a few light hairs on the upper thighs. Her panties were dark red with white polka dots. The crotch of them was darker red, made so by the wetness that had soaked in there. I ran my index finger up and down her spread legs a few times, relishing the feel of that soft skin, that youthful skin. Finally I continued to her crotch and hooked the finger through the elastic of the panties. My knuckle was against her lips, feeling damp heat. I tugged and she lifted her hips, allowing me to drag them free and off of her body.

I couldn't have imagined a sexier looking vaginal area. Her pubic hair was blonde, only slightly darker than that on her head. It was sparse, revealing two very swollen lips and one very erect clit. I don't believe I've ever seen a finer one.

"You like what you see?" She asked me, opening her legs more, obviously knowing that her crotch was one that men dreamed of.

"Very much." I said, picking up her legs by the calf and placing them on my shoulders. "I think I'll eat it."

"Ohhh." She moaned as my head went forward.

Though she was a teenager, her smell was of a woman. Sharp and musky, dripping with pheromones. My dick sprang back to life as her odor hit me. Her taste was tart as I slid my tongue between those pouting lips and plunged it in. I drove it in and out, drinking from her, enjoying my feast, feeling those soft blonde hairs tickling my nose. When her crotch began to rise and fall and her fingers began to pull strands of hair from my head, I attacked her clit, taking it between my lips. She screamed as she came in my mouth.

When her gyrations stopped she hooked her hands into my armpits and pulled on me. "Fuck me!" She commanded.

"I want to eat you some more." I told her, trying to pull back.

"Fuck me!" She growled. "Fuck me now! And then, after you come, I want you to eat me again."

So she had fantasies. But I imagined it would not be as enjoyable as she imagined since I intended to wear a condom. "I need to get a rubber first." I told her, trying to get up.

Her strong arms pulled me back down. "I'm on the pill." She told me. "Now fuck me! And then eat me!"

"Are you REALLY on the pill?" I asked, hesitating.

"Yes Goddamit!" She whined, "I've been on it for a year now. Now fuck me Billy! Fuck me now! Get your ass up here!"

I figured, through my haze of lust, that she probably wouldn't lie about that. So I climbed aboard, sliding up her sweaty body and putting the head of my dick against her wet lips.

"Do it!" She yelled, putting her legs around my ass and pulling with them. "Fuck me!"

I thrust forward into her tight slit, going in in one smooth, gripping motion. We sighed together as our pubic bones met.

"Fuck me hard!" She panted, thrusting her hips up at me. "Come on!"

I fucked her hard, pounding into her body and establishing a rhythm that got my heartrate well into the aerobic exercise category. Sweat began to form on my face and drip onto hers. When the droplets landed near her mouth she would lick at them. She kept chanting "yes, yes, yes, fuck me" as my cock assaulted her tight pussy, making wet, squishing sounds and pouring her juices out onto the bedspread.

I angled upward with my thrusts, making the shaft rub forcefully against the top of her vagina, where the clitoral nerves were. I made sure my pubis ground into hers with each thrust, which served both to pleasure her, driving her towards orgasm and served to pleasure my cock. I squeezed her tits, tweaking the nipples, I felt her tight ass as it moved beneath me, I gave her my fingers, allowing her to suck on them. I felt vague pain both in my side and in my stomach as my wounds were stretched and pulled by my frantic action but it was unimportant, overridden by the pleasure her young body was giving mine.

She came again, screaming into my ear and then biting down on the lobe. I was right behind her, pumping out another load into her gasping chasm.

My thrusts had barely stopped before she pushed me downward. "Now eat me." She said. "Please? Eat my pussy now that you've come in it. Please?"

Obviously this was a long-held fantasy of hers. Though she had definite experience, I doubted she had ever gotten someone to do THIS act for her before. Teenagers and even college age men would be disgusted by the very thought. Hell, most fully-grown and matured men were. Though it wasn't one of my favorite activities, it wasn't repulsive either. It was something I'd done before (I'd found that many women shared Cindy's fantasy of having sperm licked from their vagina). My motto had always been do whatever it takes to insure future copulation. I gave her a smile and then slid down her body. I spread her sweaty legs wide and looked at her pussy. It was drooling juice and sperm, oozing it onto the bedspread. I hesitated just to make her ask again. I didn't have to wait long.

"Come on?" She begged. "Do it, please?"

I lowered my head and went to work.

It took her only a short time to come again but still I ate her until yet another orgasm came through. I then rolled over onto my back and pulled her on top of me. With a few adjustments her pussy was soon clamped down on my cock once more and I was thrusting up into her. She didn't want me to come in her pussy again though. Instead, she pulled herself off of me and took me into her mouth once again. She put her impressive blowjob abilities to work and soon I was blasting another load down her throat.

She crawled up onto my body and collapsed atop it, kissing my cheeks and my lips. "God o'mighty." She proclaimed. "That was the best sex I have ever had. Stephie was right about you."

"Stephie?" I asked. "Do you mean Stephanie Massie?"

"You know damn well who I mean Billy." She smiled, nuzzling me a little. "She told me you could eat a pussy like there was no fuckin' tomorrow. And goddam if you can't."

"I certainly wouldn't know how she would know that." I told Cindy.

"You're full of shit." Cindy told me affectionately. "She gave me every stinky detail. You fucked the shit out of her."

I shook my head, smiling a little. "Nope." I said. "I most certainly did not. She let me kiss her a little but she wouldn't let me do anything else."

Cindy stared into my eyes, trying to read what was behind them. "Are you for real?" She finally asked.

"As real as I can be." I said, sitting up. "But you know what? You and I didn't do anything either."

"We didn't?"

I shook my head again. "Nope. We looked at records, I tried to put a move on you, and you shot me down. Hell, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

She looked at me grinning. "I guess I can't."

"But if you're ever with groups of girls and you want to tell them some dick stories about how Tracy's little brother ate your pussy until you screamed, or about how he fucked you until you clawed marks in his back, or about how he licked his come out your still-twitching cunt afterwards," I licked my lips. "Well, there's not much I can do about that now, is there? I'll deny it of course, but you know how girls love to listen to those dick stories? Hell, people believe everything they hear, don't they?"

"I guess they do." She said teasingly. "But I'm not that kind of girl. Suppose I promised to keep my mouth shut about what happened here today?"

"Oh I don't expect you to." I said. "I guess I'll just have to live with the reputation your lies will give me, won't I?"

"I guess you will." She said, giggling now. "It's a tough life, isn't it?"

Chapter 4

Here, at last, is chapter four of my ongoing saga. This chapter is a bit different since it covers a much greater span of time than the previous chapters did. Again, comments are greatly appreciated and I will eventually answer all legitimate email. Sorry to all that it sometimes takes me a while. Send comments to al_steiner@hotmail.com

Working hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Paying anything to roll the dice

Just one more time

Some will win

Some will lose

Some are born to sing the blues

Oh the movie never ends

It goes on and on and on and on

JOURNEY

Time continued to go on, as it does. I was pleased to see that it passed at an adult's pace instead of a child's or a teenager's. I went to bed each day and I woke up each day still in my new life. Gradually I became convinced that I was there to stay, that I wouldn't suddenly wake up again back in 1999. This was an idea that, once I became used to being back in my teens, used to terrify me.

Of course there were things that I missed. Modern music for one. I longed painfully sometimes to hear a little alternative rock or modern heavy metal instead of what I considered to be golden oldies. I missed some of the conveniences that I'd become accustomed to in the nineties that weren't commonplace in the early eighties. Video recorders and rented movies were a prime example. My parents would not own a VCR until late in 1984. Even then video stores would not begin to crop up until early in 1985. But most of all I missed Becky. There were times I cried in my bed at night as I lay sleepless, feeling condemned to the knowledge that I would never see her again, never hold her again.

As I'd vowed after Richie Fairview put his buckknife into my side, I was careful what I did. I went to school each day but I did not torment any more bullies. Of course if they had decided to come looking for trouble with me I would have returned it to them in spades but none of them did. My encounters with Richie forever sealed my reputation as someone that you did not fuck with. The bullies had much easier targets than I to occupy their time.

I tormented no more teachers as I had my history and A amp;P instructors. I replied politely to their questions when I was asked with whatever answer they were looking for. I brought up no controversial subjects to them. I did my homework each day the moment I got home from school (except on those days that Anita had something for me to do; something that began to happen with increasing frequency). As the school year wound on and as winter became spring my grades improved greatly all across the board, dramatically some would even say, unbelievably a few uneasy teachers even noted. By the time the school year ended my grades were straight A's and my overall average had moved up considerably.

I similarly took no further chances with my skin. As a paramedic I used to shake my head sadly at how stupid teenagers were, assuming their own immortality. After Richie I realized that I'd been even worse than they were. At least normal teenagers will acknowledge the possibility that they CAN die, even if they think it won't happen to them. But I had assumed that I COULDN'T die, that I was safe until thirty-two. That, despite eight years of scraping up the broken remains of idiotic teenagers off the streets of Spokane. I still shudder when I think of how easily I'd climbed into the car with Mike that night of the kegger, of how easily he might have drunkenly driven over the edge of the levee, dumping us both into the Spokane River. How ironic that would have been, for me to come back and save Tracy from that fate only to suffer it myself, to put my parents through the same grief with a different child.

I avoided riding in cars with teenagers when I could. When I couldn't, I snapped on my seatbelt and pulled it tight. Most of the time it was the first time the seatbelt in question had ever been fastened. I could tell that the driver's and other passengers of these vehicles wanted to deride me, call me a pussy, and apply the other forms of peer pressure that teens use for their bizarre purposes. But they never did. Again, Richie Fairview kept them from speaking their minds. Occasionally someone would ask however, why I was doing it.

"Well suppose we crash?" I'd ask.

"We ain't gonna crash." Was the inevitable reply.

"Probably not." I'd say. "But it's possible, isn't it?"

"I guess." They'd shrug.

"Well," I'd theorize. "If we DO get into an accident, I won't get hurt as bad if I have this seatbelt on. It doesn't inconvenience me in any way to have it on. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't restrict my movement, so why shouldn't I have it on?"

They usually had no answer for that and would let the subject drop there. But they never put on their own seatbelts in response. They didn't want to be called a pussy when I'd gone.

One thing I absolutely refused to do was to get into a vehicle with someone who'd been drinking and/or getting stoned. And since I didn't enjoy walking home from places like the falls, I just avoided going with anyone where that was a possibility.

This policy led to problems between Mike and I, and we already had more than our share of problems. Our relationship had changed since my return and Mike didn't care too much for it. I was no longer his trusty sidekick, willing to go along with everything that he wanted to do. I no longer smoked pot with him on the way to school because I wanted my head clear for classes. He tried every form of peer pressure he could think of to get me to change my mind but when I continually refused he blew up at me one day and stormed off. He didn't speak to me or walk to school with me for three days and surprisingly, though it had been a childish outburst over a ridiculous subject, I was very upset by the episode.

I cared for Mike and I desperately wanted to pull him off of the path he was on. My conviction to do this became even stronger after the Richie Fairview incident. He had jumped in, without the slightest hesitation and grabbed hold of the hulking asshole, pulling him off of me. He had done that despite the fact that he'd been terrified of Fairview and that Fairview was holding a knife at the time. He had cast aside his self-protection instinct to come to my assistance and I could not forget that. Maybe if he hadn't done that, maybe if he'd simply stood there during the attack unable to move, I could have simply let the friendship die and let him go about his life. But he hadn't. He'd jumped in there without a second thought. Goddamit I owed him something. I had to try!

As was his nature, he offered me no apology for his outburst. He simply showed up at my door for the walk to school the following Monday and acted as if nothing had happened. He pulled out a joint as we went along but did not offer any to me. I suppose that was as close to saying sorry as he could come.

So I continued to walk to school with him each day even though I didn't really have to. Cindy, who had her own car and who took Tracy to school each day, had offered to give me a ride if I wanted. Her invitation did not include Mike, who she couldn't stand, and so I declined it.

After school I would go over to Mike's sometimes or he would come over to my house and then, if I'd finished my homework, I would smoke some pot with him. I learned to drop myself down to the level of a sixteen-year-old during these times and even managed to have a good time. I did not, however, go out on weekends with him anymore, always pleading other plans, which was usually true. I'd found some interesting ways to spend my weekends that did not involve putting my life at risk with intoxicated drivers. Anita figured heavily in these plans most of the time. So did Cindy.

Mike always seemed upset that I wouldn't go out with him on the weekends but didn't make a big deal of it. A status quo developed in our relationship, one that was due to break before long.

In April of that year Mike's Dad, a mechanic, fixed up a two hundred dollar Volkswagen Bug and gave it to Mike to drive full-time. I remembered the car well. It was a 68, the heater didn't work, the upholstery was ripped and shredded, and the engine would constantly require attention from his Dad. Mike and I had had some good times in that car during my first trip through.

We would go to keggers, to parties, just out cruising. We would use the car to cut school with, driving to the river to go fishing.

Though I had no plans to do most of the stuff we USED to do in the car, I figured that simply driving a few miles to school would be safe enough. I was wrong.

Mike's driving in that Bug used to scare me even before being recycled. It absolutely terrified me afterwards. It only took me one trip with him to realize that I was never going to set foot in it again. He picked me up for school the first day he had it and as soon as we were out of sight of my house, he pulled out a joint and lit it up.

"You sure you should be doing that while you're driving?" I asked nervously.

"Doing what?" He replied with genuine confusion.

I pulled my seatbelt tighter and braced myself.

In the course of the short drive to school he weaved recklessly in and out of the morning traffic. He rode up on the rear of vehicles when he had no room to weave, getting so close to them that, had they stopped, he would not have had time to even apply his brakes, let alone stop in time. He ran through one red light and three stop signs, giving only a careless glance as he did so. He smoked on his joint the entire time. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was trembling with fear.

"You okay dude?" He asked, looking at me with his stoned expression.

"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.

"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."

"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."

He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.

"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."

"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."

"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.

I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?

As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.

Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.

Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.

"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.

"Sure." I smiled back, following her.

Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.

Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.

"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."

"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"

"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"

"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"

"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."

"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"

"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.

I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.

The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.

Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.

I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.

By the time Mike abruptly ended our friendship Nina and I were quite close and able to confide pretty well in each other. As I entered the lunchroom the day after my telephone conversation she immediately noticed my upset expression.

"What's wrong?" She asked, giving me her shy smile.

"Oh," I said, sitting down and opening my lunch bag. "You know my friend Mike that I've told you about?"

"Yeah," She nodded. "The guy who likes to smoke pot all the time."

"Right." I agreed. "Well yesterday…"

I poured out the whole story to her, omitting of course the part about how I'd once been a thirty-two year old and couldn't relate to a sixteen year old very well anymore. She listened without interruption and then, when I was finished, looked at me thoughtfully.

"You seem like you're blaming yourself for this." She said.

I shrugged. "We've been friends for a long time. Maybe I'm being a little hard on him. Is it that much for him to ask for me to drive to school with him each day?"

"If you're putting your life at risk it is." She answered. "It sounds to me like HE is the one to blame for this, not you. He is the one willing to end a friendship over something so stupid as who you drive to school with and whether or not you smoke pot with him."

"Yeah, I know." I agreed. "But we've been friends a long time. I can't help but feel I've let him down or something."

"If you've been friends a long time," She said. "Don't you think he'll eventually grow up a little and realize how stupid he's been? He'll come around."

"It might be too late by then." I blurted.

She looked at me puzzled. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, just ignore me." I told her. "I can be awfully bleak sometimes."

I left the lunchroom that day feeling better about the situation. Though nothing had changed I always felt better after I'd talked to Nina.

I also got into the habit of checking the business section of the newspaper each day. I would look through the stock market report, memorizing and tracking various stocks. It became such a routine at the breakfast table each morning that Dad quickly stopped asking me why I was doing it. In my former life I'd followed stocks only as they related to my 401k plan. Now I was trying to get a grip on the market, to begin the process of understanding it and eventually mastering it. If I could master it I knew, I could master everything.

Summer break began. When I brought my report card to my mother I actually feared she was going to faint as she stared at it.

"Straight A's Billy?" She asked, looking at it in disbelief. "You?"

"I guess I just started to take all that stuff you're always sayin' about how education is the most important thing, seriously Mom." I told her.

An extended version of THE LOOK followed this.

"Do you think you can make your tacos tonight?" I asked next.

"Sure." She said numbly.

The summer went by quickly in a haze of hot days and sexual activity. Although Mike no longer hung out with me I found new companionship with Cindy and Tracy. My relationship with my sister had improved to the point where she was confiding secrets in me. She began telling me her hopes and dreams; that she wanted to go to law school, that she wanted to marry a nice man and have children, that she wanted a nice house and a nice car. These were things I'd never known about her since her life had been cut short before we'd gotten out of the teenage rivalry stage.

She also no longer seemed to have a problem being seen with me. Maybe something I'd said, something I'd done had given her a little kick in the head, but she treated me that summer as a friend and companion, taking me with her when she went to parties, either with Cindy or with one of her other friends.

She'd also developed a similar aversion to being in a car with an intoxicated driver; an aversion she'd managed to share with Cindy. Whenever we went out one of the girls would stay sober enough to pilot the car safely home. They developed a designated driver rule long before that buzzword caught on. I always suspected that my little speech to Tracy that one night had a lot to do with it.

It was from Cindy and Tracy's ranks of friends that I chose my sexual companions. They were both part of the popular crowd, members of the elite and in my previous life I would have been intimidated as hell to be at a party with them. But now things were different. I could not bring myself to be intimidated by teenagers, but oh how I lusted after them. I rarely left a party without using one or more of the condoms I carried with me at all times. I got to sleep with girl after girl from my fantasies and it was usually THEY who would approach me thanks to an underground reputation I had developed among the females.

The guys at these parties, who were for the most part older than I, either seniors or college freshmen, were oblivious to what I was doing. Despite my reputation with Fairview they considered me harmless, even as I was taking their girlfriends out for a little walk while they were playing a game of quarters or having someone pour beer down their throat with a beer bong. They wondered what I was doing there of course. I was inevitably the youngest male in attendance and none of them ever chose to converse with me.

That was fine with me. As long as they saw me as no threat when they spotted me talking amongst the girls or having a private conversation with one of their girlfriends.

Tracy told me once that many of them thought I was gay. They didn't tease me about it because of Richie Fairview but that seemed to explain why I chose to hang out with the girls instead of trying to come over and talk football or cars. I never tried to convince them otherwise although the queer logic of this amused me to no end. A guy wants to hang out with girls so he must be gay.

I had careful rules about my relationships during that summer. I generally didn't sleep with anyone more than once and I made it clear that I desired no sort of commitment or ongoing relationship. I was in it for the sex and the sex only. Most of them understood this. They were in it for the sex too and happy that I was happy to keep my mouth open while it was on their pussy and closed afterword. I had two exceptions to this rule however: Cindy and Anita. I continued to sleep with both of them on a regular basis.

It was nice. They both understood the rules, especially Anita who had no desire to have anyone find out she was boffing a teenaged boy. They were also both on birth control so I didn't have to wear a condom with them. It is nice to sink bare flesh into bare flesh for a change of pace.

Except for the rift with Mike and except for the absence of my discussions with Nina, which I missed, it was quite a pleasant summer. The best one I'd ever remembered to that point.

I got my learner's permit that August when I turned fifteen and a half. Dad then 'taught' me to drive.

"You've caught on to this remarkably quick." He said, looking at me with something close to suspicion the first day. "Tracy hasn't been letting you drive, has she?"

"No Dad." I assured him, expertly changing lanes, feeling ecstatic to be behind the wheel after, how long? More than six months? "I guess I just have a knack for it."

"Some knack." He said. "I guess we won't have to go out all that often, will we?"

September brought the start of my junior year and Tracy's senior year. I had a whole new slew of classes and subjects that I'd chosen a few weeks before. I was particularly pleased to find that I no longer had to take PE.

My first period class was Introduction to Molecular Biology. Mrs. Crookshank taught it and it was a subject I knew little about. I'd taken it so that I could relieve some of the boredom of school by learning something new. I walked into class the first day and Mrs. Crookshank greeted me stiffly.

"Billy," She nodded. "It's nice to see you again this year."

"Nice to see you too." I answered.

"Do you like to read about molecular biology too?" She asked me next.

There was a hint of teasing sarcasm in her face. "No Mrs. Crookshank." I said. "I'm an MB virgin."

Before she had a chance to reply I turned to find a seat. I saw that Nina was in the class. She was sitting in the front row and all of the desks around her were empty. She gave me a weak smile, perhaps wondering if I was going to speak to her or not after the summer.

"Hi Nina." I greeted, walking over and taking the seat next to hers. "How was your summer?"

It turned out Nina was also in my third period class; Geometry. I sat next to her there also. When the lunch bell rang we walked together to the cafeteria. We found our normal seats and began to talk as we ate. After only a few minutes it was if we'd only done this yesterday.

"So you still want to be a doctor?" I asked her as we waded through the cafeteria's version of stroganoff.

"Oh yes." She nodded. "That's why I'm taking molecular biology. You have to be heavy in the science classes to get in. Especially if you want to get a scholarship."

"Where is it you want to go?" I asked her.

"Anywhere they'll take me." She said. "But I'd prefer U of W at Seattle. It's a top rated school but close enough so that I could commute home on vacations. If I get a good car that is. My parents don't have that much money."

"Mine either." I agreed. "I keep trying to get my old man to invest in the stock market but he won't do it. I don't think he trusts my predictions of good stocks."

"Do you still want to study business?"

"I don't really WANT to." I said. "But I think that I should. I think that's where my fortune lies."

She giggled, an action she would have been incapable of a year before. "Still gonna make that fortune huh?"

"I think I'll have a good head for investment." I predicted.

We ate in silence for a moment and then I asked, "Do you follow all that molecular biology crap? I mean today was only the intro but it seemed pretty deep to me. Quite a change from A amp;P."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I've read up on it a little over the summer. Trying to get myself a little edge you know? But you know what confused me?"

"What?"

"The geometry. It sounded like he was talking in Latin."

"He was." I affirmed. "But I think I got that handled. It's mostly just memorizing formulas it looks like. The actual math part is the algebra that we learned last year. If you can memorize the formula, you got it nailed."

"You must have a head for numbers." She told me, taking another bite.

"I never did before." I muttered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing." I answered, an idea suddenly striking me. "Listen, maybe we can help each other out. Why don't we get together and study a couple times a week? You can help me with the biology and I can help you with the geometry?"

She looked up at me, speechless, her face reddening.

"You okay?" I asked, wondering what I'd said to embarrass her.

"You want to… study with me?" She asked.

"Sure." I said. "Why not? We can either do it at your house or mine. You don't live too far from me, do you?"

"No." She shook her head. She gulped. "Are you sure we should do that?"

"Study together?" I asked, confused. "Of course I do. What's wrong with that?"

She looked at me hard for the longest time, various expressions crossing her face; fear, doubt, elation, disappointment, determination. "Nothing." She said finally. "When can we start?"

"I don't know." I said, still confused. "How about whenever we get stuck on something. It's probably gonna be often the way I see it."

Her face cleared a little bit and she seemed more composed. She giggled a little and shook her head.

"What's wrong?" I asked, nearing exasperation.

"Nothing." She chuckled. "Just thinking weird thoughts."

"I get those a lot too." I told her, still wondering what had gone through her head.

I saw Mike in the halls of course but he didn't talk to me, didn't approach me. His locker was no longer next to mine. It seemed he had a new group of friends to hang out with; the freshmen kids from last year. They all looked as if they worshipped him. I sadly guessed that that was what he needed. I also knew that he would drop out by the end of this year and that I was powerless to stop it. I tried to approach him a few times and he simply walked away.

Nina and I started studying together on a regular basis and our friendly relationship deepened to the point that we became intimate friends; able to judge each other's moods with a glance, able to say nearly anything to each other. I became closer to her than I ever would have thought possible. I was closer to her than I'd ever been to Mike. After all, Nina didn't always try to top whatever story I told or try to convince me about all of the mythical dick she was getting. She didn't try to get me to smoke cigarettes or cut school or get stoned. There was also no underlying sexual tension with her as there was with most of the other girls I knew. We just enjoyed being together, talking together.

She met Tracy and my parents on her first day studying at my house. It was somewhat awkward since Nina was very shy before new people and my parents were very curious about this girl I chose to have meet them. Though I was boffing nearly everything I could get my dick into at that point, I'd never introduced anyone to them. I thought it kind of ironic that the one they were meeting was the one I had not had any sex with. Nina uttered monosyllable replies to Dad and Mom's inquiries about where she lived, what she planned to do, etc, and finally they left us alone. Tracy had only uttered a polite greeting and had retreated to her room.

After she'd left, and after I'd answered my parent's interrogation and explained that we were only STUDYING together, that we were only friends, and that they should not start compiling a wedding list, I went upstairs to put my books away.

Tracy was doing some studying of her own, this time to the accompaniment of Ozzy Osborne. She looked up as I passed and called me into the room.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"Have you no shame at all?" She asked me.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"It's bad enough that you're screwing all of my friends but isn't that enough? Have you gotten bored with that and decided to start knocking off the shy egghead girls too? You are serious scum."

"I'm not screwing Nina." I said, looking at my sister aghast. "We were just studying. She's my friend."

"You don't have any girl friends." She accused. "You have fuck partners. Are you seriously telling me that you invited that poor girl over here to study? You didn't take her upstairs for a little private session before we all got home?"

"No." I yelled, shaking my head. "My god, am I that bad?"

"Are you that bad?" She laughed. "Do you know how many relationships you've broken up in the last few months? Do you know that more than four of my friends have dumped their boyfriends after they fucked you?"

"No." I said, and then, "Really?"

"Really." She nodded. "It was kind of cute at first, how all these girls were trying to maneuver to you, to get you to notice them. But you're getting out of hand. I've got girls coming up to me and pretending to be my friend just so I'll introduce them to you. Of course I have to keep it quiet they all say. I just wanna meet him, talk to him a little. Did you know that they all talk about you in the locker room and in the bathroom? Do you know what they say about you?"

"What?" I asked.

"They talk about you the way your friends talk about chicks like Steph. You're a male slut Billy. They describe what you do to them and how well you do it using the most disgusting terms I've ever heard. They've even asked me if I've done you. Me! Your fucking sister!"

"I'm sorry Tracy, I never…"

"But you know what they never say about you?" She went on. "They never say how nice of a guy you are or how respectful you are. They never come up to me and say, 'Gee Tracy, your brother is such a sweetheart'. All they talk about is how you'll eat their pussy like a goddam vacuum cleaner or about how you'll fuck them until they scream. They never talk about how they'd like to take you home to meet their mom or about how they'd like to be your girlfriend. They talk about how they can manage to get over to your house again for another session."

"Wow." I said, unsure what to think. Though I'd known that I had a reputation among the girls I had no idea they talked the way Tracy was telling me. I was also disconcerted at my sister's anger about this. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was have her pissed off at me.

"Wow." Tracy mocked. "That's pretty goddam profound."

I sat down on the edge of her bed, setting my backpack full of books down. Tracy turned down the stereo a little.

"I'm sorry Tracy." I told her. "I didn't know that what I was doing was affecting you. I thought I was just having some harmless fun. And I assure you that Nina and I are just friends. I haven't slept with her and I have no intention of doing so."

She stared at me for a moment. "You know the damnedest thing?" She asked. "The damnedest thing is that you ARE a nice guy and you ARE a sweetheart when you want to be. If you were an asshole it wouldn't bother me for girls to talk about you that way but you aren't. It bugs the shit out of me to hear people talk about my little brother that way. You would probably feel the same way if you went into the locker room and the guys were saying how well Tracy sucked dick or how she'd fuck anyone who asked, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yeah." I nodded. Would it bother me? I would want to kill whomever I heard saying that.

"That's how I feel when I hear that." She said. "And I can't even defend you in front of them because it's true. You DO fuck anyone who asks."

"I'm sorry." I repeated. I couldn't think of a thing to say to her. I surely wasn't going to say that I wouldn't do it anymore because that would have been a lie.

"Look." She said. "I'm just your sister. I'm not gonna ask you to stop fucking girls. I know you wouldn't do it anyway. But can you maybe tone it down a little? Cut it down to one or two a week? Or maybe hit up some of the other ones more than once?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "I'll try Tracy. I'll try. But remember, I'm fifteen. I'm at my sexual peak you know."

"Fuck you dickhead." She laughed back. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you deserved it."

"I suppose I did." I agreed.

"You're really not fucking Nina?"

"I'm really not." I affirmed.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet." She said.

So for Tracy's sake I toned things down a little. Also for my own. I wasn't sure I liked being referred to as a male slut. I stopped pursuing women with the vigor I'd exhibited before, instead simply waiting for them to come to me. I also began giving more repeat performances. By the time the snow flew I had, in addition to a new best friend, a small circle of girls that I regularly had sex with instead of a constant stream. It was enough and when one of the girls got tired of the relationship or met someone they wanted to have for a boyfriend, I would covet someone else.

To my surprise Tracy and Nina actually became something like friends. Nina would come over to my house twice a week or so to study and my sister, curious about the type of girl I would choose as a friend, made a point to talk to her each time she was over. Nina was slow warming up to my sister. I knew that this was due to her past treatment by other girls, which was both crueler and longer lasting than the torment she'd suffered from boys. This was something I never would have suspected had she not told me and it disheartened me to think that the fairer sex could be even crueler to their own then boys were.

But gradually Nina lost her shyness before Tracy and even Cindy, who was also a frequent visitor to our house. The two older girls took Nina under their wing and taught her the finer points of fashion, talking her into replacing her plain clothes with more modern ones. They taught her how to put on make-up, accenting her facial features. They taught her how to fix her hair into something other than a ponytail. The change in her appearance was actually startling when you saw it. I was able to see the attractive doctor that she would one day be, although without the perpetually bitchy expression and mannerism.

And then came the day in early December when a cold winter storm was blowing across the Spokane area. Snow was being driven through the air by gusting winds that registered more than forty miles an hour. As I walked out to the school parking lot towards Cindy's car the snowflakes hit me in the face like little shards of steel, stinging me and making me pull my hood and my scarf tighter around me. Snowdrifts were already more than ten feet high against some of the buildings and the ground was covered in white. If it had been snowing like this in the morning they would have closed the school.

Unfortunately the storm hadn't geared up until late morning.

When I got to the place where Cindy's car had been parked I looked up to find nothing. I looked around the parking lot, wondering if I was mistaken about where she'd parked. The wind cut into my face like a knife as I tried to locate the Caprice. It was nowhere to be seen. Other kids were rushing to their cars in groups of two or more, some of them slipping and sliding on the slick pavement. I saw no Cindy or no Tracy though.

"What the fuck?" I muttered, wondering where in the hell they'd gone.

It took me only a minute to figure out that I was stuck here with no other prospect but to walk home. I wondered if I would freeze to death before I got there. And then I spotted Raisin heading for his Falcon. I ran after him.

When Raisin dropped me off in front of my house fifteen minutes later the sight of Cindy's car parked at our curb did not improve my mood. I thanked Raisin and bade him farewell, trudging through the thick snow on the driveway to the front door, uttering foul things under my breath about sisters and friends that left brothers abandoned in a freaking blizzard.

The door was locked so I used my key, stepping into the warmth of the living room, prepared to chew out the traitorous girls. But they weren't there. The television was off, and on the stereo turntable one of my Pink Floyd albums was spinning silently around at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute, the arm suspended above one of the tracks. A quick glance at the coffee table gave me a pretty good idea what had happened. An opened bag of Doritos was sitting there along with the remains of some sandwiches and a few candybar wrappers.

They were getting stoned! They'd left me to freeze to death in the snow so they could go home and get stoned. And they'd probably smoked all of the pot before my arrival. The bitches! Where were they now? I began stomping through the house, looking for them.

When I approached the door that led out to the garage I heard girlish giggles coming from the other side. Fumed, I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. What I saw on the other side made me freeze in my tracks.

Cindy and Tracy were out there all right. The smell of greenbud came wafting over me and there was an actual haze in the confined space. But the surprising thing was who was with them. Nina was there, her mouth applied to the neck of the bong, sucking a hit up through the water while Cindy held the lighter and cheered her.

"That's the way girl!" Cindy encouraged. "Hit that shit!"

Tracy looked up at me, her eyes half-lidded, a shit-eating grin on her face.

"Hey Billy." She haled. "Glad you got home okay. You want a hit?"

Nina, hearing my name broke off what she was doing, leaving smoke curling from the bong. She saw the dumbfounded look on my face as I stared at her. She held my stare for a moment and then burst out into hysterical laughter, expelling a large cloud of fragrant smoke from her mouth and nose. Tracy and Cindy instantly joined her in hysterics. They were pointing at me as they doubled over in laughter.

They laughed for nearly three minutes as I stood in the doorway and simply stared. I could not believe that they had actually gotten Nina stoned. I could not believe that she'd gone along with it. What were they thinking?

When their giggles and chortles dried up I walked over to them. Nina started to say something and then burst into laughter again. Cindy joined her.

"You got her stoned?" I asked Tracy, who was the only one not laughing. "And you had her cut school?"

"We didn't have her do anything." Tracy told me, picking up a baggie and loading another hit into the bong. "She asked us if we had any pot. She wanted to try it. It seems all those stories you told her about smoking out made her curious." She giggled, jerking a thumb towards Nina. "As you can see, she seems to like it. Why didn't you ever smoke any with her?"

"I didn't think she'd want to." I said, watching Nina's face. She would start to calm down a little and then would look at me and burst into fresh laughter.

"I guess you were wrong." Tracy said, handing me the bong and a lighter. "I think there's a lot of things about Nina that you don't know."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Later." She answered. "Have a hit."

Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I flicked the bic and put my mouth to the bong.

Cindy and Nina both left shortly before Dad arrived home from work. I worried about the two of them on the snowy roads with a stoned driver at the wheel. I wouldn't stop them from leaving but I made them promise to put on their seatbelts. I knew Nina would and I also knew the chances of them being in a fatal crash were slim. Most fatal accidents occurred during the summer months, when the weather was clear and when the drivers could barrel along at suicidal speed. During snowy weather everyone drove slow. While there were more accidents, they tended to be minor. You simply couldn't generate enough kinetic energy to kill during a snowstorm. If Cindy got in an accident it would probably be a fender-bender. But then nothing is absolute so I worried.

After dinner and dishes, while the household began to wind down for bed I found my way to Tracy's room once again. Outside the wind was still howling against the windows, making the storm-shutters rattle and bang. They would have cancelled school the next day except for the fact that it was Saturday.

Tracy was lying on her bed, reading the latest (for that time) Stephen King book. She was wearing her standard pajamas, a long T-shirt.

"What's up?" She asked as I tapped on the frame of her door.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"Sure." She nodded, setting the book down and sitting up.

"Earlier today," I started. "While we were smoking out."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Wasn't that some killer shit? I was droning all through dinner. Do you want to smoke some more? I still have a little left."

"No," I said, shaking my head. And then I amended. "Well, maybe tomorrow. But anyway, while we were smoking you said that there's a lot of things I didn't know about Nina."

"Yeah?" Tracy smiled a little.

"What did you mean by that?" I asked.

She gave me a very adult look. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked.

"Don't know what?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Nina's in love with you Billy."

"What?!"

"Not just infatuation, not just attraction, not just puppy-love, whatever the fuck that is, but love. L-O-V-E. The big one. The ultimate like. She's head over heels in love with you little brother."

I was stunned into silence for a moment. Finally I said, "Did she tell you this?"

"No." Tracy said. "She doesn't have to. It's pretty plain to everyone who talks to her. I've known it ever since I started getting her to talk to me.

She thinks you're the shit." She shrugged. "God knows why."

"Wait a minute." I said, trying to deny it. "I think you're mistaken. We're good friends, we like to talk to each other, I can see how you would think…"

"I'm not mistaken Billy." Tracy said firmly. "You can accept it or not accept it. I'm just supplying information for you. She is in love with you. No doubt about it. And she's terribly afraid that you don't love her, that you'll never be interested in her, that you'll break her heart someday."

"What? How…"

"Because I'm a girl." Tracy answered before I could finish asking. "We know these things. She knows you could hurt her bad and she also knows she is powerless to prevent that if you decided to do it. She loves being around you but she wants more. She's not getting more but she stays around because of the hope that someday she will. She'll stay as long as the slimmest hope remains of that. The only way you'll get her to stop loving you is to destroy her hope completely. She may or may not recover from that. She's kind of a fragile girl, as you may have noticed, and I tend to think that maybe she wouldn't.

"I'm not telling you all of this to scare you or anything. I just want you to know what you're dealing with here. She loves you. You are God to her. So you need to tread carefully with her because you're playin' with her fuckin' emotions. Do you understand?"

"No." I shook my head. "I do not." I became angry. Here I was a thirty-two, almost thirty-three year old and a seventeen-year-old girl was telling me about love? What the hell did she know about it? She was probably reading all kinds of things into Nina's conversations based on the romance novels that she obsessively read all the time. "Nina and I are friends. No more than that. That's all we'll ever be. She likes me, she enjoys my company, but she doesn't love me. I used to tease her in grammar school for Christ sake! You've got your signals crossed."

She picked up her book again. "Believe what you want Billy." She told me, dismissing me in a non-verbal way. "But I'm not wrong about this."

Winter went on. I got straight A's again in the first semester of school. Second semester began with Nina and I in three classes together. We continued to study together a few times a week. I always watched her carefully, listened to her words carefully when I was with her. She liked to be around me, that was for sure, as I liked to be around her. She valued my opinion as I valued hers. She joked with me, revealing a quick and witty sense of humor beneath her shyness, a sense of humor that I knew that no one but me ever saw. We enjoyed being together. We were friends, very good friends, best friends even. But love? I thought not.

On February 10 of that year, 1983, I went down to the department of motor vehicles with my Dad after school. I took the written test, passing with 100 percent. I then climbed in Dad's Dodge Diplomat with a crusty old driving tester and took my driver's license test. The instructor was impressed with my abilities, stating that she'd rarely seen a new driver that operated a motor vehicle so well. She gave me a ninety-six on the exam, marking me down a point because I hadn't parallel parked terribly well, something I'd never mastered. I returned to the DMV office and had my picture taken. I was now a licensed driver.

As I drove my Dad home that day he congratulated me and gave me a brief lecture on safe driving. Doing his fatherly duty you understand. When he was finished I turned to him.

"I'd like to get a job Dad." I told him.

"A job?" He asked, looking at me.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I want to start making my own money. You know, so I can buy my own car and start putting money away for college. Stuff like that."

"Well that's admirable Bill." He told me, taken aback a bit. "I certainly am not going to stop you."

"Could I use the car on weekdays after you get home? If I find a job that is?"

"I suppose." He told me. "As long as we don't need it for anything. Of course you realize our insurance rates are going to go up now that you AND Tracy are listed on the policy. Also the gas is going to go up. And then there's Tracy. She likes to use the car too."

"I'll pay for whatever the increase is." I promised. "And Tracy and I will work something out."

"Yes." He said thoughtfully. "I suppose you will." He told me. "You and your sister have been getting along pretty well this last year." He said.

I shrugged in the way of teenagers.

"Much better than you used to. In fact, there was a dramatic change in your relationship and even in your personality some time ago." His eyes bored into me. "It was shortly before you got stabbed that time."

What was he saying? I felt suddenly nervous under his gaze. Dad knew something had happened to me but he didn't know what. Did he? Was he simply probing for information? Or did he suspect the truth? The truth was nuts wasn't it? He couldn't be suspecting it. Could he?

"I guess I just got my shit together Dad." I answered nervously. "Tracy too."

He continued to stare for a moment and then gave a slight shake of his head.

"Don't say 'shit'." He finally responded. "If you want to get a job and if you and your sister can work out the car, then you've got my blessing."

"Thanks Dad." I told him.

I certainly did not want to work in one of the sweat shops that was a fast food joint so I didn't bother applying at any of them. I had nothing but time I knew so I bided it carefully, only putting in applications at places where I knew I would be able to stand the pace. You have to understand that I had spent eight years as a paramedic. For all the gore we have to put up with, for all the responsibility that we are instilled with, for all of the abuse that we have to take, the job was anything but fast paced. On a twelve-hour shift we would respond to an average of six calls, each one taking an hour or so to complete from the moment of dispatch until the paperwork was dropped off at the hospital. That left six hours of downtime on each shift. Sometimes, on slow shifts, it was even more. I knew I would not be able to handle working on a burger assembly line for hours at a time.

It was a pizza joint that eventually ended up hiring me in early March. The manager had granted me an interview and had started it by saying that he probably wouldn't hire me since he generally only offered jobs to those with previous experience.

"Well Sir." I'd told him. "I can respect that opinion. And I understand it completely."

"You do?" He asked, mildly amused, checking his watch for his next interview.

"I do." I said. "But I'll tell you something. If you hire me you will not be sorry. In fact, I'd venture to say that it would be the best hire you'll ever make. You know why?"

That got his attention. "Why?" He asked.

"Because my father has instilled in me a solid work ethic. He's taught me that employment is sacred in this life, a thing to be cherished above all but the family unit. If I am given the position you will receive complete loyalty from me. I will show up each of my scheduled days on time and ready to work. I will do whatever jobs you see fit in whatever manner you see fit to do them. I am not your typical teenager who will call in sick when he hears that a good kegger is going on at the falls. I will put aside my personal life in order to fulfill my responsibilities to this restaurant and hopefully you will move me up the ladder of advancement as reward." I gave him my sincere smile. "Hire me and you will not be sorry."

He hired me. I started the following week making pizzas in the back and washing up dishes on Friday through Monday night from 5:00 PM to 10:30 PM. I did my job well, showing up on time, as I'd promised, and completing all assignments given to me without complaint. After all, I had an adult's work ethic. The manager was quite impressed with me. He often commented how mature I seemed. The pay was a pittance, $3.25 an hour, which was minimum wage for that time, but it was income none-the-less and, as a kid, I had no real expenses to speak of. We were paid once a week, on Friday. My schedule entitled me to $71.50 each paycheck. Uncle Sam and Aunt Washington took $12.00 from this, leaving me with $59.50 in cold, hard cash.

In my previous life I'd been a horrible financial manager. I lived paycheck to paycheck, never maintaining a savings account except for my 401k, which was automatically deducted. I'd run up a considerable debt with credit cards and car payments, not to mention alimony and child support. I'd been in the rut familiar to many Americans, that being that you owe so much that you could only afford to pay the minimum payments on anything. This of course left you in exactly the same place each month, each year, since the interest on these things accumulated as fast as the minimum payments reduced them. Even before Mr. Li entered my life, even before the Spokane Fire Department began threatening to take my job from me, I'd always wished that I had my financial history to do over again. Well now I did. I made another solemn vow. I would manage any money I got wisely, utilizing the brutal lessons I'd learned before being recycled. I would not live beyond my means ever again. It was un-American of course, but I was going to do it.

I took $10.00 of each paycheck for personal enjoyment type things. $5.00 paid for the gas I used in my Dad's car and another $5.00 went to insurance rate compensation. That left me $39.50 each week that had nowhere to go. I opened up a savings account at a nearby bank. I was amused and slightly offended to find that I had to have my Dad's permission before the bank would open it for me. My God, what chaos would erupt if minors were allowed to open bank accounts without regulation. I began putting this money in there each paycheck. The interest on the account was a pittance, a mere two percent, but that was okay. The savings account was just a holding tank until I built up some capital. When I accumulated enough money, I had a better place in mind to store it.

My parents watched all this with interest, not surprised at my work ethic, which I'd learned from them after all and which they'd expected nothing less than, but with my frugelness. You see, my money management skills in my previous life I'd learned from them also. My parents, through my childhood and teenaged years had managed their money about as well as I did as an adult, which was not well at all. I'm certainly not blaming them for my later troubles just explaining the fact that they were wondering where I'd learned my money management. They watched my savings account grow each week (they had to co-sign my deposits) with respect and admiration and more than a little confusion. God forgive them, they even suggested I take some of that money out from time to time and enjoy myself a little.

"I'm saving for college." I would tell them. "And maybe a car sometime soon."

"I see." They would reply. "That's very wise Billy."

My work schedule put somewhat of a kink in my sex life since the weekends had been my traditional boffing time. But it was only a minor kink. The girls that really wanted to experience my skills would find the time to be with me on weekdays. I would generally have them come over immediately after school where I would take them to my room, show them the pleasure they were seeking, and send them on their way before Dad got home from work. On most of these days Nina would come over after the latest girl had departed and we would study together or just sit on the couch and talk, drinking soda and munching on chips or something, maybe watching some TV. Mom and Dad were under the impression that Nina was my girlfriend, which actually struck me as somewhat funny. They had no idea that I was screwing the brains out of various teenaged girls before they got home. They even expressed pride that I still went over to Anita's and mowed her lawn or cleaned her windows or babysat her kids or put her storm windows up or took them down. They had no idea that their dear friend was paying me for these services in something more valuable than mere money. I don't believe even Tracy knew what the score really was between Anita and I.

The months went by. The frigid chill of winter gave way to the spring of 1983. I heard through the grapevine that Mike was leaving school to go to independent study classes. This rumor filled me with dread and reminded me that I still had a piece of unfinished business. Independent study was one of those state-sponsored atrocities that accounted for more dropouts than anything else. I should actually say IS, since the thing still existed before my recycling. What happens is a poor student is encouraged to leave mainstream high school and go to a separate campus for study. They are required to be there only twelve hours a week and are given various assignments to complete at their own pace. They and their parents are told that they can graduate this way if they only complete the meager amount of work that is supplied. What inevitably happens is that the student in question finds that even twelve hours a week is too much and they eventually leave it for the abyss of drop-out status. The whole thing is nothing more than a false hope for parents and a dead-end for students. Mike was no exception. He would be in independent study for less than two months before leaving school behind forever. He would eventually pay money to be crammed for his GED so he could get into the Air Force where he would ultimately be dishonorably discharged for marijuana use.

I had to take a shot at preventing this. I simply had to.

That week I had my Dad deposit only $24.50 in my savings account, keeping an extra fifteen bucks for myself. Naturally, since this was a break in the routine, he questioned it.

"Swaying from your convictions a little?" He asked as I handed him the deposit slip.

I shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "I guess you guys are right." I told him. "I SHOULD enjoy myself once in a while. I thought I'd just blow fifteen bucks on something this time as a reward."

"Well good for you." Dad told me. "What are you going to spend it on?"

"No firm plans." I lied. "Maybe I'll just spend it all on video games down at the arcade. You know, Space Invaders and all that?"

"Well you deserve it." He told me, putting his signature next to mine.

The following Monday at school I found Steph wandering through the halls. She was glad to see me.

"Do you think maybe your brother can get me an eighth of some good greenbud?" I asked.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" She smiled. "You got the cash?"

I handed her fifteen bucks, a ten and a five. She took it from me and then peeled off the five and handed it back to me. "For you it's only ten." She smiled. "IF, you let me bring it over to your house today to deliver it personally."

I looked her up and down, remembering what her body had felt like beneath mine. And it was five bucks. I'd certainly made worse deals in my life. "You're on." I told her. "Just show up right after school. I have to work today."

"I'll be there." She promised, stuffing the ten into the pocket of her jeans.

She was there. She handed me a plastic baggie of pungent pot and then we retired to my bedroom. I enjoyed her body in as many different ways as I could imagine while she enjoyed mine. She left with a smile on her face.

I stuffed the pot she'd given me under the center of my mattress and headed for the shower. I had to be to work shortly after Dad got home.

The next day, Tuesday, I found Mike wandering through the halls between third and fourth period. I took a deep breath and then walked up to him, matching his pace when I was beside him.

"What's up Mike?" I asked carefully.

He looked over at me, his face registering instant hostility, obviously debating whether or not to speak to me. Finally he said, "Nothin'."

"Haven't seen you in a while." I commented.

He shrugged. "Been busy." He told me.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah." I replied. "Me too. Workin' and everything. Listen, I was thinking that maybe we could get together after school today. Bullshit a little you know. Just like old times."

"Naw." He said instantly. "Got things to do."

I nodded again. "Okay." I answered, knowing that I was resorting to dirty tricks but it was a desperate situation, wasn't it? "Too bad. I just scored an eighth of some killer greenbud."

His eyes lit up like pinball machines. "Really?" He asked, his disinterest dropping away instantly.

"Yeah." I said. "But it's cool. If you got things to do…"

"Well I can prob'ly come over for a while." He put in. "You know, we haven't hung out in a while."

"Cool." I said, suppressing a smile. "I'll see you after school then."

"Right."

On the way home from school I asked Tracy and Cindy if they maybe wanted to go to the mall for a few hours before Dad got home from work.

"The mall?" Cindy asked, lighting a cigarette. "I was hopin' you had some new albums to show me today."

Tracy gave her a look of annoyance and then turned to me. "What's the matter Billy, you getting' shy about your study sessions with our friends?"

"No." I answered. "Not at all. I have something important to do today. Mike's coming over."

"Mike!" Tracy said, disgusted now. "That fuckin' hoser! I thought you'd wised up and stopped hangin' out with him."

"Please?" I said, not offering any explanation. "This is important. If you guys go out for a while I'll smoke some of the bud I scored with you later."

That did the trick. I'd long since learned the barter power that the possession of a little marijuana held in a teenaged society. Cindy let me out at the curb and roared away shortly afterword, Tracy in the passenger seat, with a promise not to return until Dad got home.

Mike pulled his Beetle to the curb soon after.

Our conversation was cautious and casual as we went to the garage and smoked ourselves into oblivion with Tracy's bong that I liberated from the secret hiding place in her room. By the time we re-entered the house we were well into the stratosphere. I hoped I was coherent enough to speak my mind effectively through the drug haze. My own intoxication was countered by the fact that Mike, in his stoned state, would be extremely susceptible to suggestion. We watched some TV for a few minutes while we munched on some food we'd found in the fridge. By the time we went to the garage for our second set of bonghits, we were comfortable speaking to each other despite our months of separation.

"I hear you're going to go to independent study." I said as I dumped the bong water down the sink and rinsed the chamber.

"Yep." He nodded, obviously excited about it. "My parents put in the application the other day. The counselor says it'll be approved and I can prob'ly start next month. After only six months of it I'll graduate."

"Six months huh?" I said. "And you only have to go twelve hours a week?"

He nodded. "Isn't that fuckin' cool. And I get to schedule my own twelve hours. I can go six hours for two days and take the rest of the week off, or four hours for three days, or three hours for four days. Whatever I want."

I carried the bong upstairs and replaced it in Tracy's room. Mike took a seat on the couch while I was gone. When I returned I sat next to him and took a sip out of a soda.

"Mike," I asked. "Do you realize that you're being encouraged to drop out of school?"

"What?" He replied, looking at me with renewed hostility.

"The system is encouraging you to drop out of school. Independent study is nothing but a joke, a joke designed to allow people to drop out with some measure of self-respect intact. First they offer you something that sounds appealing: you only have to go to school twelve hours, you work at your own pace, you'll get to graduate early. It's an offer too good to be true."

"What the fuck you talking about?" He asked. "It's not too good to be true.

That's how it works."

"Really?" I continued. "How many people do we know that have gone through independent study? Let's see there's Rodney, Steve Kale, Michelle Beckenwood, Stacy Smith. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of them graduated, not a single one.

"Yeah, but they were stupid." He said defensively. "I'm different."

"No you're not." I told him. "You're being used by the system. I'm sure the counselor spouted a bunch of bullshit to you and your parents about how this will help you. They're lying. It doesn't help you, it helps them. They've marked you as a likely dropout in the near future so they're trying to get rid of you before that happens. They don't give a shit about you or your future, they WANT you to drop out. But they want you to do it this way because it doesn't go on the school's statistics as a dropout; you go down as a transfer to another school. That way they don't lose any of their budget money or have their teaching methods audited by the state board of education.

"So off you go to independent study where you're encouraged to fade politely away. Do you know how they get you to drop out with this program? Do you know what the kicker to it is? It's that flexible schedule you were talking about. Come whenever you can, you only have to be there twelve hours a week. But you see, if you offer a teenager a deal like that, they'll abuse it and those fuckers KNOW that. You get up on Monday and say to yourself, 'I don't have to go in today because I only have to go twelve hours. I can knock out some hours tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolls around and you say the same thing. After all, you don't HAVE to be there on Monday or Tuesday. Before long you'll find yourself at Thursday without any hours built up. By that time the thought of spending six hours is too much to take. So you cut for that week; after all, anyone they send to independent study is an accomplished school cutter, aren't they? Before two months go by it will be too much trouble to go at all. There will be no paperwork done, nothing that says you've officially dropped out, but you will in effect have dropped out. Just like they planned for you."

Mike had simply stared at me during this speech, absorbing what I was saying without expression.

"Where did you come up with all that shit?" He asked me finally.

"My Dad's a teacher." I told him. "He works for the damn school district. Believe me, that's the way it is."

"What the fuck are you tellin' me all this for?"

I took a deep breath. "Mike, you're my friend. We've been friends since we were kids, right?"

"Yeah," He nodded, "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Friends try to help each other. Remember when Fairview stabbed me? You grabbed him off of me. You helped me. That's what I'm trying to do for you.

Help you. You're about to make a big mistake, a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life."

"How do you know I'm makin' a mistake?" He shouted. "Even if I do drop out what makes you think it's gonna be a mistake? What do I need a fuckin' diploma for anyway?"

"What do you want to do with your life Mike?" I asked him.

"What?"

"What do you want to do?" I repeated. "What would like to do for a living? What would be a dream job for you?"

"Man," He said, dismissing me. "Fuck this shit. Let's talk about something else."

"Look Mike." I said carefully. "Like I said, we're friends and I'm trying to talk to you as a friend. Nobody else is here, nobody's gonna hear what you say. I'm not putting you down or anything, I'm just trying to help you because you need some help. You're on a path of destruction here and I'm trying to steer you off of it. So tell me, what would you like to do for a living? What would be a cool job?"

For a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He shrugged. "I never thought about it before. I can't picture myself in five years, I don't know."

"Maybe that's part of your problem." I said. "You don't have any goals." I looked him up and down for a minute, an idea occurring to me. "You'd probably like a job where you get a lot of days off each week, wouldn't you?"

"The more the better." He agreed.

"A job where even when you ARE at work, you get to spend a lot of time sitting around on your ass."

He scoffed. "Yeah, like there are jobs like that."

"There is Mike." I told him. "There is."

"Yeah?" He said cynically. "Name one."

There was only one that I could think of. It was one that was well within reach of Mike if he would only graduate from school. "A fireman."

"A fireman?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Firemen work twenty-four hour shifts ten days a month. That leaves twenty days off a month. When they're on shift they have beds, TVs, lounge chairs to sit in, all the amenities of home. They get to sleep while they're on the clock. And they make damn good money, much more than they deserve to."

He was turning the idea over in his mind. I could see him doing it and I felt the first ray of hope. Was I finally getting through to him a little?

"And you know what the best thing about being a fireman is?" I asked.

"What?"

"The public fuckin' worships you. You can do absolutely no wrong. And women dig firemen in a bad way. They'll practically drop down and give you head right there."

He was definitely interested now.

"The requirements are that you're eighteen and have a high school diploma. You also have to be able to pass a physical agility test, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. You're in good shape."

"Are you sure about this?" He asked.

"Dude." I told him. "If you can just graduate you'll be in."

"No shit." He said softly.

"Look Mike, if you just work through this year you'll have it made. The school has a work-study program for seniors and fire technology is one of the classes. If you can hang in until then and bring your grades up to a 2.0 average you can go to the ROP classes. That means you'll just have to take three classes each day and then you'll spend the rest of the day hanging out at a fire station somewhere. You'll get to go to calls with them and watch them work and it'll look damn good on your application after you graduate."

He soured a little. "There's no way I'll get my grades up to a 2.0. I'm workin' on straight F's now."

"I'll help you with your work." I promised. "Just come over after school," I paused and then amended, "Well, after my Dad gets home that is, and I'll help you with your work. You can do it if you just go to school each day."

He shook his head. "I haven't spent a whole day in school for the last year.

I'm not sure I can do it."

"You CAN." I insisted. "Dude you're only seventeen years old. You have the rest of your life in front of you. How hard will it be to spend six hours in school for another couple of months? If you work at it we can bring your grades up and you'll be almost free next semester. A year of ROP and only going to three classes and you'll graduate. You start applying at fire departments and one of them will take you. It's not that long and it's not that high of a price, is it?"

"I guess not." He said.

It was touch and go for a while. Mike told his parents his decision to stay in school and they accepted it dubiously. However when his parents told the school counselor to withdraw the application for independent study they met some resistance. According to Mike, she tried her damnedest to get him and his parents to change their minds. She nearly begged he told me. But in the end he stuck to his guns and his parents stuck to theirs. The application was withdrawn and Mike stayed in high school.

As I promised I helped him with his homework. There was some friction at first when he discovered that I wasn't planning to DO his homework for him but to help HIM do it. There was also some friction when he didn't show up a few times so he could go get stoned with someone. I talked to him plainly about this, explaining that I would only continue to help him if he showed up each day. He was morose about it but agreed. His attendance at my study sessions improved remarkably.

His attendance at school also improved. Though he whined about it to the point of genuine annoyance on my part, he faithfully showed up to classes each day, only occasionally cutting out for a session with a marijuana pipe or something.

By the end of the first month of our studying together, study sessions in which Nina was a frequent participant, he began to catch on to his work and actually began to complete more of his assignments in school. I felt I'd done well with him and my satisfaction was great.

As the end of the school year drew closer I worried incessantly about Tracy.

This was the point that she was scheduled to die. All of the signs told me I'd steered her away from that path. When Lisa Sanchez, the cheerleader, began making friendship overtures to Tracy, she'd been almost rude in her rejection of them. The friendship that eventually evolved into the foursome that was fated to drop into the river never flourished. As a result, Tracy never went to the party where she would meet the football player that would cause her death. Instead she stayed close friends with Cindy, another deviation from the previous path. When Tracy had begun hanging out with Lisa before, the relationship with Cindy had faded away. But despite all this I was worried. Again, I did not know the rules involved here. Was fate absolute? Would Tracy end up dying one way or another simply because she was scheduled to?

On the other hand I did have some indication that things were not pre-destined. Mike was a shining example. As May began winding down towards June and the end of the school year, he was still enrolled in school, was in fact working his grades upward to the C average. This was something that had not occurred before. Mike gave me hope that I'd succeeded in saving Tracy.

The end of the school year came. Mike got his report card and it showed his year's average to be 2.1. He was qualified to go into ROP the next year. He didn't give me much in the way of thanks but I understood. It wasn't in his nature. I received tremendous satisfaction from his accomplishment anyway.

Tracy graduated. I dressed in my suit and attended the ceremony with my parents. Though my sister and I had never talked about my prediction for her fate on that night since the first time, it was obvious she remembered what I'd said. She was perhaps the only member of her graduating class to go home with her parents after the ceremony. She took off her dress and went to bed early.

When I got up the next morning I staggered downstairs and found her sitting in her pajamas in the living room. The television was on, tuned to the local morning news program. Dad and Mom had already gone off to work so we were alone in the house. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to see her there. She was alive, still drawing breath a day AFTER she'd died in her previous life. Things could be changed!

My elation was dampened a little as I got a good look at her. I could see immediately that she was upset. Her face was pale and she was trembling.

"What's the matter Trace?" I asked carefully.

"I've been watching the news." She told me slowly, turning a pair of haunted eyes to my face.

"Yeah?"

"There was an accident last night." She said. "Near the falls."

I felt all the spit in my mouth suddenly dry up. My arms broke out in goose bumps. "Was there?"

She nodded. "A Camero with four people in it crashed into the river. Lisa Sanchez was killed. She drowned in the car."

I was speechless as I listened to her, numb with shock.

"There were other people in the car." Tracy went on. "A guy named David Mitchell was driving. He's a football player at the college. Another football player named Rick Manchester was also in the car. Rick was Lisa's boyfriend. And there was one other girl in there. Barbie Langston, she's David's girlfriend."

"What happened to her?" I asked unsteadily.

"She got out. Lisa was the only one killed."

"Wow." I whispered, trying to figure out what that meant. Barbie was a cute redhead who had found her way to my bedroom last summer during my 'male slut' period. She had been installed in Tracy's place when Tracy did not meet and begin dating David Mitchell. She had lived. Why? Was it because she had lived past graduation in the previous life? Was she simply a better swimmer? Was there any meaning to be found with her non-death?

"Billy," Tracy said softly. "All of those names were the ones you gave me that day except for Barbie. You described the car, the driver, the passengers, the accident location, everything. How did you know?"

"I can't tell you Tracy." I said. "I just can't."

"Billy, for Christ's sake! I would have died yesterday if I hadn't listened to you, wouldn't I have?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"You scared me that day when you started talking about all of that. You scared me bad. But I never really, you know believed it could be true. I didn't think it would really happen. Even when little things started to click into place. Lisa Sanchez trying to make friends with me, stuff like that, even then I never really believed it. But Jesus, you were right!"

"I know Tracy." I said. "And you're alive today instead of dead. I'm glad you listened to me."

"Christ." She said, shuddering and trembling. "I could have died."

"But you didn't." I told her. "You didn't."

Summer vacation began. Tracy sent off college applications and was accepted into the University of California at Berkeley on an academic scholarship. She spent a good portion of her vacation preparing for the move to California. My parents, who had no idea how close they'd come to losing a daughter, were preoccupied with helping her at this task. They took out a second mortgage on their house to help pay for some of the expenses until Tracy managed to get a job in the Bay Area. I could tell they were worried about money although they never mentioned it to either one of us.

I was able to increase my work schedule an extra hour a day and an extra day a week now that summer was upon us and there was no school to attend. By the beginning of August I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings account. It was time to make my first move.

"Dad," I said at the breakfast table one morning. "I need you to do something with my money."

He looked at me over his paper. "Your money?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I want you to pull it out of the savings account and take it to a stock broker."

"A stock broker?"

"Here." I said, handing him a slip of paper upon which I'd written careful instructions.

He looked at it for a moment, his eyes widening. "You want to buy stocks?"

"I do." I affirmed. "As you can see there, I'd like to invest six hundred dollars in Lytech Corporation and three hundred in Smith Manufacturing Corporation."

"Billy," He started slowly, as if he were speaking to a lunatic, or a teenager. "Do you understand what you're doing? Investing in stocks is a risky business. You have no guarantee that you're going to get any return. You could lose all of your money."

"I've studied up on it pretty well Dad." I assured him. "I'm pretty sure that these two corporations are going to go through the roof in the next year."

"What are they?" He asked. "I've never heard of either one of them."

"They make latex products." I told him. "Condoms and surgical gloves mostly."

"Condoms and surgical gloves?" He asked. "You think there's money to be made there?"

"It's a matter of timing Dad." I explained. "You know about AIDS, right?"

"Of course I know about AIDS." He told me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well," I said. "I've been following the news on AIDS as well as checking the business section. Right now AIDS is mostly confined to homosexual men and IV drug users. But that's slowly changing. As more and more heterosexuals become infected the fear of this disease is going to grow, probably into a paranoia."

"That's all very interesting Billy, but…"

"When I got stabbed." I told him. "I remember that the paramedic who was treating me was not wearing any gloves. I'd been cut open and I was bleeding and he was touching me with his bare hands. The nurses and the doctors in the hospital did the same thing. It wasn't just me, it was almost all of the patients that I saw there. Nobody was wearing gloves on their hands as a matter of routine. It just isn't done right now. Are you following me?"

"You're saying that is going to change?"

"In a big way I predict, and soon. As more heterosexuals get the disease and the epidemic grows, ambulance companies, fire departments, hospitals, nursing homes, every medical office is going to start ordering huge supplies of latex gloves. There might even be a shortage of them for a while. The price of them will go up according to the law of supply and demand and their sales figures will probably increase by at least four hundred percent, maybe more. This is the perfect time to invest in the latex business."

He was impressed with my reasoning of the subject but I could tell he still wasn't convinced.

"It's still pretty risky Bill." He told me. "Are you sure you want to invest ALL of your money in this?"

"All of it." I nodded. "Can you do that today?"

He gave me one last glance and then said, "Sure. I'll do it during lunch hour."

The summer rolled on. I continued to have plenty of sex on a fairly regular basis but my heavy work schedule put something of a ding in the variety I was getting. I was down to three females that I enjoyed, rarely getting anything new. Anita would still have me over to do some work for her a few times a week, after which, or sometimes before which, we would go to her bedroom and enjoy a long sex session. She always had me over in the evenings when her kids had gone to bed. Cindy still came over to check out albums with me during the day when my parents were not home. If fact, with Tracy gone a lot of the time on various missions to prepare for college, Cindy's visits became more frequent. It seemed she felt a little guilty about screwing me while my sister was there. With Tracy gone we enjoyed the best sex we'd ever had, with no worries about being too loud or too obscene.

The third girl was Maggie Bartlett, a friend of Cindy's. She would come over on the days when Cindy did not. I tried to talk them into a threesome a couple of times but they just giggled and told me they weren't into that. A pity.

Nina and I remained in contact with each other even though we no longer had to study for anything. We would meet a few times a week at my house or hers, just enjoying each other's company. A few times we drove into nearby Idaho to spend the day at one of the resort lakes. One such day I found myself looking at her in her bathing suit while we soaked up rays on the hot sand. She was starting to fill out nicely. Her breasts, which the previous summer had been almost non-existent, were now pushing at the cups of her one-piece. Again I remembered her classy good looks as the bitchy emergency room doctor. Now that I'd removed the bitchiness I figured she would make some guy very happy someday.

"What are you looking at?" She'd asked, blushing a little as she found my eyes upon her.

I smiled. "Just seeing how your tan is coming along." I told her.

"Well?" She asked. "How is it?"

"It's lookin' good." I answered. I picked up a bottle of sun lotion. "Can you put a little of this on my back? I don't want to burn." That was the advantage of having a girl for a best friend. You could have them put oil on your back. You certainly wouldn't ask a guy friend to do something like that.

"Sure." She said softly, taking it from me. I noticed a slight tremble in her hands as she squirted some into her palm.

Dismissing this, I laid on my stomach on the towel. Her hand began smearing the slippery lotion across my back. Her hands on my skin felt good I realized. They were soft yet eager, gliding over my shoulders and through the small of my back. Her touch was almost sensuous and I felt myself, to my surprise, getting a hard-on beneath my suit.

What a mind-blower, I thought. Nina is giving me a boner. What a strange world.

On September 2 Tracy left the house for California and UC Berkeley where she would begin her first semester as a college student. She planned to get her graduate degree in Business Administration and then move from there to law school. Her hopes were to one day be a rich corporate lawyer. At least she was honest about it.

I gave her a big hug before she climbed into Dad's car for the trip to the airport.

"Take care of yourself." I told her, "And be careful."

"You too." She answered.

She climbed into the car and a minute later it backed out into the street. As I watched it go I felt a tear running down my face. Tracy was still alive.

My senior year began. Because Cindy had graduated and enrolled in college that meant that I was without a ride to school. Though Mike had improved in many areas over the last few months his driving was not one of them. I attempted to mellow him out a bit by letting him know that the fire department would not hire him if he had too many points on his driving record. I suppose this did some good, he never got any points put on, but I still was not going to get into that Volkswagen with him. Strangely enough, though this subject had prompted our long estrangement, he seemed to understand. The subject was never brought up. But this still left me without a lift to school and I'd been driven so long that I'd lost my taste for walking. Nina came to the rescue here. Her Mom, who was a housewife and who thought I walked on water, had always been in the habit of driving Nina to school all through high school. It didn't take much convincing on Nina's part to persuade her Mom to run by my house in the morning and again in the afternoon. Her Mom, who was considerably older for a parent, Nina had been a late child, drove like an eighty-year-old grandmother in her Lincoln. But that was just fine with me. I felt there was little chance of getting killed with Mrs. Blackmore at the wheel.

The reason I'd known so much about our school's ROP program was that I'd taken it as a senior my first trip through. I hadn't taken fire technology but health careers where I'd been assigned to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals as an ER tech. It was this part of my life that had seduced me into my eventual job as a paramedic. I took the health careers once again, as did Nina. I tried to remember if she'd been in it with me before and I couldn't. She had been such a forgettable person back then. Nina planned to sign up for emergency room assignment since she figured, as I had all those years ago, that would be the most exciting. Though I was tempted to do the same, I missed the thrill of the unknown that came with working in emergency situations; I chose central supply instead. Those that chose central supply were sometimes hired by mid-semester if they showed some responsibility. I planned to show lots of it. Central supply techs were paid six dollars an hour.

Mike was accepted into the fire tech ROP program. Like with our health careers program, it was required that you spend the first two months in a classroom learning the finer points of your career assignment. He grumbled about having to spend three hours a day in a class instead of in a fire station like he'd thought but he stuck with it. I knew his grumbling was good-natured and offered only because it was expected of him. He was actually finding the classroom lectures on the basics of firefighting interesting, perhaps the first thing besides marijuana and pussy stories that had ever interested him. I began to feel that Mike was going to be okay.

I perhaps suffered the worst through the classroom portion of ROP. They were teaching us how to take blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and how to respond to various hospital emergency situations like fires or floods. This was all stuff I knew not just intimately but genetically it seemed. There was however some interesting perks to the classroom. It was made up of mostly girls. I had a fresh hunting ground to pick from and an additional challenge thrown in since most of the girls did not know who I was because ROP classes were made up of students from all the regional high schools.

As I went to work on a few of the more attractive students I noticed that Nina, who was in the same class, would become morose and even throw some dirty looks my way. What was up with her? I wondered. Was Tracy right? Was Nina in love with me? I hoped not. She was my best friend and I was her best friend but I'd never done anything to encourage her to love me. If it was true, how could it have happened?

In deference to her feelings I tried to keep my flirtations discreet when she was around. There was no since hurting her. And if she did have some love-like feelings for me they would eventually fade, wouldn't they?

I was troubled by these thoughts but not too troubled. By my second week there I enticed a girl named Susan Kelly, a breasty brunette whose ambition was to someday work as a registration clerk, to my house after school. I was glad to find that I still had the touch after the long summer.

In September of that year the United States sent a force of Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force. I knew that tragedy would befall 240 of them at the hands of Muslim extremists. With their deployment came the opportunity for some experimentation on my part. I knew what was going to happen. Could I, in good conscience, simply let it occur without trying to stop it? I could not.

The question was, how could I stop it? I put some thought into the matter while I read as much on the peacekeeping force as I could. A plan developed in my mind by the end of September.

Using plain paper and pen I drafted a letter to the commanding general of the American forces there. I stated that I was an American Muslim and that I'd received information about an impending attack upon the forces there by way of relatives in Lebanon that were part of the extremists but not as radical as their friends. I explained exactly what was to take place and on which day. I made twenty-five copies of the letter and dropped each copy into a separate envelope, all of which I addressed and labeled CONFIDENTIAL.

I put stamps on all of the letters and then borrowed my father's car one Saturday morning, telling him that I was going to an all-day party. I promised him I wouldn't drink and he gave me the keys.

I left the house at 9:00 that morning, getting onto Interstate 90 and heading west. Four hours later I was in Seattle; a large, anonymous city that I'd never lived in. Careful was my watchword and if any feds tried to find the deliverer of the message, as I was sure they would, I wanted no trail leading them to Spokane. I dropped the letters into a mailbox in one of the suburbs. I had a quick lunch and then headed home. I'd taken my shot. My conscience was assuaged.

Of course I had no way of knowing if my letters had reached their destination and, if they had, if they would be taken seriously. I hoped that they were enough to at least take simple precautions. I listened to a news station on the radio all day on October 15, the day the attack was to take place. Nothing came across about a tragedy in Beirut. But towards the end of the day something else came across.

"U.S. Marines," Said the ABC announcer, "Have captured a group of Muslim extremists that were setting up heavy caliber mortars near the Marine Barracks, apparently with the intention of shelling the soldiers inside. A source tells us that the Marines were acting on information they received via an anonymous tip that the attack was to take place. General…"

I'd done it! I had prevented a tragedy! The Muslims that had been about to shell the barracks, destroying it and killing 240 Marines had been captured before they could do it. I had changed history!

I walked around in a state of elation for the next seven days, beaming with pride at what I'd done. What else could I change? The Challenger disaster was coming up in a few years. I could probably stop that also. In the course of that week I had myself believing that I could prevent the Persian Gulf War.

And then came October 23. I awoke to the news that a suicide bomber with a truck full of explosives had rammed into the Marine Barracks, killing many inside. My elation died the instant I heard that.

It was two days before the final death toll was announced. 240 Marines had been killed. 240! That number put an icy finger of dread upon my heart.

In my previous life the Marine Barracks had been shelled from outside the base by Muslims armed with Russian made eighty-millimeter mortars. 240 had been killed by the attack. In this life I'd prevented that from happening but a week later a suicide bomber had hit instead. 240 had been killed by that attack. I wondered if the death list of those 240 was the same in both lives. Instinctively I knew that it probably was. I had prevented nothing.

240 Marines had been killed, as if they were fated to die. As if they were fated!

I had prevented Tracy's death in this life. Was she too fated to die? Was she just going to be killed in some other manner now that I'd changed her original destiny? Was there anything I could do? Could I really change anything here? Was I fated to end up a paramedic in debt again? Was Mike fated to end up an unemployed loser? Was Nina fated to end up a bitchy emergency room doctor? If so, what had been the point of coming back? What had been the point?

I was depressed and edgy for the next week as news of the bombing in Beirut was swallowed up by news of the successful invasion of Grenada a few days later. Nina, who knew me better than anyone, picked up on my mood and tried to discover the source of it in her gentle, probing way. I told her nothing, claiming that everything was just fine. What else could I say? How could I possibly tell her what was bothering me? That I feared my sister had a death sentence hanging over her head. That I feared that everything I'd done over the last eighteen months had been meaningless.

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her as we rode the bus to our ROP classroom one day.

"Fate?" She asked, looking at me. "What do you mean?"

"You know, that everything is pre-destined. That we have a schedule that we follow in life and that we're powerless to change anything?"

"No." She said. "You don't believe that do you?"

"I didn't used to." I said. "But lately I've been wondering."

"Are you okay Bill?" She asked tenderly. "You've been kind of, well tense the last few days. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing I can put into words." I told her. "I guess I'll get over it."

I turned my head to look out the window and as I watched the traffic pass by outside the bus I felt her hands on my shoulders. They began squeezing and kneading the muscles there, forcing them to relax. It felt wonderful and I leaned my head back and sighed.

"That feels good." I told her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I've been reading on massage techniques." She told me. "Am I doing it right?"

"Perfect." I said, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take me away.

As I felt her squeezing and caressing me a thought occurred. Nina had put her hands upon me completely uninvited. She had simply reached over and done it. Nina, who'd been so shy once that she wasn't even capable of smiling in front of someone, who couldn't even bring herself to answer questions in class, who wouldn't have dreamed of touching someone with or without permission the day I'd first approached her in the cafeteria.

Nina had changed. She was no longer the mousy butt of everyone's jokes. She had friends now. Me, Tracy, Cindy, even Mike. She had learned to socialize with people even to the point of taking some bonghits at a party. I didn't think it possible that she would evolve into the Dr. Blackmore that I would one day know. She would become Dr. Blackmore but she wouldn't be the same person. She couldn't become that person at this point, the psychology that had formed her future personality had been altered. Was it possible that maybe things COULD be changed? That maybe they tended to fall into pre-destined patterns but that rule was not absolute?

In Nina's comforting hands I found some hope.

We graduated from the classroom portion of ROP and were given our assignments. Nina went to the emergency room at one of the smaller hospitals as an ER tech. I went to the supply room in the basement of the regional trauma center and was put to work sterilizing and packaging medical supplies and instruments. Mike was assigned to Spokane Fire Station #3 near downtown.

It took me only a few days to be trained in the routine that I would be following. Central supply was a little more challenging than making pizzas, but not by much. My work mate was Julie Salinas, a cute Mexican girl that had been in my training class. I'd tried once to initiate some intimate conversation with her but she'd shot me down without a second glance, stating in no uncertain terms, that she was engaged to be married after graduation. I'd shrugged her off. That kind of thing happened from time to time and there were plenty of other targets in the class.

When I walked in and saw her there the first day I assumed it was not going to be pleasant. She had been a little snotty in her rejection of my advances. But I was surprised to find that she was friendly to me as we spent three hours together each day. With our bodies covered by baggie scrubs, our shoes covered by paper coverings, our hair covered by paper nets, we would chat easily as we went about the tasks of putting forceps and scalpels and syringes and little bottles of medicine into sterile packaging and then labeling them for the appropriate departments within the hospital. It was a fun relationship. She was pleasant to talk to and since I already knew that she wasn't interested in me I was releived of the sexual tension that usually went along with being next to someone like her. Or so I thought.

As the first few weeks went by I couldn't help but notice that Julie was always there when I got there. I knew she had her own car which allowed her to drive to the hospital instead of taking the bus but why in the name of God would she show up earlier than she had to? Finally, when our relationship matured to the point that I could ask such things, I asked her.

"Because." She told me. "I intend to get hired here at mid-semester. Can you imagine? It's a dream job. If they hire you, you get paid for your time here and still get the school credits. You also get another three hours on the clock at $6.00 an hour. So if I get noticed by showing up a half an hour earlier than everyone else, so much the better. They only hire three or four of us each year you know and there's more than twelve of us working down here."

"That's a pretty good idea." I said with complete honesty. After all, I was counting on getting hired also. To do so would nearly double my current income. "I wish I had a car so I could do it too."

I meant nothing by this statement. I was merely speculating out loud, wondering in my mind if I could break loose some of my portfolio to purchase a cheap car. If it helped me get a job it would be a sound investment, wouldn't it?

"If you want," Julie said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I could give you a ride. I have to drive right by your school to get here and right by it to get home. I'd rather work with you then some of the other losers they got around here."

"Really?" I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her intentions. Usually when girls asked me something like that what they wanted was sex. I wasn't so sure about that with Julie though. After all, she'd already told me she was engaged. She in fact talked quite a bit about her fiance, who was in his second year of junior college where he was learning the finer points of drafting. She was also a practicing Catholic; a religion which most definitely frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex.

Finally I decided it was a genuinely innocent offer that a friend makes to another friend. "I'll take you up on that." I told her. "Thanks."

"No problem." She assured me.

Nina and I had arranged our school schedules that year so that we shared the last two classes before lunch and ROP. We always sat together in the classroom during those classes and then walked together to the lunchroom where usually we would sit with Mike and eat lunch prior to heading off to our job sites. Mike had had the same idea as Julie. He drove his Bug to the fire station, getting there earlier than he was required. He also tended to stay a little later than was required. He talked repeatedly of his experience at the firehouse, continually and obviously inflating his stories of what they allowed him to do. For instance he told me once that they'd allowed him to don breathing gear and go into a burning building to help fight a fire, something that they would NEVER do. But I was gladdened by his exaggerations. It meant that I'd hit upon just the right thing when I'd suggested firefighting as a career.

After he took off from lunch break to head downtown Nina and I walked out to the bus area where the ROP buses picked up the students. As we walked I explained my new riding arrangements to her along with the theory that it would help me get hired at mid-semester.

"Julie?" Nina said, frowning. "You're going to be riding with her?"

"Yeah." I said. "That way I'll be able to…"

"But she's engaged!" Nina nearly yelled. A very un-Nina-like display of emotion.

"So?" I asked, looking at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're gonna…" A pause as she tried to formulate her words. "Get a RIDE from an engaged girl?"

"Well yes." I affirmed. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Her face was actually turning red as her eyes, once so soft and mellow, burned into me. What the hell was the matter with her?

"No." She said stiffly. She turned away from me and started heading for the bus stop.

I followed after her, grabbing her by the arm. "Nina?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She said. "Nothing at all. I'll see you later."

Right then Julie, driving her Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb in the red zone. She saw me and smiled. "You ready?" She called.

"Just a sec." I told her, turning back to Nina. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm fine." She said sadly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Do you still want to ride with me to school?"

"Of course." I said, "But aren't we going to get together and study today after school? We have to go over that calculus."

"Not today." She said coldly. "I've got things to do." She turned away from me once again and disappeared into the crowd of students waiting for the bus.

With a troubled mind, more troubled than I cared to admit, I went to Julie's car and got in.

By the time we arrived at the hospital I was suspicious about Julie's intentions. She was overly friendly and openly flirty with me; signs I'd learned long before to both recognize and take advantage of. Despite my troubling conversation with Nina I found myself responding to her banter.

All through our workday it went on. She stood closer to me than was really needed, always taking the opportunity to touch my hand or bump her hip against mine. A few times she even turned so that the swell of her breast rubbed across my shoulder. It happened a little too frequently to be accidental. By two o'clock thoughts of Nina were forgotten as I pondered the prospect of bagging Julie and started working the problem of how to get her back to my place through my mind.

That turned out to be much easier than I'd thought it would.

As she drove me towards home she asked, "So, are your parents home right now?"

"No." I told her. "My old man doesn't get home until a little after four."

"Really?" She said, a smile blooming on her face. "You know, some of the other girls said they went over to your house and studied with you."

"Did they?" I asked, familiar with this opening line.

"Uh huh. Susie, Lori, and Stacy all said you're a GREAT study partner." She looked over at me. "I need to study you know."

I chuckled. "I don't think your fiance would like you coming over my house to 'study'." I told her. My own personal form of legal disclaimer. "There are those who say my study techniques are somewhat radical."

"Well I sure ain't gonna tell him." She informed me, as I'd known she would. "I'm not married yet you know."

"No." I nodded. "I guess you're not."

There is of course a certain amount of subtle nuances and so forth that must take place in such encounters before the real action begins. You can't just go inside, tear of your clothes and start rutting like an animal on the carpet. Well at least not for a first encounter. Thankfully with Julie, this period was brief. We started on the couch, were coy with each other for a few minutes, and then we began kissing.

I pulled her sexy body to mine and probed between her large lips with my tongue, licking and sucking each lip while my hands ran up and down her back, feeling her hard body beneath the T-shirt she wore, tracing the outline of her bra strap. She returned my kisses eagerly, showing some skill of her own with her tongue in the way she caressed the inside of my lips with it, the way she probed teasingly in and out, sliding it with mine on a film of saliva. Her breath was sweet and scented with the bubble gum she'd recently been chewing, it's ebb and flow increasing as she became excited by my actions.

I moved from her lips and kissed my way down across her puffy cheek to her neck, licking the salty taste on her dark flesh, nipping with my teeth and sucking lightly. She threw her head back and cooed softly, her hands sliding down to my butt and then up under the back of my shirt where she ran them up and down my bare back. Her hands were soft as they glided across my skin, punctuated by the occasional scratch of her painted nails when I gave her skin a little suck or bite.

I dropped my own hands to the hem of her shirt and slid them underneath, running my fingers up her smooth flanks on each side, feeling her soft skin and the harsh roughness of her bra when I reached her chest. I brought my hands together in the front, moving them along her bra, cupping her firm tits through the cotton and wire, squeezing them together. I could feel her nipples protruding against my palms.

I went back to kissing her, more gently this time as I ran my hands around to her back and began toying with the clasp that held her bra together. She returned my kisses while her own hands slid down my back and into the back of my pants, worming their way through my underwear until her fingers were squeezing my ass cheeks, kneading them. She pulled me tighter against her, so that the bulge of my cock was pressing against the crotch of her pants.

She broke her mouth from mine for an instant. "You have a nice ass." She breathed, nipping at my earlobe with her teeth.

"Thank you." I breathed back, pulling her face back to mine and continuing our dance of tongues.

I undid the bra clasp with a quick, expert twist of the fingers and then lifted my arms, pulling her shirt and the bra off in one quick motion. She raised her hands in the air to assist me, breaking the kiss only long enough for the shirt to clear her head.

I slid my hands around to the front again, taking her tits in them, feeling the yielding but firm flesh, the hard nipples. I stoked them up and down, gliding my fingertips around the perimeter of each nipple, finally tweaking them a little. They were as rigid as stone it seemed. I broke the kiss and pulled away from her, looking at her chest, drinking in the sight of those beautiful mammaries. As I've mentioned before, teenagers have the nicest tits; they can truly be taken as a sign that there IS a God. Julie's were no exception. They were perhaps a little larger than was considered average but they had no sag to them. They were pale in contrast to the darkness of her skin except for the nipples, which were the color of ripe cherries. I hefted them a little in my hands, stroking the sides and bottoms of them, running my fingers beneath them.

"You like them?" She asked sweetly. She knew that I liked them.

"They're all right." I shrugged and then smiled.

"You asshole." She giggled. "You want to taste them?"

"If I must." I said, feigning a sigh of a laborer contemplating an unpleasant job.

"You must." She told me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me towards her.

I sucked and licked her nipples for several minutes, tasting their texture, making her squirm on the couch beneath me.

"You know," She panted, running her fingers through my hair and sliding her denim-clad leg up and down in my crotch. "I heard that you have some really COOL study methods."

"Yeah?" I answered between tongues on her right nipple, which was dripping with my saliva. "What might those be?"

"You know?" She groaned. "Like doing things with your mouth."

I switched to the other nipple, cupping the bulk of the breast with my hand.

"I'm doing things with my mouth right now." I told her, sucking the flesh on the side of the tit.

"Other things!" She insisted. "Things a little lower."

I looked up at her. "Your toes?"

"Higher." She giggled.

"Your belly button." I guessed, sliding down and sticking my tongue into it, making her squeal.

"That tickled." She said, delighted. "But you're getting warmer."

"Well," I finally said. "Maybe you should just come upstairs to my room and show me what you mean."

"Maybe I should." She said, getting up.

Upstairs, standing near the foot of my bed while I watched her, she kicked off her shoes and socks and then unbuttoned her jeans. They were tight on her and it was with some effort that she pushed them off her body to the floor, revealing the dark elegance of her legs to me. Her panties were blue and cut high. They did not leave her body with the jeans, but remained behind after being dragged down just far enough for me to see a few tufts of her black pubic hair peeking out the top of the waistband.

Julie was certainly not shy about displaying her body. She even teased me a little, sliding the panties up and down a few notches, revealing more and more of the top of her bush before she finally slid them down and off her body. Her bush was thick and black, the lips of her pussy all but hidden in it. I stepped forward and ran my hand of her thigh, feeling the skin, finally probing lightly through the kinky hair until I felt warm wetness against my fingertip. I withdrew my finger and brought it to my nose, inhaling her scent, letting the pheromones do their work on me.

She reached forward and undid the snap on my jeans, pushing them down. Mine were not as tight as hers were and they slid easily to the floor where I kicked them and my shoes off. I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the ground while Julie slid her hand into my underwear, grasping my cock.

"Nice." She said, feeling it up and down. With her other hand she tugged at the elastic, pulling them down my legs, her head traveling downwards as her hands pushed them to my feet. As she reached my dick her tongue slid out and circled the head for a brief second, just enough to make my whole body twitch.

"How about you show me how to study now?" She asked.

I nodded, stepping around her and lying on my back on the bed. "Come here." I told her, patting the mattress next to me.

She lay down and I pulled her body against mine, sliding her on top of me, chest to chest, face to face. I kissed her again while I felt the glory of her form pressing against mine. Remaining on my back I put my hands into her armpits and tugged a little, forcing her to move upward on me. I pushed upwards at the same time, bending her back a little and those tits were dangling in my face. I reached out for them with my tongue and worked them for a minute, getting her back into the swing of things and then I let go of her.

"What's wrong?" She asked me, looking at my intense stare.

"Do you want me to eat you?" I asked her.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Bring it up here." I commanded, touching my lips with my fingers. "Put your pussy on my mouth."

"You mean, sit on you?" She asked, her eyes sparkling.

I nodded. "Come on."

She didn't have to be told twice. She slid her crotch along the length of my stomach and chest, inching forward until her soft thighs were pushing against my ears and her hairy pussy was hanging only inches from my mouth. Using my fingers I probed through her thick nest until her pink, juicy lips were visible. They were swollen and ready, gleaming with moisture, thick with the aroma of arousal. I brought my head forward and began to lick at her, driving my tongue into her passage.

My reputation among the girls was based almost entirely upon my skills at cunnilingus. For that reason, whenever I got my mouth on a pussy I gave it my very best. You had to leave the customer satisfied after all. I ate Julie until she battered my face beneath her and dented my wall by slamming the headboard of the bed into it. Her juices poured over my face and I lapped them up. When her first orgasm faded away I put her on her back and ate her again in the traditional method, starting slower this time, working my way from the bottom of her slit upwards so that by the time I reached her clit it was once again swollen and ready for a fresh assault. Her second come was even more powerful.

When that one was done I crawled up her body, which was now slick with her aroused sweat, and positioned myself atop her. She spread her legs wide for my coming penetration. With my mouth kissing hers, with my hard cock nestled in her pubic hair, feeling the waiting wetness, I reached over and opened the nightstand drawer next to the bed. Inside of that drawer, among other things, was a bible that my Mom's sister, a religious fanatic, had given me long ago. What I was doing was a practiced and perfected maneuver.

Without needing to look, or even take my mouth off her, I flipped open the bible to the middle where I'd cut a hiding hole in some of the pages. Inside this hiding hole were my condoms. I pulled one out and then flipped the book shut again. Less than a minute later the condom was firmly on my cock and the wrapper was resting on the nightstand.

"C'mon." Julie panted. "Do it."

I slid my dick through her swollen lips for a bit, wetting the condom. When it was ready I positioned the head between her lips.

"You ready to get fucked?" I asked her, looking in her brown eyes.

"Yes!" She cried, kissing my neck and squeezing my ass. "Do it! Fuck me!"

I drove forward, feeling my dick slide between those lips and into her tightness. She moaned as I penetrated her and my own voice joined hers as I felt her chamber squeezing at me. I began to move in and out, slowly at first but quickly increasing to a full-blown grind. She slid her legs up and down mine, her hands up and down my back while her hips rose up to meet me.

She came again after about five minutes, clawing my back as she did so. I continued to pound away at her until she came again. Now it was my turn to come. I picked up the pace, angling my thrusts for the maximum sensation, anticipating the feeling of blasting inside of her hot body.

But I couldn't come. My mind simply would not make the vital connection that allowed the process of orgasm to begin. It was not the first time this had happened. I'd noticed it happening over the last few months, though it was usually when I was fucking Anita or Cindy or Maggie. It was something that had happened to me in my previous life when I'd been married for a while. The mind was no longer able to generate orgasm through sensation alone, it needed a little something else. That something was usually a fantasy and I'd always figured that it was required because I'd grown a little bored by screwing the same person over and over. But I'd never screwed Julie before. Why should I require a fantasy now? Julie was something new, something fresh. Wasn't she fantasy in and of herself?

I continued to fuck her, moving in and out, feeling her tits with my hands, stroking her legs, kissing her mouth, her neck. I tried to will myself to come. I'm fucking a beautiful teenager, I told myself. But I still couldn't come.

I began to run various fantasies through my head as I screwed her. Those that have been married for any length of time will probably be familiar with this method. I thought of the first time I'd fucked Cindy. That brought a little stir in my nether regions but no orgasm. I thought of what it would be like to fuck Darla Watson, a cute blonde at school that had always rejected my advances. I imagined it was Darla's body beneath mine, Darla's mouth kissing me. No good.

Sweat was now pouring off of my face and I was starting to get tired. Though Julie was still enjoying herself beneath me I knew that if I didn't come soon I was going to have to call a halt on the grounds of fatigue. I couldn't keep up this pace indefinitely. I was loath to do that since I NEEDED to come and since it's damn near impossible to take a condom off your cock if you haven't blasted into it.

I raised my hand to my forehead to wipe the sweat out of my eyes while my hips continued to rise and fall and Julie continued to buck and moan against me. Suddenly I was thinking of Nina. I don't know what brought her image into my mind but I wasn't thinking of her as the friend I knew. I was thinking of her naked and sweating beneath me.

I felt a tingle run up my back at that very thought. The fantasy expanded. I closed my eyes and pressed my body tighter into Julie, my hips picking up speed. I imagined that instead of Julie it was Nina beneath me, her flesh pressing mine, her breasts against my chest, her sex grasping and squeezing my cock.

"Ahhhhh!" I groaned as my mind blew a circuit breaker of some sort and a powerful orgasm went slamming through my body almost without warning.

"Yess!" Julie screamed, feeling the change in my rhythm.

I bucked up and down atop her like I was in seizure, shooting blast after blast into the condom until I feared I was going to overfill it. Finally, drenched in sweat, I collapsed atop her.

She kissed and licked on me, telling me how great I'd been but I barely heard her.

Had I really been fantasizing about Nina? Had that fantasy really given me one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had?

I rolled off of Julie and removed the condom, tying a knot in the top and dropping it into the wastebasket next to the bed (which I would of course empty before Mom and Dad got home). I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and she curled up next to me, resting her head on my chest.

We made some small talk with each other for a few minutes and all the while my mind was spinning. I'd gotten off thinking about Nina. What did that mean?

When Julie finally got out of bed and went to use the bathroom I started to run the fantasy through my head once again. I started to really imagine what it would feel like to kiss Nina, to feel her body against mine, to make love to her. These thoughts were not, I found, the least bit unpleasant to contemplate.

Chapter 5

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

But I love you

Oh how I love you

THE MOODY BLUES

Julie left the house, giving me a quick kiss on the lips and walking out to her car. She told me she would see me tomorrow and then a moment later she was roaring away. I closed the door after she'd gone and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, glancing at the clock as I did so. A half an hour until Dad got home. Just enough time for a shower.

Though I didn't have to work that day a bathing session was necessary none-the-less. I was wearing only a pair of sweatpants on my body and I knew I had to reek of Julie's musk both from my skin and on my breath. There was no sense giving my Dad anything to raise his eyebrows about.

As I put ice in a glass and filled it with water from the tap, preparing to slake my considerable thirst, my mind was still reeling with the new images of Nina it had produced at the moment of truth earlier. The memory of the powerful orgasm those images had generated was still fresh and in fact the images themselves were still flitting at the forefront of my thoughts, keeping my dick in a semi-erect state.

It was Nina I was thinking about! Nina! What a mind-blower. I felt very weird about this. Nina was my best friend, my companion, my confidant for nearly two years now. Why was I suddenly having sexual thoughts about her? Was it just my teenaged libido in overdrive or was it something else entirely? As I struggled to understand the meaning of these thoughts I found myself thinking of her in more than the sexual way. I thought of all the time we'd spent together, of all the things we'd done. I liked being around her. There really wasn't anything else I'd rather do in fact. Not even sex, my greatest obsession, compared to simply being in the company of her, talking to her, listening to her.

My God, I thought. I wasn't talking about love was I? Though I looked like a teenager and though I'd learned to act like a teenager I was still, under all of that, a thirty-three year old man. Nina was seventeen. And while I'd reluctantly acknowledged the possibility that she might be in love with me, through no fault of my own of course, I'd never even considered, even for an instant, the possibility that I might be in love with her. Sure I loved her as a friend. Sure, even though she was sixteen years younger than I was (although in reality she was nearly a year older than I was) I'd always found her a mature and easy to talk to companion, much easier than my ex-wife had ever dreamed of being, easier in fact than even Tracy. But none of that meant love did it, not romantic love anyway.

I thought of how upset she'd been earlier that day because I'd chosen to accept a ride from Julie. I remembered being baffled by her anger. Why should she be upset because of that, I'd wondered? It had been in all innocence, or so I'd thought then, and we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend anyway, so what right had she to be mad at me? And then I imagined how I would feel if Nina had told me that she was going to be riding to ROP each day with someone like Rick Felone, one of the few other guys that had been in our ROP classroom. I was surprised at the sudden surge of anger and jealously that hit me at the very thought of this.

Jesus, what was happening to me? What was I going to do about it?

Before I had a chance to think too heavily on those questions the doorbell rang. Muttering a curse under my breath at being interrupted while I'd been thinking some deep thoughts, I set down my glass and headed into the living room.

Figuring it was a door to door salesman selling some worthless product or religious fanatics selling something even more worthless I threw open the door prepared to send them away post-haste so I could go up to take my shower and continue my thoughts of Nina to their conclusion. However it was neither on the other side of door. It was Nina.

Her expression was very cool upon her face, very unreadable as she stood on the porch. Her eyes took in my attire and I realized that she couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. What was she doing here anyway? She'd told me that she wasn't coming over.

"Hi Nina." I greeted her with false cheeriness, stepping back a bit to keep her from catching any sort of scent from me. I did this instinctively without even realizing why I was doing it. "Come on in. What are you doing here?"

She made no move to come through the door, she simply stood there. "I came over to apologize for acting so weird today at school." She said. "I thought I'd been out of line, getting upset just because you wanted a ride with Julie."

"That's okay." I told her. "I understand completely. Why don't you come in?"

"I was so upset by what I'd said," She continued, still making no move to come through the door. "That I decided to head over as soon as I got home from school."

My mouth dropped open and a burst of adrenaline flooded me as I realized what she was saying.

"When I got here," She told me. "I saw that you already had company. Julie's car was out front."

"Listen Nina," I started and then immediately faded away. I had no idea what I should say to her. Should I lie and say nothing had happened? I rejected that thought even as it formed. I could hardly deny it. Nina, as I may have mentioned earlier, was not stupid. Julie's car had been out front and I'd answered the door wearing nothing but sweats and smelling like I'd just fucked someone.

"What you do is your business." She told me and I saw that a tear was now running from her left eye. "It's never been any of mine and I've never pretended that it was. You've been screwing everything with a vagina for the last two years and I've never tried to convince myself that you have any feelings for me. To you I'm just Nina."

"No Nina." I protested. "That's not true at all."

"It is." She said. "But do you know what? I've always had feelings for you. Ever since you first started talking to me in the lunchroom I've had strong feelings for you. Over the past two years they've never been returned but I've always had them and I've always hoped that some day…" She sniffed a little, more tears coming down now. "Time and time again I've started to feel like maybe there was some hope. Even though I've heard all of the stories about you, about how you'll screw anyone. Even though girls are always coming up to me and asking about you, trying to get me to introduce them to you, I still had some hope. I kept deluding myself, telling myself that you really were a nice guy. That you really weren't doing all of these things that I was hearing."

"I am a nice guy." I protested. "It's just…"

"Time and time again I would see what you were doing and try to tell myself I wasn't really seeing it. I would try to tell myself that someday…" She took a deep breath. "Anyway, when you told me that Julie and you were just going to ride together I felt, well, jealous, threatened at first. I know we're not going together or anything but still, I feel these things Bill. I can't help it. I've got these fucking feelings for you. But then I thought about it and decided I'd overreacted a little. I told myself that there was no way Bill would ever do anything with an engaged girl. I convinced myself that I'd let my feelings come out a little too much this time." She snorted in disgust. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me. So I came over here to tell you I was sorry about that.

"When I got here and saw Julie's car out front it suddenly came home to me. Everything that I'd always heard about you was true. All of the times I'd convinced myself that people were just talking about you, all of the times I saw with my own eyes what you were doing and convinced myself it was something else, all of that just fell apart when I saw her car. You really are an asshole Bill, and the worst kind. You're an asshole that can pretend not to be one."

"Nina," I said, "Let me explain…"

"There's nothing to explain." She said. "I've got to get away from you. I've got to stay away from you, do you understand? You're not good for me and you give me too many bad feelings. I just came up here to let you know that you're going to have to find another way to get to school." Tears were now running freely down her cheeks and her voice was breaking as she held off sobs.

"Nina, let's talk about this." I said.

"No." She cried, turning away from me. "Goodbye Bill." She started down the walk.

"Nina!" I yelled, starting after her.

"Leave me alone." She sobbed. "Just stay away from me here, now, and forever. Don't call me anymore, don't talk to me anymore. Please."

She continued down the walkway and turned left at the sidewalk, heading for home. Less than ten seconds later she was out of my sight. But she wasn't out of my mind.

Despite what she'd said to me I tried to call her several times that day. I needed to talk to her, to tell her that I wasn't really an asshole. I needed to try to get her to change her mind. Each time her mother answered the phone and told me that Nina was not there. Her mother's voice, which usually lit up when she was talking to me, was emotionless and flat, with no hint of the previous warmth that had been in it. Finally she told me that her daughter did not wish to speak to me and asked that I refrain from calling anymore. I put down the phone feeling defeated.

The next morning Dad saw me bundling up and preparing to walk to school. He gave me a puzzled look.

"Isn't Nina coming to pick you up today?" He asked.

"No." I told him. "She's kind of, well, mad at me. She's not going to give me a ride anymore."

"You guys broke up?" He asked, his voice soft with sympathy.

"She was never my girlfriend Dad." I told him, irritated. "She's just mad at me and doesn't want to give me a ride anymore."

He stared levelly at me. "Bill." He told me. "I hate to tell you this but Nina WAS your girlfriend, whether you realized it or not."

I shook my head. "No Dad." I said. "We were just friends. We never…, well you know?"

"Is that what you think a girlfriend is?" He asked. "Someone to, 'you know' with? You and Nina might not have ever done that with each other but you were boyfriend and girlfriend all the same. You liked being around each other, you liked to talk together. You were friends. You loved each other.

Isn't friendship the most important part of a relationship, any relationship? Why do people disregard such things?"

Had it been so obvious that even my Dad had seen it? How could I have not seen it all this time? And how could fate have been so cruel to allow me to realize it on the very day, at the very minute that it's destruction was being engineered.

"I don't know Dad." I said with complete honesty. "Maybe they're just assholes."

He gave me a meaningful look. "Maybe they are." He replied. "And maybe they need to take a good look at what is making them an asshole, don't you think? Maybe they can change that little something?"

I gave him a sharp look. What was he saying? What did he know? Was he talking about my social activities? Surely he didn't know about that did he? But then I'd assumed Nina hadn't known about that either, an assumption that, now that it had been proven wrong, seemed painfully naive. Was my assumption that Dad or even, I shuddered, Mom, didn't know as flawed as that about Nina?

Dad had hidden his face back behind the paper, offering me no more insights into what he was thinking. Troubled, I picked up my backpack and headed out the door. I wasn't surprised to find that it was raining as I headed, on foot, to school. It was that kind of day.

My attempts to talk to Nina at school were met with stony silence. By the time lunch came around I knew better than to even try anymore. As I ate my lunch in the lunchroom I looked over to where Nina sat and dread covered me like a blanket. She was sitting alone at a table, eating from her tray, a book open before her. Just like she'd been doing the first day I'd approached her. Just like it.

Julie picked me up once more for ROP. As we drove to the hospital together I was disquieted by the freeness of her affection towards me. She would put her hand on my leg as we talked, or brush my hair from my eyes for me. Once she even kissed her finger and put it to my lips gently. She told me how great of a time she'd had yesterday.

"Do you think maybe we could study together again after school?" She asked brightly.

"Uh…, not today." I told her. "I have to work." In truth I could have easily arranged a little meeting before work but I simply wasn't up to it. I'd never felt less like having sex in my life.

She pouted a little. "Well maybe next week." She said. "I really need to bone up on certain things."

As we worked side by side I noticed again how much she went out of her way to bump into me or to rub her breasts against my shoulder. Since I was quieter than usual she decided to talk more than usual. I winced when she mentioned her fiance.

"Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision when I said I'd marry him." She told me.

I looked over at her, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended to. "What do you mean?"

"Well," She beamed, her eyes shining. "I'm still young, ain't I? Maybe he's not the right one. Maybe I just jumped because he was the first one to ask.

There's lots of other guys out there that might be, uh, better, isn't there?"

I quite simply didn't know what to say to her.

When I came home from work that night my Mom was sitting on the couch watching television and working on some sort of project for work. I gave her a perfunctory greeting and started to head for my room.

"Bill?" She asked, "Are you doing okay?"

I stopped, turning towards her. "Sure Mom." I answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Dad told me about you and Nina breaking up." She said. "I just wanted to know how you were handling it."

I didn't even bother explaining to her that Nina and I hadn't had a relationship to break up from. By now it was starting to sound like a lie even to me. "I'm okay Mom." I assured her. "It'll work out."

"I certainly hope so." She told me sympathetically. "I really like her a lot you know. I thought you two made a cute couple."

I smiled weakly.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your life or anything Bill." She said. "But I think you had a good thing with her. If I were you, I'd do whatever I had to to get her back. Sincerely."

"Thanks Mom." I muttered, unsure what I was thanking her for. Why in the hell hadn't anyone told me this stuff a month ago, or a year ago, or even twenty-four hours ago?

Of course I was deluding myself because they had. Tracy in the most direct way, although I'd refused to hear her, Mom and Dad in more indirect ways. How many times had they referred to Nina as my girlfriend, either to me or when talking about her to someone else? And how many times had I reproached them for this, angrily even on occasion? Too many to count.

"Well that's my motherly advice for the day." She said. "If you're feeling down maybe this will help." She picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to me. On the front I recognized my sister's handwriting.

"From Tracy?" I asked. Since leaving for California Tracy had not exactly been an open line of communication. Two phone calls, one of which had just been to tell us she'd arrived safely, and this one letter. Since she lived in the dorms it was almost impossible to get hold of her.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "And about time too. I swear, you send them to college and they forget you exist."

I opened the envelope and sat down on the couch, pulling the single handwritten sheet of paper out and unfolding it.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Bill, it started. It was mostly to let us know she was alive and well and doing fine. She chattered on about how much she was enjoying her classes and the California weather, how much she liked living in the dorms, about her job at the campus book store which would help supplement her living expenses. And then towards the end she told us that she'd met a boy and had been dating him fairly frequently. His name was Darren Maxwell.

Darren Maxwell. I'd never heard that name before in my life, before or after recycling. But for some reason that name gave me a twinge of fear. I continued to read her decidedly unfeminine handwriting, becoming more nervous in a much more identifiable way. He was a junior at the school attending on a baseball scholarship. A baseball player. He was a sports figure, just like the guy who had been scheduled to cause her death. It should have felt stupid that I was worrying about her just because she was dating a baseball player but it didn't. It made me very uncomfortable. I found myself wondering what kind of car he drove and if he liked to drink at parties.

Troubled, I put the letter back into the envelope and put it back on the table.

"What's the matter Bill?" Mom asked me. "You look kind of pale."

"Nothing Mom." I said, standing up. "I think I'm gonna hit the rack."

I was halfway up the stairs when it hit me. I realized why Darren Maxwell's name bothered me so much. He had the same initials as David Mitchell. The same amount of syllables in his name. I wondered if they looked alike. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, if the initials and the sports history were just a meaningless coincidence. Every time I started to convince myself that paranoia was all it was I would think about Beirut and about Nina sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book before she went off, alone, to medical school.

"Jesus, this is creepy." I muttered.

I lay in bed but it was a long time before I got to sleep.

I tried to call Nina twice over the weekend. The first time her mother not so politely told me that Nina did not wish to speak to me. The second time her Dad told me he would call the cops if I called there again. On Monday at school I tried to talk to her in class.

"I told you to leave me alone." She said quietly but coldly, in a voice that did not promise the opening of negotiations.

I left her alone.

Julie picked me up once again, for what I planned to be the last time. Though I wanted a job at central supply as much as anyone, I could not ride to work with her anymore. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to bring Nina around again but it certainly wouldn't help for her to see me driving off every afternoon with Julie. I planned to tell her on the way to the hospital that this would be the last ride. But before I could, she blindsided me.

She was bubbly and exuberant as I climbed into the car and she roared off with much more enthusiasm than she usually displayed.

"You're in a happy mood today." I commented, trying to think of an opening, or closing line.

"Yep." She bubbled happily. "I sure am. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Look." She said, and waggled her left hand before my face.

I blinked in confusion, not following her. "Your hand." I said dryly. "What about it?"

"Notice anything missing?" She smiled, waggling her fingers.

And suddenly I did. The diamond engagement ring that she'd been so proud of, that she'd annoyed the living shit out of every member of the class with, was no longer on her ring finger. "Your ring." I said hollowly, knowing what the significance of it's absence had to be.

"Yep." She nodded, dropping the hand into my lap, very near my crotch. "I'm free. Absolutely free. I gave it back to him on Saturday night and told him I didn't want to marry him or see him anymore."

I took a deep breath. "Why did you do that?" I asked slowly.

"Because I don't want to see him anymore." She told me. She gave my leg a squeeze. "I've found someone else."

She'd found someone else? Oh shit. "And who might that be?" I braced myself.

She gave me a look that conveyed the message that she thought I was teasing her. "You, you hoser." She smiled. "What we experienced the other night was just, just incredible, wasn't it? I knew right then we had something special going. Didn't you just feel the electricity?"

"Oh God." I couldn't help but mutter. Could this week get any worse?

"Hey," She said, "Are your parents gone? I was thinking maybe we could cut ROP today and go over to your place." Her hand trailed upward until it was firmly in my crotch. "Spend the afternoon together?"

Slowly, patiently, I picked up her hand from my lap and put it back in hers.

"Julie." I started, and then was unable to think of anything to say.

"What?" She said, confused by my rejection of her hand and the serious tone of my voice.

I looked at the ceiling of the car for a moment, trying to think. Why the hell was she doing this to me? Didn't she understand THE RULES? She was supposed to enjoy our session and leave it at that. She wasn't supposed to break up with her fucking fiance because of it. She wasn't supposed to be feeling electricity or any of that romance novel crap. I had no experience with this sort of thing.

"Sweetie," She said, concerned. "What's wrong?"

Sweetie? Oh Christ. This was getting way out of hand.

"Look Julie." I said patiently. "I'm not your sweetie. I'm just Bill. Bill from class. We had a little fun together the other day, something we probably shouldn't have done, but I never meant for it to go any further than that. I never meant for you to break up with your fiance over it."

Her face turned deadly serious. "What are you saying?" She asked.

What was I saying? Hadn't I just said it? "What I'm saying," I told her carefully. "Is that I am not looking for a relationship with you. We just had a day of fun together."

"You don't want to go out with me?" She whispered, her tone conveying danger just under the surface.

"No." I said. "What happened between us just kind of happened. I didn't intend for it to go any further than that. Can't we just be friends?"

"Friends?" She nearly spat. "It sounds to me like you think I'm some sort of slut."

"No, no!" I protested. "That's not…"

"You take me over to your place and fuck me and you just want to end it like that? That's how guys treat sluts!"

"But…"

"I'm not no fuckin slut!" She screamed at me. "Did you think I was one? Did you think you were just gonna fuck me and then we'd forget about it the next day? How could you think that? I'm a Catholic Goddamit. I go to fucking church! Nobody treats me like a fuckin slut!"

"You're not a slut Julie." I protested. "All I was trying to say…"

She suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing her car to a screeching, smoking halt in the middle of one of Spokane's major arteries. I heard the screech of other brakes behind us as several cars nearly rear-ended her.

"Julie, Jesus, what are…"

"Get the fuck out of my car you asshole!" She screamed at me. "Get your fuckin ass out NOW! I don't ever want to see your fucked-up, lying face again!"

"Let's talk about…"

"GET OUT!" She screamed and I saw murder in her eyes.

I unsnapped my seatbelt, opened the door, and got out. Before I could close the door she peeled away, ripping it out of my hand, leaving me standing in the middle of the street in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. I looked around uncomfortably at the angry faces of the motorists whose progress I was impeding and I hurried to the curb.

"I think I could have handled that better." I muttered to myself.

I took a quick look around me, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was in front of a liquor store and three blacks were hanging out in front of it. They were in their early twenties or late teens and looked like gang members based on their garb. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking from forty-ounce cans of beer. They eyed me with amusement.

"Homey," One of them said to me sympathetically. "That was one pissed off bitch."

"Yep." Another agreed. "I heard her rap all the way over here. I was you Homey, I'd stay away from that shit."

"Sure thing." The other one put in. "Bitch done dropped your ass off in the hood. You'd a been good as dead she'd a done that shit at night. Lucky for you it's day, you only half as good as dead 'round here now."

They all laughed at that, shaking their heads at my predicament. I felt no fear from them. I'd worked for years in 'the hood' and had gotten good at reading the intentions of the inhabitants of it. Their jostling of me was for their own amusement. They meant me no harm. However, there were others around that would mean me some harm if I encountered them. I was no longer in possession of the safety my uniform provided or the portable radio that I'd once carried here that could summon every cop within five square miles in less than two minutes. I was in a delicate situation.

"Yeah." I said to them. "I do seem to be out of my element here, don't I?"

This cracked them up again. "You ain't shittin." One of them said.

"The bus stop around here somewhere?" I asked.

"Right here Homey." One answered. "Should be comin round in about twenty minutes."

"Hope you can make it that long." The one that had made the crack about the hood commented.

I looked around again, not seeing anything that offered comfort to me. The street was lined with liquor stores, cheap motels, and the occasional sub-human apartment complex. There were alleys between each of the buildings that undoubtedly contained all manner of thug of all races and creeds. This was not a place to take a little stroll. I turned back to the three-man comedy team.

"Gentlemen," I said. "I propose a business deal."

"Say what?" The apparent leader of the trio asked me.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, my weekly ration from my paycheck. I silently gave thanks that I'd increased it to ten after starting work in the hospital. "Take this ten." I said, "And take it into the liquor store there. Buy me one of those forties you're drinking, since I can use a drink about now, and give me back a buck for the bus. You guys keep the rest for yourself in exchange for keeping me from getting killed before the bus gets here."

They all stared at me for a moment, a trio of THE LOOK. Finally the leader spoke.

"And what's to stop us," He asked. "From just takin the dime and sendin your ass the fuck out of here?"

I shrugged. "Absolutely nothing." I answered.

It took them a moment but they finally started laughing. The leader, shaking his head and grinning, plucked the ten out of my fingers and headed into the store. He returned a minute later handing me a frosty, forty-ounce can of King Cobra and a dollar bill.

"You know somethin Homey?" He asked me as I cracked open the beer and took a huge swallow. "You're all right. You the most fun we had around here in a fuckin week."

And so I made it safely out of the worst area that Spokane had to offer. I boarded the bus, buzzing pleasantly from the beer that I'd just slammed into my system, gave my business partners a wave goodbye, and found myself a seat. I thought it prudent to avoid going to the hospital that day, giving Julie twenty-four hours to cool down. Since I was not accustomed to riding the bus and since I did not have any more money to spare I simply sat in my seat until the bus I was on passed near my home. It took nearly two hours and by the time I got off my bladder felt as if it was going to burst. I ran the five blocks to my house, fumbled with the key, and dashed full speed to the bathroom.

It was a fitting end to the school day I supposed.

When I came home from work that night Mom was once again sitting on the couch and watching television.

"Hi Bill." She greeted. "Feeling better today?"

"Much." I lied, putting on a cheery face.

"Have you talked to Nina?" She asked delicately.

"She won't talk to me." I answered. "But life goes on, doesn't it?"

"What did you guys fight about anyway?" She asked.

"It's kinda personal Mom." I explained. "But don't worry. I'm coping."

She gave me a sideways smile. As I started up the stairs she suddenly called me back.

"I almost forgot." She told me. "Anita called and asked if you could put up her storm windows this week sometime when she gets home. Winter's coming soon you know."

"Sure." I answered. There had been a time, about a week ago, when the news that Anita had called, asking me to do something for her would have caused a stir in my nether regions. But now, nothing. Sex was still the furthest thing from my mind. "I'll do it tomorrow afternoon."

She beamed at me. "It so sweet of you Bill." She commented. "Helping Anita out even with your busy schedule. You're turning out all right."

"I hope so." I said as I headed upstairs, realizing that for the first time in forever I was looking at a trip to Anita's as a chore.

I sensed no thawing of feelings from Nina the next day so I did not attempt to talk to her. At lunch she sat alone again at her table. Mike joined me at mine, pointing at her.

"Why's she sitting over there?" He asked, not bothering to finish chewing his food first.

"She's pissed off at me." I told him.

"How come?"

"It's personal." I answered.

He stared at me for a moment and then, in the way of Mike, dismissed the subject. "You ridin' the bus today?"

"Yep." I answered, wondering if he was going to start questioning me about Julie now.

Instead he gave me a sour look. "I'll be with you." He said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "How come?"

"Bug's broke." He told me. "The fuckin oil pump took a shit on me. Have to wait till my dad gets paid again before I can get it fixed."

I commiserated with him for a minute and then our talk turned to other subjects. After lunch we boarded the bus and found seats together. Nina, not even looking at us, found a seat by herself near the front.

My stop came before his so I bid him farewell and exited through the door along with the other ROP members assigned to the trauma center. As I headed for the main doors I saw Julie's car parked in the parking lot. I felt my nerves tense up as I anticipated having to work with her. After all, we worked with scalpels and other sharp instruments.

But as it turned out my fears were groundless. She had already talked to the supervisor apparently and had requested a change of work partner for personal reasons. My new partner was Brett Jackson, one of the other guys in the class. Julie was working with another girl in a section across the room from me. Brett asked a few questions regarding the transfer but I gave him no answers. Eventually he gave up. Julie and I stayed far apart and she did not try to cut my heart out with an unsterile scalpel. It seemed that particular crisis was passed.

When I rode home that day Nina sat away from me once more. But I also noticed the fact that Mike was not on the bus. He should have been picked up before me. Where was he? Had he found another ride home? For some reason his absence filled me with the same sense of dread I'd felt when I read Tracy's letter. When the bus dropped me off at school and Nina hopped into her Mom's car and I started home, the sensation was still with me. What had happened to Mike?

In the old days, before I'd become Anita's lover, she'd always had me over to do whatever work she required done in the afternoon shortly after I came home from school. Since the first time we were intimate with each other however it became a rule that we planned my work in the late afternoon, timed so that she could feed me dinner and then put her kids to bed in time for us to retire to her bedroom, the confines of which I knew as well as my own. As I headed over at five o'clock that day I still felt like sex was the last thing in the world I wanted to participate in. I also knew that Anita would be expecting it. Beyond that my mind refused to consider anything.

She gave me a saucy smile for greeting, a smile I knew meant that she was exceedingly horny and in need of my talents. I sighed and went to work.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon I had all of her storm windows up (knowing in the back of my mind that I would soon be required to put up Mom and Dad's storm windows too). I entered the house to let her know I was done, intending to tell her that I was going to skip dinner that night and just head home. But as I made my way to the kitchen I smelled the familiar aroma of her burgundy beef stroganoff, a dish that she knew was one of my favorites and that she often prepared for me. I also knew that quite a bit of preparation time went into the construction of this meal and I found myself without the heart to turn it down. Besides, I rationalized, Mom, knowing I would be eating at Anita's would have prepared only enough dinner for Dad and herself.

"Do you want to take a shower before dinner?" She asked me as she started the finishing touches on her meal.

"Sure." I nodded, without enthusiasm.

As I scrubbed myself in her shower, washing the sweat of my exertions down her drain I heard the click of the shower door behind me followed by a rush of cold air against my wet skin. Startled, I turned around to see Anita, completely naked, stepping into the shower with me.

"Anita?" I said, alarmed as she shut the door and pushed her body into mine.

"What are you doing?"

She grinned. "I'm feeling a little dirty tonight." She told me, running her hands over my soapy chest.

"But the kids." I protested. "They're still awake."

"They're watching TV." She said, grabbing the bar of soap from my hand. "Don't worry about them."

She began sliding the bar of soap over my wet skin, running it up and down between my lower abdomen and my shoulders, leaving white, foamy streaks on my flesh. Her large breasts were touching my arm as she did this, pushing their weight into me.

"Anita." I started again. "This is a bad idea."

"A bad idea?" She asked, letting the bar slide down onto my thighs and across my balls.

"Yes." I nodded. "We shouldn't…"

"Why don't you let me," She said, dropping the soap to the ground. "Decide what is and isn't a bad idea."

"But…"

"Oh dear." She said with mock concern. "I've dropped the soap. Perhaps I should go retrieve it."

"Anita…" I began again but she wasn't listening. She slowly dropped to her knees on the floor of the shower and took my wilted cock into her mouth.

"Anitaaaaa…" I pleaded, trying to resist her.

It was useless. Anita knew how to suck a cock. Though I'd sworn only minutes before that sex was the last thing on my mind it took only a moment of her teasing, sucking mouth slurping at my meat before I started to stiffen.

"Mmmmmm." She moaned, pulling her mouth free for an instant. "I LOVE to feel it get hard in my mouth." She dove back down on me.

She sucked me until I was as hard as a diamond and resting my arm on the top of the shower to keep from falling down. She then began to move her head up and down, sucking and licking and jacking with her hands. Water ran across her face as she sucked, adding it's own tickles to the experience. Just as my hips started to gyrate back and forth, she pulled her mouth from me and stood up, trailing her tongue up my body as she went. She licked across my nipples, onto my neck, and finally to my mouth where she plunged her tongue inside.

Libido is both the gift and the curse of the young. She had succeeded in driving thoughts of Nina and Beirut and Tracy and Mike from my head. She'd succeeded in transferring control of me to the other head. I put my arms around her and pulled her soft body to mine, letting my hands drop down to her ass cheeks which I began squeezing.

She broke the kiss and stood back a little, out of the spray of the warm water. She reached into her shower caddy and removed a bottle of baby oil. It was the baby oil I knew, that was responsible for the silky, sensuous softness of her skin. She put it on herself every time she bathed. I'd watched her do it plenty of times.

"Here." She said throatily, handing me the bottle. "Put it on me."

"Okay." I agreed, popping open the cap.

"Be sure to rub it in good."

I turned the bottle upside down and dumped a large quantity over the top of her breasts. The clear oil ran over them, between them, and around the sides of them, spilling onto her belly. I set the bottle down and put my hands on her, starting at the top and rubbing the oil into her skin. My hands and fingers glided over her breasts, squishing them in and out of my grasp, making them slippery and almost frictionless. Her nipples stood out proudly and I took a moment to give each one a quick suck, tasting the bitterness of the oil on my tongue as my hands continued to her stomach.

When her entire belly and flank were slippery I grabbed the bottle once more and then went to my knees before her. Her swollen, dripping pussy was right before my eyes but I ignored it for the time being dumping some oil on each of her upper thighs. I began to massage her legs, starting at the top and working my way down to her feet, rubbing and caressing them until they were as slippery as her torso.

I then dumped some oil into the palm of my hand and cupped her pussy, squishing the oil into her lips. She sighed as I touched her there and I began to rub the oil in, feeling her lips swell further, feeling her slick clit rubbing against me. I slid two fingers into her body. They penetrated the slick passage with ease. Her experienced muscles gripped at me. I began to plunge the fingers in and out while I leaned forward and took her slippery, rigid clit into my mouth and began sucking it.

"Ohhhhh." Anita moaned, her hands coming to the back of my head.

When she came, her legs trembled so badly that I feared she was going to fall on me. Somehow she kept her balance, riding through the tremors I gave her.

I stood up, my dick straining out before me, with the intention of sinking into that slippery channel and taking her standing up while her oil slickened body slid against mine. But Anita had other plans.

"I still need oil on my back." She told me.

Dutifully I picked up the bottle while she turned herself around. I poured a quantity onto her shoulder blades and it tracked a course down towards her ass. I massaged the oil into her skin, working my way lower once more until my hand was probing between the cheeks of her ass. I dumped more oil, getting her good and slippery in the valley, running my hand in and out. Anita really liked it when her ass was played with and I could hear her heavy breathing as I paid her attention there.

She stepped backward a step and bent over, exposing her crotch and ass to me.

"You know what I want." She breathed, her hand going up to her pussy where it began to rub.

"I think I do." I told her, pouring a little more oil into my hands and then dropping the bottle to the floor.

I put my oily hands back between her ass cheeks and touched the bud of her anus with my index finger. I pushed forward and the digit slid into her back passage, lubing the way as her hot tunnel squeezed me. I probed in and out for a minute and then added a second finger. Anita moaned her approval.

"C'mon!" She commanded. "Do it!"

I pulled my fingers from her and grasped my cock in one hand. With the other hand I spread her slippery cheeks apart. I moved forward, putting the head against her slick asshole. I probed forward once, feeling the orifice grip at me and then I pushed into her, sliding deep into her ass in one fluid motion.

"Yessssss!" Anita groaned and I had to agree with her. Her passage was tight and slick.

I dropped my hands to her hips and began to move in and out of her, feeling her gripping and releasing, hearing her excited moans over the patter of the water. Her hand began to move faster between her legs and her hips began to move backward against me as I moved forward.

She came again and the erratic spasming of her ass around my cock brought my own orgasm forward. With Anita giving me obscene encouragement, I blasted my load deep into her bowels.

After coming she quickly rinsed herself off and got out of the shower, leaving me to give myself another once-over with the soap, particularly in my crotch. As I cleaned my body I gave silent thanks for Anita. She'd given me just what I needed and I felt better, calmer than I had before coming over. I was pleased to find that I had come quite nicely without having to think of Nina at all. In fact she'd hardly entered my mind.

Dinner was up to it's usual standards, which was excellent, and by the time it was over and the kids were in bed I was ready for another session. So was Anita. We went to her bedroom and spent about an hour pleasuring each other in the conventional fashion.

After this, as we were lying together on her bed, sweat drying on our bodies, my seed dribbling from between her thighs and puddling on her comforter I stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts flow. Beside me, Anita was in a semi-stupor, drifting towards a full-fledged sleep. She often drifted off after we were done, leaving me to shower and find my way out alone. I'd always taken this as a sign that I'd done a good job.

I thought of Anita, thinking back on our relationship together since that first time I'd come over pleading for her help with a girlfriend problem, engineering her seduction of me. Since then we'd never gone a week without finding ourselves in each other's arms, in each other's body. As far as physical pleasure went she still remained the best. I wondered if, when she met the man she would marry, she would constantly compare him to me? Or would she maybe teach him some of my techniques? This thought actually amused me, making me chuckle for perhaps the first time during that miserable week. Anita teaching her new boyfriend and future husband some of the things she'd learned from a teenager.

I yawned and stretched, preparing to hop out of her bed and head for the shower when a thought from left field suddenly struck me. I froze in mid-stretch, coming fully awake, turning me head and looking at my bed-partner that was just about to give in to the final submersion of sleep.

Anita was already supposed to be dating the man that would marry her! She was supposed to have met him before Tracy graduated from high school. I remembered that clearly from my previous life. He'd been at her side at Tracy's funeral! By the time I went off to college she was supposed to have married him and moved away. But she was doing none of that. She had no boyfriend. The closest thing she had was… me.

What had happened? Why hadn't she started dating him? Why wasn't she falling into her previous pattern as Beirut and Nina were doing? I tried as hard as I could to rationalize a reason for the absence of the boyfriend but only one explanation held water. I had interfered with that by starting a relationship of my own with her.

What had been his name? I thought, trying to remember back over a considerable span of years. Something with a J in it was all I could come up with at first. The name danced for a while on the tip of my tongue until finally I was able to snag it. The last name continued to elude me but a first name was all I needed.

"Anita?" I said, shaking her gently until her eyes opened a little. She stared up at me blearily.

"Whu?" She grumbled.

"Do you know anybody named Jack?" I asked her.

"Huh?" She said, waking up a little more now.

"Jack." I repeated. "Do you know anyone named Jack?"

"My ex-father-in-law's name is Jack." She said. "Do you mean him?"

"No." I shook my head. "Any other ones?"

She thought for a second. "Well there's Jack Valentine at work." She said.

Bingo! Once she told me the last name it came back to me. Her future married name was supposed to be Anita Valentine.

"Why would you ask that?" She wanted to know.

"Tell me about Jack Valentine." I prodded her.

She gave me a puzzled look for a second but, like Tracy and Nina, she was well used to the occasional strange question or statement from me. "He transferred to my department about a year ago." She finally said. "He's divorced and kind of good looking. He asked me out a few times last year but finally he gave up when I kept turning him down. He's dating some tramp from accounting now. Word has it their relationship isn't going so well."

"Why," I asked cautiously, "Did you turn him down when he asked you out?"

She looked at me strangely and then smiled. "Why would I want to go out with some pinhead when I got you?" She asked. "You take care of ALL my needs. Well, most of them anyway."

"Anita," I said, thinking as quickly as I could about how I was going to phrase this. If I'd learned nothing else from my experience with Julie it was to treat a woman during a conversation like this as you would an unexploded bomb. "Don't you think that, well, maybe you should occasionally go out with guys your own age?"

"Why?" She asked softly.

Why? "Uh…, well, you know, because you might want to uh, develop a relationship with a man and maybe, you know, get married again someday."

"I would like to get married again someday." She told me, scooting a little closer to me. "And I DO have a relationship with a guy going. You."

"But Anita." I said. "I'm only seventeen years old. I'm in high school. I'll be going off to college next year."

"I know." She nodded, slapping playfully at me with her hand. "And once you're eighteen years old we won't have to keep our relationship a secret anymore. We'll be free."

"Free?" I said, looking at her like a rabbit in a set of headlights.

"Yes." She nodded. "I figure I can go with you wherever you go to college. I can get a job practically anywhere with my skills. We can rent a house while you get your degree. The only hard thing is going to be telling your parents about us." She shook her head sadly while I stared with my mouth agape. "That's certainly not going to be fun."

"No," I muttered slowly, numbly. "It wouldn't be fun at all, would it?"

She leaned over and kissed my nose with a quick peck. "But don't worry." She assured me. "It'll work out. Love will find a way. Why don't you go take your shower now? You don't want to make your parents suspicious do you?"

"No." I said. "That wouldn't do at all."

I was deeply troubled once again as I walked home and headed upstairs that evening. I brushed by my mother before she had a chance to get a good look at my face and see my emotions there. As I crawled under my covers and shut off my light I found myself actually grateful for my fight with Julie. It was thoughts of her that had kept me from telling Anita then and there that I had no intention of marrying her or having her follow me to college. In fact I never intended to sleep with her again. But I had to think carefully first about how I was going to break that news to her. It was clear that I was in the process of screwing up her life but good. Instinctive moves to correct this action might not necessarily be the best ones. The situation would need to be reflected upon first.

As I was reflecting I fell asleep. When I woke up a whole new day was beginning.

I half expected Mike to show up at my house in order to walk to school with me since his car was broken. When he didn't, I figured that one of his parents must have given him a ride. I didn't see him during the classroom portion of the day at all but that was hardly unusual. During lunch period, when I still didn't see him I was forced to conclude that he wasn't there. The conclusion was confirmed when I boarded the bus for ROP and he wasn't there either.

Where was he? I wondered worriedly. Was he sick? Had he maybe taken ill during his shift the previous day? Although that nicely explained why he hadn't been on the bus yesterday or today it didn't ring true. I had a premonition of more disaster brewing. A premonition that turned out to be correct.

Mike was supposed to come over to my house for a study session after school and when he didn't show up I called his house, noting that my hands were trembling a little as I dialed. He answered the phone on the second ring.

"Mike?" I asked. "What's up?"

"Nothin'." He told me sourly.

"Where were you today?" I asked him. "Didn't see you in school or at ROP."

There was a long pause. Finally he said, "I got in trouble yesterday dude."

My heart started hammering in my chest as I heard his words. I forced myself to ask, "What kind of trouble?"

"The captain at the station caught me smoking a joint out behind the apparatus bay."

"What?" I asked slowly. "You were smoking a joint there?"

"Yeah." He answered. "I usually smoked them in the car on the way to the station but I didn't have my car. Figures he'd come out to have a smoke just when I was trying to take a few hits."

"And what happened?" I asked next.

"I got suspended for a week." He told me. "I also got kicked out of ROP. They're gonna give me three classes to replace it."

"Mike, Jesus." I said, unable to think of anything else.

"It's cool." He told me. "I didn't really like hangin out at the fuckin fire station anyway. And the captain was an asshole. Anyway I had a meeting with the counselor and my parents today and she said I should give the independent study a try."

"You're not gonna do it are you?" I asked quickly.

"Yeah." He told me. "I am. Fuck going to class for six hours every day."

"Mike." I told him. "This isn't the end. You can still stay in school and graduate next year. You can still get on with the fire department after you graduate. You just have to tell them in the interview that you were a dumb kid and that…"

"Fuck that." Mike said angrily. "I'm going into independent study. We sent in the application today. Should be approved by next week."

"Mike," I pleaded, "We're almost halfway through the school year! You'll be done before you know it! Just hang in there for another few…"

"Fuck it!" He repeated. "I'm staying in that fuckin shithole any longer than I have to. I shoulda gone into independent study in the first place. I'd a been done by now.

"But…"

"I gotta go." He said. "I'll see you around."

With a click he hung up the phone. Slowly I replaced mine in the holder.

I sat for the longest time, trying to think my way through all of the crap that had suddenly come down in the last week but I couldn't. There was too much of it and it was cluttering up my mind. I would no sooner start to think about one aspect when another would push it's way forward, demanding my attention.

I went upstairs to my room and opened up my nightstand drawer. I looked in the cutout section of my bible and found what I needed. I took it out and pocketed it carefully. When Dad got home I asked him if I could use his car for a few hours. He handed me the keys and asked if I would be home for dinner.

"Probably not." I told him, heading out the door.

I drove to the park near the falls; the location of many a kegger. No keggers were going on at the moment since it was daytime and no families were picnicking at the moment since it was October and the weather wasn't quite up for such things. I locked up Dad's car and walked to a trail that led down to the river near the top of the falls. I began hiking.

Twenty minutes later I was standing less than a hundred yards from where the water arced over the cliff. The roar of the falls was very loud and a fine mist from below drifted through the air, blown by the prevailing winds. I found myself a comfortable spot and sat down. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out the half joint that I'd extricated from my bible.

I'd noticed long before I'd been recycled that a little marijuana helped me think deeply about things. It helped keep my thoughts from being sidetracked into something else. Though I was aware of the irony of what I was doing, using the very substance that had brought Mike down in order to help come up with a solution to his problem, as well as the many others that I'd set in motion, I took out a lighter and lit the joint. As I smoked I stared at the falls, watching the water cascade over the edge to its collision with the lower river. The sight was mesmerizing, the sound nothing but white noise. By the time I'd finished the roach my mind was clear and I began trying to think things through.

Patterns. That was what it came down to. There were two separate time lines I was dealing with. What had happened in my first trip from 1982 to 1999 and what was happening in my second trip. When I'd first come over it had seemed so simple. Everything was new, everything was fresh. I had not really believed at all that I would have to worry about the way things had turned out in my first life. But now, after all the things that had happened, I was seeing definite patterns between the two time lines. Though some things had changed I was seeing a definite tendency for things, people especially, to drift into the patterns that had apparently been set for them. As for who or what had set those patterns, I knew not and I cared not. I was only concerned with the question of whether or not the patterns were tendencies or absolute.

Mike. In my previous life he'd gone to independent study and dropped out of school. He'd joined the Air Force a few years later and the few times I heard from him after that he'd seemed to like his job as missile technician in Wyoming. However he was discovered to have marijuana in his system after a random drug test and given a choice between an Article 15 or a dishonorable discharge without criminal complaint, he chose the discharge. In this time line I'd successfully steered him off of that path at it's beginning and onto a different one, that of a firefighter. I'd kept him in high school longer than he had been previously and I'd honestly thought that I'd changed his destiny. But then he was caught using marijuana at the fire station. He was thrown out of ROP and was now planning to re-enter independent study. He'd steered himself right back into the other path with only two days worth of effort. Was he now committed to that path? Was there no way for me to steer him back again? Was it pointless to even try?

Nina. In her previous life she'd been taunted and ignored throughout her school years, eventually turning into a bitter, though highly educated person. It would be readily apparent to every person that dealt with her on a regular basis in my first life that she suffered from a raging inferiority complex. She was driven by the desire to appear smarter, better, faster, more competent, more everything, than everyone else around her. She was driven by this desire because deep inside she would always be the butt of everyone's jokes and would always feel she was inferior to everyone. The facade she would put up to convince herself and others to the contrary would often be brutal to those it touched. But in this timeline I'd steered her off of that path. I'd befriended her and, with the help of others, showed her that she really was a good person. For the longest time it seemed she could not fall into her original pattern. And then yours truly, in my idiocy, jerked her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now she was back to eating alone in the cafeteria, back to being uncommunicative with everyone. She was on her way to college and medical school next year. In the nineties would she show up in the emergency room in Spokane once again with the same chip on her shoulder, the same attitude? Although the trip took a different pathway than before it sure seemed to me she was heading for the same place.

Tracy. This was the problem that concerned me more than anything else. In the previous time line a football player named David Mitchell had gotten drunk one night and driven my sister into the Spokane River, killing her. I'd prevented that from occurring, true enough, but it was disquieting to me that the Camero had STILL crashed into the river, that Lisa Sanchez had STILL been killed in the accident, and that Barbie Langston, who had taken Tracy's place in the car, had NOT been killed. And now Tracy was dating a baseball player named Darren Maxwell. Was it coincidence that he had the same initials? Was fate simply waiting for another chance to claim Tracy, who's demise was already written in some celestial book somewhere? If so, was there anything I could do about it? Was there anything she could do about it?

And that brought me to the troubling problem of Anita. She, for a change of pace, had deviated way off of the path that she'd taken before. She had not gone out with the man that she was going to marry in the previous time line and had instead fallen in love with me after I'd initiated an affair with her. She called her intended a pinhead in fact. Why was Anita different? Or was she?

I stared at the falls and ran all these things through my mind, one by one. Mike, Anita, Tracy, Myself, Beirut, trying to determine if there were any absolutes, any hard, fast rules to this thing. I stayed there for a long time, staring and thinking, thinking and staring, watching the water rush by in the river.

Was fate, I wondered, like that river? A liquid stream rushing along towards a fixed destination. All of the billions of drops of water in that river were destined to end up, eventually, in the ocean. You could take a few drops out and move them back upstream a few feet or a few miles but they would still end up passing by the same point again, they would still end up in the ocean. A few drops would occasionally splash out of the stream for a while, seeming to free themselves of the current but they would eventually be brought right back into the flow. That was their destiny. That was their fate.

But was it possible for a few drops to occasionally escape that river, to find a new path? Sometimes it was. They could be taken away clinging to the bathing suit of a child or scooped up by a motorist whose vehicle had overheated and deposited into a radiator. They could be lapped away from the river by a deer or a coyote or a bear or even a stray dog. Though most of the drops were fated to continue on their way to the Pacific Ocean; it was possible for some to escape, wasn't it?

When I finally left I was soaked from the mist, shivering, probably on the verge of hypothermia, and I had a bitch of a headache.

But I felt better all the same.

Chapter 6

Once I rose above the noise and confusion

Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion

I was soaring ever higher

But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man

Though my mind could think I still was a madman

I hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I can hear them say:

Carry on my wayward son

There'll be peace when you are done

Lay your weary head to rest

Don't you cry no more

KANSAS

I awoke in a better mood the next morning even though nothing had really changed. Everything was falling or had fallen down around me and it was time to start picking up the pieces. I was determined to take action; to strike back at FATE. During my mind session the day before I'd realized that both Anita and myself were walking examples that fate could be changed.

It may not be easy to do, but it was possible. If things did not improve, or if they got worse from my interference, at least I'd be able to say that I'd tried.

After breakfast I went to our den and dug through my Dad's filing cabinet. After a minute of rummaging I came up with the letter that Tracy had sent us. I opened it up and scanned through it until I found the section I wanted.

"I have a job now," I read, "working at the campus book store as a clerk. I have to…" I scanned further, skipping over the brief description of her job duties. "I work 5:00 to closing at 8:00, Monday through Friday. It's fun I suppose. At least the money will help…"

5:00 to 8:00 Tracy would be in the UC Berkeley bookstore. I memorized that information and then put the letter back.

A few minutes later I was bundling up and preparing for the long walk to school. As I stepped outside the house I was grateful to see it was not raining. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it. It was a beautiful fall morning it appeared.

My happiness at the appearance of the sun quickly deflated when I felt the wind. It was blowing about twenty miles an hour, sending leaves and other debris parading down the street. The moving air was icy and cold, feeling as if it had just came off a glacier. My exposed cheeks immediately reddened and my eyes began to tear. With a sigh I pulled my hood tight, lowered my face, and moved out. This walking to school shit was getting old fast. One way or another, I swore to myself, I was not going to do it much longer.

My first stop upon arriving at school was the administration building. I walked into the main lobby area where two secretaries were working behind a counter. Both were banging away on IBM typewriters. Two student volunteers, both girls, one of whom had once been to my room to 'study', were doing some filing. The one I'd had relations with in the past was the only person in the room to pay my entrance any attention. She gave me a sly smile and then went back to what she was doing.

I walked up to the counter and stood politely for a few seconds. The nearest secretary continued to type, not even glancing my way, although there was no way she could have failed to notice my presence.

"Excuse me?" I finally said.

"You can't use the phone in here." She said impatiently, without even looking up or moving her hands from the typewriter keys. "There's a payphone outside. If you don't have a dime, you're gonna have to borrow one from somewhere else. We're not a bank."

"I'm not here to use the phone." I said.

"Then what do you want?" She asked, continuing to type away.

"I need to see Mrs. Compleigh." I told her, referring to one of the school counselors, the one who had pushed Mike into independent study.

Her hands still blurring across her IBM, she asked, "Do you have an appointment?"

"No." I replied. "But it's kind of an emergency. I need to…"

"You'll have to schedule an appointment with her if you want to talk to her." She replied tersely. She returned her full attention to her work.

"This is an emergency." I tried again. "I need to see her now."

She gave a hiss of disgust and pushed herself away from her desk. She turned to me, her eyes full of contempt. "Look young man," She said, projecting all of the petty authority she possessed towards me. "Our counselors are busy people and I can't just go sending kids in to them any time some student asks. Now if you could just…"

"Now wait a minute." I interrupted, using my adult voice, a voice I rarely employed anymore. It worked it's magic. She, as well as the other secretary and the two volunteers all stopped and stared at me. Concentrating my attention on the one I'd been speaking to I asked, "What is your name?"

"My name?" She asked, the first tinges of actual anger appearing in her tone.

"Yes." I nodded. "You know, what they call you?"

"Now you listen to me young man…" She started, but weakly. She seemed cowed by the bold way I was speaking to her. Her expression reminded me a little of how Richie had looked when he'd realized he'd bitten off a little more than he could chew.

"Your name?" I demanded, sharpening my tone a little.

"Mrs. Wilks." She finally said. "Now I really…"

"Well, Mrs. Wilks," I said, "When I went through orientation for this school it was explained to me that the school counselors existed to assist me in times of need. That they were student advocates. I was told I could talk to them at any time during the school day. Any time. Are you telling me now that that was a lie?"

"Well no." She stammered, "You can talk to them any time if there is some sort of, well, problem. It's just that for routine matters like what you're…"

"Routine matters?" I asked, exasperated. "I believe I told you twice that this was an emergency. Emergency is not a synonym for routine. Emergency means a pressing matter, a problem, something that requires immediate address by qualified people. I would like to see Mrs. Compleigh for this problem that I have. Is she here?"

"Well, yes she is." Mrs. Wilks said, looking quite dazed now.

"Good." I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Would you please tell her that a student has a problem and would like to see her?"

"Uh…, well, what is your name?" She asked.

I told her.

"Okay." She nodded, jotting it down. "And what do you need to talk to her about?"

I looked around, seeing that our audience was raptly awaiting my answer for that one.

"That is most definitely none of your business." I told her.

She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, and then perhaps thought better of it. She stood up and headed through a door, closing it behind her. The other three occupants of the room continued to stare at me for a moment. The two student volunteers were hiding smirks of amusement at the exchange they'd just witnessed. Finally they reluctantly went back to work.

Mrs. Wilks returned a few minutes later. She gave me a nervous look and said, "Mrs. Compleigh will see you in just a minute."

"Thank you." I said.

She didn't answer my thanks. She walked over to a large filing cabinet and, using a key from a ring, opened up one of the drawers. She fingered through it for a few seconds and finally pulled a manila file from it. My eyes are pretty sharp, always would be, and I had no trouble seeing my name printed on the tab. She carried the file back through the door from which she'd come. She returned a minute later and sat back at her desk.

Another five minutes went by and the same door opened revealing Mrs. Compleigh. She was about forty or so, with long brown hair that was tied into a bun. She wore a plain brown dress and nylons. Her eyes held a cynical gaze as she appraised me.

"Billy?" She asked. "If you would come with me?"

I stood and pushed my way through the little barrier door and then followed her through the back door. We moved down a hallway past the principal's and assistant principal's office, both of which were empty, a copy machine, a coffee maker, and finally to a door with the counselor's name printed on it.

She opened the door and led me into her office.

Her office was small and cramped with a cheap metal desk taking up a large portion of the room. Two small chairs sat before the desk. Her work area was cluttered with various papers and forms although my file was nowhere to be seen there. Framed pictures of two children, one a boy of about ten, the other a girl of about fourteen or so, sat on the desk flanking her penholder. On the wall behind the desk were two framed degrees from the University of Idaho at Boise. She had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in public education with a minor in Psychology. The air in the room smelled as if she regularly violated the school no smoking policy.

She worked her way behind her desk and waved me to a seat in one of the chairs. I sat.

"Well Billy," She started. "Mrs. Wilks is a little upset by the way in which you talked to her." She started. "She says you were getting smart with her. Is that true?"

"Getting smart?" I asked contemplatively. "Why do teachers, counselors, and secretaries tell kids not to get smart? Isn't that what we are in school for?"

This produced a few stunned seconds of THE LOOK. Finally she kind of shook her head, as if clearing her mind of my words. "We'll discuss Mrs. Wilks later perhaps." She said finally. "I understand you have some sort of emergency?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"I hope it's nothing serious." She told me. "You're one of our better students here. In fact, if not for some poor grades your first year, you'd probably be in the running for valedictorian. So what kind of emergency does a bright young man like yourself have?"

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment. She had rattled off my school record with the intention of making me believe that she knew who I was and how I was doing in school off the top of her head. She was trying to give me the impression that she knew all of her students by name and could instantly recall their respective records. Her psychology or education classes had probably assured her that this was a good trick to instill trust. I dismissed this without comment only reluctantly.

"Well actually." I said. "I am not the one having the problem. I came here on behalf of Mike Meachen."

Her face clouded a bit. "Mike Meachen?" She asked me. "I don't understand."

"Mike Meachen." I repeated. "Surely you remember him? You talked him and his parents into independent study?"

"I'm afraid," She told me firmly, "That what Mike Meachen and his parents discussed with me or decided to do is none of your business."

"Is that a fact?" I asked pointedly.

"YES, it is." She replied, annoyed. "Now if that's all you wanted to discuss, I have a lot of work to do."

"If that's ALL?" I asked, switching to the adult voice again. "You encourage a student to drop out of school, to destroy his life, and you wonder if that's ALL I want to discuss? What kind of counselor are you anyway?"

"Now wait just a minute!" She said sharply, sitting up straighter and leaning over the desk towards me. "Mike is going to independent study. He is NOT dropping out. He is NOT destroying his life."

"Don't give me that crap." I told her, holding her hostile gaze. "You know as well as I do that no one graduates from independent study. It's a holding tank where you put kids that you think are going to drop out anyway so that when they do, it doesn't go on your statistics."

She actually paled a little as I said this, her eyes telling me she knew that what I was saying was true and that she was shocked that I'd come up with this information. She quickly composed herself however and began spouting the company line. "Billy, that is simply not true." She said. "Independent study is a program designed to help students like Mike when they are struggling…"

"You're quoting directly from the pamphlets, aren't you?" I interrupted. "The ones that the school district administration gave you when they instructed you to seek out likely drop-outs and steer them into this program. I'm sure they told you all kinds of things about how it was for the protection of the school, the protection of the students, the protection of the goddam American way of life. But I can see in your eyes that you don't really believe all the bullshit you're spouting at me. You KNOW what I'm saying is true. You probably wouldn't admit it under torture, but you KNOW. Don't you?"

"I would appreciate you watching your language in here." She snapped, continuing to stare at me. "I refuse to have a discussion with a foul-mouthed child who comes into my office and…"

"Yes," I continued, "You know. And part of you probably hates it, don't you? Or at least maybe you did once. How long have you been doing this? Are you numb to it now? Do you sleep well at night after you send someone to oblivion? How many kids have you steered into this program, talking to their parents like you were a used-car salesman offering a Cadillac for a hundred bucks? How many kids that you steered into this thing might have been saved if you'd have done what your job was SUPPOSED to be and helped them?"

"I think I've heard just about enough from you." She told me. "Please ask Mrs. Wilks to supply you with an office pass since you're now late for first period."

I shook my head sadly at her. "No." I said softly but firmly. "I will not leave until I've had my say."

Her face reddened this time. "Young man!" She barked. "You will leave this office right this…"

"Are you afraid of me Mrs. Compleigh?" I asked.

"NO!" She lied. "I am simply tired of having my time wasted by listening to your paranoid delusions. You are a sixteen year old CHILD. You've come to some strange conclusion in your mind and you think it's the truth. Well I'm nearly forty years old and I can tell you with authority that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I struck a few of your chords, didn't I?" I asked, smiling. "I told you a few things about yourself that you didn't really want to hear, didn't I? If you were wise, you would sit down and listen to me for a few minutes. As you pointed out, I'm much younger than you are and you probably don't think I have anything of value to tell you, right? Well someone much younger than me, in a manner of speaking anyway, once tried to tell ME something. And I figured that since I was so much more "mature", that she couldn't possibly be right. Well, I was wrong and I ignored what she had to say, and the consequences of that are something that still haunts me, maybe always will. Do me and yourself a favor and hear me out?"

She looked downright nervous now but finally said, "Say what you need to say."

"Thank you." I replied. "You told me a minute ago that independent study was for students that are 'struggling' in school. Correct?"

"Yes." She said carefully.

"I don't agree with independent study." I said. "I think it's an atrocity. I think you counselors and administrators spend far too much time trying to cover up for poor students instead of trying to help them. Sure, you'd lose a bunch anyway but even if you could save just one, just a single one, wouldn't it be worth it?"

Before she could answer I continued. "But I've learned that you can't change the world. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to change a little part of it. Sometimes I think you CAN do that. You told me that Mike Meachen was a struggling student. Did you even bother to check his record before you had him and his parents in here? Did you even bother to note that he is NOT struggling anymore before you cut him off at the knees? His grades have come way up since last year. He was on his way to an upper 3 average for the first time in his life. He might have even made a 4.0 for the year until you kicked him out of school."

"I didn't FORCE anybody anywhere." She protested. "Mike and his parents WANTED him to go to independent study."

"No, you didn't force them." I said. "You just brought them in here and waved it in front of their faces. 'Look Mike, you only have to go to school twelve hours a week.' 'Look Mrs. and Mr. Meachen, your child can graduate in only a few months this way. If you don't do this, he might not graduate at all.' Isn't that pretty much the line you handed them? Did I hit upon any exact quotes there?"

She was staring at me with her mouth agape, her face telling me that was exactly what she'd said.

"But since you didn't bother checking his record first, you never noticed that he WAS going to graduate. Not through any efforts on YOUR part I might add, but on mine. The first time you waved this crap in front of him I talked him out of it. I got him to study, I got him to bring his grades up and focus on a goal. Things that YOU are charged with doing. I did them for you. He was on his way to his goals and you steered him right into oblivion. Instead of helping him, you destroyed him."

"He was smoking grass." She said defensively. "At his ROP site. You can't expect me to overlook something like that can you?"

"No." I said, "I can't. He did something stupid, I'm not saying he didn't. He did something that he needs to be punished for so that he learns not to do it again. But is this the answer? Sending him out of school? Destroying his life? He didn't kill anybody for God's sake, he smoked some pot. Jesus, haven't you ever smoked pot."

"Certainly NOT!" She said, much too quickly.

"Right." I said, letting that drop. "And granted, he should not be doing it on his job site. But he's a seventeen-year-old kid. Seventeen year olds do stupid things. Maybe he's got a problem with pot, maybe not. But did you even bother trying to figure that out? To counsel him, counselor? No, you just steered him off into independent study because you've been told to do that with people like Mike.

"Try to think back to when you were in school, to when you decided that being a school counselor or an educator was what you wanted to do. Back before the realities of life shit all over your viewpoint. Didn't you, at one time, want to do this so you could help kids? Wasn't that a goal at some point in your past?"

She was looking me up and down in a manner I'd seen a few times before. My history teacher had looked at me this way when I'd asked her sensitive questions. Mrs. Crookshank had looked at me this way when I'd explained about underachievers to her. Dad had looked at me this way when I'd explained why I wanted to invest in latex. The cop who had taken the assault report had looked at me this way when I'd explained what I'd done. It was the look of a person who had thought they'd been speaking to a child but who'd suddenly realized that they were, for whatever reason, talking to an intelligent and insightful adult. It was a look of confusion and growing respect and fear mixed with awe. It was an extended version of THE LOOK.

"Yes." She finally said. "It was."

"Have you abandoned that goal completely?" I asked next.

She licked her lips for a moment. "I hope not." She shook her head.

"Who wanted Mike out of ROP?" I asked her next. "Was it the fire department's idea or yours?"

"Mine." She admitted. "The fire department expressed concern about the incident and requested we have a talk with him. I was the one who recommended removal from ROP."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was…" She paused.

"Was what?"

"Easier." She said shamefully. "Our contract with them is delicate. It seemed the best solution to the problem was to remove Mike from the program so we didn't risk future enrollees."

I stared at her for a minute. "Easier." I finally said, snorting in disgust. "Has it ever occurred to you that you people are educating the people that are going to be running the damn country in twenty or thirty years. The people that are going to be controlling your Medi-Care and Social Security payments? Do you really want them always choosing the path that is easier on them?"

She had no answer for that.

"Mrs. Compleigh," I pleaded. "Can't you do something about this? Mike was trying to become a productive member of society. He was trying. He did something stupid that needs to be addressed. So address it. Talk to him about it. Let him know he did something stupid. Talk to the fire department and see if there's any way they can give him a second chance. If you do that, let me talk to Mike too. I believe I have some influence with him."

She smiled for the first time. "Billy, I believe you about that."

"If he screws up again than you can write him off as a loser and send him to independent study. But please, give him a second chance. Get his file out of the cabinet instead of mine this time. Read it. See how hard he's worked for this goal in the past year. He's trying. How about you do what your job title says and help him. Meet him half way. Please?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes softening. "You're a remarkable young man Billy." She told me.

I shrugged, switching back to my teenager persona. "I try." I said.

"I'll do as you ask." She assured me.

Though she was no longer talking to me and though she no longer sat with me at lunchtime, Nina was still forced to sit next to me in the two classes we shared prior to ROP. We had picked our seats at the beginning of the semester and now we were committed to them; for better or for worse. She would typically spend each class period looking straight ahead as the teacher lectured, occasionally jotting down a note in her binder. She never looked at me or acknowledged my presence in any way.

That day was no different as I sat down for my second class of the day, and the first with her. While awaiting the rest of the class to file in and find their seats she simply stared at her notebook, ignoring the activity around her, ignoring me most of all. Had it only been a week before that we used to chat happily together during this portion of the class, discussing how our day had been until that point, what we were going to do later? It seemed like an eternity had passed since I'd last heard a kind word from her, had seen her smile.

At some point I'd stopped telling myself that I wanted our relationship to mend so that Nina would not turn out to be a bitch later and started telling myself the truth; that I wanted our relationship to mend because I liked our relationship, because I enjoyed being with her. I'd never noticed before how eager I'd been for Nina to come over each day to study with me until she was no longer doing it. All of my brainstorming of the previous day had failed to produce a plan to make-up with her. I simply did not know what to do.

"Nina?" I chanced, leaning towards her a little and whispering.

She hesitated for a second, long enough to make me think that she was not even going to acknowledge my words, but finally she turned her face towards me. Her eyes were blank, revealing nothing of what was going on behind them.

"You heard what happened to Mike?" I asked her.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's too bad."

"I went and saw Mrs. Compleigh today." I told her, thrilled to be even speaking to her. "I think I convinced her to let him back into ROP. He's getting another chance."

She nodded softly. "Good." She said. "I like Mike."

There was a long silence. Just as she started to turn her head back to her notebook I whispered, "I miss you."

She looked at my face for a second, her eyes still blank. Without saying anything she turned her attention back to her notebook. She said nothing.

"Nina?" I said.

She ignored me. Before I could try again the bell rang and the teacher called the class to order. He then began the day's lecture on the Principals of Chemistry.

All day I dreaded what I had to do when I got from school. When I finally arrived home my mind tried to find excuses to delay or even postpone the task at hand. There was homework to be done, housework to be done, deep thoughts to think, bodily functions to take care of. The rational part of me rejected these excuses one by one and finally I put my coat back on and headed out the door.

A short walk brought me to Anita's house. I made my way to her front door, almost left again, and finally, employing my willpower, I pushed her doorbell.

She was very pleased at my unexpected arrival. It showed in her face as she swung open the door. She was dressed in a pair of baggy sweat pants and a T-shirt. It was obvious that she had no bra on beneath.

"Hi Billy." She beamed, standing aside to allow me entry. "Come on in. What a pleasant surprise."

Her children were sitting at the dining room table working on some learning books. An array of crayons and construction paper was spread out before them. They looked up, greeted me briefly, and then went back to what they were doing. Anita, once the door was closed, leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the mouth, probing outward with her tongue for just the briefest instant. She made a point to rub her unencumbered breasts against my chest.

"Anita." I hissed. "Your kids are right here!"

"Oh you." She slapped at me playfully, breaking the embrace. "They're going to have to get used to us eventually anyway aren't they?"

"Uh…" I started.

"So what brings you over here today?" She asked me teasingly. "Need another shower?"

"No." I shook my head quickly, banishing the image of dumping oil all over her before it could give me an erection. As I mentioned before, my mind may have been in my thirties but my body was firmly entrenched in my teens. Testosterone was surging through my veins and calmly assuring another part of my body that it wouldn't really hurt to just take a quick shower with her before we had our talk. Just to mellow everyone out a little.

"Oh," Anita nodded knowingly. "You want to get dirty first. Give me a minute to set up a movie for the kids. That'll keep them distracted longer."

"Anita," I said, "That's not why I came over here. I need to talk to you about something."

Perhaps catching the tone of my voice, she gave me a wary look. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked carefully.

"Can we sit down somewhere?" I asked her. "Somewhere private?" And somewhere without a lot of sharp objects, I did not add.

"Sure." She said. "Let's go to the bedroom."

I nodded. "Okay."

We went into her room and I grabbed a chair near her dresser. She gave me another concerned look as I did this. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong Billy?" She asked me.

I breathed deeply and slowly let it out. "Anita," I told her. "I don't know how to tell you this but it needs to be said."

"Tell me what?"

"I suppose the best way is to just come out and say it." I said, looking at her face. "We need to end our relationship with each other."

"End…" She whispered, staring at me. Finally she gave a nervous giggle. "Billy, don't joke about things like that. It's not very…"

"Anita, I'm not joking." I told her. "We have to stop seeing each other."

"You're not joking?" She asked softly.

"No." I shook my head. "I'm not."

She began to wring her hands together. "I don't understand Billy." She told me. "Why would you say something like that? We're perfect together. We have a good thing going."

"That's just it Anita." I explained. "We DON'T have a good thing going and we're NOT perfect together. I'm sixteen years old and you're twenty-eight. I'm a teenager in high school and you're a full-grown woman with kids."

"That doesn't matter!" She protested. "As long as two people love each other…"

"Anita." I interrupted gently. "I don't love you that way."

She stared at me for a second, the wounded expression on her face striking directly at my heart. God, how I hated doing this. "But you do." She told me. "You do love me."

"No." I said, shaking my head. "I don't. And I don't think you love me that way either."

"How can you say that?" She asked, raising her voice for the first time. Her eyes were now beginning to leak a little moisture down her cheeks. "After all we've done together, after all we've shared? How can you say that?"

"I'm sorry Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for what I'm telling you now and I'm sorry that I ever initiated our relationship in the first place. I shouldn't have done that."

"Yes!" She yelled. "You should have! What we have together is beautiful! You're not going to let a little age difference keep us apart are you? Billy, we're meant for each other!"

"No." I said firmly, raising my voice a little. "That's just it. We're NOT meant for each other. I'm a kid in high school Anita. I should be dating girls my own age. You should be dating men your own age. While I've been having a relationship with you, you haven't been dating anyone or gone out anywhere. I'm screwing up your life Anita. And it has to stop. Both of us need to move on."

"You're not screwing up my life!" She protested. "Is that what you're worried about? You've improved my life. I used be so lonely Bill and then I found you. You're everything I want. Just because you're younger than me…"

"Anita," I interrupted. "I AM screwing up your life. I never intended for what we had to be a permanent relationship. I was stupid and thought that there were no consequences to what you and I were doing. I figured, hey, here's a cool older woman for me to screw and she's willing to do it again and again. But there are consequences Anita, there are. More than I imagined, more than you can imagine. We have to move on now, get back on track, don't you see that?"

"No." She told me. "You ARE the track that I want to be on. I DO want a permanent relationship with you."

I sighed, not relishing what I had to say next. "But I don't want a permanent relationship with you." I said.

More tears came down. "How can you say that?" She repeated.

"Because it's true." I said. "I don't love you. I'm sorry to have to say that and I know I'm an asshole. I entered into this thing without considering there might be emotional involvement. If I would have known that I never would have started anything. I'm ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed that I took advantage of your loneliness, ashamed that I didn't see this sooner. I'm an asshole Anita and I admit that freely. I'm trying to get better, trying not to be an asshole anymore. I don't like being an asshole. But before I can do that I have to be even more of an asshole and put an end to our relationship. Now, today."

She stood up and began to pace nervously, continuing to wring her hands. She chewed on her lip for a moment. "So you're saying that you want to see other people?" She asked. "To date others for a while to help strengthen the relationship?"

"No Anita." I said. "That is not what I'm saying. I have been dating other people the entire time we've been seeing each other. There is nothing in this relationship to strengthen. I started it only for sex, don't you see that? And sex was all I ever wanted. I'm sorry. My behavior was horrid, worse than horrid. I had no right to do any of that, but unfortunately I did. I'm trying to change now and I can no longer continue to take advantage of you. We have to stop."

"I don't want to stop." She told me quietly, stopping her pacing and turning towards me.

"We have to Anita." I said.

"Maybe I don't mind being taken advantage of." She said, desperation in her voice. "Did you ever consider that? Maybe I want you to continue to take advantage of me if that's what you were doing. I can live with that Billy."

"No." I said firmly, wondering how, in my supposed maturity, I'd managed to miss how deeply she'd felt about me all this time. God I was an idiot. "That won't work. I couldn't live with that. I couldn't keep doing that to you. Despite the way I've acted, I have a conscience. My conscience will not allow me to do that."

She let loose a sob. "Billy, we can't just stop!"

"We have to." I insisted.

She began crying freely now, her chest hitching up and down, tears coursing down, sobs pouring out of her mouth. I stood and put my arms around her, letting her put her head to my chest and cry on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Anita." I whispered to her. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

Her tears slowed down a little and suddenly her hand was around mine. Before I knew what was happening she'd pulled it under her shirt and placed it on her bare breast, allowing me to feel the familiar flesh. I tried to pull it out but she held it firmly with her hand.

"Anita." I said sharply, "Let me go."

"Just one more time Billy?" She pleaded, her free hand sliding down and tugging at the buttons on my jeans. "Just one more time?"

Again my teenaged body had ideas of its own. My teenaged body thought that one more time was a fine idea. Despite all that had just happened and had just been said, my dick stiffened up at the thought. My adult mind was appalled by this.

"No!" I yelled, slapping her hand away from my crotch a little sharper than I'd intended. I jerked my other hand free of her tit and stepped away from her.

The look in her eyes would haunt me. It was anger, hurt, and desperation. "Please?" She pleaded.

"I have to go Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for everything."

I opened her bedroom door and headed for the living room. As I left she called my name again. I looked back at her.

"I'll be here for you when you want to come back." She said. "I'll always be here for you."

I swallowed nervously. "Goodbye Anita." I finally said. "And I'm sorry."

She remained in her bedroom as I made my way out of her house. The children gave me worried looks as I left. As I closed the door behind me I could hear the sound of her sobs coming from the bedroom.

I only picked at my dinner that night, scraping much of it down the garbage disposal when I did the dishes. My mother expressed concern but I explained my loss of appetite away by proclaiming I felt like I was coming down with something. She felt my forehead, in the way of mothers, and told me she hoped I felt better soon.

"Me too." I said sincerely.

After the last dish was done I went upstairs to my room. I opened my closet and removed a copy of the World Almanac, that great repository of usually useless but occasionally helpful factoids. I paged through the index until I found the page for the section I wanted. I turned to the page.

UNITED STATES AREA CODES read the heading. They were arranged alphabetically by state. I flipped to California and scanned down the column until I saw Berkeley. 415 was the code. I memorized this information, carefully put the book away, and then headed downstairs.

Mom and Dad were both watching television, or at least sitting in front of it. Dad was correcting some papers for his classes at school. Mom was working on some paperwork for her job. I figured they were well occupied so I headed for Dad's den. I called information for the 415 area code and asked for the phone number for the UC Berkeley bookstore. This was the first time I'd called information after being recycled and it startled me a little when the operator actually read off the number to me instead of having a computer do it.

"Did you get that Sir?" She asked.

"Uh, yes." I said, "Thank you very much."

"Your welcome." She said cheerily. "Is there anything else I can help you with."

"No thank you."

She hung up and I dialed the number she'd given me. A man with a decidedly feminine voice and trouble pronouncing the letter S answered the phone. Ah, California.

"Bookstore, can I help you?" He chirped.

I asked for Tracy.

"Just a minute."

The phone clunked down and, instead of being placed on hold, I heard the low murmur of conversations drifting into my ear and the sound of the man who'd answered yelling for Tracy. A few moments later I heard the phone being picked back up.

"Hello?" Came my sister's voice, a tinge of nervousness in it. She was probably not accustomed to receiving phone calls at work.

"Tracy, its Bill." I said.

"Bill?" More worry now. "What's wrong? Are Mom and Dad okay?"

"They're fine." I assured her. "It's you I need to talk to."

"Me?" She said, "How come? And how did you get this number? I'm not supposed to be getting phone calls at work unless it's an emergency."

"The number's a matter of public record Tracy." I told her. "And it's the only way I could think of to get hold of you. Sorry I had to bother you at work."

"That's okay." She said. "But what's wrong?"

"It's nothing immediate." I said. "But I think that there's a chance you might be in, well, in some danger."

"Danger?" She asked, alarmed. "What do you mean?"

"It's probably not a good idea to talk about this while you're at work." I replied. "And like I said, it's nothing immediate. But can you call me tonight when you get off work? Give me a time and I'll stay by the phone."

"Bill?" She asked. "I don't understand. What do you mean I'm in danger? You're in Washington and I'm in California. How could you know anything from there?"

"Tracy, I'll explain everything when you call. Or at least as much as I can. Will you please do it?"

A sigh. "Yes Bill." She answered. "Be by the phone at nine tonight."

"I will." I told her. "Thanks Tracy."

At nine o'clock sharp I was positioned by the phone in the den. When it rang I picked it up before it had a chance to get half a second into the first ring.

"Hello?" I said.

The operator told me I had a collect call from Tracy and asked if I would accept the charges. I told her I would.

"Okay Bill." Tracy said to me. In the background I could hear music and the squeal and giggles of many girls. I concluded she must be on the payphone in the dorm. "Tell me what this is all about."

"Well." I said. "Do you remember when I told you before that you should not get into a car with a certain person on a certain day?"

"Yes." She answered quietly. I could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

"Some disturbing things have happened lately." I went on. "Some things that lead me to believe that you are not exactly out of danger from that."

"What do you mean?" She asked. "I didn't get in that car that night and what you said was going to happen, happened without me. How could I still be in danger from that? Believe me, I'm still not going to get into a car with David Mitchell."

"That's the thing Tracy." I told her. "You didn't get into the car that night and Barbie Langston DID. But Barbie didn't die in the accident. She's still alive."

"So?" Tracy, obviously uncomfortable with the discussion, asked.

"So," I told her. "Some other things have happened that make me think, well this is going to sound crazy, that you were SUPPOSED to die in that car and that since you didn't, things are trying to re-align themselves the way they are SUPPOSED to be."

"Billy," She said angrily. "That is nuts. That's absolutely crazy! What do you mean I was SUPPOSED to die? I didn't. And I'm not going to die."

"Just promise me something Tracy." I asked her.

"What?" She asked.

"Promise me you will never get into any car, with anyone who's been drinking. Especially not your boyfriend's. Are you still seeing him?"

"Yes I'm still seeing him!" She barked at me. "What does that have to do with anything? And I never get into a car with someone who's been drinking.

You should know that."

"I know Tracy." I said. "And that's what worries me. I don't know if the drinking part is a pre-determined factor in this. I don't know much of anything about the rules. I'm not even sure there ARE any rules."

"Rules to what?" She asked. "Where do you come up with these things Bill? You scare me sometimes."

"It's a long story." I answered. "A very long one. Does your boyfriend drink?"

"What?"

"Does he drink?"

"Yes." She said. "He's a college student. We all drink."

"What kind of car does he drive?" I asked next.

"A Corvette." She answered. This should have made me feel better. But it didn't. "Why are you worried about Darren? What does his car and whether or not he drinks have to do with anything? I didn't die that day Bill. Somehow, some way you knew about that. I don't know how. But it's over now. I'm still alive and nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing!"

"Tracy," I pleaded. "Just promise me you won't ever get in the car with him after he's been drinking. Promise me."

"Yes Bill," She recited. "I promise. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

Actually there was. I wanted to talk about Nina to her, get her feelings on the matter, get advice from her, tell her that she was right and I was wrong. But she didn't seem in the mood for it just then. It would have to wait.

"No Tracy." I answered. "I just want you to be careful. I worry about you."

"I can take care of myself Bill." She said shortly. "I've gotta go."

"Goodbye Tracy." I said. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Goodbye Bill." She answered. A second later there was a click in the earpiece.

I hung up Dad's phone and sat there for a few moments. I could only hope that I'd done some good. Because there was nothing else I could do.

The next day at school I was met first thing in the morning my some of Mike's fabrications and exaggerations. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to hear them.

"Dude," He said excitedly to me. "Guess what?"

"Hey Mike." I greeted. "Suspension's over?"

"Yeah," He nodded. "But that's not all. I'm back in ROP."

I breathed a silent sigh of thanks to Mrs. Compleigh. "Really?" I asked. "That's cool. How'd that happen?" I was actually sort of curious to see how it had transpired.

"Well, I guess the battalion chief over at the fire department really racked that asshole captain's ass for yelling at me and kicking me out of there. The BC told the counselor that he wanted me back like yesterday." He gave a self-satisfied grin. "At least HE knows what he's got going with me on the department."

"I guess so." I agreed.

"So anyway, they want me to go talk to the BC today and they're going to reassign me to a different station. Station 2 this time. They got a truck and an engine running out of there."

"No shit?" I said, gaining a lot of information from what he was saying despite his embellishments. Station 2, another downtown station, did indeed deploy a truck and an engine. It also was the home, at least in my when, of the battalion chief for that battalion. I figured they had probably decided to move Mike there so that more people, including the boss, could keep an eye on him. He wouldn't be trusted for a while, would in fact face a long, hard road in that endeavor. But at least he was back in.

"Yeah," He strutted. "I hear they're gonna bust that captain back down to engineer for all of this."

"Well," I answered. "That may be so Mike, but if I was you, I'd lay off the buds while I was at the work site. I don't think they'll let you back in if they catch you doing that again. Or even if they THINK you're doing it again."

"Yeah, I know." He said dismissively. "That's what the counselor told me too. I guess I can wait until I get home. So anyway, they tossed out the application for independent study. So I guess I'll hang out for the rest of the year after all."

"Glad it worked out Mike." I told him. "And if you want to keep coming over to have me help with your homework, I'm home the same hours."

"I'll be there." He said.

As I headed to my first class of the day I had a careful smile on my face. At least I'd steered Mike back to where he'd been. The rest would be up to him and if he blew it again I would be forced to concede the inevitability of his loser status. But for now he was back on track. Or back off track if you prefer.

When my alarm clock woke me up the next morning the first sound I heard upon shutting it off was the patter of rain against my window. I sighed as I pondered walking to school in a downpour again. As I listened to the precipitation against the glass I came to a decision on a matter I'd been mulling over for some time.

After showering I went down to breakfast and picked up the business section as usual.

"How are the stocks doing today?" Dad asked from behind the sports page.

"Up a little again." I told him, doing some quick calculations in my head based on some figures I'd added up a few days before. The latex industry was slowly climbing at this point but had yet to do anything dramatic. It would before too much longer went by. But in the meantime I was funneling all of my spare income into those stocks. The added capital plus the gains in the price added up to more than two thousand dollars of available income.

Not a fortune, but not bad either.

I flipped through the business section and found the classified ads. After five minutes of perusal I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

"Dad," I said. "Can you cash out six hundred dollars worth of my stocks today? Three hundred from each company?"

He slid his paper down and looked at me. "What for?" He asked.

"I need to buy a car." I told him. "I refuse to walk to school in the rain anymore."

We talked that matter over for a few minutes, as fathers like to do with their sons. He agreed to cash out the stock but made me promise to take him with me when I went out looking. He would keep me from being screwed he told me. Knowing that I didn't really need his help to keep from getting screwed but also knowing that buying the first car was one of those things that father's lived for, I agreed.

I was very excited about the prospect of going out car shopping on Saturday.

Excited enough to dampen the depression the rain had brought. But my mood was changed in an instant when Mom came into the living room.

Casually, she said to me, "Oh Billy, Anita called last night."

"Anita?" I said as tonelessly as I could manage.

"Yes." She nodded. "She wanted to know if you could swing by after school today and help her change the oil on her car before you go to work. I told her you probably wouldn't mind doing that."

"You did?" I said.

Mom gave me a strange look. "That's okay, isn't it?" She asked. "You're usually able to help her out when she asks."

"Uh…" I stammered, my mind whirring. "Well actually I have a lot of homework to catch up on today."

"Bill, its Friday." She told me. "Can't it wait?"

"No." I shook my head. "It's chemistry. If I don't do it right after school I, uh, forget all of the formulas and stuff."

Mom looked at me for a minute, her mother instinct probably being jigged by my words. But finally she shrugged. "Okay." She said. "But will you try to do it this weekend sometime?"

"I'll uh, see what I can do Mom." I said carefully.

"Thank you Billy." She answered, looking at me with a troubled expression.

Had I really believed that Anita was going to fade away that easily? I guess I had.

That night when I went to bed my testosterone got the better of me. There was only one way to relieve it and manage some sleep. I took myself in hand and began stroking, an action I'd performed thousands upon thousands of times before in my two lives. I thought of Nina as I did it, almost against my will. Never had a fantasy been so vivid, so real to me. It only took a minute or so before my fantasy Nina's job was complete and I was drifting off into a troubled slumber.

The next day, Saturday, Dad and I spent the late morning and early afternoon driving from place to place and looking at used cars. Dad showed me how to negotiate and how to check out a vehicle that you might buy. To my surprise he actually taught me a few things that I didn't already know. I was pleased with the vehicle we eventually settled upon. It was a 1976 Datsun B-210 with seventy thousand miles on it. The engine was in reasonably good shape although the paint job and the interior were in bad need of an overhaul. I paid five hundred cash for it and drove it home that day. That evening I took it to work with me. No matter what else happened, there would be no more walking to school in the rain or the snow.

A week went by and then another. Nothing changed between Nina and I. She continued to ignore me in class and to eat lunch by herself. I tried to talk to her a few times without any measure of success. I tried to tell her I missed her but she didn't listen. My hope for any future relationship began to dwindle. During this period I maintained my habit of jacking off once a day on average. I simply couldn't help it. Nina was always featured in these fantasies and most of them were not even about sex. Most of them just involved being in an intimate place with her, being together with her.

Anita continued to be a problem. She continually called my mother asking if I could come over to do little chores for her. I was fast running out of excuses for why I couldn't do what she asked and my mother, now quite plainly sensing that something was wrong, was running out of look-the-other-way-so-you-don't-have-to-address-an-unpleasant-truth. I knew that I was going to have to have another talk with Anita but I wasn't up for it yet. The memory of our first talk was still too fresh in my mind. I'd experienced emotions during that talk that I'd never felt before, not even during the divorce with my wife in my previous life.

On the following Friday night, while I was adding up my stock holdings after receiving my latest paycheck from the pizza joint, the phone rang. Dad answered it, listened for a minute, and then yelled my name. I walked into the kitchen and took it from him, figuring it was probably Mike.

"Hey Billy-Boy!" A familiar female voice haled. "How you been?"

Cindy! In all of the turmoil of the recent past Cindy had completely slipped my mind. Our album sessions had dwindled once she'd started college and had all but disappeared in the last two months. I hadn't seen or heard from her since then.

"Hi Cindy." I said carefully. If I'd learned nothing else over the past few weeks I'd learned that females that you thought you were having a casual relationship with were often not under the same impression. Was another bomb about to drop on me? Had I screwed up Cindy's life as I had Anita's? I honestly didn't know. In my previous life I'd lost track of Cindy after her and Tracy had stopped hanging out together. The last time I'd seen her had been at Tracy's funeral where she'd given me a sympathetic hug and had disappeared from my life forever.

"What's up?" She asked me.

We chatted for a few minutes. She apologized for not having contacted me lately and I assured her it was okay. She told me she had a new love interest and I was very glad to hear that. Even when she mentioned that he was a professor at her college who was 'kind of married', I maintained my delight.

"That's just great Cindy." I told her. "I hope things work out for you."

"Oh they will." She assured me. "They will. I'll see to it."

"I'm sure you will."

"Listen," She said. "The reason I called is that Maggie and I are moving into an apartment together. You remember Maggie, don't you?"

How could I forget her? She was Cindy's brunette friend that used to come over to 'study' with me on days that Cindy could not. Like with Cindy, I hadn't seen Maggie in quite a while. Was Maggie going to be the latest bomb?

"Yes." I said. "I'm familiar with Maggie."

Cindy giggled. "I'm sure you are." She said. "Maggie knows your album collection almost as good as I do. Anyway, we really need someone to help us move tomorrow. We have a truck but we need help getting our shit out of our parent's house and into ours. Could you be a sweetheart and give us a hand?"

"Is anybody else going to be there?" I asked.

"Just me and Maggie." She told me. "Everyone else is busy on short notice. And if you help us out, we might give you a real special reward."

"Special reward?" I said quietly.

"REAL special." She said. "So what do you say?"

I'd told myself that I was past my previous ways, that my days of fucking anything with a pussy were gone. I knew I should offer a sincere apology to Cindy and tell her I was busy. But I hadn't released my daily load for the day and I was feeling quite horny. The thought of Maggie and Cindy, of their tight, youthful bodies wormed its way into my mind and stuck there. I found my mouth opening and the words: "What time should I be there?" leaving my lips.

"My house." Cindy said. "Ten o'clock sharp."

"You got it." I told her.

"I'll be looking forward to it." She told me.

I hung up the phone feeling guilty about my actions. But I also did not have the willpower to call Cindy back and tell her I couldn't make it. I told myself that I would just help them move and that nothing else would happen. And I knew that I was lying to myself.

It was overcast the next day but not raining. I drove to Cindy's house, arriving promptly at ten, and met the two girls standing next to a medium sized U-Haul truck. They both gave me hugs for greeting and both gave my ass a discreet squeeze, making my dick, which I'd just releived only twelve hours before, pulsate in my pants. My morals wavered.

We spent about an hour moving boxes from Cindy's bedroom in her parent's house into the U-haul. We then caravanned to Maggie's house, where I'd never been before. It took an hour and a half to move Maggie's boxes from her room. Once the U-Haul was full we drove to a large apartment complex near the college.

Like Raisin's apartment complex, I knew this one from my previous life as a paramedic. We used to go to calls to it frequently, not because it was scummy, although there was a little bit of that, but because it was huge and because it was filled with college students. College students like to drink and take strange drugs and get into fights over things like parking space ownership and who drank the last beer. I'd been here for overdoses, for life-threatening alcohol ingestion, for countless assaults, for people on acid who'd convinced themselves that they'd forgotten how to breathe, and for the occasional stabbing or shooting. I remembered it mostly because each trip into its bowels was an exercise in celestial navigation. There were no maps in the front. The buildings had no numbers on them. Even the apartment numbers themselves were marked only with a four-inch set of black numbers on the brown background of the doors. I remembered driving around in the place for fifteen or twenty minutes looking for the right apartment every time I came, and receiving angry rebuffs from the drunken college students when I finally stumbled across the right one, as to why it had taken me so long to get there. I remembered thinking that there should be a law against places such as this.

Thankfully Cindy and Maggie had been to their apartment before. They found it after only ten minutes of driving around. The U-Haul was parked illegally in a red zone and the ramp was extended. The apartment was opened up and we began picking up boxes, each of which was marked either with a C or an M or an LR or a K, into the two-bedroom living quarters. Forty minutes later the U-Haul was empty.

We sat down on boxes in the cluttered living room and Cindy opened up an ice chest, distributing wine coolers to all of us. I popped mine open and took a long swallow, feeling the fruity, sweet beverage pass my gullet. Cindy then produced a joint that we all smoked from, getting us pleasantly stoned.

With each sip of wine cooler, with each toke from the joint, thoughts of Nina and fate and Julie and Anita went further and further to the back of my mind. By the time the roach was nestled safely in an ashtray and Maggie was plugging in a boom box and putting on some Sammy Hagar, my dick was stiff from looking at the two girls.

Cindy made the first move. She came over and sat next to me, her left hand dropping down to the crotch of my jeans where her fingers began making sensual patterns across the bulge of my cock.

"I've missed this." She said, looking down at the unnatural tightness of the denim. "That's one thing about the professor, he may be a nice guy and he sure knows how to treat me, but he doesn't know how to operate his piston very well."

"Maybe you should teach him." I said, with a voice that wasn't quite steady.

She popped the top button slowly and then gave a sharp yank, opening all the others. "Maybe I should." She said. "If he wants to keep me around he's going to have to learn a few basic skills anyway." She smiled. A smile I was very familiar with. "Maybe I should refine my teaching techniques a little."

"I'm happy," I said, watching her fingers fish through my BVDs, seeking my cock, "To offer my services as a learning tool."

"Good." She said, sliding off the box and sinking to her knees before me.

She tugged at my waistline and my jeans came down, allowing my hard cock to pop out into the light. With a quick glance at Maggie, who was sitting ten feet away and watching the developments, she lowered her head and took me into her mouth. Cindy hadn't forgotten a thing about cock sucking. She bobbed up and down, teasing and sucking at the same time. I sighed as I felt her talented mouth go to work on me.

Across the room Maggie watched us and I saw a familiar shine in her eyes. Her nipples began to poke out through her sweater and she began to rub her legs together. Finally she stood up and walked over to us.

"I must say," She said, grabbing the hem of her sweater. "This is very arousing. I never thought I'd get turned on watching Cindy suck someone's cock but it's strangely alluring all the same."

"Yeah?" I said, looking at her. She was a little chunkier than Cindy was but still very attractive. She looked like a future librarian, glasses and all. She was also, I knew from previous dealings, very well read and possessed a large vocabulary that she liked to show off. Maybe she would be a writer some day. Maybe she would write about his.

"Yeah." She nodded, lifting her sweater up and off, revealing her bra-clad tits.

While Cindy continued to work on my cock I pulled her to me, reaching up for the clasp on her bra. In a half second it was released and the bra dropped to the floor. She stepped forward, sticking her left tit into my mouth. I began to suckle the nipple while my hand stroked up and down the smooth flesh of her stomach. My other hand was in Cindy's blonde hair while Cindy's head continued to work my dick.

After a moment Cindy pulled herself free from me and stood up. "Switch!" She told Maggie.

Maggie slipped her tit out of my mouth and dropped down between my spread knees. A second later my cock disappeared into her mouth. Cindy pulled off her own sweater and then quickly dropped her bra. While I reached out and took a tit into each hand, feeling the flesh and the nipples, she kicked her shoes across the room and unbuttoned her pants. With a quick push of her hands she was naked, her blonde bush open for my perusal.

"Did you miss this?" Cindy asked, spreading herself open and gyrating her hips.

"Yes." I lied.

"I want to sit on your face." She told me. "Maggie, let the man up."

"Mmmmm. He IS up." Maggie said from around my cock.

The two girls giggled. While I shucked my pants the rest of the way and tossed off my shirt, Maggie did the same with her pants. A minute later I was naked and looking at four tits and two bushes, one blonde, one black as night. My dick was twitching with arousal. In all of the encounters I'd had since recycling and in all of the encounters I'd had before recycling I'd never had two girls at one time. I don't believe I could have resisted this is Nina had walked through the door at that very moment.

I lay on my back on the floor and Maggie dropped down again, taking my cock into her mouth. Her sucking continued while her hands fondled my balls. Her tits rubbed against my upper thighs. Cindy, her back to Maggie, eased herself down over my face, allowing her wet, juicy pussy to descend upon my mouth. I stuck out my tongue to meet it, tasting her tangy secretions and plunging in. Her pubic hair pushed into my nose as I lapped away at her, first plunging in and then going for the clit.

Meanwhile Maggie was trying her damnedest to suck a load from my cock. She drove her head up and down, sucking all the while, her hands frantically jacking. Maggie I knew, loved the taste of come in her mouth. She'd been known to come over just to give me a head job. Not that I ever complained about this of course.

About the time that Cindy began gyrating uncontrollably upon my face, drenching me with her secretions, I felt my own orgasm approaching quickly.

"Yesss!" Cindy moaned above me.

"Mmmmm!" Maggie moaned from between my legs as I began to shoot my come into her throat.

"Ahhhh!" I moaned, on sensory overload from all of the female fresh pressing into me.

Maggie licked my dick and balls clean, giving me the beginnings of a new hard-on. Cindy climbed off of my face and tapped her naked friend on the shoulder.

"I'll take over here." Cindy said. "Get yourself up there and get some tongue."

Maggie smiled. "If you insist." She answered, raising her head from my crotch.

She positioned herself as Cindy had, lowering her black bush and wet lips onto my face. I began eating her, both tasting and smelling the contrast between the two girls' juices. Maggie's clit was already hard so after only a brief period of licking and sucking her lips, I attacked it. Meanwhile Cindy continued to suck and slurp on my cock, bringing it back to full hardness.

Of course I couldn't see anything with Maggie's body perched on my face but soon I felt Cindy's mouth pull itself off of my cock. This was followed a moment later by the feel of her inner thighs straddling my outer thighs and the head of my dick being tickled by a nest of hair. Her hand grasped me and I felt myself moved through wet hair and into a warm set of lips. She rubbed me against her clit for a minute and then suddenly, without warning, I was engulfed in her tight body as she sank down on me.

"Ahhhhh!" I moaned into Maggie's cunt.

"Keep eating me!" Maggie panted from above. "I'm almost there!"

I dove back into her pussy, sucking her clit into my mouth once again and savaging it with my tongue. Maggie verbally registered her approval while Cindy began moving up and down on my cock, gripping it in that way of hers.

Maggie was both more violent when she came and more verbal. She screamed her orgasm out to the room using gutter profanity while her pubis battered my face until I was dazed. Cindy came again at the same time, dripping a stream of juices down to my balls.

Maggie got off my face and turned around to face Cindy, who was still bouncing away, her pretty tits jiggling up and down.

"My turn with the cock." Maggie proclaimed.

"Ohhh." Cindy whined, but she pulled herself off anyway.

Maggie lay down on the carpet next to me on her back, spreading her legs wide. "I like it this way." She told me. "Climb aboard."

I rolled over on top of her and sank into her flesh. While I fucked her Cindy sat in front of us, watching with a shine in her eyes and idly stroking her pussy with one hand. In all of my fantasies that involved two women at the same time, the two women always decided to try a little girl on girl action during the event. Apparently reality wasn't the same as fantasy. The two girls seemed to go to great lengths to avoid actually touching each other. But that was fine with me. It would have been nice to watch them go at each other but what I was doing now was nice enough even without it. Who was I to complain?

Maggie had another orgasm, again announcing it to the world in a much more violent manner than Cindy with screams of profanity and claws to my back. Figuring it was now safe to come again I began driving forward towards this goal. Cindy, still stroking herself, saw what I was doing and lodged a protest.

"No!" She yelled at Maggie. "You got to take the first load. I get the second one." She dropped down to the floor next to us, presenting herself in the doggy-style position. "Switch!"

Maggie, dripping with perspiration, panting, looked at me and said, "Fair is fair."

I shrugged, not really caring whose body I came into. I pulled myself out of her with a wet squish and raised up to my knees. I eased over behind Cindy and lined up. When my cock was in the right place I drove forward into her, immediately re-establishing the frantic rhythm I'd been using with Maggie.

As I fucked in and out of Cindy, using her hips for leverage, Maggie raised up to her knees and turned towards me. She leaned over and began kissing and licking the back of my neck and near my ears.

"Come in her." She whispered over and over again. "Come in her."

It didn't take long. With a cry of satisfaction I blasted my load into Cindy's hungry pussy, triggering an orgasm from her at the same time.

Satiated, I pulled my cock out of her pussy and let myself fall backward to the floor. Maggie curled up on my left side while Cindy flipped over and curled up on my right side. I put my arms around the two girls, feeling their wet, sticky skin.

"That was fun." Cindy commented, giving me a peck on the cheek. "We double-teamed you."

"I guess you did." I nodded, basking in the afterglow.

"But you got to come three times." Maggie protested lightly, aiming her comment at Cindy. "I only got to come twice."

"Not my fault." Cindy told her new roomate.

"Maybe," I suggested. "Cindy owes you an orgasm. What do you think Cindy, want to pay up?"

They both looked at me for a moment and then shook their heads.

"Don't be a pervert Bill." Maggie said. "You've been reading too many porno mags."

I shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

When I returned home that day I was sore and free of excessive testosterone but surprisingly and pleasantly guilt-free about my encounter with the two girls. Conversation with them afterword had assured me that neither one of them were following the path of Julie or Anita. Though I didn't know what path either of them had taken in my previous life since I'd lost track of Cindy and hadn't known Maggie at all, I received no ominous instinct that would lead me to believe I was pulling them away from their destinies. Chances are that Cindy had had an affair with her college professor before and that Maggie had moved in with her and had followed whatever path she was currently embarked upon. I was changing nothing with these two except for the occasional merger of my path with theirs.

And though I knew that Nina probably would not approve of what I'd done, would probably see it as further evidence of my assholery if she knew about it, I could not bring myself to feel guilt about this either. I wasn't supposed to be a freaking monk was I? Nina and I had no relationship at the moment to endanger. If I ever did manage to bring her around I hoped to have a more intimate relationship with her and of course I would have to refrain from having threesomes with attractive college students, but until then there was no harm being done as far as I could see.

I took a quick shower and then went to work. I sang happily along with the radio in my new car as I drove there.

I was awakened at 7:30 the next morning by Dad's pounding on my bedroom door.

"Bill?" He asked, opening the door and pushing his head through just as I was coming fully awake.

"Yeah Dad," I said blearily. "What is it?"

"There's a girl on the phone for you." He told me, "She says she needs to talk to you right now, in private, and that it's an emergency."

That was strange enough to bring me fully awake in an instant. I had a sudden bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked up at Dad and saw that he was worried about this also. He was probably figuring that some girl was calling to tell me that I'd knocked her up.

"Who's the girl?" I asked Dad.

"She didn't give her name." He said. "And I've never heard her voice before."

"All right." I answered, pulling myself out of bed. I threw on a pair of sweat pants and followed Dad downstairs. "Do you mind if I use your den phone?" I asked him.

"Sure." He nodded, waving me towards the room.

I went in and picked up the phone. "I got it!" I yelled through the closed door. A second later I heard the click of the other extension being placed back in its cradle.

I took a deep breath and said into the mouthpiece, "This is Bill."

"Hi Bill." A completely unfamiliar voice said to me. "My name is Linda. Your sister wants to talk to you."

"Tracy?" I said, confused. "What…"

"Hang on a sec." Linda said. A second later I heard her voice say faintly, "It's him."

"Thanks." My sister's faint voice replied.

There was a long pause and I heard the sound of a door shutting somewhere in the room where Tracy was. I figured that was Linda leaving the room to give Tracy some privacy.

At last Tracy's loud voice said, "Bill?" Her voice sounded haunted, scared.

What had happened?

"Yeah." I answered. "What's going on Trace?"

"I had Linda call for me so that Mom or Dad wouldn't know it was me." She explained.

"That's fine." I replied quickly. "What's wrong Trace? Are you all right?"

"How did you know Bill?" She asked, demanded. "How do you know the things you know?"

"What happened Tracy?" I asked. "Tell me why you called."

"Last night." She said, "I went to a party with Darren in the city. A frat party. There was a keg of beer there and everyone, me included, got pretty drunk."

My mouth suddenly dried up as I heard this. "Go on." I said numbly.

"When it came time to leave Darren insisted he was okay to drive. He told me he wasn't really drunk and that he was okay. My judgement was pretty screwed up by the alcohol I guess and I believed him. I believed him! We walked out to the car and I had every intention of getting into it with him.

I mean he seemed fine! He was walking okay, talking okay, everything!"

"Tracy, what happened?" I asked.

"When he went to unlock the car he had trouble getting the key into the lock. Just a little bit of trouble but he couldn't quite get it to fit in there." Her voice started to break a little. "Part of me tried to ignore this. I tried to tell myself that it didn't mean anything. But I remembered what you had said to me, how you'd warned me, and at the last second I told Darren that I didn't think he should be driving."

"And then what happened?"

"We had a fight. We yelled at each other out in the parking lot and he sounded so damn reasonable that I almost got in again. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't! So anyway he eventually got totally pissed off and drove off without me. I caught a cab home, bitching the whole time about you and your stupid warnings, about how I was going to have to pay twenty bucks to get home when a perfectly good ride had driven off without me, shit like that."

"And?" I asked, knowing there was more or she wouldn't have called.

"I got back to the dorm safely and passed out in my bed. When I woke up this morning I was told that Darren drove his car into San Francisco Bay on his way home last night."

There was silence on the line as I digested this, as shivers went up and down my body. "Tracy, Jesus." I said. "Thank God I talked to you. What happened to Darren?"

She sniffed a little. "He's fine." She told me. "He pulled himself out of the car without any problems. Of course he got arrested for drunk driving but other than that he's fine." She paused. "But I wouldn't have been, would I?" She asked me, almost accused me.

"I don't think so Tracy." I told her.

"What is going on here Bill?" She demanded. "I think I deserve an explanation! Is this going to keep happening over and over until finally I die?"

"Tracy, I just don't know." I said. "All I know is that you need to be as careful as you can."

"Christ!" She told me. "You're telling me that fate has got a hard-on for me, that I'm supposed to drown in a traffic accident! How can I live a normal life if I have to worry about this all of the time? Is there any way to stop this?"

"I don't know." I said in answer to both of her questions. "I just don't know."

"Tell me what you DO know!" She yelled. "I have a goddam right to this information! Tell me!"

"Tracy, I can't."

"Why not?" She asked. "You come up with all this mystical shit, mystical shit that just happens to be true. Shit you have no business knowing and you won't tell me how you're getting this information?"

She had a point there. "Are you coming home for Thanksgiving Tracy?" I asked her.

"I don't know." She said, semi-hysterically. "Is it safe for me to fly on an airplane?"

A legitimate question. "I think so." I told her, figuring that fate wouldn't kill several hundred people just to get at my sister. "Why don't you come home then. We'll have a nice family get-together and you and I will sit down and have a talk."

"And you'll tell me what you know?"

"As much as I can." I promised, although I wasn't sure just how much 'as much as I can' encompassed.

"And in the meantime?" She asked.

"And in the meantime stay out of cars with people who have been drinking. Stay out of cars completely if you can avoid it. Fate does seem to have a hard-on for you Tracy. So don't give it an easy mark. In a way the accident that your boyfriend had…"

"He's not my boyfriend any more." She spat. "You can bet your sweet ass on that."

"Right," I said, and then continued. "As I was saying, the accident that he had leads me to believe that certain pre-conditions have to be met. I don't know this for sure so be careful with everything you do, but it seems that the factors of a car, a drunk, and water all have to be met. Just to be safe, stay away from water too. Don't go swimming."

"And if you're wrong about these pre-conditions?" She asked.

How to answer that one. If I was wrong then Tracy was probably fucked. Fate would take her at its leisure. "Let's just hope I'm not wrong Tracy." I finally said. "Come home for Thanksgiving and we'll see what we can figure out."

"All right Bill." She said. "What else can I do?"

Chapter 7

Now I've gained some understanding

Of the only world that we see

Things that I once dreamed of

Have become reality

These walls that still surround me

Still contain the same old me

Just one more who is searching for

The world that ought to be

All the same we take our chances

Laughed at by time

Tricked by circumstances

RUSH

Okay, I'm going out on a limb with this chapter. Due to the specifics of the plot at this particular junction in the story, I am not able to provide a sex scene in this installment. It simply would not work and would run counter to the characterization. I thought I would put that right out front since this is, after all, a sex-stories newsgroup. If anyone does not wish to read this chapter because of this I will understand, but be advised that if you skip this chapter you most likely will not have any idea what is going on in the next chapter if you choose to read that one. My thanks in advance to all whom will bear with me for this chapter in which much is resolved but in which nobody gets laid. I would also like to thank Tony Tiger, a frequent corespondent of mine, for providing me with the nodal and cascading theories that appear here. Putting names to what I was thinking helped me immensely.

I went with Mom and Dad to pick up Tracy at the airport on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. For any of you that have ever been to a large metropolitan area's air terminal on such a date you can appreciate the chaos that results from having five times as many people in the building as the fire code probably allows. It was wall to wall people pushing from one place to the next, all of them dressed in winter clothing since an early snowstorm had decided to descend upon our fair city. The noise and the crowding were suffocating and Tracy's plane arrived nearly thirty minutes late.

But when we saw her walking out of the skyway towards us it made it all worthwhile. Unlike Mom and Dad, I had not realized how much I'd missed my sister until I saw her. Being younger I beat them to her and got the first hug of greeting.

Before Mom and Dad could reach us Tracy whispered in my ear. "You promised me a talk."

"Soon." I told her. "Soon."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we got home that night and all of us went straight to bed. There would be no talk that night. The next day relatives began to pour in from other parts of Spokane and from as far away as Sandpoint, Idaho and Moses Lake in the southern part of Washington. Mom made a huge turkey dinner that we all demolished and Tracy and I took our turns in the barrel having our cheeks pinched and being told how much we'd grown. By the time all of the relatives cleared out it was nine o'clock and we were all exhausted once more.

Mom and Dad had a long-standing tradition that they shared with another couple, the male half of which was a private pilot. Each day after Thanksgiving they would pile into a rented airplane and fly to Seattle to have lunch at the space needle. It was an annual event that they'd participated in for as long as I could remember. They'd even continued to do it in my previous life after Tracy's death. They'd offered, halfheartedly I might add, to cancel it this year since Tracy only had a few days with us before she returned to Berkeley, but both Tracy and myself insisted they go.

"Bill and I can find something to do." Tracy told them, looking sharply at me.

"Yeah." I agreed. "We'll keep ourselves busy."

So it came to pass that Mom and Dad piled into their car at eight o'clock on Friday morning for the trip to the small municipal airport from which they would depart. Experience had taught both my sister and I that they would not return until at least six o'clock that evening.

Their car couldn't have been more than a mile from our suburban house before Tracy got off the couch and headed up to her old room. I gave her a puzzled look that grew more puzzled when she returned carrying a twelve pack of beer in her hands.

"Okay," She told me, slapping the beer down on the coffee table. "I scored us a twelver of this imported shit back in California and brought it all the way here for this talk." She ripped open the package, which was green and contained a brand of beer I'd never heard of; something called Steinlager. She pulled out two bottles and popped the tops with a bottle opener.

"Tracy, it's only eight in the morning." I protested. "I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She smiled. "Little brother," She said. "If you want to be successful when you go to college you'd better learn to drink beer first thing in the morning. It's a requirement." She handed one to me.

I took it, surprised to find that it was icy cold.

"Something else you learn in college." She told me, taking a huge swallow. "If you want to keep your beer cold in the absence of a refrigerator, store it outside in the cold. I put this on the roof outside my window last night. Thank God it didn't get below freezing."

I took a swallow, finding the beer very tasty despite the early hour. "Not bad." I told her, drinking some more.

"Okay," She said. "Enough preliminaries. Let's talk."

I set my bottle down on the coffee table, struck by the strangeness of drinking a beer while still dressed in the clothes I'd slept in, my baggy sweats and a T-shirt. Tracy too was still dressed in her customary long T-shirt, this one with the University's logo on the front. Her legs were crossed Indian style on the couch, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I still had no idea what I was going to tell her, how much I should tell her.

"Why don't we start," I told her. "With what you DO know and what you think is going on here. Tell me that."

"Why do you want to hear that?" She asked.

"I just want to see how this whole thing looks to someone close to me."

She thought for a second and then nodded, taking another sip of beer. "Fair enough." She told me. "Here's what I know. I know that the day you told me about the accident I was scheduled to be in the first time, your personality underwent a radical change. One day you were immature little Billy, the next day you were hugging on me, telling me you loved me, and you weren't sure of the exact date. You got into a fight with a huge bully at school, something completely out of character for you, and you put him in the hospital. You came home that day and caught us smoking pot in the living room and you reamed us for it, the same way an adult would, but also different somehow. You also made Cindy's asshole boyfriend back down, and let me tell you, he doesn't back down too often.

"So I'm forced to conclude that whatever happened to you, happened on that day. Am I right?"

I nodded. "Yes. That was the first day."

"That night you came to my room and told me that creepy-ass story about the car accident. You gave me exact details, exact, about what would happen, who would be in the car, etc. You told me things you had absolutely no right knowing and they turned out to be true.

"About the same time you completely lost all of your shyness. One day I was wondering if my little brother was EVER going to get himself laid and the next day you're suddenly a male slut, bagging everything left and right and apparently, if my information was correct, doing a very good job of it.

"You also developed a sudden interest in the stock market and in finding a job. Your grades improved overnight. And I even heard that you put a few teachers in their places."

"Okay." I nodded, surprised at the amount of information Tracy possessed. Again I was forced to wonder just how much my parents knew or suspected. "So tell me, what do you think all of this means?"

"Well obviously something very strange happened to you on that first day." She offered.

"Such as?"

"I think you had some sort of well, psychic flash. I think you had some sort of Scrooge type experience while you slept that night. Something that showed you what the future was going to be like and was realistic enough that you were unable to simply discount it as a dream. That doesn't explain everything of course, but I think that's something like what happened to you. I don't know how such a thing is possible, or why you were chosen to have this knowledge, but somehow, you were shown the future, including my death, and you were able to stop certain things and start others. Am I close?"

"Kind of." I said, taking another sip, surprised to find that the bottle was now empty. I leaned forward and grabbed another one, opening it up with the bottle opener. "You are somewhat on track here but the truth is actually a little stranger than that."

"So what IS the truth?" She asked, grabbing a fresh beer of her own. "Like I said before Bill, I think I have a right to this information."

"And you do Tracy," I agreed. "You really do and I think that maybe with both of our minds working on some of the problems that have cropped up here, maybe something can be done. But there is one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I tell you what I know, what happened to me, you can never tell anyone else. NEVER. If you were to do that and word about what happened got to the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Mostly for me, but also for our family. There are people in the world that would literally kill in order to possess the information that I have. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"

"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."

She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"

"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."

She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.

"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"

"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.

I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."

"1999?" She said, with disbelief.

"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.

That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."

"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."

She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."

"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."

She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."

I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.

"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."

"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.

"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."

"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.

"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."

"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.

"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."

"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.

"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."

"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."

"No." I said. "I couldn't."

She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"

"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.

"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.

"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"Wow." She said.

"Do you believe me?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."

"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.

"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Yep." I agreed.

Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."

"I agree." I told her.

"You do?" She asked.

"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."

"Are you saying that you are not doing that anymore?" She asked.

"I'm trying not to." I said. "It's cost me a lot. I told you that Nina and I were no longer talking to each other."

"You did." She nodded. "I figured it had something to do with your extracurricular activities. I tried to tell you once that she loved you. And I was pretty sure that you loved her too. You didn't listen."

"I know. And you were right on both counts." I said. "Unfortunately I waited too long to realize it. I screwed around until Nina had her eyes opened to what I was like. She basically told me to fuck off and stay away from her. She won't even talk to me now."

"I'm sorry." Tracy said honestly. "I like Nina. I thought you two were perfect together. I still think that even though I now know you're actually seventeen years older than she is. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe." I said. "Or maybe not. In any case, Nina is part of why I called you at the bookstore with that warning. Nina and Mike and some other things have made me realize that fate has a pattern to it. A pattern that it keeps trying to put things and people into. You are part of what has fallen out of pattern."

"Because I didn't die on graduation night?" She asked slowly.

"Exactly." I nodded. "In a way I'm glad that these other things have happened. They allowed me to see what was going on, that fate was attempting to re-align things. When I saw that, I was able to give you that second warning and you were able to heed it when fate took a second shot at you."

She shuddered. "I still get the creeps when I think about how close I was to getting in that car with Darren that night. Jesus. What other things have you seen as far as these patterns go? Maybe if I know how strong this thing is…"

"Okay." I said. "There's you first of all. As you know, in my previous life you died on graduation night. In this life I prevented that. But I also knew Nina in my previous life, in school of course but also years later, and that Nina was not a pleasant person at all."

"What do you mean?" Tracy asked.

"In my first life Nina was a doctor in one of the emergency rooms. And she was a total bitch. She was the shining example of a big-time inferiority complex. If anybody did anything good in front of her, she would find a way to criticize it. If anyone did anything wrong, she would jump down their throats. She was a miserable person and it was quite plain to me why she was a miserable person."

"Because of the way she was treated in school." Tracy said.

I looked at her, smiling. "You know Tracy, you're pretty smart for a youngster."

She giggled nervously. "This is so weird." She commented. "Trying to adjust myself from thinking about you as my 'little' brother. You've got seventeen years on me now."

I snorted. "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser Tracy. Believe me. Anyway, when I came back I decided to eat in the cafeteria one day and I saw Nina sitting in there alone. That brought back memories of how bitchy she was as a doctor and led to the speculation as to its cause. So I, thinking I was the great superhero, the fixer of oppressed people everywhere, decided to befriend her and maybe change her personality a little."

"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.

"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."

"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"

"An asshole?" I suggested.

"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."

"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."

I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.

"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.

"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."

"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."

"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."

"You did?"

"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."

"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"

"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."

"What's that?" She asked.

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.

"Anita." I said softly.

Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"

I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."

"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"

"Because of me." I said.

"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"

I nodded shamefully.

"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"

"Yes." I said.

"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."

"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"

"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."

"God." Tracy muttered.

"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."

"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"

"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."

"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"

"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."

"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"

"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"

"But she hasn't?"

I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.

"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."

Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.

"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."

"It does?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"

"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."

"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."

"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.

"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."

"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."

"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.

"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."

"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.

"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"

"Yes." I said, "I do."

"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"

"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."

"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.

"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."

"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.

"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."

"And Nina?" I asked.

"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.

"The exception to the rule." I agreed.

"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.

"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."

"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.

"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.

I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."

"Very quickly." She affirmed.

"And you?"

She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."

"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"

She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."

Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.

Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.

Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.

Resolved to my task, I raised my fist and knocked on her door firmly.

It was less than ten seconds before it swung open and Anita herself, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt appeared to me on the other side.

"Billy!" She said, her face beaming. "Come in! I knew you'd come back."

"I'll stay out on the porch Anita." I told her firmly. "What I have to say won't take but a minute."

Her face clouded, trying to retain some of the hope it showed when she first saw me. "What do you mean?"

"Anita," I said. "I'll make this short and to the point. Our relationship is over. Over and done. I'm sorry I ended it so abruptly and I'm sorry I hurt you, but it is over. You need to stop calling my house and asking for me to come over and do chores for you."

"Billy, I was just trying to stay friends with you." She told me, fresh hurt marring her features. "Don't you want to still be friends?"

"You know that being friends after a sexual relationship is not possible." I told her. "That is not why you're calling. You're hoping I'll come over and resume where we left off. I will not do that. You need to stop it. You're making my mother very suspicious and if you push much harder the consequences are going to unpleasant."

She became indignant. "Well maybe your mother SHOULD know about what happened between us. Maybe I should just tell her."

I shook my head, disgusted with both her and with myself for bringing her to this point, this desperation. "Think about that for a second Anita." I told her. "Do you think that if you tell my mother about our relationship she's going to order me to come over here and marry you? Is that what you really think? Well I'm here to tell you that if you tell my mother anything it will be the worst mistake you'll ever make in your life. Mom will be very offended by it and she will not be directing her offense at me. You are the adult in this situation and in case you forgot, I am a minor.

"I imagine Mom would probably call the cops about this and you would end up with a criminal charge of some sort. You may not be convicted of anything but you would almost certainly have your children taken away from you. Is that what you want?"

Though the shock that overcame her expression was painful to watch, it was also a relief. I had managed to break through to her, to get a point across.

"Your mother wouldn't do that." She protested, but weakly.

"To tell you the truth Anita, I don't really want to find out. I didn't come over here to torment you and despite what you probably think, I don't hate you. I just need you to acknowledge that our relationship is at an end. That it's over. I don't want you to get into trouble Anita, I just want you to leave me alone."

She gulped, tears running down her face. "I'll leave you alone." She whispered, barely audibly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said I'll leave you alone." She nearly shouted. "Are you happy?"

"No Anita." I answered. "I'm not. But I'm glad you agreed with me."

This time I was able to get away before the sound of her sobs reached my ears.

Before she left Tracy was royally chewed out by my mother for not calling or writing more often. She left us with a promise to phone at least once a week. It had been three weeks since she'd left and so far she'd kept up with her promise well. As to how long that would last was anyone's guess.

I was home alone when she called on Wednesday evening, a week prior to Christmas vacation.

"Hey Bill." She said cheerfully. As before I could hear girlish revelry going on in the background. "Just making my obligatory weekly call so that Mom doesn't cut off my funding."

"Well, you wasted a call." I told her. "There out at Dad's school's Christmas party. They probably won't be home until midnight or so."

Tracy giggled. "And when they do get home, Dad will be drunk and Mom will be ragging on him about having too much to drink and swearing that she's not going to take him to next year's party."

"Gee," I mocked, knowing that Tracy was correct. "You sound like you've lived through this before."

"Oh, I might've witnessed something like that a time or two." She agreed. "So how's things with you?"

"Well," I said. "I think I have the Anita problem stabilized. She's not calling here anymore, hasn't since I had that little talk with her."

"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"

"But it wasn't terribly fun."

"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."

"Maybe." I agreed.

"How about Nina? Any developments there?"

"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."

"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."

"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.

"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"

"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"

"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.

I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."

"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."

"I do what I can." She said.

"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"

"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"

"I'll try Trace. I'll try."

They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.

It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.

"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."

I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.

"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.

"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.

I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.

"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."

"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.

To each their own I figured, dismissing this.

"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"

"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."

"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.

"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.

I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.

"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.

"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.

Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"

"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.

"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.

"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.

"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.

I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."

Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.

"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"

"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.

"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"

He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.

"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."

"Okay."

Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.

Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.

"Give me half of them." I told Brett.

With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.

"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.

He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.

"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.

Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.

I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.

"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."

She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.

"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."

She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"

"Well…" I shrugged.

"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"

I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."

I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.

"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.

"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."

"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.

When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.

"You're covered under the hospital's work comp." She told me. "They'll cover the hospital bill but, unfortunately, since you don't make any salary, there's nothing to compensate you for time off work. You should've dragged yourself to your paid job and pretended you did it there."

"I'll do that next time." I said.

"Anyway," She continued. "Why don't you head up to the ER so they can stitch you up? I'll call your parents for permission to treat and send up the authorization. Then I'll start the reams of paperwork you've just dumped on me."

"Right." I said morosely, thinking about the ER. This was the busiest hospital in the Spokane metropolitan area. It's ER alone dealt with over eighty thousand patients every year. Great. When I'd come here with the stab wound to the abdomen they'd treated me right away of course. But this was not a life-threatening problem. I would not be high on their list of priorities. If I was lucky, they might get around to stitching me up before the ten-hour deadline for suturing a wound expired. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day and part of the night sitting in the waiting room among the scrotes that this hospital attracted. It was too bad I couldn't go somewhere else to get my stitches. Any of the other hospitals could…

I stopped suddenly at that thought.

"Uh, Mindy?" I said.

"Yeah?" She asked, rummaging through her desk drawer now.

"Do I HAVE to get my stitches here?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Why would you go somewhere else?" She asked.

I explained about the eighty thousand patients, and the wait, and the deadline. "I think if I went to another hospital, say Holy Family, I would get treated a lot quicker."

"Holy Family?" She asked. "That's clear out in North Spokane. How were you planning to get there?"

"My car." I said. "I can drive myself there."

"Is it a stick-shift?" She asked.

"Oh no." I lied. "Automatic, all the way."

She thought for a minute. "Comp will still cover it." She said. "But I don't know if your parents are gonna go for that. Since you're a minor we have to do whatever your parents say."

"Let me talk to them." I said.

She shrugged and spun her phone around, offering it to me. "Dial nine before the number." She said. "And let me talk to them when you're done."

I called Mom since she was the easiest to get hold of during the workday. I assured her I was all right but that I'd had a little accident at work that was going to require some stitches. After the obligatory mother interrogation as to my health and well being, I told her that, although I was located downtown in the trauma center, I wished to drive to North Spokane to get my stitches.

"Why Billy?" She asked. "What's wrong with getting them where you're at? After all, they treated you pretty good when you had, well, your little fight that time."

"Yeah Mom." I said. "But they're pretty busy here. I could end up waiting for hours."

"Okay." She said. "But why Holy Family? There are other hospitals that aren't so far away."

"Well Mom, I thought maybe it would be nice to go to, uh, well, the hospital where Nina works."

There was a long pause, almost long enough for me to think I'd been disconnected. Finally Mom said, "I think that's a fine idea Billy. Sometimes Fate works in mysterious ways."

"You ain't kidding." I told her.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said. "My supervisor wants to talk to you. I'll head over to Holy Family and hopefully I'll be home before dark."

I quickly realized why Mindy had been concerned about the layout of my transmission. I hadn't even made it to the freeway before the gauze on my hand began spouting flowers of red from the action of operating the gearshift. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the suburban hospital my hand was throbbing and the gauze was stained with my blood.

I locked up my car and, authorization form in good hand, walked up to the emergency room entrance. The automatic doors led me into the emergency waiting area which, I was gratified to see, was not even a quarter full of people. I signed in somewhat clumsily since my right hand was my good hand and was shortly called up to a little room to be triaged. The nurse listened to my story impassively, took my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate. She examined my wound and then re-wrapped it in fresh bandages. I was then sent me to the waiting room.

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a look at the magazines lying around. They were outdated even for this when. I ignored them and began to wait.

It was less than five minutes before the door that led from the emergency room to the waiting room creaked open. My heart quivered in my chest as I saw who poked their head out. It was Nina. She was dressed in a pair of surgical scrubs that hid all the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. And she looked very pretty, very Nina as I looked at her. I knew then that I'd made the right decision by coming here. I only hoped Nina would too.

She had a chart in her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and then said to the room at large, "Matthew Miller?"

Across the waiting room from me a large blonde woman holding a crying baby with a runny nose stood up. The baby, who I figured was the Matthew Miller of whom she spoke, was tugging on his right ear obsessively. Matthew's mom carried him to where Nina stood and they all three disappeared, closing the door behind them. Nina had not seen me sitting there.

Twenty minutes passed. I sat there with my hand throbbing and my brain working on overdrive, trying to figure out what I should say to her, how I should say it, and how I could keep from saying the wrong thing. I passed a thousand scenarios through my mind, laying out a thousand scripts and rejecting them all. Finally I concluded that I would just have to take things as they came. That was one of my shining abilities.

When the door opened again Nina had a fresh chart in her hand. Her mouth opened to shout out a name as her eyes locked onto the paperwork before her, her lips beginning to form together to say the first name; William. Then she stopped. Recognition filled her face. Slowly her eyes left the chart and began to examine the waiting room. It was less than a second before they locked onto me sitting there.

I offered her a smile as she studied me, as she fought to compose herself. Finally, keeping her face neutral, her voice toneless, she said, "William, if you would follow me please?"

I stood up and walked over to her. She turned her back to me and led me into the emergency room.

The ER was almost exactly as I remembered it being on my many trips here as a paramedic. There were a few additions and coats of paint that they had yet to do, but otherwise I knew its layout fairly well. I even recognized a much younger version of one of the old biddy nurses that worked in there. Despite the relative emptiness of the waiting room, the treatment area, which only contained ten beds, was full. Several elderly people were being treated for breathing or cardiac type problems. Two children were waiting to be stitched up like I was, and of course there was Matthew Miller, who seemed to have an ear infection. Nina led me to an empty room, which was actually a hospital gurney surrounded by a yellow curtain.

"If you'll have a seat here." She said, waving me to the gurney. "The nurse will be in to see you shortly."

"Thank you Nina." I told her.

She looked at me for a moment. "Why did you come here?" She asked.

"Because YOU work here." I told her. "I wanted to see you, to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say to you." She informed me. "And we won't be speaking any further. Sorry you wasted your time."

As she turned to go I said, "I'm not giving up that easily."

She gave me one more glance and then marched out of the room. She made a point of staying out of my line of sight. But, as I told her, I wasn't giving up that easily. This might be my only chance. Though it had been more than eighteen years, I had once been an ROP ER tech too and I knew well what their duties were.

A nurse came in a few minutes later, gave my wound a cursory examination, and then told me what I already knew; that I was going to need some stitches. She told me the doctor would be in as soon as he could to do that. "Anything we can get you?" She then asked, "Some water or a blanket or something."

"I'm fine for NOW." I told her.

She left the room, slipping between the flaps of the yellow curtain. I knew that she would be telling Nina, the ER tech, to set up a suture kit in my room. It was part of Nina's job and she certainly would not be able to refuse to do it.

Sure enough, Nina pushed back through the curtain less than five minutes later, carrying one of the sterile suture kits, the sort of kits I assembled all the time in central supply at the trauma center, in her hands. She kept her eyes off of me as she walked over to the stainless steel wheeled stand next to my bed and set the kit down.

"Nina." I told her as she opened the un-sterile outer seal and folded it back. "I'm miserable without you. I miss you terribly. More than I ever imagined I would. I was an asshole before but I'm trying to change, I really am."

She looked at me impassively. "Don't touch any of this stuff." She told me.

"It's sterile and if you put your hands on it you might get an infection."

She smiled. "We wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?"

"Nina," I started again. "Do you remember when you told me…"

"I have work to do Sir." She said shortly. "You won't be seeing me again." She turned and headed out the door.

I sighed. How much time did I have before the doctor came in to stitch me up? Not much I figured. I sat quietly at my bed until I saw a nurse pass by outside.

"Nurse?" I asked, making her stop in her tracks and peer questioningly in at me.

"Could I possibly have some water? I'm awfully thirsty."

"Sure." The nurse nodded. "Just a second." She disappeared again.

Sure enough, a minute or so passed and then Nina reappeared in my cubicle, this time carrying a plastic cup of water in her hands. She walked quickly over and held it out to me.

"Your water." She said.

I didn't take it. "Nina," I said. "You told me once you had feelings for me. Do you remember?"

"Do you want the water or not?" She said testily. "I have lots of work to do."

"Tracy tried to tell me that once." I said. "Remember the time she and Cindy got you high? She tried to tell me that night but I didn't listen. I should have listened. I should have told you the things I'm trying to tell you right now at that moment. But I didn't. I was an asshole, I was stupid, and I regret that with all of my heart now."

She stared at me for a moment as I recited this to her. She then set the water down on another tray and left the room again.

Was this doing any good? It seemed it wasn't. But I was committed. All I could do was keep trying.

"Nurse?" I asked the next time one passed by.

"Yes?"

"I'm kind of cold in here. Do you suppose I could have a blanket?"

"Why sure." She said, disappearing.

A minute later Nina entered the room yet again. This time she carried a blanket in her hands. Her eyes bored into me. "Your blanket." She said.

"Nina, what I'm trying to say," I said. "Was that I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Since you've had your talk with me I haven't gone a day without thinking about what I screwed up with you. I miss our talks about books, about life, about everything. I miss being with you. I didn't realize how happy I was when I was with you; how good you made me feel, until it was gone. I NEED you Nina and I want you to come back to me. I'll accept any terms you want to offer. Anything. But please, come back to me.

Be with me again? You told me that you had feelings for me once. Are they completely gone? I realize now how deep my feelings are for you."

She was now chewing on her lip as she listened, the first break in her professional, neutral face. She still held the blanket in her hands. I sensed that she was about to throw the blanket at me and flee. It was time to lay down all the cards.

"Jesus Nina." I said. "I'm sitting here talking about 'feelings', just like you did that day. Why don't we cut the shit? You were right about me and you have absolutely no reason to believe what I say based on my past behavior, but I'm going to say it anyway. " I swallowed. "I love you Nina.

I love you deeply, intimately. You're all I can think about, you're all I want in this life. I waited too long to realize it, to say it, but it's the God's truth. I love you and I want you to be with me forever. I'll do anything you want me to in order to prove this to you but I love you. I LOVE you."

She stared at me, her lip quivering now. Suddenly she shook her head almost violently. "No." She said. "This has to stop. If you have feelings for me as you say then you'll leave me alone like I asked. Just leave me alone. Stop talking to me, stop thinking about me. I need to get you out of my life and keep you out of it."

"I'll do that if you do one thing for me." I said. "Just one little thing."

"What's that?"

"Look in my eyes and tell me you don't love me. If you can truly say that you don't love me, that you don't miss me, then I'll leave you alone forever."

She sighed, tossing the blanket on the foot of my gurney and wiping a tear that was forming in her eye. "I do love you Bill." She said. "If I didn't this would be a whole lot easier. I've loved you almost since the first time we started talking together. Don't you see that that is the problem? Love like that doesn't just die. You hurt me badly. You devastated me. You showed me how blind I could be about seeing certain things because of love. You showed me how much love could hurt me and how it could keep on hurting me long after I stopped talking to you.

"Don't you understand? I'm just now getting to the point where I can go for an hour or so without thinking about you. I'm just now starting to get you out of my system. And here you are telling me everything is all right and we should just go back to the way we were. I can't do that! I will not live through that hurt anymore."

"You won't have to Nina." I told her. "You won't have to. I'm not saying we should go back to the way things were. I want more with you now. I want to be with you always, don't you see? I am not the same person I was last month. I've changed. I will never hurt you that way again."

"Bill, if there's one thing I learned through all of this," She said, really crying now. "It's that love sucks. We weren't even going together, we never even kissed each other, and you were able to hurt me. How much more could you hurt me if we did start going together? How much more, Bill?"

"A lot more." I said honestly. "But I won't. I promise you that. I won't."

"How could I believe you? After all the girls you had, after all the girls you used and then tossed over your shoulders like a beer can, how could I ever trust you not to do that with me? What's going to happen when you get tired of me? How long will that take?"

"It'll take forever Nina." I said. "I will never get tired of you and I will never treat you the way I've treated other girls. When I was doing that I was being stupid and immature. I was being self-centered. But I've learned a few things. Getting your teeth kicked in by consequences does that for you. The most important thing I learned was how much you meant to me and how stupid I'd been to not see what you and I had together, to not seize it while I had the chance.

"I want one more chance Nina. Just one more. I've given you all the promises I can and you can take them for what they're worth. I can give you all the assurances I can and you can take them the same way. But what it comes down to is your choice. If you want me to, I'll walk away from you now and never enter your life again without permission. If you ask me to do that I will, and I'll be feeling the same hurt, the same guilt, the same feelings that you've felt, that you're feeling now.

"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."

She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."

"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."

"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."

"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.

"Nina," I said.

She turned to look at me.

"Thanks for listening to me."

She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.

The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.

It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.

"You know something?" She asked me quietly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."

"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.

She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."

"Nina I told you…"

"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.

"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."

I swallowed, blushing.

"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."

"Did it?"

She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."

I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"

Chapter 8

The best of times

Are when I'm alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We'll make this a world for two

All memories of yesterday

Will last a lifetime

We'll take the best, forget the rest

And someday we'll find

These are the best of times

STYX

I don't believe I ever looked forward to a simple lunch session in the school cafeteria as much as I did that Tuesday afternoon, the day after Nina invited me to join her. I hardly slept at all that night, tossing and turning restlessly as my mind kept screaming at me: Nina is back! Nina is talking to me again! Bleary eyed I drug myself off to school and experienced a near crawl of the time continuum through first period. When the bell rang I nearly sprinted to my second class, feeling like the teenager I was charading as for perhaps the first time since returning.

I took my seat and waited nervously while other students filed in, my eyes drawn to the seat next to mine, the seat that had been so recently occupied by a silent and reproachful Nina. That would be different today, wouldn't it? She hadn't changed her mind, had she? She was talking to me again, wasn't she?

When she entered the room her face was blank, expressionless. She walked to her chair and methodically removed her book and notepaper from her backpack before stowing it in under her seat. She arranged her supplies on her desk and sat down.

"Good morning Nina." I told her nervously.

For a horrible instant I thought that she was going to simply ignore me as she had in the past. Just keep her eyes facing forward, her psyche radiating a stern signal that communication was not desired. Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to wash her hands of me after all?

Finally she looked over at me, her expression remaining blank. "Good morning." She told me.

"Are we still on for lunch?" I asked her, dreading her answer but needing to hear it all the same.

A slight smile gave me hope. "Sure." She nodded. "If you still want to."

Relief and renewed hope washed over me. I returned her smile. "More than anything." I said.

Her smile widened, warming her face and making me feel giddy. She was smiling! At me no less! In that instant I blessed that idiot Brett and his carelessness at leaving the scalpel blade up in the tray. In fact I wanted to buy him a beer for doing that.

The entrance of the instructor and the initiation of that day's lecture brought our conversation to an abrupt end. I hardly heard a word that was said.

Third period offered us little chance to talk. By the time we found our seats in the classroom it was time for class to start. I barely heard that lecture too, so intent was I on the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock as it marched its way towards lunch.

Finally, lunchtime came. We walked in silence together to the cafeteria, unsure of what to say to each other, unsure how to begin. We got our food and then found seats at an empty table. I wasn't sure what I'd expected from this reconciliation but the awkward silence we were experiencing was certainly not it. We picked at our food, neither one of us able to make the first statement, both of us secreting nervousness as we secreted perspiration when hot. What was happening here? I'd never had trouble talking to Nina before. Why couldn't I say anything now? Was it because, for the first time, we were both aware of our naked feelings for each other?

Because we'd both used the word love in conversation? Because we both knew that our relationship depended absolutely on what transpired? Were we both deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing?

I wanted to reassure her that I loved her. I wanted to promise once more that I'd never hurt her again. I wanted to hear her say she loved me, only this time not in a break-up conversation or in anger. But none of that seemed right. I'd said my piece the day before and she knew how I felt. I knew I was on probation here, an extremely rigid probation. If I said or did one wrong thing, Nina would possibly disappear from my life, moving back to the fate which was still trying to claim her.

I looked at her, at the features of her plain face that were so beautiful to me now. I knew that SOMETHING needed to be said. She looked back at me, probably thinking the same, probably wondering what was going to come out of my mouth, probably wondering if she'd made a mistake in giving me a second chance. What had brought us together in the first place? What had made us love each other before? Could that be recaptured?

"What was the book?" I finally asked, speaking softly.

She continued to stare at me for a moment, her face taking on the expression of one that doesn't believe she's heard correctly. "The book?" She asked.

I nodded. "You said you read a book you were dying to discuss. What was the book?"

Her face warmed almost inperceptively and I knew I'd said exactly the right thing.

"It was called 'The Cider House Rules'." She said.

"By John Irving." I nodded, thanking whatever gods there may be that it was a book I was familiar with. This was not entirely a coincidence. Nina and I, we'd discovered earlier in our relationship, shared the same tastes in literature.

"You've read it?"

"Yes I have." I nodded. "A very astute analysis on the issue of abortion. Very good book, one of Irving's best I think. I particularly liked how well the characterization was done."

She sat up straighter. "So did I. My favorite character was Candy. I really liked the way she…"

We discussed the book together, hitting upon our favorite parts and characters and then opinionating on what the meaning of the story was. This then led to a discussion about abortion in general. Though we were talking together as we used to it was clear to both of us that there was a strain that had never existed before. Nina was very guarded, her smiles not as broad or genuine as they'd once been. It was as if she did not want to enjoy our conversation, did not want to allow herself to get too close to me too quickly.

By the end of the lunch period it was plain what the rules were going to be.

We would be moving slow and I was going to have to regain the trust I had lost. It wasn't going to be awarded to me by default. Those were my terms, firm though unspoken, and I was going to have to accept them.

I had put considerable thought into the problem of Anita. Though I had ended my relationship with her and though my second talk with her seemed to have brought this fact home to her, I still felt a considerable amount of guilt. Things were not right with Anita. She had been pulled from her destiny because of me. And because she had been pulled from her destiny, her children had been pulled from theirs. They were growing up without a father figure in the house, something they were not meant to do. The ramifications of this could only be guessed at. Maybe there would be no change in their future. But maybe there would be a catastrophic one. Anita, for many reasons, needed to be steered back to her destiny. The responsibility for doing this was mine alone.

My talk with Tracy and the run of my own thoughts convinced me that putting Anita back on her track was not only possible but should be reasonably easy at this point in time. Fate was, for once, on my side, my ally in this endeavor. All she needed, I theorized, was a little nudge. But the more time that went by, the harder that nudge would have to be. Since I was under a doctor's orders not to return to either ROP or my normal job, I took it upon myself to fill this idle time giving that nudge. Her and her intended needed to be put together. The question was how to do it?

I knew from my long relationship with her that Anita was a real estate agent specializing in single-family houses in the North Spokane area. Though I had never been there, I knew where she worked. I also knew that Jack Valentine, her destined husband, worked at the same office. What I did not know was what Jack Valentine DID at that office and I only had the vaguest impression of what he looked like. My only memory of his features came from my previous life. I needed to gather some information.

Being free from ROP after my first lunch with Nina, I climbed into my car and drove to North Spokane, parking three blocks down from Anita's office. It was located on a major street that fed to the freeway system. The street was lined with gas stations, mini-marts, and strip malls. The office itself was located between a dentist's office and a pizza parlor. A light snow was falling as I entered the side parking lot of the complex, moving with all the caution of an infantry soldier in enemy territory.

I had purposely dressed warmly and was fully prepared to wait in the parking lot until she went out on a showing of some suburban house. I was aware that it might take several days of observation before such an event happened. After all, winter was not the prime time for real estate sales. But, to my surprise and delight, my luck was in. Anita's car was nowhere to be seen after three circuits of the parking lot.

Gambling that she would not return in the short time that I needed to be in there, I walked quickly to the door of the office and stepped inside, blessing the orgasmic warmth that rushed over me from the building's heater.

There was a waiting area with several chairs and the inevitable outdated magazines. These faced a receptionist's desk where a pretty young woman was typing with machine-gun bursts. Behind her were ten or so desks, about half of which were occupied. One of the occupants I recognized as Jack Valentine, the only male present in the room beside myself. None of the desk workers paid me any attention as I entered but the receptionist gave me a suspicious look.

"Can I help you?" She asked, her voice not nearly as friendly as it would have been had an adult walked in. She probably figured I was going to ask to use the bathroom or something.

"Yes Ma'am." I said shyly. "My Dad asked me if I would stop by here and pick up something called a…" I paused as if trying to recall information, "A listing paper?"

"You mean a listing sheet?" She corrected, becoming instantly more friendly.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's it."

"Did your Dad tell you what range he wanted that for?" She asked patiently.

"Oh," I said, shaking my head as if disgusted with myself for not remembering. "I'm sorry. Seventy-five to eighty-five thousand."

"Why sure." She said, brightening even more when she heard that. She stood up and headed over to one of the desk people.

I took a moment to admire her legs, which were truly magnificent encased in dark nylons as they were. I then cast a nervous look outside, making sure Anita hadn't pulled up and was heading in. I could only imagine what would happen if she found me in there.

It took a minute but the receptionist returned with a sheaf of copied computer print-outs upon which all of the current houses for sale in the price range I'd specified, the upper end for that time period in that city, were listed. The existence of such a document was not something the average sixteen year-old would have known about since most sixteen year-olds have not purchased a house in their past.

"Here you go young man." She told me, smiling professionally.

"Thank you." I said, taking the papers and returning the smile. "And he also asked if I could have one of your brochures too?"

She picked one up from a stack on her desk. It was a full color pamphlet that listed the real estate agents employed by that office, their mission statement, and phone numbers. She handed it to me. "One brochure." She said. "Anything else?"

"That should do it Ma'am." I told her. "Thank you."

A moment later I was out the door. Five minutes after that I was sitting in my car, letting the heater run while I looked at the paperwork I'd acquired.

According to the brochure, Jack Valentine was indeed another agent, not a supervisor or a lawyer or something else, as I'd feared. Perfect. He was one of four males in an office staffed by eighteen.

I looked at the printout next, looking mostly at the addresses of the houses for sale. Eight years as a paramedic had made me more than passingly familiar with the layout of the streets in this, or indeed any Spokane County neighborhood. There were four listings in close proximity to the office. I started up my car and drove to the first of them, my eyes looking for the right combination of details. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all four of the houses as a matter of course but the moment I saw the second one I knew it was as close to perfect as I was going to get. A small city park was directly across the street, complete with rows of bushes and thick foliage. The house itself had two large trees in the front yard, trees which would serve to cut the view from inside the house. The driveway, which I looked at most carefully, was completely unobservable from the interior of the house due to it's positioning. Truly, for what I had in mind, it could not be much better.

After dismissing the last house and firmly settling my mind on the second, I drove to the freeway, heading for downtown Spokane, my mind full of shaky confidence that my crazy scheme could be pulled off.

The hall of records was located in the Spokane County Courthouse, a dilapitated building in the unfashionable part of downtown. After battling for a parking spot, fighting my way through three clerks who wanted detailed explanations of why I, a teenager, wanted to take a look at these supposedly open public records, and then pouring through tons of paperwork in the largest filing cabinets I've ever personally seen, I was forced to admit there was something I missed terribly from my old life. The Internet. In 1999 I would have been able to pull up this information, information that took me more than two hours to retrieve in the courthouse, in less than five minutes. God bless technology, despite the Unabomber's ravings to the contrary.

I finally found what I was looking for in an obscure file marked "Real Estate Transactions--1983", a file which was not, I might add, stored with Real Estate Transactions 1900 to 1982 as you would have thought it would be.

The file was more than an inch thick. I paged forward until I found the months of October and November. I began scanning through the columns of text and legalese, looking for two names in particular: Anita Browling and Jack Valentine. I found them eventually and copied down the names that were listed with them as clients.

Satisfied with my work, I returned the file to its proper place, signed out, and went home. I hoped this was all going to work. I'd been to a lot of trouble if it didn't.

That night I gave Mike a call.

"What's up?" He asked me, pleasantly enough.

"Not much." I told him. "You still coming over to study tomorrow?"

"Fuckin' aye." He agreed. "Got a test coming up in English and I need you to go over this modifier crap with me."

"You got it." I told him. "How's ROP going?"

"Bitchin." He said. "I'm diggin the new station. The BC has been hangin out with me a lot, you know, talkin to me and all. I think he likes me. He told me they'd probably be testing for hire in August this year. Looks like I might be getting paid to work there then."

"Cool Mike." I told him. "You'd better quit smoking and start running." I advised him. "I hear that physical agility test is a bitch."

"Yeah, that's what the BC told me too." He answered. "I thought maybe I'd start jogging at night before I go to bed. That'll probably help."

"Probably." I agreed, inwardly feeling very pleased to hear his words. It sounded like Mike was growing up a little. Strange but true. "Listen," I told him. "I was wondering if maybe you could do me a little favor before you head to the fire station tomorrow."

"It'd have to be a quick favor." He told me. "I don't want to be late."

"It'll only take a minute." I explained. "Just meet me at the payphone by the office after lunch."

"What for?" He asked.

"I need to borrow your voice for something."

"How is your hand healing up?" Nina asked me the next day at lunch, her voice still careful and guarded.

"I think I'll live." I answered, holding it up for her inspection. The stitches were still quite prominent but the skin itself was starting to knit back together. It didn't actually hurt anymore but it itched like mad most of the time.

She nodded quietly. "You ought to be more careful what you do." She commented.

"I'm trying to be Nina." I told her seriously. "I'm really trying to be."

This won me a smile. Not the best I'd ever seen from her, but it was getting there.

By the end of that lunch period she'd thawed a little more. Not completely, but a little more. She laughed a little. She offered looser comments. She even slapped at my shoulder playfully once, sending thrills racing through me at her touch. I began to suspect that things between Nina and I might just work out. Maybe even sooner than I'd expected.

I left the lunchroom happier than I'd been in quite some time.

Mike met me at the payphone just as I'd asked him to. The light snow of the day before had turned into heavier snow accompanied by an icy North wind. He was shivering when I found him there.

"God damn dude." He told me, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. "I was about to leave. I'm freezing my ass off out here. What took you so long?"

"Sorry." I apologized. "I was talking to Nina and time kind of slipped away from me."

"Nina's talking to you again?" He asked, feigning disinterest.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I guess you could say we made up."

"Cool deal." He told me wisely, speaking with his voice of experience. "I think she's got the hots for you man. You play your cards right, you might even get some off her like I did with Kathy the other night. Let me tell you, that bitch knows how to suck a…" He continued for more than five minutes, graphically detailing an encounter with this girl; someone I'd never heard of.

When he finished, I said, "Well that's cool. But anyway, can you make this call for me?"

"Sure." He said. "What do you want me to say?"

I explained what I wanted to him and we went over it a few times. "And be sure to deepen your voice a little, just a little, so you sound like an adult."

"And why are we doing this again?" He asked.

"It's a long story." I told him. "But you can rest assured it's for the betterment of all mankind."

He looked at me for a moment and then laughed. "Jesus Bill, you sure know how to come up with 'em."

I handed him a dime and he picked up the phone. As he plugged the coin into the slot he took a sheet of paper from me, scanned it for a second, and then punched in the number that I'd instructed him to dial. He held on to the paper after dialing so he could refer to the names and addresses I'd printed there.

I was worried that he would over-act but, to give him credit, he performed perfectly. He listened for a few seconds and then I could see by his face that the phone had been picked up. With just the right amount of deepening to his voice, he said into the phone. "Good afternoon Mrs. Browling. My name is Bob Hartley. I was referred to you by a friend of mine who purchased a house on Sallyport Way last month; Rick Whaling?"

He paused for a second and then gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know she was buying it so far.

"Yes," He nodded. "Rick loves the house and he recommended you if I should ever find myself in need of a good real estate agent. Well, as it turns out, my wife and I have been planning to buy a house for quite some time. After five years of saving we've managed to put aside eight thousand for a down payment." A pause. "Yes, that's right. Eight thousand. Anyway, we've been kind of looking on our own and we found a house that is listed with your agency out in North Spokane." Another pause. "Well it's at…" He read from the sheet. "Twenty-one nineteen Westbrook Lane." A pause. "Yes, Westbrook Lane." He rolled his eyes upward for a moment. "Why sure, I'll hold."

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "She's going to get the file on that house." He told me. "Who is this bitch anyway?"

"Maybe I'll tell you someday." I said cryptically.

He shrugged and went back to waiting. A minute or so passed. Finally he began to listen again. "Yes, that's right." He told Anita. "My wife and I would like to take a look at that house as soon as possible. Is there any chance you could show it to us, say today about one o'clock?"

He nodded, completely into the drama he was participating in. "Very good." He said and then listened some more. "No no, we know where it's at. How about we meet you there?" He listened some more. "That's right, one o'clock. See you there. Thank you very much Mrs. Browling."

He hung up the phone and looked at me. "Whatever you're planning." He told me. "You're dialed in."

"Thanks Mike." I told him. "I owe you one. You've been a benefit to oppressed people everywhere."

"Yeah right." He said. "Well I gotta go dude. Catch you this afternoon."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Hey Mike?"

"Yeah?" He said, in the middle of turning to leave.

"You got any buds? I've been itching to get stoned."

He looked at me strangely for a second. "I got some at home." He told me. "About enough for a joint, but I don't have any on me. You want to get stoned later?"

"Yeah." I said, hiding the grin that wanted to break out on my face. Mike had pot but he wasn't bringing it to school with him! For Mike, that was an accomplishment. "After we study today. I think we deserve it."

"Cool." He said, nodding. "Well, gotta jet."

"See ya." I replied, watching him go. He really was growing up.

Finally I turned back to business. I picked up the phone and put in another dime. Consulting my list I dialed a number. It rang three times and then a male voice responded.

"North Spoke Reality. This is Jack Valentine, can I help you?"

"Why yes, Mr. Valentine." I said, deepening my own voice. "You certainly can. You see, a friend of mine, Mark Vincent, recently purchased a house on…"

By twelve-thirty I was sequestered in the row of bushes in the park across the street from 2119 Westbrook Lane. Despite my overabundance of clothing I was shivering as the wind cut through my down jacket and snowflakes stuck to my cap. I was reasonably sure that I could not be spotted by anyone from the house even if they WERE looking for me, which they wouldn't be. The snow that was rapidly accumulating on me would do nothing but help with my camoflaugh.

I'd enticed the two real estate agents to this house by offering them dream clients, making my fictional customers almost too good to be true. It was something no agent would ever turn down; people that had apparently already decided upon a house and had large down payments in reserve in order to help finance it. They would show up, visions of large, quick commissions dancing in their heads. I only hoped that one of my suppositions was correct. If I remembered my real estate agents correctly, they always parked in the driveway if they could when meeting someone at the house. This allowed the customer to get the whole view of the house as they stepped out of their vehicle. The driveway was big enough for both Anita and Jack's cars to fit.

It would certainly make things easier and less dangerous to me if they did NOT park in front of the house. If I was wrong, and they did, there were at least the trees to give partial cover.

As it turned out my supposition was a correct one. Anita arrived first at twelve-fifty, fully ten minutes early. She pulled her car into the empty driveway, bringing it to a halt. Before she could even step out of her vehicle Jack pulled in, driving a late model (for that when) Buick. He parked it right next to hers.

They got out of their vehicles and looked at each other in surprise for a moment, holding a quick conversation. I couldn't hear them but I could guess what they were saying. What are you doing here? A client for this house? Oh really? One o'clock? What a coincidence. What's your client's name? Really? Well, I'll try not to step on you. Pretty weird, huh?

They spoke to each other as acquaintances, with no hostility that I could detect. I saw them shake their heads a few times as if wondering at the quirks of fate which brought both of them here at exactly the same time. Finally a comment was passed that had to have amounted to, 'why are we standing out here in the snow?'. They both headed for the front door.

Anita knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell a few times. In my planning stage of this I'd worried obsessively about whether or not the owners of the house would be home before I finally figured out that it really didn't matter. Ideally, they would be gone but if they weren't, the plan would still work. As it turned out, they were gone. Giving up on the doorbell, Anita walked over to the brass lockbox that was attached to the water pipe. She dialed in a combination and opened the box, pulling out a key. With the key, she opened the door. A moment later the both of them stepped inside, closing the door behind them.

My first thoughts that had led to this plan had told me that simply getting Anita and Jack into a house together for twenty to thirty minutes would be enough to push them together. Further reflection upon this, and the consideration that the occupants would be home, therefore breaking the mood, led me to modify that plan somewhat. Just putting them together might not be enough. I had to emmerse them into a situation together. Even that, I reluctantly admitted, might not be enough, but it was better than just throwing them together. An extension to the plan developed. An extension that now needed to be put into effect.

I acted quickly, extricating myself from the bushes and moving west along the perimeter of the park until I was out of view of the house. I crossed the street and began walking along the sidewalk, strolling casually towards the house, doing my best impression of a neighborhood kid out for a walk in the snow. When I reached the driveway, where the two cars were parked, I took a good look around me, searching for any neighbors that happened to be out and paying attention. There were none. It was time.

I dashed between the two cars, both of which were ticking as their engines cooled down, quickly putting myself between the garage door and the front of Anita's Chrysler. A quick look assured me that from here I was unobservable from any angle. I had changed the oil in Anita's car more than ten times, usually as a prelude to sexual activity, and I knew the engine compartment of it well. I knew, for instance, that you did not need to be inside the car in order to open the hood. My hand found the hood release, which was warm, and slowly pulled it until I felt a click.

Carefully, taking another quick glance for unwanted observers, I lifted it, wincing at the squeaking noise it made. When it was about a foot above the engine compartment I peered inside. Though, as I've mentioned before, I am not a mechanical genius, my thirty-four years on two different Earth's had taught me enough to know that an internal combustion engine could be quickly disabled by removing one particular piece of it. I reached in and grasped the coil wire, which led to the distributor cap. Without this wire, electricity could not get to the spark plugs and the cylinders could not fire. I gave a sharp yank and the wire was in my hand. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket and then eased the hood back down, giving it a firm push to latch it and wincing again at the sharp noise that resulted.

One more quick glance around for danger and I dashed back to the sidewalk. I headed back the way I came, crossed the street once again, and moved back into the park. A few minutes after that I was back in the bushes, observing the house. I began to wait.

It was twelve forty-five before they both emerged from the house. In the ensuing fifty minutes I'd seen both of them peer out multiple times, looking for their clients pulling up out front, clients that were figments of my imagination. When they left the house, carefully locking it up and putting the key back in the lock box, they were talking to each other and shrugging.

I wasn't close enough to read their expressions so I could not tell how cozy they'd gotten during the waiting period.

They conversed a moment more and then headed for their respective automobiles. Jack jumped in his first and fired up the engine before Anita was even settled. I had a moment's horror when it looked like he was going to back out and drive away before Anita even had a chance to crank her now-worthless engine. But thankfully, his mother had taught him some manners and he stood by, waiting for her to leave.

From across the street I could hear the grinding of her engine turning over without catching. She would grind it for about ten seconds, let it rest for five, and then grind it again. This went on for about four cycles before the abrupt cut-off of exhaust vapor from Jack's tailpipe signaled that he'd shut down his engine.

He stepped out and walked over to her door. She rolled down the window and a brief conversation ensued. She then opened her door and stepped out, allowing him to sit down in her seat. He cranked the engine a few times himself, as if the mere presence of A MAN behind the key would make it fire up. Finally, when it didn't, he walked around to the front and popped the hood.

The hood obstructed my view of the two of them while they peered inside but it was readily apparent that Jack knew his way around an engine compartment.

It wasn't sixty seconds before he stepped out from behind it, looking nervously around the street, peering up and down it, looking for the culprit that had taken Anita's coil wire. He spoke to her for a moment, pointed into the hood compartment, and then she too began to look around.

They quickly gave up looking for the culprit and turned their attention to looking under and around the vehicle, as if the coil wire could have just fallen off the distributor. When they didn't find it on the ground they searched the hood compartment. When they didn't find it there they began to converse again, this time with much shaking of heads and puzzled glances up and down the street. The conversation continued for a few moments and then Anita smiled at him, obviously thanking him. They walked to his car and he opened the passenger door for her (way to go Jack, I thought happily). She sat down and he walked across to the driver's side. A moment later his car started and they drove off.

Though I didn't know Jack at all, I know what I would have done in such a circumstance. I would have driven her to the nearest auto parts store and bought her a new coil wire, taking it back to the car and making a big show of installing it for her, making it look, of course, more difficult a job than it really was. I would then dramatically sit behind the wheel and fire up the engine, grinning sheepishly at the accomplishment of fixing the car for her. Hell Ma'am, it weren't no trouble at all. Of course she would be grateful to her knight in shining armor. Perhaps they would decide to go to dinner?

As they disappeared from my sight I extricated myself from the bushes and stretched, popping my stiff joints. I shook the accumulation of snow from my clothing and then headed for my car.

"The rest is up to you Jack." I mumbled to myself, smiling as I walked. "Take advantage of Fate."

Overnight the snowstorm we'd been experiencing developed into a full-scale blizzard. The wind tore through the Eastern Washington area, driving the snow before it. When I awoke Thursday morning it was still going strong. A look out my window, at the icy, covered streets, at the snowdrifts more than eight feet high in some places, told me that I would not be going to school that day.

My confirmation of this came when I went downstairs to breakfast and found Dad still in his pajamas and robe, his face unshaven. As a teacher Dad was probably even happier than the students were when they closed school for the day. After all, he still got paid for it. Mom too was lounging around in her pajamas, her work had apparently decided to make it a holiday as well. I was not as happy. That meant there would be no lunch with Nina that day.

"There's lots of good news today." Dad told me as I sat down at the table.

"How's that?" I asked him, digging into the bacon and eggs Mom had prepared in honor of the non-work day.

"Looks like you were right on the mark about the latex thing." He said, sliding a section of the newspaper over to me. "Take a look at this."

I picked up the section and looked where he was pointing.

FEAR OF AIDS LEADS TO NATIONWIDE GLOVE SHORTAGE read the headline. It was an Associated Press story, which meant that it had been printed in newspapers all over the country. The text of the story told of hospitals, fire departments, and ambulance companies all ordering large amounts of latex gloves in response to fear of disease and a federal OSHA mandate that all health care providers wear gloves on every patient contact. Every patient contact! This was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

"Out of sight." I said, grinning.

"So this is going to make you some money on those stocks, right?" Dad asked.

"This is going to be like hitting the lottery." I told him happily. "Actually like hitting it twice."

"Twice?" He enquired, putting his paper down.

I nodded. "There's two aspects of stock ownership in a case like this." I explained. "First of all there's profit. Selling all of those gloves is making a lot of money for the companies I've invested in. That allows me dividends because as a partial owner of the company, I'm entitled to a cut of the profits. The second aspect is the price of the stock itself. Now it's gone steadily upward since I first invested in it but not dramatically by any means. The increase merely reflects those wise investors who have taken the time to research the company and note the recent increase in profits. But now that this story has appeared in the paper, all that will change. Everybody and their mother will know that latex is going to go through the roof and they will all rush to buy stock in it. That is going to drive the price of the stocks through the roof, therefore making my holdings much more valuable."

Dad had long since learned not to question my wisdom on the workings of the stock market. After all he saw me researching it and studying it every day.

"So how much are we talking about here?" He asked.

"It would not surprise me," I said, "If the value of my stock doubled by the end of the year and tripled by the end of the following quarter. Plus I stand to receive a healthy dividend check."

"Amazing." He whispered. "And I thought you were throwing your money away."

"This also means that I need to start putting my income somewhere else, to find another trend that's about to take off."

He looked confused. "Why is that? Shouldn't you continue to invest in latex?"

"No." I told him. "As the stock goes up, putting further money in it will be futile. Remember that I now have to pay the inflated price for more of the stock. What I need to do is keep my assets in latex right where they are and let them go up. But my future income needs to be put into other places; places that are cheap now but that are likely to rise in the future.

That's what investing in the market is all about."

"So what are you going to do now?" He asked.

I smiled. "I've been planning this for quite a while now." I told him. "The money from the latex investment will probably peak about the time I'm ready for college. It should be enough to get me enrolled and carry me through the first year. From now on my paychecks will be invested in something with slower, but steady medium-term growth. Something that will rise considerably over the next few years instead of months. I'll continue to dump money into those until they rise to a point where they've reached their peak of growth. It'll build me up capital for the big move I'm planning to make in a few years."

He shook his head. "What do you mean? What are you going to invest in now?

And what big move are you talking about?"

"Right now I'm going to begin investing in the computer industry. Apple, IBM, and a chipmaker called Intel. Over the next few years I believe that computers are going to start appearing everywhere and they're all going to be made by a few companies."

Dad looked at me in amazement. "You think those three are going to make all of these computers and the chips? What about Atari and Commodore?"

"I think they'll be outmarketed." I said. "Just a prediction you understand, but they probably won't be able to hold their own when the computer revolution swings into full gear."

"I see." He nodded, looking at me strangely. "And this big move you're planning to make?"

"It's kind of complicated." I told him. "I'll know it when I see it though.

You see, every computer has to have something called an operating system; software that tells it what to do."

"Okay." He said, semi-following me so far.

"The company that gets in on that market will make billions, trillions even.

They'll quickly be able to dominate the software market if they make their move at the right time and in the right way." I grinned. "I imagine that there's someone out there who sees this as well as I do. I imagine that someone has probably got a company that makes software going right now, as we speak. And I imagine that someone is just waiting for the time to be right to introduce an operating system that will set the standard for all computers and make it damn near impossible to operate one without it."

"Bill, how do you know so much about this?" Dad asked me slowly.

I shrugged. "I read a lot Dad. And I'm blessed with above average reasoning ability."

He shook his head a little. "Right." He said. He considered for a few more minutes. "You know," He finally said. "I have some money from each paycheck that is just going into the credit union savings account."

I looked up at him. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Maybe I should put some of that in the stock market."

"Maybe you should." I told him.

By late afternoon the worst of the blizzard was past, leaving only flurries drifting through the air. The snowplows caught up with their work, clearing the roads of the city to something approaching passable. About six o'clock, after being cooped up in the house all day I was getting restless. I needed to get out and do something. An idea occurred to me. An idea that I couldn't get out of my head once it was in there.

Maybe Nina would like to go out and catch a movie with me.

It was probably too early in our reconciliation for this. It might seem I was being too forceful, pushing too hard. I might lose some of the ground that I'd gained. I probably shouldn't chance it, I finally decided.

And so thinking I went to the living room and dug out the newspaper, flipping through to the movie section. Maybe I would just go by myself. Yes, that's what I would do. I frowned as I read through what was currently playing. One of the problems of traveling back in time was that you inevitably had seen all of the movies before. I had another fifteen years to wait before something new, from my perspective, came out. I sighed.

I put the newspaper down and then picked it up again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ASK her. She wouldn't abandon me for that would she? But then again…

With a start I realized that I was acting like what I was; a teenager trying to work up the courage to ask a girl out on a date. I'd asked girls out on date a thousand times in my life. Chastising myself for being immature, I picked up the phone.

Thought I hadn't called it in a while, I knew Nina's number from memory. The phone rang more than eight times and I was about to hang up in frustration when it was finally picked up.

"Hello?" It was Nina. The very sound of her voice thrilled me inside.

"Hi Nina." I said. "It's Bill."

There was a very long pause. "Oh, hi." She said finally, in a voice that sounded decidedly weird.

"Nina?" I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Uh, sure." She told me. "Listen, can I call you back in a few minutes? I'm eating dinner right now."

"Sure." I said. "But…"

"Thanks." She said quickly and the phone clicked in my ear.

Slowly I put the receiver back in its cradle. What was that all about? Why had she sounded so weird?

With a worried mind I went back to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator.

It was another twenty minutes before the phone rang. My dad picked it up and yelled for me. I told him I'd take it in the den and locked myself in there.

"Hi Bill." Said Nina, her voice sounding much more normal now.

"Hi." I answered, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No." She said. "Why would you ask that?"

"You just sounded kind of funny on the phone."

"Oh." She said, and then, "Well, the fact of the matter is that it's probably not a good idea to call me here just now. I haven't told my parents that you and I are, uh, talking again."

"I don't understand." I told her. "Your parents liked me before. Just because we had a… well a fight and stopped seeing each other for a while, why shouldn't they like me? All teenagers do that from time to time."

"It's a little more complicated than that." She replied. "I don't really want to go into it right now. But please, don't call me at home just yet?"

"Okay." I answered, very troubled by this.

"So what did you want?" She asked brightly.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to think quickly. The don't-call-here speech had just taken the wind out of my sails, making asking her out seem a bad idea after all.

"Bill?" She asked. "Are you there?"

"Yes." I said, throwing caution to the wind. After all, I had to say SOMETHING. "I was wondering if maybe you'd, uh, well, like to go out to a movie with me tonight?"

"A movie?" She asked, her voice unreadable.

"Yes." I confirmed. "If you're not doing anything else, that is."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" She asked next, seemingly puzzled.

"Well, yes. I am."

She was silent as she digested my request. Finally she said, "It's a bad idea to do this so soon Bill."

I cringed, feeling stupid for asking, feeling ashamed of myself for pushing things. "Oh." I said. "Well maybe some…"

"But what the hell?" She interrupted cheerily. "I could stand to see a good movie tonight."

I was so overcome by the rejection that it took me a moment to process that I hadn't been rejected after all. "Really?" I finally said.

"Really." She told me and I could hear that she was smiling, I could see it.

"What did you want to see?"

"Anything you want Nina." I answered happily. "Anything at all."

"I'll borrow Mom's car and be over in a little bit." She said.

We hung up our phones and I sat there for a moment, basking in the glow of success. She was going to go out with me. On a date no less. Things really were looking up.

Finally I stood up and headed upstairs to take a shower and get dressed.

The movie we decided on was one that I really had no desire to see, Flashdance. But I didn't let this bother me. I would have gone to see a four-hour documentary on the history of the ice cube tray with her if that was what she'd wanted. We took my car, leaving her Mom's parked at the curb in front of my house.

We talked of inconsequential things on the way; the storm we'd experienced, our hopes for college scholarships, how our ROP jobs were going. It was the first time since we'd come back together that there was no strain in the conversation. Our words flowed easily out of our mouths, the friendship that we'd developed in the past finally manifesting itself once more. Nina giggled frequently as we chatted, even blushing a time or two at my remarks.

She seemed like she was regaining her old personality. It made me warm inside to look at her, to see her smile, to hear her laugh.

We took seats near the back of the nearly empty theater, setting down our popcorn and stowing our drinks. We reclined and munched and drank and waited for the movie to start. We talked of some of the things we'd done in the past. Going to the lake in the summer, studying during the school year, going skiing in the winter. The remember game. Just as the lights started to dim down in preparation for the ten minutes of previews that proceeded every movie, I turned to her.

"I'm glad you came tonight." I told her. "And I'm glad you gave me a second chance."

Her blue eyes stared at mine, her face forming a serious smile. "Me too." She told me.

About twenty minutes into the movie, while the dancers were dancing and the music was pounding from the Dolby system, I reached slowly out with my left hand, putting the palm over the back of Nina's hand. She looked at me for the briefest second, hesitation marring her face, and then she turned her hand over, grasping mine, hesitation turning to contentment. Her hand was soft and dainty, fragile in mine. After all I'd experienced since my return, after all the girls and women's bodies I'd enjoyed in every possible way, you wouldn't have thought I'd get excited over the simple holding of a hand in a movie theater. You wouldn't think so, but it was thrilling me to the core.

Later on she edged slightly closer to me, squeezing my hand a little. I was fumbling and unsure of myself, of how far to take this, but in the end I couldn't resist. I unclasped my hand from hers and put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened momentarily, probably in nervousness as opposed to hostility, and then she relaxed, allowing me to pull her against me. She gazed up at me dreamily for a second.

"I really love being with you Nina." I whispered to her.

"Thank you." She whispered back, nestling up against me, resting her head on my shoulder, making me happier than I'd ever been with any other person.

When the movie was over we walked hand in hand out of the theater into the frigid night. The sky had cleared of clouds, allowing the stars to shine in all their glory. The half moon drifted directly above us. Our breath puffed out before us and our cheeks turned red on contact with the air.

"Do you want to take a walk before we go back?" I asked her.

"Bill," She giggled. "It's freezing out here."

"Yep." I agreed. "So what do you say?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The theater was located in the downtown mall, near the river. We strolled off the grounds and towards the scenic bridge and the levee. Soon we were staring down at the running water, watching the moonlight shimmer off of it.

"Did you like the movie?" She asked me, nestling against me as we stood there, allowing me to feel her weight pushing at me through her heavy down jacket. I put my arm around her once again, drawing her closer. She came willingly.

Though I'd promised myself that I would always be honest with Nina, there were times when that promise could be broken. This was one of those times. "Oh yes." I told her. "It was a very good movie. That was a good choice."

She looked up at me, staring in my eyes. "Really?"

"Really." I assured her.

"I thought it sucked rocks." She informed me huffily. "We should've gone with 'All the Right Stuff'."

My jaw dropped for a second as I heard this and then I burst out laughing.

"What?" Nina asked, looking at me with amusement.

"I thought it sucked too." I told her. "I was just being polite because you picked it."

"I didn't pick it!" She said, laughing with me. "You did!"

"Only because I thought that was what you wanted to see."

"Why would you think I wanted to see that crap?" She asked, shaking her head in exasperation.

"Because every woman wants to see that crap." I told her. "It's a movie made for women."

She turned towards me, not drawing her body away, but pushing it against mine. We were zipper to zipper with our down jackets, eye to eye. She let her hands slide down until they were nestled in the large pockets on my jacket. "I'm not most women Bill." She said softly, pulling me tighter. "You should know that by now."

"I guess I should." I answered, with a voice that was no longer steady.

Our eyes were only inches apart, our faces close enough so that I could feel her breath against me. The vapor from our exhalations combined, swirling together before drifting off into the night. I put my arms around her, feeling the curves of her body somewhere beneath all of the fabric and duck feathers she was adorned with. Our legs were pushing together. My body was tingling with anticipation and nervous desire. I was almost giddy with it.

Finally I leaned forward, moving slowly but deliberately, and touched my lips to hers. She did not resist, in fact she leaned into me, meeting me halfway. Her lips were cold and dry from the icy wind, but never had a pair felt so good against mine, never had my body reacted as it was reacting to hers. We slid our lips together softly, the kiss lasting less than ten seconds before we broke apart. But worlds suddenly changed in that ten seconds.

We continued to stare at each other for a long time after our lips parted.

"That was nice." Nina finally said, barely above a whisper.

"Very nice." I agreed.

"We've crossed a line." She told me. "I told myself that going out with you was a bad idea. That if I did, I would fall right back in love with you the way I was before. You haven't proved yourself to me yet Bill. You haven't proved that you're any different. You could be just putting on an act. After all, you must have a lot of charm to do the things you've done."

"Nina, I…"

"Shhh." She hushed. "Let me finish."

"Okay." I said.

"In the end I simply couldn't stay away from you. Except for a few rumors from school, I have no proof that you're any different. I have no proof that you've given up your old ways. Your shining ability among the girls at school was your discretion. Your downfall was that it was they who were indiscreet.

"And I was right Bill."

"Right?" I asked.

"I fell right back in love with you. When you held my hand in the theater I almost melted. When you put your arm around me I did. And when you kissed me just now." He she took a deep breath, blowing a large plume of vapor into the night. "I love you Bill. I was starting to get over you but now I'm head over heels again. You tell me you're different now, that you've changed. I certainly hope so Bill. I certainly hope I'm not being played for a fool."

"You're not Nina." I answered her. "I swear you're not. I love you. I really do."

"You hold my heart in your hand now Bill."

I nodded. "Yes I do. And I promise you won't regret giving it to me."

"I'll hold you to that." She said, leaning forward for another kiss.

Al Steiner--July 16, 1999 Chapter 9 ->

Chapter 9

Tender is the night

When you hold your baby tight

Tender is the moment

Tender is the night

JACKSON BROWNE

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, to 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 Datsun's heater tackle the task of warming up the interior of the car. 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 told her.

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 answered.

"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 thirty-eight when she had me, my Dad was forty. 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 nodded. "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 that 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 told her, 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 that 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 told me. "And it's good to see snow on the ground. I'm so sick of rain all the goddam 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 told her. "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." I said. "Actually I am in a very good mood."

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

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

"Stitches." She nodded. "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?" She asked.

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." I replied.

"Do you think it worked?" She asked.

"Time will tell." I shrugged. "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 motherfucking 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 told me. "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?" She asked.

"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." Tracy 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 that was 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 nodded. "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."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob that 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 that 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 that we'd 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 the Raley's 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 that often led to arguments.

We had trouble talking together at times. She had no understanding for the bizarre hours that 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 that 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 that 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, that 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 that 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.

It was plain that she wished more also. I could feel desire radiating off of her in waves when we hugged or kissed each other. I could see the unmistakable shine in her eyes, feel the trembling of her body. But I could also feel her fear. Fear of emotions and feelings that she had never felt before, perhaps had never even suspected before.

Our slow pace meant that when we DID progress, the weight that each new act carried was doubled or even tripled when it was allowed to take place. That made each one special and allowed it to be burned forever into my memory as well as hers.

On Christmas Eve she came over in the early afternoon, wheeling her Mom's car to the curb in front of the house. Tracy was out visiting some old friends and my parents were out doing some last minute shopping (something that was somewhat of a tradition for my parents). Nina carried a small, wrapped package into the house with her.

"I figured that since we won't get to see each other tomorrow," She told me as we walked to the couch and sat down. "That I should give you this today."

I took the package from her. "You didn't have to get me anything." I told her.

"Now what kind of girlfriend would I be," She asked, "If I didn't buy you a Christmas present?"

I looked up at her, seeing that she was blushing strongly. That was the first time that she'd referred to herself in such a manner.

"Thank you." I said gently. "Can I open it?"

"What ELSE would you do with it?" She wanted to know.

I grinned. "My we're getting mouthy." I said, sliding my finger under the seam of the neatly wrapped package.

"Who do you think I learned it from?" She shot back.

I opened the package. It was a new leather wallet with my initials engraved upon it. A gift that had probably cost her thirty dollars at least; a small fortune for a teenager in that time period.

"Nina, you can't afford this." I admonished, unfolding it, inhaling the scent of fresh leather.

"I know." She said conspiratorially. "That's why I shoplifted it."

I laughed, reflecting again that there had once been a Nina completely incapable of telling a joke. "Thank you." I told her, "It's very nice, much nicer than the Velcro job I have now." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the corner of the mouth.

"Mmmm." She said, her eyes sparkling. "Maybe I'll go shoplift some more if this is what I get."

"Maybe you should." I answered, kissing her more firmly on the lips.

She kissed me back enthusiastically at first and then her circuit breaker kicked in. She pulled away, flushed. A brief moment of awkward silence ensued.

"Wait here." I finally told her.

I went upstairs to my room and opened my closet door. I rummaged around for a moment until I retrieved what I was after. When I returned, I handed a wrapped package to her.

"For me?" She asked with mock innocence.

"For you." I confirmed.

She took the package, which was the size of a paperback book, and hefted it a few times, testing the weight.

"Kind of light." She remarked, jokingly.

"But it's straight from the heart." I assured her.

She began to tear into the clumsy wrap job (wrapping presents is something I've never been able to do well, in either life), revealing the plain white box beneath. When the wrapping paper was a balled up mess on the coffee table she began working on the tape that I'd placed heavily over the lid. When, after considerable effort, the lid came loose, she began pawing through the tissue paper in the box.

At last she pulled a small object encased in clear plastic from the pile. It was a glass cylinder, slightly larger in diameter than a quarter, with metal threads on the bottom. She held it up to her eyes.

"It's…" She started doubtfully, her face scrunching in confusion. "It's…," A pause as she gathered her thoughts. "What is it Bill?"

"It's a forty amp fuse." I said proudly.

"A forty amp fuse?"

"Right." I told her, nodding enthusiastically. "With that baby in your household fuse box, you'll damn near have to burn down the house before it blows. You can hook up Christmas lights, a toaster, and a dryer all to the same circuit if you want."

She looked at me for a moment and then back at the fuse. "A forty amp fuse." She said slowly. "Well it's… uh…"

I was going to keep up the charade a little bit longer but I couldn't contain myself. I burst out laughing. Nina looked at me and finally realized I was putting one over on her.

"You asshole." She giggled, throwing the fuse at me. It bounced off my shoulder and clattered to the coffee table.

"I'm sorry." I said, still chuckling. "But you should have seen your face."

"How would you like it if I gave you a box of tampons?" She asked. "I could tell you that 'these babies will keep your flow contained for damn near six hours in an emergency'."

I looked up at her in stunned disbelief for a moment. That was, without a doubt, the raunchiest joke I'd ever heard her crack. My laughter bubbled up again, spewing from my mouth. She joined me, slapping playfully at my arm once. Finally I took her in my arms and gave her another kiss. The seriousness of the kiss cut our laughter off like a valve.

When we broke apart once again, both of us tingling, I reached into the pocket of my sweater and pulled out another clumsily wrapped package, this one only three inches square. This one was the REAL gift. As I'd predicted, my stocks had risen considerably after the news article about the glove shortage. They'd inflated enough for me to cash out a few and do some reckless spending.

"Here." I said, handing it to her. "This one might be a little more pleasing."

She took it, continuing to eye me for a moment. Finally she began to pull the wrapping paper off. The package beneath was a velvet covered, hinged box from a jewelry store. She lifted the lid and stared at what was inside.

"Oh Bill." She said softly. "It's beautiful."

Inside the box was a gold pendant in the shape of a heart. Its surface was studded with small diamonds. A gold chain was attached to it and stowed under the display partition in the box.

"I'm glad you like it." I told her seriously.

"Bill, this looks very expensive." She said, fingering it lightly.

"It wasn't too bad." I said dismissively. "I was glad to get it for you. Do you know why?"

"Why?" She asked.

"Because I love you Nina." I said.

She looked at me, her face melting, a tear forming in her eye. "I love you too Bill." She said softly. "More than anything."

We continued to stare at each other for a moment, neither of us sure what to do, both of us feeling the tingling of electricity that was building between us. I finally broke the spell by asking, "Why don't you put it on? See how it looks."

"Sure." She said, taking her eyes from me and concentrating on the gift in the box.

She extricated the necklace and pendant, gave them a quick look, and then handed them to me. "Can you put it on me?" She asked.

I took it from her and undid the clasp. She leaned forward towards me, grabbing her hair and holding it away from her neck. Our faces were less than six inches apart. Taking the ends of the chain in each of my hands I put my arms around her neck, resting my forearms on her shoulders. She gazed up at me lovingly as my trembling hands attempted to put the little clasp into the little loop. It was not as easy as it looked.

"Take your time." Nina said breathlessly, pushing herself closer to me.

I nodded, finally getting the two ends to fit together.

"There." I said, trying to pull away. But she dropped her hands from her hair and put them around my back, holding me firmly to her, refusing to let go.

"I'll look later." She said, pulling me against her.

Our lips met in a soft kiss and her arms squeezed me tight, allowing me to feel her chest pushing against mine. Instead of touching her lips to mine and then withdrawing as she usually did, she kept them there, pressing them, letting them taste me. For the first time since our first embrace by the river I felt the tip of her tongue reach out hesitantly, touching the underside of my upper lip. Her tongue was warm and soft, wet with her saliva as it touched briefly and pulled back into her mouth.

Emboldened by her first tentative move, she did it again, letting her tongue slide completely between my lips. I touched the tip of it with my own and our taste buds connected. At the touch she trembled in my arms, compelling me to pull her tighter. She pulled her tongue back again and then slid it in a little deeper, seeking and meeting mine, allowing them to swirl together for an instant. I gave her tongue a little suck with my mouth and she hummed against me, driving it further into my mouth.

We broke apart for a second and looked into each other's eyes. I saw wanting in hers, excitement, the excitement of new discovery.

"I always thought it would be gross." She said softly, her breath tickling the wetness of my lips.

"Gross?" I asked, leaning in and kissing her lightly, dabbing at her lip with my tongue, before withdrawing.

"Yes." She nodded. "French kissing. I always thought it would be gross. Touching someone else's tongue with yours. But it's not."

"I guess it depends on who the someone is." I said.

She leaned forward again. "Maybe that's it."

We resumed our kiss, letting our tongues glide together, holding each other tightly. Her hands came up to the back of my neck and began caressing me there, lightly rubbing with the fingertips, lightly scratching with the fingernails. The sensation sent chills down my spine and I felt myself becoming erect with frightening speed. I let my own hands drop down to her lower back, my fingers feeling the muscle and skin, the softness that existed beneath the material of her sweater.

We continued to do this for more than ten minutes, our tongues probing each other's mouths, our hands caressing. Nina seemed to relish it, to draw strength from it. She quickly learned what I liked and what I did not like and adapted her technique. She learned not to cram her tongue down my throat but to teasingly swirl the tip, gradually increasing the depth. I sucked gently on her lips for a moment, making them swell and then she did the same to mine.

My dick, which had been releived by nothing but my own hand since my afternoon with Cindy and Maggie, was straining in my jeans, begging to be released. It was accustomed to playing a more active role in the festivities once things reached this point. It ached to be ground into her body, to have her hand upon it. But this was not Cindy or Maggie, this was not Debbie or Steph or Anita or any of the other girls I'd bedded. This was Nina, who I loved and who I was not going to push anything upon. My pants would be kept firmly buttoned, at least until after she'd left.

When we finally broke apart a few minutes later I could feel the dull ache of blue balls in my groin. Nina looked up at me, her face still flushed, her eyes shining.

"Wow." She commented, straightening herself on the couch.

I nodded, trying to adjust myself in my pants by shifting my body back and forth. It was a poor job at best.

"So that was 'making out', right?" She asked me.

I chuckled. "Yes." I told her. "That was making out."

"Mmmm." She said clinically. "I can see why people like to do it."

"Yes." I nodded. "It is rather enjoyable, isn't it?"

"And now that we're, uh, together, we can do that whenever we want to?"

"We should probably wait until we're alone," I said. "But yes. Anytime."

She smiled. "Having a boyfriend is pretty cool." She said.

Nina left early the next morning to visit some relatives in Idaho with her parents. I would not see her for the next three days. When she returned we were only able to get together for a few hours on two different days. On one of those days we found the time and the privacy to 'make out' for a while but it did not match the passion of that first time. Not that it was disappointing you understand.

We made plans to get together on New Year's Eve, to see in the beginning of 1984 together. Tracy would be going to a party with some friends (and borrowing my car to do it so she wouldn't risk riding with a drunk driver) and my parents would be at a New Year's Eve party of their own. I had a twelve pack of beer that Tracy had scored for me and a joint of some good greenbud that Mike had scored for me. We planned to sit and watch all of the stupid shows that were on, smoke grass, drink beer, and maybe make out a little. Though it may sound unimaginably dull to some, I was looking forward to it greatly.

About six o'clock that evening, as Tracy and my parents were frantically scrambling around the house trying to get ready to go, Nina called me.

"Bill," She told me sadly, getting right to the point. "I can't come over tonight."

"You can't?" I asked, disappointed, feeling almost betrayed in fact.

"I'm sorry." She said. "My parents told me I couldn't go out tonight. They were very firm about it too." She sighed. "I don't know what's gotten into them. They've never treated me like this before. Never!"

I was silent for a moment. I knew what was happening and I had known that it was coming eventually. As I said before, you simply cannot hide your activities from those that you lived with. Especially not when you had been in the habit of staying home all of the time and then you suddenly developed the urge to go out for hours at a time every day. I'd tried to bring this up to her on a few occasions but her reaction each time quickly taught me that it was a taboo subject. I knew I was simply going to have to wait until the subject came to a head. Well now it seemed as if that had happened.

"Nina." I told her. "Did your parents ask you where you wanted to go tonight before they said no?"

"Yes." She told me.

"And what did you tell them?"

"That some friends from school were having a party that I wanted to go to. I told them I wouldn't drink and everything and they still said no. No matter how much I…"

"Nina." I interrupted.

"What?"

"They know about us." I told her.

There was silence on the line for a moment. Finally, "No Bill, they can't. How could they know? I never tell them where I'm REALLY going when I come over to your house."

"Do you think your parents are stupid Nina?" I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle, but wanting to get this point across.

"No!" She said sharply, "But I don't see how…"

"Think about it." I told her. "You're a shy girl all of your life until you meet me. Suddenly you start going out and doing thing all of the time. They like me at first so they allow it. But then we have a falling out because of, well, you know. Anyway, you stop seeing me and go back to staying in the house all of the time. They tell you that you are never to see me again. For a while you don't. And then all of a sudden you start having things to do once more. You want to borrow their car all the time so you can go visit someone. No matter what you are telling them when you come over here, I doubt if they bought it more than twice. They have common sense Nina. They know about us."

"They DO NOT!" She yelled angrily. "They're just afraid of me being out on a night when everyone's drinking. I was careful Bill. They don't know about us and they won't find out!"

"Nina…"

"I'm sorry I can't come over." She said shortly. "If you'd like me too, I'll try and come over tomorrow."

"Of course I do Nina," I said. "But you're going to have to face…"

"There's nothing to face!" She insisted. "Do you want me to come over tomorrow or not?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Yes Nina," I said, more gently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll give you a call." She said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear. Before I'd even had a chance to tell her I loved her.

And so it came to pass that I spent New Year's Eve alone in my parent's house. The beer did not get drank, the pot did not get smoked. I went to bed around ten o'clock. I was too miserable to even masturbate.

When I woke up the next morning I was not surprised to find my parent's car missing from the garage. It was a New Year's eve tradition with them. They would get totally trashed at the school faculty party and take a cab home. The next morning they would not get out of bed until at least noon, at which point they would spend the rest of the afternoon bitching about their hangovers and swearing they were never going to drink again. In the early evening they would pile into Mom's car and drive to wherever Dad's car had been left the night before to retrieve it. Let me tell you, anyone who thinks of teachers as stoic, sober, square people never grew up with one in the house. In my experience Dad was more the rule than the exception. He was by no means an alcoholic but he sure liked to party on special occasions.

Tracy was already up when I went down to the kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper. She was not hung over since she had not had anything to drink the night before. Nothing like having a death sentence from fate hanging over you to keep you from driving a car while intoxicated. Too bad there wasn't some way we could do that to those that were arrested for drunk driving. It would probably drastically cut down on the repeat offender rate.

She asked how my night had gone and I told her about my conversation with Nina. She listened with concern.

"A classic case of denial." She told me when I'd finished. "But understandable. Remember Bill, she's still, for all of her maturity and sophistication, a seventeen-year-old. Seventeen year olds are always right."

"I know." I said. "I'm sure that deep down she knows that I'm right. She just doesn't want to face it, doesn't want to confront it because she'll then be forced into a confrontation with her parents. She's very untypical of a seventeen-year-old in that regard. She worships her parents and she still thinks they're smarter than she is."

"In all except for this." Tracy agreed. "If I was you I'd brace myself. I think this thing might be about to explode."

"I think you're probably right." I agreed.

Tracy then turned the conversation around to her REAL goal of the morning. She wanted to borrow my car again to go to a football party. I had nowhere to go so I told her she knew where the keys were. Less than twenty minutes later she was out the door.

Nina called a few minutes later and told me happily that her parents had raised no objections to her going out today. She almost gloated as she told me this. When I hung up from her my mood was improved greatly. I would get to see her today. That always made me happy. And maybe I was the one who was wrong about her parents. Maybe they really HAD been concerned about her being out on New Year's Eve. After all, Nina knew her parents better than I did, didn't she?

I was about to head upstairs to shower when Dad came staggering into the kitchen. He was wearing his robe tied loosely around him. His hair was a tangled mess and his face was unshaven with eyes that looked downright painful.

"Ohhh God." He moaned, heading for the cabinet. As he passed I could smell the odor of stale booze around him; a smell my paramedicine career had made me intimately familiar with. "Never again."

"Little too much to drink last night?" I asked him as he fumbled a large tumbler out of the cabinet and almost dropped it.

"Uhhh!" He groaned, turning on the sink and filling the glass. "Don't ever drink Bill." He advised me. "Ever."

"I'll take that under consideration." I told him, watching as he downed the glass of water in three gulps. He refilled it and then went to another cabinet for some aspirin.

When I finished my shower and came back downstairs he was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around him, watching the first of many football games. He seemed semi-catatonic and I could not imagine that he was actually seeing anything on the screen. I smiled in amusement, reflecting that if I'd been a normal teenager I would have been struck with the screaming horrors at the idea of my girlfriend coming over while my Dad was in his bathrobe on the couch.

"Nina's coming over in a little bit." I told him, just to give him fair warning.

"Uh." He grunted, his head never turning.

When Nina arrived we went up to my room. This was not out of desire to make out or out of embarrassment at the state of my father but simply to keep the noise level downstairs, where both my parents were, to a minimum. They probably weren't in the mood for excessive chatter.

We sat on my bed talking while a Simon and Garfunkle album played on the turntable at low volume. Since my return I'd re-discovered the fact that most music from the eighties really sucked. This was probably due to the advent of MTV, which had made it necessary for a band to LOOK good on camera instead of to produce good music. Since I could not hear music from the nineties, when this fad had balanced out a bit, I had turned, in desperation, to listening to music from the seventies and sixties. To my surprise and delight much of it was actually pretty good and even deep. I'd even managed to get Nina interested in some of it.

We were discussing the track called "The Boxer" when the sound of the doorbell ringing from downstairs registered on my consciousness.

"So you see," I explained. "He's a musician that tried to make it in New York and failed the first time. That's what the lyrics basically say. It's the last verse that really sums it up, tells you that he was defeated but that he remains a fighter from the experience."

"It's actually like poetry." Nina, an aficionado of poetry told me.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's what any really good song lyric is like. That's what they should strive for. That's what a lot of the crap they're putting out these days is lacking in. They simply try to repeat the same phrase over and over while they dance and come up with a bitchin beat from their synthesized drums. That's not music, that just…"

I stopped suddenly, hearing the sound of raised voices drifting up from below. My Dad's was one of them. He was trying to patiently explain something to someone but the someone in question kept overriding his words. When the words 'where is she' drifted up from the owner of the other voice, Nina's ears perked up.

"Dad!" She said suddenly. "That's Dad!"

"Oh shit." I mumbled, hearing MY dad start to raise his own voice.

"What do we do?" Nina asked me. "What is my dad doing here?"

"I guess we'd better go find out." I said, already knowing. "Before our dads start exchanging punches with each other."

"Bill?" She asked, looking really scared now.

"C'mon." I said, standing up. "My dad is younger but your dad was in the war. I don't want MY dad to get hurt."

"Bill!" Came Dad's voice from downstairs. "Would you and Nina come down here for a minute?"

"C'mon." I told her. "The jig is apparently up."

"Oh God Bill." She said, shaking her head.

When we got downstairs we found my dad, still dressed in his robe, still unshaven and looking like shit, facing off against Nina's Dad, who was clean shaven and dressed in slacks and a sweater, over the threshold of the front door. When he saw Nina he took an angry step forward.

"Get your butt down here girl!" He yelled. "How dare you tell me you were going to visit a friend and then take our car over here to this slimy scumbag's house!"

"Dad!" Nina yelled back, not moving forward.

"Now just a minute!" Dad put in angrily. I could tell he was reaching the end of his fuse. "Where do you get off coming to my house and calling my son…"

"Your son is the scum of the earth!" Mr. Blackmore put in. "And you Sir, are the man who raised him with the values of a rutting pig. That makes you a rutting pig in my book and I have no further words to pass with the likes of you. I have come for my daughter before your son violates her in some god-forsaken way. I only hope and pray it hasn't happened yet. Nina, get over here now!"

"Dad!" Nina cried, tears on her cheeks now. "What are you doing? I love Bill!"

"Love?!" He screamed, turning to me. "You are the lowest form of life on this earth young man. Nina, NOW!" He commanded.

She opened her mouth to say something else but I spoke first.

"You'd better go with him." I told her.

"What?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd betrayed her.

"Nothing can be accomplished right now." I said. "This situation can only get worse. Go with him and try to talk to him. Tell him what I'm like."

"I KNOW what you're like." Mr. Blackmore told me. "I know exactly what you're like."

"Now you listen here!" Dad yelled, taking a step forward. "My son…"

"Dad." I said sharply, using my adult voice. "Let it go. It'll be all right."

Dad paused with his mouth open. He didn't look like he wanted to let it go and I was absurdly touched by this. My Dad, one of the mildest mannered people I knew, seemed on the verge of violence because someone was slandering his son's reputation.

"It's okay Dad." I told him again. "Let it go."

"Get out here Nina!" Mr. Blackmore said again. "Now!"

"Bill?" Nina asked again, looking miserable.

"Go Nina." I told her. "Talk to him. It's for the best. But wait until he's cooled down a little. And remember that I love you."

"Love?" He repeated. "You truly are…"

"Hey!" I barked, taking a step towards him, my eyes boring into his. It had the desired effect, he stopped talking and looked at me. "You have what you came for." I told him. "Nina is leaving with you, right Nina?"

"Yes." She cried.

"You don't need to stand here and continue to throw insults at me. Just go."

We stared at each other for a moment and I could see in his eyes that he was starting to glimmer that he wasn't dealing with an ordinary teenager. Finally he nodded. "C'mon Nina." He told her. "Let's go."

She gave me one last look and then followed her father out the door. She climbed into her mother's car while Mr. Blackmore climbed into his. A second later they were gone, leaving Dad and I standing in the doorway.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"Apparently Mr. Blackmore doesn't care too much for you?" He asked mildly.

I suppressed a smile. "Apparently not." I agreed.

He shut the door and looked at me for a moment. He rubbed his temples. "What are you going to do now?" He asked.

"Give it a few days." I said. "That's what I'm going to do. Hopefully Nina will be able to bring him around to at least tolerating me."

"And if she doesn't?"

I shrugged. "I love her Dad." I said. "I plan to marry her some day. I don't think her Dad is strong enough to keep us apart. One way or another we'll be together. Although I'd prefer to be with her with her Dad's consent. If she can't bring him around I guess I'll go over and have a talk with him. Maybe that will help."

"Or maybe he'll shoot you dead on his porch." Dad suggested half-seriously.

"Ahh Dad," I said. "At least that way I'd die poetically. In the name of love. Wouldn't that be glorious?"

Dad continued to stare at me, not even cracking a smile at my glory of love line. Finally he said, "Bill, don't you think it's about time you had a little talk with ME?"

"A talk?" I asked.

"A talk." He confirmed. "I should have brought this up before now and I really wish that the straw that broke the camel's back hadn't happened on a day that I was hung over, but I really think it's time."

"What are you talking about Dad?" I asked weakly.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." He told me. "It happened nearly two years ago now. One day you were Bill the underachiever. A nasty, typical teenager that didn't want anything to do with his parents, that hated his sister, that wouldn't listen to a word anyone told him. The very next day you were cleaning your room, improving your grades, making great strides to improve your relationship with Tracy, and…" He paused, "And you became somewhat of a hit with the girls. Much more of a hit than I've ever seen anyone be, adult or teenager. Something happened to you, something big, and it changed you completely. Sometimes you seem very adult in manner. VERY adult. In fact you almost seem like someone who has seen a little bit of everything. At the same time you've made frighteningly accurate predictions about the stock market and events in the news. So how about we start to talk about it?"

"Dad," I started, not sure what I was going to say.

"Bill." He told me. "It's time. I can't go on like this any longer. Tell me what happened to you."

I frowned, looking at him. What to do?

Finally I came to a decision. "Dad," I asked. "You ever smoke grass?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Don't give me the standard Dad answer." I told him. "Tell me the truth. You grew up in the sixties. You went to college during the summer of love. You used to attend anti-war protests. Mom told me you burned your draft card and got arrested for it. I've seen pictures of you when you were in college. You looked like a hippie. So tell me, have you ever smoked grass?"

"Of course." He told me. "I used to smoke it quite a bit in college. But what does that…"

"Meet me in your den." I told him. "And I'll tell you everything."

"But…"

"Just do it Dad. I have a joint upstairs. We need to smoke it together."

"You have a JOINT?" He asked sternly. "Bill, how dare you…"

"Dad." I said mildly. "As you pointed out, I'm not a typical teenager. If you want to hear what I have to say I think you're going to want to smoke some pot first. It's quite a story."

"I can hear your story just fine without smoking any pot, thank you." He told me. "And I want you to march right upstairs and throw away whatever marijuana you have in this house and never bring it in here again. What did you think…"

"Dad," I interrupted. "What I have to tell you is pretty mind-blowing, okay? You're going to need to put aside your parental attitude for a while.

You've mentioned that I act like an adult at times. Well this is one of those times. If I'm going to tell you this story you're going to need to speak with me as an equal, not a teenager. In order to speak with me as an equal we need to BE equal. Smoking pot with me will serve that purpose." I smiled. "Besides, it'll probably get rid of your hangover."

He stared at me for a moment, giving the extended version of THE LOOK. Finally he nodded. "I guess I'll do about anything to get rid of this hangover." He said. "Meet me in there quick before my better judgement makes me beat your ass and ground you."

"Right." I said, heading upstairs.

We closed ourselves in to Dad's den, locked the door, and I produced the joint. I lit it with a lighter, took a good hit, and then passed it over to Dad. He took it from my fingers and looked at it for a minute.

"Bill, this is nuts." He said. "I haven't done this in fifteen years. You're my son for God's sake. Fathers are not supposed to smoke Mary Jane with their sons."

"Buds Dad." I told him, exhaling my hit. "We call it buds these days. Take a hit."

He gave me one more doubtful look, sniffed a little at the joint, and finally put it to his lips. He inhaled, making the tip glow and then coughed a pungent cloud of smoke out.

"It tastes like a skunk." He complained. "Bill, I don't think…"

"It's supposed to taste like that." I told him. "That means its good shit. Hit it again. Slower this time."

He tried again. This time he managed to hold the hit for about fifteen seconds before he coughed it out. He passed the joint back to me and I quickly took another hit. When I gave it back to him he tried to refuse it.

"Hit it Dad." I insisted. "If you want to hear this story you gotta be stoned. That's the rules."

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He muttered but took the joint anyway.

By the fourth hit Dad was starting to mellow. He stopped trying to refuse the joint when I passed it to him. In fact he even began making jokes.

"Don't Bogart that joint my friend." He told me when I took an especially long hit. He then began chuckling.

"Wouldn't dream of it Dad." I told him, feeling the drug going straight to my head.

"Wow." He said after exhaling another hit. "They've certainly made some improvements in grass since I used to smoke it. It used to take us four or five joints to get to where I am now."

"The miracles of modern horticulture." I told him and he started cracking up hysterically. I joined him, marveling that he was right, it was pretty freaking weird to get stoned with your Dad.

When the joint was burned down to a roach and both of us were flying high, I turned to my father.

"Okay." I told him. "Are you sure that you want to hear this? What I'm about to tell you will change your entire opinion of me. You will no longer be able to see me as the son you've known."

He took a deep breath. "I don't see you that way now Bill." He told me seriously. "Like I said, you changed suddenly one day. I have to say it's been for the better, but you haven't been the son I knew in quite some time.

I still love you of course, don't get me wrong, but you weren't the same after that day. So give. Tell me what happened to you."

"If I tell you," I said. "You can never tell anyone else this story. No one, never! I would prefer you not even tell Mom although I would understand if you did. The consequences of anyone finding out what happened to me are potentially severe."

"The consequences?" He asked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I said, telling him the same thing I'd told Tracy, "That I possess knowledge that people would literally kill for. That they would stop at nothing to possess."

He raised his eyebrows a bit at that one.

"You're thinking I'm having delusions of grandeur, right?"

"It had occurred to me." Dad admitted.

"I'm not." I told him. "Remember the stocks Dad? Remember how I knew a particular stock that was going to skyrocket at a particular time?"

"Yes." He nodded. "Are you trying to tell me that you can see the future Bill? Because I'm not sure that I can really accept that."

"I'm not seeing the future Dad." I told him. "I have lived through the future."

He looked at me for a moment, blinking. "Lived through the future?"

I began to talk.

Chapter 10

Momma loves her baby

Daddy loves you too

And the sea may look warm to you baby

And the sky may look blue

But ooooh Baby…

PINK FLOYD

Our conversation lasted for nearly an hour. Dad listened to me with rapt attention, interrupting me only to ask questions when something I'd said required qualification. He didn't seem to have any problem believing my tale, leading me to believe that he'd suspected some vague version of the truth the whole time. When I got to the part about Tracy dying in the car accident and fate continually trying to reclaim her his face paled. He picked up the roach and held out his hand for the lighter. I handed it to him and he took a mighty hit.

Dad was strangely un-offended by the fact that I'd gone on a minor rampage among the high school girls.

"I can see how the temptation to do that would be overwhelming." He told me knowingly. "You're over that phase now? Except for Nina?"

"Yes." I told him. "Believe me, I've learned my lesson. Being dropped off in the middle of the hood will do that for you. And Nina's different. I love her. She may be seventeen but she's got the maturity of someone much older. Like I told you, I plan to marry her someday."

He was however, like Tracy, strangely offended by my affair with Anita.

"I can't believe you would do something like that." He told me, shaking his head. "And I can't believe SHE would do something like that."

"Dad," I said, "At the time I started the relationship with her I was thirty-two. Who else should I be sleeping with? And don't blame Anita for anything. I found her weakness and exploited it in order to seduce her. Remember, in my first life she never tried anything with me. Only when I pushed her buttons in the right way did she act."

"And she fell in love with you." He said. "So much in love that she didn't meet and marry her intended husband."

"Like I said Dad," I told him. "I've learned a lot since I came back. One of the things I learned was that I was not quite as mature as I thought I was. And that I didn't know nearly as much about love as I thought. But I'm learning."

"And Anita?" He asked. "What of her?"

"Hopefully," I said, "My little commando raid on her car did the trick. If not, I'll just have to come up with something else. Like I said, fate WANTS Anita and Jack to be together so my little nudge probably worked."

He nodded, looking at me. "And you told Tracy all of this?" He asked.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Do you think that was wise?" He asked me cautiously. "Tracy is only eighteen. Are you sure she fully understands the consequences of not keeping her mouth shut about this?"

"I think so." I told him. "Tracy is pretty smart in case you haven't noticed."

"Oh I have." He nodded.

"And like she pointed out, she had a right to the information. My most important goal from the very start was Tracy's survival. That remains my most important goal. I thought that she would probably heed my warnings a little better if she knew exactly what she was dealing with. That meant telling her. I still shudder when I think of her almost getting into a car with her boyfriend that night. She almost did that because she didn't know the source of the information I was giving her. I couldn't take the chance that would happen again. She needed to be told for her own protection."

Dad nodded soberly. "I guess you're right." He said, rubbing his temples again. "This is all pretty "mind-blowing", as you promised. It's hard to imagine that in some alternate time-line I've lost my daughter and I'm a victim's rights advocate. And what about that Bill?" He suddenly asked. "Is anybody going to suffer because I'm not doing that? Is any good that I did in the other life going to be left undone?"

I looked at him, knowing what he was going through. It was the same thing I went through when I first got back to 1982. Your mind tried to deal with all of the possible ramifications for your actions. Sometimes you had to make unpleasant decisions or conclusions. The loss of my daughter Becky was one such thing.

"I don't really know Dad." I answered. "After Tracy died and after the asshole that killed her was given a suspended sentence so he could play football, you and Mom turned your grief and anger into a full scale assault.

The group you joined helped increase the penalty for first time drunk driving, it helped raise the drinking age to twenty-one nationwide, and it helped pass mandatory sentencing laws in cases of vehicular manslaughter. Will all of that still get done without you?" I shrugged. "Probably. Like I told you, fate seems to try to keep things in line based on whatever pattern has been determined."

"But what if doesn't Bill?" He asked. "What if somewhere down the line someone dies because I haven't been a part of something that I was supposed to be part of? What if those laws don't get passed or they don't get passed at the same time and some drunk driver who otherwise would have chosen a different path or would have been in jail goes out and kills someone?"

"That might happen Dad." I told him. "And if it does there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. Nor should you blame yourself or me for it. If it's any comfort to you, you will probably never even know if such a thing does happen."

"But maybe I should join this group anyway." He said. "Maybe since I'm meant to do that I should go ahead and do it."

"Maybe." I agreed. "But it won't be the same. Being an advocate was a frustrating, agonizing process for you and Mom. Trying to get anything done was like trying to erode a rock by spitting on it. The only thing that kept you going year after year was your grief and anger over Tracy's death. Tracy is not dead Dad, and hopefully she won't be dead anytime soon. I doubt you can duplicate the drive you had without that factor thrown in."

"But…"

"Dad." I said. "I've learned that you can't change the world with this gift. All you can do is try to change a few things around you and even that is difficult and sometimes impossible. Our destiny has been altered because of my interference and we have Tracy when she should be dead. Fate will hopefully accept the consequences of that and adjust itself accordingly. I'm confident that that will happen, okay? If there are some minor changes from this interference there's nothing that you or I could do about them. I couldn't very well have let Tracy die just because there was a possibility that someone else down the road would get hurt or killed.

"I told Tracy not too long ago that I was not the type of person to carelessly hurt someone in my own self-interest just because I didn't know the person getting hurt. I stand by that statement but, unfortunately you sometimes have to take that risk anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, do you understand?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I think so."

"Look at it this way." I told him. "Remember the story I told you about the kid that was choking on the hot dog?"

He nodded. "The one that Nina wrote you up for saving."

"Right." I said. "I saved that kid's life in that timeline. He hasn't even been born yet but I'm scheduled to save his life. What is going to happen when that kid chokes on that hot dog and Bill, paramedic extradonaire, is not there to save him because Bill never became a paramedic in the first place?"

"I suppose some other paramedic will show up at the call." He said.

"Right." I nodded. "Now modesty aside, I was a pretty damn good paramedic. There were others at the company that were not as good at it. There were some that were damn incompetent in fact. Suppose one of them shows up. Suppose they do not clue in to the fact that the kid is choking and don't clear his airway in time?"

"Then he'll die." Dad answered.

"Maybe." I nodded. "But you see, I'm inclined to believe that this kid will live. No matter how incompetent the medic that shows up is, he or she will attempt to put in a breathing tube. When someone is not breathing, that is what you do. So even if the rest of the clues don't inform him or her that they are dealing with an airway obstruction they will still put a laryngoscope into the kid's mouth at some point and try to put a tube down. At that point they will not be able to help but see that there is a large piece of hot dog in his trachea and they will remove it.

"Now it is possible that the extra minute or so that this might take will mean the difference between life and death for the kid, but I doubt it. This kid is meant to live and he probably will. Those drunk driving laws were meant to get passed and they probably will. And if either of those things don't work out this way, all I can say is that I was acting as I thought was best. And that's what you should say too."

We sat quietly for a few minutes while Dad digested all of this. Finally he looked up at me.

"You were right about my opinion of you changing." He told me. "I'll be forced to think of you as an adult now. An adult with opinions and ethics based on years of learning. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm going to have to stop thinking of you as a son and start thinking of you as an equal. I don't have anything else to teach you."

"Dad," I said, "I still am your son. Everything that I am, everything that I was is based on the way you raised me. My moral code, my ethics, all of that is from you and Mom. Sure, some of it took place in an alternate time-line but it was still you and Mom and the part that really counted was the part I learned long before I was even a teenager. You're still my Dad and you always will be."

"I never thought I'd have a son," He told me, "Who was only six years younger than me."

I laughed. "And I never thought I'd sit down and smoke a joint with my Dad either. But there you have it."

"There you have it." He repeated.

"What about Mom?" I asked next.

"What about her?" He said.

"Are you going to tell her all of this? Or would you like me to tell her?"

He took a deep breath. "What do you think?" He asked.

"To be honest Dad, I really don't know. I'm not sure Mom would care too much for the knowledge that her son is only three years younger than she is.

She especially wouldn't care for the part about the teenaged girls or Anita."

"Oh she knows about the teenaged girls." Dad assured me. "You didn't really think you were putting one over on anybody, did you?"

"No." I said. "I gradually came to the realization that my actions were not as secret as I thought they were. What I meant was that she wouldn't care for the knowledge that her thirty-two year old son was doing those things."

"You're probably right." He said. "And I imagine she had more than just a simple suspicion about Anita and you. She probably didn't want to face up to it, but I'm sure she had her suspicions."

I nodded, feeling shame and embarrassment at the thought that my mother knew about my sexual exploits.

"How about this?" Dad said. "Why don't we keep your secret between us for the time being. I don't see any good that could come of telling her and I can think of several bads that could come of it. If, at some point in the future, a reason to tell her develops then we'll sit down and have a talk with her."

"Sounds good Dad." I told him and then smiled. "Did Mom used to smoke pot with you back in college?"

He chuckled. "You know your Uncle Dave, Mom's brother?"

"Of course." I said.

"The Uncle Dave that is the conservative republican lobbyist for the insurance industry?"

"Yes."

Dad smiled. "He used to sell us the pot back in college. Pretty good shit for that time too."

I did not hear from Nina over the next two days. She didn't call me, come over, send a carrier pigeon, or send up smoke signals. I had no way of knowing if she was making any headway with her parents.

The Saturday afternoon before the start of school Tracy flew back to California. We all gave her hugs and she was admonished by my Mother to keep in touch. Dad and I had discussed Tracy and had seen no real reason to tell her that Dad was in on my secret. As her plane climbed into the sky she still thought she was alone in her knowledge of her brother's special difference.

First thing Monday morning, the first day of school of 1984, I took up position near the front of the school where Nina's mother dropped her off. It was snowing once again, a light flurry with little wind, and I stood unobtrusively near some parked cars, my hood pulled tightly over my head. Kids, dejected to be back at school so soon, walked to and fro providing me with camoflaugh. Ten minutes before class started Mrs. Blackmore pulled her car to the curb and Nina, dressed in the same down jacket she wore on the night of our first kiss, hopped out. She gave a half-hearted wave to her mother and began heading up the walkway where Richie Fairview and I had met so long ago.

When Mrs. Blackmore pulled away from the curb I broke into a run, catching up with Nina in less than ten seconds, just as she entered the quad.

"Nina." I called, feeling nervous at the reception I was going to receive. Was she mad at me? Had her parents talked her into abandoning me?

She turned at the sound of her name and I slowed to a walk, my eyes searching her face.

"Bill!" She said happily, rushing to me. She threw her arms around me and we embraced tightly, right there on the quad, right in front of hundreds of students. More than a few of them gave us some strange looks but I didn't care.

"Oh God Bill." She told me, kissing my cheek and hugging me tighter. "I missed you so much. I'm so sorry for what happened. I'm so embarrassed that my dad came over there."

"It's okay Nina." I told her. "I'm just glad you still like me."

"Of course I like you Bill. I love you. Nothing is going to change that."

"I thought your parents might have, you know, soured you against me."

She snorted. "They tried Bill, believe me. I got even more speeches and lectures about 'guys like you'. To tell you the truth, I've been fighting with both of them since that day. Things aren't cheery in the Blackmore house, let me tell you."

We finally broke our embrace and began walking towards the lockers. "So am I to assume," I asked, "That you weren't able to make much headway with them?"

"Not an inch." She told me. "I talked to them until I was blue in the face.

I told them that you're different now, that you've changed, that I'm in love with you, that you're in love with me, but they are completely irrational on the subject. They think you're Lucifer Himself. " She shook her head in puzzlement and frustration. "And I have no idea why they're acting like that. It is SO unlike them. They're usually the calmest, most understanding people."

"So what happens now?" I asked her. "Will we be able to see each other at all? Except for school that is?"

"They've grounded me Bill." She told me. "Grounded. Me! I've never been grounded in my life. I didn't even know they knew how to ground someone! But I'm not allowed to leave the house after school at all. For anything!"

"Hmm." I nodded. "That does present a problem."

"During one of our arguments," She went on. "I told them that they could keep me in the house until I graduated if they wanted but that wouldn't matter. I told them I'd be eighteen soon and heading off to college. Then I could see anybody I wanted!"

"And they said?"

"They said you'd lose interest in me by then so it didn't matter." She replied. "But if you hadn't, if I still tried to see you that they would not pay for any college outside of Spokane! And that they would only pay for that if I came home promptly each day." She shook her head. "Bill, that's absolutely nuts! I can't believe they'd say something like that. I can't go to college in Spokane! There's no medical school here!"

This last statement brought home just how strongly Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore felt about this subject. Like Nina had said, it was nuts. It was not the outpouring of a mind that was working a problem through rationally. Nina was their pride and joy, all that they lived for. To threaten to take away all that she hoped for just to keep her away from a certain boy, a certain boy that they'd once liked immensely, was mad.

"Nina?" I asked. "You said they developed this, uh, strong attitude about me right after you told them about my, uh, transgressions, right?"

"Right." She nodded.

"And they've never acted this strongly about anything before?"

"Never." She assured me. "This is completely wacko behavior for them."

We had reached Nina's locker and I stood behind her as she opened it and stowed some of her books inside. My mind was reeling with something that was right on the tip of it. Some explanation for this problem that was simply eluding me.

"What year did your parents get married?" I asked Nina as some vestige of it finally broke free.

"What year?" She asked.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"1951." She told me. "Why do you ask?"

"Your Dad told me once, back before he hated me anyway, that he and your mom were high school sweethearts."

"They were." She said. "They dated all through high school. And then Dad dropped out to go to the war. They got married when he got back."

"But the war ended in 1945 Nina." I reminded her. "What happened in the six years after?"

She shrugged. "They told me that they kind of broke apart for a while and then found each other again. They never really explained it any further than that. I never really asked. Why?"

"But your Dad did come home right away after the war, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did." She searched her memory banks for a moment and then nodded more firmly. "Yes." She told me. "He did. I remember him saying that he worked construction for a while right after the war. He told me that once when we were driving by some of those ghetto houses on the south side. He told me he'd helped build them in '47 and that they were nice back then." She looked over at me. "What does all of this have to do with anything?"

"I don't think your parents really hate ME." I told her. "They hate people LIKE me. More than hate, they detest, they're disgusted by."

"What are you saying Bill?" She asked uncomfortably.

"There's something in their past." I said. "Something in those six years after the war. I'll bet anything that's it."

"I'm not sure what you mean." She told me.

"Neither am I." I said. "Neither am I. Your old man's a mailman now, right?"

"Yes." She said. "He's been doing that since just after he and mom got married. He's getting ready to retire soon."

"So he's probably got a pretty cushy route, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He does those nice houses out by the river."

"What time does he usually get home?"

"Why?" She asked suspiciously. "You're not thinking of talking to him are you? That would be a very bad idea Bill."

"What time Nina?" I asked.

"Bill." She shook her head. "Don't do it. Daddy will kill you if he sees your face. He won't listen to a thing you say."

"Nina." I told her. "I intend to marry you some day."

She froze in her tracks, staring at me. "Marry?"

"Yes." I said. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I think you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Am I wrong?"

She swallowed nervously. "No." She said simply.

"I'd rather do it with your dad's blessing. I NEED to talk to him. Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself. And don't worry about your dad, I won't hit him." I chuckled. "He'd probably kick my ass anyway. But we need to talk."

"Bill," She shook her head vehemently. "You don't know…"

"No I don't." I said. "But all the same, this is something that is going to need to be addressed. I need to talk to him. What office does he work from and what time does he get off work?"

She saw the determination in my eyes. To this day I don't know if she gave in because she had faith in me or simply because of blind hope. But finally she said, "The office on North Grant Avenue in River View. He's usually done around two o'clock and home by two-thirty."

"Thank you Nina." I said. "I'd better get to class before I'm late."

"Bill?" She said as I turned from her.

I paused. "Yeah?"

"Good luck."

"I'll need it." I assured her. "And I love you."

"I love you too."

My hand was now completely healed up and I was cleared to return to full work duties. That included ROP. On the way to the trauma center I made a brief stop at home. I pulled something from my closet and took it downstairs, depositing it in a closed, cool place. I then drove to the hospital.

"Hi Mindy." I told my supervisor when I walked through the door.

"Bill!" She greeted me happily, even going so far as to give me a brief hug.

"I'm glad you're back." She lowered her voice and whispered. "Now maybe we can get some damn work done around here."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her.

"How's the hand? All better?"

I held it up for her perusal. It bore a clean, sharp scar that is still with me to this day.

"Poor baby." She cooed. "I've reassigned you with Kelly. Hope you don't mind. I had a little talk with your instructor about the incident with Brett, as well as some others, and she agreed that maybe he would be happier in shipping."

"I see." I said, feeling a minor pang of sorrow for Brett. He'd really wanted to get hired. "Listen Mindy," I started.

"Oh," She said, smiling. "By the way."

"Yeah?"

"I've put your name at the top of the list for students I recommend for hiring at semester break." She told me. "And my recommendations are always followed. Congratulations."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her happily. "I don't know what to say."

"You already said it." She said. "And it's not in your interest, it's in mine. You're a damn good worker."

"That's nice to hear." I told her. "But…"

"But?" She asked, glaring at me. "I don't like to hear buts."

"Well," I said. "I do need to ask a brief favor."

"And what might that be?"

"I need to cut out at one-thirty today. Today only. I hate to ask on my first day back but…"

She scoffed. "Is that all? You've got it Bill. Cut out whenever you want."

"Thanks again Mindy." I told her.

"Welcome aboard Bill." She said as I headed off to the sterilization area.

I decided to take my hiring as a good omen for my later task.

The River View area of Spokane was and is one of the more exclusive parts of town. The streets here were lined with trees and had center dividers that had grass growing on them; grass that was lovingly maintained by an army of City-paid gardeners. Streets that did not have any liquor stores, pawn shops, K-Marts, or, God forbid, apartment complexes. It was where the elite of Spokane lived; the lawyers, the real estate developers, the movers and shakers. It was a part of town where I had to be genuinely worried that I would be pulled over by a Spokane police officer, a high seniority officer of course, on general principals when my Datsun was spotted cruising the streets. It was a part of town that I'd rarely responded into as a paramedic. Rich people simply didn't call for ambulances very often.

Even the post office was a miracle of modern architecture. It was a single story building with Spanish tile on the roof, tucked unobtrusively away behind a commercial complex. The snow was still drifting down as I pulled in at twenty minutes to two that afternoon and found a parking spot in view of Mr. Blackmore's car.

I waited, chewing on my fingernails in anticipation.

At five minutes to two I spotted Mr. Blackmore heading from the main building out into the parking lot. He was walking hunched over against the wind, his postal uniform upon his body. I opened my car door and stepped out, taking a final deep breath to gather my courage. I headed towards him on an intercept course.

"Mr. Blackmore." I hailed when he was less than ten feet from me.

He looked up, his face showing his age, his gray hair tucked beneath his cap. I was struck by the strong resemblance between him and Nina. It took him a moment to recognize me. When he did his eyes burned.

"You." He spat, glaring.

"Me." I agreed.

"Get away from me you slime." He told me. "How dare you come here."

"We need to talk Sir." I told him firmly.

"I have nothing to talk to YOU about." He said. "Get away from me right now or I'll call the cops."

"I don't think we need to involve the police in this." I said. "I don't think they'd be very interested. I just want to talk to you about your daughter."

"My daughter has been forbidden to see you."

"I know." I answered. "She told me that when I talked to her this morning."

"You stay away from her!" He yelled. "Do I need to call the school and talk to the principal about keeping you apart?"

"You could." I allowed. "And he might go so far as to separate our classes.

But that won't help. Your daughter and I are in love Mr. Blackmore. No matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, we will find some way to see each other."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." He proclaimed, heading for his car once more. "Stay away from her!"

"I can't Mr. Blackmore." I told him simply.

He turned back towards me, his face red, his hands balled into fists. I was forced to wonder if the flippant comment I'd made to Nina about him kicking my ass hadn't been so flippant after all. "You WILL!" He ordered.

"Come over to my house." I said, holding my ground, using my adult voice.

"What?"

"Talk with me." I offered. "Sit down with me and tell me why you think I should stay away from your daughter. Why you think you know better than she does what's good for her. There has to be a reason. You can tell me what it is."

"I can tell you the reason right now." He said. "It's because you are a lowlife scumbag who is only after one thing."

I held his gaze. "No." I said. "I'm not."

"You are." He insisted. "She told us how you were. About the girls at school. Well you are not going to add her to your list. You are not going to destroy her life."

"So you thought you would do it for her?" I asked.

"How dare you…"

"Did you tell her that you would only pay for college if she stays in Spokane?" I asked him.

"If that's what it takes to keep her away from you." He said.

"Think about that Mr. Blackmore." I said. "Step outside yourself and think about what you're saying. Nina wants to be a doctor. She's geared her entire high school curriculum towards getting into college and med school. There is no med school in Spokane. You are talking about taking away her dream just to keep her away from me. Does that sound like a person who is acting in his daughter's best interests? Does that sound like the workings of a rational mind?"

"You will lose interest in her by then." He said. "Once you don't get what you want from her…"

"I already have what I want from her." I said. "I have her love. And I will not lose interest in her."

"You don't have the slightest idea what love is." He spat. "And neither does she. You're just trying to make her think you love her so she'll give in to you."

"Believe me Mr. Blackmore." I assured him. "I know what love is. Your daughter has shown me. We're not ordinary teenagers and I am not the way you think I am. Look at me." I told him. "Do I seem like a typical teenager to you?"

He stared for a moment, his face showing the first signs of confusion, his mouth open to make a reply. Finally he said, "No. You don't."

"Come over to my house." I offered again. "Talk to me like one adult talks to another. You're not afraid to do that, are you? You're not afraid that you might be wrong?"

"Afraid?" He asked. "Boy, there is absolutely nothing about YOU that can scare me."

"Then prove it." I challenged. "Come over to my house. We'll have ourselves a little talk, like men, and if you can convince me that I'm hurting Nina in any way, then I'll leave her alone."

"And why should I believe you about that?" He wanted to know.

I shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"

He continued to look at me for a long time as his mind worked over what I'd said. Finally he nodded. "Okay Son." He said. "I'll meet you at your house and we'll talk. And when we're done talking I expect you to keep your slimy self away from my family."

I smiled. "Well that's a start Mr. Blackmore. I trust you know where my house is?"

When we arrived at my house it was of course empty. I sat Mr. Blackmore down on the couch and excused myself for a moment, going into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two of the beers from the twelve-pack that Tracy had bought for me. They had been in just long enough to be of the proper drinking temperature.

I carried them into the living room and handed one to Nina's Dad. He looked at me strangely.

"As I recall from the days when you liked me," I told him, "You're partial to a cold brew when you get home from work."

"You think I'm going to be impressed by your possession of beer?" He asked.

"I'm not trying to impress you." I told him. "Just talk to you, one adult to another. I've found that adults talk better, looser, over a few beers. Don't you agree?"

He looked at me, a full-blown version of THE LOOK. "You don't seem like a teenager at all." He whispered.

"Let's pretend there's no age here Mr. Blackmore." I said. "We're having a serious discussion with long-term ramifications." I popped open my beer and sat down in my Dad's favorite chair. "So for now, let's just be Bill and Jack, two adults talking over an important subject."

Mr. Blackmore seemed confused by my words. I sensed a softening of the barrier he'd thrown up and felt I'd finally broken through. And then his expression returned to one of angry determination. He shook his head violently. "You're good Son." He told me, accused me, "That's what I need to keep reminding myself about people like you. You can seem so damn nice, so damn reasonable, so damn adult." He stood back up, setting the beer down on the coffee table. "You took me in once when you first started hanging around my daughter. Shame on you. But you almost took me in twice just now. That's shame on me." He began heading for the door.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said reasonably.

"You're not going to nice your way back into our house." He said. "Stay away from Nina."

"There's someone like me in your past, isn't there?" I asked him.

He stopped suddenly, jerking his head towards me. "What?"

"Tell me what happened." I said. "Why do you feel so strongly about me? It has something to do with the reason you came home right after the war but didn't marry your wife, who was your high school sweetheart, until 1951, doesn't it?"

He was now staring at me, agape.

"Doesn't it?" I prodded.

"Who have you been talking to?" He asked me, horrified.

"Just my own common sense." I assured him. "Nina supplied me with the dates and I was able to draw conclusions on my own. Your reaction to me is irrational Mr. Blackmore. You've focused on an aspect of my personality, my success with girls, and you won't hear anything else, won't listen to your own daughter even. Something happened to you and your wife after the war but before you got married, didn't it? Something to do with a womanizer who talked sweet?"

He continued to stare in disbelief.

"Tell me about it." I repeated. "Like I said, if you can convince me that I'm hurting your daughter, I'll leave her alone."

"You want to hear about it?" He asked me, glaring.

"Yes." I told him. "Sit down, open your beer and tell me about it. I'm a good listener."

"All right Son." He said. "You want to hear why I don't like you, why I won't let you near my daughter, I'll tell you." He sat down on the couch again, making no move to pick up the beer.

"Mary and I WERE high school sweethearts, as you said. We met when I was a junior and she was a freshman. That was in 1942 right here in Spokane. Mary was the most beautiful, sweetest, most desirable girl I'd ever met in my life. I could talk to her about things I couldn't talk to anyone else about. I fell in love with her right away, maybe even before our first date. And she fell in love with me too."

I nodded, not speaking, picturing Mary, a.k.a. Mrs. Blackmore, as she must have been back then. She'd probably looked and acted a lot like Nina.

"By the time I started my senior year we were an "item" as we said back then. Oh, how I loved her, young man. I couldn't wait until the day when we were finally married. We were going to have a church wedding with hundreds of guests and then buy a house near the falls." He shook his head sadly. "Things didn't quite work out that way."

"I have my share of blame to take for the way things turned out. If not for me going off to fight in that stupid war…" He trailed off.

"Something happened why you were at war?" I asked.

He glanced up at me for a second, not answering my question. He sighed and finally picked up the beer bottle. He twisted the top off and took an enormous drink.

"Everyone wanted to go to war back then." He told me. "The soldiers were gods. They were fighting for this great arsenal of democracy we live in. Whenever you went to the movies and saw the newsreels you saw our fabled soldiers fighting those godless Krauts and Japs. You can't imagine how glorious they made war look."

I nodded. I could well remember how it had been during the Gulf War (or how it was going to be). You tell people enough that this war is worth fighting and that the soldiers are gods, they start to believe it. If it worked in the cynical nineties I could imagine how well it worked in the comparatively naive forties.

"Even when people I knew," Mr. Blackmore went on, "Started coming back crippled or burned, with arms or legs missing, even when I'd hear they had been killed and buried over there, it still didn't dissuade me. I wanted to go. I thought I wanted to go more than I wanted to stay and start my life with Mary. After all, Mary would still be waiting for me when I got back, wouldn't she?

"When I was a senior all of my buddies started enlisting. You could do that at seventeen if you had your parent's permission. So I asked my Dad if I could go and he let me." He shook his head. "To this day I still don't understand it. He let me drop out of school and go to war. I'd never seen him as proud of me as he was the day I asked him if I could. We went down to the recruiting office together and we signed the papers. I went through all of the induction physicals and testing and finally they gave me my ship off date. I raised my hand and swore an oath and I was a soldier.

"I wanted to get married before I left but Mary's parents wouldn't let her. They gave me all kinds of reasons why she couldn't. All kinds of reasons but the real one. Mary's Dad had been in World War I, a combat soldier. He knew what I was in for. He didn't want his daughter being a war widow at fifteen or sixteen.

"So we promised we'd marry as soon as I got back home. We promised we'd write to each other. We promised." He sighed. "And off I went. Of course merely being in the war wasn't enough for me. Oh no, I had to volunteer for the most dangerous job I could think of; the airborne infantry. Here was a division that had been known to lose more people in routine training than some regular infantry divisions lost in combat. That was for me. After all, when you're seventeen, you don't think you can die, right?"

I nodded solemnly at his words, remembering my own youth the first time around and remembering my feelings of immortality when I'd returned. Feelings that Richard Fairview had ended with a sweep of his knife.

"They took me of course." He went on. "I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. By my eighteenth birthday in late April of 1944, I was at a base in Southern England, training for the invasion of France."

"D-Day." I said, looking at him. I knew that the 82nd had been pummeled on D-Day and on many operations after it. This man had lived through all of that somehow.

He nodded. "Yeah, I was there. I'm coming to that."

"All the time I was in basic and in airborne training, Mary and I wrote letters back and forth. We told each other we loved one another. We promised to be true. I even wrote her love poems and put them at the bottom of each letter. I told her that I missed her and that I couldn't wait to get back so we could have that church wedding. Her letters said the same; she even used to tell me whom she was going to invite to the wedding and who she wasn't. You know how women are?"

Before I could answer that he looked at me sharply. "Oh yeah. You do."

I decided silence was the best answer to that comment. After a moment he went on.

"The rumors about losses in training turned out to be true." He said. "We lost a lot of people before I ever left United States soil. Parachute technology wasn't quite what it is today back then. People would go down and splat when their chutes didn't open for whatever reason. That's what we called it: a splat. Once an entire plane crashed on take-off during a training exercise killing the whole damn platoon inside. Forty airborne troops killed in an instant before they ever got near the war. Gradually I began to realize that I wasn't immortal. If Joe Hecklemeyer, another seventeen year old in my company and a good friend of mine, could die in something so stupid as a training accident, then so could I. I guess I was lucky in a way. I came to the realization that I was in a dangerous business long before D-Day. Those poor slobs in the regular infantry didn't come to that conclusion until the ramps of their landing craft dropped down on the beach.

"The letters from Mary made my day every time I got them. I would read them and they would make me feel better about what I was in for. I was fighting for Mary, for Mary's parents, for the children that Mary and I would someday have. It gave me something to live for, something to hope for. Mary was my reason for coming home, do you understand?"

"Yes." I said. "I do."

He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, not wanting to believe me. But he could see in my eyes that I was not putting him on. "Somehow I think you do." He said.

"The letters from Mary followed me to England when I went, although they'd sometimes take a little longer to reach me. But when late May rolled around I suddenly stopped hearing from her. I didn't know why. I thought at first that it was a screw-up with the mail but other guys were getting letters from home. Some of them were even from Eastern Washington. If they were getting their letters, why wasn't I?

"Before I had a chance to become seriously concerned about this the rumors began to fly through the division. We would be invading France soon and the 82nd and the 101st were slated to be the first in. I began to sense that the time to earn my money was coming soon.

"In the late hours of June 5, we were ordered to assemble. We were told that Eisenhower had given the order and the invasion was on for the next morning. We were a little surprised by this since it had been raining and windy for the past three days and was raining even then, but we were assured that a brief break in the weather would give us a window. My platoon, the forty men I'd trained with since my assignment, a mixed group of combat veterans and green soldiers like me, were assigned as part of a battalion tasked to take a bridge and hold it until the regular infantry, invading from the Normandy coast, could advance to us.

"At 12:30 AM, the morning of June 6th, we were loaded into the C-47s and off we went. I was in the front of the plane, near the pilots, and therefore would be one of the last to jump. I was loaded down with my pack, my rifle, my parachute and a picture of Mary I carried with me for good luck. I simply stood there with the rest of them, waiting for the signal. Finally it came. One by one we walked to the rear of the plane and jumped out, our static lines pulling open our chutes for us. Just before I went I took one last look at Mary's face, gave the picture a kiss, and then stowed it in my pack. Out I went into the night.

"There were five planes in our group and we were supposed to be dropped five miles from our objective. Our rally point was a clearing along the river. From there we were supposed to march in and assault the bridge, taking it by surprise." He snorted in disgust. "Apparently the lead pilot of our group was a little TOO good at his job. He dropped us right over the bridge itself. A bridge that was guarded by anti-aircraft guns and spotlights, a couple of tanks, and a company of German infantry with heavy and light machine guns."

"Jesus." I whispered.

"Jesus is right." He answered, drinking from his beer again. "They slaughtered most of us before we even hit the ground. People I knew intimately, people I'd trained with, my commanding officers, other greenies like me, were shot out of the air by flak shells and machine guns as we floated down. The spotlights would hit a group as they descended and tracers would arc up, blowing them to pieces. As I came down, near the rear of the group, I was forced to watch this in horror, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I saw hundreds of flashes from the ground as they shot us out of the sky like clay pigeons at a skeet range. Well over half of us were dead by the time our feet hit the earth. Most of our company that lived through this came down around the bridge. They were shot as soon as they landed, most of them before they could even get a shot off. Some of them drowned when they landed in the river. Some got hung up in the trestles of the bridge and were picked off there.

"I landed in a swampy area about three hundred yards from the bridge. It was dark where I came down and I got out of my parachute as quick as I could. Five other soldiers, others that had jumped with me from the fronts of the planes, joined me. Only one of us had combat experience, a sergeant from one of the other planes. He ordered us towards the bridge although even then he must have known it was hopeless. The machine gun fire had died down and had been replaced by the sound of rifles firing single shots. German rifles.

"By the time we got there the Germans had already killed everybody who'd landed near them. There were bodies everywhere, nearly all of them connected to the black parachute harness. German soldiers were walking around putting bullets in the bodies of those that were still moving. As I watched, a German soldier, obviously an officer, gave an order and a platoon of them began moving towards us.

"We bugged out as fast as we could, heading for our rally point since there was nowhere else to go. When we got there we found that well over half of our battalion had met a similar fate. Some were dropped in a swamp and drowned, some had been dropped in the middle of a town near the bridge and had been massacred as my company had. We had a mixed group of people from six or seven different companies with the task of taking a bridge that had already been alerted to our presence.

"The new commander of the battalion, a Captain who was the most senior officer there, ordered us to begin marching. We did.

"On the march to it all I could think about was Mary. I had love waiting for me when I got home. All I had to do was live through this war and I could claim what was mine. We hit the bridge at about 3:00 AM, going up against soldiers that were waiting for us. It was a vicious fight that lasted nearly an hour. The machine guns and the tanks cut down scores of us. Finally we pushed them away from the bridge and destroyed the tanks. When we finally stood on that bridge and started to dig in we were less than a quarter of what was originally tasked to take it. Somehow through all of that I'd lived. I didn't even have a scratch on me. I was years older than I'd been a few hours before, but I was alive.

"We were counter-attacked twice that night by German reinforcements. We fought them off each time but lost more and more people each time. We held that bridge for three days, all the time not knowing if we were fighting a hopeless battle, not knowing if the invasion had gone forward as planned or if it had been thrown back into the sea by Rommel's beach defenses. We held on and I thought of Mary and what was waiting for me when I got home; love and marriage and a family. I had to live, I simply had to.

"Finally, on June 9th at about three o'clock, our relief came. Regular infantry pushed forward from the beach and I'm ashamed to say that we actually fought a ten-minute battle with them before the both of us figured out what was going on. Ten people were killed in that friendly battle. But we were relieved. They took charge of the bridge and we, those of us that were left, were escorted back to safety. I was alive, for the time being anyway.

"The beachhead expanded and our troops finally broke out of Normandy. Understandably the mail was a little slow getting to us but as I waited at base camp day after day I figured that when the mail finally DID get through, there would have to be a letter from Mary in it. She'd never gone this long without writing before.

"When it finally got there I was handed three letters. Two of them were from my parents but one had Mary's handwriting on the front. I ripped it open before I even left the mail line. It was dated May 28th, 1944."

He gazed meaningfully at me. "To this day I still have the entire text of that letter memorized."

"A dear John letter?" I asked.

He sighed. "Dear Jack." He recited. "This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write in my life but I feel that I owe you an explanation. I know that we said we would love each other forever and that we would be married when you returned from the war. But we've been apart for a long time and I have grown up since you've left. I've grown up enough to realize that what I thought I wanted when I was fifteen is not really what I wanted. You're one of the sweetest, most understanding men I've ever met in my life but, unfortunately I've found true love in another while you've been gone. Bob Simpson and I have been spending a lot of time together lately and I've realized that it is he that I am in love with. I hate to give you this news while you are away at the war and it seems so impersonal to write it in a letter instead of telling you face to face but the fact is that I must tell you. Bob and I are in love and I feel that we will be getting married soon.

When you return from wherever you are Bob and I will most likely be married. I felt that I owed you this letter and I am truly sorry that I led you on before you left. Hoping you understand and with sincerest apologies, Mary."

He stared at me angrily. "YOU," He said, "Are Bob Simpson. And this time you're after my daughter instead of my wife. But this time you won't have her."

I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "Tell me about Bob Simpson." I said.

"What's to tell?" He asked. "He's you. Why should I have to tell you about the kind of person you are?"

"Obviously," I said, ignoring his categorization of me, "Mr. Simpson didn't marry your wife."

"Of course he didn't!" Mr. Blackmore yelled. "Mary was a good-looking, confused girl who's intended was away fighting the war. He wasn't interested in Mary's love. He was interested in her body!"

"Tell me about him." I repeated.

He swallowed the last of his beer and set the empty down on the table. "Do you have another?" He asked.

Wordlessly I got up, retrieved the empties and carried them to the kitchen. I tossed them into the garbage can and retrieved two more from the refrigerator. I carried them back to the living room and handed one to Mr. Blackmore. He popped it open and took a drink.

"Tell me about him." I said again, opening my own beer.

He sighed. "Bob Simpson was one of those kids that was real popular in school. He always said the right thing to whoever was talking to him, always said whatever that person wanted to hear. He was like a commission salesman, in fact that's what he became later on in life, selling used cars down at Zed Viermore's car lot. Did real well at it too.

"He was two years ahead of me in school. He graduated in 1942, when the war was really gearing up but he didn't enlist in the service. Oh no, not Bob. He stayed at home and took over the jobs that those who left to fight had vacated. He seemed to have no interest in going off to fight and the men in the town used to make fun of him, call him names about this but Bob paid them no heed. Bob had a high lottery number in the draft and just counted on the fact that the war would probably be over before they ever got around to sending him off.

"Bob you see, had discovered a situation that he could take to his advantage. He'd found that with the war going on there was a distinct shortage of men his age around while there was a distinct advantage to the amount of women that were lonely and scared. He used to make friends with them and eventually seduce them, leaving them like yesterday's trash once he got what he wanted from them. The same thing that YOU apparently discovered."

I had nothing to say to him. I couldn't deny what he was accusing me of.

"To tell you the truth, I used to envy Bob before I shipped off. It never occurred to me that he would one day be after MY girl and you couldn't help but be impressed by someone who could have the experiences that he was having. He never told anyone what he was doing, mind you, he was very discreet about it, but we all knew all the same. He did it with married women twice his age whose husbands were off in Europe or Japan. He did it with the fiances of younger men or even their wives after their husband's had shipped out. God knows how many he did but it was a lot. Some of them, usually the older ones, knew it was just a physical thing, a replacement until their husbands came home, but the younger ones sometimes fell in love with him. And he never tried to convince them that was a bad thing either. He broke more hearts than can probably be counted during World War II, marking off those he'd conquered on a little list somewhere."

"While I was off in England preparing to drop into France and witness the majority of my company getting slaughtered, Bob turned his attention to Mary. And why not? She was a beautiful, auburn-haired girl in the prime of her life. He worked on her for nearly a month, at first befriending her and then finally making her fall in love with him, all the time pretending he was in love with her. That was the thing back then you see. A girl would never consent to sex before marriage if she didn't think the guy was in love with her. There was no casual sex like there is these days. If you did the unthinkable and had sex before marriage, it damn sure meant you were going to get married soon. So that was Bob's scheme, he would turn on the charm and make them think he intended to marry him, he would make them think they were so in love that sex wouldn't seem like a big deal since they were going to get married eventually anyway.

"That's what he did to Mary. He seduced her over the space of about a month and finally got what he wanted from her. He took her virginity from her one night in his apartment building after telling her he loved her and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

"The next day, thinking that she was in love, thinking that she'd found what she wanted from him, she wrote me that letter.

"Bob continued to have sex with her for about a month, as much as he could get away with. When she finally started trying to pin down a date for the wedding, when she started asking too much about when she could tell her parents about the announcement, he dumped her. Of course being the person he was he had a speech already pre-planned. He gave it to her, telling her that he'd THOUGHT he'd been in love with her but that it had been simple youthful exuberance. She left his apartment that day knowing she'd been destroyed, knowing that she'd lost everything. She never even wrote me again after that. We never even communicated through the rest of the war.

"I jumped out of airplanes time and time again before Germany finally surrendered in April of 1945. I helped take bridgeheads, railheads, and every other kind of head in advance of the infantry troops. Friends were shot down left and right until I stopped making friends. I even jumped across the Rhine itself just before the end of the war. I didn't care whether I lived or died anymore. Mary was gone. What more did I have to live for?

"Somehow I made it to the end. A bullet or an artillery fragment never had my name on it. I came home in October of 1945 to Spokane to find my life destroyed, my hopes shattered by Bob Simpson."

He grinned a little. "Sometimes there is justice in the world. When I got home I found that someone like me had been there before me. A young man my age by the name of Jeff Zand had received a similar letter while he was fighting the Japanese. Jeff got himself a million dollar wound on Okinawa, shot in the knee, and they sent him home. His first act upon getting back was to find himself a pistol and shoot Bob Simpson to death in his apartment. He shot him twelve times, having to reload his pistol once in order to do it. Jeff was given the electric chair of course and he sat in it less than a year later. His last words were to the effect that it had been worth it."

"Not too many people turned out for Bob's funeral I heard, but there was damn near a thousand at Jeff's. I was one of 'em. I gave his coffin a sharp salute before they lowered it into the ground."

"But you and your wife did eventually marry." I said.

"Eventually." He told me, nodding. "I knew what Bob was like you see so I knew long before I got back that she wasn't gonna be Mrs. Simpson. But she was tainted you see, I couldn't take her back and she couldn't ask. Both of our lives were destroyed by what Bob had done to her. You see, despite his discretion, everyone knew what he was doing and everyone knew whom he was doing it to. It amazed me how so many women fell for him with the reputation he had; hell, even Mary had to have heard the rumors before she started up with him. He must've been one smooth talker indeed.

"Back then it was unthinkable for a woman to get caught having sex without benefit of the clergy. Once people knew she'd done such a thing, Mary was little more than a slut in everyone's eyes." He swallowed. "Mine included. An unfair way to think I agree, but that's the way it was. I couldn't have anything to do with her after that. I still loved her and I still thought about her, especially late at night when my hand found my organ, but I couldn't be with her because of what she'd done.

"The same applied to everyone else. Oh, men approached her all of the time but not with marriage in their minds. Mary learned her lesson from the first time and always sent them away but the damage, as they say, had been done. She got older and older and remained a maiden; a miserable maiden, living with her Mom and Dad.

"Myself, I tried to date some other girls and more than one of them hinted that marriage might be in the cards if I played them right, but none of them ever made me feel the way Mary had. None of them could compare to the way I'd felt when I was with Mary.

"The solution to the problem was so simple. It was staring me in the face the whole time but the thinking I'd been raised with kept me from seeing it.

Instead of finding a replacement for Mary, I needed Mary. In late 1950 I finally came to my senses. I decided to throw all of the unkind words, all of the nasty talk about her to the side. I went and found her and asked her if she would go out with me.

"She did and it was less than two weeks before we were talking about marriage. Of course everyone I knew told me I was making a mistake. My own parents told me to stay away from that slut. But for the first time in my life I stopped listening to what other people said and listened to what my heart said. The happiest day of my life was the day that Mary and I went down to the courthouse and said our vows to each other."

"As it turned out, I made the right decision back then. Mary and I have been happy together ever since. Many of the same friends who shunned me for marrying "a slut" ended up divorced from the "respectable women" that they married. To this day I still love her deeply and she still loves me and I sometimes still curse myself for wasting all those years.

"The only sour spot in our marriage was our inability to have children. We tried and tried and nothing happened. When we finally went to see the doctor he found that I had an unnaturally low sperm count. We were told that conception was damn near impossible and that we might want to consider adoption.

"Well, we decided against adoption for various reasons and just went about our lives. And then in 1966, long after we'd given up any hope for kids, Mary got pregnant." He snorted. "That brought back all of the slut talk of course. If there's one thing people love to do more than have sex it's talk about where everyone else is getting theirs. They figured Mary's "true colors" had come out once again. How else could she be pregnant? There was never any doubt in my mind about Nina's paternity. I live with Mary and I know her better than anyone on Earth. She could no more cheat on me than she could sprout a set of wings and fly.

"So you can see two things from this conversation young man," He told me. "One, why I dislike you so much and why I won't let you around my daughter. Two, why I care so much for my daughter and what happens to her. Nina's led a sheltered life with us, I'll be the first to admit it. It wasn't helped that she had a lisp as a child. Kids used to make fun of her, call her ugly, treat her like dirt because she was a little different." He shook his head sadly. "Kids can be mighty cruel you know. We sent her to speech therapy and got rid of the lisp but, like with her mother, the damage had been done.

"That's why we were so taken with you when you first started to come over. You seemed such a nice young man, intelligent, and you seemed to like Nina for who she was. You took us right in boy, right in."

"I do like Nina for who she is." I told him slowly. "You're wrong about me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Are you saying that you were not taking advantage of young girls at school? Are you saying that you didn't sleep with an engaged girl right before Nina saw you for who you were?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I did all of that and more. I discovered a near foolproof way to get girls into bed with me and I abused it. I didn't realize that there were consequences to my actions, I was selfish and self-centered, and my behavior was, in fact, despicable."

"I appreciate your honesty." He told me, somewhat taken aback by my words, "But how can you sit there, after telling me what you just did, and try to say that you are not like Bob Simpson?" He asked. "Maybe I'm missing something here."

"You are." I said. "You're missing something big Mr. Blackmore. You're missing the fact that I've never treated Nina like that. I've never tried anything with Nina, not even once. Nina is my friend. That was what she started out being and that was what our relationship has always been based upon. Your daughter is the best friend I've ever had in my life and that friendship has evolved into love. When we had our fight and she stopped seeing me, what did she tell you was the reason?"

"Because you were sleeping with every girl at school!" He almost yelled. "I thought we'd established that."

"Did she tell you that she loved me?" I asked next.

"Of course." He answered, exasperated. "That's what guys like you do to…"

"No Mr. Blackmore." I cut in. "That's where you're getting locked up. You're comparing what happened between me and Nina to what happened between your wife and this Simpson guy. But that's not what happened at all."

"Because she came to her senses before it could." He said.

"No." I shook my head. "She stopped seeing me because she loved me and I wasn't returning her love. She was in love with me during the period I was sleeping with all of these girls and I was in love with her but I didn't realize it. I didn't know that you could love someone you were friends with. By the time I realized it she had gotten fed up with my other activities. She'd gotten fed up with the pain that comes with watching someone you love play with someone else. She left because she figured that I would never love her and she would never have a relationship with me, not because I was trying to sleep with her.

"Once she was gone I realized my mistake. I realized how much I loved her and I felt physical pain that she wasn't with me anymore. When she ignored me at school it hurt Mr. Blackmore, more than I ever would have thought possible. I stopped my activities with other girls and I started concentrating on getting Nina back." I held up my hand so he could see it. "You see this? I drove a car with a stickshift all the way across town with this hand bleeding from a scalpel wound just so I could have a chance to talk to her, to say my piece to her. Does that sound like the sort of thing Mr. Simpson would have done? I love her Mr. Blackmore, I want to be with her always, do you understand? I feel the way about her that you felt about your wife when you went off to the war."

This comparison upset him. "You have no idea how I felt about my wife!" He yelled. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" I asked calmly. "And why is that? Is it because I'm so young?"

He didn't answer, simply looked at me.

"You were sixteen when you fell in love with your wife, weren't you?" I asked him. "About the same age that I am now, right? And your wife was only what? Fourteen, fifteen? A little younger than Nina is now. Why is it so hard for you to accept that your daughter might know what love is? Or me?"

"I just can't accept this!" He told me. "I can't accept your story that you're really a nice young man who's merely trying to court my daughter in the old fashioned way. You have a gift young man. Like you told me, you're a good listener and you give off a vibe that tells people you can be trusted. You do this so well that I came in here and told you a story that I've never told anyone before. Me, who hated your guts, told you this story." He shook his head. "I can see why the girls go for you and I can see why Nina fancies herself to be in love with you. But you're a scoundrel all the same. You use your gift for your own pleasure and I don't want my daughter to be one of your playthings."

I took a sip of beer again, trying to think my way through what he'd just said. Finally I asked him, "Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?"

"What?" He asked.

"Do you remember what it was like to be sixteen years old and to have hormones surging through you day and night. Do you remember being able to think of nothing but sex? What it felt like? When you'd get it? Who you'd get it with?"

He swallowed nervously and then nodded. "Yes, I do."

"That's what I'm going through right now." I told him. "About two years ago I figured out a way to seduce girls easily. Never mind how I did it, but I did. I found that I could have sex pretty much with whatever girl I wanted to. Now put yourself into the shoes of a fifteen year old and ask yourself if you would be able to disregard that gift if you had it."

"Of course not." He admitted. "But…"

"Nina was never a part of that." I told him again. "I never tried to use this on Nina. Nina is my friend, do you understand? Even now, when I'm deeply in love with her, I do not use this gift on her. To do so would cheapen the relationship, would make it less than it really is. I have done nothing more than kiss your daughter Mr. Blackmore and I've only done that at her initiation.

"But that's not all. I've given up this gift for Nina. I don't do it anymore. I have the same hormones surging through my body, I have the same desires as any other sixteen going on seventeen-year-old. I could pick up that phone right now and in less than an hour I could have some girl over here that would fuck my brains out. But I don't do it. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because of Nina." I said. "I love her Mr. Blackmore. I feel about her the same way you felt about your wife. I want to marry her some day, do you understand? I don't know how to make this any more plain to you than that, but that is the fact."

He set his empty beer bottle down on the table and sighed. "Like I said young man," He told me. "You SOUND very convincing. But how can I take the chance that you're what you say you are? How can I gamble with my daughter's life?"

"You're not really doing that." I said, finishing off the last of my own beer. "Nina is seventeen. She's an adult in all but legal status. She's decided that I am the boy for her. She loves me as much as I love her. One way or the other we're going to be together. One way or the other I'm going to marry her someday, and someday soon I'd imagine. You can try to keep us apart but it would be futile. Once she turns eighteen, and that happens in five more months, she can do whatever she wants to do. You can threaten her and try to intimidate her to stay away from me if you want. If you do that, one of two things will happen. She'll either listen to you and dump me or listen to me and dump you. Either way she is going to be filled with resentment. If she goes with me, she'll resent me for taking her away from her parents, if she goes with you she's going to resent you for taking her away from me. With either equation she loses.

"I'm not asking you to open your arms to me and welcome me into your family just yet. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that Nina has a say in this matter. Right now she's saying she wants to be with me. The same equation holds true here. If you allow it, or at least accept it, one of two things will happen. One, I'll dump her at some point in the future and break her heart. That's something I can do with or without your consent however. If it's with your consent, at least you'll have the luxury of saying, "I told you so" to her, right? At least you won't lose your daughter in the process. Or we can continue our relationship to the point where I know it's heading. We can get married someday, Nina can get her medical degree and I can get my business degree and we can have a pleasant relationship with our in-laws on both sides. That's what I want Mr. Blackmore.

"Nina's a big girl, let her make her own decision, for better or for worse, on her own."

He stared for a long time, his brain working over what I'd said. I hoped I'd given him the logic he needed to make the right decision. I had every intention of pursuing Nina to the conclusion of our relationship but, as I'd pointed out, the road would be much bumpier if decided to keep up the resistance.

"I'll let her see you." He finally said quietly.

It took a minute for that to sink in. When it did, a grin spread across my face. "Thank you." I told him.

"I don't know WHAT I'm going to tell Mary, but I find you make a good argument." He smiled a little. "I guess my little girl is growing up some and I guess it's time to let her spread her wings, for better or for worse as you say."

"I agree." I told him.

"But if you hurt her." He warned, pointing a finger at me. "I'll make what Jeff Zand did to Bob Simpson look like a mother's kiss compared to what I'll do to you."

I chuckled. "I'll consider myself duly warned." I answered.

Al Steiner-July 30, 1999 Chapter 11 ->

Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad Bill." He said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snowbank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" She yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about." She smiled. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." Her smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said. "It's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your Mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision." She admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She smiled and kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet." She said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" She asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your Dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about." I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" She asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it." I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose." She said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided that it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house; just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb.

There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go." She replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date." She told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No." She agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom," She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow." I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry." I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have NEVER fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't." I said softly.

"I couldn't Bill." She told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her. "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?" She asked.

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your Dad." I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart Nina. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your Mom and your Dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?

"Of course." She answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble." I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your Dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your Mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better Bill." She told me.

"I do my best." I told her. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right." She answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a Black Angus restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of "War Games". The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen "War Games" before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," She whispered in my ear. "Are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" She asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No Nina." I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why…"

"Then why won't you touch them?" She asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes." She told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think…"

"No you didn't." She breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked it's way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh Bill." She whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh." Was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie." She commented breathlessly.

"Yeah." I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house.

Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We exchanged "I love you's" and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on a BTO album that I'd found in my Dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina." I protested playfully, not pulling away from her. "We're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" She asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way." I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found it's way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Her's showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some REAL studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of." She told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough." I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterword, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples." She said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all." I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know." She answered, "But I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you." I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right." She answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." She said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later." She whispered, licking at my lips. "Your Dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing." She told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away." She said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that." He told me. "But I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that Bill?" He asked.

"Get into pizza delivery." I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be." I said, "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is NOT charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting Bill." He said. "But you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I NOT charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahh." I said. "That's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay Bill." He told me patronizingly. "Tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple." I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people that are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people that would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour that the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza.

That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice Bill." He said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that." I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street.

A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.

Dad too began investing. Like Tracy, once he knew the source of my information he had no problem acting upon it. He diverted all of the money that he had going into savings into the computer stocks. He also freed up some more money from Mom's paycheck and added that to it. When I explained the ramifications of the big play that was soon to come he became very enthusiastic, diverting every spare penny into the investments. Mom questioned this a little but Dad convinced her that I knew what I was doing without actually telling her how he knew this. Since she had seen me obsessively studying all aspects of business for the last two years she had no problem accepting the fact that my foresight was based only on my own common sense.

My new schedule did cut down on my time with Nina on the weekdays. Occasionally she would come over to my house after work and we'd spend a little time together either downstairs or in my room. These were nice times; all times were nice when I was with her, but there wasn't much of an atmosphere for intimacy. Even if my door was closed it felt decidedly weird making out while my parents were home. The most we ever managed was a few deep kisses and a slight dance of tongues.

The weekends however, were now completely free since I no longer had to work on Saturday and Sunday nights. Our ski trips became longer. We would head out early in the morning and drive to resorts further and further away from what we were used to. We trekked all the way up to the very northern fringes of the Idaho panhandle or to the western portions of Montana. We loved everything about these trips; the loading of the equipment in the frigid early morning air, the long drive as we shared coffee from my thermos, the standing in lines waiting for the lifts, the time in the lodge, but especially the long, tired drives home. We would switch off the driving chores but often as not, Nina would end up curled up on my shoulder as we approached Spokane, fast asleep, a contented smile on her face.

The ski trips are special memories of special times but we could not do them every weekend. Sometimes the weather would intrude upon our plans but usually finances did. Skiing is an expensive hobby and most of my money was tied up in my stocks, either growing with latex for college or growing with computer technology for my big move. But having fun does not necessarily have to cost money. Some weekends we would just go ice skating on the frozen lake, or we would take in a movie, or we would just hang around my house. We were in love and we didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

As the weeks went by Nina's complexion cleared up again, leaving her soft face unmarred. The pimples she'd had went nearly out of my mind. Her boobs continued to be sore for about a week and that too went away. Unfortunately I wasn't given much opportunity to touch them.

In late February we took a ski trip to western Montana and enjoyed ourselves so much that the sun was setting before we packed up and headed home. Nina volunteered to drive the first leg back and before she even got the car back onto I-90 I was fast asleep beside her, my hand resting on her knee.

The sensation of the car coming to a stop woke me some time later. I opened my eyes and saw that complete darkness had fallen outside. The stars were out and shining with a brilliance that can only be experienced at high altitude. Nina had pulled into a turnout beside the road, crunching over the gravel and finally coming to a stop behind a snowbank. From the other side the sound of traffic could be heard passing on the interstate.

"Where are we?" I asked, yawning, looking around outside. My ears popped as I yawned.

She turned off the headlights and pitch-blackness resulted, making the stars shine even brighter.

"We're in Idaho." She told me. "Up near the summit outside of Coeur d'Alene."

"Nina." I admonished. "You shouldn't have driven so far. Why didn't you wake me up sooner."

"I was okay." She told me, leaning back in her seat. "You looked like you were enjoying your little nap." She giggled. "You're cute when you're asleep. My eyes were starting to get a little tired though so I thought I'd rest. It's pretty here, isn't it? You can see all the stars."

"Yes." I agreed, looking around. It was a very pleasant spot. Even the sound of passing traffic added just the right amount of white noise. "Why don't you let me drive for a while. We're awfully late."

"I called Daddy from the ski resort before we left." She said. "He knows I'm going to be late. Why don't we just sit for a while? Enjoy the night."

I smiled, putting my arm around her and drawing her close. "If I didn't know better." I told her. "I'd think you were trying to put a move on me."

She snuggled up to me. "And what would you do if I was?" She challenged.

I shrugged. "Call the cops?"

"I don't think they'll hear you from here." She said.

"Well," I answered. "I guess the next best thing would be to give in."

We kissed, lightly at first, reacquainting ourselves with the taste of each other. Her arms went around my neck and mine went around her waist, inside of her coat. Before long our passion heated up and we were exchanging deep soul kisses, our tongues dueling back and forth. The gearshift and the parking brake lever were getting in the way so I finally pulled her over the top of them so she was sitting on my lap, facing me.

"I don't know about this." She said, bending her neck uncomfortable against the roof of the car.

"Here." I said, reaching down with my right hand and grabbing the seat lever. "Is this better?"

With a pull the seat reclined backwards until it was resting against the back seat. This put me almost horizontal and put Nina's body comfortably against me.

"Worlds better." She whispered, bringing her lips to mine.

We kissed contentedly for an unknown amount of time, our libidos shifting into high gear while the idling car engine kept us warm. The spring from the seat bit into my back and my left leg fell asleep because of her weight pushing down on my thigh but I was in heaven all the same. When she began rubbing her hips back and forth, putting pressure on my straining erection I groaned, letting my mouth find her neck.

"They're not sore anymore." She whispered to me.

"What?" I asked, kissing her earlobe and pulling her waist harder into me.

"My boobs." She whispered back, nipping at my ear. "They're not sore anymore."

Not needing to be hit over the head with a hammer, I slid my hands under her shirt. Her coat got in the way of this process so she impatiently sat up and ripped it off her body, tossing on the driver's seat. When she leaned back down the going was easier and my hands found her bare flesh.

"I like your hands on me." She said softly, kissing my eyelid.

"And my hands like to be on you." I assured her.

As I felt her under her clothing she sat up a little. I don't know who initiated the action but suddenly my arms pushed upward, hiking her sweater and her bra up to her shoulders. Her bare stomach and breasts were now exposed to me although it was too dark to see them in any detail. But my hands found them and began to touch them softly, feeling them unencumbered for the first time. As I've mentioned before, they were small, each hand covered a breast completely, but they were firm and very erotic to touch, the skin warm and moist from aroused perspiration. She moaned as I slid my palms back and forth across them, as my fingers gently touched and flicked her erect nipples. Her chest heaved as she panted with sexual excitement and the knowledge that she was showing a secret part of her body to me for the first time.

I let my hands slide from her breast to her armpits. I tugged gently upward and she slid forward. With a pull of my arms she leaned forward into me and her left breast was suddenly against my face, the nipple pushing into my cheek. I slid my tongue out and licked around the perimeter, finally touching the nipple, feeling the rough ridges of it. Nina jerked as if shocked at the contact.

"Oh Bill." She moaned.

I teased the nipple for the briefest instant and then gently sucked it into my mouth, suckling it as a baby would. It tasted divine against my tongue. I had sucked many a nipple in my two lives but never had one sent tingles through my body as this one did.

Nina's hands went to the back of my head and pulled me tighter against her chest. She moaned and cooed as I suckled, her fingers running spastically through my hair. I switched to the other nipple, bathing it with my saliva, my hand cupping the first. Nina's hips began moving in an involuntary rhythm on my abdomen as sensations that she was unfamiliar with assaulted her body.

I switched breasts again, allowing my hands to drop down to her stomach and flanks where my fingers slid slowly up and down upon the soft, sensitive flesh there. I could feel the gooseflesh that was covering her body beneath my fingers, hard, miniscule bumps of overheated skin.

And then suddenly she was pulling back from me, her fingers pushing off my shoulders, her nipple popping free of my mouth and leaving a trail of my saliva from it.

I looked up in confusion, my own arousal near a fever pitch. What was wrong?

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, near tears, her body trembling all over.

"What's the matter?" I asked breathlessly, still tasting the aftereffects of her flesh in my mouth.

"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.

"Nina?" I asked gently.

"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."

"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!

"You must hate me." She said.

"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.

"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."

She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.

"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."

She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."

We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.

"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."

She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.

Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.

It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.

"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"

I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.

"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.

I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.

"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."

I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.

He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."

"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.

"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"

"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.

"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.

I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.

"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."

"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."

"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.

"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."

"Good for you." I said, wondering if he really was a shoe-in like he claimed. It was possible. If he'd made a good impression as an ROP student, and he would have had to make a damn good one after the marijuana incident, the word would filter upward to the powers-that-be in the department. The powers-that-be would see to it that his name was among the next hiring group. The pitfall of this was that the same thing worked in reverse too.

My Mom and Dad, as I've mentioned before, loved to go to parties with their co-workers. It didn't matter the occasion, if there was a party, they were there. One such party was for the opening day of baseball each year. They were in the habit of traveling to one of Mom's fellow worker's house, a woman whose husband possessed a large screen television, for opening day each year. In truth my Dad cared even less about baseball than Mom did. It was simply an excuse to get together with friends, drink lots of beer, eat fancy appetizers and drink more beer.

They left the house at 9:30 that morning and I would have been surprised to see them home anytime before 6:00 that night, riding in a cab of course. Nina and I decided to take advantage of the situation. She came over at 10:00 that morning and by 11:00 we were making out on the couch, our passion accompanied by the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, one of my Dad's albums.

Since that day I'd put my mouth to her breasts we'd been very reserved in our affections. We kissed a lot but didn't tend to go much further than that, even if we were alone. Only once had my hands gone beneath her shirt since then and that had been only because she'd physically picked them up and put them there. I was determined not to push her too far too fast. As a result I was actually getting used to the sensation of blue balls.

But on this day Nina was extremely passionate. Her hands were feeling me all over. She slid them over my chest, under my shirt to my back, to my butt where she squeezed brazenly as our tongues dueled. She ordered me to feel her tits and I gladly put my hand beneath her shirt while my tongue continued it's exploration of her mouth.

As I felt and kissed her she suddenly pulled her mouth from mine. She looked at me, blushing furiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, worrying I'd gone too far again.

She licked her lips nervously and then said, "Wouldn't you like to take my shirt off?"

I stared at her, searching her eyes, trying to determine if she was doing this because SHE wanted to or because she thought I wanted to. I saw nothing but passion there, mixed with a little nervous anticipation.

"Yes." I said, stroking her face, feeling the heat coming from the aroused blush. "But are you sure you want me to?"

"Take it off." She told me. "Do to me what you did that night."

Surprised to find my own hands trembling I reached for the hem of her sweater. I lifted upwards and she raised her arms to allow me to pull it off. Her white bra was only a few shades lighter than the pale skin of her stomach, skin which had spent the winter firmly clad in clothing. The sight made my mouth water. I stroked the exposed flesh above her bra cups softly, raising goose bumps on her, and then let my fingers slide around to the back. We kissed as my digits began the process of unclasping her bra snaps.

In a moment I would see my beloved's bare breasts, a sight I'd fantasized about so many times.

The phone started to ring, shrill, annoying decibels, cutting through the air.

We broke our kiss and looked at each other, my fingers freezing in place.

"You gonna answer that?" She asked, pushing her chest into mine.

"Hell no." I said, shaking my head, leaning in to kiss her again.

We tried to re-establish the rhythm and the passion we'd just had but the telephone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I didn't attempt to take off her bra while the infernal noise was going on because I didn't want my first view of her breasts in the light of day to be marred by the distraction of a ringing telephone. I wanted to drink in the sight, to relish it, to assign the entire being of my concentration to it. How long could a telephone ring? I wondered. Don't most people give up after ten rings or so? If nobody answers after ten rings they can assume that nobody's home, right?

But not this person. That phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. We would pause at the end of each ring, relishing the brief silence, expecting that another one would not follow and that we could then get back to business. But after two seconds or so another ring would always shatter the calm of the living room. Finally our mouths broke apart.

"I'm ripping that fucking cord out of the wall." I told Nina, pushing away from her.

"Bill," She said, obviously as annoyed as I, "Why don't you just answer it? Whoever it is must have something important to say or they wouldn't have let it ring so long. Maybe there's some sort of emergency."

"They're gonna have an emergency if they don't have a damn good reason for this shit." I proclaimed.

I walked over to the phone and picked it up roughly, cutting it off in mid-ring. I put it to my ear. "What?!" I almost yelled.

There was a brief pause. Finally, "This is the AT and T operator. Will you accept a collect call from Tracy?"

Tracy? Goddam her! This had better be good. "Yes." I said shortly. "Put her on."

"Thank you." The operator said, probably sounding much huffier than her supervisor would have cared for.

"Bill?" Came my sister's voice hesitantly.

"Hi Tracy." I said impatiently, looking over at Nina, who was sitting on the couch in her bra, her nipples poking at the material. I could vaguely make out the shadow of her aureole through the cotton. My dick was throbbing with desire. This had better be good.

"Uh…" She said uncertainly. "Are Mom and Dad home?"

"No they're not." I said. "It's the first day of baseball." I knew that Tracy would need no further explanation than that.

"Oh yeah." She said, giggling, her tone telling me she knew damn well what day it was and that Mom and Dad wouldn't be home. "It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I told her. "So they're over at Janice and Ken's. You might try them tomorrow. Probably later would be better. They're bound to be hung over."

"Okay." She said. "Oh, did you hear about Cindy?"

This got my attention a little. "No." I said. "What about her?"

"I got a letter from her yesterday. Her professor boyfriend is divorcing his wife. Cindy has moved in with him. Can you believe it?"

"Actually I can." I answered. This news didn't surprise me in the least. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.

"She's dropping out of college too." Tracy added. "I guess she figures she got what she went there for."

"I guess she did." I replied, casting another glance at Nina, disheartened to see that her nipples were losing their erection. "Listen Tracy." I said.

"I was kind of in the middle of something."

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'll let you go and get back to it."

"Thanks." I said.

"Umm?" She said hesitantly. "There IS one thing I wanted to ask you while I had you on the line."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well," She said uncertainly. "The people that I hang out with here are having, well, a little baseball pool."

"A baseball pool?" I asked, exasperated. What the hell did she want to talk to me about this for?

"Yes." She answered. "For five bucks you can enter who you think will be in the World Series this year. If you're right, you win the pot in October."

"The World Series?" I asked, trying to glare through the phone.

"Yes." She said. "So I was wondering if maybe YOU could tell me who was going to be in the series this year? I know you have a real good head for this sort of thing Bill." She giggled knowingly.

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then cast a glance at Nina, who was looking at me expectantly, questioningly.

"Tracy," I told her honestly. "I don't have the slightest idea."

There was a long pause. Finally, pouting, "Bill, this doesn't hurt anything. How is this different than you taking advantage of stocks you know are going to go up? I could win twenty-five hundred bucks from this!"

"It doesn't Tracy." I said, lowering my voice a little so Nina couldn't hear. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She nearly screamed, pissed at my refusal to supply her with this information. "You've already lived through it! You know! You just don't want to tell me for some moralistic, bullshit reason."

The biting edge of her words cut through me like a knife, deflating my desire like a punctured balloon. "Tracy," I said carefully. "I really don't know. I'm not a baseball fan. I've never paid attention to baseball in my life, just like Dad. How the hell would I know who was in the series in 1984?"

"Because you've already been through it!" She cried. "You HAVE to know. You just don't want to tell me!"

"Tracy?" I asked, looking at Nina again, she was now definitely sensing that something was wrong. "Tell me who won the World Series in 1982."

"What?" She asked.

"You've already lived through it." I said, mocking her tone. "It's only been two years from your perspective instead of," I thought for a second, doing some quick mental addition, "Seventeen years from my perspective. So tell me, who won the series?"

"That's different!" She said desperately. "You're a boy. Boys know this shit!"

"This boy doesn't." I told her, feeling my own anger starting to rise now. "But let's put that aside. Let's ask you some girl shit. Who won best supporting actress in 1982?"

"What?" She asked, confused.

"You heard me." I whispered harshly. "That's girl shit if I've ever heard it. So who won it?"

There was silence on the line for a moment. "I don't know." She finally said.

"And I don't know who won the fucking World Series in 1984." I told her. "And if you call me back in October and give me the names of the two teams who are actually in the fucking thing, I still wouldn't know who won it. I don't watch baseball Tracy. I don't give a rat's ass about who was in it or who won it. You should know that. You're right, this information is harmless, and I would tell you if I knew, but I don't know. And I don't appreciate you screaming at me because of this. And I especially don't appreciate your indignant tone with me because of it."

The silence on the line was longer this time. "I'm sorry Bill." She finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Goddam right you shouldn't have." I said.

"I just thought that maybe…, well, you know."

"Tracy," I told her, calming a little. "You're going to be all right. You don't need to be so greedy. Isn't it enough that you're alive?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of our conversation took less than thirty seconds. When I hung up, Nina was looking at me quizzically.

"Your sister?" She asked carefully.

I nodded.

"You seemed mad at her." Nina said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle." I told her.

"Bill," She said softly. "What's wrong? You can talk to me about anything you know?"

"I know Nina." I answered. "And usually I do. But this is something of a family secret if you know what I mean."

"Like what my Dad told you?" She asked sharply.

"Kind of." I agreed. "But much more secret than that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She said, pouting a little.

The mood for the day was effectively broken. By the time my parents got home that evening Nina was long since at her house and I was long since releived of my testosterone by my own means. I spent the rest of the day with Mike, drinking some beer he'd managed to get hold of. It was fun but not as fun as what Tracy had interrupted.

It was late April when I went to Nina's house to pick her up one evening. It was Friday night and we had a date to go see the release of the movie 1984 based on the Orwell novel that had been the basis of the first conversation we had shared. I pulled to the curb at her house at 6:30 and stepped out of my car, heading for the front door.

I was no longer nervous about picking up Nina at home. The impasse with her parents was holding strong. Nina had told me that her parents had gone back to their usual relationship, as I'd predicted, but that I was never discussed in their household. It was taboo apparently. When she told them that she was going out with me they would give a small grunt in reply and question no further. That they weren't happy about her continued relationship with me was obvious but they never tried to stop her or talk her out of seeing me. She said they treated it as a phase she was going through, a phase that would eventually end. The fact that they still, after all this time, didn't trust me, that they still, after seeing the obvious happiness of their daughter, didn't trust my intentions, spoke volumes about how badly they'd been stung by the Bob Simpson episode. They really thought that I still intended to dump their daughter like a bag of garbage. All I could do was hope that someday they would come around. Didn't they realize what they were doing to Nina?

Because of this impasse, an unwritten set of rules had developed about my picking up Nina for dates. I did not enter their house or speak with them in any way. Nina would simply answer the door when I was expected and then leave upon my arrival. They, in turn, would be out of the room when I arrived, keeping us from even having to look at each other. I expected nothing different on this day. But something different was what I got.

I rang the doorbell and stood patiently, waiting for the door to swing open.

It didn't. I rang the doorbell again, pushing longer this time and finally was rewarded with the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and there stood Nina. She was wearing a robe tied tightly around her. Her hair was a frazzled mess, as if she'd gotten out of the shower and dried it but had not combed it. She most definitely didn't appear ready to go to the movies any time soon.

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, her voice worried. "I don't think I'm going to make it tonight. Daddy's sick."

"Sick?" I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She shook her head. "He says it's just the stomach flu but I don't think so. He was sitting in his chair after dinner and he started getting all fidgety. Then he started throwing up. He's all pale right now and sweaty and he looks like he's not breathing right."

"Sweaty?" I asked, feeling an instant return of my paramedic instinct. When people were sweaty for no good reason, something was usually very wrong. That in conjunction with "not breathing right" made me immediately concerned.

"Yes." Nina nodded. "I've seen people in the ER that look like he does now." She told me. "And usually they're very sick. I'm worried about him Bill. I've been trying to get him to let me take him to the hospital but he's being stubborn. He's scared, I can tell, but he won't go. I want to stay here in case something happens."

"Let me see him." I said suddenly.

"Bill," She shook her head. "I don't think…"

I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pushed past her and entered the Blackmore house for the first time in many months.

"Bill!" Nina protested.

"Where is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes scared, her own face pale. She pointed to the kitchen. "In the den." She said. "Through there."

"Come on." I told her, heading that way.

Mr. Blackmore's den was a room that had been built to house a bedroom. He had long since converted it to his own personal use. An oak, roll-top desk was the dominant piece of furniture. It sat against the far wall. It's surface was scattered with books containing lovingly placed stamps beneath plastic covers. On the wall above the desk a deer rifle sat in a rack. On either side of this were large racks taken from an elk and a deer. On a small love seat next to the desk was Mr. Blackmore.

"Jesus." I muttered, looking at him.

He looked worse than Nina had led me to believe. His skin was not merely pale but was gray and ashen. Sweat was glistening off of him, his shirt was damp with it. His mouth was open and he was breathing rapidly, seeming to struggle to get air in. His right arm was massaging his left shoulder.

"What are YOU doing here?" Mrs. Blackmore, who was sitting next to him, asked sharply.

I ignored her. "Mr. Blackmore." I told him, walking over. "You need to go to the hospital. Now."

He looked up at me. "Bill," He said, shaking his head. "I think you'd better leave. Sorry to have to postpone your little date." This last was said quite sarcastically.

I reached down and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"You will LEAVE this house immediately!" Mrs. Blackmore told me, ripping his hand away from mine.

"I know what I'm doing." I said forcefully, meeting her gaze. We stared for a second and she finally dropped her eyes.

I took his wrist back, finding his radial pulse. It was beating rapidly and irregularly, sometimes not pulsating for as long as six seconds. I noticed that when I could not feel the pulsations, Mr. Blackmore's breathing became more ragged at the same time. Though I did not have a cardiac monitor on me, I had a pretty good idea of why this was happening.

"Nina," I said. "Go call 911 and get an ambulance here."

"What?" Mr. Blackmore said. "I don't think…"

"Do it now." I told Nina calmly and with unmistakable command in my voice.

She gave a quick glance towards her father. "No Nina." He told her. "I'll be all right."

"Do it Nina." I said firmly. "Tell them he's having a heart attack."

Nina was convinced. She rushed to the phone. Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore were not. They called once after her but quickly realized it was futile. When she was gone they turned to me.

"How dare you come into this house and…" Mrs. Blackmore started.

"What do you think you're…" Mr. Blackmore started.

"Quiet, both of you!" I barked. It had the desired effect.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said, looking at him. "Are you having chest pain right now?"

"No." He told me. "Just some indigestion. She made some spicy food tonight and it didn't agree with me."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "Why are you rubbing your shoulder like that?"

"It's sore." He said. "What business is this…"

"Show me where your chest hurts." I told him. "Point with your finger."

Rolling his eyes upward he put a finger right in the middle of his chest. "Right here." He told me. "It's just indigestion."

"Indigestion doesn't hurt right there." I told him. "It hurts down here." I put my finger just under his rib cage. "And it doesn't radiate up to your left shoulder either. And it doesn't make you short of breath or sweaty. It doesn't make you throw up. And it most definitely doesn't make your pulse irregular. Have you ever had heart problems before?"

"No!" He said.

"You're having them now." I said. "You're having a heart attack Mr. Blackmore and a very dangerous one if I'm right about what I'm feeling in your pulse. You need to get to the hospital, now."

"What the hell do you know about it?" He asked angrily. "You're just a kid."

I smiled, gazing at him meaningfully. "We've had this conversation before." I said. "Do we need to rehash it? I think you're having a heart attack. Go to the hospital with the ambulance when it gets here. If I'm wrong, then you'll get to say I told you so."

Before he could answer Mary Blackmore spoke up. "Jack." She said softly. "Why don't you do what he says?"

I looked over at her in surprise. She was the last person in the world I expected to have as an ally in this thing. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. I think she knew that I was right and she was terrified that she was about to lose her husband. So terrified that she was even willing to listen to me.

"Listen to your wife Sir." I told him. "You want to see your grandkids someday don't you?"

"Okay." He nodded. "Once again young man, you've stated your case well."

"You can't die Mr. Blackmore," I told him. "Until you learn to get used to me dating your daughter. I won't allow it."

He actually chuckled at that.

From outside came the sound of approaching sirens.

Chapter 12

The paramedic and the EMT that showed up were both strangers to me. Probably they were people that had worked briefly in the field and then had gone onto other things; the fire department, the police department, nursing, medical school. They came in the door shortly after the fire engine crew had barged in. I was glad to see that the paramedic took Mr. Blackmore's condition as seriously as I did. I stood back and said nothing, feeling confidant he was in good hands.

While the paramedic went through the routine questioning, questions I was very familiar with, his partner hooked up the EKG machine. It was an older model of the device, a model I was unfamiliar with since it had been replaced long before my debut in the medical field, but the display was the same. I saw the rapid complexes of his normal heartbeat intermixed with frequent premature complexes; beats that were not perfusing much blood, beats that were the telltale sign of a very irritated heart. Worse still was the fact that sometimes Mr. Blackmore would have fifteen to twenty of these premature beats in a row. This was known as ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, in medical circles and it was very dangerous. It was, in fact, only a step above complete cardiac shutdown.

The paramedic, a young, blonde man whose hair was probably a little longer than was allowed, saw the display and tightened up almost inperceptively. He glanced at his partner for a moment and a look was passed between them; a look that the ordinary citizen would not have even noticed but which I was well versed in. It was a look that said "Holy Shit!".

"Set me up an IV." The paramedic told his partner calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal request. It wasn't. Usually IV's were not started on scene.

"Right." His partner nodded, going for their medical box.

"Put him on high flow oxygen." The paramedic told one of the firemen.

He went mechanically about the task of installing the IV line into Mr. Blackmore, speaking soothing words to him the whole time, telling him what he was going to be doing. On the other arm a fireman was taking his blood pressure. He shouted out the reading when he had it.

"Ninety-four over forty." He said.

The paramedic digested this, chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a second. That was not the greatest blood pressure in the world in relation to a cardiac event. Finally he plugged in the IV and taped it down.

He injected some lidocaine into the IV port and watched the display on the EKG. The lidocaine was supposed to numb the heart a little, making it less irritable and less likely to throw premature beats, go into V-tach, or, worst of all, go into fibrillation. The runs of V-tach slowed a little, becoming less frequent and shorter in duration when they did come. Not the best thing in the world but better. Hopefully it would be enough to deliver him to the hospital alive.

"Let's get him out of here." The paramedic said.

Mr. Blackmore was loaded up onto their gurney and rushed out of the house to the waiting ambulance. Mrs. Blackmore was placed in the passenger seat by one of the firemen. Another fireman climbed in the back with the paramedic.

Again this probably seemed routine to the average person and again it wasn't. A paramedic only took a fireman in with him when he thought that he might need an extra hand on the way to the hospital. In other words, when he thought there was a good possibility that CPR was going to need to be performed at some point. Runs of V-tach had a nasty tendency to degenerate into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.

"Bill," She asked me. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I hope so." I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"

She nodded and rushed into the house.

We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.

"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"

Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No." She said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."

"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.

She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."

I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.

It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.

He invited Nina's Mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain bespoke the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.

"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction." The doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."

"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.

"It's too early to tell." He said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."

"What do you mean?" She wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".

"Well," He explained. "A heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure.

"But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."

"There are?" She asked.

"Yes." He nodded. "There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."

"So he'll be okay?" She asked hopefully.

"With a little luck," He said, "Your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."

"When do you start?" She asked.

"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen…"

He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.

As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?

We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?

After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.

"Thank you." Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.

"No cream, one sugar." I said. "Just the way you like it."

She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"

I smiled. "Nina told me." I answered. "She takes it the same way."

She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.

Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.

"We think we cleared the obstruction." He told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."

He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.

By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.

"Thank you Bill." Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."

"I don't know about that." I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."

"You saved him Bill." Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" She asked sharply.

"Nina, I…" I started.

"Hush." Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"

Mrs. Blackmore swallowed nervously and then reluctantly looked at me. "She's right." She finally said. "You did save him. We owe you our thanks."

"I did what any decent person would do." I told her, emphasizing the word "decent". "I'm glad he's going to be all right and I was glad to help."

She nodded and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"So." I said at last, breaking it. "Why don't we see if they'll let you two visit him for a bit? You're probably anxious to do that."

Only one visitor at a time was allowed in the recovery room. It was a rule the staff was very firm about despite my attempts at intervention using my adult voice. Finally Mrs. Blackmore went in, leaving Nina and I alone in the waiting room. We sat together and I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, yawning with weariness.

"Sorry we couldn't go to the movie tonight." She told me.

"Understandable." I assured her, stroking her hair.

A minute went by. Finally Nina asked, "Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know Daddy was having a heart attack?"

I had been afraid of this question, though I knew it was coming. I didn't enjoy lying to her.

"I read a lot of medical texts." I told her. "It's kind of a hobby of mine. I thought about being a paramedic once so I went through their textbook and studied it. Your Dad was having textbook symptoms of a heart attack and he was displaying the common response to it. Denial. When I felt his pulse and noticed the missing beats I was sure. That's another textbook symptom."

"You knew all this from reading a textbook?" She asked, her tone unreadable.

"Yes Nina." I said. "I have a good memory for written words."

"I see." She said softly. And she said no more about it.

We sat and talked softly for more than fifteen minutes, me continuing to hold her and stroke her hair. A slight cough interrupted us and we both looked up to find Mrs. Blackmore looking at us, taking in the manner in which we were seated.

"Hi Mom." Nina said, somewhat embarrassed. She broke free of me and sat up.

"How's Daddy doing?"

She walked over slowly. "He's a little groggy from the medicine they gave him but otherwise he's okay. They're going to take him up to his room soon.

We won't be able to visit him anymore until tomorrow. Why don't you go in and talk to him real quick?"

"Okay." She nodded, standing. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She left the room leaving me alone with her mother. We looked at each other for a moment and finally she took a seat next to me. She sat stiffly upright.

"You didn't have to stay you know." She told me.

"I wanted to." I told her. "Besides, how else are you going to get home? You know how much a cab ride would be from here?"

"We could've handled it." She answered.

"Like I said Mrs. Blackmore." I replied. "I WANTED to stay."

Another uncomfortable silence developed. There was so much I wanted to say to this woman next to me, so much I wanted to explain, but this was not the time. Not when her husband, a man I knew she loved deeply, was in a hospital room after nearly dying.

But Mrs. Blackmore apparently DID want to talk about it.

"You're a very strange young man." She said, not looking at me.

I nodded. "I've been accused of that." I agreed.

"I like to think that I've got you figured out." She said. "That I know exactly what you're like, how you'll act, what you'll do. I tried to tell Nina this when she started seeing you again. But she didn't listen to me, wouldn't hear a word of it. I tried to tell myself that it was teenaged rebellion, that she knew I was right but that she wouldn't listen because she thought she was in love with you and because her Mom was telling her these things."

"But?" I prompted, looking over at her.

"But now I'm forced to wonder if maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time." She admitted.

"Really?"

"Really." She sighed. "You see, I've been waiting all of this time for you to toss my daughter aside like an old shoe. That's what people like you do I told myself. You get them to fall in love with you and then, once you get what you want a few times, you get rid of them. I have speeches all memorized for the day that you finally do that; speeches I'll recite to her as I'm holding her while she cries. I'll tell her that someday she'll find someone who REALLY loves her for herself, not for her body. I'll tell her about how I found a man like that and how he came back to me even though I made a horrid mistake once. I'm well prepared for the day when you finally show Nina that you are nothing but slime." She stared over at me, her eyes softening. "But that's not going to happen, is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it's not." I said. "I love your daughter Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."

She nodded softly. "You know something?" She asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside.

But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.

"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."

"Do you know why I feel this way?" She asked me pointedly.

I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.

"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" She said.

This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh…"

She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."

"Look, Mrs. Blackmore…" I started.

"Call me Mary." She said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"

This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?

"Bill." She went on. "You know about Bob Simpson, right?"

I nodded. "Yes." I answered.

"I appreciate your honesty." She said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me.

I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."

"Okay." I agreed.

"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"

"Yes." I answered. "I do."

"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."

"I know." I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina.

Never."

"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."

"And then she went back to you." Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."

"And the rest is history." I said softly.

She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about Bill." She told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"

"No." I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.

"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina IS my future Mary. Can you understand that?"

"That's just it." She said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.

"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"

I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have." I agreed.

"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."

"Me?" I asked.

"You." She nodded. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her." She said.

"Yes." I nodded enthusiastically. "I do. That's what I've been trying to say all this time."

"I recognize that now." She said. "And I realize that you are not exactly Bob Simpson. But you're close. And just because I recognize it doesn't mean I like it Bill. I'm willing to acknowledge that you and Nina are in love with each other. But I can't forgive you for what you've done in the past and I have no proof that you are no longer doing such things. I still believe that Nina is heading for destruction by being with you."

"That's fair enough." I told her. "You think that we're too young to know what love really is and that I'll give in to the temptation to stray away from Nina, right?"

"Roughly." She answered.

"We are young." I said. "But tell me this, do you think that Jack knew what he wanted when he told you he wanted to marry you before he went off to the war?"

"What?" She asked.

"He loved you back then. Very much from what I understand. And though he didn't have the, uh, experience that I do, he was pretty certain that you were the woman for him. So do you think he knew what he was talking about?"

"Yes." She nodded, seeing where I was taking this.

"That's the same way I feel about Nina. I know she is whom I want to spend the rest of my life with. My experience has done nothing but show me that sex is nothing but hollow pleasure if it's not with someone you love. I don't plan to repeat those experiences. I am committed to Nina now and I will remain so. I'm the same age Jack was when he fell in love with you. Nina is older than you were when you fell in love with Jack. She's older than I am in fact since I got to skip second grade. Why do you think that you, of the previous generation, have some sort of all-knowing lock on what love is and that those of us in this generation are clueless?"

THE LOOK was strong upon her face. She smiled. "You are certainly a remarkable young man Bill." She said. "I'll give you that. Like I said, I'm not quite sure you're right for Nina and I'm not quite sure you are my idea of the perfect suitor. But there's little I can do about it. You've proved yourself worthy of my giving you a chance. So for Nina's sake I would like to extend you a welcome into our house for as long as you and she are together. Maybe someday I'll learn to love you. Or maybe I won't. But until we know for sure, you no longer have to hide on the porch when you come over. You're welcome in our house."

"Thank you Mary." I answered, touched by her cynical words. "I'll take you up on that. And be assured, you're not going to get rid of me."

"Time will tell Bill." She answered. "Time will tell."

Two days later Jack Blackmore was transferred to the hospital that I worked at in order to undergo bypass surgery. He was installed in a private room on the seventh floor. His spirits were reported to be high by Nina, who visited him daily after school, usually joining her mother there. I had not had opportunity to see him since the night he'd been taken away.

On the Tuesday following his heart attack I had a brief chat with my Dad before I headed off to school.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" He asked me, nearly appalled by what I was suggesting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it wise." I agreed. "But it's not dangerous. After all, the man's undergoing a bypass tomorrow. What can it hurt?"

Dad shook his head. "I'll concede to your greater medical knowledge." He told me. He did as I asked.

After work that night I went out to my car and put a few things into a plastic bag. I then went back inside. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and headed for the ICU where Jack was being stashed. Visiting hours were soon coming to a close and Nina and her mother had already gone for the night. I was unquestioned as I walked past the nurse's station. The surgical scrubs I wore saw to that.

I entered his room and stood in the doorway for a moment. Jack Blackmore was dressed in a standard hospital gown. IV's were installed in his arm and connected to a pump. Wires snaked from beneath the sheets and his gown and fed to a monitor on the wall above his head. He was sitting in the bed, which he'd adjusted to a chair position, watching a baseball game on the television. He looked over at me as I entered, his eyes taking a moment to realize that I was not just another hospital worker coming in to take his blood pressure or to get him to piss in a jar.

"Bill." He nodded when he recognized me. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I told him, coming in and closing the door behind me. "How are YOU?"

"Hanging in here." He said as I took a seat. "I never did get a chance to thank you for talking me into going the other night." He lowered his voice a little. "The doc tells me I might've died if I hadn't of come in."

"I was glad to help." I assured him.

"As much as I hate to admit it." He said. "I owe you one."

"Maybe I'll collect someday." I said. "But in the meantime, I brought you something you might like."

"What's that?" He asked.

I reached into my bag and withdrew two dripping, icy cold bottles of beer. Beer that my Dad had bought for me that morning and which had sat in an ice chest in my car all day. It was his favorite brand. His eyes lit up as he saw them.

"I can't drink that." He told me, his voice far from virtuous.

"Sure you can." I said. "You're probably sick of Jell-O and powdered eggs about now. You're probably even sicker of powdered orange juice. Have a brew. You're going in for bypass surgery tomorrow. What can it hurt? Hell, they ought to be feeding you bacon and eggs and greasy tacos tonight. The cholesterol can't hurt you now."

He licked his lips for a moment and then said. "You have a gift for putting things into perspective young man. Give me the beer."

"Better pour it into your cup." I instructed. "If the nurse comes in and sees it, she'll kill me."

He gave me a shrewd look. "We wouldn't want that now, would we?" He asked.

We poured the beer into the little plastic cups that are only found in hospitals and stashed the bottles away.

"To good health." I offered, holding up my cup.

He nodded. "To good health."

We clinked them together, well, not really, plastic doesn't clink, but you get the idea. We drank. The beer was like nectar on my parched throat. It probably tasted even better to Jack Blackmore, who had just faced death in a much different way than he had in World War II.

"Mary tells me that you had a talk with her." He said after the first drink.

I looked at him for a moment and then nodded. "We did." I said.

"Uh huh." He grunted. "She also tells me she invited you into our house."

I swallowed nervously, wondering if Mr. Blackmore was about to veto this decision. If he was about to tell me that he would see me in hell before he saw me in his house. "She did." I said.

"Well," He said, sipping out of his beer again. "I guess I'll have to agree with her then."

It took me a moment for what he said to filter through, so much was I expecting the "see you in hell" speech.

"You agree with her?" I finally asked.

"Young man." He told me. "You alone have caused more turmoil in my household than anything since Bob Simpson himself. I've fought with my wife, my daughter, sometimes both at the same time over the subject of you. That last thing I ever thought I'd do was invite you into my house. But I'm forced to admit that much of the turmoil and arguing that you've caused was because of the preconceived notions that Mary and I had about you. Notions that, like Mary pointed out, are apparently wrong."

"I'm not inviting you over because you saved my life, although I'm grateful for that. I'm inviting you over because I think I was wrong about you. You're not Bob Simpson. You're an offshoot of him, but you're not him. And I think that maybe you're starting to get out of that stage. My daughter adores you Bill, absolutely adores you. But I also realize that maybe you feel the same way about her. That maybe you were telling me the complete and honest truth that day I came over to your house. If that is so, I apologize for not believing you and ask that you understand why I didn't."

"I do." I said. "I probably would've reacted the same in your shoes."

"I suppose you would have." He said. "I'm not sure I like you yet. I'm still holding judgement on that matter, but I'm going to give you a chance. Just like any father gives any suitor their daughter brings home."

"Thank you." I said.

"You asked me the other day if I wanted to live to see grandkids."

"Yes." I said.

"I do." He nodded. "And I assume that you intend to provide those grandkids?"

I swallowed nervously again. "Yes." I finally said. "I do."

He nodded slowly, taking a long drink from his beer. "Be sure you treat my daughter right Bill." He said. "She's the only one I got. I intend to live long enough to kick your ass if you ever hurt her. Do you understand?"

"I do." I told him. "And you're gonna have to live a long time to see that Mr. Blackmore."

We stared at each other for a moment. Finally his expression softened. "Who do you like?" He asked, jerking his head towards the television.

"Like?" I asked.

"In baseball?" He clarified, as if I was an idiot. "You're from Spokane so I assume you like the Mariners."

"Well to tell you the truth Mr. Blackmore…"

"Jack." He said. "Call me Jack."

"Jack." I said, the name sounding strange on my lips. "To tell you the truth I'm not much of a baseball fan at all. In fact I don't really follow sports at all."

"You don't watch sports?" He asked, looking at me as if I was some sort of communist radical.

I shook my head. "No."

"If you're going to be my son-in-law Bill, we're going to have to change that."

The next day Jack Blackmore went under the knife for a triple bypass operation. They cut open his leg and removed arteries from it. They then split open his chest, stopped his heart and installed those arteries in his heart, bypassing the occluded vessels. They restarted his heart and sewed him back up. The procedure took nearly five hours to complete from anesthesia to recovery room. Nina and Mary spent the day there, hanging around in the surgery waiting room, reading old magazines, drinking coffee, and worrying.

I spent the day in school and at work, doing some worrying of my own. At the front of my mind was the fact that I'd most likely pushed fate off of it's path once more. Mr. Blackmore, Jack, was supposed to be dead in all likelihood. But now he wasn't. Was fate going to work swiftly to reclaim him? Was he going to die on the operating table, a victim of reaction to anesthesia, improper procedure, or some other malady? Was he going to die of a post-op infection? A thousand things could go wrong, any of which a vengeful fate could seize upon in order to take the wayward Jack Blackmore out of the picture.

Since he was in the hospital where I worked I stopped up to see how things were going at every opportunity. I popped by upon arrival to find Nina and Mary still in the waiting room, waiting anxiously. I hugged Nina and told her it would be all right. She wiped a few tears away as she heard this. The words felt almost like a lie on my lips. By my second break he was out of surgery but not allowed any visitors yet. I offered more words of encouragement before heading back to my station. By my last break they'd both been in to see him. Their moods were better and they were more relaxed. He'd come out of surgery just fine, they told me, though he was in considerable pain.

I went back up when my shift was done and found them both in the private room that he'd been moved to. They were sitting in the chairs by his bed, just watching him as he floated in and out of consciousness. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that he'd been heavily medicated.

"How's he doing?" I asked the two women in his life.

Before they could answer, Jack himself spoke up. "Like shit." He said thickly, his eyes turning to me.

"Not good huh?" I asked him, stepping closer.

"It feels like someone chopped my goddam chest open with an axe." He said.

"Jack." Mary admonished automatically. "Your language."

He gave her a look, a look that only people that have been married for thirty-three years can pass.

I stayed with them until visiting hours were over. They seemed to have no problem with my presence there. Nina and I held hands as the conversation went back and forth and as Jack went in and out. He tried explaining the finer points of the Mariner's strategy to me but the Demerol or whatever they were giving him made him continually forget what he was saying.

When we finally left him for the evening I rode the elevator down with Mary and Nina and we walked out to the parking lot. Their car was parked in the visitor lot while mine was parked in the employee lot. I walked them to their car and it was time for me to make my leave.

Mary walked around to the driver's side of her car while Nina and I stood at the passenger door, looking awkwardly at each other.

"Well," I said, "I'll see you tomorrow. Are you going to be here?"

"Only in the late afternoon." She said. "Since Daddy's doing fine I'm going back to school and ROP."

"Oh." I nodded, casting an eye at Mary, who was watching us, refusing to get into the car. "Well, I'll see you at school tomorrow then and I'll probably stop by here after work."

"Good." She smiled hesitantly. "Well…"

"Well…" I repeated. We continued to stare at each other, casting nervous glances at her mother.

"Oh for Christ's sakes." Mary suddenly announced. "If you want to kiss each other go ahead and do it. I've seen you do it enough through the curtains."

With that she huffily got into the car.

Nina and I looked at her and then at each other, astonishment and embarrassment on our faces.

"You heard Mom." Nina told me, smiling.

"Yep." I said, leaning in and kissing her.

The next day Nina went back to school, as she'd said. She would not be able to visit her father in the hospital until at least four o'clock. Jack was continuing his recovery and was reported to be doing well. Mary Blackmore was holding vigil at the hospital.

I reported to work as usual, not stopping upstairs. At my first break I stood hesitantly outside the central supply department. Finally I pushed the elevator call. When it arrived I rode upstairs.

When I entered the room Mary and Jack were talking softly about something. They both looked at me strangely as I entered. We stared at each other, nobody wanting to talk, neither of them wanting to ask me what I was doing there without Nina.

Finally I stepped in. "Jack?" I asked. "How are you doing?"

He hesitated for a moment, continuing to look at me. At last he said. "A little better. Not much, but a little."

"Good." I replied, going over and grabbing a seat.

Jack stayed in the hospital for two weeks. He suffered no post-op infections and in fact made what was termed by his cardiologist a "remarkable recovery". During this time I made it a habit to head upstairs on breaks and check on him, to pass a few words with the elder Blackmores. It was only two days before they stopped looking at me strangely and started greeting me with something approaching warmth. And of course I visited after work when Nina was there.

Understandably Nina and I had little time or place or mood for physical affections. Our brief kiss as we parted at night as Nina climbed into her Dad's car, Mary climbed in her car, and I climbed in mine became an accepted ritual with her mother but there were no rendezvous at the empty house, no making out, no dates.

When Jack was released he was still in pain, particularly when we moved his chest or took a deep breath, but he was much better. He was instructed to get up every day and walk or perform some other form of exercise. He was instructed to change his diet, to avoid alcohol, and to avoid everything else that was the least amount of fun. He would be off work for at least another month before he would be allowed back on light duty for another two months. If all went well he would be able to resume his route about the time that Nina and I left for college.

Two days after Jack went home, I went to work as usual. The first thing that happened was Mindy greeting me at the locker room door as I emerged dressed in my scrubs and sterile cap.

"Hi Mindy." I said, somewhat surprised to see her there. "What's up?"

"Hi Bill." She greeted, smiling. "I got a question for you."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Since you're my favorite employee," She said. "I thought I'd ask you first.

My husband and I bought tickets for "Fiddler On The Roof" on Saturday night down at the theater. But the asshole went and got himself a promotion at work and has to go to Seattle for a training session over the weekend."

"Really?" I asked, immediately interested.

"Yeah." She said sourly. "Anyway, I'm trying to get rid of the tickets now.

I paid twenty apiece for them but if you're interested I'd be willing to let them go for ten apiece." She smiled a little. "Of course they won't let you have the complimentary glass of wine, but hey? So what do you say?"

"I say, will you take a check?" I asked.

Nina was delighted to go to the theater with me. She'd never been to such a thing before, had never even seen the movie version of Fiddler On The Roof. She was a little nervous about having to dress nice for the occasion, rarely did we go someplace where a dress code was in place, but she was excited about it whenever I talked to her.

She called me up Saturday afternoon about one o'clock.

"Mom and Dad want to know if you'd like to come over for dinner with us before we go?" She asked me.

"You're kidding." I said, feeling a little nervous myself at the prospect. Though the Blackmores had warmed to me during Jack's stay in the hospital I still had not been inside their house since the day of his heart attack. To me it didn't seem we were quite ready for that step despite the invitations from them.

"Not at all." Nina replied. "She's making her roast chicken."

I had enjoyed Mary's roast chicken once before, in the days before our break-up, back when they'd still thought I was a suitable companion for their daughter. It was truly a work of art.

"Well," I said doubtfully. "What do you think?"

"I think you should come." She said softly. "They're trying Bill, they're trying to accept you. I think you might do some damage to that if you refuse."

I sighed. "What time then?"

"Four-thirty."

"Tell your Mom and Dad I'd be honored to accept their invitation."

I had just hung up the phone and was heading for the bathroom when it rang again.

"You got that?" I heard Dad yell from the other room where he was watching a nature program on PBS.

"Yeah." I called back. "It's probably Nina again."

He grunted something in reply and I picked up the phone. "Hello?"

It was not Nina. "Bill Stevens please?" A gruff voice demanded more than asked. I was immediately on guard just hearing it.

"This is Bill." I said slowly. "And who is this?"

"Mr. Stevens." Said the voice. "Sergeant Matt Cable, U.S. Marines. How are you today?"

U.S. Marines? What the hell? A part of me wondered if this had anything to do with the Beirut bombing that I'd tried to stop. Was Sergeant Cable from intelligence? If so, he wouldn't have called on the phone, would he? "I'm just fine, uh, Sergeant. What can I help you with?"

"Well Mr. Stevens." Cable told me forcefully. "The question here is what I can help YOU with."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you planning to go to college?" He asked next.

"Yes." I said. "Uh Sergeant, perhaps you could…"

"Good." He went on, not even hearing me. "And have you thought about how you're going to pay for college?"

Suddenly I got it. He was a recruiter! He was trying to get me to join the Marines. How the hell did he get my phone number? I didn't remember any recruiters calling me at home in my previous life. But even as I thought this a vague edge of a memory surfaced, more a sense of deja vu. Maybe they HAD called me and I'd just dismissed it.

"Uh, yes Sergeant, I have college expenses all taken care of. Thank you very much for asking. Now I'm kind of busy and…"

"Ahh." Cable went on again. "But did you realize just how expensive college really is? The average cost today for a four-year degree is approximately thirty thousand dollars. Do you have that kind of money?"

"I will." I said shortly. "Listen, I appreciate your calling and all, but I'm really not interested in joining the Marines. How did you get my number anyway?"

"The high schools in the area provide us with a list of graduating seniors." He said absently. "But really Mr. Stevens, I think you should give some thought to the Corps. It will give you four years of discipline and maturity. You'll get to serve your country in the most honorable way imaginable, and you'll make over forty thousand dollars for college while you're doing it. You can also learn valuable job skills…"

"Like charging machine gun nests?" I asked.

"What?" He said, confused. He was obviously not accustomed to having his sales pitch interrupted.

"Valuable skills you said. Is charging machinegun nests and jumping out of landing craft onto a hostile beach a valuable skill? What if I get killed? Can't really go to college then, can I?"

He paused for the longest time. Finally he said… "You misunderstand Mr. Stevens. Not everybody in the Corps does that. There are many support positions that require skilled individuals. We will train you in those skills. For instance, computer science, an up and coming field. We can train you in it. By the time you get out you'll possess a valuable civilian skill and you'll have money to go to college with to expand upon it. Not only that, you'll have had the satisfaction of serving your country."

"Uh huh." I replied. "And suppose I take the ASVAB and it tells you that I'd make a lousy computer tech? Suppose it tells you that I'm not good for much of anything besides shooting a gun and charging out of landing craft? The ASVAB is taken AFTER I've signed my name, right? So if it tells you I should be a grunt and I've asked for computer science, where am I going to end up?"

This threw him completely off guard. "Uh… well," He stammered. "The fact of the matter is…"

"The fact of the matter is that you just want me to sign my name on the line and you don't care what happens to me after that. You don't care because you got whatever points they've given you for signing up another stupid kid so your cohorts can train me to love the idea of dying for my country in some conflict over oil supplies or something equally worthless. Do you believe in honoring your father Sergeant Cable?"

"Well, of course." He answered, reeling from what I'd just said. He didn't have enough sense to gleam the fact that I wasn't interested and end the conversation.

"Well my father didn't charge machine gun nests or fight VC. He braved hostile police and National Guard soldiers so he could smoke dope and burn his draft card. If I was to join the Marines after he went through all of that, it would be an awful betrayal, don't you think?"

He didn't answer that one, there was only silence on the line.

"So if it's all the same to you," I finished. "I'll just go to college with the money I have, study well, and leave the machine gun nest charging to those too stupid to see through your used car salesman speech. And hopefully we'll have ourselves a nice war sometime and they'll reinstate the draft so I can go to protests and smoke dope and burn MY draft card and honor my father in a manner that he so deserves. Good day sir, and please lose this phone number."

I clicked down the phone, smiling to myself. That was the most fun I'd had without Nina in quite some time.

The day was a glorious example of spring in Spokane; perhaps the nicest time of the year in our city. Unlike Western Washington, we don't get near the rainfall and cloud cover in the eastern portion of the state. At ten minutes to four, when I headed over to the Blackmore house, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was a deep blue, the trees were blooming with fresh leaves and fruit blossoms, and the temperature was a pleasant seventy-two degrees.

I was actually sweating a little in my suit and tie, both from the warmth upon my thick clothing and from the nervousness of having dinner with Nina's parents. I wheeled to the curb, took a few deep breaths to gather my courage, and then headed to the door.

Nina answered it and she quickly made me forget about her parents. She was wearing a pretty black and white dress complete with nylons and high heels. Her face was made up and her hair was styled attractively. I felt my eyes widen as I took in the sight of her, as I saw her blush at my perusal.

"I've never worn anything like this before." She said, embarrassed. "Mom helped me pick it out."

"It's beautiful." I told her, leaning forward and giving her a peck on the lips. "Your mother has good taste."

"Thank you." Mary Blackmore said dryly from just inside the doorway. It was my turn to blush.

"You look very nice too Bill." Nina squeaked, standing aside to allow me entry.

I stepped inside to find her mother, wearing a pantsuit and a cooking apron, appraising me. We looked at each other for a moment.

"How do you do Mary?" I asked politely. "Thank you for inviting me over."

She nodded, her face forming the slightest hint of a smile. "I told you that you're welcome in our house Bill." She said. "And Nina's right. You DO look very nice. Are you hungry?"

"Famished." I assured her, telling the absolute truth.

"Well good." She said, turning and heading for the kitchen. "Because I've made enough for an army."

While her mother went to finish dinner Nina led me into the living room where Jack was sitting in his recliner, watching television. The Mariners were battling the Blue Jays and apparently getting the shit kicked out of them. Jack seemed in a foul mood because of this.

"Hi Jack." I said nervously, seeing the scowl on his face.

"Goddam bunch of pansies!" He yelled at the TV as a Mariner hit into a double play. Beside him a glass of lemonade sat untouched so long the ice was melted.

"Jack, your language." Came drifting out of the kitchen.

He shot an irritated look in that direction for a moment and then turned to me. "There's no hope." He told me.

"No?" I asked carefully.

"None." He assured me. "Well don't just stand there. Have a seat. Watch this pathetic excuse for a game with me until dinner. Maybe you'll learn something."

"Okay." I said, heading to the couch. Nina came with me. When she sat down she did it inexpertly, since she was not used to wearing a dress. It hiked all the way up to mid-thigh before she shifted and pulled it back down. It took every ounce of my willpower to keep from gazing at this directly, instead of with my peripheral vision. Somehow I managed.

Jack saw my struggle, I know he did. I think I gained a point or two with him.

He continued to explain the finer points of baseball to me as we sat there, while Nina looked bored. His conversation was peppered with the occasional "goddam", which was always answered by an admonishment from Mary in the kitchen, no matter how softly he muttered it. Each admonishment was met with an irritated stare back towards the kitchen.

When Mary called us to dinner we sat down at the table, Nina seated next to me. We dug into delicately basted and roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, and homemade biscuits. It was all as wonderful as I remembered it. Many boys, when taking dinner with their girlfriend's family for the first time make the mistake of only eating one helping for fear of looking like a pig. I did no such thing. I ate until I was stuffed, refilling my plate three times. It wasn't hard to do. I knew I'd earned some brownie points with Mary for doing so.

We pushed away our plates at last and Jack stifled a burp, an action that earned him a sharp look from his wife but no verbalization.

"Great dinner Mare," He told her affectionately, patting his stomach. "Up to your usual standards."

"I agree." I put in. "Your chicken was divine."

"I'm glad you liked it." She said tonelessly, though obviously pleased with the praise. She stood up. "Let me start clearing the table."

While she began picking up the dishes Jack turned to me. "Chicken is good." He told me. "Especially the way Mary does it, but there's nothing like fresh meat you've brought down yourself. You like venison?"

"I don't know." I told him. "I've never had it."

He looked at me in disbelief for a moment. "You've never had venison?"

"Never." I told him. "My dad doesn't hunt."

"So you've never had elk either?" He asked next.

"Never."

"Boy," He said. "You've lived in Spokane all of your life and you've never had venison or elk?"

I shook my head.

"Amazing." He said, staring. "So you don't have a hunting rifle then?"

"I've never fired a gun in my life." I told him.

"Bill." He said seriously. "You and I are going to have to take a little trip one of these Octobers over to the panhandle. You're not one of those goddamn animal rights activists are you?"

"Jack." Mary warned from the sink.

"No." I told him, wondering if he was really offering to take me hunting. Was this the same man who had stormed my house on New Years Day? "I suppose I've never been hunting before because my Dad has never been hunting before.

There was nobody to show me how to do it. I'd really like to learn how if you'd teach me." I told him.

He nodded, smiling. "The first October you have free, you come see me." He said. "We'll get you a rifle and a license and we'll head up. I'll show you what it's really all about."

"That'll be cool." I answered truthfully. "I'll be looking forward to it."

"I think Mom and Dad are actually starting to like you." Nina told me as we drove towards downtown and the theater building.

"Yeah." I agreed, resting my hand on her nyloned knee. "Weird, isn't it?"

"They're starting to see you as I do Bill." She told me. "Especially Daddy."

I looked over at her. "I'm not gonna have to kiss him, am I?" I asked.

She chuckled. "Who knows?" She asked. "Maybe he's a good kisser. He's certainly done it more than I have."

"Well maybe we'll play a little catch-up tonight." I suggested slyly.

"Maybe we will." She answered back, just as slyly.

We both enjoyed the play immensely. Nina because it was the first time she'd seen a live play and because the story was both romantic and tragic, elements she loved in her art. Me because it was one of my favorite productions and because I was seeing it with Topal, the Russian Jew who played the part in the movie, cast as the lead character, something I'd never been able to see in my previous life. The acting and singing were magnificent and by the end Nina had tears streaming down her cheeks as the Jews were forced from their village. I myself had to stifle tears despite having seen the play and the movie multiple times before.

We joined the throngs exiting the theater and made our way to my car, walking hand in hand, talking about what we'd just seen as we went. Nina went on and on about the story, the plot, the acting, the thrill of seeing it live. I was glad that I was there to share this first experience with her, to hear her reactions to it.

When we reached my Datsun I opened the door for her and she sat down. Her skirt rode up again as she did this, reaching well above mid-thigh. This time there was no father to think about and my eyes drank in the sight of her legs, clad in dark nylon and spread just a tad. I felt warmth spreading to various parts of my body as I witnessed this.

Nina saw where my eyes were glued and she smiled, pulling down her skirt demurely. "What were YOU looking at?" She asked teasingly.

"A work of art." I told her, making her blush.

I got into my side of the car and started it up, heading for the freeway. My hand dropped to her left knee, leaving it only to shift gears.

"It's still early." Nina told me, glancing at her watch.

I looked at mine, seeing it was shortly after ten o'clock. "Kind of." I agreed.

"It's a nice night." She said next, looking at me, her own hand dropping to my thigh.

"That it is." I answered, suppressing a smile.

Silence developed. Finally she said, "So why don't we go find a nice place to sit for a while and just look at the stars and the moon?"

"The stars and the moon?" I asked lightly.

"Yes." She said firmly. "They're very pretty tonight. I'd like to look at them. Surely you know a place where we can look at them alone."

I grinned, nodding slowly. "I think I know such a place." I said, putting on the gas a little.

"I thought you might." She said.

The place was a little used park near the falls, almost directly across the river from the larger park where the high school students liked to have their keggers. As a matter of fact we could hear the faint hoots and howls and drunken laughter mixed with the indecipherable sounds of car stereos drifting over the roar of the falls towards us. A kegger was going on as we sat there.

I had long since removed my tie and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. I'd also thrown my jacket in the back of the car. We walked over to a picnic table and sat on the surface of it, our feet resting on the wooden seat, looking out at the falling water, smelling the mist. Our hands intertwined gently and we simply looked for a while, not speaking. There was a light breeze, warm enough to keep us from shivering and the sound of thousands of crickets chirping came from behind us. The stars and the moon were shining in the sky.

"It really is a beautiful night." I offered, edging a little closer to her.

"Yes." She agreed, letting her head fall to my shoulder. "It's too bad we don't have a blanket or something so we could lie on the ground and really look at the stars. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"I have the blanket in my trunk from when we went on the picnic last month." I offered, thanking whatever gods there was that I was a lousy housekeeper.

Nina gulped and then raised her head back up. "Really?" She asked.

"Really." I said seriously.

"Break it out." She told me.

We spread it about fifty yards away from the car, near the cliff that led to the river below the falls. When the wind blew right a fine spray of mist would hit us delicately. We lay down on our backs, about a foot apart, our hands together, our heads looking upwards.

"Do you like astronomy?" She asked me, her thumb tracing circles around the back of my hand.

I shrugged. "I've read a little on it." I told her, only semi-lying. In my previous life I'd taken an astronomy course in college as a science elective. That had been in my pot-smoking days. There's nothing like getting stoned and heading up to the college's observatory in the middle of the night. I got an A in the class.

"So have I." She told me. "I bet I can name more stars than you."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "What's the bet?"

"Loser has to kiss the winner until they say to stop." She offered.

I nodded, feeling my penis stir in my suit pants. "You've got yourself a bet."

She pointed to the most obvious. "Polaris." She said.

I pointed to another. "Regula." I told her, pulling out my big guns.

"Amateur." She scoffed, pointing again. "Betelgeuse."

"Not bad." I allowed, pointing again at a fuzzy blur. "You see that one?"

"Which one?" She asked.

Gently I took her face in my hands and pointed it in the direction I was looking. "That red one over there about ten degrees west of Cassiopeia."

"I see it." She said, looking at me instead of the star.

"That's Mars." I said firmly.

"No it's not." She told me. "Mars is a planet and the planets are all in the ecliptic. Besides, Mars isn't visible right now."

"It's not Mars?" I asked innocently.

"No." She told me.

"Bummer." I said. "I guess I lose then."

We stared at each other in the moonlight. "I guess you do." She told me, angling her face towards mine.

There was no slow build up to our kisses, our tongues found each other in the first two seconds while our arms and hands pulled our bodies together. I felt the scratchy material of her dress beneath my hands, the outline of her bra straps bulging from beneath. Her hands yanked the back of my dress shirt out of my pants and then plunged beneath it, her manicured nails scratching at my back.

I rolled her onto her back, pressing my body to hers and began to kiss her neck, inhaling the perfume she'd applied, working my way down to the hollow of her throat. She arched her back as I kissed her there, licking lightly with my tongue, tasting her delicate skin.

"I've missed this so much." She told me breathlessly as my hand slid up her flank and across the bulge of her right breast.

"Have you?" I muttered, nipping at her skin lightly, my fingers coming to rest on the silver button at the front of her dress. It was cool to the touch, round, and I swirled around it, playing with it.

"Yes." She nodded, kissing the top of my head, her hands pulling free from my shirt.

Slowly I undid the button, leaving a gap in the front of her dress. She smiled, arching her back a little more. My fingers dropped to the second button. In the moonlight I could now make out the top of her bra and the upper swell of her breasts. I leaned my head down and kissed her chest, just above this, running my tongue down to the top of her bra. She shivered in delight, pulling me closer. I undid the remaining buttons, spreading the dress wide open, so her entire bra was visible to me.

I let my mouth travel between her breasts, feeling the cotton material pressing into my flesh and then I began to kiss her ribcage below the bra cups; teasing, soft kisses punctuated with licks. Nina moaned softly at the sensation, her fingers finding my hair. I worked my way back and forth beneath her breasts, my mouth kissing every inch of the exposed skin of her chest. Occasionally I would rub my cheek across her bra cup and feel the material and the protrusion of her nipples sliding across.

Finally my hands slid behind her back and found the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick it was undone. I slid my hands back around to the front and pushed upward, moving the now-loosened bra off of her breasts, baring them. I looked at them in the moonlight, seeing the rigid nipples, seeing how they heaved up and down with her excited respiration.

"They're beautiful." I told Nina softly. "I'd like to kiss them."

"Ohh." She groaned, pulling my head down.

I took the right nipple in my mouth, sucking on it gently, as I had in the car that night. I swirled my tongue around it, suckled it, kissed it, made it stand out proudly before I switched to the other one. Nina held me firmly to her as my hand dropped down and landed on her knee, where it began squeezing and caressing through the nylon. Slowly I began to slide my hand upward.

I was ready to halt the exploration of my hand at the slightest sign of protest but I received none. Her legs slowly parted, encouraging further travel. I shifted to the inside, my digits trailing over the smooth nylon and tight muscle of her thigh. I reached the hem of her dress and slowly continued onward. She opened her legs wider. I squeezed her inner thigh, marveling at the feel of her legs in pantyhose and then the back of my hand reached the junction of her legs; the panty portion of the hose. I felt dampness against my knuckles and Nina drew in a sharp breath, pushing her crotch into me.

Continuing to suck her breasts I let my hand turn over so my fingers were now touching her. I felt the wet material and the outline of her swollen lips. I pushed slightly, making circles around the area, memorizing the feel of this moment, making out the bulge of her clit through the thin layer of clothing.

"Oh God." Nina moaned, her hips bucking a little. "That feels so good."

I raised my head from her breasts and moved it back up, so I was staring in her eyes. They were shining and very excited.

"It's not supposed to feel bad." I whispered to her, bringing my lips to hers once more.

Her tongue plunged into my mouth, attacking mine viciously, her lips sucking it into her mouth. Her hand slid down to my crotch and began to squeeze my erection through my dress pants, making my own hips begin an involuntary rhythm.

My fingers left her junction and continued upward, across her lower stomach, seeking and finding the top of her pantyhose just under her belly button. I slid one finger beneath the elastic, touching her bare stomach, letting it slide back and forth along the edge.

"Yes." She whispered into my mouth, sucking my upper lip, running her tongue along my teeth.

I pushed downward once again, this time beneath the pantyhose, my fingers feeling the soft flesh of her lower stomach and finally encountering coarse, curly hair. I pushed onward and she spread her legs even more. I touched warm wetness and smooth lips, felt the erect clit and then my middle finger was resting against her lips. Her crotch began to push upward against my hand, demanding more, so I gave it to her. My middle finger slowly slid into her tight warmth, her membranes clutching at me greedily. It slid in easily, lubricated by her copious juices. She was tight, tighter than anything I'd ever felt before, tight enough that I worried if intercourse was even possible with her.

"Oh Bill." She moaned, squeezing me extra hard. Suddenly her fingers were fumbling with my belt. She pulled the end free of the loop and gave a sharp yank, freeing the buckle.

"Nina?" I asked, panting.

"I want to feel it." She told me, nipping at my neck.

I nodded and her fingers popped open the button on my pants. She yanked the zipper down and plunged her hand inside, diving beneath my underwear. Suddenly her cool, eager fingers were around my cock, feeling it, touching it, moving harshly over it while her hips continued to move up and down under my own fingers.

She was inexpert at the job but that didn't matter. The feel of her hand on my bare flesh was thrilling enough, the thought that she was touching me intimately driving me on. I let my finger slide out of her a little and I began pushing against her clit, rubbing my hand in circles.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her own hand becoming erratic and finally dropping away from me. "Yesss Bill!" She cried, grabbing my forearm and pulling it harder into her. Her hips were now blurring up and down, moving with instinctive force. Her juices were soaking me as I rubbed her clit and slid my digit in and out.

She lost the ability to speak coherently. She only moaned and said things like, "Ohhh yess, ohhh Bill, ooooh."

Finally she arched upward and all of her muscles tightened. Her fingernails bit into my forearm painfully and from her lips came: "Mmmmmmm!"

I continued to rub her until she relaxed once more, her butt dropping back down to the blanket. A relaxed sigh escaped from her lips and she looked up at me. Slowly I pulled my hand from her crotch. It was dripping wet and I resisted the urge to put it to my nose, to inhale her special scent for the first time.

"Wow." She muttered, taking deep breaths.

"Are you okay?" I asked gently, a little worried that I'd overwhelmed her.

"Yesss." She breathed. "That was the most incredible thing I've ever felt. Having you do it is much better than…" She stopped suddenly, realizing what she was saying.

I must say that I was shocked by her words. "Better than what?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Though it was very dim lighting I could tell she was blushing again. "Well," She said, giggling a little. "You know? After our other, uh, sessions, I had to do something to get myself to sleep at night. There's nothing wrong with it you know."

No there was nothing wrong with it. In fact the mental image of Nina laying in her bed and masturbating herself was so powerful and erotic that I nearly came just thinking about it. For some reason I just hadn't considered the possibility that she was doing that, although my first act upon returning home was a quick session with my five best friends.

"I think that's very sexy." I told her.

She giggled again. "Now you know one of my secrets. You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Of course not." I said, laughing. Who would I tell? Her Dad? Her Mom?

"It's just embarrassing." She said, her hand touching my cheek. "But it was nothing like it felt when you did it to me just now. I mean, wow." She shook her head.

"I'm glad I could help." I said, kissing her lips.

"What about you?" She asked. "Do you ever, you know?"

"Masturbate?" I asked teasingly.

"Well, yes." She nodded.

Now had I been a normal teenager I wouldn't have admitted it under torture. I would have claimed that I'd never so much as laid a finger on my penis, not even to pee, not even to wash it. Teenagers have a horror of being discovered masturbating. But I was not an ordinary teenager and I knew that women were as turned on by the thought of a guy jerking off as guys were thinking about women doing it.

"All the time." I told her. "Especially after one of our sessions. Especially then."

"Really?" She asked, her eyes shining with arousal again.

"Really." I nodded. "After we make out I HAVE to. You see, when I'm uh, turned on for a long time without uh, relief, it actually causes pain if I don't."

"You mean blue balls?" She said clinically.

I laughed. "Nina, you never fail to surprise me." I told her. "Yes, that's what I mean."

"So every time you and I have made out you've gone home and…"

"Whacked off." I confirmed.

"Wow." She whispered, licking her lips. "What do you think about when you do it?"

"You." I said. "Making love to you."

She gulped, her eyes drifting down to my dick, which was still protruding through my pants, as erect as it could be. "So you're going to do that tonight when you get home?" She asked.

"First thing." I answered.

She hesitated for a second. "Maybe I could, you know, do it for you?"

"What?" I asked, my dick giving a twitch at the thought.

"You did it for me." She said, sliding her hand over my chest. "The least I could do is return the favor, right?"

I swallowed. "Well." I said. "If you really want to…"

"I do." She whispered, pushing me onto my back. "Just tell me how to do it."

She reached out and grasped me once more, encircling my shaft with her fingers.

"Do I move it up and down?" She asked, doing just that.

"Yeah." I breathed, lost in the sensation of her hand upon me. I directed her to move it upward a little more and to increase her speed and loosen her grip. Eager to learn, she complied. Her hand stroked me softly, finally gaining speed as my hips began to move up and down.

"Involuntary action of voluntary muscles." She said, watching this phenomenon. She speeded up, increasing the pressure.

"How much will come out?" She asked me, just as I started to feel the tingles running up my spine.

"A lot at this point." I groaned, actually humping her hand.

"Yeah?"

"Yeahhhhhh!" I breathed. "I'm gonna…"

She watched intently as orgasm assaulted me and my dick began to spurt jet after jet of pent up semen from the head. I groaned in pleasure, the exquisite feeling of relief, doubled by the fact that it was not my hand that was providing it. It shot straight up and landed on my stomach, my pants, my shirt. It covered Nina's hand, running down the back of it, sticking to her fingers. The blue ball sensation, which had been building in my testicles, was releived in an instant.

When the last bit dribbled out Nina removed her hand and looked at it. "Wow." She said. "That was very sexy Bill. Can we do that again sometime?"

"You bet." I agreed, basking in the afterglow.

It took a few minutes to clean ourselves up. There was a hopeless stain on my dress pants that would require a dry cleaner to remove but Nina had somehow managed to only wrinkle her dress and run her pantyhose in one spot.

It was high on her thigh, probably a result of my hand being in there and her mother would most likely not notice it.

When we were composed we kissed each other one more time and carried the blanket back to my car. From across the river the sound of the kegger continued. I smiled as I thought that I'd just had much more fun than most of them would have and that I wouldn't wake up with a hangover as a result.

We talked of inconsequential things on the drive home, both of us still glowing from the experience we had just shared, both of us realizing that things were moving forward in our relationship. I gave her a long, luxuriant kiss goodnight at her front door, not even caring that her mother was probably watching, and then watched her until she was safely inside.

I drove home to a darkened house, my parents already in bed. I went directly to bed, smiling as I fell asleep.

Chapter 13

Graduation night came at last. We put on our dress clothes and then covered them with gowns. We put stupid looking hats on our heads and filed into the school auditorium where our parents were assembled. We listened to a bunch of boring speeches by the principal, a guest speaker, and the school valedictorian, Carrie Founder, who had an appointment with a good-looking loser and an overdose of anti-depressants in her future. She rattled on and on so long that she began receiving catcalls from her bored peers. At last we filed across the stage where the principal read our names from a little card that we each discreetly slipped to him and he then handed us a fake roll of paper with a ribbon attached to it. Our real diplomas, we were promised, would come in the mail in a week or so. Flashbulbs exploded from the audience like strobe lights.

Nina, Mike, and I hung together through all of this, passing the occasional comment under our breaths, Nina and I holding hands for much of the night. We got our fake diplomas and returned to our seats, watching, catatonic, as the rest of our class marched through one by one. Why are these so-called "great memories" that people go on and on about; graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, so damn dull while you're actually sitting through them? Most of the students, myself included, were looking forward to what came AFTER the ceremony.

The school was of course sponsoring a graduation party. It was to be at a local community center and was touted as a fun-filled celebration with dancing, music, and food in a safe, alcohol-free environment. Of course no one but the geekiest planned to be there although many had claimed to their parents that was where they were going. The REAL party was to be at the falls where three kegs were being brought in for the occasion. Marijuana sales had also gone through the roof in the proceeding two days.

When the ceremony was over everyone headed out to the parking lot. Hundreds of students and parents hugged each other, slapped each other on the back, shook hands, posed for the obligatory pictures, and generally congratulated each other on surviving the Spokane Public School System with their lives and sanity intact. Then the parents began to drift to their cars, leaving the students to their own devices. Of course the memory of Lisa Sanchez's untimely death on the previous graduation night was strong among the parents. Admonishments to be careful, and not to drink and drive, and other worried comments echoed through the parking lot followed by the reassurances of those that thought themselves immortal.

Even my Dad, knowing what he did about me, was worried.

"You'll be okay tonight Bill?" He asked as we stood next to his car.

"You bet Dad." I told him. "I'm going to be the designated driver tonight. I'll get everyone home safe."

He nodded slowly and then climbed into the car, Mom beside him. They drove off and I returned to Nina, who was standing with her own parents.

"Congratulations Bill." Jack told me, holding out his hand. I shook it and then received a surprise when Mary, repeating his words, actually stepped forward and hugged me.

"Thank you." I told both of them, giving Mary my best hug before she released me.

"Where are you two going tonight?" Jack asked next.

"Oh, just to a party." Nina replied vaguely.

Jack gave her a knowing look. "And will there be drinking at this party?" He asked.

Nina hesitated and was probably about to give him a pathetic lie. Nina was not a very good liar, particularly to her parents. But I jumped in.

"There certainly will be." I said.

Nina looked sharply at me, her expression disbelief. Jack and Mary also seemed surprised.

"It's graduation night." I went on. "I believe that the law states you MUST drink on graduation night. But have no fear. I'm driving and I take that very seriously. I'll get Nina home safely, I promise."

"You're not going to drink?" Jack asked, skeptical.

"Maybe a beer or two at the beginning." I answered. "But I'll be sober when it's time to come home. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." Jack told me, his eyes boring into me. "Remember what I told you about my daughter. She's the only one I got."

"And remember what I told you about your daughter." I shot back. "She'll be safe with me. Won't you Nina?"

"Of course." She said softly, watching the exchange and realizing it was taking place on a level she was not a part of.

Jack and Mary finally climbed in their car and drove off. Nina and I went to find Mike, who was explaining to his parents how he was going to the school sponsored party where no alcohol was allowed. His parents were reassured by this and were smiling as they entered their own car. When they were gone we all looked at each other.

"Let's go." I said.

"Fuckin aye!" Mike put in happily.

We climbed into my car and headed for the falls.

I must say that it was very eerie being at the party. You see, I'd attended it before when I'd graduated the first time in my previous life. The only differences were the presence of Mike, who had not graduated before, and Nina, who had not been a member of the party-group before. Aside from that, everything was the same. Everything.

The kegs were scattered throughout the parking lot as they had been before, lines of people, still dressed in their dress clothes winding their way to the tap to fill their cups. The same cooperative effort with the car stereos had occurred, with everyone agreeing to tune them to the local rock station and not to play any tapes. The music of Van Halen, Foreigner, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, and others marched by and I was almost able to predict which song was coming next. The conversations were the same and though I hadn't memorized them on my first trip through, hearing them as I went by it was uncanny how much my subconscious had absorbed seventeen years before. It was a little like being in the middle of a dream, one of those dreams you have of prior events in your life, but never had the sensation of deja vu been so strong.

Nina, Mike and I paid our money and had our hands stamped. I quickly drank down three beers, giving myself a pleasant, non-dangerous buzz. The alcohol was able to dampen the sensation a little but not completely. It was very disquieting.

Mike of course was hitting the keg as fast as he could, filling his cup and then walking immediately to the back of the line. By the time he reached the tap again, his cup would be empty. He then repeated the process. He also had several joints with him, which he shared with those in line around him. It was less than an hour before he was hopelessly wasted. This was not surprising.

What was surprising was the fact that Nina was sticking with him and doing the exact same thing. She was drinking beer like water and hitting every joint or pipe that was passed her way. I'd never seen her do anything like this before.

"You might want to slow down a little." I suggested to her as she came staggering over to me after her latest trip through the keg line. She was weaving and unsteady on her feet, spilling some of her beer on her arm.

"Fuck it!" She said, giggling. "I'm having a good time tonight. How many times in your life do you graduate?"

I nodded. "Good point. But be careful. If you keep up this pace you're going to be unconscious before too long."

She reached down and grabbed my cock through my pants, making me jump and look around to see if anyone had seen it. A few had, and they turned away, smirking.

"Nina!" I admonished, pushing her hand away.

"I'm not gonna pass out until I get what I want." She grinned, taking a huge drink of her beer.

Apparently Nina wasn't the only one whose inhibitions were being destroyed by alcohol. Every time she walked away from me some girl would come up and strike up a conversation. Most of them were girls that I'd bedded before during my "male-slut" period. Most of them made no bones about what they wanted.

I'd run into this before of course. When I stopped making my rounds and committed myself to Nina a lot of the girls continued to approach me for a while. They always used the line that I was used to, that they needed help "studying" and had heard that I was an awesome tutor. I would tell each one the same thing, that I had a girlfriend now and that my tutoring days were over. It hadn't taken long before the grapevine had informed all but the most aggressive that I was out of circulation. Even the most aggressive gave up after a while. But the party atmosphere and the alcohol had renewed a lot of the aggression. I believe I gave up more sex that night than I ever would have thought possible.

One girl, Jessica Round, was especially persistent. She would not take no for an answer. I remembered her well. A redhead that was a member of the elite, she'd been well versed in sexual technique before I ever got to her. She had been one of my favorites both because of her staggering good looks and because of the fact that she was on birth control pills, which made a condom unnecessary. She had been one of the longest holdouts when I'd dropped out of circulation.

Three times she approached me when Nina was getting her beer refilled or heading off to the porta-can to pee. On the third time she became nasty in her suggestions.

"C'mon," She pleaded, burping a little as she sipped from her beer. "I haven't had my pussy eaten with any skill since I came over to your house that time. Ditch that little lisping, skinny chick you're with and take a walk with me." She grinned. "You WON'T be sorry."

I bit back my anger for a second and took a deep breath. An idea came to me.

"Listen Jess." I said softly, conspiratorially. "Nina and I are pretty much committed now so I can't really do that."

"Nina." She scoffed. "What does that…"

"But." I said.

"But?" She asked hopefully.

"Well, I couldn't really take myself out of circulation without finding a suitable replacement, could I?"

She looked at me fuzzily. "What do you mean?"

I pointed at Mike, who was standing among a group of guys near the keg. They were all looking at the passing females with admiration and probably explaining to each other which one's they'd fucked, how they'd done it, and when they'd done it. A joint was being passed around while they conversed.

"You see Mike Meachen over there?" I asked her.

"Yeah?" She asked confused.

"He's even better at it than I am."

"Mike Meachen?" She asked, scowling.

"I've lectured him on the proper study techniques so that my name could live on. You get him to go for a walk with you and you won't be sorry."

"Mike Meachen?" She repeated again.

"Trust me on this Jess. He's good. All you have to do is tell him EXACTLY what you want him to do, and he'll do it. Be specific, he doesn't mind. He aims to please."

She appraised him for a moment. "Well," She said, "He IS kinda cute."

"Would I steer you wrong?" I asked. "Sensual pleasure is just waiting for you." I winked. "And of course, he's just as discreet as me. So go get him."

She smiled drunkenly. "Okay." She announced. "Thanks Bill."

She headed off in his direction. Nina returned a moment later, carrying a fresh beer. Her gait was very unsteady now and her eyes were glassy.

"What were you talking to Jessica for?" She asked with distaste and more than a little suspicion.

I shrugged. "She's kind of aggressive." I told her. "So I directed her attention elsewhere."

"You've, uh, done her before?" Nina asked.

"Nina…" I started, uncomfortable.

"I only ask because she used to come up to me all the time and ask what the deal was with you. And then she started asking me if I liked the "vacuum cleaner" treatment. She's a ho."

"I agree." I said. "And I'm sorry you had to deal with her. She's from a previous life Nina."

"Okay." Nina nodded, kissing my cheek. Her breath smelled of beer. "What's she doing over there with Mike?"

"Watch and see." I said happily, taking the cup out her hand and taking a quick drink.

It didn't take long, less than thirty minutes in fact. I couldn't hear what was being said but suddenly the attractive redhead joined the group that Mike was a part of. The other guys tried to flirt with her of course but she only had eyes for Mike. Within ten minutes she was rubbing against his arm. Within fifteen she was pushing her breasts into his back and shoulder.

Within twenty he accompanied her to the keg and refilled her glass. There was one more whispered conversation and the two of them walked off into the woods, holding hands, carrying their beers with them. Even from my vantage I could tell that Mike was nervous. Again I found myself wondering if he'd ever actually been laid before. Oh well. He was about to be laid now.

"How did you do that?" Nina asked me, weaving a little.

"I can do anything I set my mind to." I told her. "Anything."

She leaned forward and kissed me again. Then she looked up. "I'm very drunk Bill."

"I know." I said. "But you only graduate once, right?"

Mike and Jessica emerged from the woods about forty minutes later. Both were staggering and holding onto each other, their hair mussed up, their clothes wrinkled. Both were smiling. That was a surprise. Had Mike done a good job on her? Maybe a combination of her drunkenness and her instructions to him had done the trick. She seemed happy, which hadn't exactly been my goal, but so did Mike. They hit the keg again and then split up, Jess heading over to a group of her friends, Mike heading over to his. It wasn't a minute before he began his description of what just happened to him. By morning her reputation would be shot. Cruel? Maybe. But so had been the way she'd talked about Nina.

By this time Nina had gone back to the keg herself and was having difficulty standing. She giggled at everything and her words were slurred. She rubbed her body against mine shamelessly, pushing her breasts into my arm, grabbing my butt.

"I think you'd better lay off the beer Nina." I told her carefully, holding her up.

"Everything is starting to spin a little." She admitted. "But I'm having such a good time."

"When things start to spin," I suggested, "That should be your warning sign that you've had too much. Believe me, you want to quit."

"Then take a walk with me." She said. "Let's go into the woods like the other couples have."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I told her.

"Why?" She burped, nearly falling. "I want to make love under the stars. Come on Bill," She kissed my neck, nipping at it. "Let's go."

"Not tonight." I insisted.

"Don't I turn you on anymore?" She pouted.

"Very much." I told her. "But I want your first time to be special. Doing it in the woods on a bunch of pine needles while you're drunk would not be special. Do you want your life-long memory of your first time to be, well, nothing? Because believe me Nina, you won't remember anything that's happened tomorrow."

She looked at me for a moment and was about to say something else when her face suddenly soured. "I'm gonna throw up." She said matter-of-factly.

She was right. I led her over to the edge of the woods, out of sight of everyone else, and she began vomiting up great gluts of beer. It went on for several minutes and I held her up while she did it. For the first time I began to worry about what her parents were going to think when I brought her home. Her Dad would kill me.

I led her over to my car and placed her in the passenger seat.

"Sit right here." I told her. "And if you need to throw up again, just do it outside, okay?"

She groaned in reply, but it was an affirmative groan. I headed back to the party to try and collect Mike.

Mike wasn't in much better condition. He was sitting on one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed, concentrating intently.

"You okay Mike?" I asked him.

"I feel sick." He told me. "I'm trying not to barf."

"C'mon." I told him, grabbing him by the arm. "Let's get you back to the car. I'll help you."

He leaned heavily on me as we walked.

"Guess what dude?" He burped, tripping and nearly falling.

"What?"

"I fucked Jessica Round tonight."

"Yeah?" I asked, knowing I was hearing a true pussy story for once from him.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I ate her pussy and everything. That bitch was hot for it. She kept tellin' me what she wanted me to do."

"Did you do it?" I asked.

"Goddam right." He affirmed. He then went on to describe the encounter in greater detail. By the time we got to the car I had the high points.

"Oh dude," He moaned as we reached my trunk. "Take me home."

"You need to do something for me first." I told him.

"What's that?" He slurred.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"What?" He demanded, holding onto the trunk to keep the world from spinning out from under him.

"Stick your finger down your throat."

"That'll make me throw up!" He cried.

"Right." I acknowledged. "You're going to do it anyway so you might as well get it over with here instead of in my car. Besides, you'll feel better. Trust me."

"I don't know man." He said doubtfully.

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced him. He staggered over a few paces, got down on his knees, and stuck his finger down his throat. A moment later he was regurgitating beer all over the place. While he did this I went to check on Nina. A fresh puddle outside the passenger door told me that she'd had another bought of vomiting. She was currently curled up in the seat, her head against the doorframe, asleep. I elected not to disturb her.

When Mike finished I loaded him into the back seat and buckled him up. I buckled up Nina and then started up the engine. I headed back to the city.

Mike was easy to get home. A few quick shakes in front of his house and a helping hand getting out of the car and he went staggering up his walkway, giving me a slurred farewell. He had some trouble getting the door open but finally figured out he was using the wrong key. Once this was rectified, he was inside. I drove off towards Nina's house.

The Blackmore house was darkened as I pulled to the curb and shut down my engine. I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Maybe I could get her inside without awakening her parents. Beside me Nina was unconscious, snoring softly. I began to shake her gently, trying to wake her.

"Nina." I called, using a louder and louder voice. "You're home."

She stirred a little but would not open her eyes. She batted at me once when I shook her a little too hard.

"Shit." I mumbled.

I began patting down her pockets, looking for her keys. Feeling the tell-tale bulge in the right front of her pants, I put my hand in, having to force it the pants were so tight, and finally felt the cold metal of the keys. It took a few moments of stern yanking before they popped free. Using the dome light I searched through the ring and finally identified a likely house key.

I got out of the car and walked up to the door, quiet as a mouse, and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock. It wouldn't turn. With a curse I pulled it out and searched through the ring again, locating another prospect. This one did the trick. I released the bolt and pulled the key free. I then tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked too. Using the first key I unlocked that and gave the knob a quick turn to make sure it would open. Knowing that Nina had a cat that was not supposed to be outside, I did not open the door just yet, although that would have made my task easier.

I quickly returned back to the car and opened the passenger door. I shoved the keys back into Nina's pocket and then reached down and picked her up, cradling her like a baby. This was easy since she only weighed about a hundred pounds or so. Even in her stupor her arm automatically went around my neck.

Tiptoeing I walked up to the door and, after considerable twisting and stretching, managed to get my hand on the doorknob. With the layout of the Blackmore house in my mind, giving me the fastest route to her bedroom and back out, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, prepared to make the dash.

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

My eyes looked up to the lighted box next to the front door. An alarm code box. As soon as I heard the noise and saw the box a memory came to me, a memory of the days before our breakup, when Nina's mother used to drive us to this house after school to study. I remembered either Nina or her mother punching in a code as soon as the door was unlocked. A code that shut off the infernal beeping before the alarm would start to ring. How in the hell had I forgotten about that?

I shook her up and down, trying to rouse her. "Nina." I whispered frantically into her ear. "What's the code for your alarm?"

"Huh?" She croaked, her glassy eyes creaking open a quarter of an inch or so.

"What's the damn alarm code?" I asked desperately.

She giggled. "That's funny." She went back to sleep.

"Nina!" I barked louder.

A bedroom door opened from down the hall. A light clicked on.

"Nina?" Came Jack Blackmore's voice. "Turn off the damn alarm! What's the matter with you?"

Footsteps began to approach. Mary's voice spoke up. "Jack? What's wrong? Why is the alarm going off?"

I could only stand there as Jack came around the corner. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and was shirtless, the surgical scar on his chest standing out like a zipper. His eyes locked onto me standing there and holding his unconscious daughter in my arms.

"Christ Almighty." He muttered, tromping over. He punched in a code and the beeping fell silent.

"Jack?" Came Mary's voice from the bedroom. "Is everything all right?"

Jack looked at me carefully for a moment and then at Nina, who was snoring drunkenly again. I wondered if he was going to go get his hunting rifle and blow me away right there or if he would at least give me a running start.

"Is she okay?" He asked tonelessly.

"Uh…" I stammered.

"She smells like a damn brewery. Is she okay?"

"She had a little too much to drink." I finally admitted.

Mary came around the corner. She was dressed in a long cotton nightgown and pulling a robe around her body. She took in the scene before her and walked carefully into the living room.

"What's wrong with her?" She asked.

"Too much to drink." Jack explained.

"I tried to get her to slow down." I offered weakly. My arm muscles were starting to cry out as I stood there. I wondered if we were going to end right back up at step one again because of this?

"And you?" Jack asked me. "Have you had too much to drink too?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "I only had three beers all night, and those were when we first got there. I told you I take driving very seriously."

He nodded. "You seem sober enough." He pointed out. "Well don't just stand there. Go put her in her room. Mary, can you take care of her once she's there?"

"Of course." Mary said, shaking her head sadly and looking at her intoxicated daughter with something that looked almost like affection. Strange.

"C'mon." Mary told me, leading the way.

"Aren't you guys mad about this?" I finally had to ask.

They both stopped and looked at me. "Mad?" Jack asked. "Why would we be mad? You got her home safely just like you said."

"Yeah." I stammered. "But…"

"You mean because she's drunk?" Mary asked next.

I nodded.

They looked at each other for a moment and chuckled knowingly.

"Bill." Jack told me. "We'd be about the biggest hypocrites in the world if we got mad over this. Why back in our day I drug Mary home many a time carrying her just like you're carrying Nina there."

"And I've dragged Jack into the house more than my share too." She added.

My mouth was agape as I tried to picture what they were saying.

"Drinking is a part of every young person's life." Mary said, reaching out to stroke Nina's hair. "She's free and eighteen and if she wants to drink until she vomits, that's her prerogative. Did she vomit?"

"Uh, yeah." I nodded.

"You were a lot more responsible than we used to be." Jack told me. "Why we used to go out to parties and when it was time to go we decided who would drive by whoever had to carry the other. A couple times we woke up the next morning and the car was in the garage and we had no idea how we'd gotten home."

They looked at each other affectionately again. "It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves back then." Mary said nostalgically. She turned to Jack. "Remember that time we woke up in someone's house in the morning and we didn't know where we were?"

Jack laughed fondly. "Oh yeah." He nodded, turning to me. "It was back in the late fifties or thereabouts. We went to this Christmas party and got drunk out of our minds. The next thing we know, we're waking up the next morning in chairs at someone's dining room table. Never seen the house before in our lives."

Mary actually giggled, to my astonishment. "And the kid!" She said. "Remember the kid!"

"Oh yeah." He repeated. "There was this kid eating breakfast at the table. A bowl of cereal. We'd never seen him before, had no idea who he was. He just kind of looked at us and said hi and then went back to eating. Were we hungover? Oh boy I guess we were. Our car was out front so we got into and tried to drive home but we had no idea what part of town we were in or anything."

"It took us about twenty minutes to find a street we were familiar with." Mary laughed.

That this story would be one of their fond marital memories seemed strange at first but I finally realized I was dealing with the alcohol generation here. In their youths alcohol use did not have the stigma it would develop in mine. Drinking was a part of every social function and was seen as a rite of passage almost. The Blackmores seemed almost proud of their daughter for having her first vomitus trip through the land of intoxication.

"This is very weird." I couldn't help commenting.

They offered no comment to that. Mary led me to Nina's bedroom where I gently laid her down on her bed. She shoed me out and closed the door while she began attending to her comatose daughter. When I returned to the living room, Jack was holding two bottles of beer in his hands. He handed one to me.

"Since you didn't get to drink at the party tonight," He said. "I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home."

I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest.

"You're not supposed to drink, are you?" I asked lightly.

"Screw those doctors." He told me. "If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn't have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me."

"I won't insult you by saying no." I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.

Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn't quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.

Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn't a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80 degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.

The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He'd picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks proceeding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn't be mailed to him for a week, he KNEW that he'd passed. I couldn't doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was "Congratulations". His score was ninety-one percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o'clock the afternoon of June 20.

I didn't believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I've mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner's muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence that he would do so.

The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he'd gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o'clock, that something was wrong.

It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.

"I didn't pass dude." He told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.

"What happened?" I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I'd failed the same test before of course but I hadn't wanted it as badly as he did.

He sighed, shaking his head. "My legs and my endurance were fuckin' top rate." He said. "I lit into that course like you wouldn't believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat, it didn't even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledge hammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn't even winded and my time was pushing the record." He gave me a bitter look.

"And then what?" I asked gently.

He scowled. "I'm tellin' you man." He said. "I've spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that's the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren't working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom." He sniffed a little. "Automatic disqualification."

I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I'd never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I'd taken it I hadn't worked my arms either. But I'd also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position. Actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.

"I'm sorry Man." I told him. "I know how much you wanted this."

He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. "That kinda shit happens." He told me. "Oh well. There's always next year, I guess. I'll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then."

We smoked the joint together but it didn't improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn't like seeing him that way.

As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice; the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina's time was taken up by much of the same process.

But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my Dad's boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He'd purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it's engine broken, it's paint faded, it's hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.

I myself had owned a small boat in my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I'd finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts.

But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I'd gotten Dad's tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could.

I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.

And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the "engine doesn't work" problem that my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.

He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we'd installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.

"Head gasket is blown." He told me happily.

"Okay." I said, not knowing what that meant. Like my old man I knew next to nothing about the internal combustion engine. "Can we fix it?"

"Are you serious?" He asked, shaking his head.

"What do you mean?"

"I can do it in a day for less than a hundred bucks." He told me. "The head gasket is the seal between the head and the engine block. If it's blown it fucks up the compression and lets oil and shit spray out. That keeps the engine from running or from cooling right. If that's all that's wrong, we'll have this thing up and running next weekend."

"No shit?" I asked, impressed.

"No shit." He answered happily.

So the next Saturday he came over at nine in the morning and we went to work. First we visited the auto parts store where he requested the appropriate parts and I paid for them. We took them back to my garage and he opened his toolbox. We went to work, me very much in the apprentice mode.

I had noticed that he was preoccupied with something else throughout the day but I didn't broach the subject. Mike was not the kind of person you tried to draw out. If he wanted to tell you what was wrong, he would do it. If he didn't, you weren't going to get it out of him.

It was after we'd removed the head and placed it on some newspapers on the garage floor along with all of the other parts, as he was scraping the old gasket off, that he finally spilled it. Our hands were grimy and greasy and both of us were dripping sweat from the high humidity. We were both drinking cans of beer that my Dad had supplied us with.

"I'm thinking about joining the Air Force." He told me, scraping away with a razor.

That one sentence sent chills through my body, even before my mind completely processed it. The Air Force? I could almost feel fate pulling at Mike, could almost sense it as a hostile, aware presence in the garage with us, a cloaked figure with a satisfied smile on it's face.

"What did you say?" I asked quietly, hoping I hadn't heard him right, or that he was merely joking with me.

"The Air Force." He repeated, grinding away at a stubborn piece of gasket. "I got a call from this recruiter guy the other day and I talked to him about twenty minutes. He was a really cool guy."

A really cool guy. Not surprising. Recruiters were, after all, salesmen. A good one would have gone out of his way to learn the lingo of his target group and would talk just like a teenager, even if he was a fifty year old man. They were paid to seduce the young and they were good at it.

"What did he say?" I asked, my mind in overdrive trying to think of a way to counter this situation.

"Well we talked for a little bit." He said. "And I told him that I was interested in firefighting. He says that every Air Force Base, everywhere in the world, has a fire department. They handle all of the medical aids and fires on the base housing. They also get extensive training in aircraft fires and rescue. If I spent four years in doing that it would almost guarantee me a job when I got out. Think of how that would look on my resume, being trained in aircraft suppression, HAZMAT, and with four years of practical experience doing it."

I realized two things as I listened to him. One, was that he was repeating, almost word for word, what the recruiter had thrown at him. Mike would never have said anything like "resume" or "practical experience". The second thing was that he was seeking my approval of his plan. Whether he was doing it unconsciously or consciously, he was running his idea by me hoping I'd say it was a great one. This gave me hope that I could divert him from what I was sure would be a destructive path. I had no illusions about what would happen if Mike joined the Air Force. But I needed to do it carefully. If I pushed too hard, my words would have the opposite effect that I intended.

"Did he tell you that you could go into the fire department?" I asked.

"He said that I could put that in as my request for skills and they would try to place me there." Mike said. "It sounds like a pretty good deal."

"Yeah." I nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like one."

"I made an appointment to talk to him tomorrow." He said.

I chewed my lip a little, knowing that the recruiter had every intention of getting Mike to sign his name to the line tomorrow, knowing that Mike would most likely do so if left to his own devices. What to do?

I picked up my beer, which was warm at that point and tasted like shit but I took a big drink of it anyway.

"I've looked into the military a little bit." I told him.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I affirmed. "It could be a good career move under certain circumstances, but there's a few things you have to realize."

He scowled a little bit. "What do you mean?"

I took a deep breath. "Well," I said. "First of all there's the recruiter. You have to understand what his purpose is. In our country we have a volunteer military. There's no draft in place so they have to staff everything with people who have signed their names of their own free will. In order to do that, they have to make the military look attractive to their prospects, to draw them away from civilian life. That's where the recruiter comes in. He probably sounded like he was your best friend, right?"

Mike shrugged, scraping away a little more gasket. "Yeah, he was pretty cool."

"That's because he's a salesman. His job is to sign up people for the Air Force. He wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't good at it. So he'll pretty much tell you anything in order to get you in there. He'll go on and on about how great the Air Force is but he won't tell you the unpleasant parts because that might put you off a little. So the first thing you need to realize is that the recruiter is not really your friend. He has a job to do, and his job is to sign you up."

"Yeah," Mike scowled further, "But…"

"Now hold on." I interrupted. "I'm not saying the military is a BAD idea. I'm just trying to get you to see that the recruiter can not necessarily be trusted to hold your best interests in mind. Can you see this?"

He thought for a moment and finally nodded. "Yeah." He agreed. "I see where you're coming from."

"For instance," I said. "Did he mention the ASVAB to you?"

"The az-vab?" Mike asked.

"Armed services vocational assessment battery." I translated. "The ASVAB. It's a test they give you once you're committed. It's a general knowledge exam designed to get into your mind a little and see what makes you tick. Psychologists and so forth have designed it and it measures what your strengths and weaknesses are. From that, they determine what job you're going to be assigned to once you're in."

"But he told me they'd put me into the Firefighting School." Mike protested.

"No no." I corrected. "You yourself just told me that they would put that in as a request for skills and TRY to assign you there. He didn't actually say that you would be put in there, did he?"

Mike thought for a moment. "No." He finally said. "He didn't. But still, my request will be in. Why wouldn't they put me there?"

"Lots of reasons." I explained. "First and foremost your ASVAB might say you wouldn't be a good firefighter. If that's the case, then you won't get it no matter what. If your ASVAB says you'd make an excellent, oh, missile technician in some silo in North Dakota, then that's where you're going to go. But even if your ASVAB says you'd make a good firefighter, there might not be any openings for that skill. I imagine that firefighting and MP skills are taken up pretty quickly."

"If they don't give me what I want." Mike said firmly. "Then I won't do it."

"That's the catch." I told him. "You take the ASVAB after you've signed your name and committed yourself. You would have taken the oath at that point. You can't back out after that. You'd be in for four years, doing whatever they wanted you to do. If they wanted to send you to Germany to clean out shithouses, you'd be doing it. Once you sign your name, you're government property. The only way out at that point is some sort of discharge that would be other than honorable. It could be medical, psychological, dishonorable, but no matter what it would be, it would destroy your chances of getting on with any fire department anywhere."

He had stopped scraping the gasket and was looking at me. I could read his face and could see that a part of him wanted to be angry with me, to storm out of my garage for telling him something he didn't want to hear. But another part of him, the part that was becoming an adult, was also there. That part was carefully considering what I'd just said.

"Are you sure about all of this?" He asked me.

"You don't have to believe me." I told him. "You have an appointment with the recruiter tomorrow. Ask him all of this. Ask him directly if what I've just told you is true. He'll hem and haw and try to convince you that you'll almost surely be put in the firefighter class but he won't give you any sort of guarantee in writing and he won't be able to say, "Mike, you WILL be in that firefighting class". I'm not wrong about this Mike. You need to be wary of making impulsive decisions that can erase four years of your life."

He nodded, not speaking.

"If you don't join up." I told him. "You can take the Spokane test again next year. Or you can start applying at other departments around here. Someone, somewhere is always hiring. Seattle Fire hires twice a year I hear and they pay quite a bit more than Spokane. Put in your interest cards everywhere and fill out the applications. Take the tests even if it's some bum-fuck Egypt department that you'd never work for. It's good practice. In the meantime, sign up for the fire science classes at the community college."

"College?" He asked, never having considered that concept.

"Why not?" I enquired. "It's cheap and it gives you something to do. When you go to the interviews you can tell them that you're working on your degree in Fire Science. They love that shit. Once you get hired you can drop out if you want. Or you can continue. My point is that just because you missed one test the first time, you don't have to do something rash like joining the military. If you do that there's a good chance you might regret it later and have no way out. If you stick it out for a while you might get hired somewhere else or you might get hired at Spokane next year. If none of that works out, then maybe you can give the military a try. But there's no hurry is there? The Air Force will still be there in a year, won't they?"

"I suppose so." He told me.

"Just don't let the recruiter seduce you tomorrow. Be on guard and ask the right questions. Remember that the recruiter can act like your friend, he can make you believe he's your friend, but he's not your friend. He exists to get you to sign your name. He doesn't give a fuck about you."

Mike nodded. He didn't commit himself one way or the other but I knew I'd given him a lot of food for thought. I hoped it was enough.

The conversation soon turned to other things. We worked for another three hours and finally the engine was back together.

"Okay." Mike told me, standing near the back of it. "Fire it up."

I turned the key and it roared to life, sounding exactly like an eight cylinder, gas-guzzling engine should. Mike proclaimed the boat fixed. Of course it still had to have it's registration updated but we made tentative plans to take it out the following weekend.

I thought about reminding him of what we'd talked about as he headed home but decided not to. I could only hope his maturity would win out over his other side.

I didn't get a chance to talk to Mike for a few days. The day after the boat was fixed Nina and I spent the day together downtown, catching a movie and then having dinner together. We made out a little in my car at a deserted park but did nothing fancy. My mind was preoccupied with a thousand things, as was hers. We said our good-byes at her doorstep at ten that night, exchanging a demure kiss. I then went home and wanked myself to sleep.

Monday and Tuesday were my normal routine. I got Dad to go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and re-register the boat. He did so grudgingly, he hated DMV as much as anyone, but he was proud of the accomplishment of getting the old boat running again. I told him my plans to take it out the following Saturday and he quizzed me once more about my experience with driving a boat and driving a car with a boat trailer attached to it. I assured him that I knew how to do it. One of the advantages of having my Dad in on my secret was that he didn't question things like that too heavily and that I didn't have to lie to him. It was nice.

During this time period I almost called Mike a half a dozen times. I was worried that the recruiter had somehow gotten to him. I wouldn't have even put it past one of those slime to outright lie and tell him that of course he'd be placed in the firefighting program. After all, by the time he found out to the contrary, it would be too late wouldn't it? And if his complaints somehow landed on something other than deaf ears, the recruiter could always deny it. I hoped he'd taken my speech about putting things in writing seriously.

He finally called me on Wednesday, just before I left for work. It was maddening as he talked of inconsequential things for five minutes and part of me wondered if he knew what hell he was putting me through and enjoying it. Finally the subject of the meeting with the recruiter came up.

"You were right Dude." He told me. "That asshole was a piece of shit."

"Yeah?" I asked, suppressing a shout of joy. "What happened?"

"I asked him the questions you told me to ask." He said. "He went on and on about how I would most likely be placed exactly where I wanted to be, even in the city I wanted to be in, but that he couldn't ACTUALLY guarantee it. He told me the ASVAB was just a formality and that it didn't mean much but he wouldn't break out anything in writing to put me in the firefighting program. He kept trying to smooth talk me and get off the subject of where I would end up. He started talking about college, and money for college, and serving my country, and a bunch of shit like that. Finally I told him to fuck off and left."

"That's fuckin cool Mike." I said, unable to suppress any longer. "You made the right decision."

"Yeah." He said. "Thanks for clueing me in about that asshole. I owe you one."

He had actually thanked me! Unbelievable. "No problem man." I told him. "That's what friends do."

"We still on for Saturday?" He asked next. "I'm ready to try water-skiing."

"We're on." I told him. "You and me and Nina. We'll head out about nine."

"Cool." He said, then paused for a second. "I'm not gonna be in the way or anything with you and Nina, am I?"

"No." I assured him. "You need three to water-ski anyway. Someone has to be the observer."

"That's cool." He told me. "You're lucky. You got a girlfriend to take with you. I seem to be fresh out of women at the moment. I tried to call Jess Round but she's not even speaking to me. She told me to fuck off when I got hold of her."

"Fuck her." I told him. "She's a ho. We'll find you someone else."

"Think you can do it by Saturday?" He asked jokingly.

"I'll get right on it." I said, just as jokingly.

It was Thursday morning and I was at the local AM/PM pumping gas into my Datsun. I wasn't thinking of much, just reflecting upon the fact that I missed the convenience of just sliding my ATM card into a little slot and pumping my fill without ever having to actually go inside the store and pay in cash. It was one of those things that would appear in the next few years that I had to live without. Such a little thing, the ATM card and the interlinked networks, but something that once you got used to, you felt the sting if it wasn't there anymore.

ATM machines themselves were just starting to make their appearance to the world. At the moment, my bank did not have any of them. When I wanted money I had to physically go inside and cash a check. I had to be sure to do this between nine and five on a weekday or I was shit out of luck in the money department. I reflected, as the numbers on the pump clicked off dollars and cents, that the American public in general was probably spending a lot less money than they would in a few years. Right now you had to go to the bank to get cash and cash was basically the only way to acquire anything small. In a few years you would be able to go to any machine anywhere and deplete your checking or savings account at any hour of the day. It would be no longer mandatory to take out a supply of money in order to survive the workweek.

I was wondering if this was a bad thing or a good thing when I detected a presence moving in on me. My instincts flared, thoughts of Richie Fairview coming for his final revenge crossing my consciousness. Adrenaline flooded me in an instant as my body prepared to fight or flee. I turned into my aggressor, my arms coming up in a defensive posture and suddenly I was enveloped in a pair of female arms, a warm, soft body pressing heavily into me.

"Bill!" A familiar voice squealed at me. I felt the press of breasts against my chest as I was pulled into my attacker.

"Maggie?" I asked, taking in the form and instinctively returning the hug.

She gave me a wet, sloppy kiss on the cheek. "Did I scare you?" She asked teasingly, pulling back to look at me.

"No." I lied. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting gas." She told me, finally releasing me from her embrace. She was dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a half-shirt. She looked very pretty.

The endlessly horny part of my brain remembered what that body looked like naked, how it felt moving beneath (or above) mine. "What else does one do at a gas station?"

"Good point." I allowed. "How have you been? What have you been up to?"

"I'm still going to college." She said. "Working on my pre-recs for nursing school. Hopefully I'll be able to transfer over to State next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed."

"Good for you." I told her, knowing what was going to come soon from her lips. An offer to get together with her for a little fun. Fortunately she'd allowed me an opening to derail her offer before it came. I seized upon it. "My girlfriend is going to be getting those pre-recs too. She wants to go to med school."

"Girlfriend?" She moaned sadly, but good naturedley. "Don't tell me you're out of circulation?"

"Afraid so." I confirmed.

"Well that sucks the big one." She giggled. "I was hoping you and I could get together, you know, for old times sake." Her tone heavily implied that this would still be a possibility, girlfriend or not.

"Sorry." I said, smiling. "But if I was ever tempted…" I winked.

We chatted for a minute, her catching me up on the whereabouts of Cindy. "That bitch moved in with the college professor and left me holding the lease for our apartment. If I wouldn't have found another roommate right away they would've had to evict me. She's such a blonde."

"Are they still together?" I asked.

"Oh yeah." She nodded. "They're gonna get married as soon as his divorce is final."

"Go Cindy." I said.

"So who's the lucky girl that snagged you?" Maggie asked me. "She must be a hottie."

"Nina Blackmore." I told her.

Her brow crinkled in confusion. "Nina Blackmore?" She asked. "Really?"

"Really." I confirmed, knowing the source of her confusion. Though Nina was pretty and though I longed for her body as well as her mind, she was not exactly in the category of "hottie".

"Well congratulations." She told me. "But if you ever break up with her…"

"You'll be the first one I call." I promised. "But I don't think I'm gonna break up anytime soon."

"Pretty serious huh?" She asked.

"Very." I confirmed.

She sighed. "That's what I need." She told me. "Someone to be serious with. Having different boyfriends every month used to be fun but it's getting kind of old. And now with AIDS and all that shit, well, you know?"

I nodded and then an idea suddenly hit me. It was an impulsive decision, one that I did not have time to think out carefully, but I went with it.

"Hey Maggie," I said. "Do you like to water-ski?"

She looked at me, wondering what this was about. "I've done it a few times." She said. "It's fun."

"I just fixed up my Dad's ski boat." I told her. "Nina and Mike Meachen and I are taking it out on Saturday. You want to come?"

She grinned knowingly. "Are you trying to fix me up with Mike Meachen?" She asked.

"No." I protested. "I just thought you'd like to come, that's all. What's wrong with Mike anyway?"

A giggle. "You are." She accused. "There's nothing wrong with him I guess.

He's kinda cute, but he's younger. I don't go for younger guys."

"You don't have to go for him." I said. "I just wanted to know if you'd like to go skiing with us."

She considered for a moment. "Okay." She finally said. "What time?"

That evening after work Nina came over for a visit. We did the obligatory time chatting with my parents and then we went out front to sit in the porch swing with our arms around each other, watching the sunset while we rocked slowly back and forth. I told her that I'd invited Maggie to go boating with us and felt her tense up.

"Maggie Bartlett?" She asked carefully. "You invited HER to go?"

"Yeah." I answered, wondering suddenly if it had been such a good idea after all. "I ran into her at the gas station. I thought that maybe her and Mike might hit it off a little."

She looked over at me. "She's very pretty." Nina said.

I shrugged. "I suppose."

"You've uh, done it with her before." She said. It was not a question.

"Nina that was the past." I said. "And it was a long time ago." Which wasn't exactly true, Maggie and Cindy had been the last two girls I'd slept with after all, but I didn't think that little fact needed to play a part in this discussion.

"Bill…" She started worriedly.

"Those days are over." I told her. "I promise you that. I'm committed to you completely. Maggie is just a friend and I thought that maybe her and Mike would maybe make a good couple. Mike needs a girlfriend and Maggie needs a boyfriend. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. If you want, I'll call her up and tell her we cancelled the trip."

She considered this for a moment. "No." She said finally. "Let her come. It's very nice of you to try and fix Mike up. It's just weird to think that I'll be spending the day with someone that you used to… you know?"

I nodded. "Are you sure?" I asked.

"I'm sure." She told me. And then softly, "Was she good at it?"

I nearly choked. "What?"

"Was she good at it?" Nina asked. "In bed?"

I shook my head. "No." I replied. "Terrible."

Nina smiled a little. "You're not a very good liar Bill."

My mother was still not in on the secret of my recycling and so she naturally questioned my Dad's decision to allow my friends and me to take out the boat. I can see her point of view well. Somehow, how I know not, Dad convinced her that it would be all right. She didn't like the idea but she consented to it. And since she'd consented to it she made it her mission to make sure we were suitably supplied for a day at the lake. She packed a picnic basket with enough fried chicken, homemade potato salad, chips, and pork and beans to kill us all. She filled up a large ice-chest with soda. After a stern, motherly warning to be careful and to bring back her silverware, we were allowed to proceed with the loading of the boat.

Things were a little awkward at first. Maggie was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt over her bikini top. Nina was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans too. They were pulled over her one-piece bathing suit. The two girls sized each other up for a few moments, exchanging only polite pleasantries with each other, both of them wondering what I saw in the other.

Mike was also surprised, although pleasantly so, to find Maggie there. I'd decided that the best course was not to tell him beforehand. If there was chemistry to be found between the two of them, then so be it. I did take one step in order to help the chemistry along.

"What's she doin' here?" Mike asked me when we were out of earshot.

"She's an old friend of mine." I told him.

"She's fuckin' hot." He proclaimed. "I used to see her at school."

I nodded. "Don't get your hopes up." I told him. "She's got a boyfriend. She's just along for the ride."

"She does?" He asked, disappointed.

"Sorry dude." I told him. "She's off the market."

"That's the shit." He pouted. "Oh well, she's nice to look at anyway."

"You got that right." I nodded.

By telling Mike that he didn't have a chance with her I figured that I was actually giving him his best chance. If he knew that she was available he would have been hitting on her like mad and I knew his lines and techniques would have been immature enough to drive Maggie away. But if he thought she was already spoken for he would tend to be much more like himself. That was what I wanted.

Mike and I, shirtless for the occasion and wearing shorts, finally picked up the tongue of the trailer and placed it on the hitch on my Dad's car. I was gratified to see that Maggie was taking in the bulging leg muscles of Mike as we did this. I suppressed a grin.

We connected the wires for the trailer lights and, with a last farewell to my parents, pulled out into the street and headed for the freeway. We got on I-90 heading east for Idaho, Nina and I in the front, Mike and Maggie in the back. My plan was working so far at that point. The two of them were talking easily in the back, discussing the merits of Spokane's community college. In the front, Nina rested her hand on my bare thigh and occasionally gave me a little squeeze.

Our first stop was a grocery store just outside of Coeur d Alene. The drinking age in Idaho was nineteen years old at that time. In a few years it would be raised to twenty-one thanks to the efforts of the group that my Mom and Dad were supposed to be part of.

"Okay Maggie." I said, handing her the cash that we'd pooled. "Go do your stuff."

She smiled sweetly and stepped out of the car. "You wanna come?" She asked Mike. "I'll need help carrying everything."

"Sure." He barked, stepping out with her.

While they were inside Nina and I went back to the boat and opened up the ice chest. We took out all of the soda my Mom had placed in there and tossed it into the trunk of the car. When Maggie and Mike returned they had three twelve packs of Olympia and two bags of ice. This was placed in the ice chest and we headed North.

Lake Pend Oreille, our destination, is a huge lake, the third largest West of the Mississippi. We paid our money and pulled into a launching facility at the south end of it. The facility was crowded with other boaters out to take in a day on the lake and we had to wait in line for about twenty minutes. The air was festive as we watched people scurry here and there, watched the sun beat on the blue surface of the water, and listened to the gunning of boat engines. Finally it was our turn. It had been a while since I'd done such a thing but I managed to back the boat into the lake without breaking or hitting anything. We detached it from it's trailer for the first time in years and I parked the car while Mike held the boat to the dock with a rope.

We climbed into the boat, Nina sitting next to me in the front while Mike and Maggie sat directly behind us. The engine fired up at once and I took a moment to praise Mike's mechanical skills.

"You fixed the boat?" Maggie asked Mike, her eyes shining at him. It seemed she was warming up to the possibilities he represented.

He nodded suavely. "Yeah." He confirmed. "I know a little about engines and stuff."

"Don't be modest." I said as I backed the boat away from the dock. I turned to Maggie. "We wouldn't be out here today if it wasn't for him. He's a goddam mechanical genius."

Mike blushed at the praise and Maggie smiled. "You know?" She said. "My car's been making a funny sound lately. Maybe you could take a look at it sometime."

"Maybe I could." He nodded. "What's the sound?"

While Maggie described the ticking noise her car was making I throttled up a little and began to ease the boat out towards the buoy. Nina dropped her hand to my knee again and smiled at me. I was able to read her thoughts. She was thinking that bringing Maggie along was a good idea after all.

Conversation became impossible once I passed the buoy and throttled up the engine to full. It screamed with horsepower, driving the boat along at 45 MPH, the bow bouncing over the chop on the surface of the water, tendrils of spray occasionally wetting us. It was thrilling to be on the lake again, to be at the controls of a boat after all that time. I felt the thrum of the engine beating through my chest, felt the bow bouncing up and down in the waves, felt the sun beating down on my shirtless body, felt the hand of my beloved on my thigh.

I headed in a NorthWest direction, hoping to find a reasonably deserted portion of the lake so we could do some skiing and maybe find a nice island to hang out on. I looked at Mike at one point and mimed the act of drinking with my hands. He got the idea and fished in the ice chest, pulling out a frosty can of beer for me. While I opened it he pulled out three more and distributed them. Nina, who had recently sworn off alcohol opened hers and took a huge drink.

Finally finding an empty spot I throttled down the motor and let the boat drift.

"Who wants to ski?" I asked.

Nina and Mike had never done it before so Maggie volunteered to be first. She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto her seat. Her bikini top was red and was very brief, allowing her large breasts to bulge out the side. I tore my eyes away from the appetizing sight of this and looked at Mike instead. His eyeballs were nearly bugging out.

She put on the life vest and then jumped into the water.

"How is it?" Mike asked her.

"A little chilly." She admitted, suppressing a shiver. "It's making my nipples hard."

I looked over at Nina to see if this statement would offend her but she only giggled and took another drink from her beer. Mike, on the other hand, was staring agape. This made both of us laugh even more.

Maggie smiled up him. "The water might make Nina's and my nipples hard," She said, "But wait till you see what it does to you and Bill. Does the word "shrinkage" mean anything to you?"

We all laughed at this and Mike, trying to compose himself, finally picked up the water skis and put them in the water for her.

"Thanks." She said, gazing at him. While he blushed she began the process of putting them on.

She fumbled around in the water for a few moments and finally mangaged to get the skis on her feet. Mike tossed the rope to her next and I instructed him to face backward and watch her carefully.

"No problem." He assured me, watching her legs bobbing up and down.

"And tell me if she falls." I added.

"Oh yeah." He nodded.

I throttled up a little until the rope was tight and pulling Maggie forward.

She got into position and then gave me the thumbs-up. I throttled up more and she was pulled neatly out of the water where she began sliding across it's surface, a huge grin on her face.

Maggie turned out to be quite an accomplished skier. I turned left and right and she hung in there, turning gracefully behind me, maneuvering herself so that she went back and forth across the wake. Finally I turned a little too sharp and she hit the wake at the wrong angle. She went down in a tumble of arms and legs, her skis flying free.

"She's down!" Mike screamed, much too loudly.

I throttled down and circled around to pick her up while she swam after the skis.

"You asshole." She yelled at me when I got close. "You turned too sharp."

"If you can't hang…" I said, smiling. "You wanna try again?"

"No." She said, shaking her head. "Let someone else have a chance."

She tossed the skis in the boat and climbed up the ladder. Her body was dripping with lake water and when she pulled the life vest off I noticed, uncomfortably, that her bikini top had pulled down from her collision and the upper half of her aureole was showing. I dragged my eyes away from this but Mike didn't.

"Like what you see?" Maggie asked him sweetly, slowly reaching down to pull her top back into position.

Mike suddenly found something to look at in the sky, his face reddening even more. "I didn't see anything!" He protested.

Nina and I both suppressed laughter at this while Maggie kept the amused, interested expression on her face. "It's okay." She said. "Accidents happen." She handed him the life vest. "Let's see how you do Mr. Mechanic."

Mike gulped and then began to put on the vest. He did it quickly and jumped into the water. But not before everyone had seen the fact that his shorts were definitely bulging outward.

We spent the next two hours skiing back and forth across the portion of the lake we were on. Mike did badly at first, continually falling the moment I tried to pull him out of the water. He was making the typical beginner's mistake of trying to pull himself up instead of letting the boat do it. This let the line develop slack which, when it was unslacked inevitably pulled the skier sharply forward. Maggie gave him helpful hints from her position as observer and finally he was able to get up without falling. Once he figured this out he was unstoppable. He had a keen sense of balance and soon he was out-skiing Maggie.

Nina had no trouble gaining her feet but she had a lousy sense of balance. It was quite a while before she was able to keep from falling whenever I turned. While she skied and while Maggie continued to serve as observer I taught Mike the basics of piloting the boat. At last, when Nina came dripping inside it was my turn. With Mike at the helm I skied back and forth for a while, reacquainting myself with the pleasure of sliding along the water. While Nina sat backwards, watching for me to fall, I couldn't help but see that Maggie and Mike were sitting quite close together in the front. Just call me Cupid.

We were all buzzing pleasantly from the beer and absolutely famished with hunger when I finally pulled myself back inside and threw down the life vest. We opened up another beer and then went to find a place to eat.

I found a small island to park at. It was about an acre or so and had some scrubby looking trees growing on it. We pulled the boat onto the shore, tied it to a tree to keep it from drifting away, and then grabbed our picnic blankets. We spread them in the shade and opened up the food my Mom had packed for us. The next twenty minutes were filled with contented chomping and chewing and the slapping at bees and flies that had been drawn by the smell of fried chicken. Out on the water an occasional boat shot by, most pulling skiers behind them, but for the most part it was peaceful and quite.

After we stowed the food away and got rid of the trash we lounged on the blanket. I sat up drinking a beer while Nina laid down on her back with her head on my lap. She seemed very contented to be there. Maggie looked at us for a moment and then at Mike.

"That looks comfortable." She said and then patted his bare leg. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." He croaked, shifting his position to give her room.

With a smile she stretched out and put her head in his lap. He seemed as if he was in ecstasy and a look was passed between the two girls. A knowing look.

The conversation went back and forth, varying on subject as we sat there. Mike was strangely quiet through all of this.

"I have to pee." Nina finally said, lifting up her head.

"Go do it in the lake." I suggested.

"That's disgusting." She told me. "You don't do that do you?"

"Of course not." I lied, suppressing a smile.

"I hope not." She said. "I had my head on those shorts."

"Don't let him fool you Nina." Maggie said. "Men are pigs. They pee anywhere." She raised her head off of Mike's lap. "Come on." She told her. "I need to go too. Let's take a walk to the other side of the island."

"Okay." She said, slipping into her sandals and giving me a brief kiss on the lips. "We'll be back."

Maggie gave Mike a saucy look and the two girls then tromped off, disappearing into the trees.

Mike and I looked at each other for a moment. When he was sure they were out of earshot he said, "Are you sure she's got a boyfriend? She's been flirting with me all day."

"That's what I heard." I shrugged. "Maybe I was wrong. It sure seems like she likes you."

"It does, doesn't it?" He nodded, obviously unaccustomed to the sensation.

When the girls returned the flirtation continued, gearing up a little. She fawned over his red shoulders and offered to rub lotion on them. Watching the way her fingers slid over his skin, massaging in the lotion, I knew he had to fighting to maintain control of himself. I knew from experience that Maggie could do wonders with her hands.

"Do you want to go swimming?" Nina asked me, giving me a look that said they wanted to be alone.

"Sure." I nodded, standing up.

"We'll just stay here." Maggie said, putting some more lotion in her hand.

Nina and I splashed out into the water, holding hands as we went. The water was a bit biting but it wasn't icy and we quickly got used to it. We went out until we were almost completely submerged and then began to move along the shoreline. In a matter of minutes, Mike and Maggie were out of our sight. I mentally wished him luck and then diverted my attention to Nina.

We played in the water for a while, splashing each other and romping around.

Gradually our playfulness turned to caresses and hugs. While still standing in shoulder deep water I pulled her tightly to me and we kissed; a long, sensuous kiss that made things stir a little down below.

When our mouths parted she looked at me. "I'm glad you invited Maggie along." She told me. "It would've been kind of awkward without her here."

"That's what I figured." I answered. "Did she tell you anything when you went off to pee?"

"Just that she thought he was kind of cute. And that he seemed very, you know, inexperienced."

"Does that bother her?" I asked.

She smiled knowingly. "No." She said. "In fact she kind of seemed to like the idea. I think she wants to teach him a few things."

"Oh?" I grinned. "What kind of things?"

"These kind of things." She said, leaning in and putting her mouth to mine.

We stood there kissing hotly, our hands gliding up and down each other's backs while the waves gently lapped against our bodies. We quickly heated up despite the cold as we rubbed against one another under the water. There is something intrinsically erotic about making out in a lake. Maybe it's the water, maybe it's the thrill of doing it outdoors, or maybe a combination of both. Whatever it was we both felt it, both responded to it.

Her hand slid down my chest and across the front of my shorts, her fingers squeezing my turgid erection.

"Nina." I said with feigned shock at her naughtiness.

"Just checking for shrinkage." She told me, licking at my lips, sucking at my tongue. "It doesn't seem to be a problem here."

"No?" I asked.

She nibbled on my ear. "Well, there's only one way to be sure." She said.

Her fingers found the button on the top of my shorts and undid it. Next she found the zipper and slowly slid that down. Her cool hand reached inside and wrapped around me, squeezing and sliding up and down. I let my head fall onto her shoulder and my hands slide down to her ass, which I began stroking through the material of her shorts.

She stroked me to a near frenzy while I fondled her ass and kissed on her neck and shoulders. At last she pushed downward on my shorts, sending them down my leg and freeing my cock.

"I don't think this is a good idea." I whispered to her.

"Shhh." She whispered into my ear, her hand grabbing me once again. "I want to make you come again."

"But…"

"Shhh." She repeated, silencing me by putting her mouth to mine. She kissed me for a second and then said, "Take off my shorts."

"Your shorts?" I asked, wondering uneasily what she had in mind. She didn't want me to make love to her here, in this lake did she? That certainly wasn't the first time of love with her that I'd envisioned. We also had no protection. "Nina, I think we should stop and think about what we're doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing." She told me, giving my cock a few strokes. "Now take off my shorts."

The demanding tone of her voice drove me to action. Too aroused to fight anymore I reached down and unbuttoned her. I slid down her zipper and then pushed the shorts down her legs. She kicked them free and they floated up to the surface next to her. With her free hand she grabbed them and tossed them onto the shore where they landed with a wet plop. She was standing before me only in her bathing suit now. Her face was flushed with excitement.

"Now come here." She told me, pulling me towards her by the cock. She pulled me until I felt the head touch the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She slid it up and down a few times and then the top of my shaft was touching the material that covered her crotch. She let go of my cock and pulled my groin into her, closing her thighs around it. I felt the soft, baby smooth skin of her upper legs engulf me while the top of my shaft pressed firmly against her mound through the bathing suit.

"Ohh." She sighed, gyrating her hips a little, obviously enjoying the pressure in her nether regions.

I certainly was. It wasn't as pleasurable as being inside of a vagina, but it was very nice indeed. I moved my hips back and forth a little and her thighs rubbed the sides of me, sending pleasure radiating upward. Nina began to move back and forth too, increasing the pressure on her mound while her hands pulled at my ass, driving me into her.

We were both panting as my hips moved, driving my cock between her thighs. She kept them just tight enough against me to generate a pleasant friction but not so tight that abrasions would result. Her hands squeezed and fondled my ass and my hands did the same, dropping down and grabbing her cheeks, my fingers sliding beneath the elastic and touching bare flesh.

I had never done anything like this with anyone before, in either life and I found it blackly exciting. Especially when I considered that the woman who had initiated this was Nina who, though I loved her deeply, I'd figured to be a bit sexually repressed due to her upbringing and history. I guess I was wrong about that.

"Do you like it?" She breathed, her eyes shining as she watched my face.

"Yeah." I panted back at her. "Where did you learn this?"

"I read a lot." She told me, giving my ass an extra hard squeeze. "And some of the stuff I read is not exactly what my mother would approve of."

"I guess not." I answered, kissing her neck.

"I want you to come." She told me, whispering in my ear. "I want to feel it."

I didn't answer her, just continued to thrust in and out against her thighs, against her nylon-covered sex. Her tongue dipped into my mouth again, finding and attacking mine, her lips sucking obscenely at me. Nina had learned the lessons of kissing well. Finally I could take it no more. My hips began to blur as I drove in and out of her thighs.

"Yes." She told me, breaking the kiss for an instant, leaving a string of saliva stretched between our mouths. "Come. I want to feel it."

"Ahhh." I groaned, feeling the sensation beginning. I pulled her tightly to me and pumped like mad, my body out of control as the spasms began. She kissed me hard and squeezed my ass with all her might as I began to shoot between her legs. My semen shot out and splattered against her thighs, against her crotch. Some of it floated upward in the water, sticking to her swimsuit. It went on and on, seemingly forever before I finally relaxed in her arms.

We stayed that way for a moment and then finally I looked up at her. She was smiling. "That was interesting, wasn't it?" She asked me playfully.

"You never fail to amaze me Nina." I told her. "Tell me about this book you read this in."

A giggle. "Let's just say that you'd be surprised at what kind of things you could find at the public library."

I reached down and pulled my shorts back up, tucking myself inside and fastening them. I suggested we move a few feet from where we were.

"How come?" She wanted to know.

"Because the evidence of our indiscretion is floating all around us in the water." I said. "A lot of it is stuck to your swimsuit."

She looked around and saw the little stringy globules floating everywhere. The sight gave her the giggles, especially when she saw it sticking to her suit in various places. "What would my mother think about that?" She asked, moving with me out of the danger zone.

I spent a few minutes splashing water over her to get rid of the residue and then dropped my hand down between her legs.

"What are you doing?" She asked, making no move to stop me.

"Just making sure you're clear down there." I said.

She was, but I made extra sure, running my hand all over her thighs and the crotch of her suit. One of my fingers slid deftly inside, touching hair and the swell of her vaginal lip. She jumped a little at the contact.

"You know." I told her. "It seems the least I could do is return the favor you just did for me." I slid my finger between her lips, pushing the crotch of the suit further aside. Despite the fact that she was under water her passage was slick with her juices.

"If you insist." She breathed.

It didn't take long. She held tightly to me as my fingers moved in and out and my hand made circular motions across her clit. When she came her pelvis humped up and down on me and her teeth bit lightly into my shoulder.

We spent a few more minutes kissing and holding each other, just enjoying the touch of our bodies together. Finally we decided we should start working our way back. She went and retrieved her shorts from the shore, washed the dirt off of them and then put them back.

We made sure to make enough noise as we headed back to the boat so that Maggie and Mike would not be caught in an embarrassing situation. Our ploy worked. When we trodded ashore we found them lying on their stomachs, very close together. Their eyes were shining with the glow of new discovery.

We spent the rest of the day at the lake, either lounging on our island or going out for skiing runs. We had to refill the gas tank on the boat once, it really was a gas-guzzler, but otherwise it ran perfectly. By the time the sun started to set we piled in the boat once more and began heading at a sedate pace towards the launch ramp. As we idled along slowly, watching the sun sink towards the mountains, watching the light fade from the sky, feeling the warm summer breeze caress our exposed skin, Nina cuddled up beside me. Behind us Mike and Maggie were also pretty chummy. He had his arm around her shoulders and they kissed frequently. You could almost taste the romance in the air.

There was of course a considerable line of boats waiting when we reached our destination and we had to wait until well after full dark before we could pull up to the ramp and put the boat back on the trailer. We didn't mind. We sat with our arms around our respective companions and watched the brilliance of the stars as they came out, even seeing the occasional satellite as it passed overhead.

Knowing that I would have to drive home I'd quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.

I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they'd connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He'd probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don't believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn't know, couldn't predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn't happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?

I couldn't have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.

My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o'clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn't think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.

He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.

"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.

"It's Tracy." Dad said hollowly. "There's been an accident."

Chapter 14

Those four words: "there's been an accident" brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father's tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it's presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I'd won? Why hadn't I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.

"Is she…" I asked my Dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't speak the word.

"She's alive right now." Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. "We don't know a lot about how she's doing."

By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.

"What do you know?" I asked him. "What happened?"

"We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police," Dad said.

"South Lake Tahoe?" I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.

He nodded. "Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don't know what happened yet, or at least they're not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down."

"Jesus," I muttered. "And Tracy?"

"She didn't drown," Dad told me. "She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn't know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn't hurt too bad they said."

"They don't know anything about her injuries?" I asked.

"Nothing," Dad said. "I tried calling the hospital she's in but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything."

"What time did all of this happen?" I asked him, feeling guilt that I'd been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.

"We got the call a little over an hour ago," he told me. "The accident happened about an hour before that. They had a little trouble identifying her because she apparently had a fake I.D. on her. Only after they searched through her things did they find her real driver's license. I guess she was up there for a little gambling trip."

"Jesus," I said again.

"There's a red-eye flight out of Spokane in two hours," Dad told me. "It doesn't go to Reno but it stops in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours away by car. Your mother and I are going to be on it."

"Me too," I said quickly.

"Bill," he started. "There's nothing that you can…"

"I'm going Dad," I told him. "I'll pay for the ticket myself."

He looked at me for a moment. "You don't have to do that," he said. "Why don't you get the boat put away so we can get ready to go?"

Obviously a damper had been put on the end of what had been a very pleasant day. Mike and Maggie, after hearing the story of Tracy, offered condolences and then quickly slipped away. I was not so far out of it that I didn't notice Mike climbing into Maggie's car even though he only lived around the corner. Nina offered me some soothing words and a hug and then she too left, making me promise to call her and let her know what was going on. I promised.

I showered quickly and packed a few things. Soon we were on our way to the airport.

We took off on time, heading Southwest for Sacramento. The flight took forever. I spent much of it staring out the window to the darkness below while Mom and Dad held hands quietly next to me. Around us the lights were dimmed down and most of the other passengers were asleep in their seats. I was exhausted from the day I'd just spent and the droning of the engines was soothing white noise but I couldn't sleep. Not while my sister was maybe already dead somewhere, maybe sitting in the refrigerated section of the county morgue in Reno, a little tag tied to her toe.

Sometimes having knowledge of how a medical system works is not a good thing. This was one of those times. I could perfectly envision Tracy being taken into some hospital room, possibly the trauma resuscitation room, possibly the emergency operating room. I could see a team of doctors working on her, mechanically following written protocols as they cracked open her chest, or cracked open her skull, trying to save her but knowing it was useless. Doing it only because their training dictated they try. I could see a technician squeezing a bag attached to a breathing tube to supply her with oxygen while the efforts were going on. The technician would probably be checking out her tits as he did it, admiring them, thinking lightly that it was a shame they were going to be taken out of circulation soon.

At some point the doctor in charge would decide enough is enough. The time would be noted and all of the devices would be taken off of her. She would be zipped into a body bag which, by protocol, would have already been placed beneath her before she'd even arrived. The doctors, nurses, and technicians would all go onto other things, treating patients, stitching wounds, writing orders, fetching blankets, reflecting sadly for a moment how it was a shame that someone so young had died that way.

But none of them would shed a tear for her. None of them would slam their fists into the wall, cursing the insidious nature of DEATH, the mortal enemy. They would go about their tasks, eat their lunches, and the next day none of them would even remember her. Except maybe the technician who had admired her tits. The zippered bag would be moved into a storage room somewhere and a phone call would be placed. Soon a white van from the coroner's office would arrive and the bag would be placed on a small gurney and taken to the county morgue. The next day a pathologist would rip open her body, saw open her skull, take out her internal organs and weigh them, and then finally stuff everything back inside and crudely sew her up.

I could not get this vision out of my head no matter how hard I tried to think of other things. As our aircraft slowed and began to descend into Sacramento we passed within sight of Reno. I could see it's lights shining up from the pre-dawn darkness and the vision became almost overwhelming. Tracy was down there somewhere. Was she still drawing breath? Not if fate had had it's way.

We touched down normally at ten minutes after four in the morning. The Sacramento airport was almost completely deserted, the few passengers from our plane it's only customers at the moment. Mom went to go secure a rental car while Dad and I headed directly for a bank of pay phones. He dialed a number that he had written on a slip of paper. The number for Washoe Medical Center in Reno, where Tracy was (if she wasn't in the morgue, a nasty part of my brain insisted upon reminding me).

Dad fought through at least five different people, said Tracy's name at least fifteen times, and was placed on hold at least ten. It was maddening watching this, waiting for someone to tell him something. Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes he managed to get hold of someone who knew something.

"She is?" he said softly.

She is what? I wondered, wanting to rip the phone out of his hand. She is dead? She is alive? What?

Dad, sensing what I was going through, held the phone away from his mouth for a brief moment and told me, "she's in surgery right now." He then spoke into the phone again. "What kind of surgery? Can you tell me how bad she is?"

He listened, his face souring. "What do you mean you don't know who I am?" he shouted into the phone. "I'm her father and I'm very worried about her. Please tell me what's going on!"

He listened some more, his expression darkening. "But I'm in Sacramento!" he yelled. "I'm more than two hours from there! Are you really going to let me go the next two hours wondering? Just tell me how bad she is! What kind of surgery she's having!"

He listened for another moment and then slammed the phone down angrily. "Fucking asshole!" he shouted at it loudly enough for his words to echo through the terminal. A few people glanced at him uneasily and then went about their business.

He turned to me, shaking his head. "They won't tell me anything about her condition." he told me, "because they can't verify who I am. Who the hell else would call up and say they were her father?"

I sighed. "You're dealing with bureaucracy at it's finest when you're dealing with a hospital," I told him. "And remember, the accident happened in California, law suit capital of the world. They probably have lawyers who call up and pretend to be family members in order to get information. It happens all the time, even in Spokane."

"That's disgusting," he proclaimed.

"That's lawyers," I said. "At least we know she's still alive."

"Yeah," he breathed. "Let's go find your Mom and get headed up there."

Mom had procured a Toyota Corolla for us. Dad updated her with what he knew as we walked to the rental car pick-up. Fifteen minutes later we were roaring away, Dad at the wheel, Mom in the passenger seat, me in the cramped back seat, reading the map we'd been given and navigating. There was little talk as I directed Dad down Interstate 5 to I-80 East. We passed through the darkened city of Sacramento and it's suburbs and were climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the sun made it's appearance in front of us.

It was shortly before eight in the morning when we entered the Reno city limits. I navigated Dad through the city, past the towering casinos, until we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. We practically rushed inside and spent twenty more minutes finding someone who could tell us something. Was Tracy dead? Was she alive? Was she horribly crippled? Was she on a ventilator awaiting permission from the parents to pull the plug? The tension was so thick between the three of us that it was almost palpable in the air.

We were directed to a small waiting room on the third floor of the hospital.

It was empty when we arrived. This time my knowledge of the medical system was an asset. I smiled happily as I read the sign and saw what part of the building we were in. Hope showed itself for the first time.

"We're in orthopedics," I told Mom and Dad happily, my voice conveying the message that this was good news.

They looked at me cautiously, waiting for me to explain the ramifications of this.

"We're not in neurology, which would be bad," I told them. "That would mean she had some sort of neurological damage. You know, brain injury, spinal injury, paralysis, something like that. Orthopedics is bones. They put you here when you have broken bones, and only broken bones."

They became cautiously hopeful but I could tell they were awaiting a final word. It was understandable. I was too. About ten minutes after we arrived a young doctor came into the room. He was dressed in scrubs and I had an eerie flashback to waiting for the prognosis on Jack. He introduced himself and we all stared for a moment in disbelief as we heard him say his name.

"Did you say Dr. Quack?" Dad finally had to ask.

He smiled the smile of one who has explained this many times before. "It's spelled with a KW," he said, "but yes, you have the pronunciation right. But have no fear. My name does not reflect my skill, although I had to put up with quite a bit of teasing in med school and residency. Anyway, I'm an orthopedic surgeon and I'm in charge of Tracy's case."

"How is she?" I blurted before anyone else had a chance to.

"In considerable pain," he told us. "And she'll be in a wheelchair for a few months, but other than that, she's doing fine. I expect a complete recovery."

It took a few moments for that to sink in. I almost thought I hadn't heard him correctly. Doing fine? Complete recovery? Had fate been thwarted again? Beside me Mom and Dad breathed great sighs of relief. Dr. Kwack smiled at us for a moment and then explained her injuries.

"From what I hear," he said, "Tracy was seatbelted into the right rear of the taxi. The driver was making a left turn and was struck by a shuttle van right where your daughter was seated. The impact was considerable and the taxi was spun around to where it rolled off of an embankment into Lake Tahoe, landing upside down in the water. Fortunately Tracy was able to extricate herself from her seatbelt and get out of the car before she drowned. This is a remarkable feat I must add since her injuries were undoubtedly caused by the initial impact. It must have been horribly painful for her to drag herself out of the car but somehow she did it."

"And what are her injuries?" Mom asked.

"Her pelvis is broken in four places," Dr. Kwack explained. "Her right femur, that's the long bone in the leg, is broken in two places. She has two broken ribs on the right side and had a partially collapsed lung when she was brought in. A chest tube down in the ER took care of that. She also has a nasty cut on the right side of her head. That's been stitched up. I operated on her leg and her hip and put pins in to help set the bones back together. She's going to have to go through some physical therapy and she'll probably always walk with a little limp since her right leg is going to be about an inch shorter than her left. And she'll probably set off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life. But she's alive and doing well."

"When can we see her?" Dad asked, tears in his eyes as he heard the news. It was understandable. There were tears in mine too.

"She's just been moved to her room," he said. "And she's pretty doped up on pain medication, but you can go see her now if you wish. She may not be capable of talking to you, but you can see her."

We did. And Dr. Kwack was right. Tracy was flying high. She was lying in a hospital bed, her body covered by a gown. Her entire pelvis and right leg were encased in a fiberglass cast. Her ribs were taped on the right side and the plastic hose of a chest tube snaked out from beneath it. Her face was deeply bruised, the right cheek an ugly purple color, her right eye swollen shut. Some of her hair had been shaved away and a neat line of stitches was visible on her scalp. There was also the inevitable catheter hose protruding from beneath the sheets and ending at a plastic bag with urine in it. The other end of the hose would be threaded through her urethra and into her bladder. Remembering my own experience with such a thing I pitied her.

Mom wept openly at the sight of her, stroking her hair and trying to get her to talk. Tracy opened her eyes a few times to Mom and Dad's voices but seemed to have no awareness of what was going on around her. When she tried to speak it was only in nonsensical grunts. We stayed for nearly an hour before a nurse finally suggested we leave for a little bit. She would probably be like this for the next twenty-four hours we were told.

We found a hotel room in one of the downtown casinos and fell into immediate sleep within minutes. It had been a long night.

The next day Tracy, though in pain, was awake and alert enough to talk. She told the story of what had happened to her both to Mom and Dad and I and to the investigator from the South Lake Tahoe Police department.

Her and one of her girlfriends from college had ridden a Greyhound bus up to the casino area to do a little weekend gambling and drinking. Tracy, I knew, did not like to ride in a car with anyone but she had no problem with airplanes or buses, figuring that fate would not wipe out an entire vehicle full of people just to get to her. Since you had to be twenty-one to gamble or drink in Nevada, Tracy and her friend had secured fake ID's from a reputable dealer at the college. She declined to name just who this person was to the cop, although he did ask. The Greyhound had dropped the two girls off at one of the casinos on Friday night. They'd spent a few hours gambling and drinking and then, finding the room rates at the casino a little more than they could afford, rode a shuttle bus to one of the motels on the California side of the town and got a room there. Early the next morning they rode another shuttle bus back to the casinos.

The two friends spent all day on the strip and Tracy managed to get ahead more than a hundred bucks. Her friend was down about the same amount. Feeling fatigued, Tracy elected to head back to the motel to take a nap for awhile. She tried to find a shuttle bus heading in her direction but discovered that none were scheduled for more than an hour. Wanting badly to sleep, she'd gone out to the taxi stand and hopped in a cab. After all, she was ahead of the game and she could afford it.

The last thing she remembered was driving down the boulevard of South Lake Tahoe in the back of the cab. The next thing she knew, she was in horrible pain in a helicopter, looking up at a trauma nurse in a blue jumpsuit. Things were very spotty from there.

She was questioned several times about the accident itself but she said she could not remember anything. Nobody disputed her on this point. Amnesia is common among accident victims.

The cop filled us in on a few details that had been uncovered.

"According to the witnesses," he explained, "the cab made a left turn against across traffic and was struck by the shuttle van, which was moving about thirty miles an hour. The van driver was slightly injured, as were six of the passengers, although that's probably just what we call Jacoby and Myers pain around these parts. Anyway, your daughter and the cab driver were the only one's with any significant injury. The fault for the accident lies directly on the cab driver. No question about it."

"The driver of the cab was drunk," he said. "From what we've learned he's a hopeless alcoholic. We found an empty pint of vodka under the seat in the cab. Vodka and gin are the favored beverages of those alcoholics that are trying to function on the job. It doesn't leave much of an odor on the breath although it does leave a little. Our officers smelled it right away when they questioned him. They took a blood sample from him at the hospital. He registered point two-one percent. That's more than twice the legal limit. He has two previous convictions for driving under the influence. One in Nevada, one in California. He'll be charged with felony driving under the influence this time."

Tracy, who had remained very composed through all of this, listening respectfully, suddenly turned angry. "Why," she asked the cop, "was this man still driving a cab if he had two DUI convictions?"

The cop gave a cynical look. "Don't ask me," he replied. "If it'd been up to me the asshole – excuse my language – would have had his license yanked forever the first time he got convicted. Unfortunately, it's not up to me. You don't get much around here for DUI. A little fine, a little lecture from the judge not to do it again. Sometimes I think those Iranians have the right idea about that problem. They give 'em the death penalty. A little harsh maybe, but they don't have pretty young girls ending up in hospital beds because of drunk cab drivers."

Though my parents were screaming liberals and routinely canonized the efforts of groups such as the ACLU, they didn't dispute the cop's argument. Nor did I.

"Anyway," he went on, "I think this time he'll at least do a little time in county. He'll also have his hack license taken away. I wish I could promise you that he'll never do it again but you know alcoholism is a "disease" and it's not really his fault. That's what they tell us anyway." He looked at Tracy meaningfully. "Are you SURE you don't remember anything?"

She shook her head, the effort obviously painful. "Not a thing," she said quietly, her eye, the one that was open, flitting away from the cop's face.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Doesn't matter," he finally said. "I'm glad you're gonna make it all right. You probably won't even have to testify. I'm sure a plea bargain will be worked out." He said the words "plea bargain" the way other people say "venereal disease".

We stayed at the hospital for a good portion of the day. Mom brought Tracy some flowers and Dad brought her a large stuffed bear with it's leg in a cast. Her friend Linda, who had accompanied her to Lake Tahoe, stopped by also and we all got to meet her. Linda was a cute blonde, very nice, though a little on the shy side. She was a business major and a member of the young republican's club. She'd apparently gone through quite a bit of turmoil of her own during Tracy's accident. She'd returned to their room expecting to find Tracy there and didn't. She was only slightly worried at that point, figuring her friend had slept and then gone back to the casinos.

But when she still hadn't returned the next morning she became seriously worried. She began calling the cops and the local hospital. The local hospital of course hadn't heard of her since she'd been taken to Reno and whomever she'd talked to at the police department didn't recognize Tracy's name in relationship to the accident. She became frantic when the time for their return came and went and Tracy still hadn't shown up at the room. Another call to the cops was made and someone finally was able to make the connection and let Linda know where Tracy was and that she was alive.

Linda didn't stay long, just long enough to assure herself that Tracy was fine, exchange a hug or two, and let my sister know that she'd retrieved all of her belongings from the motel and would keep them for her. She told us all that she was pleased to meet us and then disappeared.

When Tracy received her latest pain shot and drifted off to sleep we decided to disappear also. We piled into the rented Toyota once more and headed back to our hotel room.

Mom laid down herself and fell quickly to sleep. Dad, claiming he was too wired to sleep, decided that he would go downstairs for just a little bit and maybe have a beer. I gave him a knowing look as he went.

I tried to lay down myself but found sleep impossible. There were many unanswered questions going through my mind. Finally I got up and crept out of the room, catching the elevator to the lobby. Dad was not in the bar but this did not surprise me. I began wandering through the casino, dodging the occasional security guard to keep from being ejected. I walked past jingling slot machines, beeping poker machines, and hundreds of people, finally finding Dad sitting at a two-dollar blackjack table. He had a beer and a stack of five-dollar chips before him and was hitting on a fourteen when I put my hand on his shoulder.

He looked up and gave me a guilty smile. The dealer, oblivious to my presence, slapped down a five on top of his fourteen. He took a quick look and then tucked his cards under his bet.

"Doing a little gambling?" I asked him with mock sternness.

He shrugged. "As long as we're here," he said, "I thought I'd try my luck a little. It's funny. Your mother looks at this whole thing as a tragedy and of course it is, but I know the real tragedy that was supposed to happen. It was supposed to happen on her graduation night and it was supposed to happen the other day, wasn't it?"

"It certainly seems a little more than a coincidence," I told him, keeping my voice low to avoid having the other players gleam what we were talking about. I didn't really have to worry. They were all watching the dealer who was admonishing an ancient man at third base for touching his bet after the cards were in play. "All of the elements were there. Drunk driver, car, water. Somehow Tracy dragged herself out of there though. She didn't drown. That goes against everything I thought I understood about this whole thing."

"Yeah," Dad nodded. "And it makes me feel guilty to feel good about the fact that my daughter was merely injured. We got lucky Bill. Somehow we did. So I figured I'd come down here and see if maybe some of that luck is still floating around."

"And is it?" I asked him.

Before he could answer me the dealer, finished with her gentle reaming of the third baseman, resumed play. With a ten showing she flipped up her down card. It was a five. She gave herself another card, a six, and the table groaned. With a sorrowful look she collected all the bets.

"As you can see," Dad told me, "the theory's flawed. I'm losing my ass." He put another five-dollar chip on the table. "What brings you down here?" He gave me an evil smile. "Pity you're in Reno and too young to gamble, eh?"

I laughed lightly. "You gotta take the bad with the good. But anyway, I wanted to borrow the car," I told him, "I need to talk to Tracy."

He turned serious. "You don't think she's telling everything she knows, do you?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I don't think she's lying about anything but I just wanted to be able to talk to her alone, to see if she tells me anything else if you and Mom aren't there. She doesn't know that you know after all."

The dealer gave him two aces. She herself had a four showing. Dad smiled and picked up another five-dollar chip, splitting his bet. "That's a good idea," he told me, watching as he was given an eight and a nine to go with each of his aces. He looked at this in satisfaction for a moment and then reached in his pocket and withdrew the car key while the dealer attended to the other players.

"Thanks," I said, taking it from him and pocketing it. "I won't be too long."

"Who knows?" Dad said. "Maybe I'll win so much while you're gone I won't have to worry about things like stocks and investments."

At the table the dealer flipped up a ten to go with her four. She dealt herself a two and then a five. Another apologetic smile to the groaning crowd and she began to collect the money. Dad looked at this in disbelief. Two of the other players got up and left.

"I wouldn't go cashing in any stocks just yet," I told him, chuckling to myself as I headed for the door.

Tracy was awake when I entered her room. She almost looked as if she was expecting me. I took a moment to marvel at the condition of her face. Two and a half days after the accident now it was very swollen and a spectacular array of colors had erupted upon it. Hues of purple, black, blue and yellow competed for billing, centering around her right eye, which was still swollen tightly shut. Though I'd spent eight years looking at people that had been battered with everything from baseball bats, to steering wheels of cars, to crowbars I had never had much opportunity to observe these injuries after they'd had time to swell and discolor. I now knew why police photographers liked to wait twenty-four hours before they snapped shots of assault victims. It was hard to believe that in a week or so her face would be back to it's normal, pretty self as Dr. Kwack had assured her.

"How bad is it today?" Tracy asked. "They won't give me a mirror."

"It's pretty bad," I admitted. "But you're alive. It'll get better."

She nodded, wincing a little as she did so. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah," I answered, coming over and grabbing a seat next to the bed.

"I thought you might come by alone," she said. "I was kinda hoping for it."

"Oh?"

"I lied to the cop Bill," she told me, her voice hitching, tears running from her good eye as she began to cry. "I remember everything that happened. Every last fucking thing."

She broke down completely, sobs pouring out her, her chest heaving up and down. I got up out of my chair and sat on the edge of her bed. It was awkward with the cast and the pulleys and the IV line but I managed to get my arms around her and her head pulled against my shoulder. She cried hysterically for the better part of five minutes, her tears burning my chest and wetting my shirt. I soothed her the best I could, patting her on an uninjured part of her back and speaking soothing words to her. Finally her sobs quieted down and she got control of herself again. She raised her head from my shoulder and looked at me, sniffing.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't ever do things like that. I don't ever cry."

"It's okay Tracy," I told her. "Sometimes you have to. Do you feel better?"

She smiled a little, a weak smile at best. "A little," she said. "Can you get me some water?"

I released her and stood up, picking up her glass from the tray next to the table and pouring some of the water from her plastic pitcher. There was a flexible straw in the glass, bent at a ninety-degree angle. I handed the glass to her and she took a long sip. Figuring that the immediate crisis was over I sat back down in the chair again.

"You know something?" she asked. "The day of the accident I was in the sports bar in Harrah's. Linda and I were having a beer and, you know, checking out the guys and I happened to see that they were taking bets for the football season. You could put down money on who you thought would be in the Super Bowl, just like our pool for the baseball season that I asked you about that time."

I nodded. "I really didn't know," I told her, wondering what this had to do with anything. "I still don't, although with Nina's Dad's help I'm actually starting to like baseball a little bit."

She smiled. "But I thought that you did," she told me. "I thought you just didn't want to tell me because you didn't want me taking advantage of your knowledge. I was pissed off at you Bill, I almost hated you because I thought you were depriving me of something that I had a right to."

"Tracy," I started, seeing that a tear was flowing from her eye again.

"Let me finish," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.

I nodded.

"When I was in the sports bar and saw the football thing I thought about calling you again. I was going to yell at you and demand you tell me who was going to be in the Super Bowl this year. It's supposed to be held at Stanford stadium this year and that's only an hour from Berkeley. I wanted to get tickets, go watch the game and then catch a bus up to Tahoe and collect my money. I figured I had a right to that information. I was gonna call you up and law down the law with you. I was gonna threaten not to…"

She sobbed a little and took a deep breath. "Not to speak to you anymore if you didn't tell me." She sobbed some more. "I'm sorry Bill. I can't believe I was such a bitch, that I was thinking things like that. I was actually telling myself that you didn't love me very much if you wouldn't kick down a little information to me. The only reason I didn't call you was because when I was talking to Linda about wanting to make a bet on the Super Bowl she told me that my fake ID wouldn't hold up for something like that. But I was prepared to do it Bill. I was really going to."

"Tracy…" I started again and then trailed off. I honestly didn't know what to say, what to think about what she'd just told me.

"I just can't believe I was like that," she cried. "I was actually thinking you didn't love me, that you were trying to keep me down or something. I'd completely forgotten that I was still alive because of you, that you'd already showed me how much you loved me by saving me, not once but twice. And how do I repay you? How do I return your love? By trying to get you to exploit what you know against your morals. By calling you up and trying to get you to tell me about a baseball game and then getting pissed at you because you don't know. By wanting to threaten you if you didn't tell me about a football game. By thinking you're some kind of moralistic…" She broke into fresh sobs again. "Oh God Bill!"

"It's okay Tracy," I soothed, holding her hand. "At least you like me now, right?"

She composed herself a little but continued to squeeze my hand almost painfully. "I've had a lot of time to think in here," she told me. "A lot of time. And I realized that I was having a lot of bad feelings for you. I told myself it was because of you withholding knowledge from me. You were on your way to getting rich but you weren't including me in it. Like I said, I felt I had a right to get rich off of you, and do you know why?"

"Why?" I asked, though I suspected the reason.

"Because I was blaming you for this death sentence I have hanging over my head. I realize now how irrational that is, you didn't cause it, you just told me about it. But somehow, in my mind, I thought it was your fault. You were the one that screwed around with fate and caused this. Never mind that fate would've taken me on graduation night if not for your interference, you were the one that put all this in motion and therefore you were the one to blame for it. So then part of me figured that if I got stinking rich all of this would just go away. I wouldn't have to worry anymore about riding in cars. Do you know how damn inconvenient it is to NEVER get in a car with someone? That was all your fault Bill. That was what I thought, what I brought myself around to believing. And then you wouldn't help me get rich to compensate for it. When I went up to Tahoe this weekend, I was a very bitter person."

I nodded, not talking, understanding the source of her feelings a little. I can imagine what it's like living every day wondering if fate was finally going to catch up with you. She probably felt a little like soldiers in a war feel after a while.

"Sometimes I would feel paranoid beyond belief. Like I didn't dare even step outside the dorm room because fate was waiting for me out there. It would send a drunk driver along to run over me and knock me into the duck pond or something just to get at me. Other times I'd think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, that I could climb into a car with Ted Kennedy and be perfectly safe. I can't even go to counseling about it. Can you imagine how the counselor would react? And I can't tell my friends about it either, although I must admit that sometimes, after Linda and I had a few beers, I was tempted to tell her what happened to you. Something kept me from doing that. The only person I could really talk about it with is you, but I didn't want to talk to you because you were trying to keep me down and you had caused all of this in the first place."

"But through all of that I stayed away from the situation that I knew fate wanted me to get into. I never got in a car with anyone else driving. I rode my bike when I wanted to get somewhere close by, even if it was pouring rain. If I needed to go to The City for something I took BART or the city bus. I was very careful not to give fate an opportunity.

"A few times though, I got into cabs. I didn't really like doing it but I also didn't think it was that dangerous. Cabs are public transportation aren't they? It never occurred to me that a cab driver would be drunk."

"You've ridden in cabs before?" I asked, surprised.

She nodded. "A few times. I only did it as a last resort but I never had a problem before. Sometimes we even drove right along the Bay too. I figured cabs were reasonably safe. In truth I didn't ride in them much mostly because they're expensive. And then I got in the one at the casino."

"What happened then?" I asked.

"I knew something was wrong almost right from the start of that trip."

"What do you mean?" I asked, fascinated, eager to hear this story.

She swallowed nervously. "It was the eeriest thing. I'd been drinking at the casino and was pretty buzzed, feeling kind of good you know? I was up a hundred bucks and ready to just go back to the room and crash. As soon as I closed the door in the cab and it pulled away I started to get nervous. I didn't know why at first. I didn't equate fate with any of it. I just felt twitchy, uncomfortable, like I didn't really want to be there. I thought it was the cab driver. He didn't seem drunk at all, that really would've made me nervous obviously, but there was something about him I didn't like. Something about his face, which looked kind of old and gross looking. He was talking about how good the tips were in his job since he usually only drove people who'd won big. Kind of hinting, you know? He asked me if I'd won big."

She breathed deeply, wiping a tear from her eye. I could see that she was trembling.

"He turned his head towards me when he asked me that," she went on. "When he did that I smelled it. Alcohol on his breath. Like the cop said, it wasn't much, just a faint whiff of that odor that people have when they've been drinking. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Oh yeah," I affirmed softly. As a paramedic I'd smelled that odor thousands of times and knew it well. When I'd been new and had worked the night shift in downtown Spokane that odor had been on nine out of ten of my patients.

"As soon as that hit my nose and I realized I was in a car with a drunk driver at the wheel I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. The buzz that I had went away like that." She snapped her fingers. "I almost panicked, especially when I glanced over to my right and saw that we were driving alongside the lake. It was dark but I could see the water less than twenty feet away, just down a small incline. I could imagine perfectly being under that water, trapped in my seatbelt, not able to breathe, drowning. I could see Mom and Dad and you at my funeral, crying while they lowered my coffin into the ground.

"The cab driver was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question. Everything was moving in slow motion. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going and he was drifting into the other lane. That broke through. I yelled at him to watch where the hell he was going and he jerked his head back, steering back into his lane. He said something like, "Jeez lady, I wasn't gonna hit nobody" and looked offended. But I was still terrified.

"I told him to stop right there and let me out. He said, "what are you talking about, your hotel is still a couple a miles away?" and I told him I didn't care, to let me out right there. We argued for a minute about it and he just kept driving down the road, telling me that we were almost there and that he couldn't let someone out before they were where they were going. Finally I screamed at him to stop the fucking cab now.

"Things got really slow motion at that point. He was pissed off and said "fine, walk if that's what you want". But instead of simply stopping and letting me out he tried to pull into a parking lot on the other side of the street. He did it without looking to see if anything was coming first. Something was. It was one of the shuttle vans that take people from the motels to the casinos. He pulled right in front of it. It didn't even have time to put on the brakes. I didn't even have time to yell. In that second, while I was looking at it's headlights less than five feet from me, I knew that fate had finally caught up with me. I knew that I hadn't listened to you as much as I should have. I knew that I was going to die. I KNEW it!

"When it hit, glass sprayed all over me. I felt something like a sledgehammer hit me all over my right side. I felt the doorframe hit the side of my head. The noise was incredible Bill, I never heard anything like that. I felt us spin around and then start to tip over. Just as I became upside down there was a splash and water was covering my face. I couldn't breath and my body actually felt a little better, less pain when the cold hit me. I felt the seatbelt holding me in place just like I'd imagined. I was trapped underwater and I was going to die. And it felt RIGHT. I knew that if I just sat there for a minute or two it would all be over. Something inside of me told me just to do that. Just to wait there until everything went black. I wouldn't be in pain. I wouldn't have to worry anymore. It would just be over. It was a calming feeling Bill. The thought of just dying actually got rid of the panic.

"I sat there upside down, not breathing and I saw the roof of the car hit the bottom of the lake. I saw a bunch of bubbles go floating up. I saw a bunch of muck get stirred up and obscure everything outside. It seemed trippy to me. I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking, "so this is what it's like-this isn't so bad". I even saw the cab driver get out of his seat belt and swim out through his window. He'd had it open and he just squeezed his way out. His arm was bleeding and leaving little trails of blood in the water and I tripped off of them for a second. I knew that he'd swim to the top and that he wouldn't try to come back for me. I knew it.

"I didn't feel any pain right then. I was relaxed. Just waiting to die. Just waiting to do what I was SUPPOSED to do. It didn't feel bad at all. It actually felt kind of nice."

"Jesus." I mumbled, staring at her. She hadn't said that with nostalgia, but with horror.

"I was just starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to just suck in a bunch of water and get it over with. I was SUPPOSED to die, so why prolong it? That's when I thought of you." She soured a little. "It wasn't a nice thought. I thought, "that'll teach Bill not to tell me what I want to know, not to keep me down anymore. Now the asshole can just cry his ass off at my funeral." It was that thought that got me moving. I actually saw you next to my grave, tears running down your face, wondering why I hadn't listened to you. The fact that you could cry for me told me that you really did love me, that you would be…" She broke a little. "Be disappointed in me."

"I sat there upside down, underwater, not able to breathe and all these thoughts going through my head. Was I really going to just die in order to get back at you? You'd fucked over fate time and time again and I was going to let myself die just to prove you were wrong? What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn't I at least TRY to get out of here?"

"I didn't think I was going to make it. I really thought I was going to die anyway because I was supposed to but I decided to at least try." She shook her head. "It was absurdly easy to get out of there. I've been wondering why the Tracy in the other time-line found it so difficult." She glared contemptuously at me, directing her glare to the "other Tracy" whom she obviously had little respect for. "That Tracy simply drowned. She wasn't injured like I was. I found the clasp on my seatbelt and pushed it, expecting that it would be jammed or something but it wasn't. It came right apart and I dropped slowly onto the roof of the car. My right leg was pinned a little bit between the front seat and the door that had been hit. It hurt when I pulled it but it came out without any problem. I was free but I was still in the car.

"Everything was calm and cool. I was considering myself as good as dead so I didn't worry too much about what would happen if I failed to get out. What did I have to lose by trying? I had time and presence of mind to actually consider the options of escape before I gave it a shot, that's how calm I was. I looked at the driver's side window, thinking I could swim out through there. But it was rolled up and the glass hadn't broken. I knew I wouldn't be able to break it. I looked at the window where the van had hit us. The glass had broken but the frame had been smashed in and I didn't think I could squeeze through it. So finally I looked at the window where the driver had gone out. There wasn't a partition between the front and the back seats like the cabs in Berkeley have so I decided that was the way to do it. I twisted myself around and pushed myself into the front seat.

"I noticed I was running out of air at that point, that I badly needed to take a breath, but that still didn't worry me. The worst that could happen was that I could die, right? All I was doing was trying. I didn't even think about how long I'd been under the water. So I pushed myself through the window. As I did that I felt some pain in my hip and in my leg but it wasn't bad, it was distant. Once I was free, I just let myself float up to the top.

"When I broke the surface and took the first breath of air, everything changed. I saw the stars outside, I saw the cab driver pulling himself onto the shore while other cars had stopped and people were starting to run over to the edge of the lake. I tasted the air as it went into my lungs and that was when I realized that I was still alive and that I could stay alive."

She looked meaningfully at me. "That's when it came home to me how precious life was and how close I'd just come to losing it. That's when all the pain hit me and I realized that it wasn't over yet, that I could still drown. Only then, I didn't want to drown, I didn't want to die. Pain went shooting through my whole body, centered on my right side from my face to my feet. It was agony Bill, absolute agony. I started to sink in the water and my face went under. I sucked in a bunch of water before I could force my head back up and started coughing. The coughing made the pain worse.

"I started flailing around in the water, really panicking now and then I noticed the cab was not completely under water. The back wheels were sticking up. I grabbed hold of one and held on as tight as I could. I've never hugged a tire like that before. I tried to put my feet down on the bottom and stand up but as soon as they touched, pain went shooting through my leg and my hips. Horrible pain. So I just held on and let my feet float. I coughed some more, thinking I still had water in my throat and a bunch of blood came shooting out. That's when I realized that I couldn't breathe very well. Every breath was hurting in my chest and it didn't feel like I was getting enough air. I also noticed blood dripping from my head down into the water. I was hurt bad. I started to wonder if I was going to die from the injuries.

"Through all of this nobody on shore noticed me. There must've been sixty people gathered at that point but they were all gathered around the fucking cab driver, may he rot in hell. He'd collapsed on the embankment and some people had pulled him up. They were all fawning over him, asking him a bunch of questions, and nobody was seeing me down in the water because I was on the other side of the cab hanging onto the tire. I tried to scream at them but as soon as I sucked in breath to try it made my chest hurt and made me cough up more blood. Meanwhile it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

"I was out there for almost five minutes and things were starting to get kinda gray and fuzzy. I was thinking that I was going to die anyway, just lose consciousness and slip into the water. It was like one of those dreams where you're trapped and in trouble and trying to call for help but nobody can hear you. You ever have those?"

"Yes." I nodded, surprised. They were a common stress dream for me though I wasn't aware that Tracy, or anyone else for that matter, had them too.

"I would've thought that it WAS a dream except for the pain and the trouble breathing," she went on. "Finally a cop car showed up. The cop waded through all the people and looked at the cab driver for a minute. Then he shined his flashlight on the cab, probably just to see it, and his light caught my face. The next thing I know he was splashing into the water and coming after me. He asked me how I was but I couldn't even talk by then, I was concentrating everything just on getting in the next breath. So he dragged me to the shore.

"He tried to pull me up the embankment but that hurt so bad that I DID manage a scream. So he decided to leave me down there. He stayed with me until the firemen put me on a backboard and pulled me up. A paramedic cut off all my clothes and stuck an IV in my arm. I was hurting so bad and was so scared that I wasn't even embarrassed to be lying naked in front of all those people. They gave me some oxygen and that helped a little, but not much.

"While they'd been working on me I heard a helicopter land and felt a bunch of dust and shit blow over me. A few minutes later a nurse in a jumpsuit came over and looked at me for a few minutes. She told me she was going to make it easier to breathe and then she jabbed a needle right into my chest."

"A chest decompression," I said. "I've done a couple of those."

"Whatever it was, it hurt like hell," Tracy told me. "But there was this pop in my chest and I heard a bunch of air come hissing out and all of a sudden I could breathe again. It made the pain from the needle worthwhile. So anyway, the next thing I know a bunch of firemen picked me up and put me into the helicopter. A few minutes after that we took off.

"What I told the cop was the first thing I remember was actually the point that things got kind of fuzzy on me. Everything is jumbled after that. I knew I was hurt bad but I didn't feel like I was going to die anymore. The clarity went away. I barely remember landing and being taken out of the helicopter. I remember all kinds of doctors and nurses poking and probing me, jabbing needles into me, and I definitely remember someone sticking their goddam finger up my ass. What the hell do they do that for?"

I smiled a little, sensing the old Tracy returning a little. "If you have an orifice," I told her, "they're gonna stick something in it. They leave no hole un-probed."

"Assholes," she mumbled. "So when they got done with the poking and probing and all that, they gave me something in my IV. Everything got really hazy after that. I have a vague memory of a doctor cutting into my chest and sticking a tube in there. I remember it hurt but that's the only clear thing until I woke up the next day and you and Mom and Dad were there."

We sat in silence for a minute, her words hanging in the air. She took another sip out of her water and then handed it back to me to set down on the table.

"So do you hate me?" Tracy asked finally. "I wouldn't be surprised if you did."

"Hate you?" I asked. "Why would I hate you?"

"Because of the way I treated you, the way I was thinking about you. I was being a bitch Bill. A total, unthinking, unfeeling bitch."

"I could never hate you Tracy," I said gently. "And I'm sure that what you were feeling was a natural tendency considering what you were going through."

"A natural tendency?" she asked.

"Well, I don't believe that there have never been any extensive psychological studies on the effects of having a family member return from the future to let you know that you have a death sentence from fate hanging over you. The target group is probably rather small. But I can understand the need to blame someone, something for what was happening. It's human nature and fate is not an easy target to discharge your frustration upon. I came back and told you something that profoundly affected your life. It's only natural that you wanted to punish the messenger for the bad news. I understand, I really do."

"You're not just saying that?" She asked, another tear trailing down her face.

"Of course not," I said, standing and giving her another hug. "I'm glad you're still alive, ecstatic about it. Remember, my number one goal since the day of my return has been to keep you alive. That was all that ever really counted." I shook my head angrily. "I didn't realize how close it had been until you told me your story just now. Christ Tracy, I should have warned you. I'd seen some signs that fate was still at work and I didn't even equate that with you."

"Signs?" She said softly. "What kind of signs?"

I told her about Mike and how he had come to me, telling me he was thinking about the Air Force.

"That's it?" Tracy said. "That's the sign you were talking about?"

"Yes," I nodded. "Don't you see, I should've at least called you and…"

"Bill," she interrupted. "You couldn't have prevented this. If you would've called me up with that story about Mike and the Air Force I would've laughed at you. I would've asked you if you were going to start reading the entrails of chickens next. Then I would've tried to get you to steal someone's invention or tell me about the Super Bowl. It wouldn't have made any difference. I still would've gone to Tahoe and I still would've gotten into the cab that night. You're not to blame for any of this. You've saved my life three times now because of what you know, what you've told me. If I hadn't of thought of you, of all you've gone through while I was upside down in that cab, I would've just drowned. It was thinking of you that got me moving, that got me out of that cab. I owe you my life and I promise I'll never forget that this time. I promise."

There were tears in my own eyes now as I listened to her. I was unable to say anything for a moment. Finally I looked at her.

"San Francisco and Miami," I told her.

She looked confused. "What? What are you talking about?"

"The Super Bowl," I said. "It's going to be the Forty-niners and the Dolphins. The forty-niners are going to win."

She looked surprised, "You DO know?"

"I didn't know about the World Series," I told her. "And I wouldn't know about any other Super Bowl. But I have a memory attached with this one. My first trip through I was at the community college working on my history degree during it. I remember specifically that it was my first year of college. Some friends that I was hanging out with had a Super Bowl party and there was a girl that I knew was going to be there. I was trying to get into her pants and had received some hopeful signs that the party just might be the clincher.

"Back then I was just getting over my shyness and learning that girls weren't the mysteries that I'd always thought they were. Everyone else at the party liked the Niners but Terry, that was her name, liked the Dolphins.

I didn't really give a shit about football one way or the other so I braved the contempt of my peers and allied myself with her on the subject of the Dolphins." I smiled. "It worked. After the Dolphins lost the game we went to her place and consoled each other."

Tracy laughed. "You know," she said, "it just figures that the reason you would remember something like that would be because of sex."

I shrugged, laughing with her. "Unlike most guys, I know where the real priorities lie."

"And so do I," Tracy told me, turning series. "So thanks for telling me and if there's a pool at college, I suppose I'll get in it. After all, who could resist? But I think I'm going to have a new outlook on things from now on. I won't call you up and bug you anymore about your knowledge, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "But remember, nobody's a saint. If I happen to remember anything non-dangerous, I'll be sure to clue you in. And when you get some free money, I happen to know of some good stocks to invest in."

It was three more days before Tracy was able to travel. We stayed in Reno, visiting her every day as much as we could. I'd called Mindy at the hospital in Spokane to let her know what was happening and that I would not be in to work probably all week. She commiserated and told me she would say a prayer for my sister. I thanked her. Mom had a similar conversation with her employer. Dad, being a teacher, was off work for the summer and had no such concerns. I also updated Nina on how things were going and she was pleased to hear that Tracy was going to be all right. She told me she loved me. I asked her is she'd heard anything about Maggie and Mike. She hadn't.

With less to worry about I silently wished them luck.

Tracy was unable to fly on a commercial airline due to her cast so a medical transport plane was suggested in order to get her home. We were delayed an additional day because the insurance company that covered Tracy did not want to pay for such a thing because they felt it was unnecessary. I had a little talk with them while Mom was out of the room, mentioning things like lawyers and lawsuits and media coverage. They listened to me and eventually saw it my way, making the arrangements, not just for the plane but for ambulance transportation from the Spokane Airport and for a hospital bed and visiting nurses at our house. I thanked them politely and hung up.

Tracy said goodbye to the nurses that had cared for her and to Dr. Kwack. An ambulance picked her up and drove her to the airport where they loaded her onto a twin-engine prop plane that was designed just for such things. It was staffed with two nurses in addition to the pilot. Mom rode with her after giving the small plane more than a few nervous glances. Dad and I had a flight back to Spokane in another two hours on a commercial jet and would actually arrive home first. We watched the small plane climb into the sky and disappear into the clouds.

I'd told Dad about my conversation with Tracy and he was shocked to hear of her greed and feelings before the accident but also pleased to hear about her apparent conversion after the accident. As we waited in the lounge before our flight was called, Dad drinking a beer, me drinking a soda, he asked me about what I thought the meaning of all this was.

"So the accident that Tracy was supposed to have has happened," he said, taking a sip. "But she's still alive. What does that mean?"

"I've been thinking about that," I told him, envying the beer he had. "And the answer is, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure."

I shook my head. "I can see it both ways. For one, all of the requirements of the accident were allowed to come together and it occurred. Though Tracy didn't die, probably because she had forewarning of the accident, it has happened. So maybe it can't happen again. But on the other hand, Tracy was supposed to die in the accident. But she didn't. Will fate keep trying to get her? Will it try to arrange another accident? Maybe, maybe not. Again I believe that the basic premise still holds. The longer Tracy stays alive, the more likely it is that fate will accept her being here. What confuses me however is the fact that she's been in taxi-cabs before without any problem."

"What do you mean?" Dad asked.

"She's been in the exact same circumstances before in Berkeley and nothing happened to her there. She told me that they even drove along the Bay a few times. Part of me wants to think that there is no fate and that everything is just random chance. But I can't believe that since the accident was almost exactly the same as it was supposed to be. It just doesn't make any sense that earlier, when the pull to put things right was stronger, that fate didn't seize the opportunity on one of her cab rides. How much of this IS random? Can fate send a cab driver that is drunk when Tracy hails a cab?

Or does it have to wait until a drunk one just happens to cross her path? Before, I would have thought that if Tracy tried to get into a car as a passenger that fate would automatically have arranged to have a drunken cab driver there. Remember, it wants to put things right. So if fate was trying to get her and all of the conditions had been met, why hadn't…" I trailed off, a thought suddenly coming. ALL of the conditions?

"What?" Dad asked.

"Jesus." I said softly. "Could it really have been that simple?"

"What do you mean?" He repeated.

I told him what I was thinking. He raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.

"Interesting," he muttered. "Sounds like you need to ask Tracy about this, but maybe you've hit upon it."

"Wow," I said, shaking my head, thinking that Tracy was going to be pissed if that was the truth.

Tracy was installed in a hospital bed in my Dad's den since her old room was upstairs and moving her up and down would have been damn near impossible. Her chest tube and her IV had been removed before leaving Reno and she was given strong oral analgesics in place of the Demerol that she'd been taking.

The catheter remained and Mom was given instructions by the nurse on how to empty it and how to keep an eye on the output. She was given a supply of bedpans for her other bodily functions. The nurse was scheduled to stop by twice a day to check on her, give her a sponge bath, and to make sure she was healing up. Arrangements were made for further treatment at a local hospital and later, at a local physical therapy facility.

We moved in a TV, a stereo, and her record collection, putting all of it in easy reach. We brought in books, magazines and everything else we thought would make her comfortable in her little prison. She was obviously not happy to be bedridden but her spirits seemed high as she settled in. She fell into an exhausted sleep shortly after dinner so I never had a chance to be alone with her, to ask her what I suspected.

Though I was tired myself I was also going into withdrawal from not having seen Nina in nearly a week. I called her up and she came over. We spent two hours on the porch swing just talking, occasionally sharing a kiss. She went home around ten o'clock and I went by Tracy's new room on the way upstairs. My sister was snoring the snores of those on narcotics. I went upstairs and fell asleep the moment I was undressed and in bed.

The next morning was Saturday. Mom prepared one of her famous, high cholesterol though nearly as good as sex breakfasts. Dad and I ate at the table while Mom ate in the den with Tracy. After all of the dishes were done and put away Tracy said she was going to read for a while and then maybe catch a nap before the nurse showed up to check on her. Her morning medication was working strongly upon her and she seemed quite cheery.

Mom and Dad flipped on the TV and went about the task of reading the newspaper. I wandered out of the room and into Tracy's. She was lying awake in the bed, a book open on her chest, the radio playing the local rock station softly.

"Book no good?" I asked her.

She smiled. "I don't know," she said. "This medicine they gave me has got my mind a little fuzzy. I read two pages of it and then realized I couldn't remember a single thing I'd just read. Music is a little better, much better in fact." She raised her eyebrows and I noted that I could actually see her right eye a little now. "In fact, I think a little Pink Floyd would go nicely with this stuff. You think maybe I could borrow a few of your albums?"

"What's mine is yours," I told her. "I'll go get them in a minute. Do you mind if I sit down for a second?"

"Sure," she said. "What's up?"

I grabbed Dad's desk chair and pulled it over next to the bed. "I've been thinking about all of this fate stuff," I told her.

"Yeah," she said, disgusted. "Fucking fate."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah," I said. "Anyway, I was kind of thrown for a loop by the fact that you'd been in cabs before in Berkeley and you never had any problems with that. In light of what happened to you, doesn't that strike you as a little strange?"

"As a matter of fact," she said, "it does. I've been wondering about that myself. I didn't see cabs as a threat so I willingly climbed into them more than once. If fate was out to get me then why didn't it go for me earlier?"

"We thought we had all the pre-conditions for your accident worked out," I said. "Water, drunk driver, automobile. We thought that was everything. But what if that wasn't everything?"

She looked confused. "What do you mean? What else could there be?"

"On those other times you got into the cab," I asked her, "had you ever been drinking on any of those times?"

"Drinking," she asked, "what does that have to do with anything?"

"Were you?" I repeated.

"I don't think so," she answered after a moment's thought. "Usually it was when I was heading for the airport to go home on the holidays or returning from the airport. You know, when I had luggage and shit with me? Why…" Her eyes widened as she realized what I was saying. "Holy shit."

I nodded. "In my previous life, when you were killed on graduation night, you had a blood alcohol level of point oh nine. The papers made a big deal about that in their article about teenaged drinking. David Mitchell's attorney made a big deal of it at his trial, as if the fact that you were drunk too excused the fact that he'd killed you and abandoned you in the water. When your boyfriend at college drove into the Bay in the car that you were supposed to be in, you had been drinking. And when you got into the cab in South Lake Tahoe you'd been drinking too."

"Oh my God," she exclaimed, sitting up a little in the bed. Her book tumbled off and fell to the floor. "Are you saying that I had to be drinking too in order for the accident to happen?"

"I don't know," I told her. "You tell me. Were you drunk or had been drinking on any of your other cab trips? Or on any other time you'd gotten into a car with someone since graduation?"

She thought long and hard about that, her face scrunched in concentration. "Only once," she finally answered. "The night that Darren had his accident, the accident I was supposed to be in, I took a cab home instead of riding with him. I was drunk then. But other than that, never."

"Hmm," I said thoughtfully. "That fits. On the night of Darren's accident, fate had already arranged something for you. All of the conditions were met but you didn't get in the car. You got in another car. The fact that you were drunk was probably cancelled out by the fact that you hadn't gotten in the car you were supposed to have gotten in. Interesting. Are you sure there are no other times you got into a cab or another car while you were drunk?"

"Well, another car yes," she told me. "Quite a few times. But never while the driver was drunk too. And I never got into a cab while I was drunk at all. After you told me about graduation night and especially after Lisa Sanchez died, I made sure that I never got in a car with someone who was drunk. If Cindy and I went out, one of us would always stay sober, I made sure of it. When I went to college but before Darren's accident, I did the same thing. I made damn sure that if I was drinking someone else who had not been was doing the driving. On all of the cab rides I took before except for that one, I was stone cold sober since they were usually to or from the airport. Jesus Bill, do you mean to say that I could have been riding in cars all of this time as long as I wasn't drunk?"

"It kinda seems that way, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Fuck me," she muttered, shaking her head.

"But again Tracy," I qualified, "we don't know the exact rules here. I could be wrong."

"Doesn't it feel right to you?" she demanded.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Fuck me," she said again.

Mike stopped by for a few minutes the next day. He asked about Tracy and was glad to hear she was doing okay. He told me he couldn't stay long because he and Maggie were going downtown to catch a movie.

"You and Maggie are getting along pretty good huh?" I asked casually.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes beaming. "She's great. We've been out every day since the boat trip, doing something. You were wrong. She doesn't have a boyfriend at all. Hasn't had one in a while in fact."

"Cool," I nodded. "Guess my information was wrong then."

"Guess what else happened while you were gone?" He asked.

"What?"

"I got a job at the fire department."

"A job? What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna be what they call the courier. The position was open and the battalion chief at the station where I was at called and asked if I wanted it. I'll start next Monday. I'll drive around in one of their little trucks delivering the inter-station mail and the supplies. It's five days a week, about four hours a day and it pays five-fifty an hour."

"That's cool Mike," I told him, pleased. I guess the battalion chief had liked him after all.

"Yeah," he nodded. "And the best thing is that it keeps my foot in the door at the department for the next time they test. Keeps my face known and all that, especially since I'll visit all the stations on all three shifts. And the guys at the station where I was at told me I could use their weight room whenever I wanted to help build up my arms for the combat challenge." He gave me a determined look. "I'm gonna ace that motherfucker next time I take it."

We talked a little bit more and he eventually climbed back in his car and drove off to go get ready for his date with Maggie. Talking with him had put me in a great mood.

Nina came over for dinner that night. After eating my Mom's ham we spent a little time talking to Tracy in her little cave. The two of them chatted on and on, mostly ignoring me as Nina asked question after question about college life and Tracy answered them. We were at the stage where we were waiting for either the acceptance or the rejection letters from UWS and Nina told her how she waited every day for the appearance of the mailman and was disappointed every day when the letter wasn't there. Tracy said she remembered well what that had felt like. Finally, with her pain medication kicking in, Tracy started to nod off a little.

"We'd better let you sleep," I told her, standing up. "You got your appointment tomorrow at the hospital."

"Yeah," she mumbled sleepily. "What a nightmare that's going to be. Another ambulance coming over to wrestle me onto a gurney."

We said good night to her and headed out towards the porch, passing Mom and Dad who were in the living room watching television. Mom was working on some of the paperwork from her job that she'd missed while she was gone. She didn't plan to go back to work until Tracy was better so she was completing some of her work at home. Dad was going over some bills. My parents rarely watched the television, they just liked to have it on while they did other things. They both grunted to us as we went out the front door, closing it behind us.

We sat on the old porch swing and Nina leaned into me. The sun had just set and the few clouds in the sky were tinged with red as the sky steadily darkened. The evening star was the only one out.

"How come an ambulance has to come and get Tracy?" Nina asked me.

"Because she's in that lower body cast and she can't bend. She won't fit in the car so they have to put her on a gurney, take her to the hospital for the appointment, and then bring her back again. That's how they're gonna have to do it for the next five weeks until the cast can come off. Then she'll start physical therapy until she's able to walk again normally."

"Poor Tracy," she said sadly, snuggling a little closer to me. "Are you going with her tomorrow?"

"No," I said. "Just Mom and Dad. I imagine it'll degenerate to just Mom after a few times."

"What time does she go?"

"The appointment's at nine," I answered. "But the ambulance will be here at eight-thirty. Why?"

"Oh, just curious." She said innocently. Maybe a little too innocently.

We talked and swung gently back and forth as the last of the light faded from the sky. The kids that had been outside playing all drifted back in as their mothers called them. Other stars appeared and the sound of the crickets began.

I pulled her a little tighter and she turned her face up to me to be kissed.

I put my lips to hers, feeling her tongue dart out to taste me. My tongue answered back for a moment as I relished the feel of her mouth against mine.

I broke the kiss and tried to pull away but her arms went around my neck, pulling me gently against her. Her tongue shot back into my mouth insistently, hungrily. I kissed back enthusiastically for a moment, aroused by her aggression. I allowed my hand to drop to the skin of her bare thigh.

"Nina," I said breathlessly when our kiss finally broke. "My parents are right inside."

"So?" she asked, licking across my upper lip with her tongue. "They know we kiss don't they? Besides, I don't think your parents are the type to watch us."

"Yeah," I said, "But…"

"I missed you while you were gone Bill," she told me. "I missed talking to you, being with you, hearing you. I got to catch up on that yesterday. But I also missed touching you and having you touch me. I missed kissing you." She sucked my upper lip into her mouth and let her tongue slide inside my mouth again.

I gave in, surrendering to her kisses, my hand rubbing up and down on her thigh, feeling the skin beneath my fingertips, feeling my penis come to full staff in my shorts. After five minutes of this Nina let her hand slide slowly down my chest and stomach, her fingernails scratching at me through my shirt. Her hand continued downward and was suddenly resting on the bulge in my shorts. Her fingers, which were quickly becoming expert at the task, began to squeeze.

"Mmmmm, and I missed this," she said softly against my lips.

As much as I enjoyed the feel of her caressing hand on me I had to reach down and gently remove it. We were on a front porch on a suburban street. And though it was dark, it wasn't pitch black and anyone could have wandered along at any time. My parents also might have wandered out to the porch for whatever reason.

"Prude," Nina accused playfully, giving me one last squeeze but taking her hand away.

"Sorry," I chuckled.

She gave me another kiss and then moved her lips to my ear. She licked at the lobe briefly and then whispered, "I guess I'm gonna have take care of myself again tonight."

She had found one of my weak spots and she knew it. The thought of Nina laying in bed and rubbing herself was almost more than I could handle. I groaned in frustration.

"Unless," she continued to whisper, "you'd maybe like to take a little walk with me? Didn't you tell me once that you and Mike had a spot over at the school? A private spot? A spot that we could maybe put to a little better use than smoking pot?"

"Let's go," I said, standing quickly up.

She giggled and stood, taking my hand in hers. We started to walk.

It was very dark as we crept our way into the back of the school. There were no light poles or building lights nearby. The only illumination came from the stars and the half-moon that drifted above us. The crickets ceased their chirping as we found a spot under a tree and sat on the ground, our backs against the trunk.

"There," Nina told me, pushing her body against mine. "Nice and private. No parents, no people out for a walk. Nice place you have here Bill."

"Thanks," I said softly, pulling her to me and kissing her again.

Our kisses were frantic, deep, without a hint of gentleness as our tongues dueled in each other's mouths. Our hands slid up down each other's bodies, grasping and groping. I slid my hand beneath her shirt, under her bra, taking her bare breast in my palm and feeling it. Her hand slid down the back of my shorts, feeling my ass.

"Kiss my neck," she commanded, letting her head fall back on her shoulders. "I love it when you do that."

I complied, letting the back of my tongue trail across her cheek to her throat. My free hand slid up the inside of her bare thigh to the edge of her shorts. She opened her legs for me. I slid my fingers under the leg of the shorts, which were loose and baggy upon her. They moved upward until I reached the crotch of her panties, which were soaked with her excited secretions. Two fingers wormed their way beneath the cotton to her swollen lips. She moaned as my digits penetrated her.

It was awkward and my hand and forearm quickly got sore from the angle, but I brought her to orgasm as I slid my fingers in and out of her body. She thrust her pelvis rapidly into me and began to whine as she came. I silenced her vocalizations by putting my mouth to hers.

She relaxed against me, her tongue continuing to flit in and out of my mouth. I pulled my fingers free, again resisting the urge to smell them, to put them in my mouth and taste her.

She broke the kiss and looked at me in the darkness, her hand dropping down to the button on my shorts. "Your turn," she told me, unfastening it.

She unzipped me and then began to tug on the shorts and underwear. I lifted my hips a little, allowing her to drag them down to mid-thigh. My erection popped out and she took it in her hand, moving it slowly up and down as I'd taught her that night near the falls. I moaned while she kissed my neck, her hand continuing it's work.

"Does it feel good?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I moaned.

"Would it feel better," she asked quietly, "if I put it in my mouth?"

"What?" I asked, startled.

"I want to suck it," she told me, "would you like me to?"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" I asked, trembling with desire at the thought but not wanting to push her into doing anything too soon.

"Yes Bill," she said, kissing me again, squeezing my cock. "I want to make you come with my mouth, I want to feel it when you shoot. Can I?"

I nodded. "Yes Nina, oh yes."

She gave me one last kiss and then slowly shifted her legs so she had room. Still holding it in her hand she lowered her face to my lap. Her mouth opened and she put it on the head, allowing me to feel the wetness of her tongue against me. I jumped a little and groaned at the contact. I'd had many a mouth on my dick before but this was Nina doing it and the sensation was doubled, tripled by my mind, by the thought that she was actually doing this to me. She sucked only the head for a moment while her hand slowly moved up and down on the shaft and then she sank down slowly, taking as much as she could.

I looked down and saw her brown hair in my lap, saw her head moving up and down. I felt her tonguing and sucking as she moved. I felt her other hand gently caressing my balls, feeling them, testing their texture. It was obvious that she had never done this before. Her actions were tentative, hesitant, new. But at the same time she was doing it well. She was moving in a way that I liked without instruction. She was sucking while moving her head up and down and continuing to use her hand at the same time. She tried to deep throat once but had to withdraw as she gagged a little.

"Sorry," she said, raising her head up for a moment.

"It's okay," I squeaked back.

She dipped back down and resumed where she'd left off, increasing the speed of her movements as she gained confidence. I felt my hips started to rise up and down a little as my body instinctively began to move with the rhythm.

I felt myself getting closer and closer to the edge as she went faster and faster.

I took my right hand, the hand that had probed under Nina's shorts a few minutes before and put the fingers to my nose. I inhaled her scent, the strong, womanly musk of arousal and the thought that I was smelling the essence of Nina brought me over the edge. I felt the familiar tingle running through my body, felt the machinery of orgasm kicking into gear.

"I'm gonna come," I groaned to her, expecting her to pull her mouth away and finish me off by hand.

She didn't. She increased her pace and the strength of her grip on me. Waves of pure pleasure shot through my body, spreading from my groin outward. My hips raised off the ground and I began to shoot into her mouth.

Her mouth moved spastically upon me as she swallowed my offering but she kept up the motion, bobbing her head and sucking until the last spurt had come out and the jerking of my body finally came to a halt.

All of my muscles relaxed and I leaned back against the tree with a sigh. Nina sucked and licked my now-deflating penis for a moment and then raised her head up to me. She licked her lips a little.

"How was that?" she asked me.

"Beautiful," I told her, pulling her to me. I kissed her, catching a faint taste of myself on her tongue but not minding. Obviously this turned her on.

"So I did it right?" she asked.

"Perfect," I assured her. "You're a very erotic person Nina, did you know that?"

"Thank you," she said, kissing me again. "You're not bad yourself. I read how to do that in a book called "The Sensuous Woman". I was dying to try it. I'm glad they told me how to do it right."

"You read how to do that in a book?" I asked, laughing.

"Same place I learned to do what we did at the lake," she said seriously. "That was under suggestions for sex when you're on your period if your partner doesn't like to do it then. I adapted it to the situation. There's all kinds of other stuff in there too. Even stuff about orgies."

"Orgies?" I asked, incredulous, unaware that Nina had even known that word, let alone it's meaning.

She giggled. "For instance," she explained, "did you know that it is considered poor etiquette to attend an orgy while you are menstruating?"

I cracked up completely. "No," I said. "I didn't know that. The things our parents don't teach us."

"So keep that in mind," she said, "if you ever invite me to an orgy. Be sure to have me check my calendar first."

We laughed together in the darkness. Eventually I pulled my shorts back up.

We sat for a few more minutes, just holding each other. Finally we stood up, brushed each other off, and started walking back to my house.

Chapter 15

My suspicions were correct. Nina had been just a little too innocent in her inquiries about what time Tracy left for her appointment. At 8:50 the next morning, less than ten minutes after the ambulance carted my sister away with Mom and Dad following in the car, the phone rang.

"Care for a visitor?" Nina asked me playfully.

"I don't know," I responded, "I had plans."

"Plans?"

"Yep," I answered firmly. "I need to go over my stock certificates and calculate my net worth. Also, Sesame Street starts in ten minutes."

"I LOVE Sesame Street," she told me.

"I'm sure you do," I replied. "But watching Sesame Street is meant to be a transcendental, solitary experience, wouldn't you agree?"

"I would," she chuckled. "But do you think that maybe just this once you could make an exception?"

I sighed, exaggerating the sound. "I suppose."

"See you in ten minutes," she told me.

I smiled as I hung up the phone, feeling warm inside as I contemplated the prospect of Nina and an empty house. Usually on workdays I didn't shower until about 11:00. But something had told me that an earlier shower might be a good idea on that day. I was already squeaky clean and dressed in shorts and a tank top.

When the doorbell rang exactly ten minutes later my warmth kicked up a few notches as I saw her standing there. She was dressed in a light yellow summer dress that came down to just above her knees. Her legs were bare. It was readily apparent by the way her small breasts jiggled beneath the dress that she was not wearing a bra. Her face was made up lightly and her brown hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were twinkling as she stepped into my arms, giving me a soft, very erotic kiss on the lips.

"Mmmm," I said, letting my hand slide slowly across her chest, confirming the suspicion I had about her brassiere.

She slapped at my hand. "I didn't tell you you could do that," she teased.

"I think we've gotten to the point," I teased back, "where they are now possessions of mine and I can touch them whenever I want to."

"Is that so?" she giggled, breaking free of my embrace and walking inside. I had a Rolling Stones album playing softly on the turntable and the voice of Mick Jagger was telling us about how we should have sympathy for the Devil.

"Yes," I nodded, admiring her legs, the way they moved beneath the hem of her dress. They were tanned and toned from our frequent excursions outside and very pretty to behold. "Did your mother see how you were dressed when you left?"

"Are you kidding?" she asked, sitting on the sofa. The hem of her dress rode up considerably. She made no effort to push it back down. "I had a bra on when I left the house." She smiled seductively, "but it was really uncomfortable, you know. So I just left it in the car." She patted the sofa next to her.

I sat down, letting my fingertips touch her exposed thigh. "If I didn't know better," I said, "I'd swear you have evil intentions."

"Me?" she asked. "I'm young and innocent."

"Uh huh. Did you leave anything else in the car?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she said indignantly. "I did not leave my panties in the car if that's what you were implying. What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"Bummer."

She leaned over and kissed me softly on the ear. She whispered, "I didn't leave them in the car because I seem to have forgotten to put any on this morning. How absent-minded of me."

My penis, which had been semi-erect from the moment I realized she had no bra on, suddenly stiffened to a diamond cutter. Realization struck me. With it, sexual excitement and doubt. She was completely naked under her dress! She hadn't come over here to merely fool around a little. She had an agenda. Were things moving too fast?

"Nina?" I said, trying to concentrate, to think this through as she ran her tongue up and down my neck, leaving wet trails of saliva. Concentration was difficult. Nina, despite her inexperience, had learned volumes about the art of pleasuring my flesh with her tongue.

"Let's go upstairs," she whispered to me. "Let's enjoy our time alone together. We don't have much time before you have to go to work."

I gulped. "But what about… you know… uh… protection?" I asked her. "I don't have any… uh… condoms." Actually I did. There was still a small stash of them in my Bible along with a joint that Mike had given me at some point. But I didn't want Nina to know that because I wasn't sure how she would react.

Her hand slid down my chest, coming to rest on the bulge at the front of my shorts. It began to twist slowly back and forth, putting delicious pressure on me. "You don't need any condoms," she said, still whispering in my ear, letting me feel her breath on me. "I'm on the pill."

The pill? I turned my head sharply at her. "You're what?"

A smile, a very wicked one came to her face. "I went to the family planning clinic way back in January. After the first time we made out. I knew back then that we would eventually work our way to this point. They give the pill to minors you know, without telling their parents."

I was speechless as I stared at her. She seemed to be enjoying the reaction she was giving me.

"You remember the pimples?" she asked, "the sore boobs? That's why I had those problems. It takes a little while to get used to the hormones in the pill. But I wanted it to be safe when we finally made love. I wanted it to be perfect. And today is perfect. We have the time, we have the place."

"Wow," I finally muttered. "You never fail to surprise me."

"And hopefully I never will," she smiled.

"But are you sure you…"

"Oh for Christ sake Bill!" she shouted, exasperated. "Why do you treat me like a child sometimes? I'm older than you are. I'm more than ready. I'm more than willing. I've been ready for a long, long time. Do you remember the day you first asked me to come over to your house to study?"

I looked at her, confused. "You mean, the very first time? Back in eleventh grade?"

"Yes," she nodded. "It was the first day of eleventh grade and you asked me to come to your place and study." She gave me a shrewd look. "I KNEW what it meant when you asked a girl over to study. I KNEW the kind of studying that went on at your house. We've already been over that point, right?"

"Uh… yes," I said slowly.

"And you'll recall that I said I would come over. I thought you were asking me over to STUDY with you. And I said yes. I wanted to STUDY, wanted it bad." She laughed, shaking her head. "Of course, the joke turned out to be on me when it became clear a few minutes later that you just wanted to study with me. To REALLY study."

"I… uh… well," I stammered, "back then I was still…"

"Hush," she told me, leaning in to give me a kiss on the mouth. "That's the past and the past is forgiven. My point is that I've been ready to feel you inside of me since then. The reasons I want to feel it have changed, and changed for the better, but I still want it. I want it today. I want it NOW. So quit trying to be gentle and considerate. Quit trying to protect fragile little Nina from the evil world. Show me the evil world Bill. Take me upstairs and fuck me. Right now!"

She stood, pulling on my hand, beckoning me to rise from the couch. I got to my feet obediently, still shocked but also terribly turned-on by what she was saying. She began to lead me to my room.

As we mounted the staircase she turned to me and said, "but first, you've just got to show me what the vacuum cleaner treatment is all about."

"That can be arranged," I told her.

We went to my room, which was spotless and neat, the bed neatly made, all of the rock music posters and other teenage memorabilia long-since removed from the walls and replaced by tasteful but cheap paintings and photographs that I'd acquired here and there since my recycling. I paused long enough to flip on my stereo and quickly tune it from the rock station it usually was set on to a college classical music station. Mozart was playing and I thought it fitting for the occasion. We turned and looked at each other.

"Love me," Nina said softly and I stepped into her arms.

We kissed standing up, her arms dropping down to my ass, feeling the cheeks through my shorts while my hands slid slowly down the back of her dress until I encountered her bare thighs. I stroked the skin softly for a moment, relishing the feminine feel of her legs, and then I began to slide them upwards, under the hem of her dress.

She had not been lying when she'd told me she had no panties on. My hands slid up her legs until they were moving across the smooth skin of her naked buttocks. I squeezed gently, pulling her body tighter into mine, caressing her, letting my fingertips dig lightly into her flesh. Her breathing quickened as she felt me touching her intimately. Her own hands slid upwards, under the back of my shirt.

"Take it off me," she commanded. "Make me naked."

I nodded, speechless and backed up a step. I moved my fingers from her rear and grasped the hem of her dress, lifting upward. She raised her arms to assist me. A quick pull upward and it was over. The dress was dropped indifferently to the floor at our feet and Nina stood naked before me.

I will always remember that moment, no matter how long I live, no matter how many lives I inhabit. The first moment my eyes feasted upon the sight of Nina in the flesh, in the bright daylight. I had undressed many a girl before, had looked at many a naked female form, but never had it been so sweet, so anticipated, so fulfilling. She was beautiful, all I ever wanted, her treasures revealed completely at last. I realized that I'd been waiting a long, long time for this experience and I savored it.

Nina's body was the type that looks it's most alluring unclothed. Her bra and her pants and her shirt tended to hide her curves, hide the swell of her breasts, hide the smoothness of her skin. Girls like Cindy and Maggie and the many others that I'd bedded tended to look better in clothing, their charms accented by under-wire support, tight denim, tight sweaters. They made you fantasize about what they looked like naked but when you finally removed their clothing you would always find that reality was not quite as good as the fantasy. Their boobs would sag, their stomach would have a pooch to it. But Nina's body was the exact opposite. Freed of restraint, her attributes were shining. Her stomach was smooth as silk, without a line marring it anywhere. Her breasts stood proudly revealed, their small size guaranteeing not a millimeter of sag. Her lower curves were starkly outlined, making a distinct hourglass shape. And her pelvic region was without the slightest hint of bulge, her tuft of brown pubic hair accenting the pouting lips of her vagina, which were barely seen.

"Nina," I said, in awe. "You are truly beautiful."

A shy smile from her. She looked as if she wanted to cover herself with her arms and hands, wanted to hide what I so desired from my eyes, but was restraining herself. "Thank you Bill," she said quietly. "I'm all yours."

I put my hands to her shoulders and slowly let my fingertips move downward, across her upper chest to the swell of her breasts. They glided across the nipples, swirling around each for one revolution before continuing onward, over the bottom-swell and down to her lower rib cage. I passed over the slight protuberance of her ribs, across her smooth stomach to her navel, where the fingertips touched each other for a brief second before separating and continuing south to her hips. They then slid around to her buttocks once more.

"Come over to the bed," I told her.

She gave me a nervous smile and let me propel her to my bed, lying her on her back near the middle, her head resting on my pillow. She kicked her sandals off as she lay down. She kept her legs tightly together, depriving me of a good view of her sex but this did not concern me in the least. I traced my fingertip from her knee to her crotch, letting it pass slowly through her pubic hair on its way to her breast. I eased myself down next to her, dropping my head to her right breast.

I licked from the bottom upward, working my way quickly to her pencil-eraser sized nipple, which I took into my mouth and began to gently suckle. It grew considerably in my lips and her hands came up to the back of my head. My hand began to slide up and down her thighs, right in the space where they came together. After a moment they parted slightly and I began to catch whiffs of her aroused odor in my nose.

I kissed downward, licking and sucking my way over her stomach, paying particular attention to her navel, which I plunged my tongue into, making her squeal in ticklish delight. I continued downward, kissing her lower stomach, moving more slowly now, tasting the soft skin with both my tongue and my lips.

When my chin touched the top of her pubic hair, felt it tickling me, I diverted to the side, kissing my way down her hip, to the outside of her thigh. I bathed her upper leg with my lips and tongue, moving downward to her knee. She continually tried to pull me back upward but I resisted her tugs, moving undaunted at my own pace. When I reached her knee her legs had spread of their own accord. I began moving back upward again, this time kissing the skin of her inner thigh, interjecting my body between her legs.

I could see her sex now as I homed in on it. I could see her lips pouting outward from the curtain of pubic hair, could see her clitoris, erect and waiting for me, bulging from its hood. Her lips were glistening with moisture, secreting her scent into the air. Her legs opened wider, her hands at the back of my head tugging harder, more insistently. I felt her calves and feet rubbing against my flanks.

I kissed all the way up her inner thigh, until my tongue was licking in the crease between her leg and her crotch. Her odor was powerful in my nose, making me giddy, making me want to rip off my clothes and drive ruthlessly into her body. Instead, I let the tip of my tongue lightly slide through her nest of hair and track up the side of her lip. I tasted the faint bite of her secretions on my tongue.

"Bill!" she begged, her legs opening wider, her hands pulling on my head.

I quit the teasing and went to work, sliding my tongue between her lips and licking, gathering her juices, feeling the sexy slipperiness of her inner membranes.

"Ohhhh!" she moaned at this first contact.

I licked up and down, staying away from her bulging clit and then began to slowly probe into her with my rolled up tongue, forcing my way inside. She was very sensitive to this treatment and her hips began to rise and fall the second I made contact.

"Yesss!" she groaned. "Oh yess!"

I lapped at her more rapidly, drenching my face in her juices, feeling her thighs rubbing on my cheeks. I probed in and out as if I was fucking her with my mouth. Finally I began to lick softly around the perimeter of her clit. Her hip motion became more rapid as I did this so I began to apply soft licks to the surface of her most sensitive area. The motion began to lose conscious control. Her moans increased in volume, became higher in pitch. I looked up the length of her body, across the heaving breasts to her face, seeing that her eyes were tightly closed, her faced scrunched in the grimace of ecstasy.

I began to gently suck upon her clit, at the same time probing between her moist lips with a finger. Her clit grew in my mouth, her motions losing all semblance of control. My finger could only penetrate a short way before coming to the barrier of her maidenhead. I could have pushed past it if I'd wished but I didn't want to, knowing that another part of my body was tasked for that job and looking forward to it.

Her orgasm started slowly, building tempo as it hit her. Her hips rose and fell so fast that I had trouble maintaining the lock I had upon her. Her thighs squeezed painfully into my neck, threatening to cut off my blood supply. Her whine became increasingly high-pitched, eventually inaudible to my ears. Every muscle in her body tensed as I continued to suck on her, as her pubis continued to mash into me, wetting my face. Her fingers pulled at my hair, ripping some from my head but I barely noticed as I brought her to her peak and she began to slide back down.

I continued sucking softly until her body relaxed and a sigh escaped from her lips into the air, until her fingers relaxed and untangled from my hair.

Her legs dropped from around me, coming to rest on the bed. Slowly I raised my head from her crotch, seeing her lying there with her legs spread, her vagina drooling juices onto my bedspread, her lips red and swollen, her nipples standing proud and erect, her eyes shining with lust. She was panting.

"My God," she proclaimed breathlessly. "I've never felt anything like that before."

I gave her a weak smile, wiping some of her juices away from my lips with the back of my hand. "I try," I told her.

"Get those clothes off," she ordered. "Get them off and get inside of me. Do it Bill."

I stood quickly and ripped my shirt free from my body, tossing it across the room. It landed on the stereo. I was just reaching for the button on my shorts, ready to rip them and my underwear down, intending to be naked in less time than it took for me to take my next breath.

From downstairs the telephone began to ring. I stopped, everything stopped.

Call it ESP, call it intuition, call it whatever you want, but there are times in everyone's life when you simply know that the ringing of the telephone is a signal for important information. It could have been Mike calling to shoot the shit. It could have been Nina's Mom asking her to pick up some milk on the way home from my house. It could have been one of Tracy's friends calling to check on her. It could have been a friend of one of my parents. But it was none of those things and I knew it by the time the second ring came drifting up the stairs. I simply knew it.

Nina looked at me, I at her. She knew the same thing I did, that whatever information was waiting on the other end of the call was going to mean an end to our encounter.

"Alexander Graham Bell was an asshole," I told her.

Still panting, still flushed with arousal, she asked, "are you going to get it?"

"I don't want to."

"I think you should," she sighed in frustration. "Try to get rid of whoever it is."

"Right." I said, heading downstairs.

My precognitive flash, or whatever it was, was strengthened by the fact that by the time I made it downstairs to the phone it was well into its eighth or ninth ring. Whoever was on the other end wasn't giving up easily.

"Hello?" I asked, fighting to make my voice sound pleasant.

"Hi," said my Dad. "Took you a while to get to the phone."

"Sorry," I mumbled, anything but.

"I figured if I let it ring long enough, you would answer. Sorry to uh… bother you."

"That's okay," I said, wondering if my Dad somehow knew what I'd been doing.

"What's up? Is Tracy okay?"

"She's fine," he assured me. "But the doctor can't complete his examination of her until he gets some recent X-rays. She was supposed to go over to the radiology clinic for that but the radiology techs are in the middle of some sort of labor dispute and they're having a sick-out today. So basically, this whole morning was a waste of time and the ambulance guys are putting her back in for the trip home right now."

"Right now?" I asked, glancing upstairs.

"Right now," he confirmed. "We should be home in about fifteen minutes or so. Just thought I'd give you a little… uh… warning."

"Okay," I said, feigning nonchalance. "Too bad for Tracy. I'll see you when you get here."

"Right," he said, hanging up the phone.

I set mine back down, feeling frustration, feeling my erection wilting in my shorts, but most of all feeling relief that my Dad had some foresight and common sense. He must have strongly suspected what I was up to or he never would have called. Dad was not the type to drop friendly little warnings that he was on his way home. I could only imagine the embarrassment for all concerned if they had come home while Nina and I had been engaged upstairs. Would we have heard them come in? Seriously doubtful.

Time was short so I rushed back upstairs.

"Who was it?" Nina asked, sitting up on the bed, still naked.

"My Dad," I told her, "they weren't able to complete Tracy's appointment. They're on their way home right now."

"Right now?"

"They'll be here in fifteen minutes," I nodded.

"Damn," she exclaimed, standing quickly up. "Stupid interruptions."

"I know," I said regretfully, looking at her naked body, knowing I'd been less than a minute away from finally entering it.

"Oh well," she shook her head sadly, as frustrated as I was, probably more so. "The best laid plans and all that." She took a good look at herself, at her dripping body. "I need to get cleaned up before they get here. I can't go home smelling like this."

"No," I said, paling as I thought about Mary Blackmore getting a whiff of the odor of sex on her daughter. Sure, she probably suspected that Nina and I were intimate with each other, that was one thing. But to have physical proof of it was quite another. "That wouldn't do, would it?"

"I need to use your shower," she said, gathering up her dress. "I'll be out before they get here. Can you go out to the car and get my bra?"

"You bet." I said. "And I probably oughtta brush my teeth too."

She giggled. "Probably oughtta," she agreed, heading for the bathroom, her dress trailing out behind her.

By the time the EMTs dragged Tracy back into the house and deposited her in her bed Nina was dried off and dressed once more, her bra properly in place.

Everyone greeted her warmly, not expressing any surprise at her presence. I did notice a few knowing looks from both Tracy and my Dad however. If they had anything to say, they kept it to themselves.

Nina and I chatted with Tracy for a while and then Mom and Dad, who had assumed their places before the television set. I kept up my end of the conversation but I couldn't recite a single thing we talked about. My teenaged hormones were surging through my body and I was having a difficult time keeping my erection from returning as I thought about Nina just sitting there, talking normally, while under her dress she had no panties on. My balls were aching fiercely.

We went up to my room about a half-hour before I needed to start getting ready for work. This was nothing unusual, we often spent time up there alone. Usually we did nothing more than kiss.

"Got blue balls?" Nina asked me, a smile on her face.

"In the worst way," I nodded.

"I'm sorry," she told me, sitting on the edge of my bed once more. "I really meant to let you make love to me. I wanted it Bill. I still do."

"I know," I told her. "It's okay."

"I guess fate just doesn't like you for some reason."

I had to laugh at what she said. Fate like me? Probably not. "No," I said, "I don't believe that fate likes me at all."

She gave me a puzzled look for a moment and then her eyes took on a little shine. "So what are you gonna do about the blue balls?" she asked. "Play with yourself after I leave?"

"Probably before your car even starts," I confirmed. "I can't go to work like this."

"Maybe I can help," she said softly. "Come over here."

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

She reached out and grabbed the waistband of my shorts, tugging me to her so I was standing between her legs. Her mouth was right at the level of my crotch. "You ask too many questions," she told me, reaching for the button and undoing it.

"Nina," I said, feeling myself coming to full erection once again, "my parents…"

"Would never come in without knocking," she put in. She unzipped me and pushed my shorts down. Another push to my underwear and my cock was waving in her face. "Just be quiet and let me do my work."

"If you insist," I croaked as her mouth slid over me.

My mom was in the habit of leaving me a plate of whatever she'd cooked for dinner that night in the refrigerator so I could heat it up when I got home from work. That night was no exception. I was gobbling up a large bowl of her beef stew and turning a thought that I'd been having over in my mind when the doorbell rang. I heard my Dad answer it and a moment later say, "he's in the kitchen." A few seconds after that, Mike came in, wearing a T-shirt from the fire department.

"What's up Mike?" I greeted, putting my thoughts on hold for the time being. "How's the new job?"

"It's cool," he answered, grabbing a seat. "I spent most of the day filling out the forms and all that crap. Then one of the captains that works days took me out in the truck to show me what I'd be doing. I'll start tomorrow on the normal route."

I offered him some of Mom's stew, there was plenty in the fridge, and he declined. While I finished up he continued to tell me about his new career.

When I was done eating and had put my dishes in the sink, we went out front.

"I'm off the buds now," he told me seriously once we were out of my parent's earshot.

"You?" I asked, raising my brows, "off the buds? What's up with that?"

He shook his head sadly. "I'll be driving a courier truck for the fire department. They have a policy. If anybody driving any vehicle gets into any accident of any kind, they have to get drug tested. It's some lawyer shit they have there. I wish I would've known about it a few weeks ago. I smoked some the other day with Maggie. Now I have to hope and pray I don't have some asshole crash into me in the next six weeks."

"Hopefully fate will be kind to you," I said, suppressing the joy I wanted to express. When I made my crack about fate I hadn't even been worried about it. Mike had already beaten fate. He had been forced to choose between marijuana and a career and he had chosen the career with hardly a second thought. Remarkable when you consider what had happened to him in his previous timeline, when he'd continued to smoke pot knowing that he would eventually be drug-tested and caught. He just hadn't cared. Now, at eighteen, he was much more mature than "the other Mike", as Tracy would have put it, ever was or ever would be. "Are you gonna miss it much?" I asked him.

"Oh yeah," he admitted, nodding. "There's nothing like getting stoned. Well, almost nothing. But I'll live. I hope Maggie understands. She likes to smoke a little bit with me. But I don't think it'll bother her that I quit. And the minute I make captain and don't have to drive anything anymore, I'm gonna go score me a fuckin' ounce and smoke it all in one night."

I grinned. "Be sure and invite me over," I told him. "How's it going with you and Maggie anyway?"

"It's goin' great," he assured me. "If she wasn't at work right now I'd be over there instead of bullshittin' with you." He grinned lasciviously, "I'm tellin' you Bill, that chick really knows how to fuck."

"What?" I asked, surprised at his words although I really shouldn't have been.

He nodded knowingly. "And she can suck dick like you wouldn't believe too. The other night she finally gave it up for the first time. Goddam she was hot. We started out in her living room. We were watching some TV and then we started kissing a little. She let me feel her tits, she has nice tits, and then she unbuttoned my…"

"Mike," I interrupted.

"What?" he asked, looking confused, wondering why I was intruding upon his sex story.

"Have you told anybody else about this?" I asked him.

"About fucking Maggie?" he asked. "No, you're the first. Why?"

I shook my head. "Don't take what I'm telling you the wrong way," I said, "I'm telling you this in friendship and to help you, just like when I told you about the Air Force recruiter, remember?"

"Yeah, but… what are you talking about?"

"Don't tell people about what you do with Maggie," I advised sternly. "Don't tell anybody a damn thing. Not even me, not even if they ask. Keep it to yourself. I know it's hard to do, I know that a guy's instinct is to share his conquests with everyone, to let other guys know he's a man. But it's a bad idea. A very bad idea."

He looked at me strangely. I could see the old immature hostility at being contradicted wanting to come forth. "I'm just telling you," he said. "Maggie doesn't know. And she wouldn't care anyway."

"Wrong." I said. "Now I don't know Maggie as well as you do, but I know women pretty well. And I know guys pretty well. If you tell me, you'll tell others. But even if you don't, you can't even trust me. Suppose I passed on what you said to Tracy. Tracy might run into Cindy, who is her friend. Cindy is also a friend of Maggie's. Suppose Maggie hears from Cindy exact quotes from what you just told me. She wouldn't be very happy. Her unhappiness will increase with each person that the story passed through before it got back to her. It really is a small world and if you are in the habit of blabbing your exploits to people, word will get around and get back to her. Women will break up with you in an instant if they find out you're telling people about what you do with them in bed. Worse than that, any other woman that the story has passed through will not have anything to do with you because they know you'll tell everyone. Are you following me?"

He looked a little shell shocked by my words. "Yeah, I see. But you won't tell Tracy anything."

"You can't know that." I told him, "You can't know that about even me and I'm your best friend. All it would take would be a few beers with Tracy, a little loosening of the tongue, and then out pops the story. You definitely can't know that about other people. Trust me on this. Keep you mouth shut about it if you want to keep her. Fuck the shit out of her at night. Enjoy it immensely. But don't tell a soul about it. Why even take a chance on her finding out? What's more important Mike, continuing to get the pussy and not having anybody know you're getting it or getting it a few times, letting everybody know, and then losing the pussy because you blabbed? Myself, I gotta go with continued pussy every time. No contest."

He was looking thoughtful at my speech but didn't say anything.

"Besides," I went on. "After it becomes known that you and Maggie are together, everyone is gonna know you're fucking her anyway. They'll know you're a man, they'll know you're taking her home and boffing the shit out of her. So why provide them with details? Let them just think about what you're doing with her and they're not. Let the fuckers be envious."

He nodded a little, brightening to what I'd said. "I see what you're saying."

"So if I come up to you and say, "Mike, you been fucking Maggie or what?", what are you gonna say?"

He smiled. "I'd say this:" He shrugged, "Maggie and I are just good friends."

I grinned. "You're learning Mike. You're learning."

"You know where I learned that line from?" he asked me.

"Where?"

"From you," he told me.

"From me?"

"Over the last couple a years," he said, "I used to see you with girls from school all the time. They used to be around you at lunch, around you after school, around you before school. Whenever I'd ask you about one of them, that's what you'd say. That you were just friends."

"And friends were all that we ever were."

He shook his head in wonder. "You sly motherfucker," he said respectfully.

The next morning, shortly after breakfast, Tracy and I were playing a game of cribbage in her cave. Tracy was not a happy person being eternally trapped in a den of her parent's house. She was suffering from a full-blown case of cabin fever and was very cranky at best. I was twenty points ahead of her and had just slapped down a double card run, fouling her mood even more.

"You lucky asshole," she said in disgust, throwing her cards at me. "This is a stupid game."

"And I'm about to skunk you at it," I added. "Which means you'll owe me fifty cents instead of a quarter, plus double points."

"Fuck you and deal," she told me. "And please turn off whatever crap that is you've put on the turntable. It reminds me of taking car trips with Mom and Dad when we were little."

"It's the Beatles," I told her. "This is the most classic rock and roll there is. How can you not like it?"

"It's old fogey music. Put on one of my albums, they're much better."

"Eighties music is an atrocity. You can't compare the freakin Thompson Twins to the Beatles. It's not even the same category."

"I LIKE the Thompson Twins," she said. "And I HATE the Beatles. And I'm the one that's injured and you're the one in MY room. So put on the fucking Thompson Twins."

"All right," I gave in, setting the cards down and heading for the stereo. Just then the phone started to ring.

"You got that Bill?" Dad yelled from his perch in the living room. Mom was off at work.

"Yeah," I said, changing course and heading for the phone. "Hello?"

"Bill?" It was Nina and she sounded very excited. "Have you got your mail yet?"

"I don't think so," I said, already intuiting what she was talking about. "Nobody's gone out to get it anyway. Why? Did you get a letter from the college?"

"Acceptance and full academic scholarship!" she squealed happily. "I'm in Bill. I'm in! And I'll be able to afford to go!"

"That's great Nina," I said, getting excited myself. "Let me go check the mail and see if mine's there. Here, talk to Tracy." I handed the phone, actually tossed it, to my sister and rushed out of the room.

Still wearing my sweat pants and no shirt I rushed by my Dad, who looked at me curiously, and out the front door. I went directly to the mailbox by the curb, throwing open the door and peering inside. There was a stack of mail in there. I grabbed it, shuffling quickly through the envelopes, magazines, and junk mail, looking for a return address from the University of Washington at Seattle. I found it near the bottom.

Standing there, holding it in my hand, I was suddenly scared, suddenly afraid to open it. Inside was either a yes or a no. If it was yes, Nina and I would be going to college together. If it was a no, who knows what would happen. I took a deep breath. With hands that were shaking, I finally tore open the envelope. One quick glance told me all I needed to know. I returned to the house.

I tossed the rest of the pile of mail at my Dad as I rushed by him once more. I went back into the den and ripped the phone out of Tracy's hands.

"Me too!" I said happily to her. "Acceptance and full academic scholarship!"

We talked for a few minutes excitedly to each other about our plans, about our excitement, about how much we loved one another. During this, Tracy seemed to actually cheer up and Dad wandered into the room to see what was going on. When I finally hung up Tracy was the first to congratulate me. She gave me a big hug and even a little kiss on the cheek.

Dad was next. "Congratulations," he told me. "I'm very proud of you."

"Thanks Dad," I said, still trying to accept the fact that everything was working out for me.

"Be sure and call your mother right away and let her know."

"I will," I promised. "I'll do it right now."

"It seems," Dad said, "that the mail is full of good news today." He handed me a small folding piece of paper, an announcement. On the front of it was a picture of two bells clanging together.

I opened it and read what was inside. The text was written in tastefully printed calligraphy.

THE STEVENS FAMILY: YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE BLESSED NUPTIALS OF JACK JACOB VALENTINE AND ANITA LYNN BROWLING SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1984 AT BLESSED SACRAMENT CHURCH, SPOKANE WEDDING CEREMONY 1:00 PM FOLLOWED BY RECEPTION AT ENDERS HALL PLEASE COME JOIN US IN THIS CELEBRATION OF LOVE

It was that evening, long after work, shortly after Mom had gone to bed. Tracy was in the den sleeping the sleep of narcotic intoxication. Dad and I were sitting in front of the television, each of us drinking a beer, the coffee table littered with empty bottles. This was something we did with fair frequency since I'd shared my secret with him and I valued these talks with him. Being treated like an adult by your father, with all of the respect due from such a relationship, is something that I believe every boy strives for whether unconsciously or consciously.

"So what do you think about Anita's wedding?" Dad asked me, taking a sip out of his fourth beer. We were making short work of the twelver he'd purchased the day before.

"I'm so happy about it," I told him, feeling my own buzz loosening my tongue, "that I could shit. Do you know what this means? It means that I was right. That I actually did something right. That one of my plans actually worked. Wouldn't that make you happy?"

He nodded wisely. "It would," he said, "but sometimes I think you sell yourself short. You have a keen head for hatching schemes and putting them into motion. You have a gift for it. When you told me all the trouble you went through just to get them together," he shook his head. "You did good Bill. You should be proud of yourself. But what I wanted to know was if you thought we should go to the wedding. Your mother and Anita haven't really spoken in quite some time. I think you know why."

"Yeah," I nodded. "My fault. And I'm sorry for that. I wish I could tell Mom how sorry I am that I hurt one of her friendships."

"Don't worry about it," he told me. "From what you've said, the relationship pretty much died after they got married anyway, didn't it?"

"Yeah," I said. "It did. Anita left the area and never looked back. I'm glad she's back on track."

"And the wedding?" he persisted.

"I want to go." I told him. "Whether you and Mom go or not, I still want to. It'll give me closure to this whole thing with her."

"Closure?" he said, puzzled.

"Sorry," I chuckled. "Buzzword from the nineties. I used to hate it then but here it is slipping from my mouth now. It means that once I see that Anita is happy, that she is content with her husband, I'll be able to put the episode with her behind me once and for all. To close it."

"I see," he nodded. "Closure. I like it."

"Don't like it too much," I told him. "It'll be horribly overused and you'll hear it so much you'll want to puke eventually."

"I'll take your word for it," he said, draining the last of his beer. "And I'll feel your mother out about going to Anita's wedding. But for now, I think I'm gonna call it a night."

"Me too," I said. "Oh, and by the way, can you do me a favor tomorrow?"

"What's that?"

"Well, earlier tonight, after dinner, I was going over my net worth. Do you know that I now have more than twenty thousand dollars in stocks?"

"Not bad," Dad said, impressed. "Almost like you were psychic, huh?"

I chuckled. "Almost. Anyway, I figure I can afford to cash out about six hundred dollars worth."

"What for?"

I told him.

He listened carefully to me, not speaking.

"I think that's a good idea Bill," he finally said. "I'll do it as soon as I get up and around."

The next day at work I told Mindy my good news. She expressed sadness that she would be losing me as an employee come August 30 but was very happy for me. I asked her if she would give me a letter of recommendation and by the time I left that night she handed me five copies of the most glowing, syrupy letter you could ever hope to read. According to her words, a hospital would be committing financial suicide by not hiring me as an employee. She assured me that any central supply supervisor would hire me on the spot once they read it. I thanked her and went home, filing the letters away.

The next day I went to the bookstore and bought copies of the two major Seattle newspapers. I began pouring through the want ads, looking for central supply tech positions. I found two. I called the numbers listed and gave my address. They promised me that applications were on their way to me.

The day after that I took the money that Dad had cashed out for me and went to downtown Spokane. It took me three hours but at last I found what I was looking for. I still had more than three hundred dollars left over. Some instinct told me not to put it back into stocks. I listened to my instinct, stashing the money in my checking account instead.

On the Fourth of July Nina, Maggie, Mike, and I took Dad's boat out to Lake Pend Oreille again. We left early in the morning, stocking up with two cases of beer and another onslaught of food courtesy of my mother. The lake was very crowded and it took us nearly an hour to launch once we hit the boat ramp. We spent the day water-skiing, drinking beer, hanging out on various islands, and generally just enjoying each other's company.

Maggie and Nina seemed to lose the awkward relationship they had with each other and worked their way to chatting happily about school, future careers, and even female problems. They had a long, drawn-out conversation about the pros and cons of birth control pills, which eventually led to the discussion of period cramps and water retention. Mike and I put in the obligatory male chauvinist pig comments when they seemed required but basically just kept out of the conversation. I was glad to see Nina developing a friendship with another girl. She had so few friends.

As the sun started to sink in the sky we loaded up the boat and worked our way northward on the lake, heading for the resort town of Sandpoint, which had a fireworks display each Independence Day that drew observers from all over the Pacific Northwest. Nine o'clock anchored us about a half mile offshore amid hundreds of other boats. At ten o'clock the fireworks began.

It was truly a spectacular show and I'd chosen our observation platform well, maybe a little too well. They burst right over the top of us for more than twenty minutes. The explosions were loud enough to hurt and the debris rained down all around us, instilling a sense of danger to the show. When it was finally over we began heading back towards the south end of the lake, a trip of nearly thirty miles.

It was well after midnight before we pulled the boat from the water. Like before, I'd ceased drinking more than three hours before so I'd be sober enough to drive home. Like before, everybody else was asleep before we even reached I-90. As I drove us towards home I remembered the last time we'd taken the boat out, the news that had awaited me when I got home. Irrationally, I worried as I drove, wondering what bad news would be there when I arrived.

But there was none. My house was darkened when we pulled up to it at 1:30 the morning of the fifth. We parked the boat and everyone went home. Well, almost everyone, Mike decided he would see Maggie safely back to her apartment. And so ended a perfect day.

Nina and I had no real opportunities to be alone long enough to do what we so badly wanted to do. Tracy had her appointments but they always seemed to be during my work hours. Sure, we could have torn one off on the boat trip, Maggie and Mike had, taking "a little walk" on our island and disappearing for an hour, but both of us, by unspoken agreement, wanted our first time to be in an actual bedroom.

She never left me with blue balls when we went out. She became quite accomplished with her mouth and hands whenever we went out to the movies or on some other date. I received several blowjobs from her while parked in my car at the local make-out spot near her house. Once she even wore a dress and I was able to return the favor, eating her to orgasm in the back seat while Journey played on the tape player. But as for intercourse, we bided our time, knowing that eventually the perfect day would come.

I was sent the applications for the central supply tech from the two Seattle hospitals and I filled them out, sending in an impressively constructed resume that Maggie, who had a flair for such things, had done for me along with copies of my letter from Mindy. It was the University of Washington Medical Center, the hospital that Nina would eventually train in, that responded first. They offered me an interview on July 23 at 11:00.

I didn't want to drive to Seattle for the interview since it was four hours by car so I looked into plane tickets. I was quite appalled by how much a round trip across the state cost on the cheapest airline.

"I'd better get this fucking job," I muttered, mostly to myself as I reserved a seat on an airliner. Dad, who had been nearby, overheard me and asked me what the problem was.

I told him how much I was spending for the ticket and grumbled about the goddam airlines for a moment. He looked kind of thoughtful for a second, and then said, "why don't you give Ron a call?"

"Ron?" I said, knowing whom he was referring to. Ron Valet was the private pilot who worked with Dad and a good friend of our family. It was Ron and his wife Karen that Mom and Dad went to the space needle with every day after Thanksgiving. I'd been up in the plane with him several times during my life, although not since my recycling. He happily jumped on every opportunity to display his skills.

"Why not?" Dad asked me. "He's off work for the summer, just like I am. If you paid for the gas I'm sure he'd be happy to fly you down there and back. Hell, he'd probably even pay for the gas if you couldn't afford it. He was bitchin to me the other day about how he hasn't done any flying lately."

"That's a good idea Dad," I told him. "You really don't think he'll mind?"

"If he's not doing anything else, he'll be more than happy," Dad assured me.

Unfortunately, when I talked to Ron, it turned out he WAS doing something else. "Sorry Bill," he told me with genuine regret. "Karen and I are purchasing some investment property up in Idaho and we have an appointment that day to sign all the papers at 11:30. I wouldn't be able to fly you back."

"That's okay Ron," I replied. "It was just a thought."

"I'd be happy to fly you down in the morning," he told me. "And if you didn't mind staying overnight or something, I'd even be happy to pick you up the next morning. Still might save you some money."

I considered for a moment, my mind going over the figures in my head. I could rent a motel room in Seattle for about forty bucks. The cost of gas for four flights would be only about fifty bucks. That was still quite below what the cost of a round trip airline ticket would be. "I think that's a good idea Ron," I finally said. "Are you sure you won't mind?"

"It would be a pleasure," he assured me with complete truth.

I was flipping through the latest copy of the Seattle newspaper later that day, looking for something to occupy myself with during my overnight stay there. I'd considered and then rejected the idea of asking Nina to come along with me. As much as her parents were growing to like me I did not think they liked me quite enough to allow their daughter to accompany me on an overnight trip. It was as I was perusing the sports page that I happened across a couple of advertisements that got my attention. I looked at them carefully, considering what I was thinking about. Was it possible to take care of two things at once on the Seattle trip?

I made a few long distance phone calls, putting my name down for reservations and promising I'd have checks in the mail the very next day. If my plans didn't work out I could always renege on these promises. I called up Ron again.

"Would it be a big problem," I asked him, "if you picked me up in Seattle around six o'clock at night instead of in the morning?"

"None at all," he assured me. "Got some plans?"

"Something like that." I said. "And would there be any problem with a passenger on the way up and back, and with, oh, say forty pounds of cargo or so for the return leg?"

"None at all," he repeated. "That's well within the weight limit of the plane. What do you have in mind?"

I told him and he assured me again that there was no problem with anything. Smiling, I hung up and then dialed Nina's number. Jack answered the phone and recognized my voice immediately.

"I'll get Nina," he said.

"No," I told him, "it's you I wanted to talk to."

"Me?"

"Yes," I explained. "Jack, you're on light duty right?"

"Yeah."

"Any chance you could take off the 23rd and the 24th of this month?"

He snorted. "All they have me doing is busy work. Besides, I've been there for thirty-three years. I can take off whenever I damn well please. Why do you ask?"

"A friend of my family is flying me to Seattle that day for a job interview," I told him. "And I'll be forced to stay overnight for various reasons. Now I was flipping through the paper and happened to notice that the Mariners are playing the A's on that day at four o'clock. I've managed to get my hands on a couple of home plate tickets. Interested?"

"You want to take me to a baseball game in Seattle?" he asked, surprised.

"Not only that," I went on, "but I also have a couple of reservations on a deep sea fishing boat that leaves the waterfront at 6:30 the next morning and stays out for eight or nine hours. I know you like fishing so I thought that maybe you'd like to come along. Ron, that's our friend, will pick us up at the airport at six o'clock that night and have us home by 8:00."

There was a long pause. Finally, "Bill, why didn't you ask one of your friends to do this with you?"

"I did Jack." I replied.

A slight cough. "Bill," he said, "you've got yourself a traveling companion. Thank you for inviting me. Of course you'll let me pay for…"

"Negative," I interrupted. "It's all on me. I can afford it. Just be packed and ready to go at 7:00 that morning."

"Thank you," he repeated, seemingly touched.

Of course, being me, I DID have an ulterior motive.

I picked Jack up at his house at 7:00 AM on the morning of the 23rd. He carried a small suitcase with him and seemed quite excited to be going on the adventure. Nina accompanied him out and gave me a hug and kiss before we drove off to the small, private airport.

When we arrived, we found Ron already there, performing the pre-flight checks on his small Cessna. Ron was sipping a cup of coffee and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Aviator sunglasses were perched on his nose. He was a short, terminally joking man and I'd always liked him. He'd given me fifty bucks as a graduation gift.

The introductions were made and Ron noticed that Jack was giving nervous glances at the aircraft.

"Not afraid to fly are you?" he asked Jack gently.

"I was a paratrooper in the war," Jack replied. "The last time I flew it was over Berlin and I had a parachute and an M1 on my back."

"Well have no fear," Ron assured him. "I go along with the smart pilot's credo. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots. I've been flying for more than twenty years, including a stint in A-1 Sandies in Vietnam. I've logged thirty-six combat missions and more than six thousand hours total. You are perfectly safe with me at the stick."

"That's good to know," Jack put in.

We roared into the sky shortly afterword, Jack sitting in the front next to Ron, me sitting in the back. The two older men exchanged tales of their war experiences as we soared over the gentle rolling hills of Eastern Washington and finally over the Cascades where the unstable air bounced us around quite frightfully. We landed perfectly normally at nine-fifteen that morning and caught a cab to the motel where I'd made reservations.

I changed into my suit and caught another cab to the medical center, arriving twenty minutes early. The interview went well, outstanding in fact. I was all but assured that the job was mine if I wanted it.

We went to the baseball game and spent a pleasant four hours just shooting the shit and drinking beer and eating hotdogs. Jack bought my beer for me and no one ever questioned the fact that I was drinking it. The Mariners, despite horrible odds to the contrary, beat the A's 4-3, coming back with a two run homer in the eighth just when things seemed hopeless.

We went back to our motel room and crashed hard, Jack in one bed, me in the other. Jack, I found, snored like a chainsaw.

A wake-up call at 5:30 the next morning got us up and around. The day was beautiful for fishing, with no clouds and no rain. Summer is the best part of the year in Seattle. We scored some coffee and a light breakfast from the motel restaurant and then caught a cab to the waterfront. I had a large ice chest with me, the same one I took on boat trips, and we filled it with ice and beer. We obtained our one-day fishing licenses, rented our equipment, and at 6:40, the seventy foot fishing boat headed out of Puget Sound for the open water.

The sea was very rough, with fifteen-foot swells bobbing us up and down like a cork in the Pacific Ocean. There were sixty fishermen and women on the boat and well over half of them became completely incapacitated with seasickness. Bodies were laying everywhere, on every bench, on every table.

The bathroom was flooded in vomit, it overflowed the toilet and ran across the floor.

Jack and I did just fine. Both of us had been deep-sea fishing before, Jack many times throughout his life, me on five consecutive years as part of a company function in my previous life. Of course I didn't tell Jack this and he admired my stamina. Those of us that remained un-sickened managed to catch the limit for everyone else that was unable to fish. We no sooner dropped our lines in and let them sink to the bottom than we were pulling them up with three fish on the hooks. I caught twelve rock cod and Jack caught ten. He also managed to hook a lingcod, an ugly, dangerous looking fish, which the first mate gaffed and drug aboard with a long pole.

Jack and I basked in male bonding throughout that day, becoming closer and closer to each other, becoming friends despite the differences in our ages (which wasn't quite as great as Jack thought it was). We drank beer and ate the sandwiches we'd bought at the waterfront deli before departure. We gave contemptuous glances and comments to those that were too sick to fish, even though their non-participation was a blessing because we rarely got our lines tangled with another fisherman.

By the time the all the lines were pulled in for the last time and the boat began heading back towards the protected water of Puget Sound, we were pleasantly exhausted, sunburned, and sore all over. We found a relatively clean spot near the stern of the boat and sat down, both of us cracking open a fresh beer. Jack surprised me by producing a couple of cigars from his belongings. He offered one to me and I took it, seeing with pleasure that it was a genuine Havana.

"These are illegal in this country," I said with mock sternness. "And you, a government employee, has them in your possession."

He burped, firing his up with a disposable lighter. The fragrant smoke drifted off behind the boat. "Yep," he commented, unconcerned that he was violating a federal law. "A buddy of mine makes a trip up to Calgary every couple a months and picks me up some. That little shitpot country ain't good for much but goddam do they know how to make a cigar."

I took his lighter and, after considerable work in the wind, managed to get mine burning. I'd never been much of a cigar smoker but Jack was right, there was something about a good Cuban. I had a sudden vision of offering him a few tokes off of the illegal smokeable that I had stored in my bible and the image of Nina's father getting stoned was so amusing that I had to suppress a grin.

We smoked in silence for a few minutes, feeling the stern of the boat go up and down, left and right in the swells, watching the sea sick people that were still laying out on every available surface. I was gathering my courage to bring up the subject that I wished to talk about. Jack, perhaps sensing my mood, simply sat there.

"Can I show you something Jack?" I asked him finally.

"Sure," he told me, tossing his empty beer can into a garbage can six feet away; a fairly remarkable shot I might add.

I reached into my pocket and took out a small box that I'd carried with me the entire trip. Inside of it was what I'd purchased downtown the other day. Wordlessly, I handed it over to him. He looked at the felt-lined box for a moment, his eyes narrowing. Finally he opened it and beheld the diamond ring that sat inside.

"That's an engagement ring, isn't it?" he asked, snapping the box shut and handing it back.

"It is," I agreed.

"I'm already married," he told me. "And I don't think I'm your type. But I'm flattered."

I laughed nervously. "I think you know who the ring is for," I told him.

"I guess I do," he nodded, opening the ice chest. "Why are you showing it to me?"

"Because I'm asking your permission to marry your daughter," I said. "A little old-fashioned maybe, but I know how much she means to you and I thought I owed you this."

"You're asking me permission?" he asked, considering this while he pulled two beers from the ice and handed me one. "And suppose I say no? What are you going to do then?"

"Are you saying no?" I asked, cracking open my beer.

"I'm not saying anything just yet," he answered. "I'm just curious as to what you're going to do if I say no."

"Ask her anyway," I admitted. "I think you know that."

He chuckled. "Then I guess this whole conversation is pretty much meaningless then, isn't it? No matter what I say, you're still going to do it."

"But I'd feel better about doing it," I explained, "if I had your permission, which would necessarily include your blessing. It also would make you a co-conspirator when we tell Mary."

He laughed harder. "Mary scares you a little bit does she?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Good," he nodded. "Maybe that fear will keep you in line." He looked meaningfully at me. "I'd be proud to have you as a son-in-law Bill. You have my permission and you have my blessing." He held out his hand to me.

I shook with him, feeling relieved that this conversation had gone well. "Thanks Jack, thanks a lot."

He nodded, puffing his cigar. "But those threats I made to you that one day, remember those? They still apply. Even more so now."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"When are you going to ask Nina for HER permission?" he asked next.

"Soon. Very soon."

Chapter 16

Saturday, the 28th of July, 1984. Dad and I dressed in our suits and climbed into the car for the trip to Blessed Sacrament church. Mom stayed behind, her official reason being that someone had to stay with Tracy. This was only an excuse and everyone knew it. Tracy's cast had been removed and she was now able to hobble around on the braces that had been installed. She was starting physical therapy the following Monday and would no longer need an ambulance to take her places. Tracy would have been perfectly fine by herself but no one questioned Mom's decision. If anyone had, perhaps the REAL reason that she wasn't going would have come flying out of her mouth and with it, an entire can of worms. Nobody wanted that.

So we drove in silence, stifling in our suits, alone in the car. We arrived at Blessed Sacrament and were led to the bride's side of the church by an usher. Blessed Sacrament is perhaps the nicest church in the Spokane area. It is an impressive, gothic structure with expensive stained-glass windows and a towering ceiling. It has an actual belfry. Anita's wedding in my previous life, for reasons that I could not fathom, had not been held there, it had been held at a park. I wasn't much of a church going person, never had been, never would be, but I'd been inside it a few times before recycling on calls. People had a strange tendency to pass out during church services, don't ask me why, but any paramedic can attest to this. We used to joke that maybe the person was having a moment of religious doubt and a vengeful God had showed them the error of their ways in dramatic fashion.

It looked much more festive on that day than it ever had when I'd come to revive someone. Flowers were everywhere, filling the air with their perfume. An organist was playing religious hymns at soft volume, keeping everyone in the proper mood. Photographers and a man with a video camera moved here and there, snapping and filming away. The pews were about half-filled, mostly with people we didn't know. I recognized a few of the real estate agents from my trip to Anita's office and hoped that none of them would recognize me. I didn't think they would. If I'd left an impression at all on any of them it would have been as a boy bundled in a down jacket and wearing a ski hat. I doubted they would equate that image with the nicely dressed young man they saw before them now.

The ceremony began. The organist kicked up the volume a little and Jack Valentine made his entrance accompanied by his best man. They were dressed in matching tuxedos and he looked very distinguished, very worldly as he marched down the aisle and took his position near the minister.

And then Anita made her entrance. She was truly beautiful in her flowing white dress and veil, her hair done just right. Her father, I knew, was no longer a part of this Earth so in his place she was accompanied down the aisle on the arm of Ryan, her young son who was dressed cutely in a tuxedo of his own. Her maid of honor and bridesmaids trailed behind her. Her daughter held the trailing edge of her dress.

Like graduations, weddings are usually much more fun to anticipate than they are to actually witness. The minister went on and on for nearly twenty minutes about love and respect and nurturing before he got to the wedding vows. These went on for nearly ten minutes though they were admittedly well written. Another ten minutes of talking, lecturing, and praying occurred before we got to the good part; the part that ended with, "you may kiss the bride". Jack did and we moved on to part two, the reception.

Enders Hall was a large, multi-purpose building that had been designed with wedding receptions in mind. Tables were scattered throughout it with pink tablecloths adorning them and little cards with the names of the guests printed on them. A four-piece band played softly in one corner of the room.

An open bar was set up in another corner. In yet another corner was a large table where the wedding gifts were being stacked. We placed the punchbowl set that Mom had purchased on the table and then went and found our seats.

Dad got himself a beer and me a coke while I chatted with our table companions, two of Anita's co-workers, one of whom had been present the day I'd visited the office. She showed no sign of recognizing me. When she asked how I knew Anita I told her I was a neighbor that used to cut her lawn and watch her kids on occasion.

We all took our turns kissing the bride and shaking the hand of the groom. When Dad and I approached, Anita made the introductions tonelessly, without the slightest hint of what I had once been to her. As I kissed her cheek I remembered the days when I used to kiss her everywhere, when I used to make love to her on her bed, in her shower, when I used to put my head between her legs. Anita had still never been topped in the bedroom department. I knew Jack was a happy man.

"Congratulations Anita," I told her sincerely. "I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you Bill," she replied, her eyes meeting mine. "I'm very happy too."

Champagne was poured, toasts were made, the band kicked up the volume and the pace. Dancing was started. Anita danced with Jack, with Jack's best man, with her son, with several others. Finally she approached me and grabbed my hand.

"Care for a dance with the bride?" she asked lightly.

I looked at her for a moment and then said, "of course." I stood and we went to the dance floor.

We grabbed each other's hands and began to move to the music, swinging our hips. Around us, other combinations of couples were doing the same. Anita was smiling at me nervously and I wondered just why she had done this. A part of me was afraid she was going to ask me to resume our previous relationship despite her marriage.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to you," she said quietly, "since that last day. That day you came over to my house."

I nodded carefully. "I thought it best if we didn't."

"And you were right," she told me. "I wanted to tell you I was sorry for the way I acted on those last few weeks. That I'm ashamed of what I said to you, what I did, how desperate I was. Very ashamed. And I appreciate your discretion in keeping your mouth closed about it all of this time. When I look back on those times…" she shook her head sadly. "I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you did and why you did it, from the very first day we… you know, to the very last day when you had to come and explain the facts of life to me."

"You don't have to apologize or explain anything Anita," I told her. "It's me who is very sorry for doing such a sleazy thing in the first place. I've grown up since then and I'll never do that to anyone again. I'm glad you met someone to love, who loves you."

She offered me a strange smile. "Yes," she said. "Jack and I seemed meant for each other. We're very happy." A pause. "But something bothers me."

"What's that?"

"You knew his name," she said. "On our last night together, you asked me about him. You asked me by name. How did you know Bill? How did you know?"

We continued to dance while I considered my actions. "I can't tell you Anita. It's too difficult to fathom anyway. Let's just say that you and Jack were fated to be married and that I almost screwed that up by interfering. But now things are right and I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you," she said.

I led her over to the edge of the dance floor and positioned my body so that nobody could see what we were doing. I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew a wrapped package. It was long and skinny, the box originally designed to hold a set of drumsticks. I handed it to her.

"What's this?" she asked, taking it.

"I was going to slip it into the wedding gifts," I said. "The card simply says it's from "fate". It's something I thought you might like to have. You can do with it what you wish of course but after talking to you, I think you deserve to get it personally."

She looked at me for a moment, her mouth open to ask another question. She closed it, the question unasked, and began to open the wrapping paper. She slid the box out and lifted the lid, peering at what I had for her. She stared for a long time, her eyes wide.

Inside the box was the coil wire I'd taken from her car on the day I lured Jack and her to the house. I don't know why I kept it. I should've just thrown it away, its job done. But I hadn't. I'd taken it out of my jacket pocket and put it in my closet until the day before.

"Is that…?" she asked slowly.

"A coil wire," I confirmed.

"Then you were the one…" she stared at me, eyes wide. "You?"

I shook my head. "Not me. Fate. And only fate Anita. Enjoy your marriage. I wish you all the best. I really do."

I walked away from her with a smile on my face, leaving her to quickly shove the coil wire back into the box and hide it. Shortly after that, Dad and I left. Anita moved away from her house after returning from her honeymoon. A rental company took over management of it. I never saw her again. But I'd achieved closure to that part of my life and that was what was important.

When we got home Mom was listening to the radio and working on some paperwork. Though she'd worked at home during her absence from her job during Tracy's recuperation, she was apparently still far behind. Rarely did we see her without a sheaf of papers and computer printouts before her. She asked us about the ceremony and seemed genuinely interested in our answers. I asked where Tracy was, since I had not seen her in her room, and was told that she was in the back yard, practicing her walking.

I went upstairs and changed out of my suit, replacing it with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I finished and emerged from my room, Mom and Dad were both missing, their bedroom door tightly shut. Like most kids I pained myself not to speculate too much on just what they were doing in there but like most adults I realized the effect that attending weddings tended to have. I was feeling such an effect myself.

I gave Nina a call, hoping we could get together for a bit but this idea was shot down the instant I got her on the phone. An aunt from Moses Lake was visiting for the day, had come specifically to see Nina and give her a late graduation gift. Nina was trapped at home for the foreseeable future. With a sigh I helped myself to one of my Dad's beers and wandered out to the back yard where Tracy was before I was forced to hear any noise drifting out of Mom and Dad's room.

Our back yard was typical for the period in which our house was built. Considerably larger than what tract houses come with today, it was landscaped with the bare essentials. There was a large lawn, an elm tree that was large enough to climb in if you wished (and that dumped an incredible amount of leaves to the ground each fall), some brick flowerbeds that my mother had rose bushes planted and growing wild in. There was a small cement patio with a cover over it. A barbecue and some simple patio furniture sat upon it. Dad had often talked about installing a swimming pool and a hot tub but had never become quite financially irresponsible enough to actually do it. A pity.

Tracy was wearing a college T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Her right leg was clamped into a set of metal braces that looked like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. A large, metal cane apparatus was attached to her right arm and helped support her weight as she ambled along. She was dripping sweat, her face running with it, her T-shirt stained with it, and her face was scrunched in a painful expression as she hobbled in what appeared to be a circular course around the old elm tree where Mike and I had once built a tree-fort thirty feet above the ground.

"How's it going Trace?" I asked her, grabbing a seat at the table and setting my beer down next to a glass of ice water that Tracy had put there. A fly had fallen into the water and was struggling weakly between two ice cubes.

"Hey," she hailed, changing course immediately and heading my way. "This hurts like hell. But not as much as when I first tried it. I'm getting better I think. But I'm ready for a break now. More than ready." She wiped sweat from her brow, moving her damp hair from her forehead. "How was the wedding?"

"Boring," I answered, "like all weddings. But I was glad to go. It's nice to see that Anita is happy. We also had a chance to have a little talk."

"Oh?" she said, hobbling over and sitting down, unclipping her cane and putting it aside. It slid down the length of the chair and clattered to the cement loudly. She gave it an irritated look and then chose to ignore it. She reached for her glass and spotted the fly. Her face wrinkled in disgust. "Gross," she declared.

"I'll get you some fresh water," I offered, standing up and picking up the glass.

"I'd rather have one of those beers," she told me.

"Have this one." I slid mine across the table to her. By the time I returned from the kitchen with a fresh one for myself, half of it was already empty. By the time I finished telling her about the wedding and my conversation with Anita, it was completely empty.

She burped in an unladylike way. "So you actually gave her back the coil wire you took?" she asked me wonderingly. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't even know why I kept the thing in the first place. Some impulse."

"Impulse huh?" she smiled cynically. "I think you just like to be dramatic."

I didn't dispute that this might be the reason. We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the butterflies attacking Mom's roses.

"So will you be ready to go back to school in September?" I enquired.

"I'm going whether I'm ready or not," she said firmly, with determination. "I need to get back on track if I'm going to get my undergraduate degree in three years."

I nodded. "That's what Nina's intending to do too. I'm gonna give it a shot, after all, most of the general Ed classes should be pretty easy, but I'll also be working. If it's too much, I'll drop back on the pace a little."

"Not me," Tracy said. "Full steam ahead for me. I plan to take the BAR exam in 1989, 1990 at the latest."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't worry. Corporate America will still be there whenever you finish."

She looked at me for a moment, her face serious. She picked up her beer bottle as if to take a drink and then saw it was empty. She set it back down. I was about to go get her another when she said, "I'm going to change my focus off of business and corporate law."

"To what?"

She sighed. "I've had a lot of time to think while I've been recuperating from this. More time than I've ever wanted. What the hell else is there to do? I've been thinking about fate and consequences and free will and drunk cab drivers." She shook her head angrily. "And it's the drunk cab driver that keeps coming back to me. He was out there driving a goddam cab after two DUIs. He was licensed both by the State of Nevada and the State of California to do that. For what he did to me he's getting ninety days in jail. Ninety fucking days Bill! What kind of shit is that?"

"It's just life, fate, the American way?" I answered. "Whatever you want to call it. I'm just glad you lived through it, that you're still here to bitch about the injustice of it."

"Fuck that," she said. "Fuck fate and fuck everything. That asshole should NOT have been driving anything, especially not a taxi. Our system allowed this to happen and it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"Yes," I agreed, "it is."

"So I'm going to focus on criminal law," she said. "I want to try and put some of these assholes in jail. I want to do everything I can to try to stop things like this, or worse things, things like what was SUPPOSED to be, from happening time and time again. Not just drunk driving, although that will have special attention from me, but every other crime that's under-treated by the system, that's allowed to perpetuate itself because of apathy."

I felt a chill going up my spine as she spoke. She was talking about becoming a victim's rights advocate. Did she realize this? There were ramifications here, serious ones. I took a long drink of my beer. "That's uh…, very uh…, noble Trace," I managed to say.

"I've had a life-changing experience," she said softly. "I'm still alive when I should be dead, even after having the accident I was fated to have." She looked at me. "I can see that some of the thoughts I've been having about fate are occurring to you too."

She did realize the ramifications. No slouch was my sister. "Sometimes," I said, "this whole thing just scares the crap out of me. Before I came back I was pretty much an atheist. I didn't believe in anything. But now, I'm forced to concede that SOMETHING is at work behind the scenes here. I don't know if it's the Christian God, or Allah, or Buddha, or something that nobody has even conceived of before, but there is a definite power at work here."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. When I decided to go into criminal law and to fight for victims, when I actually DECIDED that, it was almost like I felt something click, like I felt some gears that had been out of alignment sliding back in. I imagine I'll be doing whatever it was that Mom and Dad were supposed to do but didn't, or won't be I should say. I feel like things are, if not exactly RIGHT, at least copacetic. The accident has happened and as a result of it someone is getting involved in victim's rights. The stress on the system is releived."

"So you should be reasonably safe?" I asked.

She chuckled a little. "I still won't be getting into any cars with drunk drivers if it's all the same to you, but yeah, I feel like I'm safe."

We watched the butterflies for a few minutes, me finishing off my beer.

"What about Mike?" I asked her. "He's on a completely different path, so am I for that matter. Anita is back where she should be, Nina is still going to be an emergency room doc, albeit a decidedly less bitchy one, so there's no great stress on the system in those cases. But what about Mike and I?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, like I told you before, I believe that fate is nodal, which means that the longer the insult to it has gone on, the more likely it is that it will be tolerated. I think the evidence we've seen so far seems to confirm that theory. From what you've told me, Mike is completely off of his former track. He doesn't even smoke grass anymore. Like you said, he's matured to the point that he's no longer capable of making the mistake that led to his former life. He's graduated from school, he's signed up for college classes, he has a job, he has a girlfriend. Fate has apparently accepted the new Mike and allowed for him. It probably would have done the same in my case eventually but I was a much stronger stress to the system and stumbled into the right set of circumstances. Fate seized the chance to correct things. The accident relieved the stress on the system as well as it could without actually killing me."

"And me?" I asked. "What about me? I must've stressed the shit out of the system. I'm not in the career I'm supposed to be in, I'm not marrying the person I'm supposed to, I'm not having the child I'm supposed to, and, if all goes well, I will be much wealthier than I'm supposed to be. How does all that fit in?"

She rubbed her ribcage a little, massaging away the tenderness that still plagued her from the accident. "You're a special case," she said.

"How so?"

"You've never had any inclinations at all to stray back onto your previous path, have you?"

"No," I said. "None."

"No strange urges to go to paramedic school, to major in history in college, to dump Nina and go find, what was her name?"

"Lisa," I answered. "And no, nothing like that."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I believe that you probably stressed the system so badly and so rapidly just by the mere fact that you came back to 1982 with your knowledge intact, that it was forced to simply accept your presence. In effect, it simply gave up on trying to divert you since it was basically hopeless. It could try to divert the other paths that you intersected, but not you. It wouldn't be possible for you to deliberately make all of the same twists and turns along your way, particularly when the consequences were unpleasant."

"That makes sense," I told her, marveling at her insight into this metaphysical subject. "It makes a lot of sense."

"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked, "that this might not be your first trip back to 1982 and beyond?"

"What?"

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she smiled. "You were fated to meet the old man on that day, the day before you came back. What was it you said to him when he asked what your greatest wish was?"

"To be fifteen again, knowing what I know now," I answered, not quite getting her.

"Suppose you hadn't answered that way," she suggested. "Suppose you'd simply answered, "to be fifteen again", leaving out the last part. That's a perfectly natural response to that question under those circumstances, wouldn't you say? In fact, adding the last part is a little bit strange if you think about it. So suppose you did just say, "fifteen again". Boom, you would've found yourself a teenager again with no idea of your former life, with no knowledge of your future mistakes or my impending death."

Another shiver went up my spine as I considered this. It was a frightening thing she was suggesting.

"You would have caused absolutely zero stress to the system," Tracy went on, "and you simply would have continued along as before; marrying Lisa, grieving for me, having Becky, getting divorced; until eventually you would have come to the convalescent home and the old man again with nothing changed. You would have responded the same way and been sent right back again, starting over. For all we know, you might've been doing the same seventeen year stretch of your life over and over again for the past ten thousand years."

Frightening became staggering as I envisioned my poor self endlessly living through the same events, some of them quite tragic, over and over again without memory of it each time. Was such a thing possible? Of course it was. At least as possible as Mr. Li sending me back in the first place.

"Wow," I said softly. "But why would this time have been different?"

"Maybe there are little things that fate can't control," she answered. "Maybe some part of you was aware of what was happening, some part buried deep in your subconscious and it caused that little add-on to slip out at the moment of truth. The cycle gets broken. You could also have wished for world peace or a million bucks or something like that. Thankfully for me, if that's what the case is, you didn't. You added, "knowing what I know now". That's what made everything possible. You get to move on past 1999 now."

"That's a truly bizarre and terrifying thought," I told her, trying to shake off the feelings that this discussion had given me. Leave it to Tracy to make you think that you might be ten or twenty thousand years old and had barely escaped from some eternal feedback look in the time-space continuum by the addition of five little words on the end of a sentence. "Well, if it's true and I'm free at last, at least I'll finally get to see how all the Y2K crap is going to come out."

She looked at me strangely. "Y2K?"

"It's not important," I said. "Just be sure to keep your computer system updated come the late nineties."

She seemed about to say something else but didn't. We watched the butterflies again.

"Where are Mom and Dad anyway?" she asked me. "Dad usually comes to check on me fifty or sixty times a day."

I gave a sour look. "They're uh…, in their bedroom."

"In their bedroom? Doing what?"

I gave her the look that one gives someone when they've asked an incredibly stupid question. "Well I don't know Tracy, they didn't clear their itinerary with me. But the door is closed."

A comical expression of disgust came across her face. "Oh my God, you mean…," she shook her head violently. "I'm not gonna think about this. I'm changing the subject. How's Nina?"

I grinned, amused by her discomfort. "Nina's fine except for being trapped at home by an aunt. As a matter of fact I wanted to talk to you about that very subject."

"Oh?"

"I bought her an engagement ring."

Tracy registered absolutely no surprise at this revelation. "Is it a nice one?" she asked.

"Reasonably," I assured her.

"When are you going to offer it to her?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I need a good, female perspective on this. You see, the first time I got married, you know, before, there was no proposal. We simply decided it made good financial sense."

"That's sad," my sister commented.

"Yeah," I replied, "it was. Lisa didn't get an engagement ring until about six months after we were married. She only wanted it because her wedding ring looked "lonesome" without one. So we went down to a jewelry shop together, bought one with our joint checking account, and had it soldered on. Not very romantic."

"No," Tracy agreed wholeheartedly.

"I want this to be different. I want it to be something she'll always remember, something she'll tell her friends, our kids, our grandkids about. Do you see?"

She was beaming. "Oh yes," she replied, "I know exactly what you're talking about. Let me think." She thought for a minute. "Well of course you simply have to drop the ring into a glass of champagne."

"A glass of champagne?" I asked, wondering if Tracy's perspective was the right one to tap after all. "Isn't that cliche?"

"No," she said firmly, "it's what we all want. Trust me."

"I'll give it some thought," I said doubtfully.

"But for the set-up for it," she said next, "consider this: A hot-air balloon ride."

That actually sounded a little more interesting. "Go on."

"They have champagne balloon rides outside Coeur d' Alene. You can book private flights where there's only the pilot. When you break out the champagne up at six thousand feet, you can make that your moment." She shivered a little as she considered it. "That would be the ultimate."

The balloon thing seemed like a good idea at first and I mulled it over for the rest of the day. I considered things like whether or not Nina was afraid of heights (I'd never bothered to ask her this), whether the presence of the balloon pilot would intrude upon the atmosphere of the occasion, and what would happen if I accidentally dropped the ring out of the balloon from six thousand feet over some farmer's back forty. I decided that more research was in order.

The next day Nina, Mike, Maggie, and myself went on another ski trip, this time to Coeur d' Alene Lake which, while smaller than Pend Oreille was considerably closer. I managed to get Maggie to myself for a little bit about halfway through the day, while Mike was dozing on a picnic blanket and Nina was off trying find a private place to pee. I posed my question to her as we waded in waist-deep water near the beached boat, drinking cans of beer.

"You're gonna ask her to marry you?" she squealed happily.

"Christ Maggie," I scolded, "you think maybe you could yell it a little louder? The people on the golf course across the lake didn't quite understand you."

"Sorry," she said, "but it's so exciting. Congratulations." She stepped forward and gave me a hug, allowing her wet, bikini-clad breasts to push into my bare chest. There was no overt sexuality behind it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't pleasurable.

"So what do you think?" I asked her once we'd broken apart. "What's the most romantic proposal scheme you can come up with?"

She smiled sexily. "Well, a traditionalist would suggest putting the ring in a glass of champagne."

"Again with the champagne," I muttered.

"But I'm not a traditionalist," she continued. "I think the best way would be to take her out to a nice dinner in a romantic restaurant. You know, a dressy place with wine and a snooty maitre 'd and all that. Order some expensive food, some expensive wine, set up the mood. But don't give her the ring there."

"Not there?"

"No," she shook her head, "that's just the set-up. After dinner, you find someplace to be alone. You know, ALONE?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Then you start kissing her. You kiss her lips, her cheeks, you nibble on her ears, you kiss your way down her shoulder and across her arm. Ideally she would have on a strapless dress for this occasion. If you could arrange that, so much the better."

"Of course."

"So, anyway, you continue down her arm, just kissing and making her generally hot." She gave me a knowing look, "I KNOW you know how to do that.

When you make it to her hand, her left hand, you surreptitiously remove the ring from your pocket or whatever and slip it into your mouth. You kiss her fingers and then take the ring finger and start sucking on it. Then, using only your mouth, you put the ring on her finger." She sighed as she thought about this. Uncomfortably, I could see that her nipples had hardened. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" I asked, "that gave me a hard-on just hearing you tell about it."

"So it's a good idea?"

"I'll consider it," I told her. "I'm not sure that's quite right for Nina, but I'll mull it over."

"You do that," she said. "Trust me on this. It'll be erotic beyond belief.

She'll remember it forever."

Just then Nina came tromping back out of the woods beside the lake. We hushed up our conversation and Maggie said, "I'm gonna go wake up Mike. After that conversation I'm gonna have to have someone go with me when I pee, if you know what I mean."

She headed out of the water, flashing Nina a pleasant grin. A minute later her and Mike had disappeared the way Nina had come. But that was okay. We found something to occupy ourselves with while they were gone.

The next day at work I brought the question up to Mindy. Since my days there were numbered, Mindy was pretty much letting me get away with whatever I wanted. She encouraged me to come in late (which I never did), to leave early (which I sometimes did) and to take long breaks. When I told her what my intentions were and asked her for advice on the matter, she took me aside and talked to me for more than thirty minutes on the subjects of women, romance, intrigue, mystery, and various other topics. She gave me no actual suggestions but listened carefully to those that I'd already received. After talking to her I was able to formulate a plan that incorporated elements of both Maggie's and Tracy's suggestions.

The next day I went to work on the plan. The first step was to talk to Nina. I gave her a call and asked her if maybe she was up for a nice dinner on the following Saturday night.

"A nice dinner?" she asked. "How nice? Would I have to dress up?"

"Yes," I told her. "That dress you wore to the play would be appropriate. So what do you say?"

"Where did you have in mind?" she wanted to know.

"You'll see it when you get there," I said cryptically. "So are you in?"

"I'm in."

When I hung up I began making phone calls, referring to a list I'd made after considerable research. I made the necessary arrangements, writing everything down so I wouldn't forget it. The final phone number was one that did not involve research. It was here where everything could fall apart. But it didn't. The recipient of this phone call was more than happy to help me out, especially after I told him what my intentions were.

I hung up the phone with a smile. Everything was in place. Well, almost everything. I went to see Dad.

"I need you to cash out some more stocks for me," I told him.

He nodded, taking a sip out of his coffee. "It'll be nice when you're finally eighteen and able to cash out your own damn stocks," he said good-naturedly. "How much?"

I told him.

"That much?" He asked, surprised.

I told him what it was for and he smiled.

"I'll do it today," he told me.

Saturday, September 3, 1984. A day that will live in infamy.

I woke up early, very early, six o'clock in the morning type of early and was unable to sleep any more. My date with Nina was still nearly nine hours away, the moment of truth considerably more than that, but I knew there would be no more sleep for me. I drug myself out of bed and went downstairs to watch some television. I knew the day was going to drag on like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

I was right of course. I spent much of it lounging around in my shorts, watching television, picking at my breakfast and my lunch. I talked with Tracy, with my Mom, with my Dad, all of whom were in on my intentions. They made comment after comment about my nervousness. I denied that I was nervous but knew that I was lying.

At about two-thirty, absurdly early, I began getting ready. I took a shower, washing myself thoroughly. I dressed myself in my best suit, fixing my tie so it was just right. And then I waited for it to be four o'clock, time to go pick up Nina.

I restrained myself from leaving the house early. It would have screwed up the schedule I'd carefully planned. Finally I made one last check of my possessions to make sure I had everything I needed. I had the ring, I had the roll of twenty dollar bills that was so thick it looked like a pimp's flash money. My family wished me good luck and I headed out the door, climbing into my faithful Datsun and heading off to Nina's house.

Jack and Mary met me at the door, inviting me in. Nina was nowhere to be seen.

"She's putting the finishing touches on," Mary told me, offering me a seat. The interrogation began.

"Kind of early for a simple fancy dinner," Nina's mom commented, handing me a glass of iced tea that I hadn't asked for.

"We'll probably be out for a while," I told her, sipping out of it.

"This date wouldn't have anything to do with that little present you showed Jack on the fishing trip now, would it?" Mary asked pointedly.

"Mary…" Jack started but was silenced by a sharp glance from her.

I licked my lips nervously, unable to think of an answer.

"Does it?" she persisted.

"Yes," I answered. "It does. It has everything to do with that. I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me tonight."

She stared hard at me for a moment and then her face softened a little. "Do you have something special planned? Something she'll remember?"

I looked down the hallway toward Nina's room, seeing that the door was still shut. I gave Mary a brief summary of what I had planned, leaving one part out of course. Mary listened to me carefully, her eyes boring into me.

"That's very romantic," she finally said, her face breaking into a smile. "Can I see the ring?"

Another quick glance and I pulled the ring, free of its box, from the inner pocket of my jacket. She stood and sat next to me on the couch, taking it from my hand. She appraised it for a moment, looking at the gold band, the diamond protruding. She nodded, handing it back to me. I returned it to its hiding place.

Mary continued to stare at me for a moment. "You know how I used to feel about you Bill," she said. "We won't rehash that. But I'm glad to find, after getting to know you, that I was wrong. As wrong as a person could be.

I wish you luck tonight and I'd like to be the first to tell you, welcome to our family." She leaned forward and gave me a hug. Surprised, I returned it.

"Of course you won't do anything stupid, like eloping, will you?" This was more a command than a question.

"No," I said quickly. "I promise."

"Good," she said, a tear coming down from her left eye. "Because I want Nina to have a big wedding with lots of guests. I want to help her plan it, I want to help her make out a guest list. You'll let me do that, won't you?" More tears were coming down now.

"I promise Mary," I told her, giving her another hug. "We'll get married in Spokane and we'll let you plan it. I promise."

"Thank you."

"Of course this whole discussion is meaningless if Nina tells me no," I put in.

Mary broke the embrace and looked at me in much the same way I'd looked at Tracy when she'd asked what Mom and Dad were doing in their room. "You don't really think that's a concern, do you?"

Mary had herself under control and Nina sensed nothing amiss when she emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later. She was not wearing the dress she'd worn to the play but an entirely new one, a dark blue and white one. It was not strapless, as Maggie had suggested it be, but that was not important. She looked ravishing in it.

"You look VERY nice," I told her, standing up and giving her a hug and kiss.

I took a quick look at her left ring finger, which was bare at that moment but would hopefully be adorned with my ring later that evening. "New dress?"

"Mom helped me pick it out," she affirmed. "You look very nice too. So where are we going?" The anticipation was killing her.

"You'll see," I said. "I think you'll like it."

We said our good-byes to the elder Blackmores. Mary, I could tell, was stifling tears as we left. Nina noticed this too and asked her mother what was wrong.

"Nothing dear," she said. "It just pains me sometimes to see how grown-up you've become. When you wear a fancy dress like that it hits me hard."

I held the car door open for her and then stepped around to my side, strapping in and firing up the little four-cylinder engine. I pulled away from the curb and headed for the freeway.

"Mom is so weird sometimes," Nina commented.

We made idle chitchat until I hit the freeway onramp. I'm sure that Nina was expecting me to head for downtown. I didn't, instead taking the opposite direction. She looked at me suspiciously.

"Bill, where are you going?" she asked. "Why are you being so mysterious?"

"I'm a mysterious person," I told her, refusing to say further.

It took us about ten minutes to get to our first destination. By the time I pulled in the front gate it was apparent to Nina where we were going.

"Why are we at the airport?" she wanted to know. "What's going on? Bill, tell me!"

"Well," I said, pulling into the parking lot of the private airfield and stopping. "I wanted to take you someplace REALLY nice. Nicer than we have in Spokane. In order to avoid a long drive, I enlisted the services of a family friend."

"We're getting on an airplane?" she asked.

"For a bit," I allowed. "He's the same guy that flew me and your Dad to Seattle. You're not afraid to fly, are you?"

"I've never done it before," she said. "Where are we flying to?"

"Seattle," I said, "All the nice places are there. I have reservations for us at what is reputed to be the nicest restaurant in the entire state of Washington. I will get you there, wine and dine you, and have you safely back in your own bed tonight."

"We're going to Seattle?" she said in disbelief. "What's the occasion?"

"Just because I love you Babe," I told her, calling her by that term of endearment for the first time. "Just because I love you."

Ron had of course been the unpredictable part of my plan. Would he volunteer to fly us there and back? Would he be free to do so? The last thing I wanted to do was impose upon a family friendship and make someone do something they didn't want to. But to my delight, he'd jumped upon the suggestion, especially when I'd told him my intentions. He'd offered to stand by at the airport until the next morning if that was required. I'd gratefully accepted and told him that a few hours should be all that was required. We'd talked over his portion of the plan and, once briefed in, he'd proved to be a godsend. His experience as a pilot had allowed me to time everything down to the minute. He also had some connections in Seattle that helped save me some money for phase two. When Nina and I walked across the tarmac, past rows of Cessna's and Pipers and the occasional Lear, we found him waiting beside the plane, its engine on, its propeller turning, its pre-flight check already completed, the flight plan already filed.

Introductions were made and Ron told Nina how lovely she looked and how much he'd enjoyed her father's company. He soothed her nervousness about the small plane, speaking loudly over the noise of the engine. He offered her the co-pilot's seat and helped her inside after I'd been stowed in the back.

Less than five minutes after my car had pulled into the parking lot we were taxing across the field. Less than five minutes after that, Ron, ignoring me completely, asked Nina, "you ready?"

"I think so," she answered nervously.

"Then push that throttle all the way to the front. Do it slowly so we don't stall the engine."

Nina reached out with a hand that was trembling slightly and grasped the throttle lever. She pushed it forward as instructed and the engine wound up to full. The plane began to move down the runway, moving faster and faster.

When it got to take-off speed Ron pulled smoothly back on the stick and we rose into the air, an audible bump sounding as the wheels broke contact with the ground.

We soared into the bright blue sky, Ron turning the plane until we were heading West. He took us up to our assigned altitude of seven thousand, three hundred feet, leveling us off and engaging the autopilot. By the time he did this Nina had lost her fear and was staring at the ground with awe, picking out sights that she recognized.

"There's the falls Bill," she told me, pointing. "And there's the river stretching off. I never knew it was that crooked before."

Ron kept silent as we plowed westward at a hundred and ten knots. Nina kept looking at the ground. I sat back and thought about all the things that could go wrong with this day and all the things that could go right.

Nina turned to me and said, "How are we getting from the airport to the restaurant?"

"You'll see," I told her.

About halfway to Seattle, just as the Cascades were starting to become visible in the distance, Ron checked his watch and concluded that we were a little ahead of schedule. He cited a tailwind as the reason.

"Care for a little flying lesson Nina?" he asked, winking.

"Why the hell not?" she replied with determination.

Now it was my turn to be terrified as Nina took the stick and, with Ron's instruction, began subjecting us to a series of turns and dives in the clear air. He'd done this with me before, back when I was about fourteen or so, and I knew it was basically harmless. But still… My stomach knotted as we moved up and down, left and right, as the horizon bobbed like it had on the fishing boat while Nina tried to get the feel of the rudder and the stick. She was almost as terrified as I was but definitely loving every minute of it. Her face showed nearly the same ecstasy as it had when I'd eaten her to orgasm. At one point she over-corrected for a bank, giving way too much left aileron. I thought I was about to die a horrible death for a few moments as I found myself looking out my side window directly at the ground. Nina, almost panicked, jerked her hands from the stick and screamed. But Ron, calm and cool, without the slightest bit of concern, simply chuckled and took the controls. Within four seconds he had us straight and level once more.

"Well that was exciting, wasn't it?" he asked us.

Both of us were trembling too badly to speak.

He played with the autopilot for a moment and then we were back on course. "Time's a wastin'," he said. "We'd better end our lessons for now and get ourselves to Seattle."

Once again the air over the Cascades bumped us around violently. It was like driving a car with old shocks across a four-wheel drive trail at sixty miles an hour. Neither Nina nor I got much more than a mild adrenaline rush from it. Nina's time at the stick had prepared us for anything and the serene expression on Ron's face soothed our nerves.

We circled in and landed with a thump at a small airport near downtown. Ron taxied the plane to the tarmac and parked it in a slot that had been assigned to him over the radio. No sooner had the engine been shut down and the doors opened up when phase two happened right on schedule. A sleek, white limousine came gliding in from the parking area. It circled around and stopped right next to the plane.

"Bill," Nina asked, her eyes shining. "Is that for us?"

"Yes," I affirmed. "They have nice taxis in Seattle, don't they?"

"I've never ridden in a limo before," she told me as the driver, an older man dressed in a white uniform, got out and stood by the back doors. "Bill, you can't afford this."

"Not as a regular means of transportation I can't," I allowed. "But for this one day, don't worry. I can cover it. Don't fret about money today, okay?"

She hugged me quickly. "This is like a dream-date."

"Is it?" I asked, giving her a quick kiss. "Why don't you go hop inside? I'll be there in a minute."

She did so. The limo driver smiled, introduced himself to her, and opened the door. While she got in and began gawking at the interior, I turned to Ron and thanked him. I gave him some money for the landing fee and for fuel. He didn't want to take it from me but I finally won the battle of insistence.

"What are you going to do while we're gone?" I asked him.

He shrugged, "Probably hang out in the pilot's lounge. Watch some TV, read some magazines, talk to other pilots. Don't worry about me. You just go out and have yourself a good time. I'll be here when you get back, no matter what time that is."

"Thanks Ron," I told him. "I owe you two now."

The driver introduced himself as Paul. He shook my hand and then politely brought up the subject of the bill. He ordinarily wouldn't have done that I was sure, but he was probably a little concerned about my age. Understandable I guess. I peeled off the required amount from my pimp's wad and handed it across to him. He at least had the class not to count it in front of me, simply pocketing it instead.

"I understand we're going to Fullers at the Sheraton, is that correct sir?" he asked me.

"That's correct," I answered.

"And that I'm to pick you up at ten o'clock out front?"

"Again, correct."

"Very good Sir," he said, opening the door for me.

"Hey, uh, Paul," I asked, "what is it that you do while you're waiting for ten o'clock to roll around?"

He looked at me strangely. I wondered if anyone had ever asked him that before. "Well usually I just go find something to amuse myself," he told me. "Sometimes I go home if I'm nearby. I go get gas, I go take care of errands. I'm on hire for the customer so I can't assign myself to another customer, although if the boss could figure out the timing you could bet he'd give it a shot."

"So basically you have nothing to do?"

"Right."

I peeled off two more twenties from my wad and handed it to him. He looked surprised although he didn't hesitate to take the offering and make it disappear.

"When you drop us off at Fullers," I told him, "come back here and pick up Ron there." I pointed to Ron, who was fiddling with something inside the cockpit of the plane. "Take him anywhere he wants to go and then bring him back here when he wants to come back."

"Of course sir," the driver nodded.

I sat down in the back of the car, next to Nina and Paul closed the door on us. The inside of the limo was nice, with plush seats, a small mini-bar complete with ice bucket, a stereo system, and a bank of controls that moved the seats back and forth and the sunroof and windows up and down. Nina was playing with these controls like a little kid, her eyes shining with excitement.

"I can't believe all this," she told me, giving me another hug. "Sometimes you are just too much."

"I hope not," I mumbled, pulling two glasses from the bar. "Would you care for a drink?"

"I'd love one," she answered. Meanwhile Paul had buckled himself in and was putting the car in gear. We pulled away from the tarmac and started heading for the street.

"What would you like?" I asked.

She smiled, "Surprise me."

I made us a couple of seven and sevens and we sipped from them as we drove along the major arteries and into downtown Seattle. We cruised between large high-rises, catching occasional glimpses of the blue-gray water of Puget Sound. We saw the distinctive outline of the Space Needle poking up into the sky far to our north. We watched the occupants of cars around us and pedestrians on the downtown streets trying to stare into the tinted back windows of the limo, to spot who we were. We held hands and leaned against each other, feeling closeness, feeling love. My doubts about the outcome of the evening began to drift away.

The Seattle Sheraton, where Fullers is located, is a thirty-five story building about six blocks from the waterfront, right in the heart of downtown. Our limo received no notice as Paul drove it into the turnaround near the front lobby entrance. There were several other limos already there. He hopped out and rushed around to open our door for us. We stepped out, leaving our glasses behind and thanked him. He nodded politely and told us he would see us at ten.

"Ten?" Nina asked, looking at me knowingly. "Why ten? How long does it take to have dinner in this joint?"

"Not that long," I answered. We began walking towards the lobby doors.

"So what else have you got planned?"

"You'll see," I told her.

The lobby alone was enough to make Nina and I, both middle-class products, feel slightly out of our element. It was spacious and seemed to ooze class.

Well-dressed men and women walked to and fro amid well-dressed hotel staff. We moved quickly to the elevators.

We rode up to the thirty-fifth floor and stepped out, following the signs to Fullers. The maitre d' was almost a stereotype of what you see in bad movies. He had it all, the balding head, the snooty French accent, the little mustache. I found myself wondering if it was all an act because that was what people expected to see when coming to such a place. Maybe he went home each night and ripped off the little mustache and then talked to his wife in a Texas accent or something. He eyed the two of doubtfully as we approached his little table.

"May I help you?" he asked, not terribly politely.

"Yes you may," I told him. "We have reservations for two for Stevens at seven o'clock."

"Well let's check into that," he told me, giving a condescending smile. He perused his book for a moment. "Oh yes, Mr. Stevens." He tapped it with his pencil. Without even bothering to check his seating chart he said, "unfortunately your table is not quite ready yet. It may be a few minutes. Perhaps you'd like to wait in the bar?"

I smiled, a very adult smile, staring into his face. I reached into my jacket and withdrew two twenties which I slid into his palm. "I would prefer to be seated immediately," I told him, "at a table with a view."

He glanced down at what I'd pressed into his palm and his expression changed instantly to one of respect. "Of course Mr. Stevens," he told me, picking up two menus. "If you and your guest would follow me please?"

It was amazing what a forty-dollar bribe got you. We were placed at a secluded table next to the large picture window. Puget Sound was plainly visible, as was the sinking sun. Sailboats and motor boats, and a large freighter could be seen moving across the surface of the water. The table was covered with a tasteful white cloth. Two candles burned near the center next to a complimentary plate of goose-liver pate and crackers. Our seats were held out for us and we sat down. We were assured that our waiter would be right with us.

"How did you know to give him money?" Nina asked me, trying a bit of the pate after putting her napkin in her lap.

"Universal language," I told her. "If I wouldn't have given him something we would have sat in the bar until about eight or eight-thirty before being sent to a seat near the kitchen door and receiving horrible service from the waiter all night. By now, the maitre d' is telling the waiter that I know the rules. I imagine the service will be pretty good."

Nina shook her head in amazement. "Why can't everyone just do their jobs like they're supposed to, without worrying about the money?"

"What are you?" I said lightly. "Some kind of communist? Everyone do their jobs without worrying about money? That's un-American."

As predicted, the waiter arrived promptly and was so polite it was almost sickening. He read off the house specialties to us and named the market price for such things as the lobster or Alaskan king crab. He asked us if there was anything he could get for us while we perused the menu.

"Yes," I told him, nodding. "We'd like a bottle of Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon."

He looked at me for a moment, giving a little cough. "Begging your pardon sir," he said quietly, "but I'm sure you're aware that the legal drinking age in Washington is twenty-one. You don't exactly look that old."

I smiled, reaching into my wad and pulling out a twenty. "I assure you I'm of age," I explained, slipping him the twenty. "Here's my identification."

He took a look at the denomination for a moment and then nodded, slipping it into his pocket. "Thank you sir, everything appears to be in order."

When he left Nina asked me, "just how many of those twenties do you have anyway?"

"Enough," I answered.

The dinner was excellent. I decided to go for broke and had the live Maine lobster. Nina, after several reassurances not to worry about the price, went with that also. We sipped our Cabernet throughout, putting a respectable dent in the bottle. We talked between bites about anything and everything; the ease of conversation had always been the strong point between Nina and I. Just after the dinner dishes were removed I stood up and excused myself, telling Nina I needed to use the facilities.

It took me less than a minute to find our waiter. He had just carried someone's MasterCard to the cashier and was waiting for it to go through.

"Excuse me," I said to him.

He looked up at me questioningly. "Is everything all right sir?"

"Perfect," I assured him. "But I was wondering if you could do me a little favor?"

We talked for a moment and I handed him Nina's engagement ring along with another twenty-dollar bill. He agreed to do as I asked.

I returned to the table where Nina was watching the sunglow against the offshore clouds. She commented on how pretty it was.

"Yes," I told her, reaching across and taking her hand, "it's nice this time of year here. Of course we're probably going to hate it during the winter, spring, and fall."

"Maybe," she said, going back to her examination of the water and the sky.

The waiter came a moment later carrying a dark green bottle and two glasses.

He set the glasses down before us and then showed me the bottle he had. It was Dom Perignon and it would add sixty-eight dollars to the bill. I nodded.

"What's this?" Nina asked as the waiter made a show of putting the bottle down and popping open the cork.

"I thought a little champagne would be nice," I explained.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" she asked brightly, letting me know that she wasn't adverse to that if that was my intention.

"Something like that," I nodded.

He poured a dab of the champagne in my glass and then stood by, waiting for me to complete the ritual of tasting it. Where did this ritual start anyway? Had anyone ever tasted the wine or whatever and then said, "this swill tastes like shit, take it away"? I was sure that somewhere, someone had done that. I picked up the glass, actually quite curious as to how Dom Perignon would taste since I'd never had it before. To my disappointment it tasted only slightly better than Brut, which sold for two bucks a bottle. Oh well, the champagne wasn't there to taste good. I nodded my approval of it and he picked up my glass to pour it full.

After setting my glass of bubbling champagne down he picked up Nina's. He had obviously done such a thing before. He was so smooth about it that even I didn't see him slip the ring into the glass before he poured. For a moment I actually thought he was ripping me off, that he'd look puzzled when I asked him where the ring was. Ring? What ring? You didn't give me a ring. But when he set the glass down before her, there it was, sitting on the bottom, little bubbles clinging to the gold band and the diamond. Nina didn't notice it.

The waiter put the bottle into an ice bucket and then beat a hasty retreat, giving me a "good luck" look as he went. Nina grabbed her glass, holding it by the stem, her thumb and forefinger hiding the ring from her view. Perfect.

"Shouldn't we toast?" she asked me, gazing at my face. "That's what you're supposed to do with this, right?"

"By all means," I said, picking up my own glass. I gazed back at her, knowing the moment of truth had come, knowing it was too late to back out. "To a long life together," I said, "filled with love and understanding."

She smiled. "That's sweet Bill," she said. We clinked our glasses.

She put hers to her lips preparing to sip out of it. Her eyes widened as she got a look at what was sitting on the bottom of the glass. She stopped, just staring, the glass hovering against her face.

"Bill," she said slowly, without moving, "there's a ring in my glass."

"What do you know about that?" I said softly. "It kind of looks like an engagement ring, doesn't it?"

She finally lowered the glass, her face suddenly nervous, her eyes searching mine. "Did…, did you put that in there?"

"Not personally," I told her. "But I arranged for it." I leaned forward. "Will you marry me Nina?"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked from my face to the ring to my face again. She started to say something and then stopped. Her hands began to tremble, making the champagne bubble more, obscuring the ring. The tension in the air was very thick, at least from my vantagepoint. I momentarily lost track of time. How long did she sit there, not speaking, not answering, leaving me hanging? How long? A minute? Thirty seconds? An hour? Would she say yes? Would she throw the glass of liquid at my face and tell me I was some kind of madman if I thought she would marry me? Would she say she'd love to but that we were too young?

"Nina?" I finally spoke, breaking the silence. Had she even heard my question?

"You're asking me to marry you?" she asked breathlessly. "You're really asking me that? This ring is really for me?"

"Yes Nina," I nodded, "to everything. I want you to be my wife. I've asked your father and he's given me both permission and blessing. But all of that's meaningless without you. So now I'm asking you formally. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?"

"You asked my father?" she asked.

Christ, she was killing me with anticipation. Couldn't we talk about her father after she said yes or no? "Yes Nina," I told her. "When we went fishing. I also talked to your mother tonight."

"Mom and Dad know where we went, what you were going to do?"

"They do," I nodded. "So does Ron for that matter." I took a deep breath, "now I don't want to rush you or anything and if you're not sure right now just tell me, but…"

"Oh God Bill," she said, her face breaking out into a huge, happy smile, "what do you mean "if I'm not sure right now"? Of course I'm sure, of course I'll marry you. Do you know how many times I've fantasized about this day? How many times I've lain awake wondering if you were ever going to ask? How you would ask if you did?"

"So that's a yes then?" I said, pretty sure it was, but wanting to confirm it.

"Of course it's a yes!" she said, leaning forward and kissing my lips, my nose, my cheek. Tears were now running from her eyes. "Do you have any idea of how happy you've just made me?"

A great sense of relief flooded me at her words, at her actions. At the tables around us I could see that some of the other diners had gleamed what was going on and most were giving us looks of happy approval. "About as happy as you've made me." I told her.

We broke apart and she looked in her glass again, eyeing the ring. "How do I get this thing out of there?" she wanted to know.

"The only way to do it without violating etiquette is to drink the champagne down and then reach in."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, the twinkle in her eye becoming mischievous.

"Yeah."

With a smile she put the glass to her lips and upended it. The champagne poured into her mouth and was swallowed in less than two seconds. Her eyes began to water profusely from the effects of the carbonation but she reached in and pulled out the ring. She held it triumphantly before her.

"Would you like to put it on me?" she asked, handing it across.

I took it and she offered me her left hand. I slid the damp ring onto her third finger, seating it in place. The fit wasn't perfect, it would have to be sized when we got back to Spokane, but it looked at home there.

We drank the rest of the bottle of champagne, sipping at it while we discussed what we'd just agreed to do. Now that the question was out and answered favorably I became almost giddy, feeling elation like I'd never felt before. She was going to marry me! Nina too was blushing and giggly. Part of that was the wine and the champagne we'd consumed, but a good part of it was simple happiness and excitement I'm sure.

The waiter came by once to offer coffee or desert. We declined. He also offered his congratulations to us as he spied the ring on Nina's finger.

"I promised your mom that we wouldn't elope," I told her. "She wants to plan your wedding, help you with the guest list, all that crap. She's very adamant about it." And of course I knew why. My first talk with Jack Blackmore had made that clear.

"But when?" she wanted to know. "When can we do it?" She giggled a little, "get married that is."

"I'm not much for long engagements," I told her. "If it was up to me, we'd be man and wife before we climbed back in that airplane with Ron. But under the circumstances, we're kinda stuck by the fact that we're going off to college next month. Also, I'm still seventeen until February. That creates additional paperwork."

She pouted a little. "So when?" she asked.

"Next June," I told her. "Near the end of the month. That lets us be home from college for the summer long enough to get back into the swing of things, go to all the rehearsals, and all of that. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like a plan."

I paid the bill and left a generous tip for the waiter. We walked arm and arm back to the elevator and, when it arrived, found ourselves alone in it. As it began plunging downward we shared a kiss, a very deep kiss that involved a brief dance of tongues. When our lips parted she looked into my eyes.

"You know what would make this night absolutely perfect?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"Making love," she answered.

I took a glance at my watch, seeing that it was five minutes after eight. Right on schedule. "Funny you should mention that," I told her.

"Oh?" Definite interest showed upon her face. "Have you made other arrangements?"

"It just so happens," I told her, "that I have a reservation for a suite in this very hotel. All I have to do is check in at the front desk, pay my money, collect my key. I hear the rooms are VERY nice."

Another look of astonishment. "You reserved a room, HERE? At this place?"

"I hope you don't think that too forward of me," I said.

"But we have to be out of here at ten," she said. "You want to pay God knows how much for a room that you're only going to use for two hours? Bill, that's insane!"

"Isn't it? So what do you say? Care to join me for a bit in the executive suite?"

The elevator ground to a halt at the fifteenth floor. The doors slid open and a middle-aged couple dressed for a night on the town stepped in. We moved back to give them room. They eyed us carefully for a moment, as if trying to decide if we were dangerous, and then turned their backs to us. The doors slid shut and we began descending once again.

Nina and I looked at each other. She whispered, "Go get the key."

We rode to the lobby and less than ten minutes later we were riding back up to the thirtieth floor, key in hand, one hundred and seventy-five dollars lighter. I considered it money well spent.

Even though I'd lived in two lives (at least) and had been around a combined, remembered total of nearly thirty-five years, I was still impressed by the executive suite. As I said before, I was strictly a product of middle-class upbringing. My idea of a nice hotel room had always been a single bed in a small room with something of a view. I considered it classy if the bedspread actually matched the carpet.

The sheer amount of square footage in the room was staggering. There was a sitting room with plush furniture and a bar. There was the bedroom that was nearly four times the size of mine at home and featured a king-sized bed with frilly covers and a twenty-seven inch TV. The remote control was not even bolted to the nightstand. The bathroom had a huge shower, a separate bath, and a sunken Jacuzzi big enough to hold six people. The water was roiling and steaming in it and a small sign assured us that the water was fresh for our visit. The window did not face Puget Sound unfortunately but did look out to the north, giving an impressive view of the Seattle high-rises and the Space Needle in the distance. A complimentary bottle of White Zinfandel sat in a bucket of ice.

"Wow," Nina muttered, taking in all of the opulence, wandering from here to there, looking at this and that. She stared for the longest time out the window.

"You like it?" I asked, coming up behind her and encircling her waist with my arms. She leaned back into me.

"This has been the most incredible night of my life Bill," she told me. "I'll remember it forever."

"That was the plan," I said, squeezing her to me.

She craned her face upward, resting the back of her head on my shoulder. Her left hand, the one with her new ring on it, reached up to caress my face. "Give me some more memories," she told me.

Our lips came together in a kiss; a hot, passionate exchange of tongues. She squirmed her body around so that she was facing me, her breasts pushing into me, her arms around my neck. By the time it broke I was erect, knowing that nothing could stop us now, that this was finally the hour. No one knew where we were. For obvious reasons I had briefed no one in on this particular part of my plans for the evening. There would be no phones ringing to stop us. For the next ninety minutes we were in splendid solitude. Not an eternity, but at the same time, it was.

Nina reached up and pulled the knot out of my tie, loosening it. She pulled it off my neck and tried to let it drop to the floor. We both laughed as it hung stubbornly to my chest, suspended by the tie tack. I disconnected it and tossed the tie, tack and all, into the corner. I shrugged off my suit jacket and let it fall to the carpet.

Nina kicked off her high heels and then stepped back into my arms. "Undress me," she said. "Undress me and make love to me. Make me yours Bill."

I led her by the hand over to the bed and we stopped there, her facing it, me standing behind her. I slid my fingers over the material of her dress to her neck, touching the skin for an instant before grabbing the small zipper.

Slowly I slid it downward and the dress parted, showing me the skin of her back, the straps of her bra. I leaned forward and kissed the back of her shoulders while my hands pulled the dress off of her arms. Gravity did the rest, letting it fall to her feet. She stepped out of it and turned into me once more, her chest bare except for her bra, her silky white slip hanging to mid-thigh on her pantyhose covered legs.

I kissed her again, letting my hands touch the slip, to feel the soft material. I gently pulled on it and it came free, dropping, as the dress had, to her feet. Again she stepped out of it, this time kicking it away from us. My hands traveled across her back, across her butt, pausing to give a quick squeeze through the panty portion before continuing down to the back of her thighs. I stroked her through the nylon, pulling her tighter against me, inhaling her perfume as our tongues continued to dance.

I reached upward and found the clasp on her bra, undoing it, releasing her breasts from their confinement. I stepped back, breaking our kiss, my eyes devouring her as I pulled the bra free and tossed it to the floor. Her nipples were turgid, standing out like sentinels, begging for my mouth to kiss them, my hands to touch them. I didn't resist their call, I leaned forward and took one between my lips. Nina cooed as I sucked first one and then the other.

I let my fingertips slide into the elastic waist of her pantyhose, right against her hips. Slowly, I dropped to my knees before her, so her crotch was less than six inches from my face. The material of the panty portion was semi-transparent, allowing me to see the darkness of her pubic hair contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. I could see the dampness across her lips outlining their shape. I could smell the aroma of her juices mixing with the nylon, creating a powerful scent that made my mouth water, my penis pulsate.

"Take them off Bill," Nina panted from above me.

My fingers were still in the waistband and it was only a matter of applying downward tugs. Slowly the top of her pubic hair came into view, then her glistening lips, then the tops of her thighs. I leaned forward and slid my tongue between those lips, licking her while my hands continued the work of removing the pantyhose. She cried out softly, pushing her crotch into my face, her knees wobbling. Her hands dropped down to my head, partly for balance, partly to pull me harder into her.

When the pantyhose were completely off and she was naked, I pushed backwards on her, forcing her to sit on the edge of the bed. Her legs opened up, giving me better access to her slit, her legs went around my shoulders, her body lay back onto the bed.

I slid my hands up and down her thighs for a moment as I licked her lips and teased around her hardened clit. But this was not my main goal, just the warm-up. I pulled my hands free and, keeping my mouth on target, began to undo the buttons on my shirt. I had to tug it out of my pants in order to get the bottom ones but finally I was able to shrug the dress shirt off. I then tugged upward on my T-shirt, having to remove my face from Nina's slit in order to do so.

She looked up at me from her position on the bed, her eyes glazed with lust and a little fear. "I'm ready Bill," she said. "Very ready."

"Me too," I told her, standing up.

She watched me while I unbuckled my belt and unsnapped my pants. I kicked off my own dress shoes and then let the pants drop to the floor, leaving me standing only in a pair of socks and a tented pair of BVDs. Two quick kicks with my feet and the socks were gone.

"Come on," she panted, spreading her legs wider, opening herself to me.

I pushed my underwear down and off, letting my erection free. Nina looked at it and shivered a little as if she was fully realizing that it would soon be inside of her body, thrusting within her. I climbed onto the bed, positioning myself with my head near the pillows. Nina scooted up until she was next to me.

I took her in my arms so that we were both lying on our sides, facing each other. We kissed while our bare chests, our bare legs slid flesh to flesh. My erection was pushing into her upper thigh. My hands felt her nakedness, sliding up and down her body, over her butt, down her thighs, back up to her back and shoulders. Her hands did the same, paying particular attention to my ass, which she seemed rather fond of.

I rolled her onto her back and then slowly positioned myself atop her. Our faces were inches apart, her nipples barely grazing my chest, her inner thighs touching my outer thighs, my hard cock resting in her wet pubic hair.

Her eyes were locked onto mine, so close I could see the individual flecks that made up the color of them, that I could see the minute contraction and retraction of her dilated pupils. Her hand was suddenly grasping me, squeezing deliciously, pulling me towards the center of her.

"Do it Bill," she whispered, "put it in me. I want to feel it."

"It'll hurt a little," I said softly, kissing her eyelid.

"I know, but do it anyway."

I replaced her hand with my own and then gently put the head against the moist wetness of her velvet lips. She gasped a little just at that contact, her body twitching. I slid up and down through her slit, wetting the head and feeling the warmth of her. I slid the shaft through her groove, wetting it. Thanks to my tongue and her fevered excitement, she was quite saturated with wetness. Gently, ever so gently, I put the head against her opening.

"Yes," she moaned, pulling at my ass with her hands. "Oh yes."

I pushed forward slowly, feeling her tight lips spread apart, accepting the head and a small amount of the shaft before fetching up against her hymen. She jumped a little as I touched it. I paused for a second.

"C'mon!" she cried, nipping at my neck with her teeth, her hands pulling on my ass, her body trembling all over with excitement and fear, "do it Bill, do it!"

I pushed forward, firmly but slowly. At first I didn't think it was going to work. I felt my dick trying to bend, felt the first warning pangs of pain moving upward as receptors in my nether regions tried to warn me that I was about to break something. But finally I broke through with absurd ease.

There was no noise, no ripping sound, no flurry of trumpets, only a sensation of something giving way. Nina let out a soft cry of pain, wincing, and suddenly, instead of only having the head in, I was inside of her well past half-shaft. I could feel her tightness around me, gripping me. I stopped, not wanting to hurt her anymore.

"Are you okay?" I asked her.

She was panting, her face flushed and sweaty. She nodded rapidly. "It wasn't that bad," she said. "Just a little burning. It's gone now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she nodded, kissing me. "You're inside of me now Bill, you're fucking me. You're finally fucking me after all this time."

"Yeah," I said, feeling her tight walls gripping at me again.

"So finish the job," she said, pulling at my ass once more. "I want to feel you come in me. I want to feel it."

I began to move in her, slowly at first as I concentrated on just getting myself all the way in. It took quite a few strokes before her tight, virginal hole adjusted to having something inside of it. I stroked in and out, pushing further with each thrust until her wetness coated me, easing the passage and at last I was able to push forward until our pubic hairs met.

"That feels sooo good," Nina sighed, pulling me against her. "Faster now."

I let my hips rise and fall, pistoning my cock in and out of her, sliding along on the lubrication of her juices, feeling her grip at me, feeling her hips begin to rise slowly to meet each of my thrusts. We kissed each other as we moved, switching from mouths to necks to ears. I dipped down and took one of her nipples between my lips for an instant.

"Yess!" she cried, "this feels so good. Keep fucking me."

"Yeah!" I agreed, picking up the pace, hearing the wet squish of our union, smelling the thick odor of our combined juices rising into the air around us. Her legs wrapped around my butt, her calves sliding up and down. Her fingernails scratched and dug at my back. Sweat formed on my face and dripped down on to hers. It formed on our bodies, giving a sensual film of slipperiness between us.

Never had an act of sexuality seemed so perfect, so right to me. This was more than just physical pleasure, much more. This was an emotional giving, a sharing of mind and soul. It was as if we were two halves that had wandered aimlessly all of our lives, not realizing we weren't complete until we'd found each other and joined. There was a rightness to this act that I'd never felt before, a feeling that transcended anything else, that made even the best sex I'd ever had seem like nothing more than a quick jerk-off in a bathroom, a quick release of a biological build-up. I felt every inch of her body against mine, every nerve ending aware and I felt her soul, her essence against mine. It was at that moment, in that hotel room, not at our wedding ceremony nearly ten months later, that Nina and I became man and wife. We wedded each other in spirit, in mind, if not in legality, as I thrust within her and she thrust back at me, as I filled her body and she accepted me.

Like during the terrifying moments after I'd asked her to marry me but before she'd answered, time seemed to slow, to stop. I didn't have any idea how long our act of love continued, how long I slid in and out of her tightness, how long we sweated and groaned, joined at the crotch. At one point she moaned and bucked uncontrollably beneath me, her legs tightening, her fingers scratching, her voice becoming the high-pitched whine I was starting to be familiar with. I continued to buck against her until her orgasm passed, her body relaxed and then I felt my own impending release coming on strong.

"Nina…" I groaned against her sweaty neck, her damp hair.

"Yesss!" she encouraged, thrusting back harder against me. She already knew the signs to look for. "Come for me Bill, come IN me."

It hit me like a freight train, starting in my pubic area and exploding outward like seismic waves from an epicenter. Pure pleasure assaulted me, had its way with me. My hips began to pound more forcefully, with less control. My mouth opened, my head arched backward. And suddenly I was pouring myself into her, feeling spurt after spurt of my hot seed blasting from my body and into hers. It went on and on, much longer than what I considered to be normal. But at last I dropped atop her, spent, exhausted, feeling the cooling wetness our juices, feeling the sharp cold of excited sweat beginning to dry on my flesh.

We kissed softly, just touching tongues, playful kisses. We held each other tightly, my softening cock still nestled in her warmth. Nina looked at me.

"I never knew it could be like that," she said.

"Me either," I answered. "Me either."

I would have expected her to express disbelief with this statement since she knew of my past history. I suppose it sounds phony as hell, what someone would say in the moment after bagging a virgin but before he slipped out the door, never to be seen again. But it wasn't phony. It was the truth and I meant it with all my heart. Nina didn't question it. She knew I spoke the truth, she knew it. She simply pulled me tight to her and kissed me.

"I love you so much Bill," she said, tears from her eyes wetting my face.

"I know Nina," I said, tears of happiness coming from my own eyes. "And I love you."

And so it was Ron who became the first of our Spokane friends or relatives to find out officially that Nina and I were engaged. She proudly displayed the engagement ring for him as we climbed into the plane for the return trip. He offered congratulations to us both, giving us warm friendly hugs. I was glad that we'd had time to utilize the large Jacuzzi in the hotel room before we left in order to wash the smell of our act of love from our bodies (of course the Jacuzzi itself led to another act of love that was shorter in duration but no less passionate). Though Ron probably suspected what we'd done, after all, he had to know it didn't take three and a half hours to simply eat dinner and propose, I didn't want him to confirm any theories he had by catching a whiff of us in the cramped space of the plane.

It was just after ten-thirty when we lifted off, heading east for Spokane. Nina sat in the back and fell quickly asleep, her soft snores reaching my ears even before we leveled off. Ron and I sat in silence, him monitoring his gauges and instruments, me looking out the side window, seeing the lights of Seattle slipping behind us. We would touch down a little after midnight, be home a little before one. I didn't think that our houses would be darkened when we got there. In fact, I imagined that both the Blackmores and the Stevens were anxiously awaiting the official word on the night's activity.

I was lost in my own thoughts as we flew, thinking of all the things that I'd done since my return from 1999. Had I made the most of my gift? Maybe, maybe not. Had I abused my gift? Definitely, but that was human nature I supposed. Had I chosen my gift wisely when it was offered to me?

I thought long and hard on that one, considering everything that I might have asked for at the moment that Mr. Li enquired as to what my greatest wish was. Had I chosen wisely? Was there anything else I could have said that would have made things easier?

I looked back at my sleeping fiance, at her lovely face, at her gentle form. I had found love because of what I'd said. I thought of Tracy, of my sister still being alive more than a year after she'd been fated to die. Tracy was alive because of what I'd said. I thought of Mike, my loser best friend. Mike was now on a career path, had a girlfriend, had every indicator of developing a normal, happy, productive life. Mike was matured and respectable because of what I'd said.

Sure, I hadn't been able to save the marines in Beirut. I probably wouldn't be able to stop the Persian Gulf War or the Challenger disaster or the Oklahoma City bombing. But what of that? Those things would happen anyway, with or without my interference.

My former life had been filled with stress, irresponsibility, uncertainty, grief, and occasional despair. I would probably not escape all of these things in my new life but I could not believe that they would be as deep seated, as constant. Mr. Li had given me a chance to correct my past mistakes, to put things into a new order, to change fate on a small scale.

Had I chosen wisely?

I'd been feeling stressed that day, the day I encountered him. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect I had to conclude that it was perhaps the wisest thing I'd ever said.

Epilogue

If Nina and I hadn't been such good friends, if we hadn't been so deeply in love, I don't believe our relationship would have made it through our first few years in Seattle. There was no conflict between us during this time, don't let me lead you to believe there was, but we simply had a very limited amount of time together. We spent our first year there in the college dorms; seeing each other only on nights that I didn't have to work and on the occasional weekend. When we did get to see each other we were usually tired and confined to public places. Nina was carrying twenty-one units, I was carrying eighteen. Our days went by in a haze of lectures, notes, homework, stolen kisses between classes, and the occasional date to a cheap restaurant.

We were drawn closer together during this period by the fact that we were unable to establish any real friendships with other students. Neither of us developed any sense of camaraderie with those that shared our majors. I was majoring in International Business because that was the subject that would prepare me to take the greatest advantage of my pre-knowledge. Unfortunately the only people that majored in this subject, beside myself, were aspiring future businessmen of the type that represented everything I always found distasteful about capitalism. They were all clean-cut, conservative, right wing spouting members of the young republicans. They were the people who would one day make the sorts of decisions that would destroy the lives of thousands and then go on to a three-martini lunch to celebrate. They all wanted to be millionaires by thirty and would stop at nothing to achieve this goal. They were young men and women in the process of selling their souls.

Nina's classmates were of two different varieties. There were the rich elite, those that had had their money handed to them all of their lives, who had gone to private academies and had grown up in the lap of luxury. They were the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of plastic surgeons, cardiac surgeons, and family practitioners to the elite. Their snobbery, Nina complained, was so entrenched within their personalities that they wouldn't even talk to you unless you had a last name that they could recognize. The second group was the super-smart nerds, the kids that had damn near aced their SATs but that had been scarred by persecution in grammar and high school. They were the kids that used to have their books knocked out of their hands, that used to be the favorite victims of the Richie Fairviews. They were better than the elite was but not much. Many of them had an inferiority complex a mile high and were so competitive that they were incapable of friendship. Nina spoke sadly of them in her discussions, not even realizing that she had been fated to be one of them.

But we had each other and that was enough. We could talk together, share our fears and frustrations together, congratulate each other, and occasionally, very occasionally that first year, make love to one another. It was always sweet.

We went home for the summer and quickly became immersed in our wedding plans. Mary proved to be a fabulous planner, taking to her task with a zeal I'd never seen or suspected. We were married on June 28th, 1985 before more than seventy guests. It was the happiest day of my life, either life, to that point. After the reception we climbed on a plane and flew to Los Angeles where we boarded a cruise ship for a seven-day trip to Mexico and back. For the first time in our relationship we had all the time in the world to enjoy each other's bodies. We missed two of the three ports of call and probably spent more time in our cabin than we did on deck.

When we returned to Spokane after the cruise we were faced with the bizarre situation of not having anyplace to stay besides either her parents house or mine. We both agreed that it was less weird to stay with mine. Less weird, but still weird. Sleeping with your new wife in your old bedroom while your parents were in the house is strange no matter how you slice it. We found ourselves making love on the floor when the urge struck us because we didn't want Mom or Dad to hear the bed squeaking.

Ironically, the best example of my business skills came our sophomore year in college, long before I picked up my degree in it. We had to rent an apartment in Seattle; there was no way we were going to stay in the dorms another year; but we needed to protect our capital from taking a serious ding from this. In order for my first major move to be successful, I needed to have as much of the twenty some-odd thousand dollars in stocks and bonds available at that time. I could not let it whittle away bit by bit paying for living expenses.

I constructed a paupers budget that had us eating Rice-a-roni, hotdogs, and bologna sandwiches a lot but that served to use up my hospital salary, the interest on the bonds, and the growth of the stocks in such a way that we were still making more than we were putting out. Our apartment was less than six hundred square feet and you practically had to do an armed reconnaissance before you dared to venture out to the car or the bus stop but we got by.

Both of us kept up our maddening pace at school, sacrificing time together in the early years because we knew it would be returned to us when we were older. We somehow managed to keep our spirits high, to keep our love strong. The best part of those years were the nights after I'd returned from work, when I would find Nina just putting her studying aside, her body clad only in a long T-shirt. We always kept a bottle of cheap white wine in the refrigerator and we would often share a glass of it before retiring to the bedroom for a lovemaking session before dropping off to sleep.

In 1986 the day I'd been waiting for since my return finally came. The business section of the Seattle newspaper announced that Microsoft Corporation would have an initial public offering of stock. The price was twenty-one dollars a share. I called my father, I called Tracy, I called Mike, I called Jack, all of whom had begun investing at my advice. I told them what they should do. I myself was probably among the first to buy when the market opened that Monday. I took everything I could spare, all my bonds, all my stocks that were simply holding money, nearly twenty-three thousand dollars worth of capital and bought Microsoft with it at twenty-one a share. That was nearly eleven hundred shares of what would eventually become the staple of the computer industry. By the end of the day that price had already risen to twenty-six a share. In less than eight hours I'd already made more than five grand. And it would do nothing but go up and up.

I continued to shove my money into Microsoft exclusively until the price rose into the forties per share. Then I began to concentrate on other IPOs that were just coming to bear.

In June of 1987, only three years after her first day of college, Nina finished her undergraduate degree. She was consistently on the honor roll and had no problem securing both admission and a student loan for the medical school. She began her classes there in September of 1987.

In January of 1988, a semester earlier than most of my classmates, I graduated with honors with a bachelors degree in International Business. Before I'd even been given my degree I was offered a job with one of the more prestigious investment firms in the Seattle area. They were impressed with my honor roll placement, my interview skills, and most of all, my portfolio. I was singled out as a rising star, going to work in a place that usually only hired those with family connections. The starting salary was forty-eight thousand a year; a considerable amount for that time period.

Nina and I stayed in our apartment, paying five hundred and twelve dollars a month in rent and stashing most of my salary into more rising stocks.

I hated every minute of it while I worked there but I learned much. I was considered somewhat of an eccentric, a square peg, but they were very impressed with the witchlike feel I had for the stock market and for picking out trends in it. It wasn't hard to do when you had knowledge of how the system worked coupled with knowledge of future events. I learned to research and invest in small, unheard of stocks that were about to benefit from some technological or sociological advance. Things like the latex glove industry in the face of the AIDS crisis.

Not surprisingly most of my brilliant insights were in the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, I knew from my previous life that there would be a big push to equip every major fire department engine and truck company in the country with semi-automatic defibrillators. So, using the skills I'd learned, I would research which companies made those things and direct my clients to invest their money there. Invariably I was right and my clients made money. My reputation grew and I began to develop contacts; the most important thing in that business. The fact that I couldn't stand most of my clients didn't matter. I learned to put that aside. My clients were my ticket to freedom.

By 1990, just as Nina was starting her third year of medical school I had both the contacts and the impressive reputation I needed. I resigned my position with the firm and Stevens Investment Consulting was born. My price was high, higher than anyone in the Seattle area. I did not advertise in any way shape or form. But I had more clients than I could handle. Word of mouth had spread that if you wanted to make some guaranteed money, you went and saw Bill Stevens. I rented a spacious office near downtown. I hired an attractive secretary to staff the front desk. And I dispensed killer advice that never, as far as I know, cost anybody a dime in losses. Amusingly enough, a good portion of my clients were the investment counselors that I'd worked with at the firm. After all, who knew better than they how accurate my predictions were. None of my clients ever knew that I lived in a pauper's hovel in South Seattle and drove an old Datsun to work. None of them knew that I was cramming every spare penny into the same stocks I was recommending to them.

Our net worth climbed past the million-dollar mark about the time that Nina started her fourth and final year of medical school. We celebrated by making a few purchases. I bought my wife a Volvo with all the bells and whistles. I bought myself a BMW with all the bells and whistles. I bought the both of us a three-bedroom house in one of the middle-class suburbs, putting down twenty percent and assuming a thirty-year loan at seven and a half percent. The real estate agent that sold it to us thought we were mad once she got a look at our credit report and earnings sheet.

"But sir," she'd nearly pleaded. "This house is only two hundred and twenty thousand. With your income and assets, you qualify for well over nine hundred thousand. Why would you want to…"

"Ma'am?" I'd interrupted, "this is the house we want. Are you going to sell it to us or not? If not, I'll be happy to find another agent who will."

She sold it to us of course. She certainly did not want to lose her commission. We moved into our first house on September 18, 1991. We made love in the bedroom that first night before we even began to unpack.

Nina Stevens became Doctor Stevens on June 3, 1992. My parents, her parents, Tracy, even Mike and Maggie flew up for the ceremony. After they all returned home Nina was left with four weeks before her residency in emergency medicine began. I took a vacation from work, it's easy to do when you're the boss, and I rented us a condo on the leeward side of Maui. Except for our honeymoon it was our first real vacation. We spent three and half weeks relaxing on the beach, eating in restaurants, sightseeing, and making love at least twice a day; sometimes in our condo, sometimes on a deserted stretch of beach as the sun went down, and once in the bathroom of a sightseeing dinner cruise boat. That last one was not exactly making love, it was pure lustful fucking, through and through. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

When we returned to Seattle the hell of residency began for Nina. She would work thirty-six hours at a stretch at least three times a week, learning the finer points of treating medical and traumatic injuries in the busiest emergency room in Washington. If she was allowed to get any sleep there at all it was typically less than an hour at a time. When she was home she was exhausted. Many was the time that she drug herself into the house at some forbidding hour and tried to tell me about her shift but fell asleep in mid-sentence. I would carry her to bed like a child on these occasions, undress her, and tuck her in.

I concentrated on my own work during this period, spending hours at my computer terminal in the office or in the den of my house, researching companies, finding out what they made, how they made it, what kind of raw materials they used to make it with. I spent even more hours on the phone with my clients, advising them to buy this, to sell that. My reputation continued to grow to the point where I had to turn down clients because I simply didn't have the time to consult with them. And of course, under the rules of capitalism, my price went up along with the demand for me. I received so many offers of employment at outrageous salaries from large firms that I lost count of them. I had so many rich pricks offer to partner with me that I had to develop a standard speech for turning them down.

I suppose it was inevitable that one day two gentlemen in suits entered my office and approached Darla, my young secretary. They spoke a few words to her, showed her some identification, and a second later my phone was ringing on my desk. She told me about my visitors and I instructed her to let them in.

"Mr. Stevens," said the taller of the two, his eyes flitting around my office, looking for something incriminating. "I'm Special Agent Talon, FBI."

He flipped open a little leather case, displaying his credentials. "This is Agent Sparks from the Federal Trade Commission." Sparks displayed his own credentials. "Would you mind if we had a few words with you?"

"Not at all gentlemen," I said, suppressing my nervousness at the appearance of a couple of feds, "please sit down." I waved them to the chairs before my desk. "Can I have Darla bring you some coffee or tea? Maybe some bottled water?"

"No thank you," Talon answered for both of them. They took their seats and spent a moment just looking at me.

"What is it I can help you with?" I asked.

"Word among the investment community," Sparks said, speaking for the first time, "is that if you want to make some guaranteed money in the market, you go see Bill Stevens at Stevens Consulting."

I gave a small smile, "glad to know that my reputation proceeds me."

"Uh huh," Sparks continued. "We did a little checking on you Mr. Stevens. When we hear something like that it makes us a little curious. Guaranteed money? In the stock market? There is really no such thing. The stock market, as you surely know, is little more than a respectable form of gambling. Some have a flair for it, some do not. But nobody has the reputation that you have. Nobody."

He leaned forward, his gray eyes burning into mine. He was trying to intimidate me. "You charge nearly three times what other investment consultants do," he said. "There is no reason or justification for such an outrageous fee in a business such as this. None at all. But somehow you not only get away with it, you have more clients than you can handle. We sent one of our agents to try and sign up with you just to check you out and he was turned away, not because he's a fed but because you have no time to take on new clients, you're that booked."

"Is there something illegal about that?" I asked, starting to get a little angry.

Sparks ignored my question. "We've talked to many of your clients. It seems that you have quite the ability to spot and exploit trends in the market. An almost spooky ability. Time after time we were told how you advised them to put their money in this stock or that stock, usually something obscure that they'd never even heard of, and then low and behold, that stock begins to go up and up. Not one person we talked to complained about their stocks going down. Not a single one. Not one of them bitched about the fee you charged. Not a single one. Do you find that a little strange Mr. Stevens? Because I surely do."

"My clients TALKED to you?" I asked, appalled. I don't know why that surprised me but it did.

"Oh yes," Sparks smiled, perhaps sensing a little uplifted corner of my persona that he could pry at. "They were quite willing to talk to us once we implied to them that something illegal might be going on and that they might be implicated. Most of them happily showed us the records of their buys and sells. They sold you out in an instant at the mere suggestion that they themselves might be in danger."

"Figures," I muttered, seething at this knowledge. I recovered myself quickly. "But I'll ask you again gentlemen, have I done anything illegal?"

"I don't know Mr. Stevens," Sparks asked me, "have you? From everything we've learned it certainly looks like a fair amount of insider trading is going on here. Somebody is feeding you information, probably several somebodies inside of these corporations."

"Are you serious?" I asked, feeling myself on a little firmer ground. "You're suggesting that I have contacts inside of more than a hundred corporations that are feeding me inside info? Do you really believe that? It would have to be that many because that's how many companies I routinely advise my clients to invest in. I'm sure you know that if you've checked on me like you said. That's an awful lot of inside information, isn't it?"

"So you say you're doing nothing wrong?" Sparks asked, "that you're just very adept at picking the right stocks time and time again. So adept that you never guess wrong?"

"Basically, yes." I nodded.

"Would you mind if we took a look through your files?" Sparks asked next.

I laughed out loud, not able to help myself. "Let you look through my files?

Are you mad?"

He gave me a reasonable look. "If you have nothing to hide Mr. Stevens," he said, "then why should you mind letting us take a look?"

I shook my head at them. I'd had about enough of this. "Gentlemen," I asked, "this is the United States of America, is it not?"

"Yes Mr. Stevens," Sparks nodded.

"Good. Then I'm protected by a little document called the constitution am I not? A little addition to that document known as the fourth amendment? If you want to look through my files than you go get a judge to give you a warrant allowing you to do so. But you can't do that, can you? Because you don't have any probable cause that I've committed any crime. You're just here on a fishing expedition, hoping that I'll break down in front of you and bust open some international inside trading conspiracy. Well sorry to disappoint you gentlemen, but that's not going to happen. There is no conspiracy and you will not be looking at any of my files."

Talon took a deep, angry breath. "Mr. Stevens," he said, "I have some very good friends at the Internal Revenue Service. I can make a few phone calls and you would find yourself under very intense scrutiny every time you filed your taxes."

"You're threatening me?" I barked, laughing. "You've got to be shitting. You know damn well you've already had your buddies at the IRS look into my background. You could probably recite my net worth as well as I can. You want to have them audit me every year? Go ahead, bring it on. They'll find nothing. I pay every penny of capital gains tax and income tax that I'm responsible for. I take no questionable deductions. I'm sure my clients have told you that I'm somewhat of a weirdo in that regard. When they bitch about their capital gains tax I always tell them they should be proud to pay it, that there is not nearly enough distribution of wealth in this country. I tell them I think the tax should be greater than it is, that the rich should be hammered with taxes. Bring on the audits guys, you can't threaten me with that."

They both stared for a moment, feeling the balance of power shifting on its axis. "Mr. Stevens," Talon started again.

"Gentlemen," I said, standing up. "I'm a very busy man and I have work to do. I think the time has come to put an end to our discussion. If you wish to talk to me again, please call in advance and set up an appointment. I'll be sure to have a lawyer present. Good day."

Despite my bravado in the face of the feds, the encounter disturbed me greatly. They might not have known what they were dealing with but the fact remained that I had been noticed. I did not like to be noticed. I went home that night and found Nina in the bathtub, fragrant bubbles covering her body as she soaked after an exhausted sleep. She was due back at the hospital at six the next morning.

I leaned next to the tub and gave her a kiss. Somehow my hand just happened to drop into the water and land against her slippery thigh. The kiss deepened and two minutes later I was naked in the tub with her. A considerable amount of water splashed onto the carpet in the next fifteen minutes.

After, as we lay in our bed naked, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around I told her about my visit from Talon and Sparks. She was very alarmed by it.

"Feds?" she asked, looking at me. "You're not in any trouble are you Bill?"

"No," I shook my head. "They were just harassing me. They thought my record was a little suspicious and were trying to see if I was doing anything wrong."

"But you haven't been," she protested sternly. Nina was well aware of my prowess at picking stocks. She used to express doubt that I was committing so much of our net worth to a particular issue but she'd long since learned to trust my "instincts". How could she argue with constant success? If she had any suspicions about where my knowledge was coming from, if she ever thought it was more than just my own common sense and thorough study, she never mentioned it, either directly or indirectly.

"No," I said, "I've always gone out of my way to be on the up and up. I've never cheated so much as a penny on our taxes. We have nothing to worry about in that regards but at the same time I think it's time for a change."

"What kind of change?"

I told her. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. By the time she left for the hospital a decision had been made. I put it into motion the very next day.

On November 16, 1993, at the age of twenty-six, with a net worth of 1.9 million dollars, I retired from work. I was free.

I didn't spare a thought about the clients I was abandoning. After all, those assholes had talked to the feds about me, had shown them records. I could understand that. But not a single one of them, not one out of the forty or so the feds talked to had bothered to give me a little call and let me know that the FTC and the FBI was sniffing at my ass. Fuck them. They'd paid me their money and I'd advised them well. Our relationship ended right there.

Darla was another matter. The closing down of Stevens Consulting left her without a job. I'd lured her away from a job that she'd hated by offering her a handsome salary. This had been in the days before sexual harassment became the issue that it is today and Darla had been expected to offer special services to her previous boss as a condition of continued employment. Naturally she'd been prepared to offer those services to me when I hired her and had been quite surprised when I didn't request them. I had changed her view of the world as she knew it.

She became a very loyal employee, a secretary that other businessmen and women could only dream about. She also became a friend during the many hours we spent alone in the office. She was very attractive and I can't say that I hadn't enjoyed looking at her nyloned legs on occasion as she typed on her computer or answered the phone, but I never once considered bedding her. I told her the news of the closure of Stevens Consulting and she broke into tears.

Her tears dried up when I gave her her severance package. I gave her a check for twenty thousand dollars and a lifelong offer to consult in investment for her free of charge. If she played her cards right she would never have to work again and she knew it. She gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an unspoken offer to continue the affections in my office. I gave her an unspoken denial and we parted.

Though Nina was still locked in the rigors of residency, I had nothing but time on my hands now. Using my computer I could monitor and adjust our investments, dispense advice to my few clients: Maggie and Mike, Jack and Mary, Mom and Dad, Darla, Tracy; by checking my computer and spending less than two hours per week before it. Our net worth had reached the point where it could only get bigger as long as I kept shifting it from rising stock to rising stock. I began to spend a little on self-pleasure.

During the last two years of Nina's residency I learned to fly an airplane and purchased a Cessna that could hold four people. I learned to sail on Puget Sound, even venturing into the open water of the Pacific Ocean and learning the finer points of open sea navigation and handling. I learned to play golf, bringing my handicap from an initial twenty-six all the way down to a nine.

I learned to hunt for deer and elk, my father-in-law taking on the responsibility of teaching me. I purchased a Winchester 30-06 and fired it at a range until I could hit a target the size of a quarter from two hundred yards. My first trip to the Idaho panhandle in October I brought down a four point buck. The next October Jack and I climbed into my Cessna and I flew us to the most remote airstrip in Northern Wyoming that we could find. We spent a week camping out, drinking beer, and basking in maleness. We both bagged an elk on that trip and had to arrange for the meat to be shipped home via ground transport because it's sheer weight would have overloaded my plane.

I kept myself amused by my many pursuits during those days, never recklessly spending money, but gratefully abandoning my miserly ways at the same time. We remained in our simple three-bedroom house, our neighbors never knowing or suspecting that we were multi-millionaires. In fact, since they knew Nina was a doctor in residency, they kind of figured that I was some sort of unemployed loser that had latched onto her. I never bothered to correct this impression.

As the end of her residency began to come into view we began to talk about what was next. Where we would go, what we would do. It wasn't a long discussion. Both of us longed to leave Seattle behind. We hated the weather, we hated the bustle of living in such a large city. We both wanted to go home.

Three things happened in the last six months of her residency. The first was that Nina began looking for a position in a Spokane emergency room. The trauma center expressed immediate interest in her and the employment process began. I flew her back and forth for interviews three times and she was offered the position. Her starting date was to be two weeks after she passed her final boards.

The second thing occurred directly because of the first. I began to scout out locations for our future home. We had long talks about our dream house during this time. I assured her that we could afford whatever it was that we came up with and that I would make it happen. We both listed what we wanted and compared the lists. Eventually we came up with a master plan. I searched out and eventually found a good architect. He flew with me to Spokane and we began scouting out land for sale in the region. It didn't take long to find exactly the plot we were looking for. I started the legal process of purchasing the land while my architect began the process of planning the house we wanted. Construction began three months before we were to leave Seattle.

The third thing that happened had nothing to do with houses and jobs. Well, almost nothing. Nina and I had several long discussions and finally, two months before we returned to Spokane, a month after our new house had begun the process of being built, Nina threw away her birth control pills. October 18, 1995, the day she started her first day as a staff physician in the emergency room of the trauma center, she was two months pregnant.

We spent our first six months back in Spokane living in a house we'd rented in the River View section while construction on our dream-house was underway. Nina swoll up with pregnancy, her breasts edging into the territory of the C-cup for the first time in her life. She continued to work and I continued to oversee the construction, making sure everything was just right.

Our house was being built on four acres of shoreline property on Lake Pend Oreille. It was a very rural part of the lake, accessible only by a twisting, two-lane road. Our land was covered with evergreens and brush. No water or electricity ran there and we had to arrange to have it; as well as a septic system; put in. The location was exactly forty-two miles from the Spokane City Limits; forty-eight miles from the trauma center. Nina assured me that she didn't mind the commute. It would take her just under an hour both ways but since her schedule was only three twelve hour shifts one week and four the next, it wasn't a terrible hardship. After the horrors of internship the schedule, including the commute, seemed almost serene.

I was able to watch the land change from forbidding forest to a nice plot overlooking the lake. The house itself is nearly six thousand square feet. It has seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a large family room, two dens, a game room, and a wine cellar. It has a built-in swimming pool that looks like a tropical lagoon (Nina's idea). It has a tennis court and a par three golf hole (my ideas). It has a large, redwood deck in the back with access from the master bedroom and the living room. The deck contains a covered hottub capable of holding eight adults in comfort. Forty-eight steps lead downward from the deck to a private dock and a huge boathouse. These days the boathouse contains a forty-foot cabin cruiser, a ski-boat, a small bass boat, and a couple of jet-skis. Real water enthusiasts are we Stevens'.

One month before Nina's due date the finishing touches were finally completed and we moved in. We kept up with tradition and made love before the boxes were even unpacked.

Laura Stevens entered the world on June 18, 1996, a tiny, red-faced infant, nearly bald, that looked so much like her mother that it was difficult to believe that I had anything to do with the conception.

Since then we've had two others. Jason, born September 20, 1997, also looks like Nina though there is at least a hint of my facial features in his form.

Megan, born October 3, 1998 is the baby of the family. God help her, she looks just like me. There's no denying paternity there.

I spend my days watching these children, caring for them on the days that Nina is at work. My life is happy. There is little else I'd rather do. I go fishing at least once a week. I go hunting once a year. I go to Mariners games in Seattle at least three times a season. I've replaced my single engine plane with a twin engine capable of holding ten. Trips to Las Vegas or Reno occur frequently.

I spend about three hours a week monitoring my investments. I was able to take huge advantage of many initial public offerings, especially over the last four years. I got in on America Online, Amazon.com, E-bay, and many other Internet stocks that went through the roof. The Stevens' family holdings have nearly tripled in the last five years. On the day I type these words our net worth is just a hair over eleven million dollars. A good thing because I've now reached the point where my pre-knowledge has run out. Obviously I've gained considerable knowledge of stocks and investments so I'll keep some money in the market but I'm planning to begin shifting the bulk of our holdings over to CDs, Mutual Funds, Treasury bonds, and other safe, quiet storage vessels.

Nina works her shifts and is a very popular doctor among the staff and her coworkers. But at the same time her superiors consider her somewhat of a pain in the ass. She doesn't work any of the many overtime shifts that are offered to her. She doesn't write papers for publication in the hospital journal. She doesn't participate in the education or training of the area's paramedics. She goes to work, does the job that she loves, and then comes home to the family that she loves.

Mike took the test for the Spokane Fire Department in June of 1985. By then he had a year of being their courier and two semesters of Fire Technology classes from the community college under his belt. He'd worked out obsessively throughout the year in fire station workout rooms and his body was an efficient, well-honed machine. He passed the written test in the high nineties but it was the physical agility test, the combat challenge, that was his shining moment. He didn't just break the previous record, he shattered it by more than eighteen seconds. His oral boards were just a formality at that point.

Early that August, while Nina and I were still sharing my old bedroom prepatory to heading back to Seattle, Mike entered the fire academy. On November 3 he was given his first assignment; an engine company very near where a girl named Julie had once thrown me out of her car. It was the busiest station in Spokane and he spent eighteen months there.

Once his probation period was up he began taking more Fire Tech courses. He collected his associate's degree in 1987 and then transferred to State College. By 1990 he held a bachelors degree.

He continued to date Maggie throughout the year prior to his hire. Unfortunately when he made the discovery as a rookie firefighter of how damn easy it was to get laid when the public adored you, he gave Maggie the old, "I think we should see other people" speech. I heard all of this from Nina, who corresponded in letters and phonecalls with Maggie. It was very apparent that Maggie did not take the speech well.

I felt sad for both of them, part of me wondering what Mike was thinking – it was obvious how he felt about her – the other half knowing exactly what he was thinking and what organ he was doing it with. Mike went on something of a rampage, very similar to what I'd done upon my recycling with exactly the same sort of blindness. I didn't interfere, didn't try to talk him out of what he was doing. I knew he wouldn't listen to me. I only hoped he would catch himself before it was too late.

Maggie was in her first year of nursing school when they broke up. She grieved for a while and then carried on, beginning to date again after a few months. She drifted back into her pattern of changing boyfriends as often as she changed her socks for about six months. She then began to date a radiology tech that she'd met during her hospital time.

They became a couple. Maggie wrote letters to Nina telling how happy she was. I read the letters and had to agree with Nina's assessment that they sounded entirely too cheery, too forced. They sounded like Maggie was trying to convince herself that she was happy.

The radiology tech asked Maggie to marry him a week before she graduated from nursing school. He didn't put a ring on her finger with his mouth, nor did he put one in a glass of champagne. In fact, he didn't even HAVE a ring when he conversationally brought up the subject of marriage to her.

Maggie said yes to him immediately. Two days later they went and picked out a ring together. The one that she liked cost more than he cared to spend so he asked her is she would mind pitching in a little for it. After all, money was tight, the republicans were fucking up the economy, etc. She pitched in. She tried to make the whole thing sound romantic in her letter but the underlying bitterness and disappointment were plainly visible between the lines.

She told Nina about their plans. They were going to get married as soon as possible, as soon as she secured employment as a nurse. He was going to quit his job and start a medical billing business that he could operate from their home.

Neither Nina nor myself had ever met this radiology tech but it certainly sounded to us like he was someone looking for a free ride. We wondered how Maggie could not see this too. Nina briefly mentioned this possibility during a phone conversation and Maggie blew up at her, slamming the phone down in anger. They made up a few days later but Maggie made it clear what the rules were: no more talking about her radiology tech.

I was forced to wonder if Maggie was following along her fated path. I hadn't known her at all in my previous life, nurse or not a nurse, she hadn't worked in any of the ERs, but I rather suspected that she was.

It was two weeks after the engagement notice, a week after her graduation, when Mike called me at our small apartment. He was in tears. We talked for more than an hour and he poured out his heart to me. He told me how much he loved Maggie, how stupid he'd been, and how he'd now lost her because he'd realized this too late.

I calmed him down – believe me, I was able to sympathize – and told him that he might be right, that it might be too late. I also told him that he didn't have a hair on his ass if he didn't at least TRY to get her back if that was how he felt about her. Even if he were still ultimately rejected he would at least not have to spend his life wondering if he COULD have. He asked how he could go about doing that.

"Do you want to marry her?" I asked him. "Is that what your goal is?"

"Yes," he answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Then in order for you to have any chance at all you're going to have to move quickly. Very quickly. You're going to have to be aggressively romantic."

"Aggressively romantic?"

I explained what that meant. We discussed a few different approaches to the problem and eventually Mike arrived at a course of action.

"Good luck," I told him after the details were worked out.

"What do you think my chances are?"

I didn't like to lie to my friends but in this case I made an exception. "About fifty-fifty."

Armed with information that I'd taken out of Maggie's latest letter to Nina, Mike was waiting for her when she emerged from a job interview at Holy Family Hospital – interestingly enough the same hospital where I'd performed a similar mission for Nina. Perhaps it was fitting. He proclaimed his love for her right there in the parking lot. He told her how wrong, how stupid he'd been. Finally he dropped to one knee and offered her an engagement ring. He told her that he would marry her that night, that hour. It was a very risky move on his part but it paid off.

She didn't accept his ring right there. She didn't gush all over him and go off into the sunset with him. But she also didn't slap his face. She left the parking lot that day by herself, her mind very troubled. But the next day she called him up and agreed to have lunch with him. By the end of that day they found themselves at Mike's house, in bed, her newest ring on her finger.

The next day she broke the news to the radiology tech. He did not take it very well. He screamed and yelled and cussed and Maggie was forced to flee in terror, honestly fearing for her safety. The words "bitch" and "cunt" and "whore" followed her to her car.

Mr. Radiology then made perhaps the worst mistake of his life. After Maggie left he went to Mike's fire station carrying an aluminum baseball bat and intending to express his displeasure with Mike in dramatic fashion. It was pretty dramatic all right. He'd failed to take a few things into consideration before launching his attack. One was that Mike was in exquisite physical shape as a result of his passion for working out. Another was that there were two other firemen in the station and firemen are fiercely loyal to each other.

The scuffle lasted approximately forty-five seconds. Radiology did not land a single blow with his bat or anything else. The Spokane Police arrived in force less than three minutes later. They charged in with their batons out, just itching to thump upon the person who had dared to storm a firehouse (the cops are VERY protective of firefighters and paramedics). What they found was their aggressor lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding from multiple places on his head and face. Radiology went to jail after a two-day stay in the Spokane Trauma Center.

The last thing that he did not take into account was that assaulting fire personnel is heavily frowned upon by the legal system, even if a deadly weapon is not involved, which in this case it was. The proverbial book was thrown at him and he ended up spending a year in the county jail which, of course, resulted in the loss of his job.

Neither Mike nor Maggie was ever bothered by him again. Less than six months later they were married. Nina and I both drove to Spokane to attend.

Did they live happily ever after? Does anybody? They are still married today and have two children that are a few years older than mine. Mike was promoted to engineer in 1989. He made Captain in 1991. He's being pressured from above to apply for Battalion Chief these days but he insists he just wants to be a Captain forever. He has his own station, his own crew, and he still gets to run into burning buildings once in a while.

Maggie went to work at Holy Family hospital, moving from department to department for a few years until she found her niche in labor and delivery. She's been there ever since and is now the dayshift charge nurse.

As a couple they are considerably more wealthy than the upper-middle-class status that their income alone would have provided. Since his first year on the fire department Mike has been taking investment advice from me. He's never committed as much as I have but the net worth of the Meachen family is currently around 1.8 million dollars. They have a large house, paid for, in the River-View area of Spokane. You can see the falls from their bedroom window and their deck.

They remain our best friends. We get together either at our house or theirs no less than twice a month, sometimes more. We spend every New Year's Eve together partying the night away. We go on skiing trips, boating trips, Vegas trips, and the occasional cruise together. We couldn't ask for better friends.

Tracy, like Nina, pounded out her undergraduate degree in three years. She was accepted into the UC Berkeley law school and graduated with honors in June of 1989. She could have had a job with any number of prestigious firms as a litigator. Instead she applied and was instantly accepted at the Spokane County District Attorney's office as a deputy DA.

She moved back home in early July of 1989, saving me the bother of warning her about the impending earthquake that was going to strike the bay area in October of that year. She has been with the DA's office ever since and she has made quite a name for herself as the prosecutor that doesn't like to plea bargain. This has made her butt heads with her superiors on more occasions than she cares to count but they can't argue with her conviction rate, which is impressive indeed. She is particularly fierce when she gets her hands on a manslaughter case and even the judges seem to fear her when this happens.

It was in July of 1994 that she went to work one morning and was handed a new case file by her boss. The suspect in the case was one Dennis Castleton. He was a first sergeant in the United States Army home on leave for two weeks. The cops had filed a charge of second-degree murder against him but it was expected that the charge would be reduced to manslaughter. Sergeant Castleton was not an ordinary soldier but a member of the elite Army Rangers that had seen combat in the Persian Gulf War. The victim of the crime was a two-time loser that had been recently paroled from state prison after serving six years for armed robbery. The victim's name was Richard Fairview.

Apparently Sergeant Castleton had been leaving a bar with his wife when Fairview, a methamphetamine addict that was out of product and desperate for more, spotted what he thought was an easy mark. He approached Castleton, pushed him roughly up against a car, and demanded all of his money. Fairview had no weapon (if he'd had a gun he could have sold it for crank) and was relying solely on his intimidating size to get what he wanted. Why not? Castleton was only five foot eight and a hundred and forty pounds or so. I guess Richie hadn't learned much from his encounters with me back in high school.

When the cops arrived they found Richie Fairview dead on the pavement. An autopsy would reveal multiple skull fractures from having his head bashed repeatedly into the side of the car and a crushed trachea from having a hand chop brutally into it. Sergeant Castleton was without so much as a scratch on him.

Tracy reluctantly had herself removed from the case on the grounds that the victim had once stabbed her brother. The case eventually went to trial but the jury deadlocked 9-3 in favor of acquittal. The DA elected not to re-try it and Sergeant Castleton was released. He was given a court martial by the military and ultimately reduced one grade in rank. He would go on to fight another day. I only wished I'd had the opportunity to buy him a drink at some point.

Tracy, like many of my friends and all of my family, is considerably wealthier than her colleagues thanks to her wise choices in investments. She owns a large house not terribly far from Mike and Maggie's. She vacations in some new, exotic place each year. She's actually been to Russia, to Africa, to the Middle East, and even did a brief stint on a very expensive Antarctica tour in 1993. She always returns from her vacations refreshed and ready to get back into the fray of the Spokane County justice system.

In addition to her DA duties she is also active in many victims rights organizations. MADD is chief among them, although she is not a mother. She is very radical on the subject of DUI laws. Sometimes I think the Iranians would think her a tad radical on that subject.

Her personal life could use a little improvement. She is driven by her job and her relationships with men reflect that. She's been married twice now, both marriages conceived in passion and haste, both dissolved after less than two years. No children were produced either time. Most men have a hard time with her aggressive, pushy nature, not to mention the long hours that she works at her job and her volunteer work. Husband number one was a fellow prosecutor and you would have thought he'd have understood. He didn't. Number two was a detective sergeant with the Spokane Sheriff's department. He hadn't understood either. Both I think were drawn to Tracy by her good looks and strong personality and then driven away when they found that personality was stronger than they'd thought.

But there's hope for my sister yet I'm starting to think. She attended my birthday party five months ago and there met Brent Hartley, a colleague of Nina's and one of our family friends that we've developed. Brent had recently been utterly fucked in a divorce settlement and at times seemed on the verge of suicide. Tracy and he began chatting together and before the night was over both were smiling and being very chummy with each other. They've been dating ever since and they seem to be happy together. Who knows? Maybe something will come of it.

Mom and Dad have done well for themselves. Dad has been listening to my investment advice ever since I lived at home and as a result he was able to retire comfortably in 1990, fully five years before he retired in my previous life. Mom retired shortly after this. Their house is now paid off but they refuse to move out of it even though they could easily afford something quite nice if they wished. They love their house, have many memories attached with it and plan to die there. The longer I live in my own house, the more I understand their feelings.

What they've done instead is buy a large (and I mean LARGE) motor home which they use to tour North America with. They are often gone for months at a time, several times a year to parts as distant as you can get without leaving the continental landmass. They have taken their motor home to Alaska, to Florida, to Maine, to Arizona, and to many places in between. They are planning a trip to Cabo San Lucas later this year.

I arrange to have their place looked after while they are gone and to pay their bills in their absence. I make sure their lawn gets mowed, their Northwest Electric gets paid, and their water pipes don't freeze. I'm glad to do these tasks for them. They seem very happy in their retirement.

Jack and Mary Blackmore are still hanging in there and show no signs of stepping out anytime soon. They too have made use of my stock knowledge and are quite wealthy. Unlike my parents, their desire to move someplace very nice was stronger than their desire to stay in their house for nostalgia's sake. They live in a nice lakefront three bedroom on the shore of Lake Coeur d' Alene. When Nina and I need a babysitter it is usually they who are the first to volunteer.

Jack, Mike, and I have become frequent companions. Jack fits in with us very well and sometimes we completely forget that he is more than forty years older than we are. We all go hunting together each fall, finding the most remote airstrip we can to stage from, always spending at least a week out in the boonies somewhere, tromping around in camoflaugh gear, packing hunting rifles, drinking beer, sleeping in tents. We go fishing together several times a month on either Jack's lake or mine (usually Jack's, he's got a bitchin bass boat). We fly to Seattle for Mariners games at least four times every season. We have an annual deep-sea fishing trip that we take on a chartered boat.

Jack drinks as much beer as he always has and he's had no further heart problems. He was seventy-three years old on his last birthday but looks fifty due to frequent exercise and outdoor activities. When Viagra first came out I asked him jokingly (after several beers on the fishing boat) if he wanted me to ask Nina to write him a prescription for some.

He looked at me lecherously and said, "I certainly don't need any of THAT shit youngster. I ain't that old."

So that's how our lives have gone, how things turned out differently with pre-knowledge. I didn't change the world, just a few lives in it. Fate has seemingly accepted us, made allowances for us. We have left a wake of passage in the smooth fabric of what was supposed to be but, as I've seen, the wake has mostly closed up behind us leaving only a few ripples to mark our passage.

Only a few ripples.

On a beautiful April afternoon in 1998 I had to drive to Spokane to pick up the new fish-finder I was planning to get Jack for his birthday. Laura, who was almost three, and Jason, who was seven months, were with me since it was a day that Nina worked.

As always when I found myself in Spokane on such days, I stopped at the trauma center for a brief visit. Nina, as well as her co-workers, enjoyed seeing the kids for a few minutes and I enjoyed seeing my wife doing her job. I got the most enjoyment when we snuck in while she was in the middle of a procedure and I got to observe her at work. It was then that I could contrast the Nina that was with the Nina that should have been. It was then that I could feel how I'd thwarted fate, how I'd defied it in the control of a life.

We spent about twenty minutes in the doctor's lounge, the kids sitting on their mother's lap. Laura was babbling about something or other, using her fifty or so word vocabulary while Jason and I were munching on some chips from a dip tray that someone had brought in. Most of the crumbs from Jason's chip were tumbling down the front of Nina's scrub shirt, which was just starting to bulge outward at the abdomen from the presence of the as-yet-unnamed Megan, who was four months along in her belly.

Finally a nurse poked her head in.

"Nina," she said, "we got an ambulance three minutes out with a twenty mile an hour auto-ped. Positive loss of consciousness and repetitive questioning. Obvious tib-fib fracture too."

She sighed, "Thanks Jen," she said sourly, handing the kids over to me. "Oh well, duty calls."

We exchanged kisses and I took the kids and went outside to the ambulance bay, hanging out until the ambulance of which they'd spoken backed in.

I looked at the ambulance with nostalgia, as I always did when I found myself in such situations. It was amazing how much I remembered from my former career, how much I missed it at times. The ambulance was the 96-240.

I remembered that it was the rig with the bizarre electrical problems that sometimes caused the radios, the power windows, and the power steering to just die until you shut off the engine and started it again. The EMT that jumped out of the driver's seat was Rob Forehand, an aspiring fireman that had been my partner for a short time once. The paramedic that jumped out of the back was Jim Corgan, one of the oldest employees that we'd employed. He was number one on the seniority list and always had his choice of shifts when we bid for them. He was also cursed with a chronically sore back, a hazard of the business, and typically took off four months of every given year on work comp. I knew these two well but they had no idea who I was.

I smiled as they gave me a disinterested glance, probably figuring I was the family of a patient out for a smoke or something. They pulled their patient out of the rig. He was a street person dressed in scraggly clothes and smelling strongly of alcohol. He was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar around his neck, two IVs plugged into his arms. They started to move him towards the entrance doors.

"Hey Rob," I said to the EMT, smiling. "Hope you get hooked up with the fire department soon."

He looked at me strangely, trying to place my face, trying to figure out if he knew me.

Before he could say anything I turned to his partner. "How you doing Jim? Good to see you. How's the back treatin' you these days?"

He gave me the same expression, finally answering, "Uh, it's okay."

"Good," I nodded, shifting Jason in my arms and grabbing Laura's hand once more. "I'll let you get back to your work."

I disappeared back to my Toyota four-runner, leaving their puzzled expressions behind me. Sometimes I just couldn't resist doing things like that.

We left the trauma center and headed for better parts of town. We picked up the fish-finder and I decided to treat my two children to some greasy fast food from a drive-through. Nina would most definitely not have approved but Jason couldn't talk yet and Laura lacked the vocabulary or the memory to rat me out.

We took our contraband to a nearby city park. Had I known something was going to happen? Had I been led there by fate for unknown reasons? Maybe. Maybe not. If so, fate does have its kind side.

The park was one that I'd once taken my daughter Becky to when she was young. Did I stop there out of nostalgia? Did I stop there because I remembered it was a good park to take kids too? I honestly don't know. I don't remember the vision of Becky coming to my consciousness at all in the decision to stop there. Thinking of Becky always made unpleasant feelings of guilt and loss to surface so my mind worked hard to keep those thoughts suppressed.

But whatever the reason, Laura, Jason, and I soon found ourselves sitting at one of the picnic tables beside the playground area. Ten or so kids of various ages and sizes were playing on the monkey bars, on the swings, on the slides, while their parents, mothers only for the most part, sat at benches or tables and kept an eye upon them.

The kids chowed down their chicken nuggets and french fries. They slurped their orange sodas dry. Finally Laura headed off to play on the jungle gym with the other kids. I carried Jason over to the swings and installed him in the baby swing. His little fists gripped the chain tightly but his face was all smiles as I began to push him in ever increasing arcs.

Then it happened.

"Swing me Mommy, swing me!" A girlish voice demanded from behind me.

I froze, waves of gooseflesh traveling up and down my entire body. I felt myself go clammy. I knew that voice, knew it well. It had been more than fifteen years since I'd last heard it. I had fought hard to keep it out of my conscious thought. But I never doubted for an instant, even before I turned around to look, that the voice was Becky.

I let my head pivot on my shoulders until I was looking at the little girl. She was about three years old, her dark hair tied into pigtails that bounced up and down as she skipped towards the swings. She was wearing a pair of blue jean overalls and sandals. It was Becky, no doubt about it, none whatsoever. Her face was slightly different than it had been, different in only the subtlest ways, ways that probably reflected the difference in paternity. But she had the same brown eyes, the same brown hair, the same upturned nose that she'd inherited from her mother. I was inundated with stark feelings of merging realities, with a horrid sense of deja vu unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

This feeling was intensified when I saw Lisa coming up behind her. She looked exactly the same as she had when I'd last seen her. Exactly. She was wearing a light summer dress that came to her knees. It was white with blue patterns upon it. I remembered that dress, had seen Lisa wearing it many times when we'd switched off Becky according to our custody arrangement.

Becky came running up at full speed and jumped onto the swing next to mine, one of the big-kid swings, landing on her stomach. Her feet came up off the ground and her forward momentum set her swinging in that position. She didn't even notice the man next to her, staring at her, not breathing as he did so, his mouth agape in surprise. Was her name still Becky? I knew that it was, I simply knew it.

Lisa noticed me staring at her daughter and quickened her approach, her eyes looking at me suspiciously. Parents do not like to see complete strangers looking at their children in that manner. I forced my mouth closed, forced myself to commence breathing once again, forced my eyes off of the small child, forced a pleasant, non-threatening smile onto my face. My hands returned to Jason's swing, picked up the task of keeping him in motion. Lisa continued her approach, keeping a wary eye upon me, keeping her distance in case I proved to be dangerous.

I looked at her, keeping my smile upon my face. "Hi," I greeted.

"Hi," she said carefully.

"Sorry I was staring," I told her. "Your little girl there looks and sounds just like my niece. It kind of startled me for a moment when I saw her since she lives kinda far away."

This seemed to put Lisa's mind at ease a little. "That's okay," she said, "no harm done."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I assured her, giving Jason another push and trying to keep my eyes off of the little girl swinging back and forth next to me. "The resemblance was kind of startling at first. I guess I'll have to tell little Belinda she's got a twin in Spokane."

Lisa smiled for the first time as Becky climbed off the swing and then held her arms out to Lisa to be picked up, "swing me mommy, swing me!" she demanded again.

Lisa dutifully picked her up and placed her on the swing in the proper fashion. Becky grasped the chains and her mother began swinging her up and down, her rhythm matching that I was setting with Jason. As she pushed I noticed that there was one thing different about Lisa, one feature that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen her. This Lisa was wearing a wedding ring.

"Higher mommy, higher!" she demanded, giggling.

"If I swing you any higher Little Beck," Lisa replied, "you're going to go catapulting across the park."

I felt another chill as I heard Lisa use the nickname we'd routinely called Becky. I suppressed any outward display of how weird I was feeling.

"How old is yours?" Lisa asked me as she continued to push.

"Jason here is closing in on eight months," I answered, "I have a three year old over there by the monkey bars too. And yours?"

"Just turned three," Lisa answered. "We're finally out of the terrible two's thank God."

"Yeah," I nodded with genuine sympathy, "us too, at least until Jason here gets into them."

We began to talk, the polite conversation of two parents that meet in a park. At least at first that's how it was. By the time the kids got tired of swinging, by the time Becky moved off towards the monkey bars and the jungle gym, we were conversing like old friends. I could tell that Lisa was surprised by how easy I was to talk to, by how our two personalities seemed to click to a certain degree. We moved over to one of the benches that sat next to the play area, me carrying Jason in my arms, and sat down. We talked of the rigors of child-rearing in this day and age.

"My husband and I both have to work," Lisa told me, "but child-care is SO expensive. So we try to keep our schedules as opposite as we can. We don't see each other as much as we'd like to but at least Becky doesn't spend much time in daycare."

"What does your husband do?" I asked, seemingly casually.

"He's the manager of the grocery store where I work."

I knew instantly whom she was talking about and felt another little chill. In my previous life, just as Lisa and I had started flirting with each other during my many trips to her line for sandwiches, she'd been bothered by her store manager, a man named Nick Morse who obviously wanted to date her. He'd been flirty with her ever since her initial hiring at the store but had become persistent after she'd broken her ankle in the fall. Since a relationship had seemed to be developing with me, she'd shunned his advances during this time period. It eventually got to the point, just after we'd began officially dating, that she had to threaten him with a charge of sexual harassment if he didn't back off. Back off he did. Eventually, in that life, he began to date another girl that worked in the store and married her about the time that Becky was born.

But without my presence in the picture Nick had apparently been successful in his courting of Lisa. I had not asked her name during our conversation, but I would have been willing to bet my net worth that it was Lisa Morse. The little girl, my daughter, and yet not my daughter, had to be Rebecca Morse. The fact that she was still married to him a year after my marriage with her had dissolved in divorce told me that she'd found the right person, or at least a person more right than I was. There was a twinkle in her eye when she spoke of her husband, a twinkle that I'd never seen when I had been married to her.

What did all of this mean? Lisa was now with someone she actually enjoyed being married to. I was with someone that I enjoyed being married to. This had occurred because I hadn't followed the path that I was fated to follow. I had been fated to marry her, to have Becky with her, and to be unhappy with her. She was fated to be unhappy with me. By altering fate we'd both ended up happy instead of sad. We'd both ended up finding soul mates instead of finding each other. What kind of fate had arranged for the previous pattern? What kind of fate had WANTED us to not find the person that matched? Was fate cruel, or just indifferent? Who or what had written these patterns? How much damage had been done by altering them?

I didn't know. I still don't.

I never saw Becky again. It was quite enough to know that she was simply alive.

I began searching for Mr. Li shortly after Nina and I moved back to the Spokane area. I had a thousand questions to ask him, a thousand things I wanted to know about him. How had he come by this power that he had? Why had he picked me? I also felt I owed him a large debt of gratitude for what he had done for me. I wanted to make sure that he did not end his life dying in a shitty convalescent home. I wanted to try to prevent his getting terminal cancer in the first place if I could. Depending on where the cancer had started, that was surely possible.

But Mr. Li proved impossible to track down. My source of information was Tracy, who, as a deputy DA had access to a nationwide computer network of known people. This should have done the trick. Unfortunately, I did not know enough information about Mr. Li. All I knew was his last name and his age approximated to within ten years or so.

When I'd first met Mr. Li on that fated night in 1999 I didn't know that he would have a very profound impact upon me. I'm surprised I was even able to remember his last name by the time it became apparent what he'd done. When I'd gone to bed that night Mr. Li had been nothing but a vague memory of a sad event, an event that I'd been forced to stand helpless before. Paramedics train their minds not to think about such things. If we grieved for every person that died before us, if we allowed ourselves to feel saddened by all of the human suffering we saw, we would all go mad very quickly. A paramedic's mind is accustomed to purging all information the moment it is no longer relevant.

According to Tracy's computer work there were nineteen hundred and four people with the last name of Li in the State of Washington that were between the ages of fifty and eighty. And that was only in Washington. Who was to say that Mr. Li even lived in Washington back then? My task seemed quite hopeless.

But as the years rolled closer and closer to 1999 and as my hopes of preventing Mr. Li's death from cancer decreased, I knew that I could at least keep the man out of the convalescent hospital. I could have him put up in a private home with around the clock nurses and premium medical care. Hell, I'd even spring for daily blowjobs if that's what he wanted. I was determined to see that old man die in comfort, to repay him for what he'd done for me.

I made contact with several people in the administration of that particular con home in mid-1998. I passed several envelopes full of twenty-dollar bills and extracted promises that I would be called immediately the moment anyone named "Li" was admitted to their facility. I promised more little envelopes when the information arrived to me. I checked back frequently with them, more than once a week when 1999 began.

But a strange thing happened, something that I could not figure out. As 1999 wound onward towards the 7th of July, the date that I'd met him and come back, no Mr. Li appeared. He had to have been there for a while before I'd encountered him, hadn't he?

By July 2nd I was very confused. Still no Mr. Li in the con home. The man was going to die in five days, had to be wracked with cancer at that very moment. Where the hell was he? Had I imagined the whole thing? That certainly wasn't possible. How else could I have had so much knowledge of what had been unless I'd really lived through it.

July 4th came. The Stevens' family and the Meachen family celebrated by taking our cabin cruiser out onto the lake and watching the fireworks near Sandpoint. It was an annual tradition. We all got drunk and poured ourselves into bed later that night, Nina and I in our room, Maggie and Mike in a guest bedroom, Jack and Mary, who had watched our children, in another guest bedroom. The next morning, still hung over and feeling like shit, I'd called the con home once more. Still no Mr. Li.

Nor was there an admission on the 6th of July under the name Li. Very strange. Would the anniversary, the sacred date, the date of his death pass by without my ever contacting him? It seemed it would. And there was nothing I could do about it.

The 7th of July was a hot, sticky, typical Eastern Washington summer day. I went out to get the mail about 10:00 that morning, the same time I always did. Our mailbox was out on the main road in front of our plot and it was a considerable walk from the house itself. I took Frank, our two-year old German Shepherd with me like always. He tagged along my heels, sniffing this, peeing on that as we went. I reached down and petted him a few times, talking to him as a man does his dog.

I hadn't been thinking of much of anything as I opened the mailbox and pulled out the pile of envelopes and advertising circulars that were inside.

I was flipping through them, sorting what was important from what was not when a voice called my name.

I jerked a little, startled by the voice in the stillness and looked towards its source. Our little stretch of the world was typically pretty deserted and having someone else out there when I picked up the mail was so unusual as to be unheard of. Frank barked once and then began to growl menacingly, his eyes locked onto one of the pine trees that guarded our driveway.

A man stepped out from behind it. I did not recognize him at first. He was Asian and very short. He was dressed in a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. His face was rugged and ageless. His appearance there coupled by the fact that he knew my name, put me immediately on guard.

"Can I help you?" I asked with a voice that was not quite steady. Beside me, Frank continued to growl.

The man smiled, continuing his approach. "You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked.

I didn't say anything, just continued to watch warily.

"Not surprising," he nodded. "The last time you saw me I looked considerably worse than I do now. But I know you've been looking for me for a long time." The smile widened. "I didn't want to be found by you, didn't want to cause you undue worry. But today the time has come for you and I to have a little talk."

I stared, wondering if what I was thinking was correct. "Mr. Li?" I asked in disbelief.

He chuckled. "The one and only."

I stared in disbelief at the vision before me. He was not emaciated in the least. In fact, his body appeared to be in tip-top physical shape. His calves were muscular, his stomach flat. His face was unlined, his eyes bright and inquisitive. He had no respiratory problems, in fact seemed to be breathing quite a bit easier than I was at that moment.

"But…" I started, "you're supposed to be…"

"Dying?" he asked, smiling at me.

I nodded.

Another chuckle. "There's a lot of things that have happened in the last seventeen years that weren't supposed to happen, eh? And a lot of things that WERE supposed to happen that didn't. You've led me on a very strange journey Mr. Stevens, a very strange one indeed. But the time has come for you and I to have a little talk together, to hash out a few details." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "This is my address.

It is imperative that you show up here tonight, alone. I believe your wife Nina is off work today, is she not? Childcare for your three lovely children should not be a problem."

"Mr. Li…"

"Take the paper," he told me, offering it. "Be there tonight at six o'clock.

Be sure you are not late. Do not tell Nina what you are doing. If you care for the life that you have built over the last seventeen years, you will do as I say."

Numbly, I took the paper from his hand. I glanced at it, seeing the address: 123 Lakefront Drive. I shivered as I read this.

"Yes," Mr. Li told me. "I live less than three miles from where we now stand. I jogged over here as a matter of fact. I'm sure you've noticed my house a time or two as you sat out on your back deck. It's the brown one you can see across the bend of the shore."

"But, how…"

"Tonight," he said, turning from me and stretching his legs a bit. "Everything will be answered tonight. Just be sure to be there."

He began trotting off down the road, his legs pumping as he ran. In less than thirty seconds he'd disappeared around the bend.

I spent that day very troubled, very uncommunicative with my wife. She commented upon it a few times and finally dismissed it as a case of PMS on my part. She retreated to her private den to study some medical journals, leaving me to keep an eye upon our brood.

I mechanically made lunch and then dinner, serving everyone about five o'clock. I only picked at my food. After Nina began doing the dishes I told her that I had to go into town to take care of some business. I don't believe that she bought the lie that I gave her but she didn't question me.

I climbed onto the Honda motorcycle I'd bought a few years before and headed off, arriving before Mr. Li's house less than ten minutes later.

It was more modest than ours was but definitely expensive. A single story, four bedroom or so with a swimming pool. I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell with a trembling hand.

Mr. Li answered the door before the echo of the doorbell even faded away. He was dressed in a pair of sweats and was shirtless, his stomach and chest without an ounce of fat upon it.

"Bill," he nodded, stepping aside. "Come in please."

I stepped in and he showed me around his house. There were indeed four bedrooms, two of which were empty. Pictures of an Asian woman were in every hallway, on every wall. She was pretty and the pictures were from various points in her life. He made no comment upon them. His den was what interested me the most. It had an expensive roll-top desk and a modern computer upon it. The window looked out over the lake and my house was plainly visible from there. A large telescope sat next to the window.

Mr. Li led me back to the living room and offered me a seat upon his couch. He disappeared for a moment and then came back holding an icy cold bottle of my favorite brand of beer. This didn't surprise me at that point, I simply took it from him and gulped down half the bottle in less than ten seconds.

"So you remember what you did for me?" I asked, although it was not a question as much as it was a statement.

"Yes," he nodded, sipping out of a bottle of Chinese beer. "I remember everything."

"How did you do what you did?" I asked. "What powers do you have?"

"Powers?" he scoffed, "I have no special powers at all. None except for one special gift that I'm allowed to pass on at my moment of death. I passed my gift on to you Bill. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. What has allowed you to do what you have done was the result of a miscalculation of thinking on a dying old man's part. An old man whose judgment was severely impaired by the effects of enough narcotic painkillers to kill an average person. An old man who'd been consumed by loneliness and loss but who should have known better. When I think of what might have happened, what could have happened, I still shudder to this day."

I stared, unable to comprehend exactly what he was saying.

"I am descended from ancient Chinese royalty," he told me. "My family has been instilled with this gift, the granting of a single wish, for the past sixty generations at least. The gift is intended to go to the first born grandchild of each recipient. It is intended that no one else but that grandchild even know about the gift. Don't ask me who gave it to us, why we have it, what entity powers it. We have this gift, I know not why. Only the bare essentials of it were explained to me when I received it for reasons which will become clear in a moment. The gift must be passed on by each holder upon his death or it is lost forever." He looked sternly at me. "I had no one to pass the gift on to, at least no one I would have trusted it to. I'd spent the years of my life thinking that it was finally going to die when my cancer took me away."

"You have no kids or grandkids?" I asked.

"My only son is dead. I have no daughters. My only grandson lives in Seattle. He is a greedy, shallow man who is only interested in himself. It is he who had me sent to that horrid place when my cancer finally reached the stage that I was unable to care for myself. If I had given the gift to him, God only knows what horrors might have occurred. I'd decided long before you were even a part of this earth Bill, that he would not receive the gift. I decided to let it die with me before he would have it."

"You were given this gift?" I asked, sipping from my beer, trying to comprehend.

"By my grandfather," Mr. Li nodded. "It was 1938 and I was nineteen years old. This was in Nanking, in Manchuria. We were under occupation by Japanese troops and it was not a gentle occupation. The Japanese were running wild in the streets, killing men at random, especially service-aged men such as myself. They were raping any women they could get their hands upon, even the elderly and children, often killing them afterward. They burned houses, temples, dug mass graves, slaughtered thousands.

"All of my family died that year at the hands of the Japanese," he continued. "I was not the one intended to receive the gift, I had two older brothers and a sister. I was the baby of the family. My oldest brothers were both killed in the army, fighting the Japanese. My parents and my sister were killed in Nanking on a night that I had been out visiting the girl I was courting. Even in the horrors of war some things still go on. Love is one of them. I was taking a great chance by leaving the safety of our family house to go see her. Had any soldiers seen me I most likely would have been shot on the spot, maybe even tortured first."

"It is perhaps ironic that I had been the one taking a huge risk in leaving the house but that while I was gone on that day, it was the house that became a deathtrap. A squad of soldiers had wandered by while my sister was out getting water. They took a liking to her and followed her back home. There, they held my family at gunpoint while they took turns raping her in front of them. Then they shot everyone, leaving the bodies there to rot while they continued about their business.

"When I returned home I found all of them dead in the living room, my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother, all except for grandfather. Can you possibly begin to imagine the horror of finding such a thing? Can you imagine it Bill?"

"No," I answered honestly, shaking my head.

"Grandfather had been shot twice in the chest," he continued. "He was covered in blood, both his own and that of grandmother who had been shot in the head while she'd been sitting next to him. He was dying fast but he was awake when I came in, he was alert. And he was staring at me, beckoning me over to him.

"I was still trying to deal with the knowledge that my entire family had been slaughtered like pigs, worse than pigs actually, people didn't torture pigs first. I was looking at their corpses, their beloved faces that were now dead and locked in screams of terror. My sister was lying naked in the middle of the room, her legs spread wide, bruises on her body, a hole in her throat from a bayonet. Father had died trying to protect mother with his body, he was lying atop of her, more than twenty bullet holes in his back. The bullets had simply traveled straight through him and into mother.

"I wanted to scream. I wanted to go find a rifle and start killing any Japanese that I saw. I wanted to attack their headquarters in Nanking personally, seeing how many of them I could kill before they cut me down. I wanted revenge Bill.

"I knew nothing about the gift that grandfather had for me; I wasn't the one whom it was intended for remember, but grandfather knew my state of mind at that moment and he also knew his time was very short.

"The gift can be a very dangerous thing. Extremely dangerous if it is used improperly. It is customary for the giver of the gift to act as advisor to the recipient long before the time comes for the passage. It is imperative that the gift be used wisely and not for the purposes of achieving power or influence. Grandfather did not have much time to convince me of several things. One that the gift existed in the first place, two, that I should not use it to either wish for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, which I probably would have done happily considering my state of mind, or to have my family back alive again. I must not do either of those things he told me as blood ran out of his mouth and he gasped for every breath. Do you know why he told me these things Bill? I suspect that you do."

"Fate," I answered. "You would have been tampering far too much with fate. If you had wished for the destruction of the Japanese Empire, who knows what could have happened, what sort of world would have resulted. Even though the major events of World War II hadn't happened yet, it would have altered the entire historical timeline."

"Yes," Mr. Li nodded. "Grandfather explained that was not a wise choice for that very reason. And as for wishing my family back alive,"

"It would have been basically useless," I finished for him. "They were fated to die. If you had brought them back alive then they simply would have been killed again the next day or the next week."

"Correct," Mr. Li said. "Grandfather told me that the use of the wish had to come from my heart and had to be a wish aimed at personal betterment. He was going fast, reaching the end of his strength when he asked me the question at last. What was my greatest wish?"

"What was it?" I asked, fascinated.

"Song, my love, the girl I'd been out to see that day, was the only thing I had left. The only thing. I wished for her and myself to survive the war unharmed." He told me. "A very simple wish, just as yours was, but one that had far-reaching implications, just as yours did."

"Song and I left Nanking, sneaking out past the occupation zone in the dead of night. We were never seen, never challenged. Of course not, we were guaranteed to survive the war unharmed. We made our way to Chinese controlled territory and we got married. The next day after our wedding I joined the army. For the next six years I fought the Japanese, killing as many of the bastards as I could get into my rifle sight. I charged machine gun nests in order to drop in grenades. I cleared paths for other soldiers across dangerous territory. I always took the point when out on patrols. Bullets whizzed around me so close that I could hear them. Artillery exploded all around me, sometimes close enough to knock the wind out of me, but never was I struck by anything. For those six years I was basically immortal. Then the Russians invaded Manchuria to help drive out the Japanese. The Americans dropped a couple of atomic bombs. The Japanese Empire was destroyed in the way it was fated to be destroyed and the war was over at last. The limits of my wish had run out.

"I returned home to find Song and the now five-year old son that I'd sired before heading off to fight waiting for me. It was time to start our life. It wasn't long however, before another war started, the civil war between the Communists and the old regime. I was loyal to the old regime but I wasn't protected in that war as I had been in the previous one. My immortality had ended. I did not fight. My family was among the first to flee to Taiwan. It was during the trip across the straights on a freighter that I finally received firsthand knowledge of how cruel, how vindictive fate was capable of being.

"We were strafed by a communist plane about halfway across. It came out of nowhere and only made one pass. Song was hit in the chest by a piece of metal that had been thrown from an exploding fuel tank on a jeep that had been hit. The piece of metal, no bigger than your thumb, missed every major organ but severed her spinal cord. She was left paralyzed from the chest down. She spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She was never able to give me any more children."

"We only stayed on Taiwan for a few years before we were allowed to immigrate to the United States. We settled in San Francisco and raised our son there. I found a job at the Port of San Francisco unloading ships. It was hard labor but it paid well. I did that until my retirement in 1980, working my way up to management eventually. Song remained my faithful wife but her health was always poor. She died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia in 1977.

"My son, Chang, attended Stanford University, obtaining a law degree much like your sister. He joined an exclusive firm and worked there for many years. He became fully Americanized, changing his name to John Lee instead of Chang Li. He sired one son before his marriage was dissolved in divorce.

He might have been worthy of the gift had he survived, but he didn't. In 1980, after years of eighty hour workweeks at the firm, he developed a bleeding ulcer, what is known in medical circles as a "GI bleed" I believe. He bled to death internally one night at the office when he ignored the persistent vomiting and diarrhea filled with blood, passing it off as a case of the flu.

"That leaves only my grandson, who is now thirty-eight years old. He too went to Stanford University but his major was business. He is an evil, corrupt man and I have nothing to do with him. His interests are in money and power and mostly in his own advancement. He works in Seattle as a high-ranking corporate officer for Pacific Healthcare. He makes more than two hundred thousand a year, plus stock options. He has a wife, three children, and two mistresses at my last count. His children are exact clones of him. The whole lot of them make contact with me as little as they can get away with, which is fine by me.

"It is here Bill, that we encounter dual realities. In the first reality, the one in which I met you for the first time in 1999, I was living in San Francisco in my old house I'd purchased my second year working at the port. I was a tottering old man, without much to say to anybody, without much to do. I watched the television, I played golf on occasion, but mostly I sat at home and did nothing. I was sedentary and cared about little. Perhaps I'd begun to become a little mentally unstable? I think that possible.

"In early 1997 I began to notice that it hurt whenever I urinated. Sometimes there would be a brown tinge to my urine. Finally it began to hurt a lot and the urine was consistently the color of fresh apple cider, that dark brown. When I finally dragged myself to the doctor to be examined it was discovered that I'd had prostate cancer. I say "had" because by the time I got checked, it had moved past my prostate and into my bladder and kidneys. It was making its first attacks on my colon and liver. It was much too far-gone for me to live much longer. Even radiation and chemotherapy only slowed it down a little. My days were numbered.

"When it got to the point in January of 1999 that I was unable to care for myself anymore, my grandson, who was listed as my beneficiary, pulled a few strings within his corporation and got me admitted to that concentration camp in Spokane. It was far enough away from him in Seattle and most of all, it was cheap. He sold my house in San Francisco and pocketed most of the money. He sent lawyers out to visit me to make sure my will was updated. He made sure that my doctor brought up the "do not resuscitate" order and made sure it was initiated. He sat by simply waiting for me to die so he would have one less inconvenience to worry about. Very American attitude, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," I nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. I'd been in every convalescent home in Spokane County at one time or another during my career. Of the forty or so that we have, perhaps three could be considered a quality type of place. The remaining thirty-seven were basically warehouses that people stashed their elderly relatives in to die. They were sentenced to those hellholes the moment it became inconvenient to care for them. And the vast majority of the residents of these places were not the relatives of the poor, they were not the relatives of ethnic minorities, they were the relatives of good old, white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class Americans. Mr. Li's presence in one had been an anomaly. One did not often find Asians in con homes. Asian culture has a much greater respect for the elderly than American culture.

"So there I laid," Mr. Li continued, "for more than six months. Getting worse every day, getting weaker, my mind and judgement deteriorating. Sometimes I was delirious, sometimes I couldn't even keep track of which day it was. And then came the final day, the day I met you. All that day I felt myself becoming more and more aware, more alert than I'd been in years.

The time of my death had come and the clarity that went with the gift was manifesting itself. The clarity was there, but my judgment was impaired severely. No offense Bill, but I never would have given you what I did if I'd been in my right mind. Never.

"But I didn't think of such things as the consequences of my actions. I didn't think about how dangerous a thing I was doing, I only thought about how, after the year I'd spent seeing the worst of America, seeing myself dying in that concentration camp, someone had finally come along that possessed some basic human kindness, some empathy. Someone who treated people with respect. I decided to take a chance on you and I offered you my gift. I had no time to explain the ramifications to you; it was an impulsive decision in the last few seconds of my life. I still had the ability to withdraw the offer if you had wished for world peace or immortality or something like that. Something that would have had dire consequences to fate and the world.

"But you didn't. You asked to be fifteen again, knowing what you knew at that point. That seemed almost noble to me. You obviously didn't believe anything would come of it but you used the gift for personal betterment. That was what it was intended for. I honestly didn't see the consequences to fate that might have occurred if you had been a less moral person than I thought you were. Thankfully my instincts were mostly right about you.

"At the moment of truth, at my dying seconds, I thought it had all been for nothing. When my grandfather passed the gift on to me in that house in Nanking, I'd felt a definite power shifting from his body to mine. It was the gift. I'd felt it enter me, felt it as a presence in me ever since that day. I knew at that instant that my wish had been granted and that the gift was now mine to pass on. I knew it."

"I didn't feel anything like that when you died," I told him, confused. "Nothing like that at all. To tell you the truth Mr. Li, I didn't think much about you at all once I wrote the paperwork and left the hospital. It was my nature. I could not allow myself to get involved in the tragedy I witnessed for my own sanity. And I never felt anything enter my body. If I have the gift with me now, I don't feel it at all."

"I understand your feelings at my death Bill," he told me. "I was in war and I probably understand them better than you do. I saw human suffering and loss during the war on a scale that you probably can't even imagine. So don't feel sorry for forgetting about me after you left. But as for the passing of the gift, you didn't feel it pass to you and I didn't feel it leave me because it involved time travel. Your wish was granted but it set up a paradox. Two people cannot possess the gift at the same time. It was not passed to you because by granting your wish I was left alive. That was why I thought it didn't work.

"I remember dying. It's not an unpleasant experience I might add. In fact, it feels almost blissful when your body finally accepts its demise. I'd never felt more at peace, more free of pain. I remember grieving absently that the gift had died with me. Everything finally went black. I was at rest.

"And then, seemingly seconds later I woke up in my small house in San Francisco and it was 1982 again. My body was functioning properly, my brain was functioning properly, and I had every memory of what had just happened. I was horrified by what I had done, by what I had put at risk. I could have destroyed the world Bill if you had wished for the wrong thing or if you had treated your gift differently once you were sent back."

"I knew that I was going to have to find you immediately and keep a close eye upon you." He cast a smile, "It's a good thing that you wore a nametag with your first and last on it or I might never have found you. You never told me your name.

"I moved to Spokane, leaving my small house in the hands of a real estate company. I located you as a teenager and I've been keeping an eye on you ever since, making sure you didn't put anything at risk." He gazed at me meaningfully, a little apologetically, "I'm sorry to say that I was prepared to arrange your death if you started to go too far off the path of morality."

I was shocked. "My death?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I would have done it without hesitation if you were putting the fabric of existence at risk. You came close a few times. I must say you were not very moral when you first returned. You put at risk more than twenty relationships by your philandering. You tried to stop an historical event from happening in Beirut."

"You knew about Beirut?" I asked, astonished, "how?"

"You had copies of your letters in your house, did you not?" he asked mildly. "I simply entered it when no one was home and took a look."

"You were in my house?!"

"Bill," he said, "I don't think you realize even today what was at stake with your wish. What you wished for was something I had no right granting. It put the entire world at risk. Of course I was in your house. I was in it more than a hundred times over the years, snooping through your things, trying to see what you were up to. I've been in the house that you share with Nina now at least fifty times. I've been watching you obsessively through my telescope. I needed to make sure that you've stayed on the straight and narrow. I don't think you realize the responsibility that I feel for empowering you in this way. You could have destroyed the world by utilizing your gift in the wrong way. Literally destroyed it. I was obligated to keep an eye on you."

"Jesus," I muttered, wondering at the fact that this man had been watching my every move for the last seventeen years. It was a spooky feeling.

"It was touch and go with you for a while," Mr. Li went on. "You teetered on the very brink of temptation those first few years. Thankfully I discovered the same thing that you and Tracy did, that fate tends to keep things in line despite your interference."

I looked sharply at him, "You know what Tracy and I talked about?"

"Your house was bugged," Mr. Li said. "I had transmitters in your telephones and in every room of the house. I listened to everything that you said to anybody." He gave me a stern, disapproving father look, "I heard every one of your "study sessions". I listened when you told Tracy about your gift. I listened when you told your father about your gift. I listened to your father and Tracy when you weren't there to see if they would tell anyone else about it. I couldn't monitor Tracy at Berkeley from Spokane unfortunately but I was able to bug your father's office. He kept the knowledge to himself and so, apparently, did Tracy.

"You gradually realized the proper use of the gift, for personal betterment.

You found love, which is perhaps the greatest thing on this earth. You did use the gift for money and you are very rich now, but you've never used it for power or influence. You've chosen well Bill. Only one time was I obligated to interfere in any way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, still trying to grapple with the knowledge that Mr. Li probably had logs of every time I'd taken a shit over the last seventeen years.

"Stevens Consulting," he said. "A very good idea. A wise use of the gift I might add. I used your service myself by working through an agent of mine. A man named Dean Stockwell."

"Dean Stockwell?" I gasped, remembering that he'd been one of my clients.

"Oh yes," Mr. Li grinned. "He accessed your services at my instruction. By then I was reasonably wealthy from my own insight but I wanted to make sure I was using an expert. Someone with the base knowledge to take full advantage of the knowledge we shared. But towards the end I sensed some greed in you. You had more than enough money to comfortably live out the rest of your life but you wanted more, you didn't seem to know when to stop.

I figured that you would need a little nudge to push you back on the path.

So I made an anonymous phone call, several of them as a matter of fact, to the FTC. They landed on you within days. Shortly after that, you retired."

"YOU did that?" I asked in disbelief.

He nodded. "I did. Sorry if that offends you. Anyway, while I've been monitoring you all of these years, I've also grown moderately wealthy. I've broken all contact with my son and his family. I went to see a doctor in late 1996 and they discovered the bare beginnings of prostate cancer in me. A single course of radiation and chemo and it was gone forever. I'm something of a health nut these days. I run forty miles a week. I've participated in five marathons. I have a resting heart rate of fifty and a blood pressure that is consistently in the nineties. I could probably live another twenty years at this pace." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't Bill."

"What do you mean?"

"I mentioned a paradox a few minutes ago. One has been created. The gift cannot belong to two people at once. When I woke up in San Francisco after dying in Spokane I could still feel the gift with me, could still feel it inside of me. I'd given it to you and your wish had been granted, but the gift itself had not been passed on because I remained alive as a result of the gift. That is the paradox. It is a paradox that will correct itself in a few minutes."

"Correct itself?"

He nodded. "If nothing is done, when the time of my death in the previous life occurs, everything will go back to the way it was. I will be dead, taking the gift with me. You will return to your previous existence with no memory of what has happened. You will simply wake up in bed in your apartment in Spokane as if nothing had ever happened. Your wife will once more be an unpleasant doctor married to a neurosurgeon. Your sister will be dead. The kids you've had with Nina will have never existed. The correction will have occurred."

That was the most horrifying thought that my mind had ever entertained. I would lose everything in a few minutes? Even the memories of the life I'd built? That couldn't be! It couldn't! I couldn't even speak, my horror was so complete.

"Before you ask," Mr. Li told me, "yes, I'm sure about this. We have less than twenty minutes now by my calculations. I have twenty minutes to live no matter how healthy I am, no matter what steps I've taken. Reality will simply go back to the way it was."

I shook my head in denial, in fear. Twenty minutes? Would I never see Laura or Jason or Megan again? Would I only see Nina as an enemy, not as a woman I loved, that I knew intimately? It couldn't happen, I couldn't accept it!

"But there is a solution," Mr. Li said softly.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The gift," he said. "I still have it. I can still pass it on to you."

I looked at him, not comprehending on the surface, but catching his meaning somewhat lower in my psyche. "But in order for you to pass on the gift, you have to…"

"Die," He nodded. "I'm going to be dead in twenty minutes anyway, one way or the other, no matter what happens. I cannot tell you what to wish for Bill, you have to decide for yourself, but there is a wish that you can make that will break the paradox. I've struggled over the years trying to decide if your family, which will be based upon your moral code, is worthy of having the gift transferred to or if I should simply let it die with me." He shrugged, "I don't know if I made the right decision or not but I like you Bill. I know you better than I've ever known anyone before, even my wife when she was alive. I think you deserve the chance. I will give you the gift tonight, right now and I want you to promise me that you will use it as it is intended, that you will follow the tradition, that you will teach your descendants the responsibility. Will you do that?"

"Mr. Li," I started, my body charged up. Was he talking about suicide? Right here in front of me? For the purpose of breaking the paradox? Was that really what he was talking about?

"Will you promise Bill?" He insisted, staring at me.

I continued to stare, feeling an incredible mix of emotions surging through me.

"Bill?"

"I promise," I finally said.

He smiled, nodding seriously. He picked up his beer and then took a swig of it. "Do you know what to wish for?" he asked me.

"I think so."

He reached into a pocket in his chair and pulled out a pistol. It was a chrome plated, semi-automatic. Its hammer was back. He looked at it for a moment, his hands trembling.

"Mr. Li," I said, shaking my head. "I can't go through with this. I can't sit here and watch you shoot yourself. I can't."

"Be strong Bill," he said. "It'll be over soon. Don't call anybody afterward. Just go home. The maid will find me tomorrow and start the machinery."

I was crying now, actually crying with fear. How could I sit there and let someone shoot himself? I couldn't.

"You can do this Bill," Mr. Li told me. "Remember, I'm going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. Save your family. Write your existence as it is now into the pages of fate. I've lived a full life. My last few years have been lived with good health and considerable comfort instead of dying and in pain. You've done me a favor. Now it's time for me to do you a favor."

I was trembling, crying, unable to leave, unable to stay. I've never felt so confused in my life as I did at that moment.

"There will be a few moments of clarity right before I die," he said, putting the barrel of the pistol under his chin. The contact kept his hand from shaking. "That goes with the gift. Be sure to take advantage of it Bill. Be sure to ask the right thing."

"I will," I choked, watching paralyzed as he held that gun to his chin. "I will."

The gunshot was flat and undramatic. The ejected shell casing flew across the room and landed with a clink on the fireplace bricks. A small spray of blood shot from the top of his head and his body slumped over to the left, the pistol falling forgotten to the floor at his feet. His eyes remained open, staring at me.

"Jesus," I muttered, watching blood pour from the hole in the top of his head, watching his left pupil begin to dilate. "Oh Jesus."

Mr. Li's dying lips began to move. There was blood in his mouth. Words began to form. They were choked and very liquid but perfectly understandable. "What… is your… greatest wish?" he asked me.

I took a step towards him, keeping my eyes focused on his face. It was difficult to do through the haze of tears. My own mouth opened, "I want everything to continue on as it has been." I told him.

He nodded, more blood pouring out of his mouth. "Excellent." he muttered and then his eyes began to glaze over as awareness left them. He slumped further over and his breathing began to become agonal in nature, very irregular. This went on for nearly five minutes. I kept my eyes upon him the entire time. At last he drew in a breath, let it out, and then didn't pull in the next one. His mouth became still.

At that moment I felt it. The power, the gift, leaving the dying vessel of Mr. Li and entering my body, my soul. I cannot describe exactly what it felt like. The closest thing I can come up with is the sensation of runner's high, the feeling of well being that creeps over you about two or three miles into a run as endorphins are released from glands in your body. A sensation that seems to start at the top and quickly work its way throughout, spreading from place to place, energizing you. That was the closest I could come to the sensation but that does not do it justice. All of a sudden I was empowered, I felt it take up residence in me, felt it nestling in. It was a sensation that I would carry with me always, until that moment when it was time to pass it on.

I stood there looking at Mr. Li, feeling the power in me for an unknown amount of time. Finally the sensation receded, leaving only a small core inside me. I felt like myself physically but at the same time I could feel the power tucked away, just waiting for release.

"Thank you Mr. Li," I finally said to his body. "Thank you for everything."

He had no answer for me. I left his house a few minutes later and climbed onto my Honda. I didn't head for home right away. Instead I took a long drive.

It was after midnight when I finally parked my motorcycle in the garage and carried myself into the house. My mind seemed clearer than it had been, more focused, more in perspective. I was beginning to grasp the depth of the gift I'd been given, the responsibility that went along with it. Just beginning mind you, I had a lot more growing to do, a lot more maturity to acquire.

I tossed my helmet on my workbench and forced my way between the cars and into the house. It was darkened, as you would expect at that time of night, everyone asleep, no one with any idea of how close they'd come to being simply erased or put into an alternate path.

I checked on Laura. She was three and a half years old, her face so much like her mother's. She likes to throw the covers off along with her pajamas as she sleeps. I found her curled in a ball in her room, her little butt sticking up, her thumb tucked into her mouth, her body shivering in the air conditioning. I put the covers back over her knowing it was an exercise in futility. Twenty minutes later they'll be off again.

I checked on Jason who was almost two. He is the opposite of Laura. He has covers piled thickly atop him. He has a collection of Hot Wheel cars that he can never keep confined to one place. I stepped on them in my bare feet as I gazed upon his sleeping form, as I listened to his soft breathing.

A short trip down the hall brought me to Megan's room. She was nine months old, almost ready to begin walking and talking. The first and only child to adapt my facial features. She is an aficionado of stuffed animals and they cover her bed, sometimes making it difficult to find her in there. She is also a poor sleeper, waking at the slightest noise. She hears my entrance into her room. She creaks her brown eyes open and gazes at me sleepily. I kiss her, hug her, tell her everything is okay and she drifts back to sleep.

I went to my own bedroom where Nina was sleeping soundly on her side of our King sized bed. Like Laura, she's not a big fan of either clothing or covers when sleeping. She's dressed only in a pair of panties, her breasts bare, her pillow hugged tightly to her face. In the dim light I could see the stretch marks on her stomach and the single line of scar that marks Megan's entrance into the world via caesarian section. Megan had been in the breach position. I looked at my wife with love, with deep feelings of gratitude towards Mr. Li, who made all of this possible.

I continued to stare at Nina, at her firm breasts, her bare thighs, her scarred but still flat stomach. We are happy together, still deliriously in love after more than fourteen years of marriage. We make love at least twice a week, often more. We sit together on the couch or in the bed or on the deck outside after she gets home from a day at the hospital and we do what we have always done best, we talk. Nina is still my best friend but she is still ignorant of the secret that I carry. She had no idea that a cosmic clock had nearly ticked away our life together. And she never will.

As if sensing my thoughts she mumbled in her sleep, rolling to one side, kicking the last vestiges of the covers off of her body. Her eyes opened and she saw me standing in the doorway, looking at her.

"Bill?" she asked sleepily, stifling a yawn, "what's the matter?"

"Nothing Babe," I told her reassuringly, "I was just checking on the kids. Go back to sleep."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

I gave her a smile. "Perfectly okay," I assured her. "Everything is just fine."

AN id=title>

Chapter 1

"I wanna go back and do it all over, but I can't go back I know I wanna go back cause I'm feeling so much older but I can't go back I know" – EDDIE MONEY

I was feeling stressed that day. That was why I said what I did to the old man. In retrospect it was perhaps the wisest thing I've ever said in my life.

I picked him up at a convalescent home in suburban Spokane; a withered, emaciated ninety year old. His race was indeterminable, he was so withered by time but his name on the bank of paperwork the con home staff had given me identified him as So Li, which, I was reasonably sure, made him Chinese. He was suffering from cancer, not just to one particular body part but throughout his entire body. I took one look at him and knew he wasn't long for this world. His breathing was ragged and irregular, his skin pale and feverish. His body probably weighed about seventy-five pounds if he was lucky. There was absolutely no muscle in evidence upon his bones and his flesh hung loosely from every extremity. Despite all of this he was mentally quite aware of his surroundings, something else I recognized almost immediately.

"How are you doing Mr. Li?" I asked him, bending over his form on the hospital bed.

"Can't…" He puffed softly. "Breathe." He finished.

I nodded, taking the stethoscope out of the leg pocket of my jumpsuit and putting it in my ears. I listened to his lungs, hearing nothing but bad news. He was barely moving any air at all. I'd been a paramedic for eight years but even a newbie could have seen that Mr. Li's survival on the trip to the hospital was in question. He needed a breathing tube placed in his lungs to help him.

The nurse (and I use that term loosely) was the epitome of white trash. Bleach blonde, sixty or so pounds overweight, and chewing a large wad of bubble gum as she peered at us. She'd placed a facemask on him but had only turned the flow to two liters per minute. The effect of this was to give him LESS oxygen than was available in the atmosphere, since the mask was a closed system. Business as usual in the con home. My partner, without being asked, switched the supply tubing to our portable tank and cranked it up to fifteen liters per minute. This helped Mr. Li a little, but not much.

"He needs to be intubated." I said to no one in particular, referring to the placement of a breathing tube.

"No, no, no!" The nurse yelled, startling me. "He's a DNR! You can't put a tube in!"

Mr. Li gave her a contemptuous glance and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out into the hall. DNR stood for 'Do not resuscitate', a physician order, commonly given to people like Mr. Li, ordering paramedics and hospital personnel NOT to use advanced life support measures to save their life. After all, what would be the point of bringing Mr. Li back from the dead only so he could continue to die of cancer? But she could have found a more tactful way of informing me of this fact.

"Do you have a copy of the DNR?" I asked her pointedly.

She dug through the file she had for a moment and then produced the form. I looked at it, making sure it was legal. Patient's name, the words DNR or NO CODE, and the Doctor's signature were all present. "Okay." I said, handing it back. "You might consider working on your tact a little in the future." I advised the nurse. "Mr. Li can hear everything you say."

She scoffed at this, giving me a condescending look. "He's a gork." She told me, using medical slang for an unresponsive person, or vegetable. "And a gook on top of that. What's the big deal?"

I turned away from her in disgust. As hardened as I've become doing this job, it never fails to amaze me how crass, incompetent, and tactless con home nurses can be. It was one of those situations where you had to figure that if they were any good at what they did, they wouldn't be working THERE.

I returned to my patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Li?" I asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"

Looking in my eyes, he nodded his understanding.

"Is that your wish Sir?" I asked him. "For me NOT to do anything?"

He smiled slightly. "Yes." He panted. "It's… " A pause to breathe. "My time."

"As you wish." I told him

We loaded him onto our gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back I hooked him up to my EKG machine in order to allow me to watch his heart rate. I put my pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Li was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.

"Mr. Li?" I addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at me.

"I'm gonna start an IV on you." I told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to, you know, help you with the pain and the discomfort."

He smiled, nodding at me.

I went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile that I was forced to use the smallest needle that we carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. I threaded it in slowly, cognizant of the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.

"I'm sorry Mr. Li." I told him when I finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."

"Thank… " A pause. "You."

"No problem." I told him.

While I adjusted the drip rate I noticed him staring at me, a queer smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.

"You're a… good boy." He said, panting. "You treat me… with… respect… where… others don't."

"I'm just doing my job." I told him, returning his smile.

He shook his head. "Been taken… before… " He said. "Not all… like you. Not at… all".

"Well." I shrugged. "I try."

"What… " He asked. "Is your… greatest… wish?"

"My greatest wish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. He nodded.

I laughed, thinking of my life. I was a thirty-two year old private paramedic that had been doing the job too long. I wasn't a dirtbag by any means but I wasn't at the pinnacle of success either. My job was constantly in jeopardy of being taken away by the Spokane Fire Department, who were just itching to get into the ambulance business. Like many fire departments around the country, they had initiated so many fire codes and regulations over the years that they no longer had any fires to put out. They knew that it wouldn't be long before the tax-payers started wondering just what they were paying these guys for anyway and, as such, their mission for the next century it seemed, was a take-over of the medical aid business. Private ambulance companies, who didn't have the political clout or the hero reputation to exploit, had already fallen to them in cities and counties all around the United States. It was a nationwide trend. Spokane FD had already tried twice, getting voted down by the city council once and then, having the same body approve them later, they were stopped by a superior court judge. At my age, I was too old to get picked up by them when they were eventually successful and I didn't know how to do anything else. I had an ex-wife and an ex-kid to pay money to each month. In short, I was in a rut that I saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as I'm prone to doing, that shift. For that reason I answered Mr. Li the way I did.

"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"

He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.

I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.

Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.

I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.

Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?

I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.

I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?

A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.

"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."

School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.

"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.

"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.

"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."

This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."

"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"

The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"

"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."

She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.

Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!

I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.

I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).

"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.

I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."

He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.

I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.

As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.

"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.

I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."

She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.

"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.

There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.

She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."

"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."

"What?!" She said, amazed.

"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"

"Huh?"

"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"

She gaped at me, not answering.

"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"

"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."

I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"

"What do you… "

"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.

"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"

I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.

"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."

"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.

"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.

By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?

Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.

SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. AT amp;T BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.

I finished up my breakfast and found, after some searching, my backpack which contained all of my schoolbooks and papers. If my fifteen-year- old self was true to form, I knew my homework wouldn't be done and my assignments wouldn't be read. That was something I would have to rectify, I figured. One of the things I regretted later in life were my poor high school grades and study habits, which precluded me from getting into a top-rated college. How hard could the work possibly be now?

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of Mike Meachen, my best friend back in high school. Mike was a year older than I and had always been the dominant member of our friendship. From Mike I learned how to smoke marijuana, how to drink beer, how to smoke cigarettes, how to cut school. Mike would drop out in the eleventh grade and work a few menial jobs for a few years before taking his GED and joining the Air Force where he was eventually dishonorably discharged for marijuana use. I hadn't talked to him in years but the last I'd heard he was still living with his parents. Could I steer Mike onto a different path? I wondered as I went to the door and bade my family farewell.

Though I was expecting it, it was still startling to see him as a sixteen-year-old again.

"Sup?" He muttered to me, his version of 'what's up?'.

"Not much." I told him, careful to give no hint of the startling change in me just yet. I closed the door behind me and we started the two-mile walk to our high school.

I was surprised at the immaturity of his conversation as we trodded to school. It centered on his phony sexual exploits with girls I'd never met, which girls at our school he'd like to fuck, and other adolescent posturing. I had to remind myself that my conversation back then had been pretty much the same and that I now had seventeen years of maturity over him. I nodded and responded to his statements with appropriateness. He noticed no change in me. I'd always been quiet anyway.

As we got close to the school feelings of unreality washed over me again. I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in years. But I was seeing them as they were then, not as my mind was telling me they should look now (I had to keep reminding myself that NOW was THEN). They were in ones, two, and even groups of six or more, heading for school. Boys and girls both. I saw Steve Johan, who would join the Army after graduation and be killed in a helicopter crash. I saw Nina Blackmore, a skinny, nerdish, friendless girl who would go to medical school and work as an emergency room doctor at Spokane's trauma center. She would also acquire good looks early in college as her body filled out and marry a rich neurosurgeon. I saw Carrie Founder, one of the best looking girls in the school giggling with some of the other elite. Carrie I knew, would marry a loser and pump out four kids before divorcing. During that period she would put on nearly a hundred pounds. Eventually, she would end up living in a trailer park with some other white-trash loser. As I paramedic I would one day pick her up for overdosing on anti-depressant medicines and pretend I didn't know her. I saw lots of others that I hadn't thought of in years and others who's faces I recognized but who's names I could not come up with.

I would be lying if I said that my attention was not distracted by the girls. Like many men there was a special place in the part of my mind that controlled lust that was obsessed with the idea of bagging a teenager. It was no doubt because they were forbidden. It was something I'd never done or attempted to do before, knowing that the risks were not worth the benefits. But things were different now, weren't they? A horny part of my mind asked me. I was a teenager now! I could do it legally!

I had been shy back in high school, a phase I'd gotten over later in life. But as a result of this shyness, I did not manage to get myself laid for the first time until I was a senior in high school (and to be honest, it was late in the year at that). But I wasn't shy now, was I? My eyes began tracking through the crowds, taking in the lean forms of the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year old girls, their tight asses, their firm breasts. I began to imagine the possibilities and my fifteen-year-old dick began to stir in my 501s. Although I intended to do as much good with the gift I had been given; there were so many things I could change or prevent now that I had pre-knowledge of it; it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a little fun; would it? Of course not.

My musings were interrupted by Mike.

As we came to the front of the school he jerked my arm, pulling me backward. "We'd better go around the other side." He said, alarmed. "Richard Fuckface and his asshole friends are standing over there."

I looked where he was indicating and saw a real blast from the past. Richard Fairview was one of many bullies at our high school. He was about six feet tall and about as dumb as a person could get while still remembering to draw breath every couple of seconds. He'd been one of the terrors of our school, his scam, when he wasn't beating people's ass for the fun of it, to post himself at an entry point and rip off lunch money from arriving kids that were dumb enough to approach him. As always he had five or six companions lounging there with him. They were all smoking cigarettes and eyeing the approaching throngs, looking for targets. I'd had my ass beaten by him a time or two. Had that happened yet? I wondered, unable to place just when those occurrences had taken place.

A smile formed on my face. In the ensuing seventeen years I'd learned a lot both about psychology and physical combat. Bullies, I knew, relied mostly on the complacency of their victims. They relied on their size and intimidation to get what they wanted. Very few of them actually knew how to fight. I, however, had worked for years at a job where physical assault by one's patients or one's patient's family members was an almost daily happening. Though somewhat of a wimp in high school, life had taught me a thing or two about hand to hand fighting. The most important thing I'd learned was that, while getting hit by a fist was painful, it wasn't THAT painful.

"C'mon." I told Mike, smiling still, heading directly towards Richard and his co-horts.

"Are you high?" Mike asked me. "He's got his friends there. I could kick his ass any day one on one but his friends will jump in."

"No they won't." I told Mike confidently. "Just watch. Stand back and don't do anything. His friends won't get in on anything."

"Bill?" He said, alarmed, but I strode purposefully forward. Reluctantly, he followed. I had to give him credit. He was loyal, willing to back me up in the face of these six guys.

"Trust me." I assured him. "Richard's about to fall from grace, big time."

As we approached the gang of bullies Richard himself eyed us and stepped forward, blocking our paths. To our right were the chain- linked bike racks. To our left was the school's perimeter fence. It was Richard's kind of tactical situation all right, blocking his victim in.

"Hey Billy-fag." He hailed, his gray, stupid eyes boring into me. "You got change for a dollar?"

I stared back at him, barely able to suppress a smile. "Yeah." I told him, my voice full of mocking contempt. "But you ain't getting' it."

He looked at me in shock, almost stepping backwards at my boldness. I think that he would have backed down right there except for the fact that a group of junior and senior girls were happening by at that particular moment and, hearing my words, stopped to see what would transpire.

"What did you say you little fuckin' pussy?" He enquired toughly, in disbelief.

I had to search through my memory banks to come up with a statement that was suitably insulting to a high school bully from the eighties. After a moment I came up with one. "I said, why don't you suck my dick asshole, if you're not too tired from fuckin' your momma all night."

His friends, as well as the group of teenagers gave a collective gasp. "You gonna let him say that shit to you Richie?" One of them asked, goading him.

"You're dead motherfucker." Richard said, advancing towards me, his fists clenched and raised in a pseudo-boxing stance.

I snorted contempt, which again almost gave him pause. He threw a haymaker right at my face, which, had it impacted, probably would have broken my nose. But it didn't. I easily sidestepped to the left, allowing his fist to whiz through thin air and spin his body around. Once he was turned away from me I stepped forward and drove my right elbow into his back, right above the kidney, as hard as I could. There was a solid thump followed by the whooshing of air being ejected from his lungs and a startled, painful cry from his lips. His hands dropped instantly down and he staggered forward two steps, holding his back.

I raised my right foot off of the ground and slowly placed it against his ass. With a hard shove of my leg, he was propelled into the chain link of the bike racks, making a musical jing as the metal was struck. He bounced off and landed on his ass on the grass, a stupid expression of surprise on his face.

While his friends gaped, unmoving at this development, the girls all erupted in fits of derisive laughter, pointing at him. As I'd planned, this infuriated him. He leapt to his feet and charged me, meaning to grab hold of me and take me to the ground, I was sure. But he hadn't learned from his first attack. He threw his weight forward and, once again, I easily stepped around him. As he passed I kicked his feet out from beneath him. He became horizontal for a brief second before crashing to the pavement, scratching up his hands and knees.

As he tried to get to his feet I hooked my foot forward, as if I was performing a kick-off in a football game, and connected directly with his face. There was an audible crunch as his nose was shattered along with several teeth. I pulled my foot back and watched as blood began to pour onto the ground from his face. He seemed quite dazed, frozen in place, so I stepped forward and kicked once more, this time connecting with his rib cage. I felt the crunch of ribs fracturing this time and Richie finally collapsed unmoving to the ground, guarding his side.

I looked at his friends, who were staring at me, mouths agape in disbelief. They could have stomped me to death in less than a minute had they wished but, as I'd figured, they didn't. I locked gazes with them, putting on the meanest expression I could call up. "You guys want some of this too?" I asked toughly.

None of them answered. They averted their eyes from me, finding objects to peruse on the ground and in the sky.

"Get the fuck out of here then." I commanded and they instantly obeyed, moving quickly down the path to the school's entrance.

I looked up to see expressions of unbelieving awe on Mike, the junior and senior girls, and several freshmen kids that had approached. The freshmen would probably had been Richard's next victims had I not taken action. They were looking at me as if I was Jesus Christ right down from the cross.

I smiled shyly. "None of you saw anything, did you?" I asked.

From the ground Richard was moaning, snorting blood out of his nose and mouth, and holding his side. They all looked at him for a moment and then back at me. A chorus of 'no's ensued.

"Good." I nodded, heading towards the school entrance once again. I looked back at Mike, who was still staring, unmoving, at Richard. "You coming?" I asked him.

"Huh?" He nearly jumped. "Oh, yeah."

We entered the school, walking through the crowded halls, hearing the slamming of locker doors and the babble of thousands of conversations.

"That was un-fucking-believable!" Mike finally said, looking at me as if I might be hot.

I shrugged. "It was nothing. Those fuckin' scrotes don't know how to fight. They just act like they do."

"Scrotes?" Mike asked, confused. "What's a scrote?"

Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.

"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"

"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."

"I thought so." I said.

Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.

"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.

I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"

"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.

I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.

"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."

"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"

I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."

"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.

"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"

"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.

"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."

"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.

"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."

He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.

While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.

"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."

She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.

"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"

"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "

"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"

"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "

"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "

"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.

She blinked at me in surprised respect.

"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."

"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"

She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "

She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?

The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.

"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.

"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.

A minute later, the class began.

I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.

My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.

Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.

"Now we've been discussing the circulatory system for several days now." She said at one point. "So can anyone tell me the complete route a blood cell takes through this system?"

Obviously she was expecting no hands to go up. It was almost, but not quite, a rhetorical question. She was met with blank looks from her class of thirty or so until I, deciding to have a little fun, put up my hand.

"Yes Billy?" She asked impatiently. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

I smiled at her shyly. I knew she was expecting nothing from me beyond that. I'd flunked her class. "No." I told her. "I was going to answer your question."

Her eyebrows went up. "YOU know the route a blood cell takes through the circulatory system?"

The class was looking at me now, obviously expecting me to make a joke of some sort, although I was not even known for that sort of behavior.

"I think so." I said softly.

She gave a patronizing smile. "Well do tell." She said.

"Okay," I began. "Why don't we start with an oxygenated cell as it leaves the heart. Is that a good starting place?"

She raised her eyebrows higher. "Sure." She finally said.

I nodded. "Okay. An oxygenated cell will be pumped from the left ventricle, through the aortic valve, into the Aorta, which will then branch into the descending and ascending Aortas. Of course at this point it may be sent to the coronary arteries but let us assume for the sake of discussion that it is not. From the aorta the cell will be pumped through the arteries into the arterioles and finally into a capillary bed somewhere where it will then give up it's oxygen molecule to a cell and pick up a carbon dioxide molecule for transport back to the lungs. At the point of transfer the capillaries will become veinuels. The cell will pass through these into veins, eventually making its way to either the superior or inferior vena cava, depending upon what part of the body it just oxygenated."

Mrs. Crookshank was obviously in shock, as if she'd seen a monkey suddenly start to talk. "Go on." She said numbly.

I nodded. "The vena cava lead, of course, to the heart. Specifically the right atria. The cell will enter the right atria and will then be pumped to the right ventricle. From there the cell will be pumped through the pulmonary valve to the pulmonary artery, which, I might add, is the only artery in the body to carry unoxygenated blood. The pulmonary artery will take the cell into the pulmonary capillary system where it will drop off its CO2 molecule, which will then be exhaled by the lung, and pick up another oxygen molecule from the alveoli in the lung. From there the now oxygenated cell with pass through the pulmonary vein, the only vein in the body that carries oxygenated blood, to the left atria. The left atria will pump the cell into the left ventricle and the process starts all over." I smiled. "Takes a little over a minute I hear."

The class was completely silent, staring at me. Finally Mrs. Crookshank spoke. "That's exactly right Billy." She said. "Very good."

"I read a little bit on it." I said, casting my eyes back to my desk.

At lunchtime it became quickly apparent that I'd altered history, as it was, a little already. As I waited in the snack bar line, and as I found an empty seat on the quad, I could see that people were pointing at me and looking at me. When I would turn to look at them, they would cast their eyes away. I figured the word had spread about my fight with Richie. People were probably in disbelief. I could almost hear the conversations they were having. Him? That little wimpy guy? Kicked Richie's ass? Sent him to the hospital? How? Does he know karate or something? He must!

I didn't mind. Obviously the word on the fight had not leaked to the wrong set of ears. If it had, I probably would have been pulled into the principal's office to talk to the cops. After all, what I'd done was felony assault. Not that I was worried about that either. Would the cops really believe that I'd done such a thing?

Finally someone came over to ask me about it. It was one of the hard- core stoner crowd; a group that I'd sometimes hung out with but had never really been a part of. I remembered smoking grass with the guy, who was a junior, on occasion, but I couldn't remember his name. He had long, unkempt black hair and the beginnings of a mustache on his lip. I wondered if he knew how ridiculous it looked. He approached carefully, as if I might suddenly lash out at him.

"What's up dude?" He asked me.

I shrugged. "Not much. What's up with you?"

"Nothin'." He paused. "I heard you got in a fight with Richie Fairview today."

"You could say that." I agreed.

"I heard you put him in the hospital."

"Wouldn't know about that." I replied. "But I doubt he'll be rippin' off people for a while." I smiled. "And if he does decide to go back into business, he might just think twice about who he fucks with."

The stoner who's name I couldn't remember grinned. "You know karate or somethin'?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Just a little about psychology and life."

His eyes widened. "Trippy." He finally said, reminding me of a phrase I hadn't heard in a while. "Listen, me and Raisin and Debbie are gonna blow this scene and head over to Raisin's house. Smoke some buds and listen to some AC\DC. You wanna come with us?"

I didn't have the slightest idea who Raisin might be, but I knew who Debbie was, even without a last name supplied. She was a cute, though skanky redhead that hung out with the stoners. She always kept close to whomever possessed the little baggie, hanging all over them and flirting with them. But, if I remembered correctly, she very rarely gave up any pussy. The polite term for her would be cock-tease. And no matter how many times they failed to get laid by her, they still fell for it every time. Thinking of her made my dick stir a little in my pants again. She was older than I was, sure, but I was definitely more experienced. Could I seduce her? And even if I couldn't, the thought of smoking a little grass was appealing in and of itself. As a paramedic we were drug tested. I hadn't smoked any pot in the last seven years.

"I'm in." I told him, standing up and throwing the remains of my burrito in the nearest garbage can.

Apparently Raisin was the one with the pot. I remembered him when I saw him. He was a short, bleached blonde who, like many short people, had adapted humor as his defense. He was one funny motherfucker. We climbed into his car; an early seventies Ford Falcon. My as-yet- unnamed friend and I climbed in the back. Debby climbed in the front with Raisin, who was looking real hopeful about his chances.

As he screeched out of the school parking lot Debbie giggled. "Fire up a joint NOW Raisin." She said. "C'mon. Getting stoned always get me horny."

"Can't Baby." Raisin replied, turning a corner at near-suicidal speed. "Don't have any rolled yet. Just hold your titties for a few. We have to get some papers."

She feigned a pout at his words and I took a moment to appraise her. She really was pretty good looking in a future trailer trash sort of way. Her red hair appeared natural, her tits firm and jiggly. As was the style of the eighties, she had on too much make-up. But I felt I could live with that. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, fresh no matter how skanky she appeared. I was determined to bag her. I thought I knew how.

Raisin pulled the Falcon into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. He backed into a spot near the back corner.

"Okay, here's the deal." Raisin told my back seat companion and me. "Bill, how much money you got?"

I shrugged. "About three bucks or so."

"Good." Raisin said. "You go up to the counter and buy a candy bar or something. Lonnie," He turned to my now-named companion. "While he's got the clerk distracted, you swipe a pack of papers from the display."

"Man, I hate doing this shit." Lonnie whined. "Why don't we just use a toilet paper roll or somethin'?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' barbarian?" Raisin enquired. "I refuse to smoke out of something that used to hold paper that I use to wipe my ass with. Just get the fuckin' papers."

Lonnie exited the vehicle, still whining, and I exited with him.

"Why don't we just buy the papers?" I asked, following behind him.

"Cause," He explained, as if I was an idiot. "They won't sell 'em to kids."

"As far as I know it's not against the law to buy papers." I opined. "Let me handle this."

Lonnie was doubtful but obviously agreeable to anything that didn't put him in harm's way. I pushed through the door of the store, making a little bell chime. The clerk was smoking a cigarette and watching a small television set. He was about twenty or so and looked as if he'd been rolling up some herb himself. He eyed us suspiciously as we entered.

I pulled out my money and then pulled a pack of zig-zags from the display and put them down on the counter. The clerk looked at them for a minute and then looked at me.

"How old are you kid?" He asked, taking a puff off of his smoke.

"Fifteen." I said.

"Uh huh. And what are you going to do with those? Let me guess, they're for your father."

"Nope." I said simply, shaking my head. "They're for my friends and myself. You see, we just scored some killer bud and now we want to smoke it. That requires papers, as I'm sure you're aware. So, how much?"

The clerk stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

"Now come on." I said reasonably. "Would you rather we came in and tried to steal them? That would be counter-productive for all concerned, wouldn't it? We're not asking to buy cigarettes, just papers. They're not controlled substances are they?" I smiled. "C'mon, didn't you used to cut school and get stoned? Help out the younger generation here."

He stared for another instant and then began to chuckle. "Fuckin' classic." He said, shaking his head. He picked up the pack of zig-zags and rang them up. "Seventy-nine cents." He said.

I started to hand him a buck and then paused, my eyes looking at a display behind him.

"Oh," I said. "And how about givin' me a three pack of those Trojans there? The unlubricated ones." I winked at him. "We got a girl with us too and I think I might find some use for them."

"That was fuckin' radical." Lonnie proclaimed as we left the store. "Totally!"

"Let me tell you somethin' Lonnie." I told him. "I've found that you'll get a lot farther in life using that approach then tryin' to sneak around the issue. Keep that in mind."

"Trippy." He said again. "But why'd you buy the rubbers? You don't think you're gonna get into Debbie do you?"

"You never know." I told him. "It's best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Avent-you-what?"

"Never mind." I said, opening the back door. The condoms were in my pants pocket. The papers I tossed to Raisin. "Let's go get stoned." I told him.

As I suspected she would be, Debbie was putty in my hands. We went to Raisin's house, which was actually an apartment. I'd been in the apartment complex many times as a paramedic on calls. It was populated with various varieties of unemployed trash living off of welfare. It was strange being in them in a way. They looked exactly the same as they had\would in my when. Raisin's mom, a single mother, was employed and spent the day at her job. This made Raisin's apartment a favored locale for school cutting, pot smoking teenagers. The apartment was cleaner than most I entered on calls, but not by much. It was a two bedroom and there were dishes scattered everywhere but at least the laundry was picked up and there were no roaches in evidence. The entire place reeked of stale cigarette and pot smoke.

Raisin put on an AC\DC album, Highway to Hell, and cranked up the volume. He then went about the task of rolling up a fat one which he lit and passed around. Predictably Debbie sat next to him on the couch, cooing at him and flirting with him. By the time the third cut on the album was playing, we were all pleasantly stoned; me probably more so than the others since I'd been away for a while.

"Isn't Bon Scott the greatest fuckin' singer on earth?" Raisin asked the room at large.

Lonnie gave a concurring opinion and even Debbie agreed, although it was easy to read her face and see that she didn't give a rat's ass about Bon Scott. I tried to remember who teenaged girls had been into back in the early eighties and drew a blank.

The conversation traveled around the room for a few minutes, long enough for me to be appalled by its immaturity. Both Raisin and Lonnie were trying like hell to win Debbie's favor but their attempts were pathetic at best. Lonnie was talking about how many push-ups he could do. Raisin was talking about how many beers he could drink before he puked. Had I been like this once? I feared that I had. No wonder I hadn't gotten laid until I was nearly eighteen. It was time to liven up the conversation a little.

"Have you guys ever considered," I asked. "How much religion has fucked up our views on sex?"

That got their interest. They all looked at me, wondering if I was telling a joke.

"What?" Debbie finally squealed.

"Think about it for a second," I explained, knowing that when you were stoned it was real easy to 'think about it'. "The drive to reproduce is, aside from food and water, the most powerful urge in the human body. We want to have sex; we NEED to have sex. It's programmed into us, into our genes and chromosomes. If a species didn't want to have sex, which after all is for reproduction, it could not perpetuate itself."

"Per-what?" Lonnie, his eyes open less than a quarter inch, asked.

"It could not keep the race alive." I termed it. "If we were not programmed with the urge to screw each other, we would have died out long ago. So, the urge to screw is given to us by God or chance or whatever, so that we will survive forever. It's a natural urge that serves a basic function, right?"

"Yeah." Debbie said, her eyes twinkling a little. Lonnie and Raisin had to agree with my logic too.

"Now we all feel these urges. I myself feel them very strongly." I gazed meaningfully at Debbie as I said this. She blushed a little but held my gaze. "Sometimes it's all I can think about. It's a bitchin' thing really. For the most part, guys want to put their dicks into a girl's pussy. Girls want to have a dick put INTO their pussy. Am I right?"

"Fuckin aye!" Lonnie nodded.

"Hell yeah." Raisin agreed.

Debbie refused to comment, she just giggled.

"But then you got religion fuckin' us all up." I went on. "There's some other social factors in there too, but religion is the biggest one. Here you have a natural urge, the urge to reproduce. It's a function of your body. But you got religion tellin' you that it's dirty. They make people feel guilty for these urges which occur through no fault of their own. They tell you that sex is wrong. They tell you to NEVER do it before marriage, and then they tell you that it's okay to do it when you are married but not to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you're sinning."

"Yeah!" Lonnie put in. "That's fucked up."

"And if that wasn't bad enough." I went on, watching Debby carefully now. She was staring with rapt attention. "Religious influence throughout our history has led to the passing of laws against certain types of sexual acts. Did you know that in the State of Washington it is illegal for a man to eat a pussy."

"What?" Debbie and Lonnie said together; Debbie blushing a little.

"Yep." I nodded, picking up the roach in the ashtray and taking another hit. I was really rocking now. "And it's also illegal for a woman to suck a man's dick. Its called oral copulation in the penal code and it's listed as a crime. Now here we have an activity that people enjoy doing to each other." I paused, smiling at Debbie. "At least I know I enjoy the shit out of eating a nice pussy. An activity that hurts no one but that if fact brings a GREAT deal of pleasure to people. At least when I do it anyway. But, thanks to religious assholes back in our history, it's illegal. I could be arrested for, say, eating out Debbie there. And she could be arrested for giving me a BJ."

"You've never eaten a pussy before." Debbie giggled, her eyes shining.

I looked at her meaningfully. "Debbie, I'm an expert at eating pussy. I bet that I could make you come in less than ten minutes using only my tongue upon your gorgeous body."

She swallowed nervously. "Oh really?"

"Really." I said. "Come here a second." I patted my lap.

"Why?" She challenged. Lonnie and Raisin were both speechless, watching this development.

"Just come here and let me give you a little sample of what my tongue can do for you." I chuckled. "Unless you're scared that is. Afraid I might make you lose control."

"You talk pretty bold little boy." She informed me nervously.

"Come here." I whispered, staring lustfully at her. "Let me show you a sample."

She hesitated for another second or so and then curiosity got the better of her. She stood and walked over to me. I patted my lap again.

"Sit down." I told her, reaching out and touching the side of her right leg. The denim of her jeans was tight. Tight enough to let me feel the muscle of her leg beneath it.

She sat on my lap, turning her face towards me, her eyes transfixed upon my face. "Well?" She said.

I reached up and took her face in my hands, feeling the soft skin of her cheeks. I pulled her forward, drawing her lips to mine. She came willingly, parting her lips. I kissed her softly, feeling her puffy lips meeting mine. I darted the tip of my tongue forward slowly, touching the inside of her lip and running it back and forth, tasting the smooth membranes and feeling the back of my tongue rubbing against her top teeth. I withdrew my tongue for an instant and then darted forward with it once more. Her tongue shot out to meet it this time. I swirled the tip of mine with hers, marveling at the fact that I was making out with a sixteen year old girl. My cock jumped to full attention.

I gave her my best kissing, sucking lightly on her tongue and lips, nipping a little at them. It was undoubtedly a far cry from what she was used to, which was probably some brute ramming his tongue down her throat. I used my tongue like an instrument, tasting her young mouth, and arousing her. She pulled herself closer to me, forgetting that two other people were in the room. Her sweater clad breasts pushed against my chest.

I kissed across her cheek to her neck, licking and sucking on it softly, working my way upward, nibbling at her soft flesh. When I reached her earlobe I nipped at it and then slid my tongue softly through the hollow of her jaw. I blew lightly in her ear and then began to whisper to her.

"Have you ever been kissed like this before?" I asked.

"No." She groaned, her hands moving up and down my back.

"Do you like the way my tongue feels against your skin?"

"Yes." She panted, trembling all over now.

"Imagine this tongue and this mouth sliding all over your beautiful body. Imagine it suckling your nipples like a newborn baby. Imagine it kissing your tummy, your legs, sucking on your toes, and finally going between your legs and licking you there. Eating you until you come in my mouth."

"Ohh." She squeaked.

"You want that, don't you?" I whispered in her ear. "You want to come in my mouth, don't you? Has anyone ever made you come before?"

"No." She shook her head as I nibbled her earlobe again.

"I can." I told her. "I can make you come until you beg me to stop. I can make you come until you scream. Would you like me to?"

"Oh god." She whined, loud enough for the other two to hear.

"Would you?" I repeated.

"Ohhhh." She was now trembling all over, her skin flushing.

I ran my tongue across the side of her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, until it was teasing the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. I sucked a little and then raised up and kissed her again. Her tongue eagerly sought out mine, sucking it into her mouth a little harder than I liked, almost painfully. That was okay. I knew I had her.

I pulled her tighter against me, feeling her breasts push into my chest. They were firm and oh so young. My instinct was to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted her to ask me, to beg me to take her there.

I put my lips back near her ear and began to whisper to her again. "You're getting hot from my mouth, aren't you Debbie?"

"Yessss!" She hissed, breathing rapidly. "I've never…, ohhhh!"

"I've gotten you this hot by just kissing your face and your neck." I whispered. "Imagine what else I can do for you. I can give you pleasure you've never dreamed of before. All you have to do is ask me. Ask me to show you."

"Ohh God." She moaned again, grasping me tighter against her. She was approaching the edge of control. I knew that she was now mine, that if I stood up and led her to the bedroom, she would come. But I wanted her to ask me.

"Just ask." I told her, nibbling her ear again. "Just ask me to show you and I will."

"Please?" She said immediately. "Show me. You have to show me!"

I smiled, breaking the kiss. I gave her butt a little pat, indicating she should stand up. She did so, ignoring Raisin and Lonnie, just staring at me with glazed, lustful eyes. I stood too.

"Hey Raisin," I asked, smiling. "You mind if I borrow your room for a while? Me and Debbie have to talk."

He was speechless, just staring at me. Though I didn't want to, I could see that he'd sprung a woody watching the two of us.

"I'll take that as a yes." I said, grabbing Debbie's hand and leading her there. She didn't even look back.

Raisin's room was suprisingly pretty neat. His bed wasn't made but the floor was free of laundry and there was little debris lying around. I led Debbie inside and then shut the door. It was latched less than a half a second before her mouth slammed into mine and her tongue was probing for my tonsils. She pulled me tight against her, grinding her crotch into mine, rubbing her hips in circles.

"Oh god," She said, breaking the kiss and licking at my neck. "I've never been this fuckin' turned on before. I can't believe I'm doing this."

"I have that effect on women." I said, kissing her back and leading her over to the bed.

We sat down on the foot of it and I kissed her again, running my hand up under her sweater. I felt her smooth stomach and the cups of her bra for a moment before pushing upward, lifting the hem of the sweater over her head. She raised her arms to allow me to remove it. I tossed it to the floor next to the bed.

I began kissing her smooth shoulders while my hands slid around her back, finding the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick of my fingers the clasp was undone, allowing the bra to sag free. I pulled it off of her and tossed it to the floor next to her sweater.

I leaned back and stared at her chest for a moment. Her tits were almost more than I take. I had to restrain myself from simply attacking them. Though large for a teenager, they were firm, unaffected by years of gravity pulling on them. The nipples were small but erect, standing out proudly. The flesh was slightly paler than the surrounding skin. Sixteen year old tits! My mind screamed at me.

She saw my gaze and flushed deeper, covering them with her arms. Obviously my eyes upon her embarrassed her.

Gently I reached out and pulled her arms back down. "Don't cover them up." I said softly. "They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

She was nervous, not saying anything but giving me a slight giggle.

I reached out and stroked them softly with my fingers, running the tips around the perimeter, feeling the young, springy flesh, testing the weight of them. She sighed a little as I did this. Again, she was probably expecting me to maul them as a normal teenager would. I let the tip of my fingers circle inward, finally just flicking her nipples. She shuddered at the contact.

She was actually trembling as I leaned forward and began planting kisses on her bare shoulder. I let the underside of my tongue slide downward along her flesh, across the top of her heaving chest until I encountered the swell of her tit. I began sucking and licking the delicate skin there, giving the occasional soft nip with my teeth. Her hands landed on the back of my head, trying to push me down to the nipple. But I refused.

I kissed and sucked my way all over her right breast, moving from top to bottom, running my tongue over the underside and her lower chest, relishing the taste of her young skin, driving her nearly crazy with my teasing, but avoiding the nipple. Finally I repeated the process on her left breast. I then slid my tongue between the two, feeling them pushing into my cheeks on either side. She was now whimpering, almost crying in her desire.

At last I moved my mouth to the right nipple. I flicked at it with my tongue, tasting and feeling it's texture. At the contact she pushed her chest forward, trying to force it into her mouth, but I backed away at the same rate she advanced, frustrating her. I began sliding my tongue around the perimeter of the nipple, making it swell further. Finally I took it in my mouth and began suckling it gently, just as an infant would do.

"Ohhhh." She moaned, her fingers running through my hair. I pushed her to her back on the bed and went to work in earnest.

I worked on her nipples for more than ten minutes, moving from one to the other, tasting them, sucking them, loving them, until her hips began to move up and down. As I did this I reached down with my hands and pulled off her shoes, letting them fall to the floor. Her socks followed this.

Once she was barefoot, I began kissing my way downward, paying particular attention to her flanks, which I'd realized in my mid- twenties was a powerful erogenous zone on women when a tongue and mouth is applied to them with the right pressure. When I reached the waistband of her jeans I kissed along it, heading for her stomach, darting under the hem with the tip of my tongue. Her tummy was a work of art in and of itself. It was as smooth as the proverbial baby's butt, unlined by stretchmarks or any other signs of time. I reached her bellybutton and teased it for a moment, making the muscles in that part of her body go into seizure. I then trailed the back of my tongue downward again, until I reached the top of her jeans.

She was wearing button-fly jeans. I reached up and slowly undid the first button, revealing just a hint of her lower stomach. The flesh there was even paler than that of her breasts. I kissed and sucked that which was revealed for a second and then undid the second button, repeating the process.

When I undid the third button the top of her panties came into view. They were sparkling white, a sharp contrast against her skin. I captured the cotton material in my teeth for a second, pulling them lightly away from her body briefly before releasing them. As I did this I caught the first whiff of her odor. It was fresh and musky, the scent of a teenager, and only touched my olfactory senses for an instant. But it was enough to make me pick up the pace.

I ripped open the rest of her buttons and disengaged myself from her, so that I was kneeling at the foot of the bed. I put my hands in the waistband of her jeans and began tugging.

"Raise your hips." I commanded.

She instantly obeyed, obviously eager for me to get on with what I'd promised her. I pulled the jeans downward, struggling a little but finally removing the tight material from her body. They joined the sweater and the bra on the floor, leaving her lying before me in only her white, cotton panties.

I paused long enough to take off my own sweater, leaving me bare from the waist up. She stared at me lustfully as I did this, her legs twisting this way and that, unable to come to a rest. They were very pretty legs, smooth as silk, lightly tanned. Looking between them I could see that the crotch of her panties was wet, sucking lightly into her pussy. My mouth began watering as I captured her legs and placed them on my shoulders.

I reached forward and grabbed the waist of her panties. She raised her hips without instruction this time and I pulled them off, tossing them to the floor and returning her legs to my shoulders. I was now looking at her pussy. An actual sixteen year old pussy. The lips were swollen and inviting, her clit peeking out of its hood. There was a growth of reddish-brown hair, thick on the top, sparse around the lips. Her odor was now strong in my nostrils, making me giddy, the smell of a teenager in heat.

"Have you ever been eaten before?" I asked her, letting my finger lightly slide between her wet lips, parting them.

"Yes." She panted, still trembling. "Once."

"How was it?" I asked.

"It was okay." She said. "Please, do it now?"

I smiled. "Okay? Did you come?"

"No." She shook her head and then repeated. "Please?"

"Then you were just licked before." I told her, sliding my finger into her about a half an inch, far enough to feel that she was TIGHT. "Prepare to be EATEN."

"Ohhhh." She moaned as I moved my head forward.

I licked between those wonderful lips, tasting her nectar, feeling her smooth membranes with my tongue. I probed in and out, lapping like a cat a bowl of milk. She moaned as I did this, spreading her legs wider. I ran my hands up and down her smooth thighs while I continued to lick at her.

Her pubic hair tickled my face as I sucked each lip in between probes with my tongue. When her hips began gyrating on the bed I began making stabs at her clit. The stabs took her breath away, made her squeal in delight with each one. I ran my tongue around her erect clit for a few moments and then finally took it between my lips and began to suck on it gently.

"Ohhhh!" She screamed. "What are you…? Ohhhhh!"

I increased the suction on it, stabbing rapidly with my swirling tongue as I did so. Her hips began moving up and down rhythmically. Her sexy legs wrapped around my back, pulling me closer.

"Ohhh Yesss!" She cried. "Ohhh Yesss! Oh God!"

Shortly her clit sucked back into its hood and her hips and pubis began slamming into my face. It became difficult to keep my lips where they belonged but I had experience reading the rhythm. I plunged two fingers into her, feeling that tight sheath contract around them. I almost came in my pants right there when I felt that tightness. Oh how good that was going to feel when I got my cock in there.

With a long, high-pitched scream she came in my mouth, her hips battering me nearly senseless and then finally slowing to a stop. But I wasn't done yet. I pulled my face away from her but continued to finger-fuck her. I looked in her eyes as I did it. Her eyes had a mad glint in them; an expression she wasn't supposed to wear for another five years or so. She was panting and licking her lips, her tits heaving up and down.

"Did you like that?" I asked her, driving my fingers in and out. Her hips already were picking up the rhythm again.

"Yess!" She hissed. "Oh god, I never knew anything could… " She couldn't finish. She simply closed her eyes and humped back at my hand.

I smiled and then lowered my face to her crotch once more.

"Again?" She cried. "Ohh God!"

It only took two or three minutes to pull the second orgasm from her. The third took even less time. By the time I pulled my face away and stood up, she looked nearly insane.

"Are you ready to get fucked now?" I asked her, opening the fly on my own 501s.

"Ohhhh!" She moaned, her eyes glued to my crotch.

"Answer me." I told her. "Are you ready to get fucked?"

"Yes!" She yelled, nodding vigorously. "Oh yes!"

I kicked off my shoes and socks and then dropped my pants, pausing long enough to pull one of the condoms from the pocket. I tossed the condom on the bed by her feet and then dropped my underwear, letting free my straining, fifteen-year-old cock. It wasn't quite as long and thick as it would eventually be but Debbie didn't seem to mind. She spread her legs wider.

"C'mon!" She told me. "Let's do it."

I picked up the condom and ripped the package open, letting it fall to the floor. I rolled it over my cock expertly, giving it a tug to make sure it was on correctly. It was. Debbie watched this all with aroused curiosity. It was obvious that she'd never seen anyone put on a rubber before, though I was sure, due to the lack of a hymen, that she'd been fucked. I understood. Teenagers didn't give a shit, didn't think about consequences. But I did.

I climbed back on the bed and positioned myself over the top of her. Our lips came together again, our tongues swirling back and forth once more. Her firm tits were against my chest and my outer thighs were against her inner thighs. I grabbed my cock in my hand and put the head against her wet lips, sliding it up and down a few times, wetting the condom.

"Do it!" Debbie yelled, pushing her hips upward.

Slowly I pushed forward, allowing the head of my cock to slide inside of her. Her tunnel grasped me tightly, feeling as if a hand was gripping me, and I could slide no further. I pulled out and pushed again, gaining a little more ground with each thrust. Finally I was all the way inside the tightest box I'd ever imagined, let alone been in. This was what fucking was supposed to be like.

I began to thrust in and out, feeling her clamping on me as I slid back and forth. After a few moments she loosened up a little, allowing me to pick up the pace. I then began to slam in and out with practiced strokes, being sure to grind my pubic bone against hers with each thrust. She moaned and clawed at my back with her nails as I fucked her, her hips rising and falling counter to my own. Her skin began to perspire heavily, making our bodies slide exquisitely together, as if greased. She kissed on my neck and my ears, her tongue strokes copies of what I'd done to her earlier.

I suddenly got up to my knees, putting her legs on my shoulders while I continued to fuck her. I was able to look down upon her supine body, to watch my cock sliding in and out her slit, to see her sweaty tits bouncing back and forth, to see her face, to watch the rapture in her eyes. I stroked her legs up and down, kissing on her calves for a while and then I began feeling those beautiful breasts, squeezing them a little rougher now. I slammed harder and harder into her, making her grunt and moan. When she came again she pulled me back down to her and thrust her tongue back in my mouth.

I was at the end of my rope by then so I went for the final push. I fucked as hard as I could, sweat dripping off my face, that tight pussy gripping and releasing me. I felt the sensation of pure pleasure starting in my groin and spreading quickly throughout my body from there. I began to groan myself, losing control of my thrusting rhythm, only battering her like an animal. The pleasure of orgasm assaulted me, had its way with me, completely took my body over for an indeterminate amount of time. It was pleasure on the purest level. My God, I could not remember when orgasms had felt like that. It made the ones I had as an adult feel like a little spasm in comparison. I shot blast after blast inside of her (inside the condom actually), continuing to pound away until I fell exhausted atop of her.

We kissed each other for a moment and then looked in each other's eyes. Hers were full of confusion and doubt.

"Wow." She whispered finally. "That was… that was awesome. Totally bitchin'."

I smiled, kissing her nose and pulling myself out of her so the condom wouldn't come off in her pussy.

"Thank you." I said, rolling to my back next to her.

She was still looking at me. "It was almost like…, I dunno." She shook her head.

"Like what?" I asked, grabbing the condom and pulling it off neatly, not spilling so much as a drop.

"Like you were, oh, I dunno, older or something. It didn't seem like I was doing someone younger than me."

I stared at her for a moment, holding the slick condom between my fingers. I chuckled. "I'm just wise beyond my years baby. That's all."

She looked at me doubtfully as I tied a knot in the condom and stood up. "What now?" She asked. "Are we like, going together now?"

Going together? I thought, accessing my memory again for what that term entailed. Finally I remembered. Boyfriend/girlfriend type of thing. Not supposed to date anyone else. I certainly didn't want that. "No." I told her. "We were just two stoned friends having a little fun together. That's all. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?"

Relief was evident on her face. She didn't want to 'go' with anybody either. "I guess it don't." She answered, then she soured. "But I guess I'll be the school slut for a while." She looked at me as I picked up my clothes from the floor. "You know, it was worth it though. Where did you learn how to, you know, like that?"

"Oh, here and there." I answered. "But there's no reason why you have to be the school slut you know. I'm not gonna tell anyone what we did."

Her smile was cynical beyond its years. "Sure you won't." She answered. "You won't tell anyone that you're the one to bag Debbie Walker."

"I won't." I said, pulling on my pants. "For what purpose would I do that? So all of you girls can talk about what a fuckin' blabbermouth I am? How will I ever get any pussy that way? No girl's gonna fuck a loudmouth. However, if you have the reputation as someone that can keep his mouth shut no matter what… well, where do you think I learned how to do what I did?"

She looked hopeful for a moment, wanting to believe me. But then she shook her head. "Even if you do keep your mouth shut, which I doubt, Raisin and Lonnie know what we did. They won't keep theirs shut."

I shrugged. "I'll tell them you wouldn't give it up. I'll call you a fuckin' cock tease when I tell them about it, kissing on me and lettin' me feel your tits a little through your sweater, but not lettin' me go any further. They'll believe it."

"YOU are going to tell them THAT?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd just explained that there really was a Santa Clause and an Easter bunny.

I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Sure." I told her quietly. "You can trust me for that. You really can. I promise. And you don't even have to trust me. Just say you didn't do anything with me but kiss me. If I'm lying and I blab to everyone, how much worse off are you anyway?"

"I suppose." She said doubtfully.

"But do me a favor." I said.

"What?"

"Well, I know you don't believe me now, but when a few weeks go by and you find out that I kept my promise, just keep me in mind the next time you get a little horny. I can be very discrete."

"Discrete?" She asked.

"Never mind." I said, pulling on my shirt. "Just keep me in mind. And if you and some of your friends ever get to discussing things like sex with each other, and if one of them ever happens to express frustration that she can't get herself fucked without the whole school knowing about it." I smiled. "Maybe you could just mention my name to them. If you know what I mean."

She stared at me for a second and then started giggling. "Are you SURE you're only fifteen?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "The best age of your life Debbie. Believe me."

Chapter 2

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all" – PAUL SIMON

Raisin dropped me off at home about 2:30 that afternoon. It was more than a half an hour before the time I was SUPPOSED to get home from school, but I knew that both my Mom and Dad would still be at work. Debbie had already been dropped at her own house. She was walking a little funny as she headed for her front door. We all watched her ass as it retreated. The moment she was out of earshot the interrogation began.

"How was she?" Lonnie asked, nearly slobbering with excitement. "Man, I can't fuckin' believe you scored with Debbie. "

"Yeah," Raisin grinned. "What a slut. Wait'll everyone hears about this shit!"

"Fuck that bitch. " I grumbled, sinking in my seat. "She wouldn't give it up. "

"What?" They said in unison.

"But we heard you in there. " Raisin protested. "She was moanin' like a fuckin' freight train. "

I shook my head. "She's a good actress. " I told them. "All she let me do was feel her tits a little through her sweater. Every fuckin' time I tried to put my hand underneath it she'd slap it away. Fuckin' cock-tease. "

"You didn't fuck her?" Lonnie asked, crushed. "What were you doing in there all that time?"

"Just makin' out. " I said. "Believe me, I tried but that bitch is harder to get into than Fort Knox. "

They were looking at me in confusion. The rule of teenaged boys of course is that even if you didn't fuck them, you told people that you did. I could almost see the wheels of irrational logic turning in their heads. If I said that I hadn't fucked her when I could easily have claimed that I had, I therefore must not have even come close to fucking her. The thought that I might actually have bagged her and was keeping it secret was so foreign a concept to them that they were able to ignore the overwhelming evidence before them and draw the conclusion I wanted them to draw. They probably figured I was even lying about feeling her tits since some embellishment was mandatory.

"That's too fuckin' bad man. " Lonnie commiserated. "I really thought someone was gonna bag that bitch this time. "

"Nope. " I said. "The same old shit. Why do we even try?"

"Some day," Raisin vowed with all the dramatics of Scarlet O'Hara proclaiming she would never go hungry again. "That bitch is gonna give it up. "

"I doubt it. " I offered. "She's good at giving blue balls though. The cunt. "

They bid me a sad farewell as I exited the car and soon the Falcon was roaring down my street, belching huge clouds of black, stinking exhaust from its tailpipe. As they disappeared I sighed with the kind of satisfaction that only a man who has just gotten laid can display. I headed for the house thinking that being fifteen again was all right. I'd wished well.

I was appalled by what I found inside. When the door opened the sound of Van Halen cranked at top volume hit my ears. The smell of marijuana hit my nose. Tracy was sitting on the couch with Cindy and a football player from school that I recognized as Cindy's boyfriend, although I could not remember his name. Cindy and the football player were kissing each other in heated passion while Tracy was flipping through a teen magazine and pretending to ignore what was going on. A plastic bong sat on the coffee table next to a paper plate with pot in it. Pepsis and a bag of chips were sitting next to this. The bong still had tendrils of smoke curling out the top of it.

They didn't even hear me come in the house, the music was so loud. I remembered that Tracy had been busted for just such a thing during her senior year when my mother had come home from work unexpectedly and had walked in on just such a scene. God, my sister was a stupid teenager too.

I kicked the plug out of the stereo system, causing "Ain't Talkin' About Love" to wind down and die. The three people on the couch jerked almost painfully in alarm. Cindy and her boyfriend separated so fast that it looked as if they'd burned each other. Cindy's boyfriend made a grab for the pot on the table. They all stopped when they saw that it was only me. They relaxed a little.

"You scared the shit out of us!" Tracy yelled at me. "You little asshole! What the hell are you doing home now anyway?"

Cindy's boyfriend was giving me a hostile look, a look that made me wonder if another Richie type encounter was brewing.

"The same thing you are. " I told her mildly, kicking the door shut. "Cutting school and smoking weed. " I looked around the room, shaking my head sadly. "However, I'm a little smarter about the way I do it than you idiots are. "

They all gaped at me. It was an expression that I was starting to get used to. I was starting to think of it as THE LOOK.

I stared at Tracy. "What if I'd been Mom coming home from work a little early because she didn't feel good or something? That kind of shit can happen you know. Do you think Mom would call the house to let someone know she's coming home? Why would she do that? Nobody's supposed to be here. You got the music turned up so fuckin' loud you didn't even hear me open the door. The damn door wasn't even locked. You guys are a freakin' bust waiting to happen!"

Cindy and Tracy just stared at me in shock. Like I said, I had always been shy before and to them my personality would have appeared to have changed radically overnight. The old Billy would, upon interrupting their session, have simply blushed and muttered a brief apology before slinking out of the room. They did not know what to say or what to think about what I'd said. But the football player reacted as his personality instinctively commanded him to.

"What the fuck is it to you?" He asked me, glaring.

"Shut your ass ball boy. " I shot back at him. "You're in MY house and I wasn't talking to you. "

His face reddened with rage. He stood up suddenly. "What did you say to me you little pussy?"

"Jeff, leave him alone. " Cindy spoke, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back down.

He shook her arm off angrily, "Say that again to me faggot. " He challenged. "I fuckin' dare you. "

"You fuckin' dare me?" I answered mildly. "Okay. " I nodded. "I told you to shut your ass. I then made a derisive remark aimed at your meager football skills. Did you hear me that time?"

"You're dead kid. " He said, starting to move towards me.

"Jeff!" Tracy spoke now. "Leave him alone!"

Jeff continued to head towards me. He was actually planning to beat me up in my own living room in front of my sister who had invited him in there. Christ why was everyone so violent? No wonder the human race fought so many wars. "Richie Fairview told me I was dead too. " I told him. "Right before the ambulance picked him up and took him to the hospital. Would you like to join him there asshole?"

He stopped. Apparently he'd heard that story. His eyes showed immediate doubt as he stared at me. I stared back.

"Go sit your ass down. " I told him. "Before you get hurt. "

He licked his lips nervously, sparing a glance at the two girls.

"I think you'd better do what he says Jeff. " Tracy told him. She was hiding a smirk as she said it. I suddenly realized that Tracy didn't like Cindy's boyfriend too much. Interesting. Was there hope for her yet?

"You're lucky they stopped me. " Jeff finally blurted. A pretty pathetic face-saving measure I'm sure even he would agree. He returned to the couch and sat down.

"Yeah, I guess I'm lucky. " I agreed, turning to Tracy. "If I was you I'd open up some windows in this house before Mom and Dad get home. The whole place reeks of pot. Do you guys do this sort of thing a lot?"

"No. " Tracy told me, obviously lying.

"Well it's amazing you haven't been busted yet. " I told her, casting my eyes on Cindy, who was looking at me as if in awe. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose fitting sweater. I'd forgotten how pretty her eyes were. They were a deep blue, the kind of eyes you could melt in. Currently of course, they were very reddened and only about half-staff and her honey-blonde hair was in disarray from Jeff's fingers. Her neck was marred by a red hickey; Jeff's territorial mark. I supposed it was better than peeing on her like a dog with a fire hydrant. I wondered about the possibilities of Cindy. Could I do it? It would be more challenging than Debbie had been.

I gave her a seductive smile and she blushed deeply. Jeff saw it and fumed at me but didn't make a move. Finally, without another word, I headed upstairs to my room, closing the door behind me.

My room was a filthy mess. I was offended by it. During my adult years I'd lost my teenaged sloppiness and had become something of a neat freak. Though I was still feeling the effects of the marijuana I'd smoked earlier and desperately wanted to lie down and take a nap, I began picking up the room.

It took me nearly two hours to get it clean, but it was a fascinating two hours none-the-less. I came across many objects and possessions that I had not seen in years. I found places for them and by the time I finished it was quite a startling change. But there was one thing missing.

While I'd been cleaning I'd heard the sound of my father coming home. I sincerely hoped for Tracy's sake that she'd cleaned the house well enough. I guessed that she had since she and Cindy were in her room, looking through some magazines as I passed by. Jeff of course, was long gone. Both girls watched me as I went by, shutting up with whatever they'd been talking about. I smiled, especially at Cindy, who returned it weakly.

Dad was sitting in his chair and drinking a bottle of beer. The television was on, showing an early edition of the local news. Again I found myself staring at him, marveling on how young he looked, how thin. He wasn't much older than I was in a way. He caught me staring at him and looked at me.

"You okay Bill?" He asked, concern in his voice.

"Oh sure Dad. " I nodded. "I'm cool. I was just tryin' to picture you with gray hair. "

"What?" He chuckled. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, Grampa has gray hair doesn't he? It stands to reason that you will too doesn't it? I was just trying to picture what you would look like. "

"That's kind of depressing. " He smiled, sipping out of his beer. "What brought you to that subject?"

"Oh, uh, we were studying genetics in Anatomy the other day. That's a dominate trait you know?"

"I've heard that. " He answered. "What're you up to?"

"Just getting the vacuum cleaner. "

Now he really looked at me strange. "The what?"

"The vacuum cleaner. " I said. "I just got done cleaning my room and now I need to vacuum it. "

"You cleaned your room?" He asked in disbelief. "You?"

"Yeah. " I nodded. "It was pretty dirty. Why did you guys ever let me get away with being so messy anyway?"

"What?"

"Never mind. " I said, moving towards the living room closet. I opened it and the vacuum was there. "I'll bring it back in a minute. "

While I carried the appliance upstairs his puzzled look followed me up.

After I stowed the vacuum back in its closet I went back upstairs to lie down. Though I was exhausted I could not sleep. For one I was afraid. What if I went to sleep and woke up back in my other life? Was that possible? I surely didn't know. What I was dealing with here was way beyond my limited range of knowledge. My very existence back in 1982 was something I'd thought impossible but here I was. Somehow that dying Chinese man had done this to me. How I knew not. Were there any rules? I could conceive of being only allowed one day. It seemed possible that I was only allowed one waking period back here. I was not ready to return yet.

But there was also the possibility that I was stuck here for good. I had to consider that too. In fact I considered that the most likely scenario. There were many ramifications to that possibility and I needed to think them through carefully. How much did I dare to change? How much could I change?

What would happen if someone found out about what had happened to me? There were people in the world that would do almost anything to get their hands on me if my situation became known. Governments wanting to know about the next seventeen years, business people wanting to know about stock trends. I could envision my family being held hostage to get me to do their bidding.

My initial thought had been to confide in Tracy. But I wondered if that was so wise. Tracy was after all, a teenager full of teenage stupidity as my earlier discovery graphically pointed out. I no longer thought that she could be trusted with a secret of this magnitude. But at the same time I needed to make sure that she did not get in the car with that college student on her graduation night. I had vowed to myself that I would prevent her death even if I could change nothing else on my return trip. That conviction was as strong in me as ever. Tracy would NOT die that night. One way or another I would see to it.

But that brought me back to the one night theory. If I couldn't tell her my secret, but if I was only allowed one night here, how could I make sure of her survival? I thought about that one for a while and finally I came up with something.

That left me to ponder the other questions in my mind. Suppose I was here for good. What else could I change? And how could I better myself and my family? I certainly did not want to end up right back where I was in seventeen years. I wanted to do things differently this time. But how? What could I do?

I reluctantly admitted to myself that I would lose Becky, my daughter in the process. This thought hurt me more than anything ever had before, but it was simply inevitable. Becky had been a very pleasant side effect of a brutal mistake that I'd made in my previous life. I simply could not, no matter how much I loved my daughter, repeat that mistake. I couldn't. I told myself that I wasn't killing her. She would just never exist in the first place. My mind was able to draw a distinction between those two things; a shaky one, but a distinction.

I lay there for more than two hours, until my mother called me down for dinner. I had a rough plan of sorts in mind by then. It was a plan that would be extensively modified and revised, but it was a plan. I felt better just having one.

Dinner was my mom's tacos. They were fried in grease and would be politically incorrect by today's standards. Each one had to have at least a hundred grams of fat. But God they were delicious. I chowed down five of them, shoveling in mounds of rice and beans as accompaniment and then washing the mess down with two Coke's from the refrigerator. The only thing that would have made them better would have been a pitcher of margaritas but I figured mom probably wouldn't whip up a batch for me.

She seemed gratified to see me eat so much. It probably put her worries about drugs aside for the moment. I remembered that I was living in the midst of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" era and that my mom had had her drug worries fueled by the little pamphlets that this era produced. The pamphlets always had "warning signs" that your kids were on drugs printed in them. I remembered how bizarre those so called warning signs had seemed to me even on my first trip through fifteen. A big one had been "loss of appetite". What was up with that? Maybe if you'd moved all the way through marijuana and had worked your way to a two hundred-dollar a day cocaine habit you would have a loss of appetite. But most teenagers simply smoked pot. Loss of appetite was most definitely not a symptom of marijuana use. They should have put "greatly increased appetite" instead. They should have put in "excessive use of Visine" as well.

I also remembered that the pamphlets had so called terminology for drugs. The theory was that parents would overhear their kids using these terms and would therefore know they were on drugs. Right, as if the kids would talk about drugs in front of their parents. I remembered having big laughs with my friends as we read these pamphlets, usually while we were stoned. Those that had used drugs in the previous generation had obviously transcribed the terminology. They said that common terms for marijuana were: Tea, Mary Jane, leaf, wonder green, and other such nonsense. None of the terms were current. In my age they called it pot, buds, herb, smoke, KGB, greenbud, and weed; none of which were listed in Nancy's pamphlets. I could imagine the laughter that would have resulted in the eighties if a kid had asked someone if they had any Mary Jane or tea for sale. I was forced to wonder if there had ever been a case of some kid being drawn off the path of drug abuse as a result of those "informational" pamphlets.

Dinner was consumed and another awkward moment occurred when Mom asked me a question just as we were about to start clearing the dishes from the table.

"Billy," She said, "Did you clean Anita Browling's windows yesterday like you told her you would?"

I looked up at her, searching my memory banks again. I came up with who Anita Browling was easily enough. She was a divorced neighbor in her late twenties that lived two houses over. She'd split with her husband sometime around the time I was twelve or so and I remembered Dad giving vague explanations about how Mr. Browling had 'found someone else' and left her (for some reason my parents had assumed that Tracy and I would be upset by their DIVORCE). My parents had, for whatever reason, kind of adopted Anita after her husband left her. She used to come over for dinner once a week. She had two small children that Tracy was volunteered to baby-sit frequently. I was always volunteered to mow her lawn for her since she professed not to know how to run a mower, or to do other small tasks such as cleaning her windows. Both of us were forbidden to take any money from her for our services, a point of resentment that had drawn my sister and I together a little in our teens.

The image in my mind of her was of a slightly chunky woman with large breasts. She was a brunette with short hair and long legs. She would meet another man at about the time of my high school graduation. About the time I moved away from home she would marry him and disappear from Mom and Dad's lives. I remembered thinking back then that I wouldn't mind doing her. But she wasn't so attractive that you could admit to your peers that you would do her, if you can dig that. I also remembered how she used to watch as I mowed the lawn, always dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. I remembered catching glimpses of her bra-clad tits when she'd bent over to pull a weed or something. My adult mind, which hadn't thought of her in years, suddenly realized that she'd been displaying herself for me. Had she been hoping for a little action from a teenaged boy?

Before I could follow that train of thought too far I came back to the original question. Had I cleaned her windows yesterday? I had no freaking idea if I had or hadn't. My mother was looking at me, awaiting a response.

"Uh… " I started, trying to think this through. Had I cleaned her windows?

"Bill?" Mom said, deepening her voice. "I told you the other day they were getting really dirty after the windstorm we had. You TOLD me you'd do it before it snowed again. "

"Uh," That gave me a little more information. I was a horrible procrastinator as a teen. Chances are I hadn't done it the first time I'd been asked. "Uh, no Mom. " I finally spat out. "Sorry. I forgot. "

"You forgot?" She asked.

"Sorry. " I squeaked.

"Billy, that is just so typical of you… " She began. Her lecture went on for nearly two minutes. I gave her uh huhs, and okays in all the right places, amazed that I still had the ability to do that after all these years. I sincerely promised that my first stop after school would be Anita Browling's house. Mom seemed satisfied. I found myself hoping that Anita would be home. I knew something that the other Billy didn't.

After dinner I went up to my room. I opened my backpack and pulled out my Algebra book. I found some blank paper and a pencil and then opened the book to the first chapter. I began studying.

Tracy had gone out somewhere after dinner and I heard her return about 8:30.

I continued to study as I heard her go to her room and slam the door. Downstairs the television was on as Mom and Dad watched whatever sitcom was on in the eighties. I could hear their sporadic laughter drifting up from time to time as well as muffled comments that I couldn't understand but were probably commentary on how TV wasn't the same as it had been a few years ago. I had managed to get a basic concept of the Algebra in the past few hours, working my way to the test questions of Chapter 2. The homework that had been assigned I'd finally figured out and completed.

With a headache behind my eyes I closed up my book and stowed it in my backpack. I still had assignments to complete in my other classes but I decided to catch them up tomorrow. I was studied out.

I changed into a pair of sweat pants from my dresser, wondrous at the fact that I was donning a piece of clothing that would not have even come above my thighs the day before my legs had\would get so much bigger. I put on the longest, baggiest T-shirt I could find and then walked downstairs, passing the living room without even drawing a glance from my parents. A moment of searching led me to a bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen cupboard. I grabbed three of them and then opened the refrigerator. I pulled out one of my father's bottles of Budweiser and stuffed it down the front of my sweats. The coolness chilled my skin but I ignored it. The T-shirt covered the large bulge the bottle made in my crotch. I dashed back upstairs and went to the door of Tracy's room.

Music was playing from inside. Rick Springfield this time. Jessie's Girl was the cut. Good old Rick. The former soap opera star turned singer who went after the easiest market to impress; teenaged girls, leading the way for Bon Jovi and other such musical travesties. Within two years, I was gratified to remember, he would fade into a land that was even beyond obscurity. The world would be better off for it I knew. I knocked on Tracy's door.

"What?" Came a voice from the other side.

Instead of answering I knocked again, not wanting to draw the attention of our parents.

The music turned down and the door creaked open about six inches, enough to allow me to see Tracy's impatient face. She was dressed in a long T-shirt that showed off her legs. Her auburn hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders. For the first time I marveled that my sister was very attractive. No wonder the college student had gone after her.

"What?" She hissed disgustedly at me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute. " I told her. "Can I come in?"

"About what?" She asked. "About that crap you were spouting today in school?"

"Yeah. " I nodded, seeing in her face that she was fearful about talking on that subject. "About that. "

She threw the door open. "Come in. " She said finally.

Her room was a pretty neat for a teenager. The bed was made, her books were all stowed in their proper places. Her dresser was cleaned off; all of her makeup in a little tray. The only clutter was the Rick Springfield album cover, which sat next to her stereo and her rumpled clothes that she'd recently removed. She shut the door behind me as I entered.

"Can I sit down?" I asked her as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She waved me impatiently to the chair next to her dresser. The same chair she'd been combing her hair at this morning. I pulled it out and planted myself in it. I pulled the beer out of my pants and set it on the desk. With an expert spin of the cap, it was opened. The three Tylenol went into my mouth and were washed down by the glorious taste of the cold beer. I sighed at the first swallow and quickly took another. Tracy watched all this without speaking, without even asking why I had one of Dad's beers.

"Say your piece and get out. " She told me. "I wanna listen to the rest of this album. "

For the second time that day I interrupted her music by unplugging the stereo. Rick managed "I wishh IIIII haaaaaaaad JJ… " And then stopped, his voice deepening to silence.

"You dick!" She proclaimed. "Why did you… "

"Tracy listen to me for a minute. " I interrupted. "I know you're expected to act a certain way in the presence of your younger brother. You're expected to treat me with contempt in order to show how superior you are. I concede your superiority, okay?"

"What?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Your friends are nowhere around and I won't tell them that you actually allowed me in your room, allowed me to shut off your precious Rick Springfield album. You can go back to treating me like shit as soon as I leave here but for now I need you to listen very carefully to me and to remember what I'm about to tell you. If you could drop the snotty attitude for a few minutes I'd appreciate it greatly. "

She stared. Finally she asked, "What's happened to you Bill? You've been acting strange all day. It's like you're a different person. "

"Never mind that. " I told her. "Tracy, do you remember when we were little kids?"

"Yes. " She answered carefully.

"We were very close back then. We were playmates. We used to conspire together. You used to call me 'little brother' and I used to call you 'big sister', do you remember?"

"No. " She shook her head, but casting her eyes aside in a way that told me she was lying.

"Well you did. " I told her. "We were best friends until about the time you started junior high school. From then on I was the object of your scorn. I understand that Tracy, I really do. You discovered boys, you discovered peer pressure. You grew out of me. It's a natural thing. And I developed interests of my own too. But the fact is, we're still brother and sister and some day we'll be close again. Can you understand that?"

She seemed about to say something snotty once more. Something like, 'as far as I'm concerned you'll be a piece of shit until you die'. But she paused at the last second and her eyes softened. "Yes Billy. " She answered. "I guess that some day we will be. "

A small triumph but a triumph in any case. "Good. " I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Now here's a harder one. Despite our fighting with each other do you realize that we actually love each other as brother and sister?"

She opened her mouth. This time I was sure she going to say something foul.

"Again," I said before she could. "No one else is here in the room and I'll never tell anyone what you say. We don't have to get into any deep philosophical discussions. I just want an acknowledgement that, as brother and sister, we love each other. We may not always LIKE each other, but we love each other. Right?"

She licked her lips nervously. "I suppose. " She finally allowed.

"Okay. " I nodded, taking another drink of my beer. "On that note I want you to listen to me very carefully for a minute. I'm going to tell you something very important. The most important thing you will ever hear in your life. Please don't ask me to explain. I can't do that right now. You probably will think I'm nuts but that doesn't matter as long as you REMEMBER what I'm about to say. Remember it well. "

"Okay. " She said carefully.

I took a deep breath, downing another large drink of beer. I passed the bottle to Tracy and she looked at it for a second and then took a swig. I took faith in the fact that she didn't pause to wipe off my saliva first.

"Now hopefully I'll be able to explain this thing further to you before the time comes. " I said. "But there's a chance I won't. There's a chance I'll be the same old Billy you're used to tomorrow. If that is the case I want you to remember this. "

"Billy, what are you… "

"Shhh. " I hushed her. "On the night you graduate from high school you will tell Mom and Dad that you are going to a party at Cindy's house. That will be a lie. What you will be doing instead will be going to a frat party at the university. "

"Billy, what?" She cried, her flesh breaking out in goose bumps.

"Listen. " I admonished. "I can't explain further right now. I don't even know what the best way of telling you this is. But you have to listen to me. A guy named David Mitchell will want to take you to this frat party. He will be driving a 77 Camero. He will be a football player at the college and very good looking. Now you will meet him about a month before graduation but it's graduation night you need to worry about. Do not, under any circumstances, get in that car with him that night. No matter what you have to do, no matter what lies you have to tell, do not do it. Your life depends upon this Tracy. Don't do it no matter what. "

"Billy, you're kinda scaring me. " She said.

"Good. " I answered. "That's my intent. Lisa Sanchez will be part of the group that gets in that car. Her boyfriend will be another college student named Rick Manchester. "

"Lisa Sanchez?" Tracy asked. "She's a cheerleader. I don't hang out with her. "

"You will. " I told her. "I'm giving you the names of all the people in the car so that you'll know when the time comes, that my information is accurate. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep you out of there. If you can keep Lisa out of there too, so much the better, but the important thing is that YOU do not get in that car on that night. "

I was gratified to see that she was scared shitless by what I was saying. Good. I figured she would obey me even a year and half later when all of the circumstances that I described came together. At least I hoped she would.

"What happens if I get in the car?" She asked me.

"Dave will be drunk that night. " I said. "He will drive the car into the Spokane River from the levee road near the falls and you and Lisa will drown before you can get out. " I took a deep breath, tears forming in my eyes as I remembered my mother coming to my bedroom at four o'clock in the morning in tears, waking me up to tell me that there'd been a horrible accident. Please, let me be successful here. There was more to the story of course. Dave would be charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. His sentence would be suspended and he would go on to play football in college, prompting my parents to become victim's rights activists; a pursuit they'd still been active in at the time of my recycling.

Tracy was looking pale as she tried to digest what I was telling her. "Bill, how can you know this? Where did you get this information? Did you have a psychic flash or something?"

"I can't tell you now. " I told her. "It's too early. I'll tell you later if I can. "

"But… "

"Tracy, just remember. " I said. "Just remember and don't get in that car that night. "

"I won't. " She promised.

I smiled and nodded. If I was only here for one day then I'd done the best I could do. If I woke up tomorrow back in 1999 then Tracy would probably still be alive. That would be the best purpose of the gift I'd been given.

Although getting laid had been nice too.

I made sure my alarm clock was set for the proper time and turned it on. I then lay down and turned out the lights. For the longest time I still couldn't sleep, fearful of what I'd find upon awakening. But at last my mind was able to shut down and I drifted off.

CLICK. "So if you're tired of the saaaaame old story. Ohhhhh, turn some pages. I'll be here when you are ready, to roll with the changes…" Came the voice of Kevin Cronin from my clock radio the next morning. REO Speedwagon. Another blast from the past. A song I hadn't heard in years. My eyes opened and I saw the now familiar confines of my teenaged bedroom. I was still here! I felt like shouting with joy. Still here!

Tracy was looking someone haggard as she combed her hair at her desk. Her face was pale and her eyes had bags beneath them. She looked up at me as I headed to the shower.

"Morning Trace. " I told her.

"Morning. " She said slowly, her eyes trying to read my face.

"Sleep well?" I asked her.

"No. " She told me. "I was awake most of the night. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares. "

I nodded. "I'm sorry about that. " I said. "They'll pass. Just remember what I said. "

"I will. " She told me. "I don't think I could ever forget it. "

"Good. " I muttered, walking to the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

Dad, as usual had the newspaper before him at the breakfast table. As I slurped down my cereal I asked him if I could see the business section.

"The business section?" He asked, raising his brow again.

"Yeah. " I told him. "I'm just curious about something. "

He shrugged and handed it over, going back to his perusal of the front page while I opened my section to the stock market report. I scanned through the list of publicly traded stocks for a few minutes, happening across several that seemed good prospects but, most importantly, not seeing the one that would be an absolute killer investment. I smiled to myself. So it wasn't on the stock market yet. Good.

"Find what you were looking for?" Dad asked as I sat the section back down in his pile.

"I think so. " I told him. "Have you ever considered investing in the stock market?"

He lowered his paper and looked at me, his eyes taking in my face, finally concluding that I wasn't joking. "Not really. " He answered. "I have my pension plan from the school district. The stock market seems like kind of a gamble. "

"In a way it is. " I agreed. "But if you could pick the right stocks and invest heavily in them, you could really make some money, couldn't you?"

"Ahh," He said. "But that's the trick. You have to pick the right stocks. If you pick the wrong ones, your money is down the toilet. It would take either someone with a lot more market savvy than I have or a genuine psychic to make a killing in the market. "

"A genuine psychic huh?" I smiled. Tracy, who had been silent during this exchange, gave me a sharp look.

"But as far as I know, such creatures are rare. " Dad said.

"I suppose. " I said. "But if someone DID have knowledge about which stocks were going to go sky-high in the future, that someone COULD make quite a bit of money. Couldn't they?"

"Well sure. " Dad answered. "It's a nice fantasy. Suppose you knew that say, oh, AT amp;T was going to go through the roof next year. If you knew that, you could invest every penny you had in it. When it skyrocketed, you could sell it off at enormous profit. But unfortunately, we don't know that information, do we?"

"I guess not. " I said, my mind whirring a mile a minute. "But it IS a nice fantasy. "

"So where were you yesterday dude?" Mike asked me as we walked to school that morning. The snow on the ground was almost completely melted and the sun was high in the sky. It was still a little cold but on the whole it was a beautiful Eastern Washington late winter day.

"Oh I met up with Raisin and Lonnie. " I said absently. "We went over to Raisin's house and smoked some buds. "

"Yeah?" He asked, obviously hurt that he hadn't been there.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Debbie was there too. I got to make out with her a little. "

"With Debbie?" He asked. "The cock-tease?"

"That's her. " I affirmed. "She cock-teased me damn near to death. "

He asked for details and I provided him with the story. I knew that would serve to reinforce the story that Lonnie and Raisin would pass around and therefore protect Debbie's reputation.

When I was finished he said, "It's too bad you didn't get to fuck her. " He put on a sophisticated look. "I fucked her once you know. "

"Oh really?" I asked, as if I believed him.

"Yep. At a party at Nick Costigan's one night. I had some weed and she wanted some. I told her she wasn't getting any until she gave up the puss. "

He then went on to describe his mythical session with her. Of course he'd made her come six or seven times until she'd begged him for more. He'd then fucked her up the ass, making her come an additional three or four times before he finally 'shot my wad' in her ass. After that she'd always wanted a repeat performance but he'd always turned her down. She was nice in a pinch he told me.

"How come you never told me about this BEFORE?" I asked, unable to help myself.

He blanched for a minute. I'd just asked a forbidden question. When you were told a pussy story you weren't supposed to question its validity. They might not listen to YOUR pussy stories if you did that.

"She asked me not to tell anyone. " He answered. "She didn't want anyone knowing she fucked. "

"I see. " I nodded. "So why did you tell me just now?"

"Well," He stammered. "It's been a while and I know you won't tell anyone. "

"Ahhh. " I nodded. "I get it. "

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Finally I asked, "Mike, do you ever think about what you're gonna do AFTER high school?"

"What?"

"After high school?" I repeated. "It's gonna end some day you know. What are you gonna do with your life?"

"You sound like a fuckin' school counselor. " He informed me, almost angrily.

"High school ain't ever gonna end man. It's a fuckin' prison. "

"In a way. " I allowed. "But some day you'll be freed from it. You ever think about what comes next?"

"No. " He said, his tone telling me to drop the subject. "I don't. "

Mr. Achmed was surprised to see me hand in homework to him that morning. He was even more surprised to find it was correct. He expressed his pleasure with my work and made a point of calling on me during class. Most of the time I managed to come up with the right answers to his questions. Instead of making me happy however, it kind of pissed me off.

Now that I was supplying the right answers to his questions he was paying attention to me. But before, when I was flunking all of his tests and getting an F or a D in his class, I was simply ignored. The same was true for my other teachers. Now I'm not a screaming liberal that likes to blame everyone but the person responsible, but there is a certain amount of responsibility instilled in a teacher isn't there? Why hadn't I been helped along before this? Why had I been allowed to simply sit in class and flunk without even a single pulling aside by a teacher? Cynicism was the answer of course.

It was the answer, but it wasn't an excuse. I had been a paramedic and, except for cops, you would be hard pressed to find a more cynical group of people. I had been called out for so much bullshit in the course of my career that I assumed everyone was full of shit until proven otherwise. People called us for hangnails, for colds, for ear infections that their kids had. And they reported these things as finger amputations, difficulty breathing, and head injuries. But never had I acted upon this cynicism. If someone said they were having chest pain, then they were having chest pain and I treated it appropriately even if they were twenty-five year olds only trying to get out of work for the day. If someone said they were short of breath than they were short of breath, even if they were speaking in complete paragraphs. If you acted on your cynicism you would be right probably ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But that one time you were wrong would bite you in the ass hard.

My teachers obviously assumed that trying to reach a disinterested student was a waste of time. Most of the time it probably would have been. But sometimes it wouldn't have been. Shouldn't they have been extending at least a little effort when someone like me simply sat in their classrooms and paid no attention? How many people that might have been turned around had just been allowed to sink into the abyss because the teachers assumed they were lost causes and directed their full attention to those that showed an interest in their subjects?

I was surprised by how strongly I felt about this subject and was quite pissed off by the time I left Algebra and headed for American History. My feelings were reinforced when I explained to the teacher that I didn't have my homework that day but that I would turn it in tomorrow.

"Fine Billy. " She said absently, moving onto the next student, obviously not believing that I was going to turn in anything the next day. Granted I did not make a habit of turning in the homework but had she ever talked to me about this? No. Had she ever called my parents and talked to them about it? No. To her I was a lost cause, unworthy of her attention. She would expend no efforts towards me unless I showed HER that I was interested in her subject. Why wasn't she trying to GET me interested in her subject? Why was she simply letting me sit there every day? What system was encouraging this?

Her lecture that day was on the role of Southern abolitionists in the beginnings of the drive towards the Civil War. She portrayed them as saintly people, dedicated to the cause of abolishing the evil institution of slavery. She implied to the class that they were right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in American History. About halfway through I could take no more. I raised my hand.

She ignored it for quite some time but finally was forced to call on me.

"Yes Billy?" She said. "Do you have a question?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I'm just curious about something. You just told us that the abolitionists used to use protests to influence those southern slaveholders. Exactly what kind of protests are you talking about?"

She gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said, "Well, they used a variety of methods. Boycotts of services and that sort of thing. "

"That sort of thing?" I said. "Isn't it true that they used to attack slave holders and their families in the middle of the night? Burning down their houses and hacking the men and even the women and children to death?"

She nearly choked but she composed herself quickly. "Well, there were some cases of the more fanatical elements doing things like that of course. But that was rare. Usually they used the other measures I talked about. You have to understand that these people felt very strongly about anti-slavery. About it's wrongness. It's only natural that some of them went off the deep end as it were. "

"Really?" I pressed further. "I actually read that grotesque violence was more the rule than the exception. I guess I must have read wrong. But to answer your other point about them feeling that it was wrong. Don't you think that these abolitionists were motivated more by economic factors than religious or moralistic ones?"

She was now speechless.

"I mean think about it. Who were the southern abolitionists? Poor whites for the most part, right?"

"Well yes," She nodded, "But… "

"Poor whites without jobs. How could they compete with slave labor? They couldn't. Isn't it true they also used to kill the slaves when they would attack a plantation? Hardly sounds like people that are just interested in freeing the slaves now, does it?"

"Well again Billy," She said firmly. "What you are talking about was the exception, not the rule. There were SOME incidents as you described but usually they used economic measures like boycotts to achieve their ends. And many of them were imprisoned or killed by the corrupt southern system for their efforts. "

"Well of course they were. " I snorted. "They were destroying valuable property and threatening a near-perfect economic system. The plantation owners ran the law after all. I imagine they came down rather hard on them when they caught them. "

She was actually flustered by what I'd said. "Well that's a very interesting point of view Billy. " She told me. "But I think we've discussed it enough now. If you don't mind, I'll get back to the lecture now. "

"Sure. " I smiled.

"Okay," She said, "Now back in 1858 there was a group called… "

Though I had no homework for Mrs. Crookshank either, she did not ignore me in class as she usually did. She remembered my dissertation on the blood cell the previous day and began probing at me to see if it was simply a well-studied joke on my part or not. Her lecture was on the major arteries of the body and she fired her first shot less than two minutes into it.

"Now can anyone tell me the name of the arteries that feed the kidneys?" She asked and then, without waiting for anyone to put up his or her hand, turned to me. "Billy, maybe you can tell us?"

She thought she had me I'm sure. I'd been doing what I usually did in her class; watching her alluring form move back and forth and not looking as if I was paying the least bit of attention to her words.

"Mesenteric. " I said in a bored voice, causing her to give me THE LOOK.

"Yes. " She nodded, obviously taken aback a bit, and then went on.

She called on me multiple other times during the lecture, making the questions harder and harder. We covered the carotids, the circle of Willis, and all of the coronary arteries. Some of the questions I knew were not even part of her lecture, were not even part of high school curriculum. I came up with the answers every time, spouting them out in a monotone voice with an expressionless face. It quickly became clear to the entire class that some sort of battle was going on between Mrs. Crookshank and I. Finally, bored, I conceded the battle, telling her I did not know the answer to a question she asked. The look on her face was of weak triumph and more than a little relief.

She wrapped up her lecture just before the bell rang and assigned us our homework for the next day. As the class filed out she called, "Billy?"

I turned to her questioningly.

"Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?"

"Sure. " I said, walking over.

Her eyes looked me up and down as I stood before her desk. "You seem to have quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy and physiology. " She almost accused.

I shrugged. "I like to read. " I said.

"Really?" She said. "What books have you read?"

"Oh the usual. " I told her. "Gray's Anatomy, A Physician's Guide to A amp;P, stuff like that. "

"You've read them?" She found this hard to believe.

"Yep. " I nodded. "Fascinating reading. I've even read your textbook a little. It's not bad but it oversimplifies things a little, wouldn't you say?"

She swallowed deeply, took a deep breathe, and then said, "Billy, I majored in Biology in college and I have an extensive background in A amp;P. I asked you questions today that are well beyond high school level knowledge and you answered every one correctly except one. "

"I only pretended I didn't know that one. " I told her. "I felt you were, shall we say, singling me out, and I wanted you to stop. " I smiled cynically. "Kind of unprofessional for a teacher wouldn't you say?"

She dismissed the subject of her professionalism, or lack thereof, with a shake of her head. "I see. So you're telling me that you've known the answers to my questions all of this time, but that you haven't answered any of them, either in class or on your tests or in your homework until yesterday?"

I shrugged again. "What can I say?"

"What can you say?" She asked, getting a little angry now. "This makes no sense. Why would you do such a thing?"

"Well Mrs. Crookshank," I told her. "I'm what's known as a classic underachiever. That means I have above average intelligence and good reasoning ability but that I am bored to death by high school because the curriculum is so scaled-down that the work is not challenging to me. This sets up a vicious cycle in which I stop listening and doing the work and therefore get far behind and fail many classes. It's mostly my fault of course, but the system itself is also partially to blame since it sets such absurdly low standards in the first place in an attempt to pad the statistics. I mean, when regional test scores are low, what do you people in the education business do? Do you beef up the learning or reevaluate your teaching methods? No. What you do is scale down the curriculum and lower the standards for passing, therefore making it easier for those "struggling" students to pass, but boring the crap out of those of us who would probably benefit from harder, more challenging classes. What then happens is that many of what could potentially be your best students simply don't give a damn while many of the less intelligent and less worthy ones have their good grades spoon fed to them by teaching them with Dick and Jane methods. "

She gaped at me. I knew I'd hit upon the very subject that line teachers like her had bitched about for years to their administration. In a few years, after several lawsuits about people graduating at a functionally illiterate level while promising students were actually dropping out, education reform would hit the State of Washington like a sledgehammer, improving things remarkably. I almost wished I could tell her that. She would still be teaching when it occurred. But I didn't.

"I read psychology too. " I told her instead, heading out the door.

I ran into Debbie at lunch. She giggled over to me and smiled. I greeted her, looking her up and down, remembering what her young body had felt like naked beneath mine.

"Word has it I'm the biggest cock-tease in the school. " She told me.

"Well what do you know about that?" I smiled. "Better than being the biggest slut, isn't it?"

She nodded, giggling again. "All the girls are asking me why I made out with you. "

"Yeah?" I grinned. "What you tell 'em?"

"That you were a totally awesome kisser. The best. "

"Thanks. " I said gratefully, wondering how long it would be until one of the other stoner girls decided to try for herself. "How are you today?"

She smiled shyly. "I could use another 'kiss' myself. " She said, blushing.

I chuckled. "I got something to do after school today, but why don't you give me your phone number? Maybe I'll give you a call on Saturday. "

She handed a piece of paper over to me. She'd already taken the time to write her number down. "Call me ANYTIME. " She said, walking away.

Period four, which I hadn't gone to yesterday, was Driver's Education. I was gratified to see that at least they took this subject very seriously. The information, though very familiar to me, was not the least bit scaled down. Period five was PE. It was spent learning the finer points of basketball. And though I enjoyed seeing all of the high school girls jumping around in their school sweats and T-shirts, I was no better at sports than I had ever been. I did enough to get by and let the rest ride.

As I dressed in the locker room some of Richie Fairview's cronies were in there. Usually they were the terror of the locker room. They eyed me nervously and came nowhere near me. When they started to approach some poor freshman slob, probably intending to make him cry just for the fun of it, I gave them a glare and they immediately found something else to do. I smiled to myself. Maybe I couldn't change the world, but I was doing a little bit at least.

Period six, the final period of the day was English. The subject was paragraph writing. I listened blandly and noted down my homework. I kept my mouth shut. When the bell rang I shouldered my backpack, found Mike, and headed for home.

Shortly after arriving home I gathered up a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Tracy had been lying on the couch flipping through a rock music magazine and had only grunted a reply to my greeting when I'd come in the house. However when she saw me heading out the door with the cleaning supplies she favored me with a pitying look.

"Going to clean Anita's windows?" She asked me.

I nodded, putting on a look of resigned disgust. "Yep. You know how it is. "

"Yeah," She nodded. "I know how it is. I gotta watch her little brats on Saturday night. " She shook her head in disgust. "Saturday fucking night! Can you believe the nerve of Mom and Dad? Volunteering me for that shit on Saturday night. And do you know why she needs a babysitter that night?"

"Why?" I asked, pausing in the doorway.

"Because she's going to a party. A party! Well what the hell do they think I was gonna do? I'm tired of them springing this crap on me at the last minute. I have a life too. "

I smiled. "Yes you do. " I told her. "Let me talk to her. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing anything Saturday, maybe she'll let me baby-sit instead. "

"You?" Tracy asked with horror. "You can't baby-sit. "

"Why not?" I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.

"Because you're a boy!"

"So? What's that got to do with anything? Why do girls automatically make good babysitters while boys are untrustworthy?"

"Well," She tried to come up with something and failed. "Just because. Boys aren't as responsible as girls are. "

"Oh we're not, are we? Why is that?"

"Because," She said, "If a boy was left alone in a house he'd do all kinds of things. "

I started laughing.

"What?" She asked.

"When you were babysitting her kids," I asked, "Did you ever drink her booze?"

"No. " Tracy said indignantly.

"Oh come on Tracy. " I chided.

"Well maybe once or twice. " She admitted.

"And did you ever have your boyfriend over to her house?"

"Well, yes. "

"And did you ever smoke weed over there and make out on the couch? Or maybe use her bedroom for a little… "

"All right!" She yelled, laughing. "You made your point. At least to me anyway. But Mom and Dad and Anita are never going to buy it. "

"I'm just offering. " I told her. "I'll float the idea by Anita while I'm over there. And Mom and Dad will go along if Anita does. Don't worry, I'm good at talking people into things. And if it doesn't work, you're no worse off are you?"

"I guess not. " She answered, her demeanor brightening. "Well thanks Bill. I hope you can talk her into it. " She chuckled. "It's kinda hard to picture you babysitting though. "

"Kids love me. " I assured her, "And I love them. I'll be fine. " I headed for the door and then paused, "By the way, what are her kids' names anyway?"

Anita Browling's house was a single story with a small lawn and small back yard. Like all the houses in the subdivision, it had been built about 1970 or so, during a major growth spurt for the Spokane area. Like many of the other houses on the block, the paint was peeling off due to the extremes of the weather. I knew that at some point in the near future I would be volunteered to paint the house for her. Was that this coming summer? I figured it would be. I knew, looking at the paint that it hadn't been done yet and I also knew that I'd done it before Tracy's death. It had\would take me nearly two weeks in the hot sun to complete.

Anita was home when I knocked. I remembered that she worked early in the morning, Tracy often had to get up at 5:00 AM to go baby-sit on vacation days, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was she did. She was wearing a pair of dark slacks that hid the form of her slightly large hips and a button-up blouse that showed off her large breasts nicely. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. She smiled warmly as she saw me standing there with my cleaning supplies in hand.

"Billy. " She greeted, throwing open the door and allowing me entry. "Did you come to do the windows today? You're such a sweetie. "

"No problem. " I said, smiling back. "I'll have 'em squeaky clean in no time. "

Her two children (Ryan and Jennifer, Ryan and Jennifer, my mind repeated to me), were coloring in books at her coffee table. They both looked up at me for a moment and then went back to what they were doing. The living room was a little cluttered with toys and so forth but remarkably neat for a woman with two children. The television was turned off and the stereo was turned on. Barbara Striesand was singing about love, how it was ageless and evergreen, whatever the hell that meant.

"I really appreciate you doing this for me Billy," Anita was saying. "They get so dirty during the winter and I have such a hard time climbing on the ladder you know. "

"I'm happy to do it. " I assured her, "Where should I start?"

I got the ladder out of her garage and began doing the outsides first, moving from one to the other, scraping and wiping off the accumulation of dirt, grime, road salt, and all of the other shit that floats around in our air or is blown forcefully through it during the winter. Anita stayed in the house for this portion although I caught glimpses of her through the windows when she happened to be in a room that I was cleaning. I watched her whenever I saw her, checking out her form and imagining the possibilities. Though she was slightly chunky, there was nothing in the world wrong with that. Her skin looked soft, her face pretty, and she had beautiful breasts that bounced nicely when she walked. Sure, a teenager wouldn't admit he desired her, such were the commandments of peer pressure, but an adult would have no problem with her whatsoever. And I was most definitely an adult.

She waved at me whenever she happened to catch me looking in at her, or smiled at the very least, but there was no overt flirtation. I began to wonder if my mind was remembering things correctly. Was I confusing my previous masturbation fantasies with reality?

When I went in the house to do the inside of the windows it was only a minute or two before I got my first clue. I was up on the stepladder doing the living room window and she came up to offer me a soda to drink. As she handed it to me I was looking down at her. She had undone the top button of her blouse, allowing me to look straight down the front of it. I could see the mass of her white breasts contained in a flimsy, lacy bra. I was certain that the top button had not been undone earlier and I was also certain, as a fifteen year old would NOT have been, that she was well aware of the view she was giving me. She was showing herself to me. But for what purpose?

"Thank you. " I smiled, taking the soda and swigging out of it. I then handed it back to her. "Could you set it over there for me?" I asked, pointing at a coffee table next to the ladder.

"Sure," She replied, taking it from my hand. When she bent over to set it down gravity pulled her breasts away from her body, as well as pulling the blouse away from her tits. This allowed me a fine view indeed. She caught me looking as she stood back up and I turned my head away, as a teenager would do. There was no sense tipping my hand, was there?

As I moved from window to window I grew more and more certain that she was deliberately showing herself to me. Why was she doing this? I wondered. Was she just teasing a teenager? Or did she desire something more? I didn't know. Though my memories of her little shows were correct I also remembered that she had never made any attempt to actually seduce me. What should I do next? How could I find out safely?

As I cleaned I also chatted and talked to her two kids, remembering my promise to Tracy. Jennifer was four and Ryan was six. I truly do love children and they were cute ones. I applied all of the skills I'd picked up in my thirty-two years charming them. The responded to me well, obviously impressing Anita with my rapport.

"Your kids are really cute. " I told her at one point, and she beamed at me.

But the kids also prevented me from seeing how far she was willing to go with her little game. She was an attentive and responsible mother. I knew instinctively that she would do nothing while they were awake. That thought led to a plan.

"What time do you and Jenny have to go to bed?" I asked Ryan playfully.

He pouted. "Eight o'clock on school nights. " He said. "And we're not even tired then!"

"That's a bummer. " I told him, marking the time in my head. "Your mommy's a real meanie, isn't she?"

"Yeah!" They agreed together, giggling and making their mommy giggle too.

While I cleaned her bedroom windows she was folding her laundry on the bed and chatting with me about this and that. She asked about school and I had to search my mind for answers since I'd only spent two days in the place. As far as I know I said nothing inappropriate. When I finished the window I stepped down from the ladder and spied the doorway that led to the master bathroom. That would be HER bathroom.

"Do you mind if I use your restroom?" I said, nodding towards the door.

"Sure. " She said, waving me in that direction.

I went inside and closed the door. After emptying my bladder into her toilet I buttoned up my pants prior to flushing. When my pants were secure I pushed the handle and used the noise of the toilet to cover the sound of me opening up her medicine cabinet. I took a look inside, quickly flitting my eyes over the shelves full of Tylenol, old antibiotics, old codeine, and various over the counter remedies. I spotted what I was looking for on the bottom shelf. A square plastic case with little white pills and occasional rows of pink ones, which were sugar pills I knew, imbedded in it. Each of the pills was in a spot marked with the day of the week. I picked it up for a second, seeing both that she was current and that she was not due for her period for more than a week. I smiled. I would have had to come up with another plan if she had not been on some sort of birth control. And being able to predict her period was a bonus I hadn't counted on.

When I emerged from the bathroom she was putting her clothes in the dresser.

"Anita?" I asked her as I folded up the ladder.

"Yes. " She asked, turning towards me.

"You have Tracy coming over to baby-sit on Saturday, don't you?"

She creased her brow a little. "Yes," She nodded. "Your mother said she would. "

"Well," I said, carefully, "The fact is that Tracy had plans for that night and my mom kinda ruined them by volunteering her to baby-sit. "

Anita's face immediately turned to distress. "Oh my goodness. " She said. "I had no idea that Tracy had plans. If I'd of known that I never would have asked your mother. " She shook her head. "Your mother told me that she'd be happy to baby-sit. "

"Yeah," I agreed, "Mom's like that sometimes. "

"Well I'll just cancel my plans. " She announced. "I don't want to make Tracy miss her party. Especially after all she's done for me in the past. And you kids never accept any money for what you do. "

"Well, you don't have to cancel your plans. " I told her. "I talked to Tracy about it and I don't have anything to do on Saturday. I thought maybe I could take her place. That way both of you could go to your parties. "

"You?" She said doubtfully.

"Why not?" I said. "I like your kids a lot, and they like me. I can take care of them all right. We'll have fun. "

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced her. Shortly after that I went home. But I wouldn't be home for long.

When I walked in the door Mom and Dad were both home. Mom was cooking up something in the kitchen. It smelled like steak. Dad was watching the news on television. I gave him a quick hello and headed directly for mom. She would be the authority on the subject I was about to discuss.

It took ten minutes and a phone call to Anita but I secured her permission to baby-sit Anita's kids in Tracy's place. She was doubtful about the plan and I knew she would probably call every ten minutes while I was over there, but I was able to wear her down.

With a smile on my face, I headed upstairs. I paused at Tracy's room and gave a knock on the door. From behind it came the sound of Rick Springfield again. The music turned down and the door creaked open. She looked at me.

"Looks like you're gonna be partying on Saturday. " I told her.

"You convinced them?" She asked in disbelief.

"Putty in my hands. " I assured her.

"Oh thank you!" She squealed, pulling me to her and giving me a big hug. She drew back and looked at me. "You know Billy," She said. "Sometimes you're not such a little asshole after all. "

"I'll take that as a compliment Trace. " I told her, walking away.

I entered my room as happy as I'd been in a while.

After dinner I went upstairs and took a shower, cleansing my body and making sure to brush my teeth and use plenty of mouthwash. I put on the tightest pair of pants that I could find, a pair that hugged my lower body like a second skin. I put on a clean sweater and combed my hair. I checked my watch. 6:40. Almost an hour and a half to go. I pulled out my books and began studying.

At 8:30 I had completed all of my homework and stowed it neatly away in my backpack. I went to Tracy's room and knocked on the door. She opened it.

"Can I use your phone a minute Trace?" I asked.

"Sure. " She said, waving me inside.

She had been doing her homework I saw. Her Biology book and a spread of papers were scattered on her desk. She was dressed in her jeans and sweatshirt still. Her Rick Springfield album was still playing on the stereo.

Earlier I'd looked in my mom's phone book and found Mike's phone number which, of course, I did not remember. I picked up her phone and dialed it.

His mom answered and I asked for him. A moment later he came to the phone.

"Hey dude," I said, "I'm telling my parents I'm coming over to your house tonight for a while. So don't call me. "

"You got it dude. " He assured me. "What's up?"

"Oh, I'm just going out for a while. "

"Doing anything cool?" He asked, fishing for an invitation.

"Naw. " I assured him. "Just gonna fuck off a little. "

"Whatever. " He said, disappointed, sulking a little, but at least I was safe from being busted via a telephone call from him. "See ya tomorrow. "

When I hung up Tracy looked at me questioningly. "Where are you going?" She asked.

"Out. " I told her.

"Just out?"

"Just out. " I said, my tone telling her she should mind her own business. I headed downstairs.

"Mom, I'm going over to Mike's for a little bit. " I said as I passed through the living room.

"All right dear. " She said absently, her attention riveted to the television. "Be back by ten. "

"I will. " I told her.

Three minutes later I was in front of Anita's house. I could see the light was on in the living room and the faint blue glow of a television screen shining through. I found myself nervous as I contemplated what I was about to do. Was this really wise? If I had misread her I could get into a lot of trouble. I might even end up talking to a shrink or something. But my little head told me I was doing the right thing. Even at thirty-two I still listened to him probably more than I should. I walked up her driveway. After another brief, fearful pause at the front door, I knocked.

The sound of her voice came drifting through the door. "Who is it?" "It's Billy. " I said, speaking only as loud as I thought I needed to in order to be heard.

"Billy?" She said, confused. A moment later the door crept open about six inches, revealing her. She was wearing a robe I saw, pulled tight around her body. Her face was void of makeup and a towel was over her head, allowing a few damp strands to peek out.

"Hi. " I said, embarrassed, not even faking it. "I was wondering if I could uh… well, talk to you about something for a minute?" "What is it?" She asked, immediately concerned. "It's kind of personal. " I told her. "Could I uh… come in?"

"Uh… " She hesitated for a second, leading me to believe I'd made a terrible mistake. Then she said, "Sure. "She opened the door, allowing me entry. I stepped into her living room and she shut the door behind me. Her living room was now absolutely spotless. The television was on showing a news program. A half-full wineglass sat on the coffee table near the couch. A glance into the kitchen revealed a half-empty bottle of white wine. My hopes perked up. She'd been drinking. "Sit down. " She said, looking at me. "Can I get you anything to drink?" "Oh, no thank you. " I told her, heading for the couch and planting myself near where she would sit.

She came over and sat down next to me, her robe riding up a little in the process and allowing me a brief glance of her milky white thighs before she pulled the hem back down. She picked up her wineglass and had a sip before using the remote control to turn down the volume on the television.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" I asked her nervously.

"Not at all. " She said, shaking her head. "I was just watching the news before Dallas comes on. What's wrong?" "Well," I started, "It's kind of embarrassing you know, but… " "Billy, what is it?" "Well," I continued, "You've been a good friend to me and I feel like I can, you know, trust you. " "Of course you can trust me. " She said. "But you're also friends with my mother. " I said. "I really wouldn't want to have her find out about what I have to ask. " "If you don't want me to tell her, I won't tell her. " Anita assured me. "Think of me as a doctor. "I paused for a moment, as if I was thinking it over. Finally I said, "Okay, well, you're younger than my mother and you're a girl and all, so I thought maybe you'd understand. " "Understand what?" She asked. "I've got a girlfriend!" I blurted. She smiled. "Well good for you. " She said happily. "What's her name?"

"Debbie. " I said, pulling out the first name to come to mind. "We've been going out for a while and… " "And what?" She asked. "And well," I took a long pause, considering my words. "And it's getting to the point where she wants to, you know, do things with me. "She raised her eyebrows, blushing a little.

"Do things?" "You know," I said. "Like uh… sex. " I squeaked.

"Sex?" She said, blushing harder now. "Yes. " I nodded.

"Billy," She said sternly. "Don't you think you're a little young to be thinking about sex?"I looked at her confused. "Anita," I said honestly. "Sex is pretty much ALL I think about. How old were you when you first, you know, did it?"She licked her lips a little. "Okay," She said, smiling a bit. "I see your point. So you're saying she wants to have sex with you?" "Yes. " I nodded. "And do you want to have sex with her?" "More than anything. " I answered. "But you see, I uh, well, I've never had, uh, sex before. " "And has she?" Anita asked. "I think so. " I nodded. "That's the problem. I don't know how to do it. " "Well I'm sure if she loves you… " Anita started. "Love?" I interrupted. "Love doesn't have anything to do with it. I don't love her, she's just my girlfriend. She expects me to do it with her and I've told her I've done it before. " "You lied to her?" "Yes. " I said. "Do you have any idea what would happen if people found out I was a virgin? I'm in high school. You have to be a stud or people think you're a fag!"She took a moment to digest this, perhaps thinking back to her own high school days. When it was processed she nodded a little, licking her lips again. "I suppose you're right. " She told me. "So what is it you want from me?" "Can you tell me how to do it?" I asked, looking hopefully at her. "Please?" "Tell you how to do it. " She said to herself, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. "Yeah. " I said, nodding. "So I'll know how to make it seem like I've done it before. Like, you know, how do I treat her boobs and all? And how do I, you know, put it in? How are you supposed to move once you're in? They don't teach you this stuff anywhere! Debbie's a blabbermouth. If I don't do it right, the whole school will think I'm a virgin by the next day. You gotta help me!" I pleaded, seemingly near tears. "Billy," She said. "I appreciate your fears but you can't just TELL someone how to do it. The only way to learn is, well, to do it a few times.

It comes naturally, you'll see. " "But I told her I've done it before!" I said. "She'll know! Can't you at least tell me a little bit about how to do it? What about foreplay?" "Foreplay?" She asked. "Yeah. " I said. "I heard you're supposed to do foreplay. I don't even know what that is!"She looked at me in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing. I flushed as if deeply embarrassed.

"Forget it. " I said angrily, standing up. "I'll just go home. "

"No, no. " She said, stifling her outburst. "I'm not laughing at you, just at what you said. I'm sorry. "Slowly, I put myself back down in the chair, noting the gleam forming in her eye. For the first time I felt I was making some headway. I noticed she'd let the hem of her robe creep up a bit, showing me her flesh up to mid-thigh. She'd also let the top open a bit, revealing a bit of cleavage and confirming my suspicion that she had no bra on under the robe. Perhaps I hadn't made a mistake in coming here. "Listen. " She said. "There's a lot involved in making love. It takes a lifetime to learn it all. But you just want to seem like you've done it before, right?" "Yes!" I agreed. "Okay. " She said, downing the rest of her wine and setting the glass down. "Let me see what I can do. " "Thank you!" I blurted. She took a deep breath. "Tell me," She said. "How far have you gone before?"

"Well," I said, "We've kissed a lot and she's let me feel her boobs through her shirt a few times. " "Okay. " Anita nodded. "And one time she let me put my hand UNDER her shirt. But she wouldn't let me put it under her bra. " "And that's as far as you've gone?" "Yes. " I nodded. "But she's hinted that she'd like for you to do more soon?"

"Uh huh. " I said. "That's why I came to you. " "Okay," Anita said. "If I tell you this, it has to remain here, do you understand? You're mother, your friends, nobody can ever find out about what I've told you. Can you do that?" "Yes," I said, sensing the kill coming. "I promise. " "Okay. " She smiled, leaning back into the couch a little. "I'll teach you the basics on how to have sex with a girl. " "I knew you'd help me Anita. " I grinned, feeling an erection starting already as I saw the shine in her eyes increase. Her nipples were hard. I could see them poking through the fabric in her robe. And she kept shifting her legs back and forth while she sat there. She was showing unmistakable signs of arousal. Signs that a fifteen-year old wouldn't be able to pick up upon, but signs that were very familiar to a thirty-two year old. "I'm glad to help. " She told me. "Now the most important thing in the early stages is to be gentle. " She told me. "Girls don't like it when you maul them. If she lets you feel her breasts, don't squeeze them hard, caress them. " "Caress them?" I asked. "Yes. " She nodded. "You need to touch them gently, as if they were a delicate egg or something. Remember that. Don't break the egg. Just glide your hands over them and don't attack the nipples. Just run your fingers over them for a few minutes. Touch them lightly. That really gets girls hot. " "Wow. " I said. "Like this?" I held up my hands and roughly moved my thumb and index finger back and forth.

"No no. " She said, shaking her head. "You have to… " She paused, thinking.

"Well," She said softly. "I suppose it would be easier to show you instead of telling you. " "Show me?" I asked, feigning confusion but feeling my cock leap to full life. I'd done it! She was going to SHOW me. "Yes. " She said. "Again, you can never tell anyone, but in the interest of education, I suppose I could volunteer as a test subject. " "What do you mean?" I asked naively. Slowly she put her hands to her robe and opened it at the chest, revealing her silky skin and freeing her braless tits. They were glorious, sagging only a little, the size of softballs. The large nipples were standing out proudly, just begging to be touched and sucked. "Here. " She told me. "Give me your hands. "Slowly I reached out and put my hands in hers. She took them and placed them upon her tits, allowing me to feel the soft, springy flesh, the hard points of the nipples pressing into my palms.

"Now caress them. " She said softly, her eyes shining. "Pretend I'm Debbie. " "Okay. " I said, faking a stutter. I began to squeeze and caress them, running my fingertips over the soft flesh, twirling around her nipples, which were easily the diameter of dimes. I hefted their weight in my hands, testing them, before going back to caressing. Her eyes softened as I did this, her breathing quickening.

"Very good. " She said, pushing her chest forward into my hands. "You're a quick learner. " "Cool. " I muttered, continuing my actions. I looked below her tits as I did this, seeing her stomach. The skin was tanned and looked soft although there were a few creases and stretchmarks. Her belly button was large and had a faint fuzz of black hair leading downward from it. I could almost make out her crotch but her robe was still closed over that portion of her body. "Wouldn't she want me to, you know, suck on them?" I asked Anita. "Girls like that, don't they?" "They love it. " Anita breathed, twisting her shoulders into me now. "But it's another thing that you have to do carefully. " She explained. "You have to treat a nipple like a baby does. Pretend you're sucking on a bottle when you suck a tit. Don't go after it like a shop-vac. " "Can I try it?" I asked her. "Just to make sure I'm doing it right?" "I suppose. " She allowed, reaching up and putting her hand to the back of my head.

She pulled my face to her left breast and my lips contacted the soft skin just above the nipple. I kissed and sucked for a second and then moved down, taking her large nipple in my mouth. As I began to gently suck she moaned, her fingers twining through my hair. I put my hands on her stomach, sliding them around to her back and pulling her tighter to me. I lapped and slurped at her nipple, tasting every square millimeter of it before switching to the right one. I took that nipple in my mouth and gave it a similar treatment. I raised my head from her chest. "Is this what foreplay is?" I asked her.

"Yesss. " She hissed. "But if you really want to master foreplay, there's one thing you want to know how to do. " "What's that?" I asked, licking her nipple once more. "How to eat a woman, er, a girl. "

"You mean… "

"You need to know how to eat pussy. " She told me.

"Can you teach me?" I asked, looking up at her flushed face.

"Yes. " She nodded, putting her hands to the top of my head and pushing me downward. Her robe parted and her chunky legs spread before me, revealing her crotch. It was covered with a mat of thick, curly, black hair. Her pink lips, swollen with her excitement, protruded from the center of her bush. Her clit was peeking from its hood near the top. Her thick, clean smell rose up before me, driving my desire, making me long to bury my face between those soft legs. I gave up all pretenses and dove in to her, attacking her slit with my tongue.

"Ohhhh!" She squealed in surprise as I drove my tongue into her body, plunging it in and out, lapping up her juices. She tasted so good. There is nothing like eating a pussy that is attached to a woman that has just emerged from bathing. Nothing!I licked up and down, in and out, while her hands pulled me closer and her bare legs wrapped around my back. I felt her legs as I ate her, admiring the silky softness of them. When she started to buck back at me I went for her clit, licking it and then finally sucking it into my mouth. Her moans were so loud I feared that the neighbors would hear. Not that I stopped because of this though.

She came after only a few minutes, a loud screaming orgasm that splashed my face with her fragrant juices and made her rip several strands of my hair from my scalp. When she finally calmed down I looked up at her, my face wet, hairs sticking from between my teeth. Her expression was of total disbelief.

"Was that how you do it?" I asked her, sliding my finger through her slippery slit. She nodded, speechless.

"Can you tell me how to fuck now?" I asked, taking off my sweater and throwing it to the floor. A minute later I was completely naked and climbing between her thick thighs. I ran my fifteen-year old cock up and down her slimy slit for a moment and then she grabbed my ass with her hands and pulled. I slid inside of her easily, feeling her grip at me, feeling my pubis mash against hers. Though she was looser than Debbie, she was certainly more experienced. Her hips rose up to meet me and she clenched her vaginal muscles expertly. She had been married after all, and knew how to fuck. She did it well I quickly discovered as I began pounding in and out. Her soft stomach pressed against mine as my pelvis moved to her rhythm. Her soft thighs slid against mine, quickly building up a sheen of sweat upon which to glide. I leaned down, feeling those tits push against my chest. My mouth found hers and our tongues began a desperate duel as we pleasured each other with our nether regions.

"Oh fuck me!" She cried, squeezing my ass cheeks. "It's been so long. Fuck me!" "Yeah. " I said, slamming harder, feeling her rise up to meet each thrust.

She broke our kiss and stared directly into my eyes, taking in my features. Her hands left my ass and began gliding over my legs, my back, my arms, playing with my armpits. Her expression was of exhalted disbelief, leading me to believe I was fulfilling a fantasy of hers. She'd WANTED to fuck a fifteen-year old and now she was getting her fantasy.

"Harder!" She commanded. "Fuck me harder!"

I pounded her mercilessly and soon her hips and her fingernails on my back told me she was coming again. She screamed out her pleasure as it hit her. "Now come in me!" She commanded breathlessly. "Oh come in me! Let me feel your fresh come squirting in my body! Oh God, please? Come in me!" "You want it?" I asked her, holding back for the moment. "Yesss!" She answered, pounding her hips and grasping my cock with greater force. "Let me feel it. Let me feel your come!" "You like fifteen year old boys?" I asked her, slamming and slamming. "You like to feel their come shooting in you?" "Ohhhhh!" She moaned, sticking her finger in my ass and moving it in and out.

"Do you?" I asked. "Tell me. Tell me what you like and I'll come. " "Oh God," She moaned, adding another finger to my ass, nearly causing me pain, but causing me great pleasure at the same time. "I love it. I've always wanted a teenager! I've always wanted to fuck you! Now please, come innn meeeee!" "Here it comes baby. " I told her, increasing my thrusts. I felt the surge running up my spine. It was going to happen now, it was inevitable. My hips became a blur and waves of pure pleasure ran through my body as spurt after spurt shot from my cock into her grasping pussy.

"Yessssss!" She screamed, feeling me shooting. Even after my thrusts slowed to a stop, hers continued. Finally we both slowed to a stop.

We kissed each other for a few moments, swirling our tongues together in the afterglow of great sex and then she looked up at me, her eyes showing shame and confusion.

"You were great. " I told her, giving her left tit a friendly squeeze. "Absolutely great. " "What have I done?" She asked, more to herself than me. "Oh my god. "I leaned down and kissed her again, licking at her lips a little. "You've done nothing Anita. " I said. "Nothing at all but give your friend Billy a little friendly advice for his girlfriend. "She shook her head violently. "No. " She told me, pushing me off of her. I slid off with a wet slurp. Her legs were still wide and a big glob of my sperm drooled out of her slit. She closed them quickly. "God, what have I done?"I rolled over and sat up. "Had a good time?" I asked, stretching a little. "I can't believe this!" She said, near tears. "You're Margaret's son! And I've, I've, taken advantage of you!"

"You did no such thing Anita!" I told her.

"I did!" She insisted, tears running down her face now.

"No," I told her. "You didn't. I took advantage of YOU. "

She shook her head, pulling her robe around her. "That's nice of you to say Billy, but you're a fifteen year old kid and I'm an adult. You came to me for help and I… I took advantage of that because it's been so long since I've had sex. I let my horniness get the better of me and I've done something awful. I… "

"Anita. " I said, still sitting there naked, her juices and my sperm drying on my dick. "There is no Debbie. "

"What?" She asked.

"There is no Debbie. " I repeated. "I made that up as an excuse to come over here. I've also had sex before, several times. Couldn't you tell while I was making love to you?"

She looked confused. "I did think you were doing it rather well for a teenager. " She admitted. "But why would you do that?"

"Because I wanted you. " I told her. "Do you know that I lie in bed at night thinking about your body while I masturbate?"

"You do?"

"Yes," I said. "Constantly. I've wanted you for such a long time now. And I've thought that maybe you were attracted to me a little, that maybe if I, you know, set it up right, you would maybe do things with me. I came over here hoping that what we did would happen. I tried to engineer it. It's me you should be mad at. I lied to you. I was conniving. And I'm sorry you're upset by what we did. You were more than I ever hoped for. "

"I was?" She asked, her eyes shining.

"Yes. " I nodded. "Can you ever forgive me for tricking you like that?"

"Of course Billy. " She said. "But I still shouldn't have done that. Do you understand how serious this is? I can be arrested for what we did. "

"I'll never tell anyone. " I told her. "I swear. "

She smiled a little, wiping her face. "Fifteen year olds swear lots of things. " She told me. "And they very rarely understand the consequences of breaking those swears. "

"Anita," I said, "I'm not an ordinary fifteen year old. I DO think about consequences. I think about them obsessively. Would you like to hear an example of how I think about them?"

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"While I was over here earlier I was already planning this episode. But I was worried about the possibility of getting you pregnant. I did not want to do that. So I looked in your medicine cabinet to make sure you were on birth control of some type. I was looking for a diaphragm case or birth control pills. Only when I found your pills and assured myself that you were current on them did I decide to come over here tonight. "

"You did that?" She asked, staring at me. Giving me THE LOOK.

"You are currently eight days from your period. " I told her.

"My God. " She said, looking at me with confused respect.

"Does that sound like a typical teenager to you? I like to think things through before I do them, eliminate all of the possible dangers that I can. So what would I have to gain by telling anyone this? A few minutes of celebrity if I told the story, which my friends wouldn't believe anyway, they would only pretend to. That certainly does not balance out the loss of you as a friend. " I leered at her. "A very special friend. "

"Wow. " She whispered, staring at me. "I don't know what to say. This is the most confusing moment of my life. "

"I'm sure it is. " I told her. "But did you enjoy what we did?"

"Well… " She started.

"Did you?" I asked.

"Yes. " She admitted. "Immensely. " She blushed again. "I've laid awake at night masturbating while thinking about YOU. But I never thought for a minute that we'd actually, you know. " She shook her head. "You are a sneaky little bastard, you know that? You played right into one of my fantasies, almost word for word. "

"I'm pretty perceptive they say. " I agreed.

"I'll say. "

"So why don't we mark it down as a pleasant experience for all concerned?" I asked her. "I enjoyed making love to you, you enjoyed making love to me. Both of us had fantasies fulfilled. I will never tell anyone about it. Nobody even knows where I am tonight. What we did will remain secret forever. I promise. "

"Okay. " She nodded, smiling again now. "But we shouldn't do this anymore. " She qualified. "It's still wrong. "

"If you wish. " I agreed sadly.

"I think that would be for the best. "

"All right. " I paused. "But is it still okay for me to baby-sit on Saturday? I'd hate to disappoint Tracy. "

"Oh sure. " She said. "Perfectly all right. "

"Good. " I stood up. "Is it okay if I use your shower before I go home?"

"My shower?"

"Yes. " I nodded. "I wouldn't want to go home smelling like sex. That leads to unwanted questions from parents. "

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head in amusement. "Very good thinking Billy. " She told me. "You know where it's at. "

"Thanks. " I told her, picking up my clothes.

I made it about ten steps towards her bedroom before her voice called me. I turned to look at her. She was standing up, her robe was flapping loosely, allowing me to see her breasts and her bush again. I felt my penis give a little twitch.

"Maybe I should go with you. " She offered, smiling sexily. "Just to make sure you get nice and clean. "

My dick took a bigger lurch. "By all means. " I answered.

Chapter 3

Take away my inhibitions

Take away my solitude

Fire me up with irresistance

Put me in the mood

Storm the walls around this prison

Leave the inmates, free the guards

Deal me up another future

From some brand new deck of cards

BOB SEGER

The next day at school, nothing terribly eventful happened. I turned in all of my completed homework to some very surprised teachers and, having done that, they began to truly notice me for the first time. They began to call on me in class, seemingly pleased when I supplied them with correct answers to their inquiries. In the classes where I'd already made my new self known, things mellowed out. Mrs. Crookshank asked me occasional questions on various anatomical topics but there was no longer a sense of challenge in them. She stayed confined to the current subject at hand and called on me no more than she did the other favorites in her class. The disinterested students like my former self, she continued to ignore. My history teacher on the other hand, seemed almost afraid of me. She didn't call on me a single time but eyed me nervously whenever she was discussing a controversial topic about the Civil War that was being scaled down into black and white, good and evil for the 'tender young minds' she was instructing. I know she was expecting me to pop up with another mini-lecture to counter hers. But I kept my peace, remaining in my seat quietly, mostly lost in my own thoughts, knowing that there was nothing that she was going to teach ME about history.

That night was Friday night; the night that Mike's parents allowed him to use the car. He told them that we were just going to drive around downtown; cruising he called it. It was, I remembered, the same thing he told them every weekend and every weekend they bought it. What we actually did was drive to a secluded park near the falls where a kegger was being held. For two bucks a head you could drink all the beer you wanted.

The night was brisk, as it always is in Eastern Washington in late February, but the good weather was holding. The stars were out and a full moon hung in the sky, providing scant illumination to the darkened family picnic area.

The atmosphere was festive as we arrived, paid our money, and filled our first plastic cups with Olympia from the tap. Kids ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen were everywhere, lounging near cars, sitting on the picnic tables in groups of three, four, eight. Music blared from at least ten different car stereos and at least five different boom boxes, most of it conflicting with each other.

I took a moment to stare at the falls, watching the white, foamy churning of God knew how many millions of gallons of water rushing over the cliff. I could hear the roar of them even over the car stereos. It wasn't very far from this spot where Tracy had an appointment with destiny. An appointment that I sincerely believed I'd cancelled. I took a drink of beer in her honor and then joined the party.

I drank beer after beer, getting pleasantly buzzed. I took a few hits off of joints or pipes that were passed my way, increasing the buzz to blissful intoxication. I listened to the conversations around me, which, admittedly, were not terribly stimulating. The talk was of rock bands, cars, drug experiences, fights, who was a bitch, who wasn't. It was peppered with unnecessary profanity, particularly the word 'fuck', which was the favored modifier among this age group.

It was less than an hour before a girl named Stephanie found me. She was skinny and bleached blonde, but attractive. She was also a junior and nearly two years older than I was. She chatted with me for few minutes and then brought up the subject that had led her to me.

"I heard you and Debbie got a thing goin'?" She asked, taking a drag off her cigarette. "Is that true?"

"No." I answered. "She's just a friend of mine."

"A friend?" She giggled. "I heard you were more than friends. I heard she threw herself at you over at Raisin's house the other day."

"Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, sipping from my latest beer.

"Lonnie." She said. "He said you were pretty smooth about it too."

I smiled at her, staring into her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about." I said. "Debbie and I flirted a little but nothing more than that. You know how rumors are around here."

"Yeah." She nodded, tossing down her smoke and crushing it under the toe of her tennis shoe. "I do. Some people just can't keep their mouths shut about things."

"Yep." I agreed. "But some people CAN."

Less than an hour later we were 'taking a little walk' into the wooded area around the park. We sat against a tree, watching the falls, the sound of the party distant in our ears. We started kissing, which led to my hands beneath her jacket and sweater, which led to me taking off her pants and eating her pussy on the cold, damp ground. I pulled two orgasms from her and then extricated a condom from my pocket. A minute later my pants were off, my dick was capped, and I was thrusting within yet another tight, teenaged pussy. After, we returned to the party, walking together as friends out for a nature walk, the discarded condom marking the spot of our indiscretion.

"Where have you been?" Mike, who was quite fucked up, asked me when I rejoined him.

"Oh," I said casually, "I was bullshittin' with some of the guys over there."

"Oh." He nodded, and then went back to his graphic description of the time he'd bagged a girl AND her sister at a similar kegger party. The rest of the guys listened respectfully to his tale. They then tried to top it.

I took a moment to be nervous about driving home with Mike as we twisted and turned along the levy road at high speed. I had no seat belt on; it simply wasn't done back then; and I was thrown from side to side as he drunkenly hit 20mph curves at around forty-five or so. But I took comfort in the fact that I'd done this dozens of times in my previous life without a second thought and nothing had happened then. I already knew that I was scheduled to live to at least thirty-two. In a way I was kind of immortal, wasn't I? Well maybe not immortal, but at least invulnerable.

I was cheered by this thought as we went on our way at 11:30 that night (we were both required to be home by midnight). That made being tossed from side to side by centrifugal force kind of fun. Even when the back end of the car slid a little on a sharp curve, bringing us dangerously close to the edge, I didn't get an adrenaline rush. I simply cheered Mike's skill with the car and asked him if he had any more weed on him.

Saturday was a good day. I woke up only slightly hung over from the beer, knowing that if I'd drank as much as I had the previous night as an adult I would have been nearly incapacitated the next day. God youth was great.

It was shortly after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away (my parents had no dishwasher, an appliance they would not acquire until shortly before I moved out) when the telephone rang. Tracy answered it.

"It's for you Bill." She told me, being very polite for Tracy. A cynical part of me informed me it was simply because I was doing a favor for her tonight and she wanted to stay on my good side. But a more hopeful part wondered if she was simply calming her attitude towards me a little.

"Hello?" I said, expecting it to be Mike.

It wasn't. It was Debbie. "Hi Bill." She said. "How you doin'?"

"How'd you get my number?" I asked her, knowing that I hadn't given it to her.

"Oh, I've got my sources." She said mysteriously. She then got right to the point. "My parents and my sister are going out of town for the day." A brief pause. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to, you know, come over?"

"To your house?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." She said. "If you're not doing anything else that is."

"Nothing planned." I told her, a smile forming on my face. "What time should I be there?"

I used my charms on Mom to score a few bucks off of her, though I had to endure one of her lectures as the price. Soon I was heading out the door. I stopped at a convenience store and bought another package of condoms. Twenty minutes after that I was in Debbie's house.

We didn't bother much with preliminaries. Less than ten minutes after my arrival we were in her bedroom stripping off our clothes. She begged me to eat her again like I had at Raisin's house and I teased her a little, saying I didn't want to break the LAW or anything. Finally I buried my face between those thighs and went to town. I then fucked her, after donning a condom of course. I then taught her the finer points of giving a blowjob, stopping her before I actually came in her mouth because I wanted to fuck her again. I showed her the female superior position and she caught on quickly, finding that if she rubbed herself in a certain way, she could bring herself off.

"See," I told her, after I'd finally blown my second load into the condom. "You can do that with any guy and you don't have to rely on his skill in order to get yourself off. As long as you can keep him from coming for the length of time it takes you to rub yourself to orgasm on his cock, you can be satisfied."

Her naked, sweaty body was collapsed across mine, her ample tits pushing into my chest. My hand was idly stroking her firm ass. "But how," She asked. "Do I keep them from coming? I haven't done it with many people besides you, but every time I have, the guy comes in less than a minute or so."

"Suck him off first." I advised her, knowing that I was making some future lover very happy. "Use those tricks I taught you when you were sucking me. Take the load and then demand he eat your pussy. Tell him he gets nothing else if he doesn't return the favor."

"Wow." She whispered, her tongue licking at the sweat on my neck.

"While he eats you," I continued, feeling myself stirring again already. God the wonders of youth! "He'll get hard again, but it will take him longer to come since he'll have just done it. You should be able to keep him active long enough to give yourself a good come." I patted her ass, rolling her over and beginning to kiss her again. "Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She breathed, thrusting her tongue at me.

I went home mid-afternoon and fell fast asleep. My balls were aching in a very pleasant way; the way that tells you that they were happily overused. I'd taken a shower before leaving Debbie's house so I had little to do before my babysitting assignment that night. When I awoke I only had to put on fresh clothes, comb my hair and, of course, brush my teeth, expunging my mouth of the smell of teenaged pussy.

As I headed out the door Tracy was getting ready for her party. She was dressed in her tightest pair of jeans and a form-fitting sweater. She smiled as I went by.

"Heading to Anita's?" She asked.

"Yep." I nodded. "Have a good time tonight."

"I will." She said. "And thanks again."

"Anytime Trace." I replied, heading downstairs. "Anytime at all."

Anita was dressed in a red dress that showed off her natural attributes, her tits, nicely. Her chunky legs were covered with dark pantyhose. She saw me looking as I entered her house and blushed a little.

"You look VERY nice." I told her lecherously. "Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?"

She giggled like a teenager. "My presence is quite expected." She told me. "Besides, the kids are awake anyway."

I nodded. "Of course." I said, and turned to the kids, who were playing on the floor with a collection of Hot Wheels. They saw me and squealed, heading for me.

"But sometimes," Anita said thoughtfully. "A girl gets a little ill and has to come home early; say around nine o'clock."

"Really?" I asked, smiling, wondering if my dick could perform after my earlier session with Debbie.

"Really." She nodded and then turned to the kids. "Gimmee kisses." She told them. "Mommy's going bye-bye."

She returned at ten after nine, just after the kids had been put to bed. After brief inquiries about their health and well being, she walked over to me and took my hand. She traced her manicured nails over the back of it and then guided it under her dress, sliding it along over her nyloned thighs to the junction of her legs. I could feel dampness and musty heat emanating from her crotch.

"Do you feel how wet I am?" She asked, grinding her thighs together, pulling on my wrist to put pressure on her sensitive regions.

"Yeah." I nodded, my mouth drying a little.

"That's from thinking about you and all the things I'm gonna do to you tonight." She told me.

"Cool." I gasped.

"Why don't you take these pantyhose off of me?" She asked, kicking off her shoes. "I could use a little air."

I kneeled before her and pulled off her pantyhose, as requested, and, while she stood there before me, she threw the hem of her dress over my head. Her bare legs and crotch were directly before my face, the silky material of her dress billowing over my back. The smell under there was rich with musk; her pussy lips were oozing moisture. She widened her stance a little, spreading her legs and bringing her pussy near my mouth. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and pulled it forward, into her wetness.

I ate her to orgasm as she stood there, though her knees became quite wobbly as she came and she had to hold onto my shoulders for support. She then pushed me to my back on the floor and pulled my shoes from my feet and my pants and underwear from my body. She spread her dress around my hips and lowered herself onto my straining, very erect cock. Slowly she sank down upon me, engulfing me in her wet snatch and then pumping her hips up and down.

I must say that she gave me one of the best fucks I've ever had, before or after recycling. I wondered why her husband had divorced her. He couldn't have found someone better in bed. Better looking maybe, but not better in the sack.

I staggered home about ten-thirty that night and fell immediately into bed. My crotch was throbbing with the beat of my heart and my dick had a raw, used feeling to it. I had a smile on my face as I fell into sleep, thanking God for Mr. Li and for the fact that I hadn't been in a jovial mood that night and wished I was an Oscar Meyer wiener or something. Never in my life had I had so much sex in so short a period of time. And with three different girls too! My last thought was what tomorrow would bring.

It didn't bring much. My body was aching and sore. Since it was Sunday, the Lord's day after all, I spent the entire twenty-four hour period without leaving the house. It was a day of rest. There was school tomorrow.

The poor weather returned for Monday's walk to school. The temperature was in the thirties, the sky was cloudy and spat intermittent flurries of snow down upon Mike and I as we walked to school. Mike was telling me what a great kegger it had been on Friday and that I should have gone to the one on Saturday night as well.

"I'm tellin' you man, there was bitches everywhere." He proclaimed.

"Yeah?" I replied, brushing a snowflake out of my eye and pulling my hood tighter against the cutting wind.

"Fuck yeah." He said. "I met this bitch from Spokane High and we got all fucked up together. After a while we went off to the trees and she gave me a fuckin' blow job."

"A blow job huh?" I asked, as if interested, wondering if Mike had ever really been laid at all.

"Yeah," He leered. "She could suck start a Harley, I'm tellin' you. You shoulda come. I bet you coulda got laid too."

"I'm waiting for Miss Right." I told him.

He looked at me strangely for a moment and then, finally figuring it was a joke, started laughing.

I didn't laugh back and we walked on in silence. Mike bothered me. I knew the path that he was on but every attempt I made to even talk about steering him off of it had failed. I wanted to help him, to keep him from ending up a thirty-three year old loser living with his parents and never having held a job for more than a year in his life. Didn't he want to marry, have children, raise a family? Didn't he want what everyone else in the world did? Surely the life he would end up with was not what he desired, was it? But I had no idea how to even begin to steer him. His facade was of the tough, independent person, streetwise, never needing advice or help from anyone. How could you reach such a person? Especially when they'd spent their entire life as the superior member of the friendship. I was clueless and hoping that some answer would come to me. But the answer, for the moment, eluded me.

"Well look who's back." Mike said as we approached the school.

I looked where he was indicating and saw Richie Fairview standing with his cronies in their accustomed spot near the bike racks. The same spot where I'd engineered his downfall and his trip to the hospital. Even from this distance I could see he had a bandage on his nose. Though he had a heavy coat on I was reasonably sure that his chest was taped up beneath it. I'd felt a definite crunch when I'd kicked him the other day.

"Well well." I smiled, already turning that way.

"You gonna fuck him up again?" Mike asked, a little fear in his voice, but not as much as before.

"Only if he wants to go the hard way." I said, heading directly for him.

You have to understand that Richie was more than just Richie to me. He was the epitome of bullies, the sum of all large, stupid aggressors that had picked on me since grammar school. He encompassed bullies that would pick on me after Richie would eventually graduate or drop out or whatever. As a shy, easily malleable kid in school I'd been easy fodder for them throughout my school years. And they had left an impression that was deeper than I'd realized until I'd seen Richie on my first day back. Richie represented all bullies that had ever said an unkind word or had laid an unjust hand upon me. By besting him at his own game, I was besting demons that had helped shape my previous life. I intended to make him suffer, to bring him down as far as I could, to expose the lie that all bullies represented; that they were gods, unchallengable.

His friends tittered nervously as I approached, whispering some things to him, him nervously whispering some things back. The very fact that he was standing at the head of them despite his earlier defeat told me a lot. He'd undoubtedly told them that he was going to repay me for the sneak attack on him the first time. They were anxiously awaiting his revenge. I was pretty sure there would be no revenge. The Richies of the world don't generally think things through very carefully.

"Hey Dickwad!" I yelled directly at him when I was close enough. "How was the hospital?"

"Fuck you motherfucker!" He yelled, taking a few steps closer; again telling me volumes about his intentions. Had he been meaning to fight me, he would have waded right in. But he didn't. He took a few steps towards me, obviously hoping I'd cower and back down. When I didn't (and why he thought I would, after our last encounter is a mystery to me), he slowed down, his mind re-evaluating what his strategy was. In that moment I knew I'd won the confrontation.

"That's some pretty insulting shit you're talking." I told him conversationally, walking closer. "I suppose you think that your friends here are impressed by it." I shook my head sadly. "They're not. Talk is cheap faggot, action is where it's at. If you wanna impress your friends and restore your reputation as a badass you're simply gonna have to kick my ass. Isn't that what you told them you were gonna do?"

"I AM gonna kick your fuckin' ass!" He roared, taking a tentative step forward.

I laughed. "Are you now?" I asked. "Well go ahead and do it." I made a 'come-on' gesture with my fingers. "Kick my ass. Let's see you do it."

He stood still, his face fuming, infuriated with shame and anger. He wanted to, that was obvious, but he also remembered what had happened last time.

"I'm waiting." I said impatiently. "When are you gonna kick my ass? It's sitting here right in front of you. Start kicking."

He remained motionless, his body trembling with rage, rage I was oh so pleased to see. This was even more satisfying than besting him in the first place.

"Yeah." He finally said. "So you can rat me out and have me arrested or something."

"Oh please." I scoffed. "Having someone rat you out never bothered you before. Why don't you just admit it? You're scared of me. You wouldn't take a swing at me if I dropped my hands and closed my eyes, would you? It HURTS to get the shit kicked out of you, doesn't it? It's an experience you don't care to repeat, is it? You know that if you take a swing at me, or make any move at all towards me, you're gonna be riding in an ambulance again, don't you?"

"Fuck you!" He yelled, near tears now, on the brink of collapse.

I shook my head again. His friends were staring at him, nervous fear in their faces.

I spat, the wad landing on his shoe. "You fuckin' disgust me." I told him. "If you want to fight you come and find me." I said. "We'll have ourselves a fight. But keep in mind, that if you start any of your 'fuck you' and 'I'm gonna kick your ass' bullshit with me again, I'm not gonna be so generous. Like I said, talk is cheap. If you want some action, look me up.

If you don't want some action, keep your fuckin' mouth closed when you see me."

I turned my back to him and walked into the school, Mike in tow. I knew I had nothing to fear by turning my back to him. I knew it.

Lunchtime. In my previous life I'd always eaten pretty much alone since Mike had a different lunch schedule than I. But now I found myself the center of some attention. People kept coming up to me, just wanting to talk about this and that. I was becoming popular I realized, not sure I liked it. And again, I was thirty-two years old, not fifteen. The conversation I was offered was not terribly stimulating.

After only five minutes the combination of the cold and the endless litany of pussy stories, car stories, or drug stories drove me inside to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was the domain of the preppie students, those college bound overachievers. The air was warm and scented with the aroma of spaghetti. It was filled with the babble of conversations and the clanking of plastic trays on simulated wood grain tables.

I stood near the doorway surveying the scene, seeing the gathering of cliques at various tables, trying to find a place to sit down. Many of the students in there were those that were in my classes. They'd always ignored me since I wasn't quite one of them and I had no desire to strike up friendships with them now. With burrito and soda in hand I scanned around the room and finally locked onto a solitary figure sitting by herself near the back of the room.

It was Nina Blackmore, the future emergency room doctor. Like always, she was by herself, eating out of her tray and reading a book. Nina, in addition to being a high school classmate, had been a junior high and grammar school classmate as well. She'd appeared at our school when I was in the third grade, a new student from somewhere or other. That, in combination with a lisp that she'd had at that time had doomed her to the role of unpopularity. She'd been the butt of jokes since forever, although they'd been particularly bad in grammar school. Third, fourth, and fifth graders can be unusually cruel to kids who were somewhat different.

I myself was as guilty of this as everyone else. I'd done my time chanting teasing rhymes at her back then, deriding her, calling her ugly, making fun of her lisp in as cruel ways as fourth grade minds could conceive. Though she'd gone to speech therapy until well into junior high and lisped no more, the damage was done to her. She was an outsider, belonging to no clique, doomed to be by herself until probably college where she would show up the vast majority of her classmates by working her way into a one hundred and thirty thousand dollar a year job.

But even then the mark of her school years would be forever upon her. I would know her as a paramedic, would frequently transport patients to the emergency room where she was employed. She would have a reputation as a cold hearted, vindictive bitch among the paramedics and nurses that she dealt with. She was the kind of doctor that would question a paramedic or RN's every decision, no matter what the outcome of the patient. And she'd always reserved her most scathing comments for me. I'd always known that this was because I'd gone to school with her and had once, in grammar school, been one of her tormentors.

A typical example of her wrath is something that occurred nearly a year before my recycling, on a frigid January day. I'd been dispatched to a call for a child with seizures in a middle class section of the city. Child seizure calls are generally nothing that gets paramedics terribly excited. Usually the child either has a history of seizures or is having them because of a high fever. Seizures are not usually life threatening.

However, when I walked into the house that day with my partner and the crew from a Spokane Fire Department engine company, I took one look at the kid in question and knew that I was dealing with something more than a seizure call. The kid, who looked to be about ten years old, was lying on the carpet near the sofa. His skin was blue; as blue as a police uniform, and he was not breathing. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, bugging out. He was lying still.

There was a brief second of pause while we all clicked into 'this is really an emergency' mode. And then every eye in the room (except for the kid) turned to me, waiting for me to tell them what to do.

"Start bagging him." I barked to one of the firefighters and she rushed into action, opening their bag and pulled out the equipment.

I kneeled down next to the kid and felt for a carotid pulse. It was there, but it was weak and very slow. What the hell was going on? I'd wondered, trying to think. Ten year olds did not just suddenly collapse and die from a seizure. There was something I was missing.

The mother was, understandably enough, absolutely hysterical but, while I opened up my airway bag and began setting up to put in a breathing tube, she was able to tell me that she'd heard a strange noise and had entered the room to find her son seizing on the couch. It had gone on for a considerable time and then he'd simply stopped just before we'd arrived. His breathing hadn't started again. She told me he had no known medical problems. He'd had no fever, had in fact been perfectly fine when she'd talked to him less than ten minutes before she found him seizing.

While I pulled out my breathing tube and a laryngoscope, a lighted instrument used to peer down someone's throat prior to placing the tube, the firefighter began bagging the child, forcing air down his throat and into his lungs. While she did this my partner had hooked the child up to our EKG machine. I took a quick glance at the reading. His heart was only beating thirty times a minute and was slowing further with each passing beat. What the hell?

The firefighter that was bagging seemed to be having trouble. "The air won't go in." She told me. "It just blows out the side."

Armed with that information I took another look around the room. The television was on, tuned to a cartoon show. A half-eaten hot-dog was sitting on a plate on the coffee table. The light bulb suddenly went off above my head.

"Was he eating?" I asked the mother.

"Yes." She sobbed, wringing her hands. "I'd just given him his lunch."

"Shit." I muttered, everything falling into place.

"Stop bagging him and let me in there." I told the firefighter. She stepped aside and I picked up my laryngoscope. Lying on the floor near his head I inserted the blade into his mouth and lifted the tongue out of the way. A lightbulb on the end of the blade illuminated his airway for me. It was blocked solid by a chunk of pink hot dog.

"Matt, give me the Magills." I told my partner.

He slapped a long set of forceps into my hand, an instrument designed specifically for removing foreign objects from airways. I'd never used them before, true choking calls are rare, but they worked just exactly as I'd been promised. I grabbed the chunk of meat and pulled it free, revealing his vocal cords and trachea behind it. I gave him a second to see if he would start breathing on his own. When he didn't, I picked up the breathing tube and slid it through his vocal cords. The firefighter attached her bag to the top of the tube and began forcing pure oxygen down into his lungs.

By the time I got the tube secured his skin had pinked up considerably and his heart rate had increased to more than a hundred. By the time we loaded him into the back of the ambulance his eyes were open and he was gagging violently, no doubt upset to wake up and find a large tube in his throat. By the time we got to the hospital I'd been forced to remove the tube and he was breathing well on his own. He was a little confused and dopey but awake and able to talk. When we brought him in to Nina's emergency room I was positively glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done, convinced that out of all the times I'd been needlessly called, for once I'd actually been NEEDED.

And what did Nina, the good doctor have to say to me after she heard the progression of the call?

"You're supposed to try abdominal thrusts on an unconscious choking victim before you resort to the Magills." She said icily. "Did you miss that part of the class back in ambulance driver school?"

She actually wrote me up for this, making me answer to our county emergency medical services authority. I was given a written reprimand in my file for failing to try a less invasive method of clearing the airway first. The medical director, to give him credit, was at least apologetic as I signed it. He mumbled something about how the ends don't justify the means and then explained that "certain doctors" seemed to have a problem with the whole world.

Though I'd been pissed at her, she'd after all turned one of the high points of my career into a disciplinary procedure, I'd understood even then that I was partially responsible for what had happened. I understood even better looking at her now in the cafeteria, sitting alone and reading a book while she picked at a plate of cafeteria spaghetti. After all, the experience with Richie was fresh on my mind. Had what she'd done been much different than what I'd done? We'd both attacked visible symbols of past torment. We'd both given in to basic human nature.

Was it too late for Nina? I wondered, looking at her. Was the damage to her already done?

I took a deep breath and headed her way.

"Okay if I sit here?" I asked her when I arrived.

She looked up at me with suspicion plain in her eyes, perhaps wondering if I'd come to renew the teasing she'd been so familiar with in grade school. While waiting for an answer I looked at her, marveling over the power of suggestion. Nina had been called ugly since the third grade. It was an accepted fact among everyone that she WAS ugly. But the funny thing is, that she really wasn't. She was skinny and had small breasts; a late bloomer as I've mentioned before. Her face was without any make-up but it was smooth and actually sort of pretty. Her brown hair was unstyled but looked just like everyone else's hair all the same. She was called ugly and probably felt ugly because we'd all agreed back in third grade that she WAS ugly.

It was also assumed that she was dumb, a natural conclusion based on the fact that she never said anything to anybody. It had been assumed of me on my first trip through school too. Obviously she was far from dumb. One did not make it through four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency if one lacked intelligence. Could there be meaningful conversation here perhaps? I saw the book she was reading, 1984 by Orwell, a very deep book.

"Please?" I asked again, "I won't bite you."

Her eyes softened a little, as if to say that she was reserving judgment for the moment. "Sure." She finally said.

I took the bench across from her, setting down my food, drink, and napkin. "That's a good book." I offered, nodding at the cover. "I've read it quite a few times. Very thought provoking."

She nodded, not saying anything, keeping her eyes firmly on the page. Suspicion was radiating off of her in waves. Maybe it was too late, I wondered.

"Its also," I went on, "The most depressing book I've ever read. Is this your first time reading it?"

"No." She said softly. "I've read it five or six times."

"Then you probably know what I mean." I said. "I mean the thought that everything is controlled. Everything. The entire war is just a production to keep the masses from bettering themselves. The entire writings of history are rearranged on a regular basis to control the way people think. Even the resistance doesn't really exist. When you get to the point that they are captured and you find out that they'd been known about the entire time." I shook my head. "It's just a depressing thought, a depressing book.

But also one of my favorites."

She was looking at me now, confusion and a little curiosity shaping her features. "It's one of my favorite books too." She said carefully, as if expecting me to start laughing at her or speaking in a fake lisp.

"Have you ever thought," I said, "That all of that stuff in 1984 could actually be happening now? That we, as proles, wouldn't even realize it? I mean, think about it, with today's technology how hard would it be to re-write history, or to control the media, or to keep track of everyone?"

"Not very hard at all." She said, putting the book down for the first time. Careful interest was visible now. "Sometimes I swear that it's really happening to some degree or another. Maybe I'm just paranoid."

"No." I shook my head. "I'm sure most intelligent people know that you can't possibly know what's REALLY going on, how things REALLY work. I'm pretty certain that they don't really work the way we're taught in government class though."

She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth. Strange I'd never noticed that before. Probably because I'd never seen her smile before. I wondered if anyone else had.

We continued to talk about 1984 and other books by Orwell. The only other one that I'd read was Animal Farm but she'd read them all. She explained the basic plots of them and the underlying message with animated clarity. Once she started talking to me I found her conversation intelligent and her insights well thought out. I almost forgot that I was talking to a teenager. Before I realized it lunch was over and it was time to head for the next class.

"Nice talking to you Nina," I told her with frank honesty as I stood.

"Thank you." She squeaked, her face blushing, her eyes confused.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." I told her and smiled. "It's nice to talk to someone who thinks like you do, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I'll be here tomorrow if you want to, you know, talk some more."

"I'd like that." I said, giving her a wave and heading for the door.

I was cheerful as I walked alone through the crowded halls, making my way through kids in groups, heading for driver's education. I was thinking that maybe Nina could be softened a little bit after all, and I'd truly enjoyed talking to her. What was that they said, still waters run deep? It seemed that was true in her case. If only I could figure out a way to reach Mike. If only meaningful conversation could be the key to derailing him from his path.

My thoughts were sidetracked as I found myself walking behind Richie Fairview. He was with two of his cronies and was trying, in his idiotic way, to strike up a conversation with a group of cheerleaders that were walking the same direction. The cheerleaders were trying there best to ignore the trio of thugs and Richie, deciding to up the ante a little, began reaching for their skirts, trying pull them up.

At the sight of this all of my anger at Richie and bullies in general came flooding back. He didn't know I was behind him but he was about to find out. I kicked out my foot, catching his back leg just as he was stepping forward. He stumbled forward and crashed to the hallway floor, scraping up his elbows and hands and sending up a chorus of delighted giggles and laughter from the cheerleaders.

Richie rolled over and jumped to his feet in an instant, his fists raised, an obscene epitaph on his lips. And then he saw who had tripped him. He stopped.

"You oughtta be more careful asshole." I told him conversationally, continuing to walk by. "You can get hurt falling down around here."

I didn't look back at him, just continued to walk down the hall towards my class. Behind me the cheerleaders were still chuckling. I wasn't attacked from behind. I knew I wouldn't be. A smile was on my face as I found the right classroom and went about the task of learning to drive a car.

The next day as Mike and I entered the school there was no Richie Fairview positioned out front, nor were there any of his goon squad. It seemed they'd finally learned the lesson. So I'd succeeded in clearing out a threat to helpless freshmen and sophomores everywhere. Richie would probably fade into joking obscurity, I figured, robbed of his most potent weapon, his reputation. In a way I was somewhat disappointed. I had actually been kind of looking forward to another confrontation with the dumb slob.

Oh well, there were plenty more bullying assholes I could deal with. I was actually starting to see myself as some sort of superhero, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, battling the forces of evil, my very name revered by all. I wondered if I could force Richie to start paying back the kids he'd ripped off. I could picture it, ordering him to give a dollar a day to every kid he'd ever robbed. And if he ever gave them any shit, they could come to the GREAT BILLY for help and justice.

I was standing at my locker, Mike beside me, running these amusing thoughts through my brain when my instinct alerted me to danger. Perhaps it was my peripheral vision, catching just a glimpse of a dark figure moving towards me, maybe it was my ears, hearing the advance of a footstep, perhaps it was some sort of sixth sense, but suddenly all of the instincts I'd developed from my years on the streets told me something was coming from behind me. I reacted quickly, but not quickly enough.

I turned, raising my hands into a defensive posture just as Richie Fairview swung at me. I raised my arm to protect my head, automatically assuming that's where he would strike me. Because of that the blow that was aimed at my body struck home, hitting on my left flank and driving the wind from me. My first thought upon being struck was that it hurt, but that it wasn't that bad. I was still standing and it was time to play some catch-up.

His right hand pulled away from my body and prepared to move forward for another blow. I stepped forward and grabbed at his wrist just as he started the second swing. I caught his wrist neatly in my hands and started to pull it forward, intending to spin him around and push him against the lockers where I could batter his vulnerable back and kidney region. Maybe I could put the fucker into renal failure. But as I started the maneuver that would have put this plan into motion I looked down for an instant at his hand, the one I was holding.

The hand wasn't empty. There was a buck knife in it. The blade, which was about five inches long, was stained with blood.

The implications of this hit me immediately. I'd been stabbed in the abdomen! How bad was it?

Mike, noticing at about the same time as I did that Richie was playing for keeps, stepped behind him and threw his arm around Richie's neck, choking him, pulling him off balance. His other arm pulled at the knife hand, keeping it well away from me. The priority of the battle had just changed. The goal was no longer to beat the crap out of Richie, it was to get the knife out of his hands and end the confrontation as quickly as possible. I'd been stabbed!

I saw the best way to do it right before me. Richie, off balance and struggling against Mike had his legs spread wide in an attempt to keep his feet beneath him. I let go of the wrist, trusting Mike to keep the knife away from me and stepped forward, bringing my knee up into his crotch with all the force I could muster. I kneed him so hard that pain went shooting up my leg from my kneecap.

Richie squealed so loud that I'm surprised nearby windows didn't break. He began choking and gagging, the knife dropping forgotten from his hand, clattering on the cement floor of the hall. Mike, seeing the knife drop, kicked it clear and then let go of Richie, who dropped to the ground in a most ungraceful manner, curling immediately up into a ball. He began vomiting.

I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.

"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"

"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.

"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.

"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?

"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.

"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!

"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.

"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.

"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"

"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"

"What are you… "

"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."

"But who… "

"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"

That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.

The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.

But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.

But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?

As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."

"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.

"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"

"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."

The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."

A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.

"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.

I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!

Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.

"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."

Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?

Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.

"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."

Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?

"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"

"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."

It took me a few minutes to come fully awake and they gave me some Demerol to take the edge off my various pains. A doctor filled me in. Apparently the knife had severed a couple of minor veins but other than that, had touched nothing important. My spleen, kidney, and lung were all fine. My large and small intestines were fine. I was, in short, very lucky, suffering little more than a flesh wound. I would be kept in the hospital overnight for observation and released the next morning. After a week or so of taking it easy, I could go back to school. He then suggested I stay away from knives.

"You're parents and your sister are outside." He told me. "But before they come in the police would like to speak with you for a few minutes."

"Okay." I told him, nodding, examining the catheter protruding from beneath the sheets with distaste. How long until they took it out?

The police officer was older. I didn't recognize him. Probably he'd retired before I made my debut on the streets of Spokane where I would, over time, get to know most of them on a first-name basis. He was wearing a uniform that would be changed in a few years and carrying a thirty-eight in his holster, a gun that would be exchanged for nine millimeters soon. He looked me up and down for a moment, his gaze telling me that he'd seen it all and heard it all. I was familiar with the gaze. I'd acquired it myself.

"So Billy," He said, opening a notebook. "Suppose you tell me what happened today?"

I knew what he was expecting. He was expecting me to say that I had no idea who had done this to me or why. That I hadn't so much as caught a glimpse of the person responsible. That I couldn't identify them in a line-up. In short, he expected me to act like a typical teenaged victim.

"Well officer Morgan," I said, reading his nametag. "I was stabbed by a kid named Richard Fairview."

"Really?" He said, looking at me.

"Really." I nodded. "He came up behind me at my locker and just as I turned around, he stuck a buck knife in my side. I fought back and managed to keep myself from getting stabbed twice. In fact, I kneed the motherfucker so hard in the balls that I think I dislocated my knee in the process."

Officer Morgan chuckled. "Well well." He said. "This is different. So tell me, why did Mr. Fairview stab you?"

"Because he's a piece of shit thug and I've been screwing with him for the last few days."

"Screwing with him?" He asked, making a notation on his pad.

"I'm sure you've got reports of his little trip to the hospital the other day." I said. "He's a shake-down artist at the high school, ripping off kids as they come in. Perhaps your department has had dealings with him before?"

"Oh yes." Morgan nodded, looking at me as if he was seeing an optical illusion. "We have quite a file on Mr. Fairview. Are you telling me you sent him to the hospital the other day? Because if you are, I think you might want to get your parents in here and have me advise you of your rights. What happened to the gentleman the other day was a felonious assault."

"He tried to rip me off." I said. "And when I refused to give him money he tried to assault me. I simply took defensive measures. Very stern defensive measures."

"I see." The cop nodded, looking at me now with something like respect. "Please go on."

"Well, after that I've been making a point to tease him every time I see him." I shrugged. "I guess I went a bit too far and he decided to take action."

"That's a delicate way of putting it." He said. "It's hard to believe a little guy like you did all of that damage to that big asshole."

"I know a little karate." I said. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." The cop said. "I ran your record and Fairview's record while I was waiting to interview you. Fairview has got multiple arrests for everything from assault to drugs to attempted rape. He's a pukebag in the making. You, on the other hand, come from a middle-class family, have no arrest record whatsoever, in fact you're not in our system at all. All of the witnesses, and there was a surprising amount willing to talk about this thing, say that Fairview came up from behind and struck you with the knife and that you were acting in complete self-defense. Your friend Mike confirms your story. Fairview's story is among the most ridiculous I've ever heard. He says that you attacked him with the knife as he walked by, he took it away from you and stabbed you in self-defense." The cop gave me a sly smile. "He's a couple of rooms over you know."

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Yep." Morgan nodded with satisfaction plainly visible on his face. "Don't tell anyone I told you but you seem trustworthy. The docs say he might lose those testicles, you got him THAT hard. Even if he don't lose 'em, it's doubtful that he'll ever have kids." The cop looked to the heavens. "Imagine that, that little shitbag won't get to breed more little assholes. Goddamit sometimes there IS justice in this fucked-up world." He gazed at me. "So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write up your story pretty much as you told it. But I would suggest highly that you profess ignorance to the little incident the other day. You're the only one that's told me about it. Even Fairview himself didn't mention it. So, to avoid complications, how about we just leave that little tidbit out of the story? Makes things much easier for everyone. You don't know WHY he attacked you by your locker, he just did. Okay?"

"Okay." I agreed, fascinated by the way he was talking to me.

"Good." Morgan nodded. "I'm gonna charge him with assault with a deadly weapon. In light of his previous record he'll get a year or so in juvie. It goes without saying that he'll be expulsed from school. So congratulations hero. You got rid of one first class, A-number one dirtbag.

I might put you in for a goddam public service award."

He took another twenty minutes or so to interview me thoroughly about the incident. He thanked me again and then left the room. A few minutes later my parents came in with Tracy in tow. Mom looked as if she'd been crying. So did Tracy I saw. Even Dad looked as if he'd aged since I'd seen him that morning. I felt sorrow and shame for having put them through this ordeal.

"Billy?" Mom said, coming forward and stroking my hair.

"Yeah Mom?" I asked. "I'm all right, really."

She gulped. "This isn't because of, well, drugs is it?"

So that is how I spent the one-week anniversary of my recycling in a hospital bed. They kept me doped up throughout the night but I still found it hard to sleep. My mind kept turning back to the fact that I'd been stabbed in this life but that I hadn't been stabbed in my previous life. The implications of that were starkly frightening. I was not invulnerable. All bets were off. I could just as easily be killed here as I could have in my own when. I could die before I turned thirty-two!

Since I'd come back and changed things from their natural order anything could now happen. Anything. The risks I'd taken so far now gave me the shivers. Riding in Raisin and later Mike's car without a seatbelt on with an intoxicated driver at the wheel. Playing games with dangerous bullies at school. Even playing mind games with my teachers. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have really thought that I was safe? Had I actually been thinking of myself as a superhero before Richie had struck me?

I made my second solemn vow since returning. I vowed that I would be careful. I was having too much fun to die.

"Are you SURE you'll be okay Billy?" Mom asked me for perhaps the fiftieth time. "We can still cancel our plans."

"No, no Mom." I insisted once more. "I'm healing up just fine. I get to go back to school on Monday. Really, I'll be fine."

It was Saturday night. I'd been home from the hospital for a week and a half, bored out of my mind, unable to leave the house or do much of anything besides lie in bed and let my wounds heal. Mom had taken off work to take care of me and had fawned over me for the past nine days. I had soup and sandwiches delivered to me in bed, I had sodas brought to me whenever I wished. I was surprised I was allowed to go to the bathroom by myself. I love my mother dearly, I really do, but after nine days she was starting to get on my nerves. Saturday night was the night of her company's annual awards banquet, an event that she and dad attended every year and would usually come home from in the wee hours of the morning in a cab they were so drunk. The last thing in the world I wanted was for them to stay home. I needed a little peace.

"Well," She said doubtfully. "If you're sure."

"Absolutely Mom." I nodded from the couch. "Besides, Tracy's here." I nodded in my sister's direction. "If there are any problems, she can handle them."

"Yeah Mom." Tracy readily agreed, too readily some would say. "I can take care of him."

She seemed satisfied. She headed upstairs and began to get ready. Two hours later her and Dad were out the door.

"Thank God!" Tracy said once their car had disappeared from sight. "How the hell could you stand it having her home all the time?"

"Mom's all right." I said. "It's just parental authority that gets old."

She smiled, not bothering with THE LOOK. By now Tracy was used to my odd sayings. "Whatever." She said. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course." I told her, offended that she felt the need to even ask that.

"Cindy scored some killer buds." Tracy told me. "She's gonna bring 'em over and we're gonna get stoned while we watch Saturday Night Live. If you can keep your mouth shut, maybe she'll share with you."

I smiled, knowing that I'd made great progress with my sister since returning. I'd never even been aware that she smoked grass in my previous life. Now she was offering to get stoned with me. Sure, it wasn't exactly a blood oath of loyalty, but it was a start. "Suppose I told you I COULDN'T keep my mouth shut." I asked. "What would you do then?"

She gaped at me for a moment and then laughed. "You're an asshole Billy." She said, shaking her head. "Do you want to get stoned or not? I've never done it with you before, you should think of it as a privilege."

"It sounds like a plan Trace." I said. "And it is a privilege."

Cindy came over at nine o'clock. She was wearing the obligatory tight 501's and a sweater that accented her pert tits nicely. Her blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled. My loins stirred at the first sight of her, my dick threatening to harden by visual stimulation alone. I'd found over the past week that, injuries aside, my libido was that of a fifteen-year old. I NEEDED to have an orgasm at least once a day. I seemed to go into physical withdrawal symptoms if I didn't. I'd jacked off so much there were actual abrasions on my dick. And Cindy had been a star player in many of the fantasies.

I was heartened by the fact that, after a quick greeting to Tracy, she rushed over to my spot on the couch and planted herself next to me. My dick stirred again as I smelled the scent of her perfume. It was heavy upon her skin but it was feminine and went right to my brain.

"You poor thing." She said with syrupy sympathy. "How are you doing?"

I smiled. "Everything that's important still works." I told her.

She giggled. "I guess Richie Fairview can't say the same." She replied. "Can I see where you got stabbed?"

"Sure." I told her, while Tracy stared in disbelief at her friend. I raised up my shirt, showing her the jagged wound. The stitches had been removed leaving only a healing line on my side. A similar wound, where they'd done the lavage, was just below my belly button.

"Ohhh." She crooned, looking at it. "You poor thing. Does it hurt?"

"Not too bad." I told her.

"Well here." She said, kissing her finger and then touching it to my bare skin, just atop the scar. "That'll make it better."

My flesh jumped at her touch, feeling the slight wetness of her saliva transferred from her fingertips to my side.

"You missed one." I told her, pointing at the surgical incision. She gave me another smile and then repeated the procedure for that one.

"Hope that makes them feel better." She said, eyeing the bulge in my sweat pants.

"It does." I assured her. "It really does."

Tracy seemed in shock as she watched her friend openly flirting with me. When they walked into the kitchen to fill the bong with water I saw a quick, whispered conversation that ended with Tracy glancing at me and then shaking her head in disbelief. I was in disbelief as well but fully prepared to take advantage of the situation. Why was Cindy acting this way with me when she'd treated me with quiet contempt before? I didn't really care but I was curious.

"You like to smoke buds?" Cindy asked me as she pulled a small baggie from her pocket.

"I LOVE it." I told her, staring into her eyes hard enough to make her blush.

Tracy looked at us uncomfortably.

She began loading up the bong, which I insisted, in the interests of safety, that we take out into the garage to smoke from. I knew that the smell of pot lingered in a room for hours and I'd recently learned very graphically that all bets were now off. I was being careful. The girls whined a little at my suggestion but finally agreed to it. So we got stoned amid my father's tools and boxes of motor oil, in the unheated garage where we could see our breath misting into the air.

"Now don't you feel safe?" I asked the two of them once we were back inside.

"If Mom and Dad come home unexpectedly now, all we have to worry about is pretending we're not stoned. We don't have to worry about them smelling it in the house."

"Mom and Dad never come home early." Tracy scoffed, taking a swig from a Coke. "You're just paranoid Billy."

"Tracy," I told her. "If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's to expect and plan for the unexpected. Sure, they probably won't come home early tonight, but it's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? If you work to eliminate all risks you'll usually be pretty safe. If you go through life assuming the worst will never happen, someday you're gonna get fucked." I stared directly at her as I said this and it was clear she got my message. Her arms broke out into visible gooseflesh and she trembled uneasily for a second.

"I guess you're right Bill." She allowed carefully, no doubt thinking about the conversation I'd had with her not too long ago.

"That's some pretty deep shit." Cindy said, scooting herself a little closer to me. "Is there anything to eat here?"

While Tracy was heating up some frozen burritos in the microwave, Cindy and I continued to sit on the couch.

"So where's your boyfriend tonight?" I asked her.

"You mean Jeff?" She shook her head and made a sour face. "I'm not going out with him anymore. He's an asshole."

"I could've told you that." I said.

"I made out with him a few times and he was telling everyone he was screwing me. Do guys really think that we won't hear about it when they say shit like that?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure what they think." I replied. "I think that 'think' is probably too strong a word for what they do. It seems to me that girls should stick to a general rule when deciding who they are going to, well, have fun with."

"Oh?" She asked perkily.

"The more a guy talks about having gotten pussy, the less pussy he's actually got. Now Jeff probably told you he'd screwed plenty of girls, right?"

"Oh yeah." She said. "As if that's going to impress us."

"Exactly. On the other hand, the guys that never tell pussy stories are usually the ones getting all the pussy. You see, they are smart enough to realize that discretion is the better part of valor. It's a pleasant cycle.

You don't talk about it, you get more of it, you get better at it. Your best lovers are gonna be those guys that have never told a pussy story in their life."

"Like you?" She asked, twirling a lock of her hair with her finger.

"Perhaps." I agreed. "But of course there's only one true way to find out how good someone is in bed."

"Really?" Cindy smiled. "And what is that?"

"Extensive personal research." I told her, letting my fingertip glide over the back of her hand. "Do you like to research?"

Tracy's return kept her from replying. She had plates of burritos and fresh cokes in her hands. Her eyes saw my fingertip caressing Cindy's hand and she shot another puzzled look at her friend. I could understand the source of her confusion. Cindy had always gone for the football player types. The good looking, rich boys from good families, and always older than her. Now she was shamelessly flirting with ME, her brother, who was not only not rich, not a football player, and not blessed with the rugged good looks of a Ken doll, but was two years younger than her as well. To Tracy it was probably as if the fabric of existence had suddenly developed a tear.

I got up to go take a leak (and to adjust my hard-on a little, it was bent at an uncomfortable angle). When I returned I could see that the two girls had been discussing something. Cindy was batting her eyes at me and Tracy was staring at me, as if she was seeing a completely different person.

When Cindy got up to go pee a few minutes later, Tracy waited until the bathroom door was closed and then turned to me almost angrily. "Do you know what Cindy told me?" She asked.

"What?" I said mildly.

"She heard that you screwed Steph Massie over by the falls last week. Is that true?"

"No." I shook my head. "We took a walk is all that happened. Talked a little. I was trying to get somewhere with her but she wouldn't go for it."

"That's not what Cindy heard." Tracy accused.

"Oh?" I asked. "And what did Cindy hear? And what does she care about Steph anyway? They don't exactly hang out together."

Tracy scowled at me. "Who do you think Cindy got the buds from you idiot? Everyone knows that Stephanie's brother is the biggest pot dealer in school."

"Oh," I paused, reaching back in my memory. Now that she mentioned it I DID remember that little piece of trivia. "Well, what did she hear?"

"Steph told her that you took her into the woods and gave her the best lay she's ever had." Tracy shook her head in disgust. "And believe me, that bitch has had quite a few lays. Did you really fuck her?"

"No." I said. "I didn't."

"Well why would she be telling people that you did?"

I shrugged. "She's just telling dick stories. You know how women are always doing that."

"Dick stories?" Tracy asked. "Girls do NOT tell dick stories!"

"Tracy," I finally asked. "What possible concern is this of yours?"

"What?"

"Why are you grilling me about this? What business is it of yours?"

"Because Cindy thinks you're some kind of great lover and she wants to, you know? That's why!"

"Wouldn't that be Cindy's business?" I asked.

"I just think she should know the truth." Tracy said indignantly.

"Okay. Tell her. Get her alone and tell her that I said I've never fucked Steph or anyone else. Tell her I'll deny fucking anyone, anywhere, at any time to my dying day. I'll go to my deathbed swearing that I'm a virgin." I smiled. "Maybe that will get her to back off."

Tracy opened her mouth to say something and then stopped, staring at me, her mind turning over what I'd just said. Her exasperation with me slowly turned into something else. It was the same change of expression I'd seen on the cop's face in the hospital. The expression became one of respect.

"You see Trace." I continued. "I might TRY to get somewhere with Cindy tonight. I might even get her to come to my room with me. But I won't get anywhere with her. Even if we're up there for an hour. Even if Cindy comes down and tells you I fucked the shit out of her, that I was the best lover she'd ever had, it would only be a lie. I will never get anywhere with anyone to hear me tell it. I guess I'm doomed to just keep trying forever and ever."

"Wow." Tracy whispered, in awe. "Do you know anyone else like you?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, no." I replied. "All of the guys I know get pussy all the time. I should know, they tell me about it."

"A shame." She commented as the bathroom door opened and Cindy emerged again.

"Have you guys been talking about me?" She giggled, seeing the serious expressions on our faces.

"No." We both answered together.

"We were just talking about brother/sister stuff." Tracy added.

We went out to the garage and smoked a few more bowls. When we resumed our places on the couch, Cindy proclaimed she was cold and asked if there was a blanket we could cover up with. Tracy retrieved a large blue comforter from the linen closet and threw it over us. Under the cover of the cover I went to work.

While we watched TV my hand found its way to the tight denim of Cindy's leg.

I caressed it for a few minutes and, when she didn't object, began to slide it upward. My fingers slowly traced over the material between her legs and continued to the waistband. I deftly unbuttoned the first two buttons of her jeans and slid my finger in the gap this created, the pad of my finger touching the soft skin of her lower stomach. She settled into the couch a little more, opening her legs for me.

I undid the rest of the buttons and slowly slid my hand into her jeans, my fingertips gliding over the silky material of her panties, staying on the outside of them. I probed further down while she spread her legs even wider. Beneath my hand I could feel the cushion of her pubic hair and, further down, the outline of her lips and dampness seeping through the cotton. I found the spot just below her clit and began to apply pressure, rocking my hand back and forth.

Though I kept my eyes on the television and my face expressionless, I heard definite change in Cindy's breathing pattern as I caressed her. I wondered if she'd ever been stimulated like this before. Probably not. The first instinct of a guy when getting his hands down a girls pants is to drive his finger into the pussy and thrust it back and forth. Now there's a time for doing that of course, but the beginning stages of foreplay are not it. Females like a slow build-up to passion, a gradual rise in excitement.

Cindy's hand came sliding across my lap. Her fingers closed around the bulge of my cock through my sweat pants, feeling the length. She gave a little coo as she felt me and I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. She was, to my pleasant surprise, pretty good at what she was doing. My dick was straining, eager for release and the touch of a female hand upon it felt heavenly.

Next to us, Tracy continued to stare at the television, either oblivious to what we were doing or pretending to be. It didn't really matter. I slid my hand upward a few inches and then let my fingers slide beneath the waist of Cindy's panties. My fingertips felt soft, feminine skin and then kinky, curly hair. I continued downward, having to push harder now, until my fingers were sliding across wetness and slippery warmth. My middle finger curled downward, sliding between an unseen set of lips that gripped eagerly back.

"Ahhh!" Cindy uttered, jumping a little at the contact.

Tracy glanced over at her, a knowing expression on her face. "You okay Cindy?" She asked sweetly.

"Yeah." Cindy answered, a little breathlessly. "Just a, Oooh," She shivered a little as I began to move my finger, "A hiccup."

"I should get those kind of hiccups." Tracy commented and then went back to the TV.

Soon her hand crept under the waist of my sweats and was digging through my underwear. Her cool, soft fingertips closed around my shaft and began to glide up and down. It felt great, to be gripped by a hand other than my own, but she was doing it with such enthusiasm that the comforter was noticeably rising up and down. Tracy couldn't have helped but see it, though she said nothing and pretended not to notice. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist and forced her to slow down a little.

I continued to finger her, feeling my hand get wet from her juices, feeling her jack my aching cock up and down. I was trying to think of a way to get her up to my room when I received help from an unexpected source.

"TV sucks." Tracy suddenly proclaimed. "It's more than an hour until Saturday Night Live comes on. Let's listen to some music."

"Uh, okay." I nodded, not caring if she wanted to put on a polka album at that point.

"You just bought the new Foreigner album a few weeks ago, didn't you?" She asked me.

I looked at her. Had I? I supposed I had if she'd brought it up. "Yeah," I nodded. "I did."

"Well why don't you go up and get it for us?" Tracy asked. "I've been dying to hear it."

"Uh, why don't you go get it?" I asked.

"I don't want to go in your room." Tracy explained, smiling. "How about you get it. Maybe Cindy can go help you look for it. She can pick out some of your other albums that she wants to listen to later." She turned to Cindy. "He's got a great collection."

"Okay." Cindy said immediately, her hand shooting out of my sweats so fast it was like it had never been there. She extricated my hand from her pants and buttoned back up, making no particular effort to hide what she was doing from Tracy. When her pants were fastened she stood up. "C'mon Billy, let's see your albums."

"And take your time." Tracy said. "Look at them all REAL carefully while you make your decision."

"You bet." Cindy said, heading for the stairs. She looked over at me, "You coming Billy?"

I looked at her seductive smile and started to rise, stopping when I realized that my sweats were probably poking out before me.

"Well Billy?" Tracy asked, looking at me. "Are you COMING?"

I looked in my sister's eyes and saw only amusement there. "Yeah." I said, throwing off the covers and standing up. Tracy's eyes dropped to the tent at my crotch.

"Looks like you dropped something in there." She smiled. She then gave me a meaningful look. "You owe me one." She whispered.

"I suppose I do." I agreed and then headed for the stairs. "Even though I won't get anywhere."

Cindy was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She took my hand in hers and led me to my own bedroom. I was glad I'd taken the time to clean it up.

Had it been its former self, the encounter might have ended right there. We entered and she closed the door behind her, she then turned to me. Despite her aggression, her eyes were showing nervousness; her body trembling a little.

"You're very beautiful." I told her, my eyes roaming up and down her form, knowing that I'd be kissing it and tasting it soon.

"Thank you." She said softly. "I can't believe I'm up here with you."

"Do you want to leave?" I asked.

"No." She said, stepping forward, putting her arms around me. I returned her embrace, already giddy at the feel of her against me. She leaned her mouth towards me. "I want to stay."

Knowing I had a reputation to live up to now, I gave her my best. I was helped by the fact that she was a girl I'd often dreamed about, both in my first trip through school, and after my return. I stood near the door with her for more than five minutes, just kissing her, letting her taste my tongue, letting me taste hers. She was a good kisser, much better than I'd expected, although not quite as good as Anita. But she excited me more than Anita, aroused my hunger more. As I began kissing her neck and her ears and undoing the ponytail to let her blonde hair cascade free, she put her hands into the front of my sweats again, grasping my cock, fondling it urgently.

"Come on." She said eagerly. "Let's do it!"

I nipped at her nose and then planted a soft kiss on her eyelid. "Patience." I told her. "This is an experience to be savored." Little did she know that it was taking all of my willpower to keep from throwing her to the bed, stripping her pants off, and pounding away like an animal.

Instead I led her to the bed, or she led me I guess since she refused to remove her hands from my cock.

"Do you want me to blow you?" She asked, kissing on my face, squeezing my cock.

"Sure." I nodded, kicking off my shoes. Although I hadn't planned on that, I certainly wasn't going to refuse it. And if she could make me come it would give me more staying power for my later work.

Slowly she sank to her knees at the foot of the bed, dragging my sweats and underwear down as she went. My cock popped free, slapping her across the cheek as it was liberated. She giggled and then slowly ran her tongue up the shaft from the base to the head.

"Ahhh." I groaned, pleased at the sensation. I was even more pleased when she took me into her mouth and deep throated me, her lips slowly sliding down until they were nestled in my pubic hair. With exquisite slowness she pulled back up, applying suction as she went. "Goddd." I breathed. "Where did you learn that?"

"You like that?" She said, planting little kisses. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

She took me back in her mouth and began to bob up and down on me. Her hand locked around the shaft and began to jack with the rhythm of her head. Her tongue swirled round and round, wetting me and sending saliva dripping down into my hair, her mouth applying a pleasant amount of suction. My hips began to rise and fall immediately from the bed. My god it felt good. This seventeen-year old girl KNEW how to give a blowjob. I would put her up against a twenty-year whore in that department.

She slurped and sucked and made little grunting noises for only a short time before the first orgasm came straining up my spine.

"I'm gonna come Cindy." I warned her, in a voice that wasn't steady.

"Mmmmm." She moaned around my cock and picked up her pace.

I began to ejaculate a large, pent-up load into her mouth. Her hand continued to jack at me throughout it and her mouth sucked my come from the head. She gulped and gulped, swallowing every drop. When she pulled her face from my crotch, my dick was wet and shiny but clean as a whistle. She smiled up at me, licking her lips.

"You're not the only one who has some talent you know." She said, standing and pushing me back onto the bed. "Now what are you gonna do to repay me?"

"I'll think of something." I said, pulling her face to mine and putting my tongue back into her mouth.

I pulled off her sweater and then her bra, baring her gorgeous breasts. There is something sensuous and indescribable about a set of tits that belong to a seventeen-year old. They are so fresh, so firm, so visually stimulating. Could there be anything on earth more appealing? I had to taste them so I rolled her over on the bed and took one into my mouth, working the nipple, teasing it, making her sigh in pleasure. I worked on the other nipple for a while and then stood and reached for her waistband.

She watched me, her face flushed as I unsnapped her jeans and pulled them from her body. Her legs were long and lean, smooth to the touch, with just a few light hairs on the upper thighs. Her panties were dark red with white polka dots. The crotch of them was darker red, made so by the wetness that had soaked in there. I ran my index finger up and down her spread legs a few times, relishing the feel of that soft skin, that youthful skin. Finally I continued to her crotch and hooked the finger through the elastic of the panties. My knuckle was against her lips, feeling damp heat. I tugged and she lifted her hips, allowing me to drag them free and off of her body.

I couldn't have imagined a sexier looking vaginal area. Her pubic hair was blonde, only slightly darker than that on her head. It was sparse, revealing two very swollen lips and one very erect clit. I don't believe I've ever seen a finer one.

"You like what you see?" She asked me, opening her legs more, obviously knowing that her crotch was one that men dreamed of.

"Very much." I said, picking up her legs by the calf and placing them on my shoulders. "I think I'll eat it."

"Ohhh." She moaned as my head went forward.

Though she was a teenager, her smell was of a woman. Sharp and musky, dripping with pheromones. My dick sprang back to life as her odor hit me. Her taste was tart as I slid my tongue between those pouting lips and plunged it in. I drove it in and out, drinking from her, enjoying my feast, feeling those soft blonde hairs tickling my nose. When her crotch began to rise and fall and her fingers began to pull strands of hair from my head, I attacked her clit, taking it between my lips. She screamed as she came in my mouth.

When her gyrations stopped she hooked her hands into my armpits and pulled on me. "Fuck me!" She commanded.

"I want to eat you some more." I told her, trying to pull back.

"Fuck me!" She growled. "Fuck me now! And then, after you come, I want you to eat me again."

So she had fantasies. But I imagined it would not be as enjoyable as she imagined since I intended to wear a condom. "I need to get a rubber first." I told her, trying to get up.

Her strong arms pulled me back down. "I'm on the pill." She told me. "Now fuck me! And then eat me!"

"Are you REALLY on the pill?" I asked, hesitating.

"Yes Goddamit!" She whined, "I've been on it for a year now. Now fuck me Billy! Fuck me now! Get your ass up here!"

I figured, through my haze of lust, that she probably wouldn't lie about that. So I climbed aboard, sliding up her sweaty body and putting the head of my dick against her wet lips.

"Do it!" She yelled, putting her legs around my ass and pulling with them. "Fuck me!"

I thrust forward into her tight slit, going in in one smooth, gripping motion. We sighed together as our pubic bones met.

"Fuck me hard!" She panted, thrusting her hips up at me. "Come on!"

I fucked her hard, pounding into her body and establishing a rhythm that got my heartrate well into the aerobic exercise category. Sweat began to form on my face and drip onto hers. When the droplets landed near her mouth she would lick at them. She kept chanting "yes, yes, yes, fuck me" as my cock assaulted her tight pussy, making wet, squishing sounds and pouring her juices out onto the bedspread.

I angled upward with my thrusts, making the shaft rub forcefully against the top of her vagina, where the clitoral nerves were. I made sure my pubis ground into hers with each thrust, which served both to pleasure her, driving her towards orgasm and served to pleasure my cock. I squeezed her tits, tweaking the nipples, I felt her tight ass as it moved beneath me, I gave her my fingers, allowing her to suck on them. I felt vague pain both in my side and in my stomach as my wounds were stretched and pulled by my frantic action but it was unimportant, overridden by the pleasure her young body was giving mine.

She came again, screaming into my ear and then biting down on the lobe. I was right behind her, pumping out another load into her gasping chasm.

My thrusts had barely stopped before she pushed me downward. "Now eat me." She said. "Please? Eat my pussy now that you've come in it. Please?"

Obviously this was a long-held fantasy of hers. Though she had definite experience, I doubted she had ever gotten someone to do THIS act for her before. Teenagers and even college age men would be disgusted by the very thought. Hell, most fully-grown and matured men were. Though it wasn't one of my favorite activities, it wasn't repulsive either. It was something I'd done before (I'd found that many women shared Cindy's fantasy of having sperm licked from their vagina). My motto had always been do whatever it takes to insure future copulation. I gave her a smile and then slid down her body. I spread her sweaty legs wide and looked at her pussy. It was drooling juice and sperm, oozing it onto the bedspread. I hesitated just to make her ask again. I didn't have to wait long.

"Come on?" She begged. "Do it, please?"

I lowered my head and went to work.

It took her only a short time to come again but still I ate her until yet another orgasm came through. I then rolled over onto my back and pulled her on top of me. With a few adjustments her pussy was soon clamped down on my cock once more and I was thrusting up into her. She didn't want me to come in her pussy again though. Instead, she pulled herself off of me and took me into her mouth once again. She put her impressive blowjob abilities to work and soon I was blasting another load down her throat.

She crawled up onto my body and collapsed atop it, kissing my cheeks and my lips. "God o'mighty." She proclaimed. "That was the best sex I have ever had. Stephie was right about you."

"Stephie?" I asked. "Do you mean Stephanie Massie?"

"You know damn well who I mean Billy." She smiled, nuzzling me a little. "She told me you could eat a pussy like there was no fuckin' tomorrow. And goddam if you can't."

"I certainly wouldn't know how she would know that." I told Cindy.

"You're full of shit." Cindy told me affectionately. "She gave me every stinky detail. You fucked the shit out of her."

I shook my head, smiling a little. "Nope." I said. "I most certainly did not. She let me kiss her a little but she wouldn't let me do anything else."

Cindy stared into my eyes, trying to read what was behind them. "Are you for real?" She finally asked.

"As real as I can be." I said, sitting up. "But you know what? You and I didn't do anything either."

"We didn't?"

I shook my head again. "Nope. We looked at records, I tried to put a move on you, and you shot me down. Hell, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

She looked at me grinning. "I guess I can't."

"But if you're ever with groups of girls and you want to tell them some dick stories about how Tracy's little brother ate your pussy until you screamed, or about how he fucked you until you clawed marks in his back, or about how he licked his come out your still-twitching cunt afterwards," I licked my lips. "Well, there's not much I can do about that now, is there? I'll deny it of course, but you know how girls love to listen to those dick stories? Hell, people believe everything they hear, don't they?"

"I guess they do." She said teasingly. "But I'm not that kind of girl. Suppose I promised to keep my mouth shut about what happened here today?"

"Oh I don't expect you to." I said. "I guess I'll just have to live with the reputation your lies will give me, won't I?"

"I guess you will." She said, giggling now. "It's a tough life, isn't it?"

Chapter 4

Here, at last, is chapter four of my ongoing saga. This chapter is a bit different since it covers a much greater span of time than the previous chapters did. Again, comments are greatly appreciated and I will eventually answer all legitimate email. Sorry to all that it sometimes takes me a while. Send comments to al_steiner@hotmail.com

Working hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Paying anything to roll the dice

Just one more time

Some will win

Some will lose

Some are born to sing the blues

Oh the movie never ends

It goes on and on and on and on

JOURNEY

Time continued to go on, as it does. I was pleased to see that it passed at an adult's pace instead of a child's or a teenager's. I went to bed each day and I woke up each day still in my new life. Gradually I became convinced that I was there to stay, that I wouldn't suddenly wake up again back in 1999. This was an idea that, once I became used to being back in my teens, used to terrify me.

Of course there were things that I missed. Modern music for one. I longed painfully sometimes to hear a little alternative rock or modern heavy metal instead of what I considered to be golden oldies. I missed some of the conveniences that I'd become accustomed to in the nineties that weren't commonplace in the early eighties. Video recorders and rented movies were a prime example. My parents would not own a VCR until late in 1984. Even then video stores would not begin to crop up until early in 1985. But most of all I missed Becky. There were times I cried in my bed at night as I lay sleepless, feeling condemned to the knowledge that I would never see her again, never hold her again.

As I'd vowed after Richie Fairview put his buckknife into my side, I was careful what I did. I went to school each day but I did not torment any more bullies. Of course if they had decided to come looking for trouble with me I would have returned it to them in spades but none of them did. My encounters with Richie forever sealed my reputation as someone that you did not fuck with. The bullies had much easier targets than I to occupy their time.

I tormented no more teachers as I had my history and A amp;P instructors. I replied politely to their questions when I was asked with whatever answer they were looking for. I brought up no controversial subjects to them. I did my homework each day the moment I got home from school (except on those days that Anita had something for me to do; something that began to happen with increasing frequency). As the school year wound on and as winter became spring my grades improved greatly all across the board, dramatically some would even say, unbelievably a few uneasy teachers even noted. By the time the school year ended my grades were straight A's and my overall average had moved up considerably.

I similarly took no further chances with my skin. As a paramedic I used to shake my head sadly at how stupid teenagers were, assuming their own immortality. After Richie I realized that I'd been even worse than they were. At least normal teenagers will acknowledge the possibility that they CAN die, even if they think it won't happen to them. But I had assumed that I COULDN'T die, that I was safe until thirty-two. That, despite eight years of scraping up the broken remains of idiotic teenagers off the streets of Spokane. I still shudder when I think of how easily I'd climbed into the car with Mike that night of the kegger, of how easily he might have drunkenly driven over the edge of the levee, dumping us both into the Spokane River. How ironic that would have been, for me to come back and save Tracy from that fate only to suffer it myself, to put my parents through the same grief with a different child.

I avoided riding in cars with teenagers when I could. When I couldn't, I snapped on my seatbelt and pulled it tight. Most of the time it was the first time the seatbelt in question had ever been fastened. I could tell that the driver's and other passengers of these vehicles wanted to deride me, call me a pussy, and apply the other forms of peer pressure that teens use for their bizarre purposes. But they never did. Again, Richie Fairview kept them from speaking their minds. Occasionally someone would ask however, why I was doing it.

"Well suppose we crash?" I'd ask.

"We ain't gonna crash." Was the inevitable reply.

"Probably not." I'd say. "But it's possible, isn't it?"

"I guess." They'd shrug.

"Well," I'd theorize. "If we DO get into an accident, I won't get hurt as bad if I have this seatbelt on. It doesn't inconvenience me in any way to have it on. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't restrict my movement, so why shouldn't I have it on?"

They usually had no answer for that and would let the subject drop there. But they never put on their own seatbelts in response. They didn't want to be called a pussy when I'd gone.

One thing I absolutely refused to do was to get into a vehicle with someone who'd been drinking and/or getting stoned. And since I didn't enjoy walking home from places like the falls, I just avoided going with anyone where that was a possibility.

This policy led to problems between Mike and I, and we already had more than our share of problems. Our relationship had changed since my return and Mike didn't care too much for it. I was no longer his trusty sidekick, willing to go along with everything that he wanted to do. I no longer smoked pot with him on the way to school because I wanted my head clear for classes. He tried every form of peer pressure he could think of to get me to change my mind but when I continually refused he blew up at me one day and stormed off. He didn't speak to me or walk to school with me for three days and surprisingly, though it had been a childish outburst over a ridiculous subject, I was very upset by the episode.

I cared for Mike and I desperately wanted to pull him off of the path he was on. My conviction to do this became even stronger after the Richie Fairview incident. He had jumped in, without the slightest hesitation and grabbed hold of the hulking asshole, pulling him off of me. He had done that despite the fact that he'd been terrified of Fairview and that Fairview was holding a knife at the time. He had cast aside his self-protection instinct to come to my assistance and I could not forget that. Maybe if he hadn't done that, maybe if he'd simply stood there during the attack unable to move, I could have simply let the friendship die and let him go about his life. But he hadn't. He'd jumped in there without a second thought. Goddamit I owed him something. I had to try!

As was his nature, he offered me no apology for his outburst. He simply showed up at my door for the walk to school the following Monday and acted as if nothing had happened. He pulled out a joint as we went along but did not offer any to me. I suppose that was as close to saying sorry as he could come.

So I continued to walk to school with him each day even though I didn't really have to. Cindy, who had her own car and who took Tracy to school each day, had offered to give me a ride if I wanted. Her invitation did not include Mike, who she couldn't stand, and so I declined it.

After school I would go over to Mike's sometimes or he would come over to my house and then, if I'd finished my homework, I would smoke some pot with him. I learned to drop myself down to the level of a sixteen-year-old during these times and even managed to have a good time. I did not, however, go out on weekends with him anymore, always pleading other plans, which was usually true. I'd found some interesting ways to spend my weekends that did not involve putting my life at risk with intoxicated drivers. Anita figured heavily in these plans most of the time. So did Cindy.

Mike always seemed upset that I wouldn't go out with him on the weekends but didn't make a big deal of it. A status quo developed in our relationship, one that was due to break before long.

In April of that year Mike's Dad, a mechanic, fixed up a two hundred dollar Volkswagen Bug and gave it to Mike to drive full-time. I remembered the car well. It was a 68, the heater didn't work, the upholstery was ripped and shredded, and the engine would constantly require attention from his Dad. Mike and I had had some good times in that car during my first trip through.

We would go to keggers, to parties, just out cruising. We would use the car to cut school with, driving to the river to go fishing.

Though I had no plans to do most of the stuff we USED to do in the car, I figured that simply driving a few miles to school would be safe enough. I was wrong.

Mike's driving in that Bug used to scare me even before being recycled. It absolutely terrified me afterwards. It only took me one trip with him to realize that I was never going to set foot in it again. He picked me up for school the first day he had it and as soon as we were out of sight of my house, he pulled out a joint and lit it up.

"You sure you should be doing that while you're driving?" I asked nervously.

"Doing what?" He replied with genuine confusion.

I pulled my seatbelt tighter and braced myself.

In the course of the short drive to school he weaved recklessly in and out of the morning traffic. He rode up on the rear of vehicles when he had no room to weave, getting so close to them that, had they stopped, he would not have had time to even apply his brakes, let alone stop in time. He ran through one red light and three stop signs, giving only a careless glance as he did so. He smoked on his joint the entire time. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was trembling with fear.

"You okay dude?" He asked, looking at me with his stoned expression.

"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.

"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."

"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."

He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.

"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."

"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."

"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.

I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?

As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.

Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.

Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.

"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.

"Sure." I smiled back, following her.

Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.

Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.

"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."

"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"

"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"

"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"

"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."

"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"

"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.

I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.

The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.

Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.

I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.

By the time Mike abruptly ended our friendship Nina and I were quite close and able to confide pretty well in each other. As I entered the lunchroom the day after my telephone conversation she immediately noticed my upset expression.

"What's wrong?" She asked, giving me her shy smile.

"Oh," I said, sitting down and opening my lunch bag. "You know my friend Mike that I've told you about?"

"Yeah," She nodded. "The guy who likes to smoke pot all the time."

"Right." I agreed. "Well yesterday…"

I poured out the whole story to her, omitting of course the part about how I'd once been a thirty-two year old and couldn't relate to a sixteen year old very well anymore. She listened without interruption and then, when I was finished, looked at me thoughtfully.

"You seem like you're blaming yourself for this." She said.

I shrugged. "We've been friends for a long time. Maybe I'm being a little hard on him. Is it that much for him to ask for me to drive to school with him each day?"

"If you're putting your life at risk it is." She answered. "It sounds to me like HE is the one to blame for this, not you. He is the one willing to end a friendship over something so stupid as who you drive to school with and whether or not you smoke pot with him."

"Yeah, I know." I agreed. "But we've been friends a long time. I can't help but feel I've let him down or something."

"If you've been friends a long time," She said. "Don't you think he'll eventually grow up a little and realize how stupid he's been? He'll come around."

"It might be too late by then." I blurted.

She looked at me puzzled. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, just ignore me." I told her. "I can be awfully bleak sometimes."

I left the lunchroom that day feeling better about the situation. Though nothing had changed I always felt better after I'd talked to Nina.

I also got into the habit of checking the business section of the newspaper each day. I would look through the stock market report, memorizing and tracking various stocks. It became such a routine at the breakfast table each morning that Dad quickly stopped asking me why I was doing it. In my former life I'd followed stocks only as they related to my 401k plan. Now I was trying to get a grip on the market, to begin the process of understanding it and eventually mastering it. If I could master it I knew, I could master everything.

Summer break began. When I brought my report card to my mother I actually feared she was going to faint as she stared at it.

"Straight A's Billy?" She asked, looking at it in disbelief. "You?"

"I guess I just started to take all that stuff you're always sayin' about how education is the most important thing, seriously Mom." I told her.

An extended version of THE LOOK followed this.

"Do you think you can make your tacos tonight?" I asked next.

"Sure." She said numbly.

The summer went by quickly in a haze of hot days and sexual activity. Although Mike no longer hung out with me I found new companionship with Cindy and Tracy. My relationship with my sister had improved to the point where she was confiding secrets in me. She began telling me her hopes and dreams; that she wanted to go to law school, that she wanted to marry a nice man and have children, that she wanted a nice house and a nice car. These were things I'd never known about her since her life had been cut short before we'd gotten out of the teenage rivalry stage.

She also no longer seemed to have a problem being seen with me. Maybe something I'd said, something I'd done had given her a little kick in the head, but she treated me that summer as a friend and companion, taking me with her when she went to parties, either with Cindy or with one of her other friends.

She'd also developed a similar aversion to being in a car with an intoxicated driver; an aversion she'd managed to share with Cindy. Whenever we went out one of the girls would stay sober enough to pilot the car safely home. They developed a designated driver rule long before that buzzword caught on. I always suspected that my little speech to Tracy that one night had a lot to do with it.

It was from Cindy and Tracy's ranks of friends that I chose my sexual companions. They were both part of the popular crowd, members of the elite and in my previous life I would have been intimidated as hell to be at a party with them. But now things were different. I could not bring myself to be intimidated by teenagers, but oh how I lusted after them. I rarely left a party without using one or more of the condoms I carried with me at all times. I got to sleep with girl after girl from my fantasies and it was usually THEY who would approach me thanks to an underground reputation I had developed among the females.

The guys at these parties, who were for the most part older than I, either seniors or college freshmen, were oblivious to what I was doing. Despite my reputation with Fairview they considered me harmless, even as I was taking their girlfriends out for a little walk while they were playing a game of quarters or having someone pour beer down their throat with a beer bong. They wondered what I was doing there of course. I was inevitably the youngest male in attendance and none of them ever chose to converse with me.

That was fine with me. As long as they saw me as no threat when they spotted me talking amongst the girls or having a private conversation with one of their girlfriends.

Tracy told me once that many of them thought I was gay. They didn't tease me about it because of Richie Fairview but that seemed to explain why I chose to hang out with the girls instead of trying to come over and talk football or cars. I never tried to convince them otherwise although the queer logic of this amused me to no end. A guy wants to hang out with girls so he must be gay.

I had careful rules about my relationships during that summer. I generally didn't sleep with anyone more than once and I made it clear that I desired no sort of commitment or ongoing relationship. I was in it for the sex and the sex only. Most of them understood this. They were in it for the sex too and happy that I was happy to keep my mouth open while it was on their pussy and closed afterword. I had two exceptions to this rule however: Cindy and Anita. I continued to sleep with both of them on a regular basis.

It was nice. They both understood the rules, especially Anita who had no desire to have anyone find out she was boffing a teenaged boy. They were also both on birth control so I didn't have to wear a condom with them. It is nice to sink bare flesh into bare flesh for a change of pace.

Except for the rift with Mike and except for the absence of my discussions with Nina, which I missed, it was quite a pleasant summer. The best one I'd ever remembered to that point.

I got my learner's permit that August when I turned fifteen and a half. Dad then 'taught' me to drive.

"You've caught on to this remarkably quick." He said, looking at me with something close to suspicion the first day. "Tracy hasn't been letting you drive, has she?"

"No Dad." I assured him, expertly changing lanes, feeling ecstatic to be behind the wheel after, how long? More than six months? "I guess I just have a knack for it."

"Some knack." He said. "I guess we won't have to go out all that often, will we?"

September brought the start of my junior year and Tracy's senior year. I had a whole new slew of classes and subjects that I'd chosen a few weeks before. I was particularly pleased to find that I no longer had to take PE.

My first period class was Introduction to Molecular Biology. Mrs. Crookshank taught it and it was a subject I knew little about. I'd taken it so that I could relieve some of the boredom of school by learning something new. I walked into class the first day and Mrs. Crookshank greeted me stiffly.

"Billy," She nodded. "It's nice to see you again this year."

"Nice to see you too." I answered.

"Do you like to read about molecular biology too?" She asked me next.

There was a hint of teasing sarcasm in her face. "No Mrs. Crookshank." I said. "I'm an MB virgin."

Before she had a chance to reply I turned to find a seat. I saw that Nina was in the class. She was sitting in the front row and all of the desks around her were empty. She gave me a weak smile, perhaps wondering if I was going to speak to her or not after the summer.

"Hi Nina." I greeted, walking over and taking the seat next to hers. "How was your summer?"

It turned out Nina was also in my third period class; Geometry. I sat next to her there also. When the lunch bell rang we walked together to the cafeteria. We found our normal seats and began to talk as we ate. After only a few minutes it was if we'd only done this yesterday.

"So you still want to be a doctor?" I asked her as we waded through the cafeteria's version of stroganoff.

"Oh yes." She nodded. "That's why I'm taking molecular biology. You have to be heavy in the science classes to get in. Especially if you want to get a scholarship."

"Where is it you want to go?" I asked her.

"Anywhere they'll take me." She said. "But I'd prefer U of W at Seattle. It's a top rated school but close enough so that I could commute home on vacations. If I get a good car that is. My parents don't have that much money."

"Mine either." I agreed. "I keep trying to get my old man to invest in the stock market but he won't do it. I don't think he trusts my predictions of good stocks."

"Do you still want to study business?"

"I don't really WANT to." I said. "But I think that I should. I think that's where my fortune lies."

She giggled, an action she would have been incapable of a year before. "Still gonna make that fortune huh?"

"I think I'll have a good head for investment." I predicted.

We ate in silence for a moment and then I asked, "Do you follow all that molecular biology crap? I mean today was only the intro but it seemed pretty deep to me. Quite a change from A amp;P."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I've read up on it a little over the summer. Trying to get myself a little edge you know? But you know what confused me?"

"What?"

"The geometry. It sounded like he was talking in Latin."

"He was." I affirmed. "But I think I got that handled. It's mostly just memorizing formulas it looks like. The actual math part is the algebra that we learned last year. If you can memorize the formula, you got it nailed."

"You must have a head for numbers." She told me, taking another bite.

"I never did before." I muttered.

"What's that?"

"Nothing." I answered, an idea suddenly striking me. "Listen, maybe we can help each other out. Why don't we get together and study a couple times a week? You can help me with the biology and I can help you with the geometry?"

She looked up at me, speechless, her face reddening.

"You okay?" I asked, wondering what I'd said to embarrass her.

"You want to… study with me?" She asked.

"Sure." I said. "Why not? We can either do it at your house or mine. You don't live too far from me, do you?"

"No." She shook her head. She gulped. "Are you sure we should do that?"

"Study together?" I asked, confused. "Of course I do. What's wrong with that?"

She looked at me hard for the longest time, various expressions crossing her face; fear, doubt, elation, disappointment, determination. "Nothing." She said finally. "When can we start?"

"I don't know." I said, still confused. "How about whenever we get stuck on something. It's probably gonna be often the way I see it."

Her face cleared a little bit and she seemed more composed. She giggled a little and shook her head.

"What's wrong?" I asked, nearing exasperation.

"Nothing." She chuckled. "Just thinking weird thoughts."

"I get those a lot too." I told her, still wondering what had gone through her head.

I saw Mike in the halls of course but he didn't talk to me, didn't approach me. His locker was no longer next to mine. It seemed he had a new group of friends to hang out with; the freshmen kids from last year. They all looked as if they worshipped him. I sadly guessed that that was what he needed. I also knew that he would drop out by the end of this year and that I was powerless to stop it. I tried to approach him a few times and he simply walked away.

Nina and I started studying together on a regular basis and our friendly relationship deepened to the point that we became intimate friends; able to judge each other's moods with a glance, able to say nearly anything to each other. I became closer to her than I ever would have thought possible. I was closer to her than I'd ever been to Mike. After all, Nina didn't always try to top whatever story I told or try to convince me about all of the mythical dick she was getting. She didn't try to get me to smoke cigarettes or cut school or get stoned. There was also no underlying sexual tension with her as there was with most of the other girls I knew. We just enjoyed being together, talking together.

She met Tracy and my parents on her first day studying at my house. It was somewhat awkward since Nina was very shy before new people and my parents were very curious about this girl I chose to have meet them. Though I was boffing nearly everything I could get my dick into at that point, I'd never introduced anyone to them. I thought it kind of ironic that the one they were meeting was the one I had not had any sex with. Nina uttered monosyllable replies to Dad and Mom's inquiries about where she lived, what she planned to do, etc, and finally they left us alone. Tracy had only uttered a polite greeting and had retreated to her room.

After she'd left, and after I'd answered my parent's interrogation and explained that we were only STUDYING together, that we were only friends, and that they should not start compiling a wedding list, I went upstairs to put my books away.

Tracy was doing some studying of her own, this time to the accompaniment of Ozzy Osborne. She looked up as I passed and called me into the room.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"Have you no shame at all?" She asked me.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"It's bad enough that you're screwing all of my friends but isn't that enough? Have you gotten bored with that and decided to start knocking off the shy egghead girls too? You are serious scum."

"I'm not screwing Nina." I said, looking at my sister aghast. "We were just studying. She's my friend."

"You don't have any girl friends." She accused. "You have fuck partners. Are you seriously telling me that you invited that poor girl over here to study? You didn't take her upstairs for a little private session before we all got home?"

"No." I yelled, shaking my head. "My god, am I that bad?"

"Are you that bad?" She laughed. "Do you know how many relationships you've broken up in the last few months? Do you know that more than four of my friends have dumped their boyfriends after they fucked you?"

"No." I said, and then, "Really?"

"Really." She nodded. "It was kind of cute at first, how all these girls were trying to maneuver to you, to get you to notice them. But you're getting out of hand. I've got girls coming up to me and pretending to be my friend just so I'll introduce them to you. Of course I have to keep it quiet they all say. I just wanna meet him, talk to him a little. Did you know that they all talk about you in the locker room and in the bathroom? Do you know what they say about you?"

"What?" I asked.

"They talk about you the way your friends talk about chicks like Steph. You're a male slut Billy. They describe what you do to them and how well you do it using the most disgusting terms I've ever heard. They've even asked me if I've done you. Me! Your fucking sister!"

"I'm sorry Tracy, I never…"

"But you know what they never say about you?" She went on. "They never say how nice of a guy you are or how respectful you are. They never come up to me and say, 'Gee Tracy, your brother is such a sweetheart'. All they talk about is how you'll eat their pussy like a goddam vacuum cleaner or about how you'll fuck them until they scream. They never talk about how they'd like to take you home to meet their mom or about how they'd like to be your girlfriend. They talk about how they can manage to get over to your house again for another session."

"Wow." I said, unsure what to think. Though I'd known that I had a reputation among the girls I had no idea they talked the way Tracy was telling me. I was also disconcerted at my sister's anger about this. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was have her pissed off at me.

"Wow." Tracy mocked. "That's pretty goddam profound."

I sat down on the edge of her bed, setting my backpack full of books down. Tracy turned down the stereo a little.

"I'm sorry Tracy." I told her. "I didn't know that what I was doing was affecting you. I thought I was just having some harmless fun. And I assure you that Nina and I are just friends. I haven't slept with her and I have no intention of doing so."

She stared at me for a moment. "You know the damnedest thing?" She asked. "The damnedest thing is that you ARE a nice guy and you ARE a sweetheart when you want to be. If you were an asshole it wouldn't bother me for girls to talk about you that way but you aren't. It bugs the shit out of me to hear people talk about my little brother that way. You would probably feel the same way if you went into the locker room and the guys were saying how well Tracy sucked dick or how she'd fuck anyone who asked, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yeah." I nodded. Would it bother me? I would want to kill whomever I heard saying that.

"That's how I feel when I hear that." She said. "And I can't even defend you in front of them because it's true. You DO fuck anyone who asks."

"I'm sorry." I repeated. I couldn't think of a thing to say to her. I surely wasn't going to say that I wouldn't do it anymore because that would have been a lie.

"Look." She said. "I'm just your sister. I'm not gonna ask you to stop fucking girls. I know you wouldn't do it anyway. But can you maybe tone it down a little? Cut it down to one or two a week? Or maybe hit up some of the other ones more than once?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "I'll try Tracy. I'll try. But remember, I'm fifteen. I'm at my sexual peak you know."

"Fuck you dickhead." She laughed back. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you deserved it."

"I suppose I did." I agreed.

"You're really not fucking Nina?"

"I'm really not." I affirmed.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet." She said.

So for Tracy's sake I toned things down a little. Also for my own. I wasn't sure I liked being referred to as a male slut. I stopped pursuing women with the vigor I'd exhibited before, instead simply waiting for them to come to me. I also began giving more repeat performances. By the time the snow flew I had, in addition to a new best friend, a small circle of girls that I regularly had sex with instead of a constant stream. It was enough and when one of the girls got tired of the relationship or met someone they wanted to have for a boyfriend, I would covet someone else.

To my surprise Tracy and Nina actually became something like friends. Nina would come over to my house twice a week or so to study and my sister, curious about the type of girl I would choose as a friend, made a point to talk to her each time she was over. Nina was slow warming up to my sister. I knew that this was due to her past treatment by other girls, which was both crueler and longer lasting than the torment she'd suffered from boys. This was something I never would have suspected had she not told me and it disheartened me to think that the fairer sex could be even crueler to their own then boys were.

But gradually Nina lost her shyness before Tracy and even Cindy, who was also a frequent visitor to our house. The two older girls took Nina under their wing and taught her the finer points of fashion, talking her into replacing her plain clothes with more modern ones. They taught her how to put on make-up, accenting her facial features. They taught her how to fix her hair into something other than a ponytail. The change in her appearance was actually startling when you saw it. I was able to see the attractive doctor that she would one day be, although without the perpetually bitchy expression and mannerism.

And then came the day in early December when a cold winter storm was blowing across the Spokane area. Snow was being driven through the air by gusting winds that registered more than forty miles an hour. As I walked out to the school parking lot towards Cindy's car the snowflakes hit me in the face like little shards of steel, stinging me and making me pull my hood and my scarf tighter around me. Snowdrifts were already more than ten feet high against some of the buildings and the ground was covered in white. If it had been snowing like this in the morning they would have closed the school.

Unfortunately the storm hadn't geared up until late morning.

When I got to the place where Cindy's car had been parked I looked up to find nothing. I looked around the parking lot, wondering if I was mistaken about where she'd parked. The wind cut into my face like a knife as I tried to locate the Caprice. It was nowhere to be seen. Other kids were rushing to their cars in groups of two or more, some of them slipping and sliding on the slick pavement. I saw no Cindy or no Tracy though.

"What the fuck?" I muttered, wondering where in the hell they'd gone.

It took me only a minute to figure out that I was stuck here with no other prospect but to walk home. I wondered if I would freeze to death before I got there. And then I spotted Raisin heading for his Falcon. I ran after him.

When Raisin dropped me off in front of my house fifteen minutes later the sight of Cindy's car parked at our curb did not improve my mood. I thanked Raisin and bade him farewell, trudging through the thick snow on the driveway to the front door, uttering foul things under my breath about sisters and friends that left brothers abandoned in a freaking blizzard.

The door was locked so I used my key, stepping into the warmth of the living room, prepared to chew out the traitorous girls. But they weren't there. The television was off, and on the stereo turntable one of my Pink Floyd albums was spinning silently around at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute, the arm suspended above one of the tracks. A quick glance at the coffee table gave me a pretty good idea what had happened. An opened bag of Doritos was sitting there along with the remains of some sandwiches and a few candybar wrappers.

They were getting stoned! They'd left me to freeze to death in the snow so they could go home and get stoned. And they'd probably smoked all of the pot before my arrival. The bitches! Where were they now? I began stomping through the house, looking for them.

When I approached the door that led out to the garage I heard girlish giggles coming from the other side. Fumed, I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. What I saw on the other side made me freeze in my tracks.

Cindy and Tracy were out there all right. The smell of greenbud came wafting over me and there was an actual haze in the confined space. But the surprising thing was who was with them. Nina was there, her mouth applied to the neck of the bong, sucking a hit up through the water while Cindy held the lighter and cheered her.

"That's the way girl!" Cindy encouraged. "Hit that shit!"

Tracy looked up at me, her eyes half-lidded, a shit-eating grin on her face.

"Hey Billy." She haled. "Glad you got home okay. You want a hit?"

Nina, hearing my name broke off what she was doing, leaving smoke curling from the bong. She saw the dumbfounded look on my face as I stared at her. She held my stare for a moment and then burst out into hysterical laughter, expelling a large cloud of fragrant smoke from her mouth and nose. Tracy and Cindy instantly joined her in hysterics. They were pointing at me as they doubled over in laughter.

They laughed for nearly three minutes as I stood in the doorway and simply stared. I could not believe that they had actually gotten Nina stoned. I could not believe that she'd gone along with it. What were they thinking?

When their giggles and chortles dried up I walked over to them. Nina started to say something and then burst into laughter again. Cindy joined her.

"You got her stoned?" I asked Tracy, who was the only one not laughing. "And you had her cut school?"

"We didn't have her do anything." Tracy told me, picking up a baggie and loading another hit into the bong. "She asked us if we had any pot. She wanted to try it. It seems all those stories you told her about smoking out made her curious." She giggled, jerking a thumb towards Nina. "As you can see, she seems to like it. Why didn't you ever smoke any with her?"

"I didn't think she'd want to." I said, watching Nina's face. She would start to calm down a little and then would look at me and burst into fresh laughter.

"I guess you were wrong." Tracy said, handing me the bong and a lighter. "I think there's a lot of things about Nina that you don't know."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Later." She answered. "Have a hit."

Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I flicked the bic and put my mouth to the bong.

Cindy and Nina both left shortly before Dad arrived home from work. I worried about the two of them on the snowy roads with a stoned driver at the wheel. I wouldn't stop them from leaving but I made them promise to put on their seatbelts. I knew Nina would and I also knew the chances of them being in a fatal crash were slim. Most fatal accidents occurred during the summer months, when the weather was clear and when the drivers could barrel along at suicidal speed. During snowy weather everyone drove slow. While there were more accidents, they tended to be minor. You simply couldn't generate enough kinetic energy to kill during a snowstorm. If Cindy got in an accident it would probably be a fender-bender. But then nothing is absolute so I worried.

After dinner and dishes, while the household began to wind down for bed I found my way to Tracy's room once again. Outside the wind was still howling against the windows, making the storm-shutters rattle and bang. They would have cancelled school the next day except for the fact that it was Saturday.

Tracy was lying on her bed, reading the latest (for that time) Stephen King book. She was wearing her standard pajamas, a long T-shirt.

"What's up?" She asked as I tapped on the frame of her door.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"Sure." She nodded, setting the book down and sitting up.

"Earlier today," I started. "While we were smoking out."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Wasn't that some killer shit? I was droning all through dinner. Do you want to smoke some more? I still have a little left."

"No," I said, shaking my head. And then I amended. "Well, maybe tomorrow. But anyway, while we were smoking you said that there's a lot of things I didn't know about Nina."

"Yeah?" Tracy smiled a little.

"What did you mean by that?" I asked.

She gave me a very adult look. "You really don't know, do you?" She asked.

"Don't know what?" I asked.

She took a deep breath. "Nina's in love with you Billy."

"What?!"

"Not just infatuation, not just attraction, not just puppy-love, whatever the fuck that is, but love. L-O-V-E. The big one. The ultimate like. She's head over heels in love with you little brother."

I was stunned into silence for a moment. Finally I said, "Did she tell you this?"

"No." Tracy said. "She doesn't have to. It's pretty plain to everyone who talks to her. I've known it ever since I started getting her to talk to me.

She thinks you're the shit." She shrugged. "God knows why."

"Wait a minute." I said, trying to deny it. "I think you're mistaken. We're good friends, we like to talk to each other, I can see how you would think…"

"I'm not mistaken Billy." Tracy said firmly. "You can accept it or not accept it. I'm just supplying information for you. She is in love with you. No doubt about it. And she's terribly afraid that you don't love her, that you'll never be interested in her, that you'll break her heart someday."

"What? How…"

"Because I'm a girl." Tracy answered before I could finish asking. "We know these things. She knows you could hurt her bad and she also knows she is powerless to prevent that if you decided to do it. She loves being around you but she wants more. She's not getting more but she stays around because of the hope that someday she will. She'll stay as long as the slimmest hope remains of that. The only way you'll get her to stop loving you is to destroy her hope completely. She may or may not recover from that. She's kind of a fragile girl, as you may have noticed, and I tend to think that maybe she wouldn't.

"I'm not telling you all of this to scare you or anything. I just want you to know what you're dealing with here. She loves you. You are God to her. So you need to tread carefully with her because you're playin' with her fuckin' emotions. Do you understand?"

"No." I shook my head. "I do not." I became angry. Here I was a thirty-two, almost thirty-three year old and a seventeen-year-old girl was telling me about love? What the hell did she know about it? She was probably reading all kinds of things into Nina's conversations based on the romance novels that she obsessively read all the time. "Nina and I are friends. No more than that. That's all we'll ever be. She likes me, she enjoys my company, but she doesn't love me. I used to tease her in grammar school for Christ sake! You've got your signals crossed."

She picked up her book again. "Believe what you want Billy." She told me, dismissing me in a non-verbal way. "But I'm not wrong about this."

Winter went on. I got straight A's again in the first semester of school. Second semester began with Nina and I in three classes together. We continued to study together a few times a week. I always watched her carefully, listened to her words carefully when I was with her. She liked to be around me, that was for sure, as I liked to be around her. She valued my opinion as I valued hers. She joked with me, revealing a quick and witty sense of humor beneath her shyness, a sense of humor that I knew that no one but me ever saw. We enjoyed being together. We were friends, very good friends, best friends even. But love? I thought not.

On February 10 of that year, 1983, I went down to the department of motor vehicles with my Dad after school. I took the written test, passing with 100 percent. I then climbed in Dad's Dodge Diplomat with a crusty old driving tester and took my driver's license test. The instructor was impressed with my abilities, stating that she'd rarely seen a new driver that operated a motor vehicle so well. She gave me a ninety-six on the exam, marking me down a point because I hadn't parallel parked terribly well, something I'd never mastered. I returned to the DMV office and had my picture taken. I was now a licensed driver.

As I drove my Dad home that day he congratulated me and gave me a brief lecture on safe driving. Doing his fatherly duty you understand. When he was finished I turned to him.

"I'd like to get a job Dad." I told him.

"A job?" He asked, looking at me.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I want to start making my own money. You know, so I can buy my own car and start putting money away for college. Stuff like that."

"Well that's admirable Bill." He told me, taken aback a bit. "I certainly am not going to stop you."

"Could I use the car on weekdays after you get home? If I find a job that is?"

"I suppose." He told me. "As long as we don't need it for anything. Of course you realize our insurance rates are going to go up now that you AND Tracy are listed on the policy. Also the gas is going to go up. And then there's Tracy. She likes to use the car too."

"I'll pay for whatever the increase is." I promised. "And Tracy and I will work something out."

"Yes." He said thoughtfully. "I suppose you will." He told me. "You and your sister have been getting along pretty well this last year." He said.

I shrugged in the way of teenagers.

"Much better than you used to. In fact, there was a dramatic change in your relationship and even in your personality some time ago." His eyes bored into me. "It was shortly before you got stabbed that time."

What was he saying? I felt suddenly nervous under his gaze. Dad knew something had happened to me but he didn't know what. Did he? Was he simply probing for information? Or did he suspect the truth? The truth was nuts wasn't it? He couldn't be suspecting it. Could he?

"I guess I just got my shit together Dad." I answered nervously. "Tracy too."

He continued to stare for a moment and then gave a slight shake of his head.

"Don't say 'shit'." He finally responded. "If you want to get a job and if you and your sister can work out the car, then you've got my blessing."

"Thanks Dad." I told him.

I certainly did not want to work in one of the sweat shops that was a fast food joint so I didn't bother applying at any of them. I had nothing but time I knew so I bided it carefully, only putting in applications at places where I knew I would be able to stand the pace. You have to understand that I had spent eight years as a paramedic. For all the gore we have to put up with, for all the responsibility that we are instilled with, for all of the abuse that we have to take, the job was anything but fast paced. On a twelve-hour shift we would respond to an average of six calls, each one taking an hour or so to complete from the moment of dispatch until the paperwork was dropped off at the hospital. That left six hours of downtime on each shift. Sometimes, on slow shifts, it was even more. I knew I would not be able to handle working on a burger assembly line for hours at a time.

It was a pizza joint that eventually ended up hiring me in early March. The manager had granted me an interview and had started it by saying that he probably wouldn't hire me since he generally only offered jobs to those with previous experience.

"Well Sir." I'd told him. "I can respect that opinion. And I understand it completely."

"You do?" He asked, mildly amused, checking his watch for his next interview.

"I do." I said. "But I'll tell you something. If you hire me you will not be sorry. In fact, I'd venture to say that it would be the best hire you'll ever make. You know why?"

That got his attention. "Why?" He asked.

"Because my father has instilled in me a solid work ethic. He's taught me that employment is sacred in this life, a thing to be cherished above all but the family unit. If I am given the position you will receive complete loyalty from me. I will show up each of my scheduled days on time and ready to work. I will do whatever jobs you see fit in whatever manner you see fit to do them. I am not your typical teenager who will call in sick when he hears that a good kegger is going on at the falls. I will put aside my personal life in order to fulfill my responsibilities to this restaurant and hopefully you will move me up the ladder of advancement as reward." I gave him my sincere smile. "Hire me and you will not be sorry."

He hired me. I started the following week making pizzas in the back and washing up dishes on Friday through Monday night from 5:00 PM to 10:30 PM. I did my job well, showing up on time, as I'd promised, and completing all assignments given to me without complaint. After all, I had an adult's work ethic. The manager was quite impressed with me. He often commented how mature I seemed. The pay was a pittance, $3.25 an hour, which was minimum wage for that time, but it was income none-the-less and, as a kid, I had no real expenses to speak of. We were paid once a week, on Friday. My schedule entitled me to $71.50 each paycheck. Uncle Sam and Aunt Washington took $12.00 from this, leaving me with $59.50 in cold, hard cash.

In my previous life I'd been a horrible financial manager. I lived paycheck to paycheck, never maintaining a savings account except for my 401k, which was automatically deducted. I'd run up a considerable debt with credit cards and car payments, not to mention alimony and child support. I'd been in the rut familiar to many Americans, that being that you owe so much that you could only afford to pay the minimum payments on anything. This of course left you in exactly the same place each month, each year, since the interest on these things accumulated as fast as the minimum payments reduced them. Even before Mr. Li entered my life, even before the Spokane Fire Department began threatening to take my job from me, I'd always wished that I had my financial history to do over again. Well now I did. I made another solemn vow. I would manage any money I got wisely, utilizing the brutal lessons I'd learned before being recycled. I would not live beyond my means ever again. It was un-American of course, but I was going to do it.

I took $10.00 of each paycheck for personal enjoyment type things. $5.00 paid for the gas I used in my Dad's car and another $5.00 went to insurance rate compensation. That left me $39.50 each week that had nowhere to go. I opened up a savings account at a nearby bank. I was amused and slightly offended to find that I had to have my Dad's permission before the bank would open it for me. My God, what chaos would erupt if minors were allowed to open bank accounts without regulation. I began putting this money in there each paycheck. The interest on the account was a pittance, a mere two percent, but that was okay. The savings account was just a holding tank until I built up some capital. When I accumulated enough money, I had a better place in mind to store it.

My parents watched all this with interest, not surprised at my work ethic, which I'd learned from them after all and which they'd expected nothing less than, but with my frugelness. You see, my money management skills in my previous life I'd learned from them also. My parents, through my childhood and teenaged years had managed their money about as well as I did as an adult, which was not well at all. I'm certainly not blaming them for my later troubles just explaining the fact that they were wondering where I'd learned my money management. They watched my savings account grow each week (they had to co-sign my deposits) with respect and admiration and more than a little confusion. God forgive them, they even suggested I take some of that money out from time to time and enjoy myself a little.

"I'm saving for college." I would tell them. "And maybe a car sometime soon."

"I see." They would reply. "That's very wise Billy."

My work schedule put somewhat of a kink in my sex life since the weekends had been my traditional boffing time. But it was only a minor kink. The girls that really wanted to experience my skills would find the time to be with me on weekdays. I would generally have them come over immediately after school where I would take them to my room, show them the pleasure they were seeking, and send them on their way before Dad got home from work. On most of these days Nina would come over after the latest girl had departed and we would study together or just sit on the couch and talk, drinking soda and munching on chips or something, maybe watching some TV. Mom and Dad were under the impression that Nina was my girlfriend, which actually struck me as somewhat funny. They had no idea that I was screwing the brains out of various teenaged girls before they got home. They even expressed pride that I still went over to Anita's and mowed her lawn or cleaned her windows or babysat her kids or put her storm windows up or took them down. They had no idea that their dear friend was paying me for these services in something more valuable than mere money. I don't believe even Tracy knew what the score really was between Anita and I.

The months went by. The frigid chill of winter gave way to the spring of 1983. I heard through the grapevine that Mike was leaving school to go to independent study classes. This rumor filled me with dread and reminded me that I still had a piece of unfinished business. Independent study was one of those state-sponsored atrocities that accounted for more dropouts than anything else. I should actually say IS, since the thing still existed before my recycling. What happens is a poor student is encouraged to leave mainstream high school and go to a separate campus for study. They are required to be there only twelve hours a week and are given various assignments to complete at their own pace. They and their parents are told that they can graduate this way if they only complete the meager amount of work that is supplied. What inevitably happens is that the student in question finds that even twelve hours a week is too much and they eventually leave it for the abyss of drop-out status. The whole thing is nothing more than a false hope for parents and a dead-end for students. Mike was no exception. He would be in independent study for less than two months before leaving school behind forever. He would eventually pay money to be crammed for his GED so he could get into the Air Force where he would ultimately be dishonorably discharged for marijuana use.

I had to take a shot at preventing this. I simply had to.

That week I had my Dad deposit only $24.50 in my savings account, keeping an extra fifteen bucks for myself. Naturally, since this was a break in the routine, he questioned it.

"Swaying from your convictions a little?" He asked as I handed him the deposit slip.

I shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "I guess you guys are right." I told him. "I SHOULD enjoy myself once in a while. I thought I'd just blow fifteen bucks on something this time as a reward."

"Well good for you." Dad told me. "What are you going to spend it on?"

"No firm plans." I lied. "Maybe I'll just spend it all on video games down at the arcade. You know, Space Invaders and all that?"

"Well you deserve it." He told me, putting his signature next to mine.

The following Monday at school I found Steph wandering through the halls. She was glad to see me.

"Do you think maybe your brother can get me an eighth of some good greenbud?" I asked.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" She smiled. "You got the cash?"

I handed her fifteen bucks, a ten and a five. She took it from me and then peeled off the five and handed it back to me. "For you it's only ten." She smiled. "IF, you let me bring it over to your house today to deliver it personally."

I looked her up and down, remembering what her body had felt like beneath mine. And it was five bucks. I'd certainly made worse deals in my life. "You're on." I told her. "Just show up right after school. I have to work today."

"I'll be there." She promised, stuffing the ten into the pocket of her jeans.

She was there. She handed me a plastic baggie of pungent pot and then we retired to my bedroom. I enjoyed her body in as many different ways as I could imagine while she enjoyed mine. She left with a smile on her face.

I stuffed the pot she'd given me under the center of my mattress and headed for the shower. I had to be to work shortly after Dad got home.

The next day, Tuesday, I found Mike wandering through the halls between third and fourth period. I took a deep breath and then walked up to him, matching his pace when I was beside him.

"What's up Mike?" I asked carefully.

He looked over at me, his face registering instant hostility, obviously debating whether or not to speak to me. Finally he said, "Nothin'."

"Haven't seen you in a while." I commented.

He shrugged. "Been busy." He told me.

I nodded wisely. "Yeah." I replied. "Me too. Workin' and everything. Listen, I was thinking that maybe we could get together after school today. Bullshit a little you know. Just like old times."

"Naw." He said instantly. "Got things to do."

I nodded again. "Okay." I answered, knowing that I was resorting to dirty tricks but it was a desperate situation, wasn't it? "Too bad. I just scored an eighth of some killer greenbud."

His eyes lit up like pinball machines. "Really?" He asked, his disinterest dropping away instantly.

"Yeah." I said. "But it's cool. If you got things to do…"

"Well I can prob'ly come over for a while." He put in. "You know, we haven't hung out in a while."

"Cool." I said, suppressing a smile. "I'll see you after school then."

"Right."

On the way home from school I asked Tracy and Cindy if they maybe wanted to go to the mall for a few hours before Dad got home from work.

"The mall?" Cindy asked, lighting a cigarette. "I was hopin' you had some new albums to show me today."

Tracy gave her a look of annoyance and then turned to me. "What's the matter Billy, you getting' shy about your study sessions with our friends?"

"No." I answered. "Not at all. I have something important to do today. Mike's coming over."

"Mike!" Tracy said, disgusted now. "That fuckin' hoser! I thought you'd wised up and stopped hangin' out with him."

"Please?" I said, not offering any explanation. "This is important. If you guys go out for a while I'll smoke some of the bud I scored with you later."

That did the trick. I'd long since learned the barter power that the possession of a little marijuana held in a teenaged society. Cindy let me out at the curb and roared away shortly afterword, Tracy in the passenger seat, with a promise not to return until Dad got home.

Mike pulled his Beetle to the curb soon after.

Our conversation was cautious and casual as we went to the garage and smoked ourselves into oblivion with Tracy's bong that I liberated from the secret hiding place in her room. By the time we re-entered the house we were well into the stratosphere. I hoped I was coherent enough to speak my mind effectively through the drug haze. My own intoxication was countered by the fact that Mike, in his stoned state, would be extremely susceptible to suggestion. We watched some TV for a few minutes while we munched on some food we'd found in the fridge. By the time we went to the garage for our second set of bonghits, we were comfortable speaking to each other despite our months of separation.

"I hear you're going to go to independent study." I said as I dumped the bong water down the sink and rinsed the chamber.

"Yep." He nodded, obviously excited about it. "My parents put in the application the other day. The counselor says it'll be approved and I can prob'ly start next month. After only six months of it I'll graduate."

"Six months huh?" I said. "And you only have to go twelve hours a week?"

He nodded. "Isn't that fuckin' cool. And I get to schedule my own twelve hours. I can go six hours for two days and take the rest of the week off, or four hours for three days, or three hours for four days. Whatever I want."

I carried the bong upstairs and replaced it in Tracy's room. Mike took a seat on the couch while I was gone. When I returned I sat next to him and took a sip out of a soda.

"Mike," I asked. "Do you realize that you're being encouraged to drop out of school?"

"What?" He replied, looking at me with renewed hostility.

"The system is encouraging you to drop out of school. Independent study is nothing but a joke, a joke designed to allow people to drop out with some measure of self-respect intact. First they offer you something that sounds appealing: you only have to go to school twelve hours, you work at your own pace, you'll get to graduate early. It's an offer too good to be true."

"What the fuck you talking about?" He asked. "It's not too good to be true.

That's how it works."

"Really?" I continued. "How many people do we know that have gone through independent study? Let's see there's Rodney, Steve Kale, Michelle Beckenwood, Stacy Smith. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. None of them graduated, not a single one.

"Yeah, but they were stupid." He said defensively. "I'm different."

"No you're not." I told him. "You're being used by the system. I'm sure the counselor spouted a bunch of bullshit to you and your parents about how this will help you. They're lying. It doesn't help you, it helps them. They've marked you as a likely dropout in the near future so they're trying to get rid of you before that happens. They don't give a shit about you or your future, they WANT you to drop out. But they want you to do it this way because it doesn't go on the school's statistics as a dropout; you go down as a transfer to another school. That way they don't lose any of their budget money or have their teaching methods audited by the state board of education.

"So off you go to independent study where you're encouraged to fade politely away. Do you know how they get you to drop out with this program? Do you know what the kicker to it is? It's that flexible schedule you were talking about. Come whenever you can, you only have to be there twelve hours a week. But you see, if you offer a teenager a deal like that, they'll abuse it and those fuckers KNOW that. You get up on Monday and say to yourself, 'I don't have to go in today because I only have to go twelve hours. I can knock out some hours tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolls around and you say the same thing. After all, you don't HAVE to be there on Monday or Tuesday. Before long you'll find yourself at Thursday without any hours built up. By that time the thought of spending six hours is too much to take. So you cut for that week; after all, anyone they send to independent study is an accomplished school cutter, aren't they? Before two months go by it will be too much trouble to go at all. There will be no paperwork done, nothing that says you've officially dropped out, but you will in effect have dropped out. Just like they planned for you."

Mike had simply stared at me during this speech, absorbing what I was saying without expression.

"Where did you come up with all that shit?" He asked me finally.

"My Dad's a teacher." I told him. "He works for the damn school district. Believe me, that's the way it is."

"What the fuck are you tellin' me all this for?"

I took a deep breath. "Mike, you're my friend. We've been friends since we were kids, right?"

"Yeah," He nodded, "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Friends try to help each other. Remember when Fairview stabbed me? You grabbed him off of me. You helped me. That's what I'm trying to do for you.

Help you. You're about to make a big mistake, a mistake you'll regret for the rest of your life."

"How do you know I'm makin' a mistake?" He shouted. "Even if I do drop out what makes you think it's gonna be a mistake? What do I need a fuckin' diploma for anyway?"

"What do you want to do with your life Mike?" I asked him.

"What?"

"What do you want to do?" I repeated. "What would like to do for a living? What would be a dream job for you?"

"Man," He said, dismissing me. "Fuck this shit. Let's talk about something else."

"Look Mike." I said carefully. "Like I said, we're friends and I'm trying to talk to you as a friend. Nobody else is here, nobody's gonna hear what you say. I'm not putting you down or anything, I'm just trying to help you because you need some help. You're on a path of destruction here and I'm trying to steer you off of it. So tell me, what would you like to do for a living? What would be a cool job?"

For a minute I didn't think he was going to answer. Finally he said, "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

He shrugged. "I never thought about it before. I can't picture myself in five years, I don't know."

"Maybe that's part of your problem." I said. "You don't have any goals." I looked him up and down for a minute, an idea occurring to me. "You'd probably like a job where you get a lot of days off each week, wouldn't you?"

"The more the better." He agreed.

"A job where even when you ARE at work, you get to spend a lot of time sitting around on your ass."

He scoffed. "Yeah, like there are jobs like that."

"There is Mike." I told him. "There is."

"Yeah?" He said cynically. "Name one."

There was only one that I could think of. It was one that was well within reach of Mike if he would only graduate from school. "A fireman."

"A fireman?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Firemen work twenty-four hour shifts ten days a month. That leaves twenty days off a month. When they're on shift they have beds, TVs, lounge chairs to sit in, all the amenities of home. They get to sleep while they're on the clock. And they make damn good money, much more than they deserve to."

He was turning the idea over in his mind. I could see him doing it and I felt the first ray of hope. Was I finally getting through to him a little?

"And you know what the best thing about being a fireman is?" I asked.

"What?"

"The public fuckin' worships you. You can do absolutely no wrong. And women dig firemen in a bad way. They'll practically drop down and give you head right there."

He was definitely interested now.

"The requirements are that you're eighteen and have a high school diploma. You also have to be able to pass a physical agility test, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. You're in good shape."

"Are you sure about this?" He asked.

"Dude." I told him. "If you can just graduate you'll be in."

"No shit." He said softly.

"Look Mike, if you just work through this year you'll have it made. The school has a work-study program for seniors and fire technology is one of the classes. If you can hang in until then and bring your grades up to a 2.0 average you can go to the ROP classes. That means you'll just have to take three classes each day and then you'll spend the rest of the day hanging out at a fire station somewhere. You'll get to go to calls with them and watch them work and it'll look damn good on your application after you graduate."

He soured a little. "There's no way I'll get my grades up to a 2.0. I'm workin' on straight F's now."

"I'll help you with your work." I promised. "Just come over after school," I paused and then amended, "Well, after my Dad gets home that is, and I'll help you with your work. You can do it if you just go to school each day."

He shook his head. "I haven't spent a whole day in school for the last year.

I'm not sure I can do it."

"You CAN." I insisted. "Dude you're only seventeen years old. You have the rest of your life in front of you. How hard will it be to spend six hours in school for another couple of months? If you work at it we can bring your grades up and you'll be almost free next semester. A year of ROP and only going to three classes and you'll graduate. You start applying at fire departments and one of them will take you. It's not that long and it's not that high of a price, is it?"

"I guess not." He said.

It was touch and go for a while. Mike told his parents his decision to stay in school and they accepted it dubiously. However when his parents told the school counselor to withdraw the application for independent study they met some resistance. According to Mike, she tried her damnedest to get him and his parents to change their minds. She nearly begged he told me. But in the end he stuck to his guns and his parents stuck to theirs. The application was withdrawn and Mike stayed in high school.

As I promised I helped him with his homework. There was some friction at first when he discovered that I wasn't planning to DO his homework for him but to help HIM do it. There was also some friction when he didn't show up a few times so he could go get stoned with someone. I talked to him plainly about this, explaining that I would only continue to help him if he showed up each day. He was morose about it but agreed. His attendance at my study sessions improved remarkably.

His attendance at school also improved. Though he whined about it to the point of genuine annoyance on my part, he faithfully showed up to classes each day, only occasionally cutting out for a session with a marijuana pipe or something.

By the end of the first month of our studying together, study sessions in which Nina was a frequent participant, he began to catch on to his work and actually began to complete more of his assignments in school. I felt I'd done well with him and my satisfaction was great.

As the end of the school year drew closer I worried incessantly about Tracy.

This was the point that she was scheduled to die. All of the signs told me I'd steered her away from that path. When Lisa Sanchez, the cheerleader, began making friendship overtures to Tracy, she'd been almost rude in her rejection of them. The friendship that eventually evolved into the foursome that was fated to drop into the river never flourished. As a result, Tracy never went to the party where she would meet the football player that would cause her death. Instead she stayed close friends with Cindy, another deviation from the previous path. When Tracy had begun hanging out with Lisa before, the relationship with Cindy had faded away. But despite all this I was worried. Again, I did not know the rules involved here. Was fate absolute? Would Tracy end up dying one way or another simply because she was scheduled to?

On the other hand I did have some indication that things were not pre-destined. Mike was a shining example. As May began winding down towards June and the end of the school year, he was still enrolled in school, was in fact working his grades upward to the C average. This was something that had not occurred before. Mike gave me hope that I'd succeeded in saving Tracy.

The end of the school year came. Mike got his report card and it showed his year's average to be 2.1. He was qualified to go into ROP the next year. He didn't give me much in the way of thanks but I understood. It wasn't in his nature. I received tremendous satisfaction from his accomplishment anyway.

Tracy graduated. I dressed in my suit and attended the ceremony with my parents. Though my sister and I had never talked about my prediction for her fate on that night since the first time, it was obvious she remembered what I'd said. She was perhaps the only member of her graduating class to go home with her parents after the ceremony. She took off her dress and went to bed early.

When I got up the next morning I staggered downstairs and found her sitting in her pajamas in the living room. The television was on, tuned to the local morning news program. Dad and Mom had already gone off to work so we were alone in the house. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to see her there. She was alive, still drawing breath a day AFTER she'd died in her previous life. Things could be changed!

My elation was dampened a little as I got a good look at her. I could see immediately that she was upset. Her face was pale and she was trembling.

"What's the matter Trace?" I asked carefully.

"I've been watching the news." She told me slowly, turning a pair of haunted eyes to my face.

"Yeah?"

"There was an accident last night." She said. "Near the falls."

I felt all the spit in my mouth suddenly dry up. My arms broke out in goose bumps. "Was there?"

She nodded. "A Camero with four people in it crashed into the river. Lisa Sanchez was killed. She drowned in the car."

I was speechless as I listened to her, numb with shock.

"There were other people in the car." Tracy went on. "A guy named David Mitchell was driving. He's a football player at the college. Another football player named Rick Manchester was also in the car. Rick was Lisa's boyfriend. And there was one other girl in there. Barbie Langston, she's David's girlfriend."

"What happened to her?" I asked unsteadily.

"She got out. Lisa was the only one killed."

"Wow." I whispered, trying to figure out what that meant. Barbie was a cute redhead who had found her way to my bedroom last summer during my 'male slut' period. She had been installed in Tracy's place when Tracy did not meet and begin dating David Mitchell. She had lived. Why? Was it because she had lived past graduation in the previous life? Was she simply a better swimmer? Was there any meaning to be found with her non-death?

"Billy," Tracy said softly. "All of those names were the ones you gave me that day except for Barbie. You described the car, the driver, the passengers, the accident location, everything. How did you know?"

"I can't tell you Tracy." I said. "I just can't."

"Billy, for Christ's sake! I would have died yesterday if I hadn't listened to you, wouldn't I have?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"You scared me that day when you started talking about all of that. You scared me bad. But I never really, you know believed it could be true. I didn't think it would really happen. Even when little things started to click into place. Lisa Sanchez trying to make friends with me, stuff like that, even then I never really believed it. But Jesus, you were right!"

"I know Tracy." I said. "And you're alive today instead of dead. I'm glad you listened to me."

"Christ." She said, shuddering and trembling. "I could have died."

"But you didn't." I told her. "You didn't."

Summer vacation began. Tracy sent off college applications and was accepted into the University of California at Berkeley on an academic scholarship. She spent a good portion of her vacation preparing for the move to California. My parents, who had no idea how close they'd come to losing a daughter, were preoccupied with helping her at this task. They took out a second mortgage on their house to help pay for some of the expenses until Tracy managed to get a job in the Bay Area. I could tell they were worried about money although they never mentioned it to either one of us.

I was able to increase my work schedule an extra hour a day and an extra day a week now that summer was upon us and there was no school to attend. By the beginning of August I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings account. It was time to make my first move.

"Dad," I said at the breakfast table one morning. "I need you to do something with my money."

He looked at me over his paper. "Your money?"

"Yeah," I told him. "I want you to pull it out of the savings account and take it to a stock broker."

"A stock broker?"

"Here." I said, handing him a slip of paper upon which I'd written careful instructions.

He looked at it for a moment, his eyes widening. "You want to buy stocks?"

"I do." I affirmed. "As you can see there, I'd like to invest six hundred dollars in Lytech Corporation and three hundred in Smith Manufacturing Corporation."

"Billy," He started slowly, as if he were speaking to a lunatic, or a teenager. "Do you understand what you're doing? Investing in stocks is a risky business. You have no guarantee that you're going to get any return. You could lose all of your money."

"I've studied up on it pretty well Dad." I assured him. "I'm pretty sure that these two corporations are going to go through the roof in the next year."

"What are they?" He asked. "I've never heard of either one of them."

"They make latex products." I told him. "Condoms and surgical gloves mostly."

"Condoms and surgical gloves?" He asked. "You think there's money to be made there?"

"It's a matter of timing Dad." I explained. "You know about AIDS, right?"

"Of course I know about AIDS." He told me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well," I said. "I've been following the news on AIDS as well as checking the business section. Right now AIDS is mostly confined to homosexual men and IV drug users. But that's slowly changing. As more and more heterosexuals become infected the fear of this disease is going to grow, probably into a paranoia."

"That's all very interesting Billy, but…"

"When I got stabbed." I told him. "I remember that the paramedic who was treating me was not wearing any gloves. I'd been cut open and I was bleeding and he was touching me with his bare hands. The nurses and the doctors in the hospital did the same thing. It wasn't just me, it was almost all of the patients that I saw there. Nobody was wearing gloves on their hands as a matter of routine. It just isn't done right now. Are you following me?"

"You're saying that is going to change?"

"In a big way I predict, and soon. As more heterosexuals get the disease and the epidemic grows, ambulance companies, fire departments, hospitals, nursing homes, every medical office is going to start ordering huge supplies of latex gloves. There might even be a shortage of them for a while. The price of them will go up according to the law of supply and demand and their sales figures will probably increase by at least four hundred percent, maybe more. This is the perfect time to invest in the latex business."

He was impressed with my reasoning of the subject but I could tell he still wasn't convinced.

"It's still pretty risky Bill." He told me. "Are you sure you want to invest ALL of your money in this?"

"All of it." I nodded. "Can you do that today?"

He gave me one last glance and then said, "Sure. I'll do it during lunch hour."

The summer rolled on. I continued to have plenty of sex on a fairly regular basis but my heavy work schedule put something of a ding in the variety I was getting. I was down to three females that I enjoyed, rarely getting anything new. Anita would still have me over to do some work for her a few times a week, after which, or sometimes before which, we would go to her bedroom and enjoy a long sex session. She always had me over in the evenings when her kids had gone to bed. Cindy still came over to check out albums with me during the day when my parents were not home. If fact, with Tracy gone a lot of the time on various missions to prepare for college, Cindy's visits became more frequent. It seemed she felt a little guilty about screwing me while my sister was there. With Tracy gone we enjoyed the best sex we'd ever had, with no worries about being too loud or too obscene.

The third girl was Maggie Bartlett, a friend of Cindy's. She would come over on the days when Cindy did not. I tried to talk them into a threesome a couple of times but they just giggled and told me they weren't into that. A pity.

Nina and I remained in contact with each other even though we no longer had to study for anything. We would meet a few times a week at my house or hers, just enjoying each other's company. A few times we drove into nearby Idaho to spend the day at one of the resort lakes. One such day I found myself looking at her in her bathing suit while we soaked up rays on the hot sand. She was starting to fill out nicely. Her breasts, which the previous summer had been almost non-existent, were now pushing at the cups of her one-piece. Again I remembered her classy good looks as the bitchy emergency room doctor. Now that I'd removed the bitchiness I figured she would make some guy very happy someday.

"What are you looking at?" She'd asked, blushing a little as she found my eyes upon her.

I smiled. "Just seeing how your tan is coming along." I told her.

"Well?" She asked. "How is it?"

"It's lookin' good." I answered. I picked up a bottle of sun lotion. "Can you put a little of this on my back? I don't want to burn." That was the advantage of having a girl for a best friend. You could have them put oil on your back. You certainly wouldn't ask a guy friend to do something like that.

"Sure." She said softly, taking it from me. I noticed a slight tremble in her hands as she squirted some into her palm.

Dismissing this, I laid on my stomach on the towel. Her hand began smearing the slippery lotion across my back. Her hands on my skin felt good I realized. They were soft yet eager, gliding over my shoulders and through the small of my back. Her touch was almost sensuous and I felt myself, to my surprise, getting a hard-on beneath my suit.

What a mind-blower, I thought. Nina is giving me a boner. What a strange world.

On September 2 Tracy left the house for California and UC Berkeley where she would begin her first semester as a college student. She planned to get her graduate degree in Business Administration and then move from there to law school. Her hopes were to one day be a rich corporate lawyer. At least she was honest about it.

I gave her a big hug before she climbed into Dad's car for the trip to the airport.

"Take care of yourself." I told her, "And be careful."

"You too." She answered.

She climbed into the car and a minute later it backed out into the street. As I watched it go I felt a tear running down my face. Tracy was still alive.

My senior year began. Because Cindy had graduated and enrolled in college that meant that I was without a ride to school. Though Mike had improved in many areas over the last few months his driving was not one of them. I attempted to mellow him out a bit by letting him know that the fire department would not hire him if he had too many points on his driving record. I suppose this did some good, he never got any points put on, but I still was not going to get into that Volkswagen with him. Strangely enough, though this subject had prompted our long estrangement, he seemed to understand. The subject was never brought up. But this still left me without a lift to school and I'd been driven so long that I'd lost my taste for walking. Nina came to the rescue here. Her Mom, who was a housewife and who thought I walked on water, had always been in the habit of driving Nina to school all through high school. It didn't take much convincing on Nina's part to persuade her Mom to run by my house in the morning and again in the afternoon. Her Mom, who was considerably older for a parent, Nina had been a late child, drove like an eighty-year-old grandmother in her Lincoln. But that was just fine with me. I felt there was little chance of getting killed with Mrs. Blackmore at the wheel.

The reason I'd known so much about our school's ROP program was that I'd taken it as a senior my first trip through. I hadn't taken fire technology but health careers where I'd been assigned to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals as an ER tech. It was this part of my life that had seduced me into my eventual job as a paramedic. I took the health careers once again, as did Nina. I tried to remember if she'd been in it with me before and I couldn't. She had been such a forgettable person back then. Nina planned to sign up for emergency room assignment since she figured, as I had all those years ago, that would be the most exciting. Though I was tempted to do the same, I missed the thrill of the unknown that came with working in emergency situations; I chose central supply instead. Those that chose central supply were sometimes hired by mid-semester if they showed some responsibility. I planned to show lots of it. Central supply techs were paid six dollars an hour.

Mike was accepted into the fire tech ROP program. Like with our health careers program, it was required that you spend the first two months in a classroom learning the finer points of your career assignment. He grumbled about having to spend three hours a day in a class instead of in a fire station like he'd thought but he stuck with it. I knew his grumbling was good-natured and offered only because it was expected of him. He was actually finding the classroom lectures on the basics of firefighting interesting, perhaps the first thing besides marijuana and pussy stories that had ever interested him. I began to feel that Mike was going to be okay.

I perhaps suffered the worst through the classroom portion of ROP. They were teaching us how to take blood pressures, temperatures, pulses, and how to respond to various hospital emergency situations like fires or floods. This was all stuff I knew not just intimately but genetically it seemed. There was however some interesting perks to the classroom. It was made up of mostly girls. I had a fresh hunting ground to pick from and an additional challenge thrown in since most of the girls did not know who I was because ROP classes were made up of students from all the regional high schools.

As I went to work on a few of the more attractive students I noticed that Nina, who was in the same class, would become morose and even throw some dirty looks my way. What was up with her? I wondered. Was Tracy right? Was Nina in love with me? I hoped not. She was my best friend and I was her best friend but I'd never done anything to encourage her to love me. If it was true, how could it have happened?

In deference to her feelings I tried to keep my flirtations discreet when she was around. There was no since hurting her. And if she did have some love-like feelings for me they would eventually fade, wouldn't they?

I was troubled by these thoughts but not too troubled. By my second week there I enticed a girl named Susan Kelly, a breasty brunette whose ambition was to someday work as a registration clerk, to my house after school. I was glad to find that I still had the touch after the long summer.

In September of that year the United States sent a force of Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force. I knew that tragedy would befall 240 of them at the hands of Muslim extremists. With their deployment came the opportunity for some experimentation on my part. I knew what was going to happen. Could I, in good conscience, simply let it occur without trying to stop it? I could not.

The question was, how could I stop it? I put some thought into the matter while I read as much on the peacekeeping force as I could. A plan developed in my mind by the end of September.

Using plain paper and pen I drafted a letter to the commanding general of the American forces there. I stated that I was an American Muslim and that I'd received information about an impending attack upon the forces there by way of relatives in Lebanon that were part of the extremists but not as radical as their friends. I explained exactly what was to take place and on which day. I made twenty-five copies of the letter and dropped each copy into a separate envelope, all of which I addressed and labeled CONFIDENTIAL.

I put stamps on all of the letters and then borrowed my father's car one Saturday morning, telling him that I was going to an all-day party. I promised him I wouldn't drink and he gave me the keys.

I left the house at 9:00 that morning, getting onto Interstate 90 and heading west. Four hours later I was in Seattle; a large, anonymous city that I'd never lived in. Careful was my watchword and if any feds tried to find the deliverer of the message, as I was sure they would, I wanted no trail leading them to Spokane. I dropped the letters into a mailbox in one of the suburbs. I had a quick lunch and then headed home. I'd taken my shot. My conscience was assuaged.

Of course I had no way of knowing if my letters had reached their destination and, if they had, if they would be taken seriously. I hoped that they were enough to at least take simple precautions. I listened to a news station on the radio all day on October 15, the day the attack was to take place. Nothing came across about a tragedy in Beirut. But towards the end of the day something else came across.

"U.S. Marines," Said the ABC announcer, "Have captured a group of Muslim extremists that were setting up heavy caliber mortars near the Marine Barracks, apparently with the intention of shelling the soldiers inside. A source tells us that the Marines were acting on information they received via an anonymous tip that the attack was to take place. General…"

I'd done it! I had prevented a tragedy! The Muslims that had been about to shell the barracks, destroying it and killing 240 Marines had been captured before they could do it. I had changed history!

I walked around in a state of elation for the next seven days, beaming with pride at what I'd done. What else could I change? The Challenger disaster was coming up in a few years. I could probably stop that also. In the course of that week I had myself believing that I could prevent the Persian Gulf War.

And then came October 23. I awoke to the news that a suicide bomber with a truck full of explosives had rammed into the Marine Barracks, killing many inside. My elation died the instant I heard that.

It was two days before the final death toll was announced. 240 Marines had been killed. 240! That number put an icy finger of dread upon my heart.

In my previous life the Marine Barracks had been shelled from outside the base by Muslims armed with Russian made eighty-millimeter mortars. 240 had been killed by the attack. In this life I'd prevented that from happening but a week later a suicide bomber had hit instead. 240 had been killed by that attack. I wondered if the death list of those 240 was the same in both lives. Instinctively I knew that it probably was. I had prevented nothing.

240 Marines had been killed, as if they were fated to die. As if they were fated!

I had prevented Tracy's death in this life. Was she too fated to die? Was she just going to be killed in some other manner now that I'd changed her original destiny? Was there anything I could do? Could I really change anything here? Was I fated to end up a paramedic in debt again? Was Mike fated to end up an unemployed loser? Was Nina fated to end up a bitchy emergency room doctor? If so, what had been the point of coming back? What had been the point?

I was depressed and edgy for the next week as news of the bombing in Beirut was swallowed up by news of the successful invasion of Grenada a few days later. Nina, who knew me better than anyone, picked up on my mood and tried to discover the source of it in her gentle, probing way. I told her nothing, claiming that everything was just fine. What else could I say? How could I possibly tell her what was bothering me? That I feared my sister had a death sentence hanging over her head. That I feared that everything I'd done over the last eighteen months had been meaningless.

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her as we rode the bus to our ROP classroom one day.

"Fate?" She asked, looking at me. "What do you mean?"

"You know, that everything is pre-destined. That we have a schedule that we follow in life and that we're powerless to change anything?"

"No." She said. "You don't believe that do you?"

"I didn't used to." I said. "But lately I've been wondering."

"Are you okay Bill?" She asked tenderly. "You've been kind of, well tense the last few days. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing I can put into words." I told her. "I guess I'll get over it."

I turned my head to look out the window and as I watched the traffic pass by outside the bus I felt her hands on my shoulders. They began squeezing and kneading the muscles there, forcing them to relax. It felt wonderful and I leaned my head back and sighed.

"That feels good." I told her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I've been reading on massage techniques." She told me. "Am I doing it right?"

"Perfect." I said, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take me away.

As I felt her squeezing and caressing me a thought occurred. Nina had put her hands upon me completely uninvited. She had simply reached over and done it. Nina, who'd been so shy once that she wasn't even capable of smiling in front of someone, who couldn't even bring herself to answer questions in class, who wouldn't have dreamed of touching someone with or without permission the day I'd first approached her in the cafeteria.

Nina had changed. She was no longer the mousy butt of everyone's jokes. She had friends now. Me, Tracy, Cindy, even Mike. She had learned to socialize with people even to the point of taking some bonghits at a party. I didn't think it possible that she would evolve into the Dr. Blackmore that I would one day know. She would become Dr. Blackmore but she wouldn't be the same person. She couldn't become that person at this point, the psychology that had formed her future personality had been altered. Was it possible that maybe things COULD be changed? That maybe they tended to fall into pre-destined patterns but that rule was not absolute?

In Nina's comforting hands I found some hope.

We graduated from the classroom portion of ROP and were given our assignments. Nina went to the emergency room at one of the smaller hospitals as an ER tech. I went to the supply room in the basement of the regional trauma center and was put to work sterilizing and packaging medical supplies and instruments. Mike was assigned to Spokane Fire Station #3 near downtown.

It took me only a few days to be trained in the routine that I would be following. Central supply was a little more challenging than making pizzas, but not by much. My work mate was Julie Salinas, a cute Mexican girl that had been in my training class. I'd tried once to initiate some intimate conversation with her but she'd shot me down without a second glance, stating in no uncertain terms, that she was engaged to be married after graduation. I'd shrugged her off. That kind of thing happened from time to time and there were plenty of other targets in the class.

When I walked in and saw her there the first day I assumed it was not going to be pleasant. She had been a little snotty in her rejection of my advances. But I was surprised to find that she was friendly to me as we spent three hours together each day. With our bodies covered by baggie scrubs, our shoes covered by paper coverings, our hair covered by paper nets, we would chat easily as we went about the tasks of putting forceps and scalpels and syringes and little bottles of medicine into sterile packaging and then labeling them for the appropriate departments within the hospital. It was a fun relationship. She was pleasant to talk to and since I already knew that she wasn't interested in me I was releived of the sexual tension that usually went along with being next to someone like her. Or so I thought.

As the first few weeks went by I couldn't help but notice that Julie was always there when I got there. I knew she had her own car which allowed her to drive to the hospital instead of taking the bus but why in the name of God would she show up earlier than she had to? Finally, when our relationship matured to the point that I could ask such things, I asked her.

"Because." She told me. "I intend to get hired here at mid-semester. Can you imagine? It's a dream job. If they hire you, you get paid for your time here and still get the school credits. You also get another three hours on the clock at $6.00 an hour. So if I get noticed by showing up a half an hour earlier than everyone else, so much the better. They only hire three or four of us each year you know and there's more than twelve of us working down here."

"That's a pretty good idea." I said with complete honesty. After all, I was counting on getting hired also. To do so would nearly double my current income. "I wish I had a car so I could do it too."

I meant nothing by this statement. I was merely speculating out loud, wondering in my mind if I could break loose some of my portfolio to purchase a cheap car. If it helped me get a job it would be a sound investment, wouldn't it?

"If you want," Julie said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I could give you a ride. I have to drive right by your school to get here and right by it to get home. I'd rather work with you then some of the other losers they got around here."

"Really?" I asked, looking at her, trying to gauge her intentions. Usually when girls asked me something like that what they wanted was sex. I wasn't so sure about that with Julie though. After all, she'd already told me she was engaged. She in fact talked quite a bit about her fiance, who was in his second year of junior college where he was learning the finer points of drafting. She was also a practicing Catholic; a religion which most definitely frowned upon pre-marital and extra-marital sex.

Finally I decided it was a genuinely innocent offer that a friend makes to another friend. "I'll take you up on that." I told her. "Thanks."

"No problem." She assured me.

Nina and I had arranged our school schedules that year so that we shared the last two classes before lunch and ROP. We always sat together in the classroom during those classes and then walked together to the lunchroom where usually we would sit with Mike and eat lunch prior to heading off to our job sites. Mike had had the same idea as Julie. He drove his Bug to the fire station, getting there earlier than he was required. He also tended to stay a little later than was required. He talked repeatedly of his experience at the firehouse, continually and obviously inflating his stories of what they allowed him to do. For instance he told me once that they'd allowed him to don breathing gear and go into a burning building to help fight a fire, something that they would NEVER do. But I was gladdened by his exaggerations. It meant that I'd hit upon just the right thing when I'd suggested firefighting as a career.

After he took off from lunch break to head downtown Nina and I walked out to the bus area where the ROP buses picked up the students. As we walked I explained my new riding arrangements to her along with the theory that it would help me get hired at mid-semester.

"Julie?" Nina said, frowning. "You're going to be riding with her?"

"Yeah." I said. "That way I'll be able to…"

"But she's engaged!" Nina nearly yelled. A very un-Nina-like display of emotion.

"So?" I asked, looking at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're gonna…" A pause as she tried to formulate her words. "Get a RIDE from an engaged girl?"

"Well yes." I affirmed. "Is there something wrong with that?"

Her face was actually turning red as her eyes, once so soft and mellow, burned into me. What the hell was the matter with her?

"No." She said stiffly. She turned away from me and started heading for the bus stop.

I followed after her, grabbing her by the arm. "Nina?" I asked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She said. "Nothing at all. I'll see you later."

Right then Julie, driving her Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb in the red zone. She saw me and smiled. "You ready?" She called.

"Just a sec." I told her, turning back to Nina. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm fine." She said sadly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Do you still want to ride with me to school?"

"Of course." I said, "But aren't we going to get together and study today after school? We have to go over that calculus."

"Not today." She said coldly. "I've got things to do." She turned away from me once again and disappeared into the crowd of students waiting for the bus.

With a troubled mind, more troubled than I cared to admit, I went to Julie's car and got in.

By the time we arrived at the hospital I was suspicious about Julie's intentions. She was overly friendly and openly flirty with me; signs I'd learned long before to both recognize and take advantage of. Despite my troubling conversation with Nina I found myself responding to her banter.

All through our workday it went on. She stood closer to me than was really needed, always taking the opportunity to touch my hand or bump her hip against mine. A few times she even turned so that the swell of her breast rubbed across my shoulder. It happened a little too frequently to be accidental. By two o'clock thoughts of Nina were forgotten as I pondered the prospect of bagging Julie and started working the problem of how to get her back to my place through my mind.

That turned out to be much easier than I'd thought it would.

As she drove me towards home she asked, "So, are your parents home right now?"

"No." I told her. "My old man doesn't get home until a little after four."

"Really?" She said, a smile blooming on her face. "You know, some of the other girls said they went over to your house and studied with you."

"Did they?" I asked, familiar with this opening line.

"Uh huh. Susie, Lori, and Stacy all said you're a GREAT study partner." She looked over at me. "I need to study you know."

I chuckled. "I don't think your fiance would like you coming over my house to 'study'." I told her. My own personal form of legal disclaimer. "There are those who say my study techniques are somewhat radical."

"Well I sure ain't gonna tell him." She informed me, as I'd known she would. "I'm not married yet you know."

"No." I nodded. "I guess you're not."

There is of course a certain amount of subtle nuances and so forth that must take place in such encounters before the real action begins. You can't just go inside, tear of your clothes and start rutting like an animal on the carpet. Well at least not for a first encounter. Thankfully with Julie, this period was brief. We started on the couch, were coy with each other for a few minutes, and then we began kissing.

I pulled her sexy body to mine and probed between her large lips with my tongue, licking and sucking each lip while my hands ran up and down her back, feeling her hard body beneath the T-shirt she wore, tracing the outline of her bra strap. She returned my kisses eagerly, showing some skill of her own with her tongue in the way she caressed the inside of my lips with it, the way she probed teasingly in and out, sliding it with mine on a film of saliva. Her breath was sweet and scented with the bubble gum she'd recently been chewing, it's ebb and flow increasing as she became excited by my actions.

I moved from her lips and kissed my way down across her puffy cheek to her neck, licking the salty taste on her dark flesh, nipping with my teeth and sucking lightly. She threw her head back and cooed softly, her hands sliding down to my butt and then up under the back of my shirt where she ran them up and down my bare back. Her hands were soft as they glided across my skin, punctuated by the occasional scratch of her painted nails when I gave her skin a little suck or bite.

I dropped my own hands to the hem of her shirt and slid them underneath, running my fingers up her smooth flanks on each side, feeling her soft skin and the harsh roughness of her bra when I reached her chest. I brought my hands together in the front, moving them along her bra, cupping her firm tits through the cotton and wire, squeezing them together. I could feel her nipples protruding against my palms.

I went back to kissing her, more gently this time as I ran my hands around to her back and began toying with the clasp that held her bra together. She returned my kisses while her own hands slid down my back and into the back of my pants, worming their way through my underwear until her fingers were squeezing my ass cheeks, kneading them. She pulled me tighter against her, so that the bulge of my cock was pressing against the crotch of her pants.

She broke her mouth from mine for an instant. "You have a nice ass." She breathed, nipping at my earlobe with her teeth.

"Thank you." I breathed back, pulling her face back to mine and continuing our dance of tongues.

I undid the bra clasp with a quick, expert twist of the fingers and then lifted my arms, pulling her shirt and the bra off in one quick motion. She raised her hands in the air to assist me, breaking the kiss only long enough for the shirt to clear her head.

I slid my hands around to the front again, taking her tits in them, feeling the yielding but firm flesh, the hard nipples. I stoked them up and down, gliding my fingertips around the perimeter of each nipple, finally tweaking them a little. They were as rigid as stone it seemed. I broke the kiss and pulled away from her, looking at her chest, drinking in the sight of those beautiful mammaries. As I've mentioned before, teenagers have the nicest tits; they can truly be taken as a sign that there IS a God. Julie's were no exception. They were perhaps a little larger than was considered average but they had no sag to them. They were pale in contrast to the darkness of her skin except for the nipples, which were the color of ripe cherries. I hefted them a little in my hands, stroking the sides and bottoms of them, running my fingers beneath them.

"You like them?" She asked sweetly. She knew that I liked them.

"They're all right." I shrugged and then smiled.

"You asshole." She giggled. "You want to taste them?"

"If I must." I said, feigning a sigh of a laborer contemplating an unpleasant job.

"You must." She told me, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me towards her.

I sucked and licked her nipples for several minutes, tasting their texture, making her squirm on the couch beneath me.

"You know," She panted, running her fingers through my hair and sliding her denim-clad leg up and down in my crotch. "I heard that you have some really COOL study methods."

"Yeah?" I answered between tongues on her right nipple, which was dripping with my saliva. "What might those be?"

"You know?" She groaned. "Like doing things with your mouth."

I switched to the other nipple, cupping the bulk of the breast with my hand.

"I'm doing things with my mouth right now." I told her, sucking the flesh on the side of the tit.

"Other things!" She insisted. "Things a little lower."

I looked up at her. "Your toes?"

"Higher." She giggled.

"Your belly button." I guessed, sliding down and sticking my tongue into it, making her squeal.

"That tickled." She said, delighted. "But you're getting warmer."

"Well," I finally said. "Maybe you should just come upstairs to my room and show me what you mean."

"Maybe I should." She said, getting up.

Upstairs, standing near the foot of my bed while I watched her, she kicked off her shoes and socks and then unbuttoned her jeans. They were tight on her and it was with some effort that she pushed them off her body to the floor, revealing the dark elegance of her legs to me. Her panties were blue and cut high. They did not leave her body with the jeans, but remained behind after being dragged down just far enough for me to see a few tufts of her black pubic hair peeking out the top of the waistband.

Julie was certainly not shy about displaying her body. She even teased me a little, sliding the panties up and down a few notches, revealing more and more of the top of her bush before she finally slid them down and off her body. Her bush was thick and black, the lips of her pussy all but hidden in it. I stepped forward and ran my hand of her thigh, feeling the skin, finally probing lightly through the kinky hair until I felt warm wetness against my fingertip. I withdrew my finger and brought it to my nose, inhaling her scent, letting the pheromones do their work on me.

She reached forward and undid the snap on my jeans, pushing them down. Mine were not as tight as hers were and they slid easily to the floor where I kicked them and my shoes off. I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it to the ground while Julie slid her hand into my underwear, grasping my cock.

"Nice." She said, feeling it up and down. With her other hand she tugged at the elastic, pulling them down my legs, her head traveling downwards as her hands pushed them to my feet. As she reached my dick her tongue slid out and circled the head for a brief second, just enough to make my whole body twitch.

"How about you show me how to study now?" She asked.

I nodded, stepping around her and lying on my back on the bed. "Come here." I told her, patting the mattress next to me.

She lay down and I pulled her body against mine, sliding her on top of me, chest to chest, face to face. I kissed her again while I felt the glory of her form pressing against mine. Remaining on my back I put my hands into her armpits and tugged a little, forcing her to move upward on me. I pushed upwards at the same time, bending her back a little and those tits were dangling in my face. I reached out for them with my tongue and worked them for a minute, getting her back into the swing of things and then I let go of her.

"What's wrong?" She asked me, looking at my intense stare.

"Do you want me to eat you?" I asked her.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Bring it up here." I commanded, touching my lips with my fingers. "Put your pussy on my mouth."

"You mean, sit on you?" She asked, her eyes sparkling.

I nodded. "Come on."

She didn't have to be told twice. She slid her crotch along the length of my stomach and chest, inching forward until her soft thighs were pushing against my ears and her hairy pussy was hanging only inches from my mouth. Using my fingers I probed through her thick nest until her pink, juicy lips were visible. They were swollen and ready, gleaming with moisture, thick with the aroma of arousal. I brought my head forward and began to lick at her, driving my tongue into her passage.

My reputation among the girls was based almost entirely upon my skills at cunnilingus. For that reason, whenever I got my mouth on a pussy I gave it my very best. You had to leave the customer satisfied after all. I ate Julie until she battered my face beneath her and dented my wall by slamming the headboard of the bed into it. Her juices poured over my face and I lapped them up. When her first orgasm faded away I put her on her back and ate her again in the traditional method, starting slower this time, working my way from the bottom of her slit upwards so that by the time I reached her clit it was once again swollen and ready for a fresh assault. Her second come was even more powerful.

When that one was done I crawled up her body, which was now slick with her aroused sweat, and positioned myself atop her. She spread her legs wide for my coming penetration. With my mouth kissing hers, with my hard cock nestled in her pubic hair, feeling the waiting wetness, I reached over and opened the nightstand drawer next to the bed. Inside of that drawer, among other things, was a bible that my Mom's sister, a religious fanatic, had given me long ago. What I was doing was a practiced and perfected maneuver.

Without needing to look, or even take my mouth off her, I flipped open the bible to the middle where I'd cut a hiding hole in some of the pages. Inside this hiding hole were my condoms. I pulled one out and then flipped the book shut again. Less than a minute later the condom was firmly on my cock and the wrapper was resting on the nightstand.

"C'mon." Julie panted. "Do it."

I slid my dick through her swollen lips for a bit, wetting the condom. When it was ready I positioned the head between her lips.

"You ready to get fucked?" I asked her, looking in her brown eyes.

"Yes!" She cried, kissing my neck and squeezing my ass. "Do it! Fuck me!"

I drove forward, feeling my dick slide between those lips and into her tightness. She moaned as I penetrated her and my own voice joined hers as I felt her chamber squeezing at me. I began to move in and out, slowly at first but quickly increasing to a full-blown grind. She slid her legs up and down mine, her hands up and down my back while her hips rose up to meet me.

She came again after about five minutes, clawing my back as she did so. I continued to pound away at her until she came again. Now it was my turn to come. I picked up the pace, angling my thrusts for the maximum sensation, anticipating the feeling of blasting inside of her hot body.

But I couldn't come. My mind simply would not make the vital connection that allowed the process of orgasm to begin. It was not the first time this had happened. I'd noticed it happening over the last few months, though it was usually when I was fucking Anita or Cindy or Maggie. It was something that had happened to me in my previous life when I'd been married for a while. The mind was no longer able to generate orgasm through sensation alone, it needed a little something else. That something was usually a fantasy and I'd always figured that it was required because I'd grown a little bored by screwing the same person over and over. But I'd never screwed Julie before. Why should I require a fantasy now? Julie was something new, something fresh. Wasn't she fantasy in and of herself?

I continued to fuck her, moving in and out, feeling her tits with my hands, stroking her legs, kissing her mouth, her neck. I tried to will myself to come. I'm fucking a beautiful teenager, I told myself. But I still couldn't come.

I began to run various fantasies through my head as I screwed her. Those that have been married for any length of time will probably be familiar with this method. I thought of the first time I'd fucked Cindy. That brought a little stir in my nether regions but no orgasm. I thought of what it would be like to fuck Darla Watson, a cute blonde at school that had always rejected my advances. I imagined it was Darla's body beneath mine, Darla's mouth kissing me. No good.

Sweat was now pouring off of my face and I was starting to get tired. Though Julie was still enjoying herself beneath me I knew that if I didn't come soon I was going to have to call a halt on the grounds of fatigue. I couldn't keep up this pace indefinitely. I was loath to do that since I NEEDED to come and since it's damn near impossible to take a condom off your cock if you haven't blasted into it.

I raised my hand to my forehead to wipe the sweat out of my eyes while my hips continued to rise and fall and Julie continued to buck and moan against me. Suddenly I was thinking of Nina. I don't know what brought her image into my mind but I wasn't thinking of her as the friend I knew. I was thinking of her naked and sweating beneath me.

I felt a tingle run up my back at that very thought. The fantasy expanded. I closed my eyes and pressed my body tighter into Julie, my hips picking up speed. I imagined that instead of Julie it was Nina beneath me, her flesh pressing mine, her breasts against my chest, her sex grasping and squeezing my cock.

"Ahhhhh!" I groaned as my mind blew a circuit breaker of some sort and a powerful orgasm went slamming through my body almost without warning.

"Yess!" Julie screamed, feeling the change in my rhythm.

I bucked up and down atop her like I was in seizure, shooting blast after blast into the condom until I feared I was going to overfill it. Finally, drenched in sweat, I collapsed atop her.

She kissed and licked on me, telling me how great I'd been but I barely heard her.

Had I really been fantasizing about Nina? Had that fantasy really given me one of the most powerful orgasms I'd ever had?

I rolled off of Julie and removed the condom, tying a knot in the top and dropping it into the wastebasket next to the bed (which I would of course empty before Mom and Dad got home). I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and she curled up next to me, resting her head on my chest.

We made some small talk with each other for a few minutes and all the while my mind was spinning. I'd gotten off thinking about Nina. What did that mean?

When Julie finally got out of bed and went to use the bathroom I started to run the fantasy through my head once again. I started to really imagine what it would feel like to kiss Nina, to feel her body against mine, to make love to her. These thoughts were not, I found, the least bit unpleasant to contemplate.

Chapter 5

Beauty I've always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

But I love you

Oh how I love you

THE MOODY BLUES

Julie left the house, giving me a quick kiss on the lips and walking out to her car. She told me she would see me tomorrow and then a moment later she was roaring away. I closed the door after she'd gone and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, glancing at the clock as I did so. A half an hour until Dad got home. Just enough time for a shower.

Though I didn't have to work that day a bathing session was necessary none-the-less. I was wearing only a pair of sweatpants on my body and I knew I had to reek of Julie's musk both from my skin and on my breath. There was no sense giving my Dad anything to raise his eyebrows about.

As I put ice in a glass and filled it with water from the tap, preparing to slake my considerable thirst, my mind was still reeling with the new images of Nina it had produced at the moment of truth earlier. The memory of the powerful orgasm those images had generated was still fresh and in fact the images themselves were still flitting at the forefront of my thoughts, keeping my dick in a semi-erect state.

It was Nina I was thinking about! Nina! What a mind-blower. I felt very weird about this. Nina was my best friend, my companion, my confidant for nearly two years now. Why was I suddenly having sexual thoughts about her? Was it just my teenaged libido in overdrive or was it something else entirely? As I struggled to understand the meaning of these thoughts I found myself thinking of her in more than the sexual way. I thought of all the time we'd spent together, of all the things we'd done. I liked being around her. There really wasn't anything else I'd rather do in fact. Not even sex, my greatest obsession, compared to simply being in the company of her, talking to her, listening to her.

My God, I thought. I wasn't talking about love was I? Though I looked like a teenager and though I'd learned to act like a teenager I was still, under all of that, a thirty-three year old man. Nina was seventeen. And while I'd reluctantly acknowledged the possibility that she might be in love with me, through no fault of my own of course, I'd never even considered, even for an instant, the possibility that I might be in love with her. Sure I loved her as a friend. Sure, even though she was sixteen years younger than I was (although in reality she was nearly a year older than I was) I'd always found her a mature and easy to talk to companion, much easier than my ex-wife had ever dreamed of being, easier in fact than even Tracy. But none of that meant love did it, not romantic love anyway.

I thought of how upset she'd been earlier that day because I'd chosen to accept a ride from Julie. I remembered being baffled by her anger. Why should she be upset because of that, I'd wondered? It had been in all innocence, or so I'd thought then, and we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend anyway, so what right had she to be mad at me? And then I imagined how I would feel if Nina had told me that she was going to be riding to ROP each day with someone like Rick Felone, one of the few other guys that had been in our ROP classroom. I was surprised at the sudden surge of anger and jealously that hit me at the very thought of this.

Jesus, what was happening to me? What was I going to do about it?

Before I had a chance to think too heavily on those questions the doorbell rang. Muttering a curse under my breath at being interrupted while I'd been thinking some deep thoughts, I set down my glass and headed into the living room.

Figuring it was a door to door salesman selling some worthless product or religious fanatics selling something even more worthless I threw open the door prepared to send them away post-haste so I could go up to take my shower and continue my thoughts of Nina to their conclusion. However it was neither on the other side of door. It was Nina.

Her expression was very cool upon her face, very unreadable as she stood on the porch. Her eyes took in my attire and I realized that she couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. What was she doing here anyway? She'd told me that she wasn't coming over.

"Hi Nina." I greeted her with false cheeriness, stepping back a bit to keep her from catching any sort of scent from me. I did this instinctively without even realizing why I was doing it. "Come on in. What are you doing here?"

She made no move to come through the door, she simply stood there. "I came over to apologize for acting so weird today at school." She said. "I thought I'd been out of line, getting upset just because you wanted a ride with Julie."

"That's okay." I told her. "I understand completely. Why don't you come in?"

"I was so upset by what I'd said," She continued, still making no move to come through the door. "That I decided to head over as soon as I got home from school."

My mouth dropped open and a burst of adrenaline flooded me as I realized what she was saying.

"When I got here," She told me. "I saw that you already had company. Julie's car was out front."

"Listen Nina," I started and then immediately faded away. I had no idea what I should say to her. Should I lie and say nothing had happened? I rejected that thought even as it formed. I could hardly deny it. Nina, as I may have mentioned earlier, was not stupid. Julie's car had been out front and I'd answered the door wearing nothing but sweats and smelling like I'd just fucked someone.

"What you do is your business." She told me and I saw that a tear was now running from her left eye. "It's never been any of mine and I've never pretended that it was. You've been screwing everything with a vagina for the last two years and I've never tried to convince myself that you have any feelings for me. To you I'm just Nina."

"No Nina." I protested. "That's not true at all."

"It is." She said. "But do you know what? I've always had feelings for you. Ever since you first started talking to me in the lunchroom I've had strong feelings for you. Over the past two years they've never been returned but I've always had them and I've always hoped that some day…" She sniffed a little, more tears coming down now. "Time and time again I've started to feel like maybe there was some hope. Even though I've heard all of the stories about you, about how you'll screw anyone. Even though girls are always coming up to me and asking about you, trying to get me to introduce them to you, I still had some hope. I kept deluding myself, telling myself that you really were a nice guy. That you really weren't doing all of these things that I was hearing."

"I am a nice guy." I protested. "It's just…"

"Time and time again I would see what you were doing and try to tell myself I wasn't really seeing it. I would try to tell myself that someday…" She took a deep breath. "Anyway, when you told me that Julie and you were just going to ride together I felt, well, jealous, threatened at first. I know we're not going together or anything but still, I feel these things Bill. I can't help it. I've got these fucking feelings for you. But then I thought about it and decided I'd overreacted a little. I told myself that there was no way Bill would ever do anything with an engaged girl. I convinced myself that I'd let my feelings come out a little too much this time." She snorted in disgust. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me. So I came over here to tell you I was sorry about that.

"When I got here and saw Julie's car out front it suddenly came home to me. Everything that I'd always heard about you was true. All of the times I'd convinced myself that people were just talking about you, all of the times I saw with my own eyes what you were doing and convinced myself it was something else, all of that just fell apart when I saw her car. You really are an asshole Bill, and the worst kind. You're an asshole that can pretend not to be one."

"Nina," I said, "Let me explain…"

"There's nothing to explain." She said. "I've got to get away from you. I've got to stay away from you, do you understand? You're not good for me and you give me too many bad feelings. I just came up here to let you know that you're going to have to find another way to get to school." Tears were now running freely down her cheeks and her voice was breaking as she held off sobs.

"Nina, let's talk about this." I said.

"No." She cried, turning away from me. "Goodbye Bill." She started down the walk.

"Nina!" I yelled, starting after her.

"Leave me alone." She sobbed. "Just stay away from me here, now, and forever. Don't call me anymore, don't talk to me anymore. Please."

She continued down the walkway and turned left at the sidewalk, heading for home. Less than ten seconds later she was out of my sight. But she wasn't out of my mind.

Despite what she'd said to me I tried to call her several times that day. I needed to talk to her, to tell her that I wasn't really an asshole. I needed to try to get her to change her mind. Each time her mother answered the phone and told me that Nina was not there. Her mother's voice, which usually lit up when she was talking to me, was emotionless and flat, with no hint of the previous warmth that had been in it. Finally she told me that her daughter did not wish to speak to me and asked that I refrain from calling anymore. I put down the phone feeling defeated.

The next morning Dad saw me bundling up and preparing to walk to school. He gave me a puzzled look.

"Isn't Nina coming to pick you up today?" He asked.

"No." I told him. "She's kind of, well, mad at me. She's not going to give me a ride anymore."

"You guys broke up?" He asked, his voice soft with sympathy.

"She was never my girlfriend Dad." I told him, irritated. "She's just mad at me and doesn't want to give me a ride anymore."

He stared levelly at me. "Bill." He told me. "I hate to tell you this but Nina WAS your girlfriend, whether you realized it or not."

I shook my head. "No Dad." I said. "We were just friends. We never…, well you know?"

"Is that what you think a girlfriend is?" He asked. "Someone to, 'you know' with? You and Nina might not have ever done that with each other but you were boyfriend and girlfriend all the same. You liked being around each other, you liked to talk together. You were friends. You loved each other.

Isn't friendship the most important part of a relationship, any relationship? Why do people disregard such things?"

Had it been so obvious that even my Dad had seen it? How could I have not seen it all this time? And how could fate have been so cruel to allow me to realize it on the very day, at the very minute that it's destruction was being engineered.

"I don't know Dad." I said with complete honesty. "Maybe they're just assholes."

He gave me a meaningful look. "Maybe they are." He replied. "And maybe they need to take a good look at what is making them an asshole, don't you think? Maybe they can change that little something?"

I gave him a sharp look. What was he saying? What did he know? Was he talking about my social activities? Surely he didn't know about that did he? But then I'd assumed Nina hadn't known about that either, an assumption that, now that it had been proven wrong, seemed painfully naive. Was my assumption that Dad or even, I shuddered, Mom, didn't know as flawed as that about Nina?

Dad had hidden his face back behind the paper, offering me no more insights into what he was thinking. Troubled, I picked up my backpack and headed out the door. I wasn't surprised to find that it was raining as I headed, on foot, to school. It was that kind of day.

My attempts to talk to Nina at school were met with stony silence. By the time lunch came around I knew better than to even try anymore. As I ate my lunch in the lunchroom I looked over to where Nina sat and dread covered me like a blanket. She was sitting alone at a table, eating from her tray, a book open before her. Just like she'd been doing the first day I'd approached her. Just like it.

Julie picked me up once more for ROP. As we drove to the hospital together I was disquieted by the freeness of her affection towards me. She would put her hand on my leg as we talked, or brush my hair from my eyes for me. Once she even kissed her finger and put it to my lips gently. She told me how great of a time she'd had yesterday.

"Do you think maybe we could study together again after school?" She asked brightly.

"Uh…, not today." I told her. "I have to work." In truth I could have easily arranged a little meeting before work but I simply wasn't up to it. I'd never felt less like having sex in my life.

She pouted a little. "Well maybe next week." She said. "I really need to bone up on certain things."

As we worked side by side I noticed again how much she went out of her way to bump into me or to rub her breasts against my shoulder. Since I was quieter than usual she decided to talk more than usual. I winced when she mentioned her fiance.

"Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision when I said I'd marry him." She told me.

I looked over at her, perhaps a little sharper than I'd intended to. "What do you mean?"

"Well," She beamed, her eyes shining. "I'm still young, ain't I? Maybe he's not the right one. Maybe I just jumped because he was the first one to ask.

There's lots of other guys out there that might be, uh, better, isn't there?"

I quite simply didn't know what to say to her.

When I came home from work that night my Mom was sitting on the couch watching television and working on some sort of project for work. I gave her a perfunctory greeting and started to head for my room.

"Bill?" She asked, "Are you doing okay?"

I stopped, turning towards her. "Sure Mom." I answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Dad told me about you and Nina breaking up." She said. "I just wanted to know how you were handling it."

I didn't even bother explaining to her that Nina and I hadn't had a relationship to break up from. By now it was starting to sound like a lie even to me. "I'm okay Mom." I assured her. "It'll work out."

"I certainly hope so." She told me sympathetically. "I really like her a lot you know. I thought you two made a cute couple."

I smiled weakly.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your life or anything Bill." She said. "But I think you had a good thing with her. If I were you, I'd do whatever I had to to get her back. Sincerely."

"Thanks Mom." I muttered, unsure what I was thanking her for. Why in the hell hadn't anyone told me this stuff a month ago, or a year ago, or even twenty-four hours ago?

Of course I was deluding myself because they had. Tracy in the most direct way, although I'd refused to hear her, Mom and Dad in more indirect ways. How many times had they referred to Nina as my girlfriend, either to me or when talking about her to someone else? And how many times had I reproached them for this, angrily even on occasion? Too many to count.

"Well that's my motherly advice for the day." She said. "If you're feeling down maybe this will help." She picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to me. On the front I recognized my sister's handwriting.

"From Tracy?" I asked. Since leaving for California Tracy had not exactly been an open line of communication. Two phone calls, one of which had just been to tell us she'd arrived safely, and this one letter. Since she lived in the dorms it was almost impossible to get hold of her.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "And about time too. I swear, you send them to college and they forget you exist."

I opened the envelope and sat down on the couch, pulling the single handwritten sheet of paper out and unfolding it.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Bill, it started. It was mostly to let us know she was alive and well and doing fine. She chattered on about how much she was enjoying her classes and the California weather, how much she liked living in the dorms, about her job at the campus book store which would help supplement her living expenses. And then towards the end she told us that she'd met a boy and had been dating him fairly frequently. His name was Darren Maxwell.

Darren Maxwell. I'd never heard that name before in my life, before or after recycling. But for some reason that name gave me a twinge of fear. I continued to read her decidedly unfeminine handwriting, becoming more nervous in a much more identifiable way. He was a junior at the school attending on a baseball scholarship. A baseball player. He was a sports figure, just like the guy who had been scheduled to cause her death. It should have felt stupid that I was worrying about her just because she was dating a baseball player but it didn't. It made me very uncomfortable. I found myself wondering what kind of car he drove and if he liked to drink at parties.

Troubled, I put the letter back into the envelope and put it back on the table.

"What's the matter Bill?" Mom asked me. "You look kind of pale."

"Nothing Mom." I said, standing up. "I think I'm gonna hit the rack."

I was halfway up the stairs when it hit me. I realized why Darren Maxwell's name bothered me so much. He had the same initials as David Mitchell. The same amount of syllables in his name. I wondered if they looked alike. I wondered if I was just being paranoid, if the initials and the sports history were just a meaningless coincidence. Every time I started to convince myself that paranoia was all it was I would think about Beirut and about Nina sitting alone in the cafeteria, reading a book before she went off, alone, to medical school.

"Jesus, this is creepy." I muttered.

I lay in bed but it was a long time before I got to sleep.

I tried to call Nina twice over the weekend. The first time her mother not so politely told me that Nina did not wish to speak to me. The second time her Dad told me he would call the cops if I called there again. On Monday at school I tried to talk to her in class.

"I told you to leave me alone." She said quietly but coldly, in a voice that did not promise the opening of negotiations.

I left her alone.

Julie picked me up once again, for what I planned to be the last time. Though I wanted a job at central supply as much as anyone, I could not ride to work with her anymore. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to bring Nina around again but it certainly wouldn't help for her to see me driving off every afternoon with Julie. I planned to tell her on the way to the hospital that this would be the last ride. But before I could, she blindsided me.

She was bubbly and exuberant as I climbed into the car and she roared off with much more enthusiasm than she usually displayed.

"You're in a happy mood today." I commented, trying to think of an opening, or closing line.

"Yep." She bubbled happily. "I sure am. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Look." She said, and waggled her left hand before my face.

I blinked in confusion, not following her. "Your hand." I said dryly. "What about it?"

"Notice anything missing?" She smiled, waggling her fingers.

And suddenly I did. The diamond engagement ring that she'd been so proud of, that she'd annoyed the living shit out of every member of the class with, was no longer on her ring finger. "Your ring." I said hollowly, knowing what the significance of it's absence had to be.

"Yep." She nodded, dropping the hand into my lap, very near my crotch. "I'm free. Absolutely free. I gave it back to him on Saturday night and told him I didn't want to marry him or see him anymore."

I took a deep breath. "Why did you do that?" I asked slowly.

"Because I don't want to see him anymore." She told me. She gave my leg a squeeze. "I've found someone else."

She'd found someone else? Oh shit. "And who might that be?" I braced myself.

She gave me a look that conveyed the message that she thought I was teasing her. "You, you hoser." She smiled. "What we experienced the other night was just, just incredible, wasn't it? I knew right then we had something special going. Didn't you just feel the electricity?"

"Oh God." I couldn't help but mutter. Could this week get any worse?

"Hey," She said, "Are your parents gone? I was thinking maybe we could cut ROP today and go over to your place." Her hand trailed upward until it was firmly in my crotch. "Spend the afternoon together?"

Slowly, patiently, I picked up her hand from my lap and put it back in hers.

"Julie." I started, and then was unable to think of anything to say.

"What?" She said, confused by my rejection of her hand and the serious tone of my voice.

I looked at the ceiling of the car for a moment, trying to think. Why the hell was she doing this to me? Didn't she understand THE RULES? She was supposed to enjoy our session and leave it at that. She wasn't supposed to break up with her fucking fiance because of it. She wasn't supposed to be feeling electricity or any of that romance novel crap. I had no experience with this sort of thing.

"Sweetie," She said, concerned. "What's wrong?"

Sweetie? Oh Christ. This was getting way out of hand.

"Look Julie." I said patiently. "I'm not your sweetie. I'm just Bill. Bill from class. We had a little fun together the other day, something we probably shouldn't have done, but I never meant for it to go any further than that. I never meant for you to break up with your fiance over it."

Her face turned deadly serious. "What are you saying?" She asked.

What was I saying? Hadn't I just said it? "What I'm saying," I told her carefully. "Is that I am not looking for a relationship with you. We just had a day of fun together."

"You don't want to go out with me?" She whispered, her tone conveying danger just under the surface.

"No." I said. "What happened between us just kind of happened. I didn't intend for it to go any further than that. Can't we just be friends?"

"Friends?" She nearly spat. "It sounds to me like you think I'm some sort of slut."

"No, no!" I protested. "That's not…"

"You take me over to your place and fuck me and you just want to end it like that? That's how guys treat sluts!"

"But…"

"I'm not no fuckin slut!" She screamed at me. "Did you think I was one? Did you think you were just gonna fuck me and then we'd forget about it the next day? How could you think that? I'm a Catholic Goddamit. I go to fucking church! Nobody treats me like a fuckin slut!"

"You're not a slut Julie." I protested. "All I was trying to say…"

She suddenly slammed on the brakes, bringing her car to a screeching, smoking halt in the middle of one of Spokane's major arteries. I heard the screech of other brakes behind us as several cars nearly rear-ended her.

"Julie, Jesus, what are…"

"Get the fuck out of my car you asshole!" She screamed at me. "Get your fuckin ass out NOW! I don't ever want to see your fucked-up, lying face again!"

"Let's talk about…"

"GET OUT!" She screamed and I saw murder in her eyes.

I unsnapped my seatbelt, opened the door, and got out. Before I could close the door she peeled away, ripping it out of my hand, leaving me standing in the middle of the street in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. I looked around uncomfortably at the angry faces of the motorists whose progress I was impeding and I hurried to the curb.

"I think I could have handled that better." I muttered to myself.

I took a quick look around me, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was in front of a liquor store and three blacks were hanging out in front of it. They were in their early twenties or late teens and looked like gang members based on their garb. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking from forty-ounce cans of beer. They eyed me with amusement.

"Homey," One of them said to me sympathetically. "That was one pissed off bitch."

"Yep." Another agreed. "I heard her rap all the way over here. I was you Homey, I'd stay away from that shit."

"Sure thing." The other one put in. "Bitch done dropped your ass off in the hood. You'd a been good as dead she'd a done that shit at night. Lucky for you it's day, you only half as good as dead 'round here now."

They all laughed at that, shaking their heads at my predicament. I felt no fear from them. I'd worked for years in 'the hood' and had gotten good at reading the intentions of the inhabitants of it. Their jostling of me was for their own amusement. They meant me no harm. However, there were others around that would mean me some harm if I encountered them. I was no longer in possession of the safety my uniform provided or the portable radio that I'd once carried here that could summon every cop within five square miles in less than two minutes. I was in a delicate situation.

"Yeah." I said to them. "I do seem to be out of my element here, don't I?"

This cracked them up again. "You ain't shittin." One of them said.

"The bus stop around here somewhere?" I asked.

"Right here Homey." One answered. "Should be comin round in about twenty minutes."

"Hope you can make it that long." The one that had made the crack about the hood commented.

I looked around again, not seeing anything that offered comfort to me. The street was lined with liquor stores, cheap motels, and the occasional sub-human apartment complex. There were alleys between each of the buildings that undoubtedly contained all manner of thug of all races and creeds. This was not a place to take a little stroll. I turned back to the three-man comedy team.

"Gentlemen," I said. "I propose a business deal."

"Say what?" The apparent leader of the trio asked me.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, my weekly ration from my paycheck. I silently gave thanks that I'd increased it to ten after starting work in the hospital. "Take this ten." I said, "And take it into the liquor store there. Buy me one of those forties you're drinking, since I can use a drink about now, and give me back a buck for the bus. You guys keep the rest for yourself in exchange for keeping me from getting killed before the bus gets here."

They all stared at me for a moment, a trio of THE LOOK. Finally the leader spoke.

"And what's to stop us," He asked. "From just takin the dime and sendin your ass the fuck out of here?"

I shrugged. "Absolutely nothing." I answered.

It took them a moment but they finally started laughing. The leader, shaking his head and grinning, plucked the ten out of my fingers and headed into the store. He returned a minute later handing me a frosty, forty-ounce can of King Cobra and a dollar bill.

"You know somethin Homey?" He asked me as I cracked open the beer and took a huge swallow. "You're all right. You the most fun we had around here in a fuckin week."

And so I made it safely out of the worst area that Spokane had to offer. I boarded the bus, buzzing pleasantly from the beer that I'd just slammed into my system, gave my business partners a wave goodbye, and found myself a seat. I thought it prudent to avoid going to the hospital that day, giving Julie twenty-four hours to cool down. Since I was not accustomed to riding the bus and since I did not have any more money to spare I simply sat in my seat until the bus I was on passed near my home. It took nearly two hours and by the time I got off my bladder felt as if it was going to burst. I ran the five blocks to my house, fumbled with the key, and dashed full speed to the bathroom.

It was a fitting end to the school day I supposed.

When I came home from work that night Mom was once again sitting on the couch and watching television.

"Hi Bill." She greeted. "Feeling better today?"

"Much." I lied, putting on a cheery face.

"Have you talked to Nina?" She asked delicately.

"She won't talk to me." I answered. "But life goes on, doesn't it?"

"What did you guys fight about anyway?" She asked.

"It's kinda personal Mom." I explained. "But don't worry. I'm coping."

She gave me a sideways smile. As I started up the stairs she suddenly called me back.

"I almost forgot." She told me. "Anita called and asked if you could put up her storm windows this week sometime when she gets home. Winter's coming soon you know."

"Sure." I answered. There had been a time, about a week ago, when the news that Anita had called, asking me to do something for her would have caused a stir in my nether regions. But now, nothing. Sex was still the furthest thing from my mind. "I'll do it tomorrow afternoon."

She beamed at me. "It so sweet of you Bill." She commented. "Helping Anita out even with your busy schedule. You're turning out all right."

"I hope so." I said as I headed upstairs, realizing that for the first time in forever I was looking at a trip to Anita's as a chore.

I sensed no thawing of feelings from Nina the next day so I did not attempt to talk to her. At lunch she sat alone again at her table. Mike joined me at mine, pointing at her.

"Why's she sitting over there?" He asked, not bothering to finish chewing his food first.

"She's pissed off at me." I told him.

"How come?"

"It's personal." I answered.

He stared at me for a moment and then, in the way of Mike, dismissed the subject. "You ridin' the bus today?"

"Yep." I answered, wondering if he was going to start questioning me about Julie now.

Instead he gave me a sour look. "I'll be with you." He said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "How come?"

"Bug's broke." He told me. "The fuckin oil pump took a shit on me. Have to wait till my dad gets paid again before I can get it fixed."

I commiserated with him for a minute and then our talk turned to other subjects. After lunch we boarded the bus and found seats together. Nina, not even looking at us, found a seat by herself near the front.

My stop came before his so I bid him farewell and exited through the door along with the other ROP members assigned to the trauma center. As I headed for the main doors I saw Julie's car parked in the parking lot. I felt my nerves tense up as I anticipated having to work with her. After all, we worked with scalpels and other sharp instruments.

But as it turned out my fears were groundless. She had already talked to the supervisor apparently and had requested a change of work partner for personal reasons. My new partner was Brett Jackson, one of the other guys in the class. Julie was working with another girl in a section across the room from me. Brett asked a few questions regarding the transfer but I gave him no answers. Eventually he gave up. Julie and I stayed far apart and she did not try to cut my heart out with an unsterile scalpel. It seemed that particular crisis was passed.

When I rode home that day Nina sat away from me once more. But I also noticed the fact that Mike was not on the bus. He should have been picked up before me. Where was he? Had he found another ride home? For some reason his absence filled me with the same sense of dread I'd felt when I read Tracy's letter. When the bus dropped me off at school and Nina hopped into her Mom's car and I started home, the sensation was still with me. What had happened to Mike?

In the old days, before I'd become Anita's lover, she'd always had me over to do whatever work she required done in the afternoon shortly after I came home from school. Since the first time we were intimate with each other however it became a rule that we planned my work in the late afternoon, timed so that she could feed me dinner and then put her kids to bed in time for us to retire to her bedroom, the confines of which I knew as well as my own. As I headed over at five o'clock that day I still felt like sex was the last thing in the world I wanted to participate in. I also knew that Anita would be expecting it. Beyond that my mind refused to consider anything.

She gave me a saucy smile for greeting, a smile I knew meant that she was exceedingly horny and in need of my talents. I sighed and went to work.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon I had all of her storm windows up (knowing in the back of my mind that I would soon be required to put up Mom and Dad's storm windows too). I entered the house to let her know I was done, intending to tell her that I was going to skip dinner that night and just head home. But as I made my way to the kitchen I smelled the familiar aroma of her burgundy beef stroganoff, a dish that she knew was one of my favorites and that she often prepared for me. I also knew that quite a bit of preparation time went into the construction of this meal and I found myself without the heart to turn it down. Besides, I rationalized, Mom, knowing I would be eating at Anita's would have prepared only enough dinner for Dad and herself.

"Do you want to take a shower before dinner?" She asked me as she started the finishing touches on her meal.

"Sure." I nodded, without enthusiasm.

As I scrubbed myself in her shower, washing the sweat of my exertions down her drain I heard the click of the shower door behind me followed by a rush of cold air against my wet skin. Startled, I turned around to see Anita, completely naked, stepping into the shower with me.

"Anita?" I said, alarmed as she shut the door and pushed her body into mine.

"What are you doing?"

She grinned. "I'm feeling a little dirty tonight." She told me, running her hands over my soapy chest.

"But the kids." I protested. "They're still awake."

"They're watching TV." She said, grabbing the bar of soap from my hand. "Don't worry about them."

She began sliding the bar of soap over my wet skin, running it up and down between my lower abdomen and my shoulders, leaving white, foamy streaks on my flesh. Her large breasts were touching my arm as she did this, pushing their weight into me.

"Anita." I started again. "This is a bad idea."

"A bad idea?" She asked, letting the bar slide down onto my thighs and across my balls.

"Yes." I nodded. "We shouldn't…"

"Why don't you let me," She said, dropping the soap to the ground. "Decide what is and isn't a bad idea."

"But…"

"Oh dear." She said with mock concern. "I've dropped the soap. Perhaps I should go retrieve it."

"Anita…" I began again but she wasn't listening. She slowly dropped to her knees on the floor of the shower and took my wilted cock into her mouth.

"Anitaaaaa…" I pleaded, trying to resist her.

It was useless. Anita knew how to suck a cock. Though I'd sworn only minutes before that sex was the last thing on my mind it took only a moment of her teasing, sucking mouth slurping at my meat before I started to stiffen.

"Mmmmmm." She moaned, pulling her mouth free for an instant. "I LOVE to feel it get hard in my mouth." She dove back down on me.

She sucked me until I was as hard as a diamond and resting my arm on the top of the shower to keep from falling down. She then began to move her head up and down, sucking and licking and jacking with her hands. Water ran across her face as she sucked, adding it's own tickles to the experience. Just as my hips started to gyrate back and forth, she pulled her mouth from me and stood up, trailing her tongue up my body as she went. She licked across my nipples, onto my neck, and finally to my mouth where she plunged her tongue inside.

Libido is both the gift and the curse of the young. She had succeeded in driving thoughts of Nina and Beirut and Tracy and Mike from my head. She'd succeeded in transferring control of me to the other head. I put my arms around her and pulled her soft body to mine, letting my hands drop down to her ass cheeks which I began squeezing.

She broke the kiss and stood back a little, out of the spray of the warm water. She reached into her shower caddy and removed a bottle of baby oil. It was the baby oil I knew, that was responsible for the silky, sensuous softness of her skin. She put it on herself every time she bathed. I'd watched her do it plenty of times.

"Here." She said throatily, handing me the bottle. "Put it on me."

"Okay." I agreed, popping open the cap.

"Be sure to rub it in good."

I turned the bottle upside down and dumped a large quantity over the top of her breasts. The clear oil ran over them, between them, and around the sides of them, spilling onto her belly. I set the bottle down and put my hands on her, starting at the top and rubbing the oil into her skin. My hands and fingers glided over her breasts, squishing them in and out of my grasp, making them slippery and almost frictionless. Her nipples stood out proudly and I took a moment to give each one a quick suck, tasting the bitterness of the oil on my tongue as my hands continued to her stomach.

When her entire belly and flank were slippery I grabbed the bottle once more and then went to my knees before her. Her swollen, dripping pussy was right before my eyes but I ignored it for the time being dumping some oil on each of her upper thighs. I began to massage her legs, starting at the top and working my way down to her feet, rubbing and caressing them until they were as slippery as her torso.

I then dumped some oil into the palm of my hand and cupped her pussy, squishing the oil into her lips. She sighed as I touched her there and I began to rub the oil in, feeling her lips swell further, feeling her slick clit rubbing against me. I slid two fingers into her body. They penetrated the slick passage with ease. Her experienced muscles gripped at me. I began to plunge the fingers in and out while I leaned forward and took her slippery, rigid clit into my mouth and began sucking it.

"Ohhhhh." Anita moaned, her hands coming to the back of my head.

When she came, her legs trembled so badly that I feared she was going to fall on me. Somehow she kept her balance, riding through the tremors I gave her.

I stood up, my dick straining out before me, with the intention of sinking into that slippery channel and taking her standing up while her oil slickened body slid against mine. But Anita had other plans.

"I still need oil on my back." She told me.

Dutifully I picked up the bottle while she turned herself around. I poured a quantity onto her shoulder blades and it tracked a course down towards her ass. I massaged the oil into her skin, working my way lower once more until my hand was probing between the cheeks of her ass. I dumped more oil, getting her good and slippery in the valley, running my hand in and out. Anita really liked it when her ass was played with and I could hear her heavy breathing as I paid her attention there.

She stepped backward a step and bent over, exposing her crotch and ass to me.

"You know what I want." She breathed, her hand going up to her pussy where it began to rub.

"I think I do." I told her, pouring a little more oil into my hands and then dropping the bottle to the floor.

I put my oily hands back between her ass cheeks and touched the bud of her anus with my index finger. I pushed forward and the digit slid into her back passage, lubing the way as her hot tunnel squeezed me. I probed in and out for a minute and then added a second finger. Anita moaned her approval.

"C'mon!" She commanded. "Do it!"

I pulled my fingers from her and grasped my cock in one hand. With the other hand I spread her slippery cheeks apart. I moved forward, putting the head against her slick asshole. I probed forward once, feeling the orifice grip at me and then I pushed into her, sliding deep into her ass in one fluid motion.

"Yessssss!" Anita groaned and I had to agree with her. Her passage was tight and slick.

I dropped my hands to her hips and began to move in and out of her, feeling her gripping and releasing, hearing her excited moans over the patter of the water. Her hand began to move faster between her legs and her hips began to move backward against me as I moved forward.

She came again and the erratic spasming of her ass around my cock brought my own orgasm forward. With Anita giving me obscene encouragement, I blasted my load deep into her bowels.

After coming she quickly rinsed herself off and got out of the shower, leaving me to give myself another once-over with the soap, particularly in my crotch. As I cleaned my body I gave silent thanks for Anita. She'd given me just what I needed and I felt better, calmer than I had before coming over. I was pleased to find that I had come quite nicely without having to think of Nina at all. In fact she'd hardly entered my mind.

Dinner was up to it's usual standards, which was excellent, and by the time it was over and the kids were in bed I was ready for another session. So was Anita. We went to her bedroom and spent about an hour pleasuring each other in the conventional fashion.

After this, as we were lying together on her bed, sweat drying on our bodies, my seed dribbling from between her thighs and puddling on her comforter I stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts flow. Beside me, Anita was in a semi-stupor, drifting towards a full-fledged sleep. She often drifted off after we were done, leaving me to shower and find my way out alone. I'd always taken this as a sign that I'd done a good job.

I thought of Anita, thinking back on our relationship together since that first time I'd come over pleading for her help with a girlfriend problem, engineering her seduction of me. Since then we'd never gone a week without finding ourselves in each other's arms, in each other's body. As far as physical pleasure went she still remained the best. I wondered if, when she met the man she would marry, she would constantly compare him to me? Or would she maybe teach him some of my techniques? This thought actually amused me, making me chuckle for perhaps the first time during that miserable week. Anita teaching her new boyfriend and future husband some of the things she'd learned from a teenager.

I yawned and stretched, preparing to hop out of her bed and head for the shower when a thought from left field suddenly struck me. I froze in mid-stretch, coming fully awake, turning me head and looking at my bed-partner that was just about to give in to the final submersion of sleep.

Anita was already supposed to be dating the man that would marry her! She was supposed to have met him before Tracy graduated from high school. I remembered that clearly from my previous life. He'd been at her side at Tracy's funeral! By the time I went off to college she was supposed to have married him and moved away. But she was doing none of that. She had no boyfriend. The closest thing she had was… me.

What had happened? Why hadn't she started dating him? Why wasn't she falling into her previous pattern as Beirut and Nina were doing? I tried as hard as I could to rationalize a reason for the absence of the boyfriend but only one explanation held water. I had interfered with that by starting a relationship of my own with her.

What had been his name? I thought, trying to remember back over a considerable span of years. Something with a J in it was all I could come up with at first. The name danced for a while on the tip of my tongue until finally I was able to snag it. The last name continued to elude me but a first name was all I needed.

"Anita?" I said, shaking her gently until her eyes opened a little. She stared up at me blearily.

"Whu?" She grumbled.

"Do you know anybody named Jack?" I asked her.

"Huh?" She said, waking up a little more now.

"Jack." I repeated. "Do you know anyone named Jack?"

"My ex-father-in-law's name is Jack." She said. "Do you mean him?"

"No." I shook my head. "Any other ones?"

She thought for a second. "Well there's Jack Valentine at work." She said.

Bingo! Once she told me the last name it came back to me. Her future married name was supposed to be Anita Valentine.

"Why would you ask that?" She wanted to know.

"Tell me about Jack Valentine." I prodded her.

She gave me a puzzled look for a second but, like Tracy and Nina, she was well used to the occasional strange question or statement from me. "He transferred to my department about a year ago." She finally said. "He's divorced and kind of good looking. He asked me out a few times last year but finally he gave up when I kept turning him down. He's dating some tramp from accounting now. Word has it their relationship isn't going so well."

"Why," I asked cautiously, "Did you turn him down when he asked you out?"

She looked at me strangely and then smiled. "Why would I want to go out with some pinhead when I got you?" She asked. "You take care of ALL my needs. Well, most of them anyway."

"Anita," I said, thinking as quickly as I could about how I was going to phrase this. If I'd learned nothing else from my experience with Julie it was to treat a woman during a conversation like this as you would an unexploded bomb. "Don't you think that, well, maybe you should occasionally go out with guys your own age?"

"Why?" She asked softly.

Why? "Uh…, well, you know, because you might want to uh, develop a relationship with a man and maybe, you know, get married again someday."

"I would like to get married again someday." She told me, scooting a little closer to me. "And I DO have a relationship with a guy going. You."

"But Anita." I said. "I'm only seventeen years old. I'm in high school. I'll be going off to college next year."

"I know." She nodded, slapping playfully at me with her hand. "And once you're eighteen years old we won't have to keep our relationship a secret anymore. We'll be free."

"Free?" I said, looking at her like a rabbit in a set of headlights.

"Yes." She nodded. "I figure I can go with you wherever you go to college. I can get a job practically anywhere with my skills. We can rent a house while you get your degree. The only hard thing is going to be telling your parents about us." She shook her head sadly while I stared with my mouth agape. "That's certainly not going to be fun."

"No," I muttered slowly, numbly. "It wouldn't be fun at all, would it?"

She leaned over and kissed my nose with a quick peck. "But don't worry." She assured me. "It'll work out. Love will find a way. Why don't you go take your shower now? You don't want to make your parents suspicious do you?"

"No." I said. "That wouldn't do at all."

I was deeply troubled once again as I walked home and headed upstairs that evening. I brushed by my mother before she had a chance to get a good look at my face and see my emotions there. As I crawled under my covers and shut off my light I found myself actually grateful for my fight with Julie. It was thoughts of her that had kept me from telling Anita then and there that I had no intention of marrying her or having her follow me to college. In fact I never intended to sleep with her again. But I had to think carefully first about how I was going to break that news to her. It was clear that I was in the process of screwing up her life but good. Instinctive moves to correct this action might not necessarily be the best ones. The situation would need to be reflected upon first.

As I was reflecting I fell asleep. When I woke up a whole new day was beginning.

I half expected Mike to show up at my house in order to walk to school with me since his car was broken. When he didn't, I figured that one of his parents must have given him a ride. I didn't see him during the classroom portion of the day at all but that was hardly unusual. During lunch period, when I still didn't see him I was forced to conclude that he wasn't there. The conclusion was confirmed when I boarded the bus for ROP and he wasn't there either.

Where was he? I wondered worriedly. Was he sick? Had he maybe taken ill during his shift the previous day? Although that nicely explained why he hadn't been on the bus yesterday or today it didn't ring true. I had a premonition of more disaster brewing. A premonition that turned out to be correct.

Mike was supposed to come over to my house for a study session after school and when he didn't show up I called his house, noting that my hands were trembling a little as I dialed. He answered the phone on the second ring.

"Mike?" I asked. "What's up?"

"Nothin'." He told me sourly.

"Where were you today?" I asked him. "Didn't see you in school or at ROP."

There was a long pause. Finally he said, "I got in trouble yesterday dude."

My heart started hammering in my chest as I heard his words. I forced myself to ask, "What kind of trouble?"

"The captain at the station caught me smoking a joint out behind the apparatus bay."

"What?" I asked slowly. "You were smoking a joint there?"

"Yeah." He answered. "I usually smoked them in the car on the way to the station but I didn't have my car. Figures he'd come out to have a smoke just when I was trying to take a few hits."

"And what happened?" I asked next.

"I got suspended for a week." He told me. "I also got kicked out of ROP. They're gonna give me three classes to replace it."

"Mike, Jesus." I said, unable to think of anything else.

"It's cool." He told me. "I didn't really like hangin out at the fuckin fire station anyway. And the captain was an asshole. Anyway I had a meeting with the counselor and my parents today and she said I should give the independent study a try."

"You're not gonna do it are you?" I asked quickly.

"Yeah." He told me. "I am. Fuck going to class for six hours every day."

"Mike." I told him. "This isn't the end. You can still stay in school and graduate next year. You can still get on with the fire department after you graduate. You just have to tell them in the interview that you were a dumb kid and that…"

"Fuck that." Mike said angrily. "I'm going into independent study. We sent in the application today. Should be approved by next week."

"Mike," I pleaded, "We're almost halfway through the school year! You'll be done before you know it! Just hang in there for another few…"

"Fuck it!" He repeated. "I'm staying in that fuckin shithole any longer than I have to. I shoulda gone into independent study in the first place. I'd a been done by now.

"But…"

"I gotta go." He said. "I'll see you around."

With a click he hung up the phone. Slowly I replaced mine in the holder.

I sat for the longest time, trying to think my way through all of the crap that had suddenly come down in the last week but I couldn't. There was too much of it and it was cluttering up my mind. I would no sooner start to think about one aspect when another would push it's way forward, demanding my attention.

I went upstairs to my room and opened up my nightstand drawer. I looked in the cutout section of my bible and found what I needed. I took it out and pocketed it carefully. When Dad got home I asked him if I could use his car for a few hours. He handed me the keys and asked if I would be home for dinner.

"Probably not." I told him, heading out the door.

I drove to the park near the falls; the location of many a kegger. No keggers were going on at the moment since it was daytime and no families were picnicking at the moment since it was October and the weather wasn't quite up for such things. I locked up Dad's car and walked to a trail that led down to the river near the top of the falls. I began hiking.

Twenty minutes later I was standing less than a hundred yards from where the water arced over the cliff. The roar of the falls was very loud and a fine mist from below drifted through the air, blown by the prevailing winds. I found myself a comfortable spot and sat down. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out the half joint that I'd extricated from my bible.

I'd noticed long before I'd been recycled that a little marijuana helped me think deeply about things. It helped keep my thoughts from being sidetracked into something else. Though I was aware of the irony of what I was doing, using the very substance that had brought Mike down in order to help come up with a solution to his problem, as well as the many others that I'd set in motion, I took out a lighter and lit the joint. As I smoked I stared at the falls, watching the water cascade over the edge to its collision with the lower river. The sight was mesmerizing, the sound nothing but white noise. By the time I'd finished the roach my mind was clear and I began trying to think things through.

Patterns. That was what it came down to. There were two separate time lines I was dealing with. What had happened in my first trip from 1982 to 1999 and what was happening in my second trip. When I'd first come over it had seemed so simple. Everything was new, everything was fresh. I had not really believed at all that I would have to worry about the way things had turned out in my first life. But now, after all the things that had happened, I was seeing definite patterns between the two time lines. Though some things had changed I was seeing a definite tendency for things, people especially, to drift into the patterns that had apparently been set for them. As for who or what had set those patterns, I knew not and I cared not. I was only concerned with the question of whether or not the patterns were tendencies or absolute.

Mike. In my previous life he'd gone to independent study and dropped out of school. He'd joined the Air Force a few years later and the few times I heard from him after that he'd seemed to like his job as missile technician in Wyoming. However he was discovered to have marijuana in his system after a random drug test and given a choice between an Article 15 or a dishonorable discharge without criminal complaint, he chose the discharge. In this time line I'd successfully steered him off of that path at it's beginning and onto a different one, that of a firefighter. I'd kept him in high school longer than he had been previously and I'd honestly thought that I'd changed his destiny. But then he was caught using marijuana at the fire station. He was thrown out of ROP and was now planning to re-enter independent study. He'd steered himself right back into the other path with only two days worth of effort. Was he now committed to that path? Was there no way for me to steer him back again? Was it pointless to even try?

Nina. In her previous life she'd been taunted and ignored throughout her school years, eventually turning into a bitter, though highly educated person. It would be readily apparent to every person that dealt with her on a regular basis in my first life that she suffered from a raging inferiority complex. She was driven by the desire to appear smarter, better, faster, more competent, more everything, than everyone else around her. She was driven by this desire because deep inside she would always be the butt of everyone's jokes and would always feel she was inferior to everyone. The facade she would put up to convince herself and others to the contrary would often be brutal to those it touched. But in this timeline I'd steered her off of that path. I'd befriended her and, with the help of others, showed her that she really was a good person. For the longest time it seemed she could not fall into her original pattern. And then yours truly, in my idiocy, jerked her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now she was back to eating alone in the cafeteria, back to being uncommunicative with everyone. She was on her way to college and medical school next year. In the nineties would she show up in the emergency room in Spokane once again with the same chip on her shoulder, the same attitude? Although the trip took a different pathway than before it sure seemed to me she was heading for the same place.

Tracy. This was the problem that concerned me more than anything else. In the previous time line a football player named David Mitchell had gotten drunk one night and driven my sister into the Spokane River, killing her. I'd prevented that from occurring, true enough, but it was disquieting to me that the Camero had STILL crashed into the river, that Lisa Sanchez had STILL been killed in the accident, and that Barbie Langston, who had taken Tracy's place in the car, had NOT been killed. And now Tracy was dating a baseball player named Darren Maxwell. Was it coincidence that he had the same initials? Was fate simply waiting for another chance to claim Tracy, who's demise was already written in some celestial book somewhere? If so, was there anything I could do about it? Was there anything she could do about it?

And that brought me to the troubling problem of Anita. She, for a change of pace, had deviated way off of the path that she'd taken before. She had not gone out with the man that she was going to marry in the previous time line and had instead fallen in love with me after I'd initiated an affair with her. She called her intended a pinhead in fact. Why was Anita different? Or was she?

I stared at the falls and ran all these things through my mind, one by one. Mike, Anita, Tracy, Myself, Beirut, trying to determine if there were any absolutes, any hard, fast rules to this thing. I stayed there for a long time, staring and thinking, thinking and staring, watching the water rush by in the river.

Was fate, I wondered, like that river? A liquid stream rushing along towards a fixed destination. All of the billions of drops of water in that river were destined to end up, eventually, in the ocean. You could take a few drops out and move them back upstream a few feet or a few miles but they would still end up passing by the same point again, they would still end up in the ocean. A few drops would occasionally splash out of the stream for a while, seeming to free themselves of the current but they would eventually be brought right back into the flow. That was their destiny. That was their fate.

But was it possible for a few drops to occasionally escape that river, to find a new path? Sometimes it was. They could be taken away clinging to the bathing suit of a child or scooped up by a motorist whose vehicle had overheated and deposited into a radiator. They could be lapped away from the river by a deer or a coyote or a bear or even a stray dog. Though most of the drops were fated to continue on their way to the Pacific Ocean; it was possible for some to escape, wasn't it?

When I finally left I was soaked from the mist, shivering, probably on the verge of hypothermia, and I had a bitch of a headache.

But I felt better all the same.

Chapter 6

Once I rose above the noise and confusion

Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion

I was soaring ever higher

But I flew too high

Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man

Though my mind could think I still was a madman

I hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I can hear them say:

Carry on my wayward son

There'll be peace when you are done

Lay your weary head to rest

Don't you cry no more

KANSAS

I awoke in a better mood the next morning even though nothing had really changed. Everything was falling or had fallen down around me and it was time to start picking up the pieces. I was determined to take action; to strike back at FATE. During my mind session the day before I'd realized that both Anita and myself were walking examples that fate could be changed.

It may not be easy to do, but it was possible. If things did not improve, or if they got worse from my interference, at least I'd be able to say that I'd tried.

After breakfast I went to our den and dug through my Dad's filing cabinet. After a minute of rummaging I came up with the letter that Tracy had sent us. I opened it up and scanned through it until I found the section I wanted.

"I have a job now," I read, "working at the campus book store as a clerk. I have to…" I scanned further, skipping over the brief description of her job duties. "I work 5:00 to closing at 8:00, Monday through Friday. It's fun I suppose. At least the money will help…"

5:00 to 8:00 Tracy would be in the UC Berkeley bookstore. I memorized that information and then put the letter back.

A few minutes later I was bundling up and preparing for the long walk to school. As I stepped outside the house I was grateful to see it was not raining. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it. It was a beautiful fall morning it appeared.

My happiness at the appearance of the sun quickly deflated when I felt the wind. It was blowing about twenty miles an hour, sending leaves and other debris parading down the street. The moving air was icy and cold, feeling as if it had just came off a glacier. My exposed cheeks immediately reddened and my eyes began to tear. With a sigh I pulled my hood tight, lowered my face, and moved out. This walking to school shit was getting old fast. One way or another, I swore to myself, I was not going to do it much longer.

My first stop upon arriving at school was the administration building. I walked into the main lobby area where two secretaries were working behind a counter. Both were banging away on IBM typewriters. Two student volunteers, both girls, one of whom had once been to my room to 'study', were doing some filing. The one I'd had relations with in the past was the only person in the room to pay my entrance any attention. She gave me a sly smile and then went back to what she was doing.

I walked up to the counter and stood politely for a few seconds. The nearest secretary continued to type, not even glancing my way, although there was no way she could have failed to notice my presence.

"Excuse me?" I finally said.

"You can't use the phone in here." She said impatiently, without even looking up or moving her hands from the typewriter keys. "There's a payphone outside. If you don't have a dime, you're gonna have to borrow one from somewhere else. We're not a bank."

"I'm not here to use the phone." I said.

"Then what do you want?" She asked, continuing to type away.

"I need to see Mrs. Compleigh." I told her, referring to one of the school counselors, the one who had pushed Mike into independent study.

Her hands still blurring across her IBM, she asked, "Do you have an appointment?"

"No." I replied. "But it's kind of an emergency. I need to…"

"You'll have to schedule an appointment with her if you want to talk to her." She replied tersely. She returned her full attention to her work.

"This is an emergency." I tried again. "I need to see her now."

She gave a hiss of disgust and pushed herself away from her desk. She turned to me, her eyes full of contempt. "Look young man," She said, projecting all of the petty authority she possessed towards me. "Our counselors are busy people and I can't just go sending kids in to them any time some student asks. Now if you could just…"

"Now wait a minute." I interrupted, using my adult voice, a voice I rarely employed anymore. It worked it's magic. She, as well as the other secretary and the two volunteers all stopped and stared at me. Concentrating my attention on the one I'd been speaking to I asked, "What is your name?"

"My name?" She asked, the first tinges of actual anger appearing in her tone.

"Yes." I nodded. "You know, what they call you?"

"Now you listen to me young man…" She started, but weakly. She seemed cowed by the bold way I was speaking to her. Her expression reminded me a little of how Richie had looked when he'd realized he'd bitten off a little more than he could chew.

"Your name?" I demanded, sharpening my tone a little.

"Mrs. Wilks." She finally said. "Now I really…"

"Well, Mrs. Wilks," I said, "When I went through orientation for this school it was explained to me that the school counselors existed to assist me in times of need. That they were student advocates. I was told I could talk to them at any time during the school day. Any time. Are you telling me now that that was a lie?"

"Well no." She stammered, "You can talk to them any time if there is some sort of, well, problem. It's just that for routine matters like what you're…"

"Routine matters?" I asked, exasperated. "I believe I told you twice that this was an emergency. Emergency is not a synonym for routine. Emergency means a pressing matter, a problem, something that requires immediate address by qualified people. I would like to see Mrs. Compleigh for this problem that I have. Is she here?"

"Well, yes she is." Mrs. Wilks said, looking quite dazed now.

"Good." I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Would you please tell her that a student has a problem and would like to see her?"

"Uh…, well, what is your name?" She asked.

I told her.

"Okay." She nodded, jotting it down. "And what do you need to talk to her about?"

I looked around, seeing that our audience was raptly awaiting my answer for that one.

"That is most definitely none of your business." I told her.

She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, and then perhaps thought better of it. She stood up and headed through a door, closing it behind her. The other three occupants of the room continued to stare at me for a moment. The two student volunteers were hiding smirks of amusement at the exchange they'd just witnessed. Finally they reluctantly went back to work.

Mrs. Wilks returned a few minutes later. She gave me a nervous look and said, "Mrs. Compleigh will see you in just a minute."

"Thank you." I said.

She didn't answer my thanks. She walked over to a large filing cabinet and, using a key from a ring, opened up one of the drawers. She fingered through it for a few seconds and finally pulled a manila file from it. My eyes are pretty sharp, always would be, and I had no trouble seeing my name printed on the tab. She carried the file back through the door from which she'd come. She returned a minute later and sat back at her desk.

Another five minutes went by and the same door opened revealing Mrs. Compleigh. She was about forty or so, with long brown hair that was tied into a bun. She wore a plain brown dress and nylons. Her eyes held a cynical gaze as she appraised me.

"Billy?" She asked. "If you would come with me?"

I stood and pushed my way through the little barrier door and then followed her through the back door. We moved down a hallway past the principal's and assistant principal's office, both of which were empty, a copy machine, a coffee maker, and finally to a door with the counselor's name printed on it.

She opened the door and led me into her office.

Her office was small and cramped with a cheap metal desk taking up a large portion of the room. Two small chairs sat before the desk. Her work area was cluttered with various papers and forms although my file was nowhere to be seen there. Framed pictures of two children, one a boy of about ten, the other a girl of about fourteen or so, sat on the desk flanking her penholder. On the wall behind the desk were two framed degrees from the University of Idaho at Boise. She had a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in public education with a minor in Psychology. The air in the room smelled as if she regularly violated the school no smoking policy.

She worked her way behind her desk and waved me to a seat in one of the chairs. I sat.

"Well Billy," She started. "Mrs. Wilks is a little upset by the way in which you talked to her." She started. "She says you were getting smart with her. Is that true?"

"Getting smart?" I asked contemplatively. "Why do teachers, counselors, and secretaries tell kids not to get smart? Isn't that what we are in school for?"

This produced a few stunned seconds of THE LOOK. Finally she kind of shook her head, as if clearing her mind of my words. "We'll discuss Mrs. Wilks later perhaps." She said finally. "I understand you have some sort of emergency?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"I hope it's nothing serious." She told me. "You're one of our better students here. In fact, if not for some poor grades your first year, you'd probably be in the running for valedictorian. So what kind of emergency does a bright young man like yourself have?"

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment. She had rattled off my school record with the intention of making me believe that she knew who I was and how I was doing in school off the top of her head. She was trying to give me the impression that she knew all of her students by name and could instantly recall their respective records. Her psychology or education classes had probably assured her that this was a good trick to instill trust. I dismissed this without comment only reluctantly.

"Well actually." I said. "I am not the one having the problem. I came here on behalf of Mike Meachen."

Her face clouded a bit. "Mike Meachen?" She asked me. "I don't understand."

"Mike Meachen." I repeated. "Surely you remember him? You talked him and his parents into independent study?"

"I'm afraid," She told me firmly, "That what Mike Meachen and his parents discussed with me or decided to do is none of your business."

"Is that a fact?" I asked pointedly.

"YES, it is." She replied, annoyed. "Now if that's all you wanted to discuss, I have a lot of work to do."

"If that's ALL?" I asked, switching to the adult voice again. "You encourage a student to drop out of school, to destroy his life, and you wonder if that's ALL I want to discuss? What kind of counselor are you anyway?"

"Now wait just a minute!" She said sharply, sitting up straighter and leaning over the desk towards me. "Mike is going to independent study. He is NOT dropping out. He is NOT destroying his life."

"Don't give me that crap." I told her, holding her hostile gaze. "You know as well as I do that no one graduates from independent study. It's a holding tank where you put kids that you think are going to drop out anyway so that when they do, it doesn't go on your statistics."

She actually paled a little as I said this, her eyes telling me she knew that what I was saying was true and that she was shocked that I'd come up with this information. She quickly composed herself however and began spouting the company line. "Billy, that is simply not true." She said. "Independent study is a program designed to help students like Mike when they are struggling…"

"You're quoting directly from the pamphlets, aren't you?" I interrupted. "The ones that the school district administration gave you when they instructed you to seek out likely drop-outs and steer them into this program. I'm sure they told you all kinds of things about how it was for the protection of the school, the protection of the students, the protection of the goddam American way of life. But I can see in your eyes that you don't really believe all the bullshit you're spouting at me. You KNOW what I'm saying is true. You probably wouldn't admit it under torture, but you KNOW. Don't you?"

"I would appreciate you watching your language in here." She snapped, continuing to stare at me. "I refuse to have a discussion with a foul-mouthed child who comes into my office and…"

"Yes," I continued, "You know. And part of you probably hates it, don't you? Or at least maybe you did once. How long have you been doing this? Are you numb to it now? Do you sleep well at night after you send someone to oblivion? How many kids have you steered into this program, talking to their parents like you were a used-car salesman offering a Cadillac for a hundred bucks? How many kids that you steered into this thing might have been saved if you'd have done what your job was SUPPOSED to be and helped them?"

"I think I've heard just about enough from you." She told me. "Please ask Mrs. Wilks to supply you with an office pass since you're now late for first period."

I shook my head sadly at her. "No." I said softly but firmly. "I will not leave until I've had my say."

Her face reddened this time. "Young man!" She barked. "You will leave this office right this…"

"Are you afraid of me Mrs. Compleigh?" I asked.

"NO!" She lied. "I am simply tired of having my time wasted by listening to your paranoid delusions. You are a sixteen year old CHILD. You've come to some strange conclusion in your mind and you think it's the truth. Well I'm nearly forty years old and I can tell you with authority that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I struck a few of your chords, didn't I?" I asked, smiling. "I told you a few things about yourself that you didn't really want to hear, didn't I? If you were wise, you would sit down and listen to me for a few minutes. As you pointed out, I'm much younger than you are and you probably don't think I have anything of value to tell you, right? Well someone much younger than me, in a manner of speaking anyway, once tried to tell ME something. And I figured that since I was so much more "mature", that she couldn't possibly be right. Well, I was wrong and I ignored what she had to say, and the consequences of that are something that still haunts me, maybe always will. Do me and yourself a favor and hear me out?"

She looked downright nervous now but finally said, "Say what you need to say."

"Thank you." I replied. "You told me a minute ago that independent study was for students that are 'struggling' in school. Correct?"

"Yes." She said carefully.

"I don't agree with independent study." I said. "I think it's an atrocity. I think you counselors and administrators spend far too much time trying to cover up for poor students instead of trying to help them. Sure, you'd lose a bunch anyway but even if you could save just one, just a single one, wouldn't it be worth it?"

Before she could answer I continued. "But I've learned that you can't change the world. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to change a little part of it. Sometimes I think you CAN do that. You told me that Mike Meachen was a struggling student. Did you even bother to check his record before you had him and his parents in here? Did you even bother to note that he is NOT struggling anymore before you cut him off at the knees? His grades have come way up since last year. He was on his way to an upper 3 average for the first time in his life. He might have even made a 4.0 for the year until you kicked him out of school."

"I didn't FORCE anybody anywhere." She protested. "Mike and his parents WANTED him to go to independent study."

"No, you didn't force them." I said. "You just brought them in here and waved it in front of their faces. 'Look Mike, you only have to go to school twelve hours a week.' 'Look Mrs. and Mr. Meachen, your child can graduate in only a few months this way. If you don't do this, he might not graduate at all.' Isn't that pretty much the line you handed them? Did I hit upon any exact quotes there?"

She was staring at me with her mouth agape, her face telling me that was exactly what she'd said.

"But since you didn't bother checking his record first, you never noticed that he WAS going to graduate. Not through any efforts on YOUR part I might add, but on mine. The first time you waved this crap in front of him I talked him out of it. I got him to study, I got him to bring his grades up and focus on a goal. Things that YOU are charged with doing. I did them for you. He was on his way to his goals and you steered him right into oblivion. Instead of helping him, you destroyed him."

"He was smoking grass." She said defensively. "At his ROP site. You can't expect me to overlook something like that can you?"

"No." I said, "I can't. He did something stupid, I'm not saying he didn't. He did something that he needs to be punished for so that he learns not to do it again. But is this the answer? Sending him out of school? Destroying his life? He didn't kill anybody for God's sake, he smoked some pot. Jesus, haven't you ever smoked pot."

"Certainly NOT!" She said, much too quickly.

"Right." I said, letting that drop. "And granted, he should not be doing it on his job site. But he's a seventeen-year-old kid. Seventeen year olds do stupid things. Maybe he's got a problem with pot, maybe not. But did you even bother trying to figure that out? To counsel him, counselor? No, you just steered him off into independent study because you've been told to do that with people like Mike.

"Try to think back to when you were in school, to when you decided that being a school counselor or an educator was what you wanted to do. Back before the realities of life shit all over your viewpoint. Didn't you, at one time, want to do this so you could help kids? Wasn't that a goal at some point in your past?"

She was looking me up and down in a manner I'd seen a few times before. My history teacher had looked at me this way when I'd asked her sensitive questions. Mrs. Crookshank had looked at me this way when I'd explained about underachievers to her. Dad had looked at me this way when I'd explained why I wanted to invest in latex. The cop who had taken the assault report had looked at me this way when I'd explained what I'd done. It was the look of a person who had thought they'd been speaking to a child but who'd suddenly realized that they were, for whatever reason, talking to an intelligent and insightful adult. It was a look of confusion and growing respect and fear mixed with awe. It was an extended version of THE LOOK.

"Yes." She finally said. "It was."

"Have you abandoned that goal completely?" I asked next.

She licked her lips for a moment. "I hope not." She shook her head.

"Who wanted Mike out of ROP?" I asked her next. "Was it the fire department's idea or yours?"

"Mine." She admitted. "The fire department expressed concern about the incident and requested we have a talk with him. I was the one who recommended removal from ROP."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it was…" She paused.

"Was what?"

"Easier." She said shamefully. "Our contract with them is delicate. It seemed the best solution to the problem was to remove Mike from the program so we didn't risk future enrollees."

I stared at her for a minute. "Easier." I finally said, snorting in disgust. "Has it ever occurred to you that you people are educating the people that are going to be running the damn country in twenty or thirty years. The people that are going to be controlling your Medi-Care and Social Security payments? Do you really want them always choosing the path that is easier on them?"

She had no answer for that.

"Mrs. Compleigh," I pleaded. "Can't you do something about this? Mike was trying to become a productive member of society. He was trying. He did something stupid that needs to be addressed. So address it. Talk to him about it. Let him know he did something stupid. Talk to the fire department and see if there's any way they can give him a second chance. If you do that, let me talk to Mike too. I believe I have some influence with him."

She smiled for the first time. "Billy, I believe you about that."

"If he screws up again than you can write him off as a loser and send him to independent study. But please, give him a second chance. Get his file out of the cabinet instead of mine this time. Read it. See how hard he's worked for this goal in the past year. He's trying. How about you do what your job title says and help him. Meet him half way. Please?"

She took a deep breath, her eyes softening. "You're a remarkable young man Billy." She told me.

I shrugged, switching back to my teenager persona. "I try." I said.

"I'll do as you ask." She assured me.

Though she was no longer talking to me and though she no longer sat with me at lunchtime, Nina was still forced to sit next to me in the two classes we shared prior to ROP. We had picked our seats at the beginning of the semester and now we were committed to them; for better or for worse. She would typically spend each class period looking straight ahead as the teacher lectured, occasionally jotting down a note in her binder. She never looked at me or acknowledged my presence in any way.

That day was no different as I sat down for my second class of the day, and the first with her. While awaiting the rest of the class to file in and find their seats she simply stared at her notebook, ignoring the activity around her, ignoring me most of all. Had it only been a week before that we used to chat happily together during this portion of the class, discussing how our day had been until that point, what we were going to do later? It seemed like an eternity had passed since I'd last heard a kind word from her, had seen her smile.

At some point I'd stopped telling myself that I wanted our relationship to mend so that Nina would not turn out to be a bitch later and started telling myself the truth; that I wanted our relationship to mend because I liked our relationship, because I enjoyed being with her. I'd never noticed before how eager I'd been for Nina to come over each day to study with me until she was no longer doing it. All of my brainstorming of the previous day had failed to produce a plan to make-up with her. I simply did not know what to do.

"Nina?" I chanced, leaning towards her a little and whispering.

She hesitated for a second, long enough to make me think that she was not even going to acknowledge my words, but finally she turned her face towards me. Her eyes were blank, revealing nothing of what was going on behind them.

"You heard what happened to Mike?" I asked her.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's too bad."

"I went and saw Mrs. Compleigh today." I told her, thrilled to be even speaking to her. "I think I convinced her to let him back into ROP. He's getting another chance."

She nodded softly. "Good." She said. "I like Mike."

There was a long silence. Just as she started to turn her head back to her notebook I whispered, "I miss you."

She looked at my face for a second, her eyes still blank. Without saying anything she turned her attention back to her notebook. She said nothing.

"Nina?" I said.

She ignored me. Before I could try again the bell rang and the teacher called the class to order. He then began the day's lecture on the Principals of Chemistry.

All day I dreaded what I had to do when I got from school. When I finally arrived home my mind tried to find excuses to delay or even postpone the task at hand. There was homework to be done, housework to be done, deep thoughts to think, bodily functions to take care of. The rational part of me rejected these excuses one by one and finally I put my coat back on and headed out the door.

A short walk brought me to Anita's house. I made my way to her front door, almost left again, and finally, employing my willpower, I pushed her doorbell.

She was very pleased at my unexpected arrival. It showed in her face as she swung open the door. She was dressed in a pair of baggy sweat pants and a T-shirt. It was obvious that she had no bra on beneath.

"Hi Billy." She beamed, standing aside to allow me entry. "Come on in. What a pleasant surprise."

Her children were sitting at the dining room table working on some learning books. An array of crayons and construction paper was spread out before them. They looked up, greeted me briefly, and then went back to what they were doing. Anita, once the door was closed, leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the mouth, probing outward with her tongue for just the briefest instant. She made a point to rub her unencumbered breasts against my chest.

"Anita." I hissed. "Your kids are right here!"

"Oh you." She slapped at me playfully, breaking the embrace. "They're going to have to get used to us eventually anyway aren't they?"

"Uh…" I started.

"So what brings you over here today?" She asked me teasingly. "Need another shower?"

"No." I shook my head quickly, banishing the image of dumping oil all over her before it could give me an erection. As I mentioned before, my mind may have been in my thirties but my body was firmly entrenched in my teens. Testosterone was surging through my veins and calmly assuring another part of my body that it wouldn't really hurt to just take a quick shower with her before we had our talk. Just to mellow everyone out a little.

"Oh," Anita nodded knowingly. "You want to get dirty first. Give me a minute to set up a movie for the kids. That'll keep them distracted longer."

"Anita," I said, "That's not why I came over here. I need to talk to you about something."

Perhaps catching the tone of my voice, she gave me a wary look. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked carefully.

"Can we sit down somewhere?" I asked her. "Somewhere private?" And somewhere without a lot of sharp objects, I did not add.

"Sure." She said. "Let's go to the bedroom."

I nodded. "Okay."

We went into her room and I grabbed a chair near her dresser. She gave me another concerned look as I did this. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

"What's wrong Billy?" She asked me.

I breathed deeply and slowly let it out. "Anita," I told her. "I don't know how to tell you this but it needs to be said."

"Tell me what?"

"I suppose the best way is to just come out and say it." I said, looking at her face. "We need to end our relationship with each other."

"End…" She whispered, staring at me. Finally she gave a nervous giggle. "Billy, don't joke about things like that. It's not very…"

"Anita, I'm not joking." I told her. "We have to stop seeing each other."

"You're not joking?" She asked softly.

"No." I shook my head. "I'm not."

She began to wring her hands together. "I don't understand Billy." She told me. "Why would you say something like that? We're perfect together. We have a good thing going."

"That's just it Anita." I explained. "We DON'T have a good thing going and we're NOT perfect together. I'm sixteen years old and you're twenty-eight. I'm a teenager in high school and you're a full-grown woman with kids."

"That doesn't matter!" She protested. "As long as two people love each other…"

"Anita." I interrupted gently. "I don't love you that way."

She stared at me for a second, the wounded expression on her face striking directly at my heart. God, how I hated doing this. "But you do." She told me. "You do love me."

"No." I said, shaking my head. "I don't. And I don't think you love me that way either."

"How can you say that?" She asked, raising her voice for the first time. Her eyes were now beginning to leak a little moisture down her cheeks. "After all we've done together, after all we've shared? How can you say that?"

"I'm sorry Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for what I'm telling you now and I'm sorry that I ever initiated our relationship in the first place. I shouldn't have done that."

"Yes!" She yelled. "You should have! What we have together is beautiful! You're not going to let a little age difference keep us apart are you? Billy, we're meant for each other!"

"No." I said firmly, raising my voice a little. "That's just it. We're NOT meant for each other. I'm a kid in high school Anita. I should be dating girls my own age. You should be dating men your own age. While I've been having a relationship with you, you haven't been dating anyone or gone out anywhere. I'm screwing up your life Anita. And it has to stop. Both of us need to move on."

"You're not screwing up my life!" She protested. "Is that what you're worried about? You've improved my life. I used be so lonely Bill and then I found you. You're everything I want. Just because you're younger than me…"

"Anita," I interrupted. "I AM screwing up your life. I never intended for what we had to be a permanent relationship. I was stupid and thought that there were no consequences to what you and I were doing. I figured, hey, here's a cool older woman for me to screw and she's willing to do it again and again. But there are consequences Anita, there are. More than I imagined, more than you can imagine. We have to move on now, get back on track, don't you see that?"

"No." She told me. "You ARE the track that I want to be on. I DO want a permanent relationship with you."

I sighed, not relishing what I had to say next. "But I don't want a permanent relationship with you." I said.

More tears came down. "How can you say that?" She repeated.

"Because it's true." I said. "I don't love you. I'm sorry to have to say that and I know I'm an asshole. I entered into this thing without considering there might be emotional involvement. If I would have known that I never would have started anything. I'm ashamed of myself, deeply ashamed that I took advantage of your loneliness, ashamed that I didn't see this sooner. I'm an asshole Anita and I admit that freely. I'm trying to get better, trying not to be an asshole anymore. I don't like being an asshole. But before I can do that I have to be even more of an asshole and put an end to our relationship. Now, today."

She stood up and began to pace nervously, continuing to wring her hands. She chewed on her lip for a moment. "So you're saying that you want to see other people?" She asked. "To date others for a while to help strengthen the relationship?"

"No Anita." I said. "That is not what I'm saying. I have been dating other people the entire time we've been seeing each other. There is nothing in this relationship to strengthen. I started it only for sex, don't you see that? And sex was all I ever wanted. I'm sorry. My behavior was horrid, worse than horrid. I had no right to do any of that, but unfortunately I did. I'm trying to change now and I can no longer continue to take advantage of you. We have to stop."

"I don't want to stop." She told me quietly, stopping her pacing and turning towards me.

"We have to Anita." I said.

"Maybe I don't mind being taken advantage of." She said, desperation in her voice. "Did you ever consider that? Maybe I want you to continue to take advantage of me if that's what you were doing. I can live with that Billy."

"No." I said firmly, wondering how, in my supposed maturity, I'd managed to miss how deeply she'd felt about me all this time. God I was an idiot. "That won't work. I couldn't live with that. I couldn't keep doing that to you. Despite the way I've acted, I have a conscience. My conscience will not allow me to do that."

She let loose a sob. "Billy, we can't just stop!"

"We have to." I insisted.

She began crying freely now, her chest hitching up and down, tears coursing down, sobs pouring out of her mouth. I stood and put my arms around her, letting her put her head to my chest and cry on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Anita." I whispered to her. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

Her tears slowed down a little and suddenly her hand was around mine. Before I knew what was happening she'd pulled it under her shirt and placed it on her bare breast, allowing me to feel the familiar flesh. I tried to pull it out but she held it firmly with her hand.

"Anita." I said sharply, "Let me go."

"Just one more time Billy?" She pleaded, her free hand sliding down and tugging at the buttons on my jeans. "Just one more time?"

Again my teenaged body had ideas of its own. My teenaged body thought that one more time was a fine idea. Despite all that had just happened and had just been said, my dick stiffened up at the thought. My adult mind was appalled by this.

"No!" I yelled, slapping her hand away from my crotch a little sharper than I'd intended. I jerked my other hand free of her tit and stepped away from her.

The look in her eyes would haunt me. It was anger, hurt, and desperation. "Please?" She pleaded.

"I have to go Anita." I told her. "I'm sorry for everything."

I opened her bedroom door and headed for the living room. As I left she called my name again. I looked back at her.

"I'll be here for you when you want to come back." She said. "I'll always be here for you."

I swallowed nervously. "Goodbye Anita." I finally said. "And I'm sorry."

She remained in her bedroom as I made my way out of her house. The children gave me worried looks as I left. As I closed the door behind me I could hear the sound of her sobs coming from the bedroom.

I only picked at my dinner that night, scraping much of it down the garbage disposal when I did the dishes. My mother expressed concern but I explained my loss of appetite away by proclaiming I felt like I was coming down with something. She felt my forehead, in the way of mothers, and told me she hoped I felt better soon.

"Me too." I said sincerely.

After the last dish was done I went upstairs to my room. I opened my closet and removed a copy of the World Almanac, that great repository of usually useless but occasionally helpful factoids. I paged through the index until I found the page for the section I wanted. I turned to the page.

UNITED STATES AREA CODES read the heading. They were arranged alphabetically by state. I flipped to California and scanned down the column until I saw Berkeley. 415 was the code. I memorized this information, carefully put the book away, and then headed downstairs.

Mom and Dad were both watching television, or at least sitting in front of it. Dad was correcting some papers for his classes at school. Mom was working on some paperwork for her job. I figured they were well occupied so I headed for Dad's den. I called information for the 415 area code and asked for the phone number for the UC Berkeley bookstore. This was the first time I'd called information after being recycled and it startled me a little when the operator actually read off the number to me instead of having a computer do it.

"Did you get that Sir?" She asked.

"Uh, yes." I said, "Thank you very much."

"Your welcome." She said cheerily. "Is there anything else I can help you with."

"No thank you."

She hung up and I dialed the number she'd given me. A man with a decidedly feminine voice and trouble pronouncing the letter S answered the phone. Ah, California.

"Bookstore, can I help you?" He chirped.

I asked for Tracy.

"Just a minute."

The phone clunked down and, instead of being placed on hold, I heard the low murmur of conversations drifting into my ear and the sound of the man who'd answered yelling for Tracy. A few moments later I heard the phone being picked back up.

"Hello?" Came my sister's voice, a tinge of nervousness in it. She was probably not accustomed to receiving phone calls at work.

"Tracy, its Bill." I said.

"Bill?" More worry now. "What's wrong? Are Mom and Dad okay?"

"They're fine." I assured her. "It's you I need to talk to."

"Me?" She said, "How come? And how did you get this number? I'm not supposed to be getting phone calls at work unless it's an emergency."

"The number's a matter of public record Tracy." I told her. "And it's the only way I could think of to get hold of you. Sorry I had to bother you at work."

"That's okay." She said. "But what's wrong?"

"It's nothing immediate." I said. "But I think that there's a chance you might be in, well, in some danger."

"Danger?" She asked, alarmed. "What do you mean?"

"It's probably not a good idea to talk about this while you're at work." I replied. "And like I said, it's nothing immediate. But can you call me tonight when you get off work? Give me a time and I'll stay by the phone."

"Bill?" She asked. "I don't understand. What do you mean I'm in danger? You're in Washington and I'm in California. How could you know anything from there?"

"Tracy, I'll explain everything when you call. Or at least as much as I can. Will you please do it?"

A sigh. "Yes Bill." She answered. "Be by the phone at nine tonight."

"I will." I told her. "Thanks Tracy."

At nine o'clock sharp I was positioned by the phone in the den. When it rang I picked it up before it had a chance to get half a second into the first ring.

"Hello?" I said.

The operator told me I had a collect call from Tracy and asked if I would accept the charges. I told her I would.

"Okay Bill." Tracy said to me. In the background I could hear music and the squeal and giggles of many girls. I concluded she must be on the payphone in the dorm. "Tell me what this is all about."

"Well." I said. "Do you remember when I told you before that you should not get into a car with a certain person on a certain day?"

"Yes." She answered quietly. I could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

"Some disturbing things have happened lately." I went on. "Some things that lead me to believe that you are not exactly out of danger from that."

"What do you mean?" She asked. "I didn't get in that car that night and what you said was going to happen, happened without me. How could I still be in danger from that? Believe me, I'm still not going to get into a car with David Mitchell."

"That's the thing Tracy." I told her. "You didn't get into the car that night and Barbie Langston DID. But Barbie didn't die in the accident. She's still alive."

"So?" Tracy, obviously uncomfortable with the discussion, asked.

"So," I told her. "Some other things have happened that make me think, well this is going to sound crazy, that you were SUPPOSED to die in that car and that since you didn't, things are trying to re-align themselves the way they are SUPPOSED to be."

"Billy," She said angrily. "That is nuts. That's absolutely crazy! What do you mean I was SUPPOSED to die? I didn't. And I'm not going to die."

"Just promise me something Tracy." I asked her.

"What?" She asked.

"Promise me you will never get into any car, with anyone who's been drinking. Especially not your boyfriend's. Are you still seeing him?"

"Yes I'm still seeing him!" She barked at me. "What does that have to do with anything? And I never get into a car with someone who's been drinking.

You should know that."

"I know Tracy." I said. "And that's what worries me. I don't know if the drinking part is a pre-determined factor in this. I don't know much of anything about the rules. I'm not even sure there ARE any rules."

"Rules to what?" She asked. "Where do you come up with these things Bill? You scare me sometimes."

"It's a long story." I answered. "A very long one. Does your boyfriend drink?"

"What?"

"Does he drink?"

"Yes." She said. "He's a college student. We all drink."

"What kind of car does he drive?" I asked next.

"A Corvette." She answered. This should have made me feel better. But it didn't. "Why are you worried about Darren? What does his car and whether or not he drinks have to do with anything? I didn't die that day Bill. Somehow, some way you knew about that. I don't know how. But it's over now. I'm still alive and nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing!"

"Tracy," I pleaded. "Just promise me you won't ever get in the car with him after he's been drinking. Promise me."

"Yes Bill," She recited. "I promise. Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

Actually there was. I wanted to talk about Nina to her, get her feelings on the matter, get advice from her, tell her that she was right and I was wrong. But she didn't seem in the mood for it just then. It would have to wait.

"No Tracy." I answered. "I just want you to be careful. I worry about you."

"I can take care of myself Bill." She said shortly. "I've gotta go."

"Goodbye Tracy." I said. "Thanks for talking to me."

"Goodbye Bill." She answered. A second later there was a click in the earpiece.

I hung up Dad's phone and sat there for a few moments. I could only hope that I'd done some good. Because there was nothing else I could do.

The next day at school I was met first thing in the morning my some of Mike's fabrications and exaggerations. I can't begin to tell you how glad I was to hear them.

"Dude," He said excitedly to me. "Guess what?"

"Hey Mike." I greeted. "Suspension's over?"

"Yeah," He nodded. "But that's not all. I'm back in ROP."

I breathed a silent sigh of thanks to Mrs. Compleigh. "Really?" I asked. "That's cool. How'd that happen?" I was actually sort of curious to see how it had transpired.

"Well, I guess the battalion chief over at the fire department really racked that asshole captain's ass for yelling at me and kicking me out of there. The BC told the counselor that he wanted me back like yesterday." He gave a self-satisfied grin. "At least HE knows what he's got going with me on the department."

"I guess so." I agreed.

"So anyway, they want me to go talk to the BC today and they're going to reassign me to a different station. Station 2 this time. They got a truck and an engine running out of there."

"No shit?" I said, gaining a lot of information from what he was saying despite his embellishments. Station 2, another downtown station, did indeed deploy a truck and an engine. It also was the home, at least in my when, of the battalion chief for that battalion. I figured they had probably decided to move Mike there so that more people, including the boss, could keep an eye on him. He wouldn't be trusted for a while, would in fact face a long, hard road in that endeavor. But at least he was back in.

"Yeah," He strutted. "I hear they're gonna bust that captain back down to engineer for all of this."

"Well," I answered. "That may be so Mike, but if I was you, I'd lay off the buds while I was at the work site. I don't think they'll let you back in if they catch you doing that again. Or even if they THINK you're doing it again."

"Yeah, I know." He said dismissively. "That's what the counselor told me too. I guess I can wait until I get home. So anyway, they tossed out the application for independent study. So I guess I'll hang out for the rest of the year after all."

"Glad it worked out Mike." I told him. "And if you want to keep coming over to have me help with your homework, I'm home the same hours."

"I'll be there." He said.

As I headed to my first class of the day I had a careful smile on my face. At least I'd steered Mike back to where he'd been. The rest would be up to him and if he blew it again I would be forced to concede the inevitability of his loser status. But for now he was back on track. Or back off track if you prefer.

When my alarm clock woke me up the next morning the first sound I heard upon shutting it off was the patter of rain against my window. I sighed as I pondered walking to school in a downpour again. As I listened to the precipitation against the glass I came to a decision on a matter I'd been mulling over for some time.

After showering I went down to breakfast and picked up the business section as usual.

"How are the stocks doing today?" Dad asked from behind the sports page.

"Up a little again." I told him, doing some quick calculations in my head based on some figures I'd added up a few days before. The latex industry was slowly climbing at this point but had yet to do anything dramatic. It would before too much longer went by. But in the meantime I was funneling all of my spare income into those stocks. The added capital plus the gains in the price added up to more than two thousand dollars of available income.

Not a fortune, but not bad either.

I flipped through the business section and found the classified ads. After five minutes of perusal I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

"Dad," I said. "Can you cash out six hundred dollars worth of my stocks today? Three hundred from each company?"

He slid his paper down and looked at me. "What for?" He asked.

"I need to buy a car." I told him. "I refuse to walk to school in the rain anymore."

We talked that matter over for a few minutes, as fathers like to do with their sons. He agreed to cash out the stock but made me promise to take him with me when I went out looking. He would keep me from being screwed he told me. Knowing that I didn't really need his help to keep from getting screwed but also knowing that buying the first car was one of those things that father's lived for, I agreed.

I was very excited about the prospect of going out car shopping on Saturday.

Excited enough to dampen the depression the rain had brought. But my mood was changed in an instant when Mom came into the living room.

Casually, she said to me, "Oh Billy, Anita called last night."

"Anita?" I said as tonelessly as I could manage.

"Yes." She nodded. "She wanted to know if you could swing by after school today and help her change the oil on her car before you go to work. I told her you probably wouldn't mind doing that."

"You did?" I said.

Mom gave me a strange look. "That's okay, isn't it?" She asked. "You're usually able to help her out when she asks."

"Uh…" I stammered, my mind whirring. "Well actually I have a lot of homework to catch up on today."

"Bill, its Friday." She told me. "Can't it wait?"

"No." I shook my head. "It's chemistry. If I don't do it right after school I, uh, forget all of the formulas and stuff."

Mom looked at me for a minute, her mother instinct probably being jigged by my words. But finally she shrugged. "Okay." She said. "But will you try to do it this weekend sometime?"

"I'll uh, see what I can do Mom." I said carefully.

"Thank you Billy." She answered, looking at me with a troubled expression.

Had I really believed that Anita was going to fade away that easily? I guess I had.

That night when I went to bed my testosterone got the better of me. There was only one way to relieve it and manage some sleep. I took myself in hand and began stroking, an action I'd performed thousands upon thousands of times before in my two lives. I thought of Nina as I did it, almost against my will. Never had a fantasy been so vivid, so real to me. It only took a minute or so before my fantasy Nina's job was complete and I was drifting off into a troubled slumber.

The next day, Saturday, Dad and I spent the late morning and early afternoon driving from place to place and looking at used cars. Dad showed me how to negotiate and how to check out a vehicle that you might buy. To my surprise he actually taught me a few things that I didn't already know. I was pleased with the vehicle we eventually settled upon. It was a 1976 Datsun B-210 with seventy thousand miles on it. The engine was in reasonably good shape although the paint job and the interior were in bad need of an overhaul. I paid five hundred cash for it and drove it home that day. That evening I took it to work with me. No matter what else happened, there would be no more walking to school in the rain or the snow.

A week went by and then another. Nothing changed between Nina and I. She continued to ignore me in class and to eat lunch by herself. I tried to talk to her a few times without any measure of success. I tried to tell her I missed her but she didn't listen. My hope for any future relationship began to dwindle. During this period I maintained my habit of jacking off once a day on average. I simply couldn't help it. Nina was always featured in these fantasies and most of them were not even about sex. Most of them just involved being in an intimate place with her, being together with her.

Anita continued to be a problem. She continually called my mother asking if I could come over to do little chores for her. I was fast running out of excuses for why I couldn't do what she asked and my mother, now quite plainly sensing that something was wrong, was running out of look-the-other-way-so-you-don't-have-to-address-an-unpleasant-truth. I knew that I was going to have to have another talk with Anita but I wasn't up for it yet. The memory of our first talk was still too fresh in my mind. I'd experienced emotions during that talk that I'd never felt before, not even during the divorce with my wife in my previous life.

On the following Friday night, while I was adding up my stock holdings after receiving my latest paycheck from the pizza joint, the phone rang. Dad answered it, listened for a minute, and then yelled my name. I walked into the kitchen and took it from him, figuring it was probably Mike.

"Hey Billy-Boy!" A familiar female voice haled. "How you been?"

Cindy! In all of the turmoil of the recent past Cindy had completely slipped my mind. Our album sessions had dwindled once she'd started college and had all but disappeared in the last two months. I hadn't seen or heard from her since then.

"Hi Cindy." I said carefully. If I'd learned nothing else over the past few weeks I'd learned that females that you thought you were having a casual relationship with were often not under the same impression. Was another bomb about to drop on me? Had I screwed up Cindy's life as I had Anita's? I honestly didn't know. In my previous life I'd lost track of Cindy after her and Tracy had stopped hanging out together. The last time I'd seen her had been at Tracy's funeral where she'd given me a sympathetic hug and had disappeared from my life forever.

"What's up?" She asked me.

We chatted for a few minutes. She apologized for not having contacted me lately and I assured her it was okay. She told me she had a new love interest and I was very glad to hear that. Even when she mentioned that he was a professor at her college who was 'kind of married', I maintained my delight.

"That's just great Cindy." I told her. "I hope things work out for you."

"Oh they will." She assured me. "They will. I'll see to it."

"I'm sure you will."

"Listen," She said. "The reason I called is that Maggie and I are moving into an apartment together. You remember Maggie, don't you?"

How could I forget her? She was Cindy's brunette friend that used to come over to 'study' with me on days that Cindy could not. Like with Cindy, I hadn't seen Maggie in quite a while. Was Maggie going to be the latest bomb?

"Yes." I said. "I'm familiar with Maggie."

Cindy giggled. "I'm sure you are." She said. "Maggie knows your album collection almost as good as I do. Anyway, we really need someone to help us move tomorrow. We have a truck but we need help getting our shit out of our parent's house and into ours. Could you be a sweetheart and give us a hand?"

"Is anybody else going to be there?" I asked.

"Just me and Maggie." She told me. "Everyone else is busy on short notice. And if you help us out, we might give you a real special reward."

"Special reward?" I said quietly.

"REAL special." She said. "So what do you say?"

I'd told myself that I was past my previous ways, that my days of fucking anything with a pussy were gone. I knew I should offer a sincere apology to Cindy and tell her I was busy. But I hadn't released my daily load for the day and I was feeling quite horny. The thought of Maggie and Cindy, of their tight, youthful bodies wormed its way into my mind and stuck there. I found my mouth opening and the words: "What time should I be there?" leaving my lips.

"My house." Cindy said. "Ten o'clock sharp."

"You got it." I told her.

"I'll be looking forward to it." She told me.

I hung up the phone feeling guilty about my actions. But I also did not have the willpower to call Cindy back and tell her I couldn't make it. I told myself that I would just help them move and that nothing else would happen. And I knew that I was lying to myself.

It was overcast the next day but not raining. I drove to Cindy's house, arriving promptly at ten, and met the two girls standing next to a medium sized U-Haul truck. They both gave me hugs for greeting and both gave my ass a discreet squeeze, making my dick, which I'd just releived only twelve hours before, pulsate in my pants. My morals wavered.

We spent about an hour moving boxes from Cindy's bedroom in her parent's house into the U-haul. We then caravanned to Maggie's house, where I'd never been before. It took an hour and a half to move Maggie's boxes from her room. Once the U-Haul was full we drove to a large apartment complex near the college.

Like Raisin's apartment complex, I knew this one from my previous life as a paramedic. We used to go to calls to it frequently, not because it was scummy, although there was a little bit of that, but because it was huge and because it was filled with college students. College students like to drink and take strange drugs and get into fights over things like parking space ownership and who drank the last beer. I'd been here for overdoses, for life-threatening alcohol ingestion, for countless assaults, for people on acid who'd convinced themselves that they'd forgotten how to breathe, and for the occasional stabbing or shooting. I remembered it mostly because each trip into its bowels was an exercise in celestial navigation. There were no maps in the front. The buildings had no numbers on them. Even the apartment numbers themselves were marked only with a four-inch set of black numbers on the brown background of the doors. I remembered driving around in the place for fifteen or twenty minutes looking for the right apartment every time I came, and receiving angry rebuffs from the drunken college students when I finally stumbled across the right one, as to why it had taken me so long to get there. I remembered thinking that there should be a law against places such as this.

Thankfully Cindy and Maggie had been to their apartment before. They found it after only ten minutes of driving around. The U-Haul was parked illegally in a red zone and the ramp was extended. The apartment was opened up and we began picking up boxes, each of which was marked either with a C or an M or an LR or a K, into the two-bedroom living quarters. Forty minutes later the U-Haul was empty.

We sat down on boxes in the cluttered living room and Cindy opened up an ice chest, distributing wine coolers to all of us. I popped mine open and took a long swallow, feeling the fruity, sweet beverage pass my gullet. Cindy then produced a joint that we all smoked from, getting us pleasantly stoned.

With each sip of wine cooler, with each toke from the joint, thoughts of Nina and fate and Julie and Anita went further and further to the back of my mind. By the time the roach was nestled safely in an ashtray and Maggie was plugging in a boom box and putting on some Sammy Hagar, my dick was stiff from looking at the two girls.

Cindy made the first move. She came over and sat next to me, her left hand dropping down to the crotch of my jeans where her fingers began making sensual patterns across the bulge of my cock.

"I've missed this." She said, looking down at the unnatural tightness of the denim. "That's one thing about the professor, he may be a nice guy and he sure knows how to treat me, but he doesn't know how to operate his piston very well."

"Maybe you should teach him." I said, with a voice that wasn't quite steady.

She popped the top button slowly and then gave a sharp yank, opening all the others. "Maybe I should." She said. "If he wants to keep me around he's going to have to learn a few basic skills anyway." She smiled. A smile I was very familiar with. "Maybe I should refine my teaching techniques a little."

"I'm happy," I said, watching her fingers fish through my BVDs, seeking my cock, "To offer my services as a learning tool."

"Good." She said, sliding off the box and sinking to her knees before me.

She tugged at my waistline and my jeans came down, allowing my hard cock to pop out into the light. With a quick glance at Maggie, who was sitting ten feet away and watching the developments, she lowered her head and took me into her mouth. Cindy hadn't forgotten a thing about cock sucking. She bobbed up and down, teasing and sucking at the same time. I sighed as I felt her talented mouth go to work on me.

Across the room Maggie watched us and I saw a familiar shine in her eyes. Her nipples began to poke out through her sweater and she began to rub her legs together. Finally she stood up and walked over to us.

"I must say," She said, grabbing the hem of her sweater. "This is very arousing. I never thought I'd get turned on watching Cindy suck someone's cock but it's strangely alluring all the same."

"Yeah?" I said, looking at her. She was a little chunkier than Cindy was but still very attractive. She looked like a future librarian, glasses and all. She was also, I knew from previous dealings, very well read and possessed a large vocabulary that she liked to show off. Maybe she would be a writer some day. Maybe she would write about his.

"Yeah." She nodded, lifting her sweater up and off, revealing her bra-clad tits.

While Cindy continued to work on my cock I pulled her to me, reaching up for the clasp on her bra. In a half second it was released and the bra dropped to the floor. She stepped forward, sticking her left tit into my mouth. I began to suckle the nipple while my hand stroked up and down the smooth flesh of her stomach. My other hand was in Cindy's blonde hair while Cindy's head continued to work my dick.

After a moment Cindy pulled herself free from me and stood up. "Switch!" She told Maggie.

Maggie slipped her tit out of my mouth and dropped down between my spread knees. A second later my cock disappeared into her mouth. Cindy pulled off her own sweater and then quickly dropped her bra. While I reached out and took a tit into each hand, feeling the flesh and the nipples, she kicked her shoes across the room and unbuttoned her pants. With a quick push of her hands she was naked, her blonde bush open for my perusal.

"Did you miss this?" Cindy asked, spreading herself open and gyrating her hips.

"Yes." I lied.

"I want to sit on your face." She told me. "Maggie, let the man up."

"Mmmmm. He IS up." Maggie said from around my cock.

The two girls giggled. While I shucked my pants the rest of the way and tossed off my shirt, Maggie did the same with her pants. A minute later I was naked and looking at four tits and two bushes, one blonde, one black as night. My dick was twitching with arousal. In all of the encounters I'd had since recycling and in all of the encounters I'd had before recycling I'd never had two girls at one time. I don't believe I could have resisted this is Nina had walked through the door at that very moment.

I lay on my back on the floor and Maggie dropped down again, taking my cock into her mouth. Her sucking continued while her hands fondled my balls. Her tits rubbed against my upper thighs. Cindy, her back to Maggie, eased herself down over my face, allowing her wet, juicy pussy to descend upon my mouth. I stuck out my tongue to meet it, tasting her tangy secretions and plunging in. Her pubic hair pushed into my nose as I lapped away at her, first plunging in and then going for the clit.

Meanwhile Maggie was trying her damnedest to suck a load from my cock. She drove her head up and down, sucking all the while, her hands frantically jacking. Maggie I knew, loved the taste of come in her mouth. She'd been known to come over just to give me a head job. Not that I ever complained about this of course.

About the time that Cindy began gyrating uncontrollably upon my face, drenching me with her secretions, I felt my own orgasm approaching quickly.

"Yesss!" Cindy moaned above me.

"Mmmmm!" Maggie moaned from between my legs as I began to shoot my come into her throat.

"Ahhhh!" I moaned, on sensory overload from all of the female fresh pressing into me.

Maggie licked my dick and balls clean, giving me the beginnings of a new hard-on. Cindy climbed off of my face and tapped her naked friend on the shoulder.

"I'll take over here." Cindy said. "Get yourself up there and get some tongue."

Maggie smiled. "If you insist." She answered, raising her head from my crotch.

She positioned herself as Cindy had, lowering her black bush and wet lips onto my face. I began eating her, both tasting and smelling the contrast between the two girls' juices. Maggie's clit was already hard so after only a brief period of licking and sucking her lips, I attacked it. Meanwhile Cindy continued to suck and slurp on my cock, bringing it back to full hardness.

Of course I couldn't see anything with Maggie's body perched on my face but soon I felt Cindy's mouth pull itself off of my cock. This was followed a moment later by the feel of her inner thighs straddling my outer thighs and the head of my dick being tickled by a nest of hair. Her hand grasped me and I felt myself moved through wet hair and into a warm set of lips. She rubbed me against her clit for a minute and then suddenly, without warning, I was engulfed in her tight body as she sank down on me.

"Ahhhhh!" I moaned into Maggie's cunt.

"Keep eating me!" Maggie panted from above. "I'm almost there!"

I dove back into her pussy, sucking her clit into my mouth once again and savaging it with my tongue. Maggie verbally registered her approval while Cindy began moving up and down on my cock, gripping it in that way of hers.

Maggie was both more violent when she came and more verbal. She screamed her orgasm out to the room using gutter profanity while her pubis battered my face until I was dazed. Cindy came again at the same time, dripping a stream of juices down to my balls.

Maggie got off my face and turned around to face Cindy, who was still bouncing away, her pretty tits jiggling up and down.

"My turn with the cock." Maggie proclaimed.

"Ohhh." Cindy whined, but she pulled herself off anyway.

Maggie lay down on the carpet next to me on her back, spreading her legs wide. "I like it this way." She told me. "Climb aboard."

I rolled over on top of her and sank into her flesh. While I fucked her Cindy sat in front of us, watching with a shine in her eyes and idly stroking her pussy with one hand. In all of my fantasies that involved two women at the same time, the two women always decided to try a little girl on girl action during the event. Apparently reality wasn't the same as fantasy. The two girls seemed to go to great lengths to avoid actually touching each other. But that was fine with me. It would have been nice to watch them go at each other but what I was doing now was nice enough even without it. Who was I to complain?

Maggie had another orgasm, again announcing it to the world in a much more violent manner than Cindy with screams of profanity and claws to my back. Figuring it was now safe to come again I began driving forward towards this goal. Cindy, still stroking herself, saw what I was doing and lodged a protest.

"No!" She yelled at Maggie. "You got to take the first load. I get the second one." She dropped down to the floor next to us, presenting herself in the doggy-style position. "Switch!"

Maggie, dripping with perspiration, panting, looked at me and said, "Fair is fair."

I shrugged, not really caring whose body I came into. I pulled myself out of her with a wet squish and raised up to my knees. I eased over behind Cindy and lined up. When my cock was in the right place I drove forward into her, immediately re-establishing the frantic rhythm I'd been using with Maggie.

As I fucked in and out of Cindy, using her hips for leverage, Maggie raised up to her knees and turned towards me. She leaned over and began kissing and licking the back of my neck and near my ears.

"Come in her." She whispered over and over again. "Come in her."

It didn't take long. With a cry of satisfaction I blasted my load into Cindy's hungry pussy, triggering an orgasm from her at the same time.

Satiated, I pulled my cock out of her pussy and let myself fall backward to the floor. Maggie curled up on my left side while Cindy flipped over and curled up on my right side. I put my arms around the two girls, feeling their wet, sticky skin.

"That was fun." Cindy commented, giving me a peck on the cheek. "We double-teamed you."

"I guess you did." I nodded, basking in the afterglow.

"But you got to come three times." Maggie protested lightly, aiming her comment at Cindy. "I only got to come twice."

"Not my fault." Cindy told her new roomate.

"Maybe," I suggested. "Cindy owes you an orgasm. What do you think Cindy, want to pay up?"

They both looked at me for a moment and then shook their heads.

"Don't be a pervert Bill." Maggie said. "You've been reading too many porno mags."

I shrugged. "Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

When I returned home that day I was sore and free of excessive testosterone but surprisingly and pleasantly guilt-free about my encounter with the two girls. Conversation with them afterword had assured me that neither one of them were following the path of Julie or Anita. Though I didn't know what path either of them had taken in my previous life since I'd lost track of Cindy and hadn't known Maggie at all, I received no ominous instinct that would lead me to believe I was pulling them away from their destinies. Chances are that Cindy had had an affair with her college professor before and that Maggie had moved in with her and had followed whatever path she was currently embarked upon. I was changing nothing with these two except for the occasional merger of my path with theirs.

And though I knew that Nina probably would not approve of what I'd done, would probably see it as further evidence of my assholery if she knew about it, I could not bring myself to feel guilt about this either. I wasn't supposed to be a freaking monk was I? Nina and I had no relationship at the moment to endanger. If I ever did manage to bring her around I hoped to have a more intimate relationship with her and of course I would have to refrain from having threesomes with attractive college students, but until then there was no harm being done as far as I could see.

I took a quick shower and then went to work. I sang happily along with the radio in my new car as I drove there.

I was awakened at 7:30 the next morning by Dad's pounding on my bedroom door.

"Bill?" He asked, opening the door and pushing his head through just as I was coming fully awake.

"Yeah Dad," I said blearily. "What is it?"

"There's a girl on the phone for you." He told me, "She says she needs to talk to you right now, in private, and that it's an emergency."

That was strange enough to bring me fully awake in an instant. I had a sudden bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked up at Dad and saw that he was worried about this also. He was probably figuring that some girl was calling to tell me that I'd knocked her up.

"Who's the girl?" I asked Dad.

"She didn't give her name." He said. "And I've never heard her voice before."

"All right." I answered, pulling myself out of bed. I threw on a pair of sweat pants and followed Dad downstairs. "Do you mind if I use your den phone?" I asked him.

"Sure." He nodded, waving me towards the room.

I went in and picked up the phone. "I got it!" I yelled through the closed door. A second later I heard the click of the other extension being placed back in its cradle.

I took a deep breath and said into the mouthpiece, "This is Bill."

"Hi Bill." A completely unfamiliar voice said to me. "My name is Linda. Your sister wants to talk to you."

"Tracy?" I said, confused. "What…"

"Hang on a sec." Linda said. A second later I heard her voice say faintly, "It's him."

"Thanks." My sister's faint voice replied.

There was a long pause and I heard the sound of a door shutting somewhere in the room where Tracy was. I figured that was Linda leaving the room to give Tracy some privacy.

At last Tracy's loud voice said, "Bill?" Her voice sounded haunted, scared.

What had happened?

"Yeah." I answered. "What's going on Trace?"

"I had Linda call for me so that Mom or Dad wouldn't know it was me." She explained.

"That's fine." I replied quickly. "What's wrong Trace? Are you all right?"

"How did you know Bill?" She asked, demanded. "How do you know the things you know?"

"What happened Tracy?" I asked. "Tell me why you called."

"Last night." She said, "I went to a party with Darren in the city. A frat party. There was a keg of beer there and everyone, me included, got pretty drunk."

My mouth suddenly dried up as I heard this. "Go on." I said numbly.

"When it came time to leave Darren insisted he was okay to drive. He told me he wasn't really drunk and that he was okay. My judgement was pretty screwed up by the alcohol I guess and I believed him. I believed him! We walked out to the car and I had every intention of getting into it with him.

I mean he seemed fine! He was walking okay, talking okay, everything!"

"Tracy, what happened?" I asked.

"When he went to unlock the car he had trouble getting the key into the lock. Just a little bit of trouble but he couldn't quite get it to fit in there." Her voice started to break a little. "Part of me tried to ignore this. I tried to tell myself that it didn't mean anything. But I remembered what you had said to me, how you'd warned me, and at the last second I told Darren that I didn't think he should be driving."

"And then what happened?"

"We had a fight. We yelled at each other out in the parking lot and he sounded so damn reasonable that I almost got in again. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't! So anyway he eventually got totally pissed off and drove off without me. I caught a cab home, bitching the whole time about you and your stupid warnings, about how I was going to have to pay twenty bucks to get home when a perfectly good ride had driven off without me, shit like that."

"And?" I asked, knowing there was more or she wouldn't have called.

"I got back to the dorm safely and passed out in my bed. When I woke up this morning I was told that Darren drove his car into San Francisco Bay on his way home last night."

There was silence on the line as I digested this, as shivers went up and down my body. "Tracy, Jesus." I said. "Thank God I talked to you. What happened to Darren?"

She sniffed a little. "He's fine." She told me. "He pulled himself out of the car without any problems. Of course he got arrested for drunk driving but other than that he's fine." She paused. "But I wouldn't have been, would I?" She asked me, almost accused me.

"I don't think so Tracy." I told her.

"What is going on here Bill?" She demanded. "I think I deserve an explanation! Is this going to keep happening over and over until finally I die?"

"Tracy, I just don't know." I said. "All I know is that you need to be as careful as you can."

"Christ!" She told me. "You're telling me that fate has got a hard-on for me, that I'm supposed to drown in a traffic accident! How can I live a normal life if I have to worry about this all of the time? Is there any way to stop this?"

"I don't know." I said in answer to both of her questions. "I just don't know."

"Tell me what you DO know!" She yelled. "I have a goddam right to this information! Tell me!"

"Tracy, I can't."

"Why not?" She asked. "You come up with all this mystical shit, mystical shit that just happens to be true. Shit you have no business knowing and you won't tell me how you're getting this information?"

She had a point there. "Are you coming home for Thanksgiving Tracy?" I asked her.

"I don't know." She said, semi-hysterically. "Is it safe for me to fly on an airplane?"

A legitimate question. "I think so." I told her, figuring that fate wouldn't kill several hundred people just to get at my sister. "Why don't you come home then. We'll have a nice family get-together and you and I will sit down and have a talk."

"And you'll tell me what you know?"

"As much as I can." I promised, although I wasn't sure just how much 'as much as I can' encompassed.

"And in the meantime?" She asked.

"And in the meantime stay out of cars with people who have been drinking. Stay out of cars completely if you can avoid it. Fate does seem to have a hard-on for you Tracy. So don't give it an easy mark. In a way the accident that your boyfriend had…"

"He's not my boyfriend any more." She spat. "You can bet your sweet ass on that."

"Right," I said, and then continued. "As I was saying, the accident that he had leads me to believe that certain pre-conditions have to be met. I don't know this for sure so be careful with everything you do, but it seems that the factors of a car, a drunk, and water all have to be met. Just to be safe, stay away from water too. Don't go swimming."

"And if you're wrong about these pre-conditions?" She asked.

How to answer that one. If I was wrong then Tracy was probably fucked. Fate would take her at its leisure. "Let's just hope I'm not wrong Tracy." I finally said. "Come home for Thanksgiving and we'll see what we can figure out."

"All right Bill." She said. "What else can I do?"

Chapter 7

Now I've gained some understanding

Of the only world that we see

Things that I once dreamed of

Have become reality

These walls that still surround me

Still contain the same old me

Just one more who is searching for

The world that ought to be

All the same we take our chances

Laughed at by time

Tricked by circumstances

RUSH

Okay, I'm going out on a limb with this chapter. Due to the specifics of the plot at this particular junction in the story, I am not able to provide a sex scene in this installment. It simply would not work and would run counter to the characterization. I thought I would put that right out front since this is, after all, a sex-stories newsgroup. If anyone does not wish to read this chapter because of this I will understand, but be advised that if you skip this chapter you most likely will not have any idea what is going on in the next chapter if you choose to read that one. My thanks in advance to all whom will bear with me for this chapter in which much is resolved but in which nobody gets laid. I would also like to thank Tony Tiger, a frequent corespondent of mine, for providing me with the nodal and cascading theories that appear here. Putting names to what I was thinking helped me immensely.

I went with Mom and Dad to pick up Tracy at the airport on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. For any of you that have ever been to a large metropolitan area's air terminal on such a date you can appreciate the chaos that results from having five times as many people in the building as the fire code probably allows. It was wall to wall people pushing from one place to the next, all of them dressed in winter clothing since an early snowstorm had decided to descend upon our fair city. The noise and the crowding were suffocating and Tracy's plane arrived nearly thirty minutes late.

But when we saw her walking out of the skyway towards us it made it all worthwhile. Unlike Mom and Dad, I had not realized how much I'd missed my sister until I saw her. Being younger I beat them to her and got the first hug of greeting.

Before Mom and Dad could reach us Tracy whispered in my ear. "You promised me a talk."

"Soon." I told her. "Soon."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we got home that night and all of us went straight to bed. There would be no talk that night. The next day relatives began to pour in from other parts of Spokane and from as far away as Sandpoint, Idaho and Moses Lake in the southern part of Washington. Mom made a huge turkey dinner that we all demolished and Tracy and I took our turns in the barrel having our cheeks pinched and being told how much we'd grown. By the time all of the relatives cleared out it was nine o'clock and we were all exhausted once more.

Mom and Dad had a long-standing tradition that they shared with another couple, the male half of which was a private pilot. Each day after Thanksgiving they would pile into a rented airplane and fly to Seattle to have lunch at the space needle. It was an annual event that they'd participated in for as long as I could remember. They'd even continued to do it in my previous life after Tracy's death. They'd offered, halfheartedly I might add, to cancel it this year since Tracy only had a few days with us before she returned to Berkeley, but both Tracy and myself insisted they go.

"Bill and I can find something to do." Tracy told them, looking sharply at me.

"Yeah." I agreed. "We'll keep ourselves busy."

So it came to pass that Mom and Dad piled into their car at eight o'clock on Friday morning for the trip to the small municipal airport from which they would depart. Experience had taught both my sister and I that they would not return until at least six o'clock that evening.

Their car couldn't have been more than a mile from our suburban house before Tracy got off the couch and headed up to her old room. I gave her a puzzled look that grew more puzzled when she returned carrying a twelve pack of beer in her hands.

"Okay," She told me, slapping the beer down on the coffee table. "I scored us a twelver of this imported shit back in California and brought it all the way here for this talk." She ripped open the package, which was green and contained a brand of beer I'd never heard of; something called Steinlager. She pulled out two bottles and popped the tops with a bottle opener.

"Tracy, it's only eight in the morning." I protested. "I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She smiled. "Little brother," She said. "If you want to be successful when you go to college you'd better learn to drink beer first thing in the morning. It's a requirement." She handed one to me.

I took it, surprised to find that it was icy cold.

"Something else you learn in college." She told me, taking a huge swallow. "If you want to keep your beer cold in the absence of a refrigerator, store it outside in the cold. I put this on the roof outside my window last night. Thank God it didn't get below freezing."

I took a swallow, finding the beer very tasty despite the early hour. "Not bad." I told her, drinking some more.

"Okay," She said. "Enough preliminaries. Let's talk."

I set my bottle down on the coffee table, struck by the strangeness of drinking a beer while still dressed in the clothes I'd slept in, my baggy sweats and a T-shirt. Tracy too was still dressed in her customary long T-shirt, this one with the University's logo on the front. Her legs were crossed Indian style on the couch, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I still had no idea what I was going to tell her, how much I should tell her.

"Why don't we start," I told her. "With what you DO know and what you think is going on here. Tell me that."

"Why do you want to hear that?" She asked.

"I just want to see how this whole thing looks to someone close to me."

She thought for a second and then nodded, taking another sip of beer. "Fair enough." She told me. "Here's what I know. I know that the day you told me about the accident I was scheduled to be in the first time, your personality underwent a radical change. One day you were immature little Billy, the next day you were hugging on me, telling me you loved me, and you weren't sure of the exact date. You got into a fight with a huge bully at school, something completely out of character for you, and you put him in the hospital. You came home that day and caught us smoking pot in the living room and you reamed us for it, the same way an adult would, but also different somehow. You also made Cindy's asshole boyfriend back down, and let me tell you, he doesn't back down too often.

"So I'm forced to conclude that whatever happened to you, happened on that day. Am I right?"

I nodded. "Yes. That was the first day."

"That night you came to my room and told me that creepy-ass story about the car accident. You gave me exact details, exact, about what would happen, who would be in the car, etc. You told me things you had absolutely no right knowing and they turned out to be true.

"About the same time you completely lost all of your shyness. One day I was wondering if my little brother was EVER going to get himself laid and the next day you're suddenly a male slut, bagging everything left and right and apparently, if my information was correct, doing a very good job of it.

"You also developed a sudden interest in the stock market and in finding a job. Your grades improved overnight. And I even heard that you put a few teachers in their places."

"Okay." I nodded, surprised at the amount of information Tracy possessed. Again I was forced to wonder just how much my parents knew or suspected. "So tell me, what do you think all of this means?"

"Well obviously something very strange happened to you on that first day." She offered.

"Such as?"

"I think you had some sort of well, psychic flash. I think you had some sort of Scrooge type experience while you slept that night. Something that showed you what the future was going to be like and was realistic enough that you were unable to simply discount it as a dream. That doesn't explain everything of course, but I think that's something like what happened to you. I don't know how such a thing is possible, or why you were chosen to have this knowledge, but somehow, you were shown the future, including my death, and you were able to stop certain things and start others. Am I close?"

"Kind of." I said, taking another sip, surprised to find that the bottle was now empty. I leaned forward and grabbed another one, opening it up with the bottle opener. "You are somewhat on track here but the truth is actually a little stranger than that."

"So what IS the truth?" She asked, grabbing a fresh beer of her own. "Like I said before Bill, I think I have a right to this information."

"And you do Tracy," I agreed. "You really do and I think that maybe with both of our minds working on some of the problems that have cropped up here, maybe something can be done. But there is one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I tell you what I know, what happened to me, you can never tell anyone else. NEVER. If you were to do that and word about what happened got to the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Mostly for me, but also for our family. There are people in the world that would literally kill in order to possess the information that I have. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"

"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."

She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"

"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."

She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.

"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"

"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.

I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."

"1999?" She said, with disbelief.

"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.

That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."

"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."

She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."

"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."

She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."

I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.

"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."

"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.

"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."

"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.

"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."

"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.

"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."

"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.

"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."

"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."

"No." I said. "I couldn't."

She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"

"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.

"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.

"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"Wow." She said.

"Do you believe me?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."

"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.

"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Yep." I agreed.

Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."

"I agree." I told her.

"You do?" She asked.

"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."

"Are you saying that you are not doing that anymore?" She asked.

"I'm trying not to." I said. "It's cost me a lot. I told you that Nina and I were no longer talking to each other."

"You did." She nodded. "I figured it had something to do with your extracurricular activities. I tried to tell you once that she loved you. And I was pretty sure that you loved her too. You didn't listen."

"I know. And you were right on both counts." I said. "Unfortunately I waited too long to realize it. I screwed around until Nina had her eyes opened to what I was like. She basically told me to fuck off and stay away from her. She won't even talk to me now."

"I'm sorry." Tracy said honestly. "I like Nina. I thought you two were perfect together. I still think that even though I now know you're actually seventeen years older than she is. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe." I said. "Or maybe not. In any case, Nina is part of why I called you at the bookstore with that warning. Nina and Mike and some other things have made me realize that fate has a pattern to it. A pattern that it keeps trying to put things and people into. You are part of what has fallen out of pattern."

"Because I didn't die on graduation night?" She asked slowly.

"Exactly." I nodded. "In a way I'm glad that these other things have happened. They allowed me to see what was going on, that fate was attempting to re-align things. When I saw that, I was able to give you that second warning and you were able to heed it when fate took a second shot at you."

She shuddered. "I still get the creeps when I think about how close I was to getting in that car with Darren that night. Jesus. What other things have you seen as far as these patterns go? Maybe if I know how strong this thing is…"

"Okay." I said. "There's you first of all. As you know, in my previous life you died on graduation night. In this life I prevented that. But I also knew Nina in my previous life, in school of course but also years later, and that Nina was not a pleasant person at all."

"What do you mean?" Tracy asked.

"In my first life Nina was a doctor in one of the emergency rooms. And she was a total bitch. She was the shining example of a big-time inferiority complex. If anybody did anything good in front of her, she would find a way to criticize it. If anyone did anything wrong, she would jump down their throats. She was a miserable person and it was quite plain to me why she was a miserable person."

"Because of the way she was treated in school." Tracy said.

I looked at her, smiling. "You know Tracy, you're pretty smart for a youngster."

She giggled nervously. "This is so weird." She commented. "Trying to adjust myself from thinking about you as my 'little' brother. You've got seventeen years on me now."

I snorted. "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser Tracy. Believe me. Anyway, when I came back I decided to eat in the cafeteria one day and I saw Nina sitting in there alone. That brought back memories of how bitchy she was as a doctor and led to the speculation as to its cause. So I, thinking I was the great superhero, the fixer of oppressed people everywhere, decided to befriend her and maybe change her personality a little."

"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.

"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."

"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"

"An asshole?" I suggested.

"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."

"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."

I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.

"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.

"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."

"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."

"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."

"You did?"

"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."

"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"

"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."

"What's that?" She asked.

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.

"Anita." I said softly.

Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"

I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."

"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"

"Because of me." I said.

"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"

I nodded shamefully.

"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"

"Yes." I said.

"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."

"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"

"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."

"God." Tracy muttered.

"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."

"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"

"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."

"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"

"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."

"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"

"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"

"But she hasn't?"

I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.

"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."

Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.

"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."

"It does?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"

"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."

"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."

"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.

"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."

"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."

"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.

"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."

"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.

"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"

"Yes." I said, "I do."

"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"

"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."

"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.

"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."

"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.

"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."

"And Nina?" I asked.

"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.

"The exception to the rule." I agreed.

"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.

"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."

"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.

"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.

I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."

"Very quickly." She affirmed.

"And you?"

She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."

"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"

She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."

Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.

Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.

Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.

Resolved to my task, I raised my fist and knocked on her door firmly.

It was less than ten seconds before it swung open and Anita herself, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt appeared to me on the other side.

"Billy!" She said, her face beaming. "Come in! I knew you'd come back."

"I'll stay out on the porch Anita." I told her firmly. "What I have to say won't take but a minute."

Her face clouded, trying to retain some of the hope it showed when she first saw me. "What do you mean?"

"Anita," I said. "I'll make this short and to the point. Our relationship is over. Over and done. I'm sorry I ended it so abruptly and I'm sorry I hurt you, but it is over. You need to stop calling my house and asking for me to come over and do chores for you."

"Billy, I was just trying to stay friends with you." She told me, fresh hurt marring her features. "Don't you want to still be friends?"

"You know that being friends after a sexual relationship is not possible." I told her. "That is not why you're calling. You're hoping I'll come over and resume where we left off. I will not do that. You need to stop it. You're making my mother very suspicious and if you push much harder the consequences are going to unpleasant."

She became indignant. "Well maybe your mother SHOULD know about what happened between us. Maybe I should just tell her."

I shook my head, disgusted with both her and with myself for bringing her to this point, this desperation. "Think about that for a second Anita." I told her. "Do you think that if you tell my mother about our relationship she's going to order me to come over here and marry you? Is that what you really think? Well I'm here to tell you that if you tell my mother anything it will be the worst mistake you'll ever make in your life. Mom will be very offended by it and she will not be directing her offense at me. You are the adult in this situation and in case you forgot, I am a minor.

"I imagine Mom would probably call the cops about this and you would end up with a criminal charge of some sort. You may not be convicted of anything but you would almost certainly have your children taken away from you. Is that what you want?"

Though the shock that overcame her expression was painful to watch, it was also a relief. I had managed to break through to her, to get a point across.

"Your mother wouldn't do that." She protested, but weakly.

"To tell you the truth Anita, I don't really want to find out. I didn't come over here to torment you and despite what you probably think, I don't hate you. I just need you to acknowledge that our relationship is at an end. That it's over. I don't want you to get into trouble Anita, I just want you to leave me alone."

She gulped, tears running down her face. "I'll leave you alone." She whispered, barely audibly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said I'll leave you alone." She nearly shouted. "Are you happy?"

"No Anita." I answered. "I'm not. But I'm glad you agreed with me."

This time I was able to get away before the sound of her sobs reached my ears.

Before she left Tracy was royally chewed out by my mother for not calling or writing more often. She left us with a promise to phone at least once a week. It had been three weeks since she'd left and so far she'd kept up with her promise well. As to how long that would last was anyone's guess.

I was home alone when she called on Wednesday evening, a week prior to Christmas vacation.

"Hey Bill." She said cheerfully. As before I could hear girlish revelry going on in the background. "Just making my obligatory weekly call so that Mom doesn't cut off my funding."

"Well, you wasted a call." I told her. "There out at Dad's school's Christmas party. They probably won't be home until midnight or so."

Tracy giggled. "And when they do get home, Dad will be drunk and Mom will be ragging on him about having too much to drink and swearing that she's not going to take him to next year's party."

"Gee," I mocked, knowing that Tracy was correct. "You sound like you've lived through this before."

"Oh, I might've witnessed something like that a time or two." She agreed. "So how's things with you?"

"Well," I said. "I think I have the Anita problem stabilized. She's not calling here anymore, hasn't since I had that little talk with her."

"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"

"But it wasn't terribly fun."

"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."

"Maybe." I agreed.

"How about Nina? Any developments there?"

"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."

"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."

"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.

"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"

"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"

"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.

I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."

"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."

"I do what I can." She said.

"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"

"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"

"I'll try Trace. I'll try."

They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.

It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.

"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."

I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.

"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.

"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.

I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.

"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."

"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.

To each their own I figured, dismissing this.

"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"

"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."

"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.

"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.

I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.

"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.

"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.

Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"

"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.

"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.

"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.

"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.

I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."

Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.

"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"

"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.

"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"

He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.

"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."

"Okay."

Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.

Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.

"Give me half of them." I told Brett.

With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.

"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.

He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.

"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.

Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.

I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.

"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."

She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.

"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."

She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"

"Well…" I shrugged.

"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"

I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."

I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.

"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.

"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."

"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.

When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.

"You're covered under the hospital's work comp." She told me. "They'll cover the hospital bill but, unfortunately, since you don't make any salary, there's nothing to compensate you for time off work. You should've dragged yourself to your paid job and pretended you did it there."

"I'll do that next time." I said.

"Anyway," She continued. "Why don't you head up to the ER so they can stitch you up? I'll call your parents for permission to treat and send up the authorization. Then I'll start the reams of paperwork you've just dumped on me."

"Right." I said morosely, thinking about the ER. This was the busiest hospital in the Spokane metropolitan area. It's ER alone dealt with over eighty thousand patients every year. Great. When I'd come here with the stab wound to the abdomen they'd treated me right away of course. But this was not a life-threatening problem. I would not be high on their list of priorities. If I was lucky, they might get around to stitching me up before the ten-hour deadline for suturing a wound expired. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day and part of the night sitting in the waiting room among the scrotes that this hospital attracted. It was too bad I couldn't go somewhere else to get my stitches. Any of the other hospitals could…

I stopped suddenly at that thought.

"Uh, Mindy?" I said.

"Yeah?" She asked, rummaging through her desk drawer now.

"Do I HAVE to get my stitches here?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Why would you go somewhere else?" She asked.

I explained about the eighty thousand patients, and the wait, and the deadline. "I think if I went to another hospital, say Holy Family, I would get treated a lot quicker."

"Holy Family?" She asked. "That's clear out in North Spokane. How were you planning to get there?"

"My car." I said. "I can drive myself there."

"Is it a stick-shift?" She asked.

"Oh no." I lied. "Automatic, all the way."

She thought for a minute. "Comp will still cover it." She said. "But I don't know if your parents are gonna go for that. Since you're a minor we have to do whatever your parents say."

"Let me talk to them." I said.

She shrugged and spun her phone around, offering it to me. "Dial nine before the number." She said. "And let me talk to them when you're done."

I called Mom since she was the easiest to get hold of during the workday. I assured her I was all right but that I'd had a little accident at work that was going to require some stitches. After the obligatory mother interrogation as to my health and well being, I told her that, although I was located downtown in the trauma center, I wished to drive to North Spokane to get my stitches.

"Why Billy?" She asked. "What's wrong with getting them where you're at? After all, they treated you pretty good when you had, well, your little fight that time."

"Yeah Mom." I said. "But they're pretty busy here. I could end up waiting for hours."

"Okay." She said. "But why Holy Family? There are other hospitals that aren't so far away."

"Well Mom, I thought maybe it would be nice to go to, uh, well, the hospital where Nina works."

There was a long pause, almost long enough for me to think I'd been disconnected. Finally Mom said, "I think that's a fine idea Billy. Sometimes Fate works in mysterious ways."

"You ain't kidding." I told her.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said. "My supervisor wants to talk to you. I'll head over to Holy Family and hopefully I'll be home before dark."

I quickly realized why Mindy had been concerned about the layout of my transmission. I hadn't even made it to the freeway before the gauze on my hand began spouting flowers of red from the action of operating the gearshift. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the suburban hospital my hand was throbbing and the gauze was stained with my blood.

I locked up my car and, authorization form in good hand, walked up to the emergency room entrance. The automatic doors led me into the emergency waiting area which, I was gratified to see, was not even a quarter full of people. I signed in somewhat clumsily since my right hand was my good hand and was shortly called up to a little room to be triaged. The nurse listened to my story impassively, took my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate. She examined my wound and then re-wrapped it in fresh bandages. I was then sent me to the waiting room.

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a look at the magazines lying around. They were outdated even for this when. I ignored them and began to wait.

It was less than five minutes before the door that led from the emergency room to the waiting room creaked open. My heart quivered in my chest as I saw who poked their head out. It was Nina. She was dressed in a pair of surgical scrubs that hid all the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. And she looked very pretty, very Nina as I looked at her. I knew then that I'd made the right decision by coming here. I only hoped Nina would too.

She had a chart in her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and then said to the room at large, "Matthew Miller?"

Across the waiting room from me a large blonde woman holding a crying baby with a runny nose stood up. The baby, who I figured was the Matthew Miller of whom she spoke, was tugging on his right ear obsessively. Matthew's mom carried him to where Nina stood and they all three disappeared, closing the door behind them. Nina had not seen me sitting there.

Twenty minutes passed. I sat there with my hand throbbing and my brain working on overdrive, trying to figure out what I should say to her, how I should say it, and how I could keep from saying the wrong thing. I passed a thousand scenarios through my mind, laying out a thousand scripts and rejecting them all. Finally I concluded that I would just have to take things as they came. That was one of my shining abilities.

When the door opened again Nina had a fresh chart in her hand. Her mouth opened to shout out a name as her eyes locked onto the paperwork before her, her lips beginning to form together to say the first name; William. Then she stopped. Recognition filled her face. Slowly her eyes left the chart and began to examine the waiting room. It was less than a second before they locked onto me sitting there.

I offered her a smile as she studied me, as she fought to compose herself. Finally, keeping her face neutral, her voice toneless, she said, "William, if you would follow me please?"

I stood up and walked over to her. She turned her back to me and led me into the emergency room.

The ER was almost exactly as I remembered it being on my many trips here as a paramedic. There were a few additions and coats of paint that they had yet to do, but otherwise I knew its layout fairly well. I even recognized a much younger version of one of the old biddy nurses that worked in there. Despite the relative emptiness of the waiting room, the treatment area, which only contained ten beds, was full. Several elderly people were being treated for breathing or cardiac type problems. Two children were waiting to be stitched up like I was, and of course there was Matthew Miller, who seemed to have an ear infection. Nina led me to an empty room, which was actually a hospital gurney surrounded by a yellow curtain.

"If you'll have a seat here." She said, waving me to the gurney. "The nurse will be in to see you shortly."

"Thank you Nina." I told her.

She looked at me for a moment. "Why did you come here?" She asked.

"Because YOU work here." I told her. "I wanted to see you, to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say to you." She informed me. "And we won't be speaking any further. Sorry you wasted your time."

As she turned to go I said, "I'm not giving up that easily."

She gave me one more glance and then marched out of the room. She made a point of staying out of my line of sight. But, as I told her, I wasn't giving up that easily. This might be my only chance. Though it had been more than eighteen years, I had once been an ROP ER tech too and I knew well what their duties were.

A nurse came in a few minutes later, gave my wound a cursory examination, and then told me what I already knew; that I was going to need some stitches. She told me the doctor would be in as soon as he could to do that. "Anything we can get you?" She then asked, "Some water or a blanket or something."

"I'm fine for NOW." I told her.

She left the room, slipping between the flaps of the yellow curtain. I knew that she would be telling Nina, the ER tech, to set up a suture kit in my room. It was part of Nina's job and she certainly would not be able to refuse to do it.

Sure enough, Nina pushed back through the curtain less than five minutes later, carrying one of the sterile suture kits, the sort of kits I assembled all the time in central supply at the trauma center, in her hands. She kept her eyes off of me as she walked over to the stainless steel wheeled stand next to my bed and set the kit down.

"Nina." I told her as she opened the un-sterile outer seal and folded it back. "I'm miserable without you. I miss you terribly. More than I ever imagined I would. I was an asshole before but I'm trying to change, I really am."

She looked at me impassively. "Don't touch any of this stuff." She told me.

"It's sterile and if you put your hands on it you might get an infection."

She smiled. "We wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?"

"Nina," I started again. "Do you remember when you told me…"

"I have work to do Sir." She said shortly. "You won't be seeing me again." She turned and headed out the door.

I sighed. How much time did I have before the doctor came in to stitch me up? Not much I figured. I sat quietly at my bed until I saw a nurse pass by outside.

"Nurse?" I asked, making her stop in her tracks and peer questioningly in at me.

"Could I possibly have some water? I'm awfully thirsty."

"Sure." The nurse nodded. "Just a second." She disappeared again.

Sure enough, a minute or so passed and then Nina reappeared in my cubicle, this time carrying a plastic cup of water in her hands. She walked quickly over and held it out to me.

"Your water." She said.

I didn't take it. "Nina," I said. "You told me once you had feelings for me. Do you remember?"

"Do you want the water or not?" She said testily. "I have lots of work to do."

"Tracy tried to tell me that once." I said. "Remember the time she and Cindy got you high? She tried to tell me that night but I didn't listen. I should have listened. I should have told you the things I'm trying to tell you right now at that moment. But I didn't. I was an asshole, I was stupid, and I regret that with all of my heart now."

She stared at me for a moment as I recited this to her. She then set the water down on another tray and left the room again.

Was this doing any good? It seemed it wasn't. But I was committed. All I could do was keep trying.

"Nurse?" I asked the next time one passed by.

"Yes?"

"I'm kind of cold in here. Do you suppose I could have a blanket?"

"Why sure." She said, disappearing.

A minute later Nina entered the room yet again. This time she carried a blanket in her hands. Her eyes bored into me. "Your blanket." She said.

"Nina, what I'm trying to say," I said. "Was that I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Since you've had your talk with me I haven't gone a day without thinking about what I screwed up with you. I miss our talks about books, about life, about everything. I miss being with you. I didn't realize how happy I was when I was with you; how good you made me feel, until it was gone. I NEED you Nina and I want you to come back to me. I'll accept any terms you want to offer. Anything. But please, come back to me.

Be with me again? You told me that you had feelings for me once. Are they completely gone? I realize now how deep my feelings are for you."

She was now chewing on her lip as she listened, the first break in her professional, neutral face. She still held the blanket in her hands. I sensed that she was about to throw the blanket at me and flee. It was time to lay down all the cards.

"Jesus Nina." I said. "I'm sitting here talking about 'feelings', just like you did that day. Why don't we cut the shit? You were right about me and you have absolutely no reason to believe what I say based on my past behavior, but I'm going to say it anyway. " I swallowed. "I love you Nina.

I love you deeply, intimately. You're all I can think about, you're all I want in this life. I waited too long to realize it, to say it, but it's the God's truth. I love you and I want you to be with me forever. I'll do anything you want me to in order to prove this to you but I love you. I LOVE you."

She stared at me, her lip quivering now. Suddenly she shook her head almost violently. "No." She said. "This has to stop. If you have feelings for me as you say then you'll leave me alone like I asked. Just leave me alone. Stop talking to me, stop thinking about me. I need to get you out of my life and keep you out of it."

"I'll do that if you do one thing for me." I said. "Just one little thing."

"What's that?"

"Look in my eyes and tell me you don't love me. If you can truly say that you don't love me, that you don't miss me, then I'll leave you alone forever."

She sighed, tossing the blanket on the foot of my gurney and wiping a tear that was forming in her eye. "I do love you Bill." She said. "If I didn't this would be a whole lot easier. I've loved you almost since the first time we started talking together. Don't you see that that is the problem? Love like that doesn't just die. You hurt me badly. You devastated me. You showed me how blind I could be about seeing certain things because of love. You showed me how much love could hurt me and how it could keep on hurting me long after I stopped talking to you.

"Don't you understand? I'm just now getting to the point where I can go for an hour or so without thinking about you. I'm just now starting to get you out of my system. And here you are telling me everything is all right and we should just go back to the way we were. I can't do that! I will not live through that hurt anymore."

"You won't have to Nina." I told her. "You won't have to. I'm not saying we should go back to the way things were. I want more with you now. I want to be with you always, don't you see? I am not the same person I was last month. I've changed. I will never hurt you that way again."

"Bill, if there's one thing I learned through all of this," She said, really crying now. "It's that love sucks. We weren't even going together, we never even kissed each other, and you were able to hurt me. How much more could you hurt me if we did start going together? How much more, Bill?"

"A lot more." I said honestly. "But I won't. I promise you that. I won't."

"How could I believe you? After all the girls you had, after all the girls you used and then tossed over your shoulders like a beer can, how could I ever trust you not to do that with me? What's going to happen when you get tired of me? How long will that take?"

"It'll take forever Nina." I said. "I will never get tired of you and I will never treat you the way I've treated other girls. When I was doing that I was being stupid and immature. I was being self-centered. But I've learned a few things. Getting your teeth kicked in by consequences does that for you. The most important thing I learned was how much you meant to me and how stupid I'd been to not see what you and I had together, to not seize it while I had the chance.

"I want one more chance Nina. Just one more. I've given you all the promises I can and you can take them for what they're worth. I can give you all the assurances I can and you can take them the same way. But what it comes down to is your choice. If you want me to, I'll walk away from you now and never enter your life again without permission. If you ask me to do that I will, and I'll be feeling the same hurt, the same guilt, the same feelings that you've felt, that you're feeling now.

"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."

She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."

"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."

"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."

"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.

"Nina," I said.

She turned to look at me.

"Thanks for listening to me."

She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.

The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.

It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.

"You know something?" She asked me quietly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."

"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.

She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."

"Nina I told you…"

"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.

"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."

I swallowed, blushing.

"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."

"Did it?"

She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."

I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"

Chapter 8

The best of times

Are when I'm alone with you

Some rain, some shine

We'll make this a world for two

All memories of yesterday

Will last a lifetime

We'll take the best, forget the rest

And someday we'll find

These are the best of times

STYX

I don't believe I ever looked forward to a simple lunch session in the school cafeteria as much as I did that Tuesday afternoon, the day after Nina invited me to join her. I hardly slept at all that night, tossing and turning restlessly as my mind kept screaming at me: Nina is back! Nina is talking to me again! Bleary eyed I drug myself off to school and experienced a near crawl of the time continuum through first period. When the bell rang I nearly sprinted to my second class, feeling like the teenager I was charading as for perhaps the first time since returning.

I took my seat and waited nervously while other students filed in, my eyes drawn to the seat next to mine, the seat that had been so recently occupied by a silent and reproachful Nina. That would be different today, wouldn't it? She hadn't changed her mind, had she? She was talking to me again, wasn't she?

When she entered the room her face was blank, expressionless. She walked to her chair and methodically removed her book and notepaper from her backpack before stowing it in under her seat. She arranged her supplies on her desk and sat down.

"Good morning Nina." I told her nervously.

For a horrible instant I thought that she was going to simply ignore me as she had in the past. Just keep her eyes facing forward, her psyche radiating a stern signal that communication was not desired. Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to wash her hands of me after all?

Finally she looked over at me, her expression remaining blank. "Good morning." She told me.

"Are we still on for lunch?" I asked her, dreading her answer but needing to hear it all the same.

A slight smile gave me hope. "Sure." She nodded. "If you still want to."

Relief and renewed hope washed over me. I returned her smile. "More than anything." I said.

Her smile widened, warming her face and making me feel giddy. She was smiling! At me no less! In that instant I blessed that idiot Brett and his carelessness at leaving the scalpel blade up in the tray. In fact I wanted to buy him a beer for doing that.

The entrance of the instructor and the initiation of that day's lecture brought our conversation to an abrupt end. I hardly heard a word that was said.

Third period offered us little chance to talk. By the time we found our seats in the classroom it was time for class to start. I barely heard that lecture too, so intent was I on the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock as it marched its way towards lunch.

Finally, lunchtime came. We walked in silence together to the cafeteria, unsure of what to say to each other, unsure how to begin. We got our food and then found seats at an empty table. I wasn't sure what I'd expected from this reconciliation but the awkward silence we were experiencing was certainly not it. We picked at our food, neither one of us able to make the first statement, both of us secreting nervousness as we secreted perspiration when hot. What was happening here? I'd never had trouble talking to Nina before. Why couldn't I say anything now? Was it because, for the first time, we were both aware of our naked feelings for each other?

Because we'd both used the word love in conversation? Because we both knew that our relationship depended absolutely on what transpired? Were we both deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing?

I wanted to reassure her that I loved her. I wanted to promise once more that I'd never hurt her again. I wanted to hear her say she loved me, only this time not in a break-up conversation or in anger. But none of that seemed right. I'd said my piece the day before and she knew how I felt. I knew I was on probation here, an extremely rigid probation. If I said or did one wrong thing, Nina would possibly disappear from my life, moving back to the fate which was still trying to claim her.

I looked at her, at the features of her plain face that were so beautiful to me now. I knew that SOMETHING needed to be said. She looked back at me, probably thinking the same, probably wondering what was going to come out of my mouth, probably wondering if she'd made a mistake in giving me a second chance. What had brought us together in the first place? What had made us love each other before? Could that be recaptured?

"What was the book?" I finally asked, speaking softly.

She continued to stare at me for a moment, her face taking on the expression of one that doesn't believe she's heard correctly. "The book?" She asked.

I nodded. "You said you read a book you were dying to discuss. What was the book?"

Her face warmed almost inperceptively and I knew I'd said exactly the right thing.

"It was called 'The Cider House Rules'." She said.

"By John Irving." I nodded, thanking whatever gods there may be that it was a book I was familiar with. This was not entirely a coincidence. Nina and I, we'd discovered earlier in our relationship, shared the same tastes in literature.

"You've read it?"

"Yes I have." I nodded. "A very astute analysis on the issue of abortion. Very good book, one of Irving's best I think. I particularly liked how well the characterization was done."

She sat up straighter. "So did I. My favorite character was Candy. I really liked the way she…"

We discussed the book together, hitting upon our favorite parts and characters and then opinionating on what the meaning of the story was. This then led to a discussion about abortion in general. Though we were talking together as we used to it was clear to both of us that there was a strain that had never existed before. Nina was very guarded, her smiles not as broad or genuine as they'd once been. It was as if she did not want to enjoy our conversation, did not want to allow herself to get too close to me too quickly.

By the end of the lunch period it was plain what the rules were going to be.

We would be moving slow and I was going to have to regain the trust I had lost. It wasn't going to be awarded to me by default. Those were my terms, firm though unspoken, and I was going to have to accept them.

I had put considerable thought into the problem of Anita. Though I had ended my relationship with her and though my second talk with her seemed to have brought this fact home to her, I still felt a considerable amount of guilt. Things were not right with Anita. She had been pulled from her destiny because of me. And because she had been pulled from her destiny, her children had been pulled from theirs. They were growing up without a father figure in the house, something they were not meant to do. The ramifications of this could only be guessed at. Maybe there would be no change in their future. But maybe there would be a catastrophic one. Anita, for many reasons, needed to be steered back to her destiny. The responsibility for doing this was mine alone.

My talk with Tracy and the run of my own thoughts convinced me that putting Anita back on her track was not only possible but should be reasonably easy at this point in time. Fate was, for once, on my side, my ally in this endeavor. All she needed, I theorized, was a little nudge. But the more time that went by, the harder that nudge would have to be. Since I was under a doctor's orders not to return to either ROP or my normal job, I took it upon myself to fill this idle time giving that nudge. Her and her intended needed to be put together. The question was how to do it?

I knew from my long relationship with her that Anita was a real estate agent specializing in single-family houses in the North Spokane area. Though I had never been there, I knew where she worked. I also knew that Jack Valentine, her destined husband, worked at the same office. What I did not know was what Jack Valentine DID at that office and I only had the vaguest impression of what he looked like. My only memory of his features came from my previous life. I needed to gather some information.

Being free from ROP after my first lunch with Nina, I climbed into my car and drove to North Spokane, parking three blocks down from Anita's office. It was located on a major street that fed to the freeway system. The street was lined with gas stations, mini-marts, and strip malls. The office itself was located between a dentist's office and a pizza parlor. A light snow was falling as I entered the side parking lot of the complex, moving with all the caution of an infantry soldier in enemy territory.

I had purposely dressed warmly and was fully prepared to wait in the parking lot until she went out on a showing of some suburban house. I was aware that it might take several days of observation before such an event happened. After all, winter was not the prime time for real estate sales. But, to my surprise and delight, my luck was in. Anita's car was nowhere to be seen after three circuits of the parking lot.

Gambling that she would not return in the short time that I needed to be in there, I walked quickly to the door of the office and stepped inside, blessing the orgasmic warmth that rushed over me from the building's heater.

There was a waiting area with several chairs and the inevitable outdated magazines. These faced a receptionist's desk where a pretty young woman was typing with machine-gun bursts. Behind her were ten or so desks, about half of which were occupied. One of the occupants I recognized as Jack Valentine, the only male present in the room beside myself. None of the desk workers paid me any attention as I entered but the receptionist gave me a suspicious look.

"Can I help you?" She asked, her voice not nearly as friendly as it would have been had an adult walked in. She probably figured I was going to ask to use the bathroom or something.

"Yes Ma'am." I said shyly. "My Dad asked me if I would stop by here and pick up something called a…" I paused as if trying to recall information, "A listing paper?"

"You mean a listing sheet?" She corrected, becoming instantly more friendly.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's it."

"Did your Dad tell you what range he wanted that for?" She asked patiently.

"Oh," I said, shaking my head as if disgusted with myself for not remembering. "I'm sorry. Seventy-five to eighty-five thousand."

"Why sure." She said, brightening even more when she heard that. She stood up and headed over to one of the desk people.

I took a moment to admire her legs, which were truly magnificent encased in dark nylons as they were. I then cast a nervous look outside, making sure Anita hadn't pulled up and was heading in. I could only imagine what would happen if she found me in there.

It took a minute but the receptionist returned with a sheaf of copied computer print-outs upon which all of the current houses for sale in the price range I'd specified, the upper end for that time period in that city, were listed. The existence of such a document was not something the average sixteen year-old would have known about since most sixteen year-olds have not purchased a house in their past.

"Here you go young man." She told me, smiling professionally.

"Thank you." I said, taking the papers and returning the smile. "And he also asked if I could have one of your brochures too?"

She picked one up from a stack on her desk. It was a full color pamphlet that listed the real estate agents employed by that office, their mission statement, and phone numbers. She handed it to me. "One brochure." She said. "Anything else?"

"That should do it Ma'am." I told her. "Thank you."

A moment later I was out the door. Five minutes after that I was sitting in my car, letting the heater run while I looked at the paperwork I'd acquired.

According to the brochure, Jack Valentine was indeed another agent, not a supervisor or a lawyer or something else, as I'd feared. Perfect. He was one of four males in an office staffed by eighteen.

I looked at the printout next, looking mostly at the addresses of the houses for sale. Eight years as a paramedic had made me more than passingly familiar with the layout of the streets in this, or indeed any Spokane County neighborhood. There were four listings in close proximity to the office. I started up my car and drove to the first of them, my eyes looking for the right combination of details. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all four of the houses as a matter of course but the moment I saw the second one I knew it was as close to perfect as I was going to get. A small city park was directly across the street, complete with rows of bushes and thick foliage. The house itself had two large trees in the front yard, trees which would serve to cut the view from inside the house. The driveway, which I looked at most carefully, was completely unobservable from the interior of the house due to it's positioning. Truly, for what I had in mind, it could not be much better.

After dismissing the last house and firmly settling my mind on the second, I drove to the freeway, heading for downtown Spokane, my mind full of shaky confidence that my crazy scheme could be pulled off.

The hall of records was located in the Spokane County Courthouse, a dilapitated building in the unfashionable part of downtown. After battling for a parking spot, fighting my way through three clerks who wanted detailed explanations of why I, a teenager, wanted to take a look at these supposedly open public records, and then pouring through tons of paperwork in the largest filing cabinets I've ever personally seen, I was forced to admit there was something I missed terribly from my old life. The Internet. In 1999 I would have been able to pull up this information, information that took me more than two hours to retrieve in the courthouse, in less than five minutes. God bless technology, despite the Unabomber's ravings to the contrary.

I finally found what I was looking for in an obscure file marked "Real Estate Transactions--1983", a file which was not, I might add, stored with Real Estate Transactions 1900 to 1982 as you would have thought it would be.

The file was more than an inch thick. I paged forward until I found the months of October and November. I began scanning through the columns of text and legalese, looking for two names in particular: Anita Browling and Jack Valentine. I found them eventually and copied down the names that were listed with them as clients.

Satisfied with my work, I returned the file to its proper place, signed out, and went home. I hoped this was all going to work. I'd been to a lot of trouble if it didn't.

That night I gave Mike a call.

"What's up?" He asked me, pleasantly enough.

"Not much." I told him. "You still coming over to study tomorrow?"

"Fuckin' aye." He agreed. "Got a test coming up in English and I need you to go over this modifier crap with me."

"You got it." I told him. "How's ROP going?"

"Bitchin." He said. "I'm diggin the new station. The BC has been hangin out with me a lot, you know, talkin to me and all. I think he likes me. He told me they'd probably be testing for hire in August this year. Looks like I might be getting paid to work there then."

"Cool Mike." I told him. "You'd better quit smoking and start running." I advised him. "I hear that physical agility test is a bitch."

"Yeah, that's what the BC told me too." He answered. "I thought maybe I'd start jogging at night before I go to bed. That'll probably help."

"Probably." I agreed, inwardly feeling very pleased to hear his words. It sounded like Mike was growing up a little. Strange but true. "Listen," I told him. "I was wondering if maybe you could do me a little favor before you head to the fire station tomorrow."

"It'd have to be a quick favor." He told me. "I don't want to be late."

"It'll only take a minute." I explained. "Just meet me at the payphone by the office after lunch."

"What for?" He asked.

"I need to borrow your voice for something."

"How is your hand healing up?" Nina asked me the next day at lunch, her voice still careful and guarded.

"I think I'll live." I answered, holding it up for her inspection. The stitches were still quite prominent but the skin itself was starting to knit back together. It didn't actually hurt anymore but it itched like mad most of the time.

She nodded quietly. "You ought to be more careful what you do." She commented.

"I'm trying to be Nina." I told her seriously. "I'm really trying to be."

This won me a smile. Not the best I'd ever seen from her, but it was getting there.

By the end of that lunch period she'd thawed a little more. Not completely, but a little more. She laughed a little. She offered looser comments. She even slapped at my shoulder playfully once, sending thrills racing through me at her touch. I began to suspect that things between Nina and I might just work out. Maybe even sooner than I'd expected.

I left the lunchroom happier than I'd been in quite some time.

Mike met me at the payphone just as I'd asked him to. The light snow of the day before had turned into heavier snow accompanied by an icy North wind. He was shivering when I found him there.

"God damn dude." He told me, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm. "I was about to leave. I'm freezing my ass off out here. What took you so long?"

"Sorry." I apologized. "I was talking to Nina and time kind of slipped away from me."

"Nina's talking to you again?" He asked, feigning disinterest.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I guess you could say we made up."

"Cool deal." He told me wisely, speaking with his voice of experience. "I think she's got the hots for you man. You play your cards right, you might even get some off her like I did with Kathy the other night. Let me tell you, that bitch knows how to suck a…" He continued for more than five minutes, graphically detailing an encounter with this girl; someone I'd never heard of.

When he finished, I said, "Well that's cool. But anyway, can you make this call for me?"

"Sure." He said. "What do you want me to say?"

I explained what I wanted to him and we went over it a few times. "And be sure to deepen your voice a little, just a little, so you sound like an adult."

"And why are we doing this again?" He asked.

"It's a long story." I told him. "But you can rest assured it's for the betterment of all mankind."

He looked at me for a moment and then laughed. "Jesus Bill, you sure know how to come up with 'em."

I handed him a dime and he picked up the phone. As he plugged the coin into the slot he took a sheet of paper from me, scanned it for a second, and then punched in the number that I'd instructed him to dial. He held on to the paper after dialing so he could refer to the names and addresses I'd printed there.

I was worried that he would over-act but, to give him credit, he performed perfectly. He listened for a few seconds and then I could see by his face that the phone had been picked up. With just the right amount of deepening to his voice, he said into the phone. "Good afternoon Mrs. Browling. My name is Bob Hartley. I was referred to you by a friend of mine who purchased a house on Sallyport Way last month; Rick Whaling?"

He paused for a second and then gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know she was buying it so far.

"Yes," He nodded. "Rick loves the house and he recommended you if I should ever find myself in need of a good real estate agent. Well, as it turns out, my wife and I have been planning to buy a house for quite some time. After five years of saving we've managed to put aside eight thousand for a down payment." A pause. "Yes, that's right. Eight thousand. Anyway, we've been kind of looking on our own and we found a house that is listed with your agency out in North Spokane." Another pause. "Well it's at…" He read from the sheet. "Twenty-one nineteen Westbrook Lane." A pause. "Yes, Westbrook Lane." He rolled his eyes upward for a moment. "Why sure, I'll hold."

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "She's going to get the file on that house." He told me. "Who is this bitch anyway?"

"Maybe I'll tell you someday." I said cryptically.

He shrugged and went back to waiting. A minute or so passed. Finally he began to listen again. "Yes, that's right." He told Anita. "My wife and I would like to take a look at that house as soon as possible. Is there any chance you could show it to us, say today about one o'clock?"

He nodded, completely into the drama he was participating in. "Very good." He said and then listened some more. "No no, we know where it's at. How about we meet you there?" He listened some more. "That's right, one o'clock. See you there. Thank you very much Mrs. Browling."

He hung up the phone and looked at me. "Whatever you're planning." He told me. "You're dialed in."

"Thanks Mike." I told him. "I owe you one. You've been a benefit to oppressed people everywhere."

"Yeah right." He said. "Well I gotta go dude. Catch you this afternoon."

A thought suddenly occurred to me. "Hey Mike?"

"Yeah?" He said, in the middle of turning to leave.

"You got any buds? I've been itching to get stoned."

He looked at me strangely for a second. "I got some at home." He told me. "About enough for a joint, but I don't have any on me. You want to get stoned later?"

"Yeah." I said, hiding the grin that wanted to break out on my face. Mike had pot but he wasn't bringing it to school with him! For Mike, that was an accomplishment. "After we study today. I think we deserve it."

"Cool." He said, nodding. "Well, gotta jet."

"See ya." I replied, watching him go. He really was growing up.

Finally I turned back to business. I picked up the phone and put in another dime. Consulting my list I dialed a number. It rang three times and then a male voice responded.

"North Spoke Reality. This is Jack Valentine, can I help you?"

"Why yes, Mr. Valentine." I said, deepening my own voice. "You certainly can. You see, a friend of mine, Mark Vincent, recently purchased a house on…"

By twelve-thirty I was sequestered in the row of bushes in the park across the street from 2119 Westbrook Lane. Despite my overabundance of clothing I was shivering as the wind cut through my down jacket and snowflakes stuck to my cap. I was reasonably sure that I could not be spotted by anyone from the house even if they WERE looking for me, which they wouldn't be. The snow that was rapidly accumulating on me would do nothing but help with my camoflaugh.

I'd enticed the two real estate agents to this house by offering them dream clients, making my fictional customers almost too good to be true. It was something no agent would ever turn down; people that had apparently already decided upon a house and had large down payments in reserve in order to help finance it. They would show up, visions of large, quick commissions dancing in their heads. I only hoped that one of my suppositions was correct. If I remembered my real estate agents correctly, they always parked in the driveway if they could when meeting someone at the house. This allowed the customer to get the whole view of the house as they stepped out of their vehicle. The driveway was big enough for both Anita and Jack's cars to fit.

It would certainly make things easier and less dangerous to me if they did NOT park in front of the house. If I was wrong, and they did, there were at least the trees to give partial cover.

As it turned out my supposition was a correct one. Anita arrived first at twelve-fifty, fully ten minutes early. She pulled her car into the empty driveway, bringing it to a halt. Before she could even step out of her vehicle Jack pulled in, driving a late model (for that when) Buick. He parked it right next to hers.

They got out of their vehicles and looked at each other in surprise for a moment, holding a quick conversation. I couldn't hear them but I could guess what they were saying. What are you doing here? A client for this house? Oh really? One o'clock? What a coincidence. What's your client's name? Really? Well, I'll try not to step on you. Pretty weird, huh?

They spoke to each other as acquaintances, with no hostility that I could detect. I saw them shake their heads a few times as if wondering at the quirks of fate which brought both of them here at exactly the same time. Finally a comment was passed that had to have amounted to, 'why are we standing out here in the snow?'. They both headed for the front door.

Anita knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell a few times. In my planning stage of this I'd worried obsessively about whether or not the owners of the house would be home before I finally figured out that it really didn't matter. Ideally, they would be gone but if they weren't, the plan would still work. As it turned out, they were gone. Giving up on the doorbell, Anita walked over to the brass lockbox that was attached to the water pipe. She dialed in a combination and opened the box, pulling out a key. With the key, she opened the door. A moment later the both of them stepped inside, closing the door behind them.

My first thoughts that had led to this plan had told me that simply getting Anita and Jack into a house together for twenty to thirty minutes would be enough to push them together. Further reflection upon this, and the consideration that the occupants would be home, therefore breaking the mood, led me to modify that plan somewhat. Just putting them together might not be enough. I had to emmerse them into a situation together. Even that, I reluctantly admitted, might not be enough, but it was better than just throwing them together. An extension to the plan developed. An extension that now needed to be put into effect.

I acted quickly, extricating myself from the bushes and moving west along the perimeter of the park until I was out of view of the house. I crossed the street and began walking along the sidewalk, strolling casually towards the house, doing my best impression of a neighborhood kid out for a walk in the snow. When I reached the driveway, where the two cars were parked, I took a good look around me, searching for any neighbors that happened to be out and paying attention. There were none. It was time.

I dashed between the two cars, both of which were ticking as their engines cooled down, quickly putting myself between the garage door and the front of Anita's Chrysler. A quick look assured me that from here I was unobservable from any angle. I had changed the oil in Anita's car more than ten times, usually as a prelude to sexual activity, and I knew the engine compartment of it well. I knew, for instance, that you did not need to be inside the car in order to open the hood. My hand found the hood release, which was warm, and slowly pulled it until I felt a click.

Carefully, taking another quick glance for unwanted observers, I lifted it, wincing at the squeaking noise it made. When it was about a foot above the engine compartment I peered inside. Though, as I've mentioned before, I am not a mechanical genius, my thirty-four years on two different Earth's had taught me enough to know that an internal combustion engine could be quickly disabled by removing one particular piece of it. I reached in and grasped the coil wire, which led to the distributor cap. Without this wire, electricity could not get to the spark plugs and the cylinders could not fire. I gave a sharp yank and the wire was in my hand. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket and then eased the hood back down, giving it a firm push to latch it and wincing again at the sharp noise that resulted.

One more quick glance around for danger and I dashed back to the sidewalk. I headed back the way I came, crossed the street once again, and moved back into the park. A few minutes after that I was back in the bushes, observing the house. I began to wait.

It was twelve forty-five before they both emerged from the house. In the ensuing fifty minutes I'd seen both of them peer out multiple times, looking for their clients pulling up out front, clients that were figments of my imagination. When they left the house, carefully locking it up and putting the key back in the lock box, they were talking to each other and shrugging.

I wasn't close enough to read their expressions so I could not tell how cozy they'd gotten during the waiting period.

They conversed a moment more and then headed for their respective automobiles. Jack jumped in his first and fired up the engine before Anita was even settled. I had a moment's horror when it looked like he was going to back out and drive away before Anita even had a chance to crank her now-worthless engine. But thankfully, his mother had taught him some manners and he stood by, waiting for her to leave.

From across the street I could hear the grinding of her engine turning over without catching. She would grind it for about ten seconds, let it rest for five, and then grind it again. This went on for about four cycles before the abrupt cut-off of exhaust vapor from Jack's tailpipe signaled that he'd shut down his engine.

He stepped out and walked over to her door. She rolled down the window and a brief conversation ensued. She then opened her door and stepped out, allowing him to sit down in her seat. He cranked the engine a few times himself, as if the mere presence of A MAN behind the key would make it fire up. Finally, when it didn't, he walked around to the front and popped the hood.

The hood obstructed my view of the two of them while they peered inside but it was readily apparent that Jack knew his way around an engine compartment.

It wasn't sixty seconds before he stepped out from behind it, looking nervously around the street, peering up and down it, looking for the culprit that had taken Anita's coil wire. He spoke to her for a moment, pointed into the hood compartment, and then she too began to look around.

They quickly gave up looking for the culprit and turned their attention to looking under and around the vehicle, as if the coil wire could have just fallen off the distributor. When they didn't find it on the ground they searched the hood compartment. When they didn't find it there they began to converse again, this time with much shaking of heads and puzzled glances up and down the street. The conversation continued for a few moments and then Anita smiled at him, obviously thanking him. They walked to his car and he opened the passenger door for her (way to go Jack, I thought happily). She sat down and he walked across to the driver's side. A moment later his car started and they drove off.

Though I didn't know Jack at all, I know what I would have done in such a circumstance. I would have driven her to the nearest auto parts store and bought her a new coil wire, taking it back to the car and making a big show of installing it for her, making it look, of course, more difficult a job than it really was. I would then dramatically sit behind the wheel and fire up the engine, grinning sheepishly at the accomplishment of fixing the car for her. Hell Ma'am, it weren't no trouble at all. Of course she would be grateful to her knight in shining armor. Perhaps they would decide to go to dinner?

As they disappeared from my sight I extricated myself from the bushes and stretched, popping my stiff joints. I shook the accumulation of snow from my clothing and then headed for my car.

"The rest is up to you Jack." I mumbled to myself, smiling as I walked. "Take advantage of Fate."

Overnight the snowstorm we'd been experiencing developed into a full-scale blizzard. The wind tore through the Eastern Washington area, driving the snow before it. When I awoke Thursday morning it was still going strong. A look out my window, at the icy, covered streets, at the snowdrifts more than eight feet high in some places, told me that I would not be going to school that day.

My confirmation of this came when I went downstairs to breakfast and found Dad still in his pajamas and robe, his face unshaven. As a teacher Dad was probably even happier than the students were when they closed school for the day. After all, he still got paid for it. Mom too was lounging around in her pajamas, her work had apparently decided to make it a holiday as well. I was not as happy. That meant there would be no lunch with Nina that day.

"There's lots of good news today." Dad told me as I sat down at the table.

"How's that?" I asked him, digging into the bacon and eggs Mom had prepared in honor of the non-work day.

"Looks like you were right on the mark about the latex thing." He said, sliding a section of the newspaper over to me. "Take a look at this."

I picked up the section and looked where he was pointing.

FEAR OF AIDS LEADS TO NATIONWIDE GLOVE SHORTAGE read the headline. It was an Associated Press story, which meant that it had been printed in newspapers all over the country. The text of the story told of hospitals, fire departments, and ambulance companies all ordering large amounts of latex gloves in response to fear of disease and a federal OSHA mandate that all health care providers wear gloves on every patient contact. Every patient contact! This was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

"Out of sight." I said, grinning.

"So this is going to make you some money on those stocks, right?" Dad asked.

"This is going to be like hitting the lottery." I told him happily. "Actually like hitting it twice."

"Twice?" He enquired, putting his paper down.

I nodded. "There's two aspects of stock ownership in a case like this." I explained. "First of all there's profit. Selling all of those gloves is making a lot of money for the companies I've invested in. That allows me dividends because as a partial owner of the company, I'm entitled to a cut of the profits. The second aspect is the price of the stock itself. Now it's gone steadily upward since I first invested in it but not dramatically by any means. The increase merely reflects those wise investors who have taken the time to research the company and note the recent increase in profits. But now that this story has appeared in the paper, all that will change. Everybody and their mother will know that latex is going to go through the roof and they will all rush to buy stock in it. That is going to drive the price of the stocks through the roof, therefore making my holdings much more valuable."

Dad had long since learned not to question my wisdom on the workings of the stock market. After all he saw me researching it and studying it every day.

"So how much are we talking about here?" He asked.

"It would not surprise me," I said, "If the value of my stock doubled by the end of the year and tripled by the end of the following quarter. Plus I stand to receive a healthy dividend check."

"Amazing." He whispered. "And I thought you were throwing your money away."

"This also means that I need to start putting my income somewhere else, to find another trend that's about to take off."

He looked confused. "Why is that? Shouldn't you continue to invest in latex?"

"No." I told him. "As the stock goes up, putting further money in it will be futile. Remember that I now have to pay the inflated price for more of the stock. What I need to do is keep my assets in latex right where they are and let them go up. But my future income needs to be put into other places; places that are cheap now but that are likely to rise in the future.

That's what investing in the market is all about."

"So what are you going to do now?" He asked.

I smiled. "I've been planning this for quite a while now." I told him. "The money from the latex investment will probably peak about the time I'm ready for college. It should be enough to get me enrolled and carry me through the first year. From now on my paychecks will be invested in something with slower, but steady medium-term growth. Something that will rise considerably over the next few years instead of months. I'll continue to dump money into those until they rise to a point where they've reached their peak of growth. It'll build me up capital for the big move I'm planning to make in a few years."

He shook his head. "What do you mean? What are you going to invest in now?

And what big move are you talking about?"

"Right now I'm going to begin investing in the computer industry. Apple, IBM, and a chipmaker called Intel. Over the next few years I believe that computers are going to start appearing everywhere and they're all going to be made by a few companies."

Dad looked at me in amazement. "You think those three are going to make all of these computers and the chips? What about Atari and Commodore?"

"I think they'll be outmarketed." I said. "Just a prediction you understand, but they probably won't be able to hold their own when the computer revolution swings into full gear."

"I see." He nodded, looking at me strangely. "And this big move you're planning to make?"

"It's kind of complicated." I told him. "I'll know it when I see it though.

You see, every computer has to have something called an operating system; software that tells it what to do."

"Okay." He said, semi-following me so far.

"The company that gets in on that market will make billions, trillions even.

They'll quickly be able to dominate the software market if they make their move at the right time and in the right way." I grinned. "I imagine that there's someone out there who sees this as well as I do. I imagine that someone has probably got a company that makes software going right now, as we speak. And I imagine that someone is just waiting for the time to be right to introduce an operating system that will set the standard for all computers and make it damn near impossible to operate one without it."

"Bill, how do you know so much about this?" Dad asked me slowly.

I shrugged. "I read a lot Dad. And I'm blessed with above average reasoning ability."

He shook his head a little. "Right." He said. He considered for a few more minutes. "You know," He finally said. "I have some money from each paycheck that is just going into the credit union savings account."

I looked up at him. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Maybe I should put some of that in the stock market."

"Maybe you should." I told him.

By late afternoon the worst of the blizzard was past, leaving only flurries drifting through the air. The snowplows caught up with their work, clearing the roads of the city to something approaching passable. About six o'clock, after being cooped up in the house all day I was getting restless. I needed to get out and do something. An idea occurred to me. An idea that I couldn't get out of my head once it was in there.

Maybe Nina would like to go out and catch a movie with me.

It was probably too early in our reconciliation for this. It might seem I was being too forceful, pushing too hard. I might lose some of the ground that I'd gained. I probably shouldn't chance it, I finally decided.

And so thinking I went to the living room and dug out the newspaper, flipping through to the movie section. Maybe I would just go by myself. Yes, that's what I would do. I frowned as I read through what was currently playing. One of the problems of traveling back in time was that you inevitably had seen all of the movies before. I had another fifteen years to wait before something new, from my perspective, came out. I sighed.

I put the newspaper down and then picked it up again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to ASK her. She wouldn't abandon me for that would she? But then again…

With a start I realized that I was acting like what I was; a teenager trying to work up the courage to ask a girl out on a date. I'd asked girls out on date a thousand times in my life. Chastising myself for being immature, I picked up the phone.

Thought I hadn't called it in a while, I knew Nina's number from memory. The phone rang more than eight times and I was about to hang up in frustration when it was finally picked up.

"Hello?" It was Nina. The very sound of her voice thrilled me inside.

"Hi Nina." I said. "It's Bill."

There was a very long pause. "Oh, hi." She said finally, in a voice that sounded decidedly weird.

"Nina?" I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Uh, sure." She told me. "Listen, can I call you back in a few minutes? I'm eating dinner right now."

"Sure." I said. "But…"

"Thanks." She said quickly and the phone clicked in my ear.

Slowly I put the receiver back in its cradle. What was that all about? Why had she sounded so weird?

With a worried mind I went back to the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator.

It was another twenty minutes before the phone rang. My dad picked it up and yelled for me. I told him I'd take it in the den and locked myself in there.

"Hi Bill." Said Nina, her voice sounding much more normal now.

"Hi." I answered, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No." She said. "Why would you ask that?"

"You just sounded kind of funny on the phone."

"Oh." She said, and then, "Well, the fact of the matter is that it's probably not a good idea to call me here just now. I haven't told my parents that you and I are, uh, talking again."

"I don't understand." I told her. "Your parents liked me before. Just because we had a… well a fight and stopped seeing each other for a while, why shouldn't they like me? All teenagers do that from time to time."

"It's a little more complicated than that." She replied. "I don't really want to go into it right now. But please, don't call me at home just yet?"

"Okay." I answered, very troubled by this.

"So what did you want?" She asked brightly.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to think quickly. The don't-call-here speech had just taken the wind out of my sails, making asking her out seem a bad idea after all.

"Bill?" She asked. "Are you there?"

"Yes." I said, throwing caution to the wind. After all, I had to say SOMETHING. "I was wondering if maybe you'd, uh, well, like to go out to a movie with me tonight?"

"A movie?" She asked, her voice unreadable.

"Yes." I confirmed. "If you're not doing anything else, that is."

"Are you asking me out on a date?" She asked next, seemingly puzzled.

"Well, yes. I am."

She was silent as she digested my request. Finally she said, "It's a bad idea to do this so soon Bill."

I cringed, feeling stupid for asking, feeling ashamed of myself for pushing things. "Oh." I said. "Well maybe some…"

"But what the hell?" She interrupted cheerily. "I could stand to see a good movie tonight."

I was so overcome by the rejection that it took me a moment to process that I hadn't been rejected after all. "Really?" I finally said.

"Really." She told me and I could hear that she was smiling, I could see it.

"What did you want to see?"

"Anything you want Nina." I answered happily. "Anything at all."

"I'll borrow Mom's car and be over in a little bit." She said.

We hung up our phones and I sat there for a moment, basking in the glow of success. She was going to go out with me. On a date no less. Things really were looking up.

Finally I stood up and headed upstairs to take a shower and get dressed.

The movie we decided on was one that I really had no desire to see, Flashdance. But I didn't let this bother me. I would have gone to see a four-hour documentary on the history of the ice cube tray with her if that was what she'd wanted. We took my car, leaving her Mom's parked at the curb in front of my house.

We talked of inconsequential things on the way; the storm we'd experienced, our hopes for college scholarships, how our ROP jobs were going. It was the first time since we'd come back together that there was no strain in the conversation. Our words flowed easily out of our mouths, the friendship that we'd developed in the past finally manifesting itself once more. Nina giggled frequently as we chatted, even blushing a time or two at my remarks.

She seemed like she was regaining her old personality. It made me warm inside to look at her, to see her smile, to hear her laugh.

We took seats near the back of the nearly empty theater, setting down our popcorn and stowing our drinks. We reclined and munched and drank and waited for the movie to start. We talked of some of the things we'd done in the past. Going to the lake in the summer, studying during the school year, going skiing in the winter. The remember game. Just as the lights started to dim down in preparation for the ten minutes of previews that proceeded every movie, I turned to her.

"I'm glad you came tonight." I told her. "And I'm glad you gave me a second chance."

Her blue eyes stared at mine, her face forming a serious smile. "Me too." She told me.

About twenty minutes into the movie, while the dancers were dancing and the music was pounding from the Dolby system, I reached slowly out with my left hand, putting the palm over the back of Nina's hand. She looked at me for the briefest second, hesitation marring her face, and then she turned her hand over, grasping mine, hesitation turning to contentment. Her hand was soft and dainty, fragile in mine. After all I'd experienced since my return, after all the girls and women's bodies I'd enjoyed in every possible way, you wouldn't have thought I'd get excited over the simple holding of a hand in a movie theater. You wouldn't think so, but it was thrilling me to the core.

Later on she edged slightly closer to me, squeezing my hand a little. I was fumbling and unsure of myself, of how far to take this, but in the end I couldn't resist. I unclasped my hand from hers and put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened momentarily, probably in nervousness as opposed to hostility, and then she relaxed, allowing me to pull her against me. She gazed up at me dreamily for a second.

"I really love being with you Nina." I whispered to her.

"Thank you." She whispered back, nestling up against me, resting her head on my shoulder, making me happier than I'd ever been with any other person.

When the movie was over we walked hand in hand out of the theater into the frigid night. The sky had cleared of clouds, allowing the stars to shine in all their glory. The half moon drifted directly above us. Our breath puffed out before us and our cheeks turned red on contact with the air.

"Do you want to take a walk before we go back?" I asked her.

"Bill," She giggled. "It's freezing out here."

"Yep." I agreed. "So what do you say?"

She nodded. "Okay."

The theater was located in the downtown mall, near the river. We strolled off the grounds and towards the scenic bridge and the levee. Soon we were staring down at the running water, watching the moonlight shimmer off of it.

"Did you like the movie?" She asked me, nestling against me as we stood there, allowing me to feel her weight pushing at me through her heavy down jacket. I put my arm around her once again, drawing her closer. She came willingly.

Though I'd promised myself that I would always be honest with Nina, there were times when that promise could be broken. This was one of those times. "Oh yes." I told her. "It was a very good movie. That was a good choice."

She looked up at me, staring in my eyes. "Really?"

"Really." I assured her.

"I thought it sucked rocks." She informed me huffily. "We should've gone with 'All the Right Stuff'."

My jaw dropped for a second as I heard this and then I burst out laughing.

"What?" Nina asked, looking at me with amusement.

"I thought it sucked too." I told her. "I was just being polite because you picked it."

"I didn't pick it!" She said, laughing with me. "You did!"

"Only because I thought that was what you wanted to see."

"Why would you think I wanted to see that crap?" She asked, shaking her head in exasperation.

"Because every woman wants to see that crap." I told her. "It's a movie made for women."

She turned towards me, not drawing her body away, but pushing it against mine. We were zipper to zipper with our down jackets, eye to eye. She let her hands slide down until they were nestled in the large pockets on my jacket. "I'm not most women Bill." She said softly, pulling me tighter. "You should know that by now."

"I guess I should." I answered, with a voice that was no longer steady.

Our eyes were only inches apart, our faces close enough so that I could feel her breath against me. The vapor from our exhalations combined, swirling together before drifting off into the night. I put my arms around her, feeling the curves of her body somewhere beneath all of the fabric and duck feathers she was adorned with. Our legs were pushing together. My body was tingling with anticipation and nervous desire. I was almost giddy with it.

Finally I leaned forward, moving slowly but deliberately, and touched my lips to hers. She did not resist, in fact she leaned into me, meeting me halfway. Her lips were cold and dry from the icy wind, but never had a pair felt so good against mine, never had my body reacted as it was reacting to hers. We slid our lips together softly, the kiss lasting less than ten seconds before we broke apart. But worlds suddenly changed in that ten seconds.

We continued to stare at each other for a long time after our lips parted.

"That was nice." Nina finally said, barely above a whisper.

"Very nice." I agreed.

"We've crossed a line." She told me. "I told myself that going out with you was a bad idea. That if I did, I would fall right back in love with you the way I was before. You haven't proved yourself to me yet Bill. You haven't proved that you're any different. You could be just putting on an act. After all, you must have a lot of charm to do the things you've done."

"Nina, I…"

"Shhh." She hushed. "Let me finish."

"Okay." I said.

"In the end I simply couldn't stay away from you. Except for a few rumors from school, I have no proof that you're any different. I have no proof that you've given up your old ways. Your shining ability among the girls at school was your discretion. Your downfall was that it was they who were indiscreet.

"And I was right Bill."

"Right?" I asked.

"I fell right back in love with you. When you held my hand in the theater I almost melted. When you put your arm around me I did. And when you kissed me just now." He she took a deep breath, blowing a large plume of vapor into the night. "I love you Bill. I was starting to get over you but now I'm head over heels again. You tell me you're different now, that you've changed. I certainly hope so Bill. I certainly hope I'm not being played for a fool."

"You're not Nina." I answered her. "I swear you're not. I love you. I really do."

"You hold my heart in your hand now Bill."

I nodded. "Yes I do. And I promise you won't regret giving it to me."

"I'll hold you to that." She said, leaning forward for another kiss.

Al Steiner--July 16, 1999 Chapter 9 ->

Chapter 9

Tender is the night

When you hold your baby tight

Tender is the moment

Tender is the night

JACKSON BROWNE

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, to 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 Datsun's heater tackle the task of warming up the interior of the car. 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 told her.

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 answered.

"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 thirty-eight when she had me, my Dad was forty. 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 nodded. "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 that 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 told her, 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 that 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 told me. "And it's good to see snow on the ground. I'm so sick of rain all the goddam 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 told her. "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." I said. "Actually I am in a very good mood."

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

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

"Stitches." She nodded. "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?" She asked.

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." I replied.

"Do you think it worked?" She asked.

"Time will tell." I shrugged. "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 motherfucking 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 told me. "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?" She asked.

"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." Tracy 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 that was 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 nodded. "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."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob that 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 that 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 that we'd 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 the Raley's 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 that often led to arguments.

We had trouble talking together at times. She had no understanding for the bizarre hours that 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 that 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 that 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, that 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 that 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.

It was plain that she wished more also. I could feel desire radiating off of her in waves when we hugged or kissed each other. I could see the unmistakable shine in her eyes, feel the trembling of her body. But I could also feel her fear. Fear of emotions and feelings that she had never felt before, perhaps had never even suspected before.

Our slow pace meant that when we DID progress, the weight that each new act carried was doubled or even tripled when it was allowed to take place. That made each one special and allowed it to be burned forever into my memory as well as hers.

On Christmas Eve she came over in the early afternoon, wheeling her Mom's car to the curb in front of the house. Tracy was out visiting some old friends and my parents were out doing some last minute shopping (something that was somewhat of a tradition for my parents). Nina carried a small, wrapped package into the house with her.

"I figured that since we won't get to see each other tomorrow," She told me as we walked to the couch and sat down. "That I should give you this today."

I took the package from her. "You didn't have to get me anything." I told her.

"Now what kind of girlfriend would I be," She asked, "If I didn't buy you a Christmas present?"

I looked up at her, seeing that she was blushing strongly. That was the first time that she'd referred to herself in such a manner.

"Thank you." I said gently. "Can I open it?"

"What ELSE would you do with it?" She wanted to know.

I grinned. "My we're getting mouthy." I said, sliding my finger under the seam of the neatly wrapped package.

"Who do you think I learned it from?" She shot back.

I opened the package. It was a new leather wallet with my initials engraved upon it. A gift that had probably cost her thirty dollars at least; a small fortune for a teenager in that time period.

"Nina, you can't afford this." I admonished, unfolding it, inhaling the scent of fresh leather.

"I know." She said conspiratorially. "That's why I shoplifted it."

I laughed, reflecting again that there had once been a Nina completely incapable of telling a joke. "Thank you." I told her, "It's very nice, much nicer than the Velcro job I have now." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the corner of the mouth.

"Mmmm." She said, her eyes sparkling. "Maybe I'll go shoplift some more if this is what I get."

"Maybe you should." I answered, kissing her more firmly on the lips.

She kissed me back enthusiastically at first and then her circuit breaker kicked in. She pulled away, flushed. A brief moment of awkward silence ensued.

"Wait here." I finally told her.

I went upstairs to my room and opened my closet door. I rummaged around for a moment until I retrieved what I was after. When I returned, I handed a wrapped package to her.

"For me?" She asked with mock innocence.

"For you." I confirmed.

She took the package, which was the size of a paperback book, and hefted it a few times, testing the weight.

"Kind of light." She remarked, jokingly.

"But it's straight from the heart." I assured her.

She began to tear into the clumsy wrap job (wrapping presents is something I've never been able to do well, in either life), revealing the plain white box beneath. When the wrapping paper was a balled up mess on the coffee table she began working on the tape that I'd placed heavily over the lid. When, after considerable effort, the lid came loose, she began pawing through the tissue paper in the box.

At last she pulled a small object encased in clear plastic from the pile. It was a glass cylinder, slightly larger in diameter than a quarter, with metal threads on the bottom. She held it up to her eyes.

"It's…" She started doubtfully, her face scrunching in confusion. "It's…," A pause as she gathered her thoughts. "What is it Bill?"

"It's a forty amp fuse." I said proudly.

"A forty amp fuse?"

"Right." I told her, nodding enthusiastically. "With that baby in your household fuse box, you'll damn near have to burn down the house before it blows. You can hook up Christmas lights, a toaster, and a dryer all to the same circuit if you want."

She looked at me for a moment and then back at the fuse. "A forty amp fuse." She said slowly. "Well it's… uh…"

I was going to keep up the charade a little bit longer but I couldn't contain myself. I burst out laughing. Nina looked at me and finally realized I was putting one over on her.

"You asshole." She giggled, throwing the fuse at me. It bounced off my shoulder and clattered to the coffee table.

"I'm sorry." I said, still chuckling. "But you should have seen your face."

"How would you like it if I gave you a box of tampons?" She asked. "I could tell you that 'these babies will keep your flow contained for damn near six hours in an emergency'."

I looked up at her in stunned disbelief for a moment. That was, without a doubt, the raunchiest joke I'd ever heard her crack. My laughter bubbled up again, spewing from my mouth. She joined me, slapping playfully at my arm once. Finally I took her in my arms and gave her another kiss. The seriousness of the kiss cut our laughter off like a valve.

When we broke apart once again, both of us tingling, I reached into the pocket of my sweater and pulled out another clumsily wrapped package, this one only three inches square. This one was the REAL gift. As I'd predicted, my stocks had risen considerably after the news article about the glove shortage. They'd inflated enough for me to cash out a few and do some reckless spending.

"Here." I said, handing it to her. "This one might be a little more pleasing."

She took it, continuing to eye me for a moment. Finally she began to pull the wrapping paper off. The package beneath was a velvet covered, hinged box from a jewelry store. She lifted the lid and stared at what was inside.

"Oh Bill." She said softly. "It's beautiful."

Inside the box was a gold pendant in the shape of a heart. Its surface was studded with small diamonds. A gold chain was attached to it and stowed under the display partition in the box.

"I'm glad you like it." I told her seriously.

"Bill, this looks very expensive." She said, fingering it lightly.

"It wasn't too bad." I said dismissively. "I was glad to get it for you. Do you know why?"

"Why?" She asked.

"Because I love you Nina." I said.

She looked at me, her face melting, a tear forming in her eye. "I love you too Bill." She said softly. "More than anything."

We continued to stare at each other for a moment, neither of us sure what to do, both of us feeling the tingling of electricity that was building between us. I finally broke the spell by asking, "Why don't you put it on? See how it looks."

"Sure." She said, taking her eyes from me and concentrating on the gift in the box.

She extricated the necklace and pendant, gave them a quick look, and then handed them to me. "Can you put it on me?" She asked.

I took it from her and undid the clasp. She leaned forward towards me, grabbing her hair and holding it away from her neck. Our faces were less than six inches apart. Taking the ends of the chain in each of my hands I put my arms around her neck, resting my forearms on her shoulders. She gazed up at me lovingly as my trembling hands attempted to put the little clasp into the little loop. It was not as easy as it looked.

"Take your time." Nina said breathlessly, pushing herself closer to me.

I nodded, finally getting the two ends to fit together.

"There." I said, trying to pull away. But she dropped her hands from her hair and put them around my back, holding me firmly to her, refusing to let go.

"I'll look later." She said, pulling me against her.

Our lips met in a soft kiss and her arms squeezed me tight, allowing me to feel her chest pushing against mine. Instead of touching her lips to mine and then withdrawing as she usually did, she kept them there, pressing them, letting them taste me. For the first time since our first embrace by the river I felt the tip of her tongue reach out hesitantly, touching the underside of my upper lip. Her tongue was warm and soft, wet with her saliva as it touched briefly and pulled back into her mouth.

Emboldened by her first tentative move, she did it again, letting her tongue slide completely between my lips. I touched the tip of it with my own and our taste buds connected. At the touch she trembled in my arms, compelling me to pull her tighter. She pulled her tongue back again and then slid it in a little deeper, seeking and meeting mine, allowing them to swirl together for an instant. I gave her tongue a little suck with my mouth and she hummed against me, driving it further into my mouth.

We broke apart for a second and looked into each other's eyes. I saw wanting in hers, excitement, the excitement of new discovery.

"I always thought it would be gross." She said softly, her breath tickling the wetness of my lips.

"Gross?" I asked, leaning in and kissing her lightly, dabbing at her lip with my tongue, before withdrawing.

"Yes." She nodded. "French kissing. I always thought it would be gross. Touching someone else's tongue with yours. But it's not."

"I guess it depends on who the someone is." I said.

She leaned forward again. "Maybe that's it."

We resumed our kiss, letting our tongues glide together, holding each other tightly. Her hands came up to the back of my neck and began caressing me there, lightly rubbing with the fingertips, lightly scratching with the fingernails. The sensation sent chills down my spine and I felt myself becoming erect with frightening speed. I let my own hands drop down to her lower back, my fingers feeling the muscle and skin, the softness that existed beneath the material of her sweater.

We continued to do this for more than ten minutes, our tongues probing each other's mouths, our hands caressing. Nina seemed to relish it, to draw strength from it. She quickly learned what I liked and what I did not like and adapted her technique. She learned not to cram her tongue down my throat but to teasingly swirl the tip, gradually increasing the depth. I sucked gently on her lips for a moment, making them swell and then she did the same to mine.

My dick, which had been releived by nothing but my own hand since my afternoon with Cindy and Maggie, was straining in my jeans, begging to be released. It was accustomed to playing a more active role in the festivities once things reached this point. It ached to be ground into her body, to have her hand upon it. But this was not Cindy or Maggie, this was not Debbie or Steph or Anita or any of the other girls I'd bedded. This was Nina, who I loved and who I was not going to push anything upon. My pants would be kept firmly buttoned, at least until after she'd left.

When we finally broke apart a few minutes later I could feel the dull ache of blue balls in my groin. Nina looked up at me, her face still flushed, her eyes shining.

"Wow." She commented, straightening herself on the couch.

I nodded, trying to adjust myself in my pants by shifting my body back and forth. It was a poor job at best.

"So that was 'making out', right?" She asked me.

I chuckled. "Yes." I told her. "That was making out."

"Mmmm." She said clinically. "I can see why people like to do it."

"Yes." I nodded. "It is rather enjoyable, isn't it?"

"And now that we're, uh, together, we can do that whenever we want to?"

"We should probably wait until we're alone," I said. "But yes. Anytime."

She smiled. "Having a boyfriend is pretty cool." She said.

Nina left early the next morning to visit some relatives in Idaho with her parents. I would not see her for the next three days. When she returned we were only able to get together for a few hours on two different days. On one of those days we found the time and the privacy to 'make out' for a while but it did not match the passion of that first time. Not that it was disappointing you understand.

We made plans to get together on New Year's Eve, to see in the beginning of 1984 together. Tracy would be going to a party with some friends (and borrowing my car to do it so she wouldn't risk riding with a drunk driver) and my parents would be at a New Year's Eve party of their own. I had a twelve pack of beer that Tracy had scored for me and a joint of some good greenbud that Mike had scored for me. We planned to sit and watch all of the stupid shows that were on, smoke grass, drink beer, and maybe make out a little. Though it may sound unimaginably dull to some, I was looking forward to it greatly.

About six o'clock that evening, as Tracy and my parents were frantically scrambling around the house trying to get ready to go, Nina called me.

"Bill," She told me sadly, getting right to the point. "I can't come over tonight."

"You can't?" I asked, disappointed, feeling almost betrayed in fact.

"I'm sorry." She said. "My parents told me I couldn't go out tonight. They were very firm about it too." She sighed. "I don't know what's gotten into them. They've never treated me like this before. Never!"

I was silent for a moment. I knew what was happening and I had known that it was coming eventually. As I said before, you simply cannot hide your activities from those that you lived with. Especially not when you had been in the habit of staying home all of the time and then you suddenly developed the urge to go out for hours at a time every day. I'd tried to bring this up to her on a few occasions but her reaction each time quickly taught me that it was a taboo subject. I knew I was simply going to have to wait until the subject came to a head. Well now it seemed as if that had happened.

"Nina." I told her. "Did your parents ask you where you wanted to go tonight before they said no?"

"Yes." She told me.

"And what did you tell them?"

"That some friends from school were having a party that I wanted to go to. I told them I wouldn't drink and everything and they still said no. No matter how much I…"

"Nina." I interrupted.

"What?"

"They know about us." I told her.

There was silence on the line for a moment. Finally, "No Bill, they can't. How could they know? I never tell them where I'm REALLY going when I come over to your house."

"Do you think your parents are stupid Nina?" I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle, but wanting to get this point across.

"No!" She said sharply, "But I don't see how…"

"Think about it." I told her. "You're a shy girl all of your life until you meet me. Suddenly you start going out and doing thing all of the time. They like me at first so they allow it. But then we have a falling out because of, well, you know. Anyway, you stop seeing me and go back to staying in the house all of the time. They tell you that you are never to see me again. For a while you don't. And then all of a sudden you start having things to do once more. You want to borrow their car all the time so you can go visit someone. No matter what you are telling them when you come over here, I doubt if they bought it more than twice. They have common sense Nina. They know about us."

"They DO NOT!" She yelled angrily. "They're just afraid of me being out on a night when everyone's drinking. I was careful Bill. They don't know about us and they won't find out!"

"Nina…"

"I'm sorry I can't come over." She said shortly. "If you'd like me too, I'll try and come over tomorrow."

"Of course I do Nina," I said. "But you're going to have to face…"

"There's nothing to face!" She insisted. "Do you want me to come over tomorrow or not?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Yes Nina," I said, more gently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll give you a call." She said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear. Before I'd even had a chance to tell her I loved her.

And so it came to pass that I spent New Year's Eve alone in my parent's house. The beer did not get drank, the pot did not get smoked. I went to bed around ten o'clock. I was too miserable to even masturbate.

When I woke up the next morning I was not surprised to find my parent's car missing from the garage. It was a New Year's eve tradition with them. They would get totally trashed at the school faculty party and take a cab home. The next morning they would not get out of bed until at least noon, at which point they would spend the rest of the afternoon bitching about their hangovers and swearing they were never going to drink again. In the early evening they would pile into Mom's car and drive to wherever Dad's car had been left the night before to retrieve it. Let me tell you, anyone who thinks of teachers as stoic, sober, square people never grew up with one in the house. In my experience Dad was more the rule than the exception. He was by no means an alcoholic but he sure liked to party on special occasions.

Tracy was already up when I went down to the kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper. She was not hung over since she had not had anything to drink the night before. Nothing like having a death sentence from fate hanging over you to keep you from driving a car while intoxicated. Too bad there wasn't some way we could do that to those that were arrested for drunk driving. It would probably drastically cut down on the repeat offender rate.

She asked how my night had gone and I told her about my conversation with Nina. She listened with concern.

"A classic case of denial." She told me when I'd finished. "But understandable. Remember Bill, she's still, for all of her maturity and sophistication, a seventeen-year-old. Seventeen year olds are always right."

"I know." I said. "I'm sure that deep down she knows that I'm right. She just doesn't want to face it, doesn't want to confront it because she'll then be forced into a confrontation with her parents. She's very untypical of a seventeen-year-old in that regard. She worships her parents and she still thinks they're smarter than she is."

"In all except for this." Tracy agreed. "If I was you I'd brace myself. I think this thing might be about to explode."

"I think you're probably right." I agreed.

Tracy then turned the conversation around to her REAL goal of the morning. She wanted to borrow my car again to go to a football party. I had nowhere to go so I told her she knew where the keys were. Less than twenty minutes later she was out the door.

Nina called a few minutes later and told me happily that her parents had raised no objections to her going out today. She almost gloated as she told me this. When I hung up from her my mood was improved greatly. I would get to see her today. That always made me happy. And maybe I was the one who was wrong about her parents. Maybe they really HAD been concerned about her being out on New Year's Eve. After all, Nina knew her parents better than I did, didn't she?

I was about to head upstairs to shower when Dad came staggering into the kitchen. He was wearing his robe tied loosely around him. His hair was a tangled mess and his face was unshaven with eyes that looked downright painful.

"Ohhh God." He moaned, heading for the cabinet. As he passed I could smell the odor of stale booze around him; a smell my paramedicine career had made me intimately familiar with. "Never again."

"Little too much to drink last night?" I asked him as he fumbled a large tumbler out of the cabinet and almost dropped it.

"Uhhh!" He groaned, turning on the sink and filling the glass. "Don't ever drink Bill." He advised me. "Ever."

"I'll take that under consideration." I told him, watching as he downed the glass of water in three gulps. He refilled it and then went to another cabinet for some aspirin.

When I finished my shower and came back downstairs he was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around him, watching the first of many football games. He seemed semi-catatonic and I could not imagine that he was actually seeing anything on the screen. I smiled in amusement, reflecting that if I'd been a normal teenager I would have been struck with the screaming horrors at the idea of my girlfriend coming over while my Dad was in his bathrobe on the couch.

"Nina's coming over in a little bit." I told him, just to give him fair warning.

"Uh." He grunted, his head never turning.

When Nina arrived we went up to my room. This was not out of desire to make out or out of embarrassment at the state of my father but simply to keep the noise level downstairs, where both my parents were, to a minimum. They probably weren't in the mood for excessive chatter.

We sat on my bed talking while a Simon and Garfunkle album played on the turntable at low volume. Since my return I'd re-discovered the fact that most music from the eighties really sucked. This was probably due to the advent of MTV, which had made it necessary for a band to LOOK good on camera instead of to produce good music. Since I could not hear music from the nineties, when this fad had balanced out a bit, I had turned, in desperation, to listening to music from the seventies and sixties. To my surprise and delight much of it was actually pretty good and even deep. I'd even managed to get Nina interested in some of it.

We were discussing the track called "The Boxer" when the sound of the doorbell ringing from downstairs registered on my consciousness.

"So you see," I explained. "He's a musician that tried to make it in New York and failed the first time. That's what the lyrics basically say. It's the last verse that really sums it up, tells you that he was defeated but that he remains a fighter from the experience."

"It's actually like poetry." Nina, an aficionado of poetry told me.

"Yes." I nodded. "That's what any really good song lyric is like. That's what they should strive for. That's what a lot of the crap they're putting out these days is lacking in. They simply try to repeat the same phrase over and over while they dance and come up with a bitchin beat from their synthesized drums. That's not music, that just…"

I stopped suddenly, hearing the sound of raised voices drifting up from below. My Dad's was one of them. He was trying to patiently explain something to someone but the someone in question kept overriding his words. When the words 'where is she' drifted up from the owner of the other voice, Nina's ears perked up.

"Dad!" She said suddenly. "That's Dad!"

"Oh shit." I mumbled, hearing MY dad start to raise his own voice.

"What do we do?" Nina asked me. "What is my dad doing here?"

"I guess we'd better go find out." I said, already knowing. "Before our dads start exchanging punches with each other."

"Bill?" She asked, looking really scared now.

"C'mon." I said, standing up. "My dad is younger but your dad was in the war. I don't want MY dad to get hurt."

"Bill!" Came Dad's voice from downstairs. "Would you and Nina come down here for a minute?"

"C'mon." I told her. "The jig is apparently up."

"Oh God Bill." She said, shaking her head.

When we got downstairs we found my dad, still dressed in his robe, still unshaven and looking like shit, facing off against Nina's Dad, who was clean shaven and dressed in slacks and a sweater, over the threshold of the front door. When he saw Nina he took an angry step forward.

"Get your butt down here girl!" He yelled. "How dare you tell me you were going to visit a friend and then take our car over here to this slimy scumbag's house!"

"Dad!" Nina yelled back, not moving forward.

"Now just a minute!" Dad put in angrily. I could tell he was reaching the end of his fuse. "Where do you get off coming to my house and calling my son…"

"Your son is the scum of the earth!" Mr. Blackmore put in. "And you Sir, are the man who raised him with the values of a rutting pig. That makes you a rutting pig in my book and I have no further words to pass with the likes of you. I have come for my daughter before your son violates her in some god-forsaken way. I only hope and pray it hasn't happened yet. Nina, get over here now!"

"Dad!" Nina cried, tears on her cheeks now. "What are you doing? I love Bill!"

"Love?!" He screamed, turning to me. "You are the lowest form of life on this earth young man. Nina, NOW!" He commanded.

She opened her mouth to say something else but I spoke first.

"You'd better go with him." I told her.

"What?" She asked, looking at me as if I'd betrayed her.

"Nothing can be accomplished right now." I said. "This situation can only get worse. Go with him and try to talk to him. Tell him what I'm like."

"I KNOW what you're like." Mr. Blackmore told me. "I know exactly what you're like."

"Now you listen here!" Dad yelled, taking a step forward. "My son…"

"Dad." I said sharply, using my adult voice. "Let it go. It'll be all right."

Dad paused with his mouth open. He didn't look like he wanted to let it go and I was absurdly touched by this. My Dad, one of the mildest mannered people I knew, seemed on the verge of violence because someone was slandering his son's reputation.

"It's okay Dad." I told him again. "Let it go."

"Get out here Nina!" Mr. Blackmore said again. "Now!"

"Bill?" Nina asked again, looking miserable.

"Go Nina." I told her. "Talk to him. It's for the best. But wait until he's cooled down a little. And remember that I love you."

"Love?" He repeated. "You truly are…"

"Hey!" I barked, taking a step towards him, my eyes boring into his. It had the desired effect, he stopped talking and looked at me. "You have what you came for." I told him. "Nina is leaving with you, right Nina?"

"Yes." She cried.

"You don't need to stand here and continue to throw insults at me. Just go."

We stared at each other for a moment and I could see in his eyes that he was starting to glimmer that he wasn't dealing with an ordinary teenager. Finally he nodded. "C'mon Nina." He told her. "Let's go."

She gave me one last look and then followed her father out the door. She climbed into her mother's car while Mr. Blackmore climbed into his. A second later they were gone, leaving Dad and I standing in the doorway.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"Apparently Mr. Blackmore doesn't care too much for you?" He asked mildly.

I suppressed a smile. "Apparently not." I agreed.

He shut the door and looked at me for a moment. He rubbed his temples. "What are you going to do now?" He asked.

"Give it a few days." I said. "That's what I'm going to do. Hopefully Nina will be able to bring him around to at least tolerating me."

"And if she doesn't?"

I shrugged. "I love her Dad." I said. "I plan to marry her some day. I don't think her Dad is strong enough to keep us apart. One way or another we'll be together. Although I'd prefer to be with her with her Dad's consent. If she can't bring him around I guess I'll go over and have a talk with him. Maybe that will help."

"Or maybe he'll shoot you dead on his porch." Dad suggested half-seriously.

"Ahh Dad," I said. "At least that way I'd die poetically. In the name of love. Wouldn't that be glorious?"

Dad continued to stare at me, not even cracking a smile at my glory of love line. Finally he said, "Bill, don't you think it's about time you had a little talk with ME?"

"A talk?" I asked.

"A talk." He confirmed. "I should have brought this up before now and I really wish that the straw that broke the camel's back hadn't happened on a day that I was hung over, but I really think it's time."

"What are you talking about Dad?" I asked weakly.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." He told me. "It happened nearly two years ago now. One day you were Bill the underachiever. A nasty, typical teenager that didn't want anything to do with his parents, that hated his sister, that wouldn't listen to a word anyone told him. The very next day you were cleaning your room, improving your grades, making great strides to improve your relationship with Tracy, and…" He paused, "And you became somewhat of a hit with the girls. Much more of a hit than I've ever seen anyone be, adult or teenager. Something happened to you, something big, and it changed you completely. Sometimes you seem very adult in manner. VERY adult. In fact you almost seem like someone who has seen a little bit of everything. At the same time you've made frighteningly accurate predictions about the stock market and events in the news. So how about we start to talk about it?"

"Dad," I started, not sure what I was going to say.

"Bill." He told me. "It's time. I can't go on like this any longer. Tell me what happened to you."

I frowned, looking at him. What to do?

Finally I came to a decision. "Dad," I asked. "You ever smoke grass?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Don't give me the standard Dad answer." I told him. "Tell me the truth. You grew up in the sixties. You went to college during the summer of love. You used to attend anti-war protests. Mom told me you burned your draft card and got arrested for it. I've seen pictures of you when you were in college. You looked like a hippie. So tell me, have you ever smoked grass?"

"Of course." He told me. "I used to smoke it quite a bit in college. But what does that…"

"Meet me in your den." I told him. "And I'll tell you everything."

"But…"

"Just do it Dad. I have a joint upstairs. We need to smoke it together."

"You have a JOINT?" He asked sternly. "Bill, how dare you…"

"Dad." I said mildly. "As you pointed out, I'm not a typical teenager. If you want to hear what I have to say I think you're going to want to smoke some pot first. It's quite a story."

"I can hear your story just fine without smoking any pot, thank you." He told me. "And I want you to march right upstairs and throw away whatever marijuana you have in this house and never bring it in here again. What did you think…"

"Dad," I interrupted. "What I have to tell you is pretty mind-blowing, okay? You're going to need to put aside your parental attitude for a while.

You've mentioned that I act like an adult at times. Well this is one of those times. If I'm going to tell you this story you're going to need to speak with me as an equal, not a teenager. In order to speak with me as an equal we need to BE equal. Smoking pot with me will serve that purpose." I smiled. "Besides, it'll probably get rid of your hangover."

He stared at me for a moment, giving the extended version of THE LOOK. Finally he nodded. "I guess I'll do about anything to get rid of this hangover." He said. "Meet me in there quick before my better judgement makes me beat your ass and ground you."

"Right." I said, heading upstairs.

We closed ourselves in to Dad's den, locked the door, and I produced the joint. I lit it with a lighter, took a good hit, and then passed it over to Dad. He took it from my fingers and looked at it for a minute.

"Bill, this is nuts." He said. "I haven't done this in fifteen years. You're my son for God's sake. Fathers are not supposed to smoke Mary Jane with their sons."

"Buds Dad." I told him, exhaling my hit. "We call it buds these days. Take a hit."

He gave me one more doubtful look, sniffed a little at the joint, and finally put it to his lips. He inhaled, making the tip glow and then coughed a pungent cloud of smoke out.

"It tastes like a skunk." He complained. "Bill, I don't think…"

"It's supposed to taste like that." I told him. "That means its good shit. Hit it again. Slower this time."

He tried again. This time he managed to hold the hit for about fifteen seconds before he coughed it out. He passed the joint back to me and I quickly took another hit. When I gave it back to him he tried to refuse it.

"Hit it Dad." I insisted. "If you want to hear this story you gotta be stoned. That's the rules."

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He muttered but took the joint anyway.

By the fourth hit Dad was starting to mellow. He stopped trying to refuse the joint when I passed it to him. In fact he even began making jokes.

"Don't Bogart that joint my friend." He told me when I took an especially long hit. He then began chuckling.

"Wouldn't dream of it Dad." I told him, feeling the drug going straight to my head.

"Wow." He said after exhaling another hit. "They've certainly made some improvements in grass since I used to smoke it. It used to take us four or five joints to get to where I am now."

"The miracles of modern horticulture." I told him and he started cracking up hysterically. I joined him, marveling that he was right, it was pretty freaking weird to get stoned with your Dad.

When the joint was burned down to a roach and both of us were flying high, I turned to my father.

"Okay." I told him. "Are you sure that you want to hear this? What I'm about to tell you will change your entire opinion of me. You will no longer be able to see me as the son you've known."

He took a deep breath. "I don't see you that way now Bill." He told me seriously. "Like I said, you changed suddenly one day. I have to say it's been for the better, but you haven't been the son I knew in quite some time.

I still love you of course, don't get me wrong, but you weren't the same after that day. So give. Tell me what happened to you."

"If I tell you," I said. "You can never tell anyone else this story. No one, never! I would prefer you not even tell Mom although I would understand if you did. The consequences of anyone finding out what happened to me are potentially severe."

"The consequences?" He asked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," I said, telling him the same thing I'd told Tracy, "That I possess knowledge that people would literally kill for. That they would stop at nothing to possess."

He raised his eyebrows a bit at that one.

"You're thinking I'm having delusions of grandeur, right?"

"It had occurred to me." Dad admitted.

"I'm not." I told him. "Remember the stocks Dad? Remember how I knew a particular stock that was going to skyrocket at a particular time?"

"Yes." He nodded. "Are you trying to tell me that you can see the future Bill? Because I'm not sure that I can really accept that."

"I'm not seeing the future Dad." I told him. "I have lived through the future."

He looked at me for a moment, blinking. "Lived through the future?"

I began to talk.

Chapter 10

Momma loves her baby

Daddy loves you too

And the sea may look warm to you baby

And the sky may look blue

But ooooh Baby…

PINK FLOYD

Our conversation lasted for nearly an hour. Dad listened to me with rapt attention, interrupting me only to ask questions when something I'd said required qualification. He didn't seem to have any problem believing my tale, leading me to believe that he'd suspected some vague version of the truth the whole time. When I got to the part about Tracy dying in the car accident and fate continually trying to reclaim her his face paled. He picked up the roach and held out his hand for the lighter. I handed it to him and he took a mighty hit.

Dad was strangely un-offended by the fact that I'd gone on a minor rampage among the high school girls.

"I can see how the temptation to do that would be overwhelming." He told me knowingly. "You're over that phase now? Except for Nina?"

"Yes." I told him. "Believe me, I've learned my lesson. Being dropped off in the middle of the hood will do that for you. And Nina's different. I love her. She may be seventeen but she's got the maturity of someone much older. Like I told you, I plan to marry her someday."

He was however, like Tracy, strangely offended by my affair with Anita.

"I can't believe you would do something like that." He told me, shaking his head. "And I can't believe SHE would do something like that."

"Dad," I said, "At the time I started the relationship with her I was thirty-two. Who else should I be sleeping with? And don't blame Anita for anything. I found her weakness and exploited it in order to seduce her. Remember, in my first life she never tried anything with me. Only when I pushed her buttons in the right way did she act."

"And she fell in love with you." He said. "So much in love that she didn't meet and marry her intended husband."

"Like I said Dad," I told him. "I've learned a lot since I came back. One of the things I learned was that I was not quite as mature as I thought I was. And that I didn't know nearly as much about love as I thought. But I'm learning."

"And Anita?" He asked. "What of her?"

"Hopefully," I said, "My little commando raid on her car did the trick. If not, I'll just have to come up with something else. Like I said, fate WANTS Anita and Jack to be together so my little nudge probably worked."

He nodded, looking at me. "And you told Tracy all of this?" He asked.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Do you think that was wise?" He asked me cautiously. "Tracy is only eighteen. Are you sure she fully understands the consequences of not keeping her mouth shut about this?"

"I think so." I told him. "Tracy is pretty smart in case you haven't noticed."

"Oh I have." He nodded.

"And like she pointed out, she had a right to the information. My most important goal from the very start was Tracy's survival. That remains my most important goal. I thought that she would probably heed my warnings a little better if she knew exactly what she was dealing with. That meant telling her. I still shudder when I think of her almost getting into a car with her boyfriend that night. She almost did that because she didn't know the source of the information I was giving her. I couldn't take the chance that would happen again. She needed to be told for her own protection."

Dad nodded soberly. "I guess you're right." He said, rubbing his temples again. "This is all pretty "mind-blowing", as you promised. It's hard to imagine that in some alternate time-line I've lost my daughter and I'm a victim's rights advocate. And what about that Bill?" He suddenly asked. "Is anybody going to suffer because I'm not doing that? Is any good that I did in the other life going to be left undone?"

I looked at him, knowing what he was going through. It was the same thing I went through when I first got back to 1982. Your mind tried to deal with all of the possible ramifications for your actions. Sometimes you had to make unpleasant decisions or conclusions. The loss of my daughter Becky was one such thing.

"I don't really know Dad." I answered. "After Tracy died and after the asshole that killed her was given a suspended sentence so he could play football, you and Mom turned your grief and anger into a full scale assault.

The group you joined helped increase the penalty for first time drunk driving, it helped raise the drinking age to twenty-one nationwide, and it helped pass mandatory sentencing laws in cases of vehicular manslaughter. Will all of that still get done without you?" I shrugged. "Probably. Like I told you, fate seems to try to keep things in line based on whatever pattern has been determined."

"But what if doesn't Bill?" He asked. "What if somewhere down the line someone dies because I haven't been a part of something that I was supposed to be part of? What if those laws don't get passed or they don't get passed at the same time and some drunk driver who otherwise would have chosen a different path or would have been in jail goes out and kills someone?"

"That might happen Dad." I told him. "And if it does there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. Nor should you blame yourself or me for it. If it's any comfort to you, you will probably never even know if such a thing does happen."

"But maybe I should join this group anyway." He said. "Maybe since I'm meant to do that I should go ahead and do it."

"Maybe." I agreed. "But it won't be the same. Being an advocate was a frustrating, agonizing process for you and Mom. Trying to get anything done was like trying to erode a rock by spitting on it. The only thing that kept you going year after year was your grief and anger over Tracy's death. Tracy is not dead Dad, and hopefully she won't be dead anytime soon. I doubt you can duplicate the drive you had without that factor thrown in."

"But…"

"Dad." I said. "I've learned that you can't change the world with this gift. All you can do is try to change a few things around you and even that is difficult and sometimes impossible. Our destiny has been altered because of my interference and we have Tracy when she should be dead. Fate will hopefully accept the consequences of that and adjust itself accordingly. I'm confident that that will happen, okay? If there are some minor changes from this interference there's nothing that you or I could do about them. I couldn't very well have let Tracy die just because there was a possibility that someone else down the road would get hurt or killed.

"I told Tracy not too long ago that I was not the type of person to carelessly hurt someone in my own self-interest just because I didn't know the person getting hurt. I stand by that statement but, unfortunately you sometimes have to take that risk anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, do you understand?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "I think so."

"Look at it this way." I told him. "Remember the story I told you about the kid that was choking on the hot dog?"

He nodded. "The one that Nina wrote you up for saving."

"Right." I said. "I saved that kid's life in that timeline. He hasn't even been born yet but I'm scheduled to save his life. What is going to happen when that kid chokes on that hot dog and Bill, paramedic extradonaire, is not there to save him because Bill never became a paramedic in the first place?"

"I suppose some other paramedic will show up at the call." He said.

"Right." I nodded. "Now modesty aside, I was a pretty damn good paramedic. There were others at the company that were not as good at it. There were some that were damn incompetent in fact. Suppose one of them shows up. Suppose they do not clue in to the fact that the kid is choking and don't clear his airway in time?"

"Then he'll die." Dad answered.

"Maybe." I nodded. "But you see, I'm inclined to believe that this kid will live. No matter how incompetent the medic that shows up is, he or she will attempt to put in a breathing tube. When someone is not breathing, that is what you do. So even if the rest of the clues don't inform him or her that they are dealing with an airway obstruction they will still put a laryngoscope into the kid's mouth at some point and try to put a tube down. At that point they will not be able to help but see that there is a large piece of hot dog in his trachea and they will remove it.

"Now it is possible that the extra minute or so that this might take will mean the difference between life and death for the kid, but I doubt it. This kid is meant to live and he probably will. Those drunk driving laws were meant to get passed and they probably will. And if either of those things don't work out this way, all I can say is that I was acting as I thought was best. And that's what you should say too."

We sat quietly for a few minutes while Dad digested all of this. Finally he looked up at me.

"You were right about my opinion of you changing." He told me. "I'll be forced to think of you as an adult now. An adult with opinions and ethics based on years of learning. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm going to have to stop thinking of you as a son and start thinking of you as an equal. I don't have anything else to teach you."

"Dad," I said, "I still am your son. Everything that I am, everything that I was is based on the way you raised me. My moral code, my ethics, all of that is from you and Mom. Sure, some of it took place in an alternate time-line but it was still you and Mom and the part that really counted was the part I learned long before I was even a teenager. You're still my Dad and you always will be."

"I never thought I'd have a son," He told me, "Who was only six years younger than me."

I laughed. "And I never thought I'd sit down and smoke a joint with my Dad either. But there you have it."

"There you have it." He repeated.

"What about Mom?" I asked next.

"What about her?" He said.

"Are you going to tell her all of this? Or would you like me to tell her?"

He took a deep breath. "What do you think?" He asked.

"To be honest Dad, I really don't know. I'm not sure Mom would care too much for the knowledge that her son is only three years younger than she is.

She especially wouldn't care for the part about the teenaged girls or Anita."

"Oh she knows about the teenaged girls." Dad assured me. "You didn't really think you were putting one over on anybody, did you?"

"No." I said. "I gradually came to the realization that my actions were not as secret as I thought they were. What I meant was that she wouldn't care for the knowledge that her thirty-two year old son was doing those things."

"You're probably right." He said. "And I imagine she had more than just a simple suspicion about Anita and you. She probably didn't want to face up to it, but I'm sure she had her suspicions."

I nodded, feeling shame and embarrassment at the thought that my mother knew about my sexual exploits.

"How about this?" Dad said. "Why don't we keep your secret between us for the time being. I don't see any good that could come of telling her and I can think of several bads that could come of it. If, at some point in the future, a reason to tell her develops then we'll sit down and have a talk with her."

"Sounds good Dad." I told him and then smiled. "Did Mom used to smoke pot with you back in college?"

He chuckled. "You know your Uncle Dave, Mom's brother?"

"Of course." I said.

"The Uncle Dave that is the conservative republican lobbyist for the insurance industry?"

"Yes."

Dad smiled. "He used to sell us the pot back in college. Pretty good shit for that time too."

I did not hear from Nina over the next two days. She didn't call me, come over, send a carrier pigeon, or send up smoke signals. I had no way of knowing if she was making any headway with her parents.

The Saturday afternoon before the start of school Tracy flew back to California. We all gave her hugs and she was admonished by my Mother to keep in touch. Dad and I had discussed Tracy and had seen no real reason to tell her that Dad was in on my secret. As her plane climbed into the sky she still thought she was alone in her knowledge of her brother's special difference.

First thing Monday morning, the first day of school of 1984, I took up position near the front of the school where Nina's mother dropped her off. It was snowing once again, a light flurry with little wind, and I stood unobtrusively near some parked cars, my hood pulled tightly over my head. Kids, dejected to be back at school so soon, walked to and fro providing me with camoflaugh. Ten minutes before class started Mrs. Blackmore pulled her car to the curb and Nina, dressed in the same down jacket she wore on the night of our first kiss, hopped out. She gave a half-hearted wave to her mother and began heading up the walkway where Richie Fairview and I had met so long ago.

When Mrs. Blackmore pulled away from the curb I broke into a run, catching up with Nina in less than ten seconds, just as she entered the quad.

"Nina." I called, feeling nervous at the reception I was going to receive. Was she mad at me? Had her parents talked her into abandoning me?

She turned at the sound of her name and I slowed to a walk, my eyes searching her face.

"Bill!" She said happily, rushing to me. She threw her arms around me and we embraced tightly, right there on the quad, right in front of hundreds of students. More than a few of them gave us some strange looks but I didn't care.

"Oh God Bill." She told me, kissing my cheek and hugging me tighter. "I missed you so much. I'm so sorry for what happened. I'm so embarrassed that my dad came over there."

"It's okay Nina." I told her. "I'm just glad you still like me."

"Of course I like you Bill. I love you. Nothing is going to change that."

"I thought your parents might have, you know, soured you against me."

She snorted. "They tried Bill, believe me. I got even more speeches and lectures about 'guys like you'. To tell you the truth, I've been fighting with both of them since that day. Things aren't cheery in the Blackmore house, let me tell you."

We finally broke our embrace and began walking towards the lockers. "So am I to assume," I asked, "That you weren't able to make much headway with them?"

"Not an inch." She told me. "I talked to them until I was blue in the face.

I told them that you're different now, that you've changed, that I'm in love with you, that you're in love with me, but they are completely irrational on the subject. They think you're Lucifer Himself. " She shook her head in puzzlement and frustration. "And I have no idea why they're acting like that. It is SO unlike them. They're usually the calmest, most understanding people."

"So what happens now?" I asked her. "Will we be able to see each other at all? Except for school that is?"

"They've grounded me Bill." She told me. "Grounded. Me! I've never been grounded in my life. I didn't even know they knew how to ground someone! But I'm not allowed to leave the house after school at all. For anything!"

"Hmm." I nodded. "That does present a problem."

"During one of our arguments," She went on. "I told them that they could keep me in the house until I graduated if they wanted but that wouldn't matter. I told them I'd be eighteen soon and heading off to college. Then I could see anybody I wanted!"

"And they said?"

"They said you'd lose interest in me by then so it didn't matter." She replied. "But if you hadn't, if I still tried to see you that they would not pay for any college outside of Spokane! And that they would only pay for that if I came home promptly each day." She shook her head. "Bill, that's absolutely nuts! I can't believe they'd say something like that. I can't go to college in Spokane! There's no medical school here!"

This last statement brought home just how strongly Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore felt about this subject. Like Nina had said, it was nuts. It was not the outpouring of a mind that was working a problem through rationally. Nina was their pride and joy, all that they lived for. To threaten to take away all that she hoped for just to keep her away from a certain boy, a certain boy that they'd once liked immensely, was mad.

"Nina?" I asked. "You said they developed this, uh, strong attitude about me right after you told them about my, uh, transgressions, right?"

"Right." She nodded.

"And they've never acted this strongly about anything before?"

"Never." She assured me. "This is completely wacko behavior for them."

We had reached Nina's locker and I stood behind her as she opened it and stowed some of her books inside. My mind was reeling with something that was right on the tip of it. Some explanation for this problem that was simply eluding me.

"What year did your parents get married?" I asked Nina as some vestige of it finally broke free.

"What year?" She asked.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"1951." She told me. "Why do you ask?"

"Your Dad told me once, back before he hated me anyway, that he and your mom were high school sweethearts."

"They were." She said. "They dated all through high school. And then Dad dropped out to go to the war. They got married when he got back."

"But the war ended in 1945 Nina." I reminded her. "What happened in the six years after?"

She shrugged. "They told me that they kind of broke apart for a while and then found each other again. They never really explained it any further than that. I never really asked. Why?"

"But your Dad did come home right away after the war, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did." She searched her memory banks for a moment and then nodded more firmly. "Yes." She told me. "He did. I remember him saying that he worked construction for a while right after the war. He told me that once when we were driving by some of those ghetto houses on the south side. He told me he'd helped build them in '47 and that they were nice back then." She looked over at me. "What does all of this have to do with anything?"

"I don't think your parents really hate ME." I told her. "They hate people LIKE me. More than hate, they detest, they're disgusted by."

"What are you saying Bill?" She asked uncomfortably.

"There's something in their past." I said. "Something in those six years after the war. I'll bet anything that's it."

"I'm not sure what you mean." She told me.

"Neither am I." I said. "Neither am I. Your old man's a mailman now, right?"

"Yes." She said. "He's been doing that since just after he and mom got married. He's getting ready to retire soon."

"So he's probably got a pretty cushy route, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He does those nice houses out by the river."

"What time does he usually get home?"

"Why?" She asked suspiciously. "You're not thinking of talking to him are you? That would be a very bad idea Bill."

"What time Nina?" I asked.

"Bill." She shook her head. "Don't do it. Daddy will kill you if he sees your face. He won't listen to a thing you say."

"Nina." I told her. "I intend to marry you some day."

She froze in her tracks, staring at me. "Marry?"

"Yes." I said. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I think you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Am I wrong?"

She swallowed nervously. "No." She said simply.

"I'd rather do it with your dad's blessing. I NEED to talk to him. Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself. And don't worry about your dad, I won't hit him." I chuckled. "He'd probably kick my ass anyway. But we need to talk."

"Bill," She shook her head vehemently. "You don't know…"

"No I don't." I said. "But all the same, this is something that is going to need to be addressed. I need to talk to him. What office does he work from and what time does he get off work?"

She saw the determination in my eyes. To this day I don't know if she gave in because she had faith in me or simply because of blind hope. But finally she said, "The office on North Grant Avenue in River View. He's usually done around two o'clock and home by two-thirty."

"Thank you Nina." I said. "I'd better get to class before I'm late."

"Bill?" She said as I turned from her.

I paused. "Yeah?"

"Good luck."

"I'll need it." I assured her. "And I love you."

"I love you too."

My hand was now completely healed up and I was cleared to return to full work duties. That included ROP. On the way to the trauma center I made a brief stop at home. I pulled something from my closet and took it downstairs, depositing it in a closed, cool place. I then drove to the hospital.

"Hi Mindy." I told my supervisor when I walked through the door.

"Bill!" She greeted me happily, even going so far as to give me a brief hug.

"I'm glad you're back." She lowered her voice and whispered. "Now maybe we can get some damn work done around here."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her.

"How's the hand? All better?"

I held it up for her perusal. It bore a clean, sharp scar that is still with me to this day.

"Poor baby." She cooed. "I've reassigned you with Kelly. Hope you don't mind. I had a little talk with your instructor about the incident with Brett, as well as some others, and she agreed that maybe he would be happier in shipping."

"I see." I said, feeling a minor pang of sorrow for Brett. He'd really wanted to get hired. "Listen Mindy," I started.

"Oh," She said, smiling. "By the way."

"Yeah?"

"I've put your name at the top of the list for students I recommend for hiring at semester break." She told me. "And my recommendations are always followed. Congratulations."

"Thanks Mindy." I told her happily. "I don't know what to say."

"You already said it." She said. "And it's not in your interest, it's in mine. You're a damn good worker."

"That's nice to hear." I told her. "But…"

"But?" She asked, glaring at me. "I don't like to hear buts."

"Well," I said. "I do need to ask a brief favor."

"And what might that be?"

"I need to cut out at one-thirty today. Today only. I hate to ask on my first day back but…"

She scoffed. "Is that all? You've got it Bill. Cut out whenever you want."

"Thanks again Mindy." I told her.

"Welcome aboard Bill." She said as I headed off to the sterilization area.

I decided to take my hiring as a good omen for my later task.

The River View area of Spokane was and is one of the more exclusive parts of town. The streets here were lined with trees and had center dividers that had grass growing on them; grass that was lovingly maintained by an army of City-paid gardeners. Streets that did not have any liquor stores, pawn shops, K-Marts, or, God forbid, apartment complexes. It was where the elite of Spokane lived; the lawyers, the real estate developers, the movers and shakers. It was a part of town where I had to be genuinely worried that I would be pulled over by a Spokane police officer, a high seniority officer of course, on general principals when my Datsun was spotted cruising the streets. It was a part of town that I'd rarely responded into as a paramedic. Rich people simply didn't call for ambulances very often.

Even the post office was a miracle of modern architecture. It was a single story building with Spanish tile on the roof, tucked unobtrusively away behind a commercial complex. The snow was still drifting down as I pulled in at twenty minutes to two that afternoon and found a parking spot in view of Mr. Blackmore's car.

I waited, chewing on my fingernails in anticipation.

At five minutes to two I spotted Mr. Blackmore heading from the main building out into the parking lot. He was walking hunched over against the wind, his postal uniform upon his body. I opened my car door and stepped out, taking a final deep breath to gather my courage. I headed towards him on an intercept course.

"Mr. Blackmore." I hailed when he was less than ten feet from me.

He looked up, his face showing his age, his gray hair tucked beneath his cap. I was struck by the strong resemblance between him and Nina. It took him a moment to recognize me. When he did his eyes burned.

"You." He spat, glaring.

"Me." I agreed.

"Get away from me you slime." He told me. "How dare you come here."

"We need to talk Sir." I told him firmly.

"I have nothing to talk to YOU about." He said. "Get away from me right now or I'll call the cops."

"I don't think we need to involve the police in this." I said. "I don't think they'd be very interested. I just want to talk to you about your daughter."

"My daughter has been forbidden to see you."

"I know." I answered. "She told me that when I talked to her this morning."

"You stay away from her!" He yelled. "Do I need to call the school and talk to the principal about keeping you apart?"

"You could." I allowed. "And he might go so far as to separate our classes.

But that won't help. Your daughter and I are in love Mr. Blackmore. No matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, we will find some way to see each other."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." He proclaimed, heading for his car once more. "Stay away from her!"

"I can't Mr. Blackmore." I told him simply.

He turned back towards me, his face red, his hands balled into fists. I was forced to wonder if the flippant comment I'd made to Nina about him kicking my ass hadn't been so flippant after all. "You WILL!" He ordered.

"Come over to my house." I said, holding my ground, using my adult voice.

"What?"

"Talk with me." I offered. "Sit down with me and tell me why you think I should stay away from your daughter. Why you think you know better than she does what's good for her. There has to be a reason. You can tell me what it is."

"I can tell you the reason right now." He said. "It's because you are a lowlife scumbag who is only after one thing."

I held his gaze. "No." I said. "I'm not."

"You are." He insisted. "She told us how you were. About the girls at school. Well you are not going to add her to your list. You are not going to destroy her life."

"So you thought you would do it for her?" I asked.

"How dare you…"

"Did you tell her that you would only pay for college if she stays in Spokane?" I asked him.

"If that's what it takes to keep her away from you." He said.

"Think about that Mr. Blackmore." I said. "Step outside yourself and think about what you're saying. Nina wants to be a doctor. She's geared her entire high school curriculum towards getting into college and med school. There is no med school in Spokane. You are talking about taking away her dream just to keep her away from me. Does that sound like a person who is acting in his daughter's best interests? Does that sound like the workings of a rational mind?"

"You will lose interest in her by then." He said. "Once you don't get what you want from her…"

"I already have what I want from her." I said. "I have her love. And I will not lose interest in her."

"You don't have the slightest idea what love is." He spat. "And neither does she. You're just trying to make her think you love her so she'll give in to you."

"Believe me Mr. Blackmore." I assured him. "I know what love is. Your daughter has shown me. We're not ordinary teenagers and I am not the way you think I am. Look at me." I told him. "Do I seem like a typical teenager to you?"

He stared for a moment, his face showing the first signs of confusion, his mouth open to make a reply. Finally he said, "No. You don't."

"Come over to my house." I offered again. "Talk to me like one adult talks to another. You're not afraid to do that, are you? You're not afraid that you might be wrong?"

"Afraid?" He asked. "Boy, there is absolutely nothing about YOU that can scare me."

"Then prove it." I challenged. "Come over to my house. We'll have ourselves a little talk, like men, and if you can convince me that I'm hurting Nina in any way, then I'll leave her alone."

"And why should I believe you about that?" He wanted to know.

I shrugged. "What have you got to lose?"

He continued to look at me for a long time as his mind worked over what I'd said. Finally he nodded. "Okay Son." He said. "I'll meet you at your house and we'll talk. And when we're done talking I expect you to keep your slimy self away from my family."

I smiled. "Well that's a start Mr. Blackmore. I trust you know where my house is?"

When we arrived at my house it was of course empty. I sat Mr. Blackmore down on the couch and excused myself for a moment, going into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two of the beers from the twelve-pack that Tracy had bought for me. They had been in just long enough to be of the proper drinking temperature.

I carried them into the living room and handed one to Nina's Dad. He looked at me strangely.

"As I recall from the days when you liked me," I told him, "You're partial to a cold brew when you get home from work."

"You think I'm going to be impressed by your possession of beer?" He asked.

"I'm not trying to impress you." I told him. "Just talk to you, one adult to another. I've found that adults talk better, looser, over a few beers. Don't you agree?"

He looked at me, a full-blown version of THE LOOK. "You don't seem like a teenager at all." He whispered.

"Let's pretend there's no age here Mr. Blackmore." I said. "We're having a serious discussion with long-term ramifications." I popped open my beer and sat down in my Dad's favorite chair. "So for now, let's just be Bill and Jack, two adults talking over an important subject."

Mr. Blackmore seemed confused by my words. I sensed a softening of the barrier he'd thrown up and felt I'd finally broken through. And then his expression returned to one of angry determination. He shook his head violently. "You're good Son." He told me, accused me, "That's what I need to keep reminding myself about people like you. You can seem so damn nice, so damn reasonable, so damn adult." He stood back up, setting the beer down on the coffee table. "You took me in once when you first started hanging around my daughter. Shame on you. But you almost took me in twice just now. That's shame on me." He began heading for the door.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said reasonably.

"You're not going to nice your way back into our house." He said. "Stay away from Nina."

"There's someone like me in your past, isn't there?" I asked him.

He stopped suddenly, jerking his head towards me. "What?"

"Tell me what happened." I said. "Why do you feel so strongly about me? It has something to do with the reason you came home right after the war but didn't marry your wife, who was your high school sweetheart, until 1951, doesn't it?"

He was now staring at me, agape.

"Doesn't it?" I prodded.

"Who have you been talking to?" He asked me, horrified.

"Just my own common sense." I assured him. "Nina supplied me with the dates and I was able to draw conclusions on my own. Your reaction to me is irrational Mr. Blackmore. You've focused on an aspect of my personality, my success with girls, and you won't hear anything else, won't listen to your own daughter even. Something happened to you and your wife after the war but before you got married, didn't it? Something to do with a womanizer who talked sweet?"

He continued to stare in disbelief.

"Tell me about it." I repeated. "Like I said, if you can convince me that I'm hurting your daughter, I'll leave her alone."

"You want to hear about it?" He asked me, glaring.

"Yes." I told him. "Sit down, open your beer and tell me about it. I'm a good listener."

"All right Son." He said. "You want to hear why I don't like you, why I won't let you near my daughter, I'll tell you." He sat down on the couch again, making no move to pick up the beer.

"Mary and I WERE high school sweethearts, as you said. We met when I was a junior and she was a freshman. That was in 1942 right here in Spokane. Mary was the most beautiful, sweetest, most desirable girl I'd ever met in my life. I could talk to her about things I couldn't talk to anyone else about. I fell in love with her right away, maybe even before our first date. And she fell in love with me too."

I nodded, not speaking, picturing Mary, a.k.a. Mrs. Blackmore, as she must have been back then. She'd probably looked and acted a lot like Nina.

"By the time I started my senior year we were an "item" as we said back then. Oh, how I loved her, young man. I couldn't wait until the day when we were finally married. We were going to have a church wedding with hundreds of guests and then buy a house near the falls." He shook his head sadly. "Things didn't quite work out that way."

"I have my share of blame to take for the way things turned out. If not for me going off to fight in that stupid war…" He trailed off.

"Something happened why you were at war?" I asked.

He glanced up at me for a second, not answering my question. He sighed and finally picked up the beer bottle. He twisted the top off and took an enormous drink.

"Everyone wanted to go to war back then." He told me. "The soldiers were gods. They were fighting for this great arsenal of democracy we live in. Whenever you went to the movies and saw the newsreels you saw our fabled soldiers fighting those godless Krauts and Japs. You can't imagine how glorious they made war look."

I nodded. I could well remember how it had been during the Gulf War (or how it was going to be). You tell people enough that this war is worth fighting and that the soldiers are gods, they start to believe it. If it worked in the cynical nineties I could imagine how well it worked in the comparatively naive forties.

"Even when people I knew," Mr. Blackmore went on, "Started coming back crippled or burned, with arms or legs missing, even when I'd hear they had been killed and buried over there, it still didn't dissuade me. I wanted to go. I thought I wanted to go more than I wanted to stay and start my life with Mary. After all, Mary would still be waiting for me when I got back, wouldn't she?

"When I was a senior all of my buddies started enlisting. You could do that at seventeen if you had your parent's permission. So I asked my Dad if I could go and he let me." He shook his head. "To this day I still don't understand it. He let me drop out of school and go to war. I'd never seen him as proud of me as he was the day I asked him if I could. We went down to the recruiting office together and we signed the papers. I went through all of the induction physicals and testing and finally they gave me my ship off date. I raised my hand and swore an oath and I was a soldier.

"I wanted to get married before I left but Mary's parents wouldn't let her. They gave me all kinds of reasons why she couldn't. All kinds of reasons but the real one. Mary's Dad had been in World War I, a combat soldier. He knew what I was in for. He didn't want his daughter being a war widow at fifteen or sixteen.

"So we promised we'd marry as soon as I got back home. We promised we'd write to each other. We promised." He sighed. "And off I went. Of course merely being in the war wasn't enough for me. Oh no, I had to volunteer for the most dangerous job I could think of; the airborne infantry. Here was a division that had been known to lose more people in routine training than some regular infantry divisions lost in combat. That was for me. After all, when you're seventeen, you don't think you can die, right?"

I nodded solemnly at his words, remembering my own youth the first time around and remembering my feelings of immortality when I'd returned. Feelings that Richard Fairview had ended with a sweep of his knife.

"They took me of course." He went on. "I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. By my eighteenth birthday in late April of 1944, I was at a base in Southern England, training for the invasion of France."

"D-Day." I said, looking at him. I knew that the 82nd had been pummeled on D-Day and on many operations after it. This man had lived through all of that somehow.

He nodded. "Yeah, I was there. I'm coming to that."

"All the time I was in basic and in airborne training, Mary and I wrote letters back and forth. We told each other we loved one another. We promised to be true. I even wrote her love poems and put them at the bottom of each letter. I told her that I missed her and that I couldn't wait to get back so we could have that church wedding. Her letters said the same; she even used to tell me whom she was going to invite to the wedding and who she wasn't. You know how women are?"

Before I could answer that he looked at me sharply. "Oh yeah. You do."

I decided silence was the best answer to that comment. After a moment he went on.

"The rumors about losses in training turned out to be true." He said. "We lost a lot of people before I ever left United States soil. Parachute technology wasn't quite what it is today back then. People would go down and splat when their chutes didn't open for whatever reason. That's what we called it: a splat. Once an entire plane crashed on take-off during a training exercise killing the whole damn platoon inside. Forty airborne troops killed in an instant before they ever got near the war. Gradually I began to realize that I wasn't immortal. If Joe Hecklemeyer, another seventeen year old in my company and a good friend of mine, could die in something so stupid as a training accident, then so could I. I guess I was lucky in a way. I came to the realization that I was in a dangerous business long before D-Day. Those poor slobs in the regular infantry didn't come to that conclusion until the ramps of their landing craft dropped down on the beach.

"The letters from Mary made my day every time I got them. I would read them and they would make me feel better about what I was in for. I was fighting for Mary, for Mary's parents, for the children that Mary and I would someday have. It gave me something to live for, something to hope for. Mary was my reason for coming home, do you understand?"

"Yes." I said. "I do."

He looked at me suspiciously for a moment, not wanting to believe me. But he could see in my eyes that I was not putting him on. "Somehow I think you do." He said.

"The letters from Mary followed me to England when I went, although they'd sometimes take a little longer to reach me. But when late May rolled around I suddenly stopped hearing from her. I didn't know why. I thought at first that it was a screw-up with the mail but other guys were getting letters from home. Some of them were even from Eastern Washington. If they were getting their letters, why wasn't I?

"Before I had a chance to become seriously concerned about this the rumors began to fly through the division. We would be invading France soon and the 82nd and the 101st were slated to be the first in. I began to sense that the time to earn my money was coming soon.

"In the late hours of June 5, we were ordered to assemble. We were told that Eisenhower had given the order and the invasion was on for the next morning. We were a little surprised by this since it had been raining and windy for the past three days and was raining even then, but we were assured that a brief break in the weather would give us a window. My platoon, the forty men I'd trained with since my assignment, a mixed group of combat veterans and green soldiers like me, were assigned as part of a battalion tasked to take a bridge and hold it until the regular infantry, invading from the Normandy coast, could advance to us.

"At 12:30 AM, the morning of June 6th, we were loaded into the C-47s and off we went. I was in the front of the plane, near the pilots, and therefore would be one of the last to jump. I was loaded down with my pack, my rifle, my parachute and a picture of Mary I carried with me for good luck. I simply stood there with the rest of them, waiting for the signal. Finally it came. One by one we walked to the rear of the plane and jumped out, our static lines pulling open our chutes for us. Just before I went I took one last look at Mary's face, gave the picture a kiss, and then stowed it in my pack. Out I went into the night.

"There were five planes in our group and we were supposed to be dropped five miles from our objective. Our rally point was a clearing along the river. From there we were supposed to march in and assault the bridge, taking it by surprise." He snorted in disgust. "Apparently the lead pilot of our group was a little TOO good at his job. He dropped us right over the bridge itself. A bridge that was guarded by anti-aircraft guns and spotlights, a couple of tanks, and a company of German infantry with heavy and light machine guns."

"Jesus." I whispered.

"Jesus is right." He answered, drinking from his beer again. "They slaughtered most of us before we even hit the ground. People I knew intimately, people I'd trained with, my commanding officers, other greenies like me, were shot out of the air by flak shells and machine guns as we floated down. The spotlights would hit a group as they descended and tracers would arc up, blowing them to pieces. As I came down, near the rear of the group, I was forced to watch this in horror, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I saw hundreds of flashes from the ground as they shot us out of the sky like clay pigeons at a skeet range. Well over half of us were dead by the time our feet hit the earth. Most of our company that lived through this came down around the bridge. They were shot as soon as they landed, most of them before they could even get a shot off. Some of them drowned when they landed in the river. Some got hung up in the trestles of the bridge and were picked off there.

"I landed in a swampy area about three hundred yards from the bridge. It was dark where I came down and I got out of my parachute as quick as I could. Five other soldiers, others that had jumped with me from the fronts of the planes, joined me. Only one of us had combat experience, a sergeant from one of the other planes. He ordered us towards the bridge although even then he must have known it was hopeless. The machine gun fire had died down and had been replaced by the sound of rifles firing single shots. German rifles.

"By the time we got there the Germans had already killed everybody who'd landed near them. There were bodies everywhere, nearly all of them connected to the black parachute harness. German soldiers were walking around putting bullets in the bodies of those that were still moving. As I watched, a German soldier, obviously an officer, gave an order and a platoon of them began moving towards us.

"We bugged out as fast as we could, heading for our rally point since there was nowhere else to go. When we got there we found that well over half of our battalion had met a similar fate. Some were dropped in a swamp and drowned, some had been dropped in the middle of a town near the bridge and had been massacred as my company had. We had a mixed group of people from six or seven different companies with the task of taking a bridge that had already been alerted to our presence.

"The new commander of the battalion, a Captain who was the most senior officer there, ordered us to begin marching. We did.

"On the march to it all I could think about was Mary. I had love waiting for me when I got home. All I had to do was live through this war and I could claim what was mine. We hit the bridge at about 3:00 AM, going up against soldiers that were waiting for us. It was a vicious fight that lasted nearly an hour. The machine guns and the tanks cut down scores of us. Finally we pushed them away from the bridge and destroyed the tanks. When we finally stood on that bridge and started to dig in we were less than a quarter of what was originally tasked to take it. Somehow through all of that I'd lived. I didn't even have a scratch on me. I was years older than I'd been a few hours before, but I was alive.

"We were counter-attacked twice that night by German reinforcements. We fought them off each time but lost more and more people each time. We held that bridge for three days, all the time not knowing if we were fighting a hopeless battle, not knowing if the invasion had gone forward as planned or if it had been thrown back into the sea by Rommel's beach defenses. We held on and I thought of Mary and what was waiting for me when I got home; love and marriage and a family. I had to live, I simply had to.

"Finally, on June 9th at about three o'clock, our relief came. Regular infantry pushed forward from the beach and I'm ashamed to say that we actually fought a ten-minute battle with them before the both of us figured out what was going on. Ten people were killed in that friendly battle. But we were relieved. They took charge of the bridge and we, those of us that were left, were escorted back to safety. I was alive, for the time being anyway.

"The beachhead expanded and our troops finally broke out of Normandy. Understandably the mail was a little slow getting to us but as I waited at base camp day after day I figured that when the mail finally DID get through, there would have to be a letter from Mary in it. She'd never gone this long without writing before.

"When it finally got there I was handed three letters. Two of them were from my parents but one had Mary's handwriting on the front. I ripped it open before I even left the mail line. It was dated May 28th, 1944."

He gazed meaningfully at me. "To this day I still have the entire text of that letter memorized."

"A dear John letter?" I asked.

He sighed. "Dear Jack." He recited. "This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write in my life but I feel that I owe you an explanation. I know that we said we would love each other forever and that we would be married when you returned from the war. But we've been apart for a long time and I have grown up since you've left. I've grown up enough to realize that what I thought I wanted when I was fifteen is not really what I wanted. You're one of the sweetest, most understanding men I've ever met in my life but, unfortunately I've found true love in another while you've been gone. Bob Simpson and I have been spending a lot of time together lately and I've realized that it is he that I am in love with. I hate to give you this news while you are away at the war and it seems so impersonal to write it in a letter instead of telling you face to face but the fact is that I must tell you. Bob and I are in love and I feel that we will be getting married soon.

When you return from wherever you are Bob and I will most likely be married. I felt that I owed you this letter and I am truly sorry that I led you on before you left. Hoping you understand and with sincerest apologies, Mary."

He stared at me angrily. "YOU," He said, "Are Bob Simpson. And this time you're after my daughter instead of my wife. But this time you won't have her."

I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "Tell me about Bob Simpson." I said.

"What's to tell?" He asked. "He's you. Why should I have to tell you about the kind of person you are?"

"Obviously," I said, ignoring his categorization of me, "Mr. Simpson didn't marry your wife."

"Of course he didn't!" Mr. Blackmore yelled. "Mary was a good-looking, confused girl who's intended was away fighting the war. He wasn't interested in Mary's love. He was interested in her body!"

"Tell me about him." I repeated.

He swallowed the last of his beer and set the empty down on the table. "Do you have another?" He asked.

Wordlessly I got up, retrieved the empties and carried them to the kitchen. I tossed them into the garbage can and retrieved two more from the refrigerator. I carried them back to the living room and handed one to Mr. Blackmore. He popped it open and took a drink.

"Tell me about him." I said again, opening my own beer.

He sighed. "Bob Simpson was one of those kids that was real popular in school. He always said the right thing to whoever was talking to him, always said whatever that person wanted to hear. He was like a commission salesman, in fact that's what he became later on in life, selling used cars down at Zed Viermore's car lot. Did real well at it too.

"He was two years ahead of me in school. He graduated in 1942, when the war was really gearing up but he didn't enlist in the service. Oh no, not Bob. He stayed at home and took over the jobs that those who left to fight had vacated. He seemed to have no interest in going off to fight and the men in the town used to make fun of him, call him names about this but Bob paid them no heed. Bob had a high lottery number in the draft and just counted on the fact that the war would probably be over before they ever got around to sending him off.

"Bob you see, had discovered a situation that he could take to his advantage. He'd found that with the war going on there was a distinct shortage of men his age around while there was a distinct advantage to the amount of women that were lonely and scared. He used to make friends with them and eventually seduce them, leaving them like yesterday's trash once he got what he wanted from them. The same thing that YOU apparently discovered."

I had nothing to say to him. I couldn't deny what he was accusing me of.

"To tell you the truth, I used to envy Bob before I shipped off. It never occurred to me that he would one day be after MY girl and you couldn't help but be impressed by someone who could have the experiences that he was having. He never told anyone what he was doing, mind you, he was very discreet about it, but we all knew all the same. He did it with married women twice his age whose husbands were off in Europe or Japan. He did it with the fiances of younger men or even their wives after their husband's had shipped out. God knows how many he did but it was a lot. Some of them, usually the older ones, knew it was just a physical thing, a replacement until their husbands came home, but the younger ones sometimes fell in love with him. And he never tried to convince them that was a bad thing either. He broke more hearts than can probably be counted during World War II, marking off those he'd conquered on a little list somewhere."

"While I was off in England preparing to drop into France and witness the majority of my company getting slaughtered, Bob turned his attention to Mary. And why not? She was a beautiful, auburn-haired girl in the prime of her life. He worked on her for nearly a month, at first befriending her and then finally making her fall in love with him, all the time pretending he was in love with her. That was the thing back then you see. A girl would never consent to sex before marriage if she didn't think the guy was in love with her. There was no casual sex like there is these days. If you did the unthinkable and had sex before marriage, it damn sure meant you were going to get married soon. So that was Bob's scheme, he would turn on the charm and make them think he intended to marry him, he would make them think they were so in love that sex wouldn't seem like a big deal since they were going to get married eventually anyway.

"That's what he did to Mary. He seduced her over the space of about a month and finally got what he wanted from her. He took her virginity from her one night in his apartment building after telling her he loved her and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

"The next day, thinking that she was in love, thinking that she'd found what she wanted from him, she wrote me that letter.

"Bob continued to have sex with her for about a month, as much as he could get away with. When she finally started trying to pin down a date for the wedding, when she started asking too much about when she could tell her parents about the announcement, he dumped her. Of course being the person he was he had a speech already pre-planned. He gave it to her, telling her that he'd THOUGHT he'd been in love with her but that it had been simple youthful exuberance. She left his apartment that day knowing she'd been destroyed, knowing that she'd lost everything. She never even wrote me again after that. We never even communicated through the rest of the war.

"I jumped out of airplanes time and time again before Germany finally surrendered in April of 1945. I helped take bridgeheads, railheads, and every other kind of head in advance of the infantry troops. Friends were shot down left and right until I stopped making friends. I even jumped across the Rhine itself just before the end of the war. I didn't care whether I lived or died anymore. Mary was gone. What more did I have to live for?

"Somehow I made it to the end. A bullet or an artillery fragment never had my name on it. I came home in October of 1945 to Spokane to find my life destroyed, my hopes shattered by Bob Simpson."

He grinned a little. "Sometimes there is justice in the world. When I got home I found that someone like me had been there before me. A young man my age by the name of Jeff Zand had received a similar letter while he was fighting the Japanese. Jeff got himself a million dollar wound on Okinawa, shot in the knee, and they sent him home. His first act upon getting back was to find himself a pistol and shoot Bob Simpson to death in his apartment. He shot him twelve times, having to reload his pistol once in order to do it. Jeff was given the electric chair of course and he sat in it less than a year later. His last words were to the effect that it had been worth it."

"Not too many people turned out for Bob's funeral I heard, but there was damn near a thousand at Jeff's. I was one of 'em. I gave his coffin a sharp salute before they lowered it into the ground."

"But you and your wife did eventually marry." I said.

"Eventually." He told me, nodding. "I knew what Bob was like you see so I knew long before I got back that she wasn't gonna be Mrs. Simpson. But she was tainted you see, I couldn't take her back and she couldn't ask. Both of our lives were destroyed by what Bob had done to her. You see, despite his discretion, everyone knew what he was doing and everyone knew whom he was doing it to. It amazed me how so many women fell for him with the reputation he had; hell, even Mary had to have heard the rumors before she started up with him. He must've been one smooth talker indeed.

"Back then it was unthinkable for a woman to get caught having sex without benefit of the clergy. Once people knew she'd done such a thing, Mary was little more than a slut in everyone's eyes." He swallowed. "Mine included. An unfair way to think I agree, but that's the way it was. I couldn't have anything to do with her after that. I still loved her and I still thought about her, especially late at night when my hand found my organ, but I couldn't be with her because of what she'd done.

"The same applied to everyone else. Oh, men approached her all of the time but not with marriage in their minds. Mary learned her lesson from the first time and always sent them away but the damage, as they say, had been done. She got older and older and remained a maiden; a miserable maiden, living with her Mom and Dad.

"Myself, I tried to date some other girls and more than one of them hinted that marriage might be in the cards if I played them right, but none of them ever made me feel the way Mary had. None of them could compare to the way I'd felt when I was with Mary.

"The solution to the problem was so simple. It was staring me in the face the whole time but the thinking I'd been raised with kept me from seeing it.

Instead of finding a replacement for Mary, I needed Mary. In late 1950 I finally came to my senses. I decided to throw all of the unkind words, all of the nasty talk about her to the side. I went and found her and asked her if she would go out with me.

"She did and it was less than two weeks before we were talking about marriage. Of course everyone I knew told me I was making a mistake. My own parents told me to stay away from that slut. But for the first time in my life I stopped listening to what other people said and listened to what my heart said. The happiest day of my life was the day that Mary and I went down to the courthouse and said our vows to each other."

"As it turned out, I made the right decision back then. Mary and I have been happy together ever since. Many of the same friends who shunned me for marrying "a slut" ended up divorced from the "respectable women" that they married. To this day I still love her deeply and she still loves me and I sometimes still curse myself for wasting all those years.

"The only sour spot in our marriage was our inability to have children. We tried and tried and nothing happened. When we finally went to see the doctor he found that I had an unnaturally low sperm count. We were told that conception was damn near impossible and that we might want to consider adoption.

"Well, we decided against adoption for various reasons and just went about our lives. And then in 1966, long after we'd given up any hope for kids, Mary got pregnant." He snorted. "That brought back all of the slut talk of course. If there's one thing people love to do more than have sex it's talk about where everyone else is getting theirs. They figured Mary's "true colors" had come out once again. How else could she be pregnant? There was never any doubt in my mind about Nina's paternity. I live with Mary and I know her better than anyone on Earth. She could no more cheat on me than she could sprout a set of wings and fly.

"So you can see two things from this conversation young man," He told me. "One, why I dislike you so much and why I won't let you around my daughter. Two, why I care so much for my daughter and what happens to her. Nina's led a sheltered life with us, I'll be the first to admit it. It wasn't helped that she had a lisp as a child. Kids used to make fun of her, call her ugly, treat her like dirt because she was a little different." He shook his head sadly. "Kids can be mighty cruel you know. We sent her to speech therapy and got rid of the lisp but, like with her mother, the damage had been done.

"That's why we were so taken with you when you first started to come over. You seemed such a nice young man, intelligent, and you seemed to like Nina for who she was. You took us right in boy, right in."

"I do like Nina for who she is." I told him slowly. "You're wrong about me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Are you saying that you were not taking advantage of young girls at school? Are you saying that you didn't sleep with an engaged girl right before Nina saw you for who you were?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I did all of that and more. I discovered a near foolproof way to get girls into bed with me and I abused it. I didn't realize that there were consequences to my actions, I was selfish and self-centered, and my behavior was, in fact, despicable."

"I appreciate your honesty." He told me, somewhat taken aback by my words, "But how can you sit there, after telling me what you just did, and try to say that you are not like Bob Simpson?" He asked. "Maybe I'm missing something here."

"You are." I said. "You're missing something big Mr. Blackmore. You're missing the fact that I've never treated Nina like that. I've never tried anything with Nina, not even once. Nina is my friend. That was what she started out being and that was what our relationship has always been based upon. Your daughter is the best friend I've ever had in my life and that friendship has evolved into love. When we had our fight and she stopped seeing me, what did she tell you was the reason?"

"Because you were sleeping with every girl at school!" He almost yelled. "I thought we'd established that."

"Did she tell you that she loved me?" I asked next.

"Of course." He answered, exasperated. "That's what guys like you do to…"

"No Mr. Blackmore." I cut in. "That's where you're getting locked up. You're comparing what happened between me and Nina to what happened between your wife and this Simpson guy. But that's not what happened at all."

"Because she came to her senses before it could." He said.

"No." I shook my head. "She stopped seeing me because she loved me and I wasn't returning her love. She was in love with me during the period I was sleeping with all of these girls and I was in love with her but I didn't realize it. I didn't know that you could love someone you were friends with. By the time I realized it she had gotten fed up with my other activities. She'd gotten fed up with the pain that comes with watching someone you love play with someone else. She left because she figured that I would never love her and she would never have a relationship with me, not because I was trying to sleep with her.

"Once she was gone I realized my mistake. I realized how much I loved her and I felt physical pain that she wasn't with me anymore. When she ignored me at school it hurt Mr. Blackmore, more than I ever would have thought possible. I stopped my activities with other girls and I started concentrating on getting Nina back." I held up my hand so he could see it. "You see this? I drove a car with a stickshift all the way across town with this hand bleeding from a scalpel wound just so I could have a chance to talk to her, to say my piece to her. Does that sound like the sort of thing Mr. Simpson would have done? I love her Mr. Blackmore, I want to be with her always, do you understand? I feel the way about her that you felt about your wife when you went off to the war."

This comparison upset him. "You have no idea how I felt about my wife!" He yelled. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" I asked calmly. "And why is that? Is it because I'm so young?"

He didn't answer, simply looked at me.

"You were sixteen when you fell in love with your wife, weren't you?" I asked him. "About the same age that I am now, right? And your wife was only what? Fourteen, fifteen? A little younger than Nina is now. Why is it so hard for you to accept that your daughter might know what love is? Or me?"

"I just can't accept this!" He told me. "I can't accept your story that you're really a nice young man who's merely trying to court my daughter in the old fashioned way. You have a gift young man. Like you told me, you're a good listener and you give off a vibe that tells people you can be trusted. You do this so well that I came in here and told you a story that I've never told anyone before. Me, who hated your guts, told you this story." He shook his head. "I can see why the girls go for you and I can see why Nina fancies herself to be in love with you. But you're a scoundrel all the same. You use your gift for your own pleasure and I don't want my daughter to be one of your playthings."

I took a sip of beer again, trying to think my way through what he'd just said. Finally I asked him, "Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?"

"What?" He asked.

"Do you remember what it was like to be sixteen years old and to have hormones surging through you day and night. Do you remember being able to think of nothing but sex? What it felt like? When you'd get it? Who you'd get it with?"

He swallowed nervously and then nodded. "Yes, I do."

"That's what I'm going through right now." I told him. "About two years ago I figured out a way to seduce girls easily. Never mind how I did it, but I did. I found that I could have sex pretty much with whatever girl I wanted to. Now put yourself into the shoes of a fifteen year old and ask yourself if you would be able to disregard that gift if you had it."

"Of course not." He admitted. "But…"

"Nina was never a part of that." I told him again. "I never tried to use this on Nina. Nina is my friend, do you understand? Even now, when I'm deeply in love with her, I do not use this gift on her. To do so would cheapen the relationship, would make it less than it really is. I have done nothing more than kiss your daughter Mr. Blackmore and I've only done that at her initiation.

"But that's not all. I've given up this gift for Nina. I don't do it anymore. I have the same hormones surging through my body, I have the same desires as any other sixteen going on seventeen-year-old. I could pick up that phone right now and in less than an hour I could have some girl over here that would fuck my brains out. But I don't do it. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because of Nina." I said. "I love her Mr. Blackmore. I feel about her the same way you felt about your wife. I want to marry her some day, do you understand? I don't know how to make this any more plain to you than that, but that is the fact."

He set his empty beer bottle down on the table and sighed. "Like I said young man," He told me. "You SOUND very convincing. But how can I take the chance that you're what you say you are? How can I gamble with my daughter's life?"

"You're not really doing that." I said, finishing off the last of my own beer. "Nina is seventeen. She's an adult in all but legal status. She's decided that I am the boy for her. She loves me as much as I love her. One way or the other we're going to be together. One way or the other I'm going to marry her someday, and someday soon I'd imagine. You can try to keep us apart but it would be futile. Once she turns eighteen, and that happens in five more months, she can do whatever she wants to do. You can threaten her and try to intimidate her to stay away from me if you want. If you do that, one of two things will happen. She'll either listen to you and dump me or listen to me and dump you. Either way she is going to be filled with resentment. If she goes with me, she'll resent me for taking her away from her parents, if she goes with you she's going to resent you for taking her away from me. With either equation she loses.

"I'm not asking you to open your arms to me and welcome me into your family just yet. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge that Nina has a say in this matter. Right now she's saying she wants to be with me. The same equation holds true here. If you allow it, or at least accept it, one of two things will happen. One, I'll dump her at some point in the future and break her heart. That's something I can do with or without your consent however. If it's with your consent, at least you'll have the luxury of saying, "I told you so" to her, right? At least you won't lose your daughter in the process. Or we can continue our relationship to the point where I know it's heading. We can get married someday, Nina can get her medical degree and I can get my business degree and we can have a pleasant relationship with our in-laws on both sides. That's what I want Mr. Blackmore.

"Nina's a big girl, let her make her own decision, for better or for worse, on her own."

He stared for a long time, his brain working over what I'd said. I hoped I'd given him the logic he needed to make the right decision. I had every intention of pursuing Nina to the conclusion of our relationship but, as I'd pointed out, the road would be much bumpier if decided to keep up the resistance.

"I'll let her see you." He finally said quietly.

It took a minute for that to sink in. When it did, a grin spread across my face. "Thank you." I told him.

"I don't know WHAT I'm going to tell Mary, but I find you make a good argument." He smiled a little. "I guess my little girl is growing up some and I guess it's time to let her spread her wings, for better or for worse as you say."

"I agree." I told him.

"But if you hurt her." He warned, pointing a finger at me. "I'll make what Jeff Zand did to Bob Simpson look like a mother's kiss compared to what I'll do to you."

I chuckled. "I'll consider myself duly warned." I answered.

Al Steiner-July 30, 1999 Chapter 11 ->

Chapter 11

Dad came home shortly after Mr. Blackmore left. I'd cleaned up the beer bottles and carried the remainder of the twelve-pack back up to my room and re-stashed it in my closet. I thought about telling Dad that I'd received tentative permission to resume my relationship with Nina but eventually decided to keep silent about it. After all, he might change his mind. People did that. I figured I'd give it a few days and see how things went before I made any mention.

I considered calling in sick for my job at the pizza joint that night. I'd been up most of the night worrying about the reunion with Nina and the beer I'd drank with Mr. Blackmore certainly hadn't helped my fatigue. But in the end my work ethic wouldn't allow me to call in on my first scheduled day back after my injury. I showered up and drug myself in.

My manager was very pleased to see me return and offered some of the same comments that Mindy had earlier that day. He became very displeased however when I told him that I'd been recommended for hiring at the hospital and that, in all likelihood, January 25 would be my last day working for him.

"That's really too bad Bill." He said sadly. "You're one of the best workers I've ever had here. Like you said when I originally interviewed you, you're not a typical teenager. I'd even offer to give you a raise if I thought it would help keep you but unfortunately I can't afford to match six dollars an hour."

I told him I understood and that I appreciated him hiring me and giving me a chance to prove myself and blah, blah, blah. I kept my amusement at his pathetic attempt to lure me to stay longer to myself. In truth I never much liked the man. He was a shameless exploiter of teenaged labor and he'd never bothered to offer me a raise before. But I also believed in not burning my bridges behind me. If things didn't work out at the hospital for whatever bizarre reason, I knew he'd hire me back in an instant. If I went in and wrote my resignation in urine on his wall, he might not be so inclined.

I was exhausted by the time I got off that night. When I got home I barely was able to remove my clothes before I fell into bed. Less than a minute later I was fast asleep; the first good night of sleep I'd had in a while.

The next morning I waited near the front of the school again. This day the sky had cleared of snow clouds and the wind had returned. The air temperature was a chilling eleven degrees at that time of the morning. The wind chill factor was probably somewhere below zero. You gotta love Spokane in the winter. I shivered and shook and felt the tears that were streaming from my eyes freezing on my cheeks. Finally I spotted Mrs. Blackmore pulling to the curb. Nina hopped out and headed for the school while her mother pulled quickly away and headed off.

Nina was looking around immediately, braving putting her face into the wind to search for me. I raised my hand and she rushed to me, colliding with me so hard that both of us nearly went down into the snowbank. As always the feel of her body against mine, even through multiple layers of winter clothing, made me feel warm all over.

"I can't believe it!" She yelled, kissing my face and my lips. "How did you do it? What did you say?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked nonchalantly.

"You know what I'm talking about." She smiled. "I couldn't believe it. Daddy sat me down last night and told me that if I insisted on seeing you that he wouldn't stop me." Her smile faded a little. "He said he still didn't particularly care for you or trust you, but that he saw no advantage to trying to keep us apart."

"Well," I said. "It's not exactly a dowry of a kingdom just yet. But it's a start. And your Mom?"

"Mom wasn't too happy about his decision." She admitted. "In fact, I heard them arguing about it. They were actually yelling at each other when he told her. Finally they started whispering back and forth, so I couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't seem too happy this morning but she didn't tell me to stay away from you like she did yesterday."

"So I guess I won't be coming over for any family dinners in the near future?" I asked.

She smiled and kissed me again, a long, luxuriant kiss. "Not just yet." She said. "But give it time."

We started walking into the school. "So what did you say to Daddy anyway?" She asked. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I don't think your Dad would really like it if I told you what we talked about." I answered. "It was kind of personal."

"Did it have to do with the years after the war like you thought?" She asked, her curiosity plain on her face.

"Nina, I really don't think he would want you to know what he said. Sorry."

She frowned. "You must have some sort of gift Bill. How you got Dad to open up to you, how you convinced him to let us be together." She shook her head. "Will you tell me someday? Someday in a few years?"

"I'll consider it." I told her. "In the meantime, I have the night off. I was wondering if you would do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie tonight?"

She gave me another kiss, again in front of everyone on the quad. "I suppose." She said. "Unless something better comes along of course."

We decided that it would be a good idea to establish with her parents that we would in fact be seeing each other. With that in mind I agreed to pick Nina up for our date at her house; just like a normal teenager would do. It had seemed like a good idea when we discussed it but as I pulled my car up to the curb that night I felt that maybe it hadn't been such a hot plan after all. My body was tensed up with nervous tension and I hesitated before I was able to pull myself out of my Datsun and trudge up to the curb.

There was another long hesitation before I could bring myself to ring the doorbell.

My nervousness turned out to be unfounded. Nina answered the door and quickly stepped out of it onto the porch. The reason for my nervousness however, was not so unfounded. Nina, dressed in a nice pair of slacks, her hair styled attractively (the mark of Tracy and Cindy), looked a little upset.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Let's go." She replied, heading down the porch for my car.

After a brief moment I followed her.

As we drove downtown towards the restaurant where I'd made reservations she told me what had happened.

"Mom is not very keen on Dad's decision to allow us to date." She told me.

"No?" I asked, not terribly surprised after the story that Mr. Blackmore had told me. It was Mrs. Blackmore, after all, that had born the brunt of the Bob Simpson episode.

"No." She agreed. "They've been arguing and fighting pretty much since you first talked to him. When I told Dad that you and I were going out tonight he kind of grunted at me but didn't say anything. But when I told Mom," She shook her head. "Mom started in right away about how she didn't agree with Dad, about how she thought you were a lowdown slimebag, and how she didn't think I should be going out with you. She told me I would be staying home and that despite what my father had said, that I was not to see you anymore."

"Wow." I commented.

"I appealed to Dad and they had another argument, a pretty nasty one. Dad finally told me I could go out with you tonight. Mom stayed in her room and wouldn't come out."

"I'm sorry." I told her, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

"Bill, I almost didn't go tonight. Mom and Dad have NEVER fought like this. Never! The most they've ever done in front of me is have little squabbles over money or housework or something. This is tearing them apart! Do you know how that makes me feel? I almost cancelled my date with you just to keep them from fighting."

"But you didn't." I said softly.

"I couldn't Bill." She told me. "I need to be with you. I couldn't bear to call you up and tell you I wouldn't come tonight. I couldn't bear not seeing you. Oh Christ, why does all of this have to be so damn complicated? Is this going to happen every time we go out?"

I let my hand drop to her knee where I patted it. "Nina," I told her. "I don't think it's going to happen every time."

"Why not?" She asked.

"There's one thing I learned while I was talking to your Dad." I explained. "That is that your parents love each other deeply. They always have. They have the kind of love that you and I have and believe me, that kind of love is rare among married couples. This won't break them apart Nina. And I believe it's one of those things that starts off as bad as it's going to get and then gradually gets better as time goes by. Your Mom and your Dad are waiting for me to break you heart. They think that's what my purpose is due to various things in their past. Do you remember the day I came to the emergency room?

"Of course." She answered. "I remember everything about that day."

"I told you that you would be taking a gamble by returning to me, that you were gambling with the possibility that I might break your heart again. Remember?"

"Yes."

"Your parents are trying to contemplate that same gamble." I told her. "Only they don't have much to lose in it. You have the possibility of love to lose. They really don't have anything. No matter what happens, they'll still have you. They don't realize that they're gambling with your happiness of course. They just perceive that I'm an asshole and that you'd be better off without me. Now I've managed to change your Dad's views on me a little with the talk we had, but I haven't managed to change your Mom's views. As time goes on however, and when I don't break your heart, and when they see that you are happy, I think they'll come around. Just remember, this is probably as bad as it's going to get."

She nodded and put her hand on top of mine. I gave her knee another squeeze. "You do have a way of making people feel better Bill." She told me.

"I do my best." I told her. "Now let's forget about your parents for a while and go out and have a good time. That's what people in love are supposed to do, right?"

She picked up my hand and put it to her lips, kissing it briefly. "Right." She answered.

A good time we had. We went to dinner at a Black Angus restaurant, both of us having the prime rib. Afterwards we drove to the movie theater, just in time to catch a showing of "War Games". The movie had been out long enough that not too many people were in the theater. We sat in the back row, in the lover's section.

I had seen "War Games" before of course, way back when. I found it not terribly interesting since the computer technology was completely antiquated from my point of view and because it's main pretense was something I knew was never going to happen. After all, the Soviet Union was going to fall in seven more years taking with it the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation. But I enjoyed it all the same because Nina was there with me.

We held hands and cuddled up together through the first part of the movie. By the time the FBI agents were taking our hero into custody our lips had drifted together and the movie was all but forgotten as we slid our tongues into each other's mouths contentedly. Our kisses became more heated, more frantic as the minutes ticked past. My erection throbbed in my pants, eventually bringing a dull ache with it, an ache that I knew would be pleasantly agonizing by the time this evening was over and would only be relieved in my bedroom.

Nina was similarly aroused. She clung harshly to me, pressing herself to me, her hands trailing up and down my body. She had removed her coat when we'd sat down and even with the dim lighting I could see that her nipples were protruding outward, visible through the material of her sweater. The sight of them nearly made me crazy and I longed to place my hand upon them, to slide my fingers under the hem of the sweater, to force my way into her bra. I could imagine what her flesh would feel like against my palm and the very thought almost made me have an accident in my pants.

Nina's lips left my mouth and slowly trailed down to my neck. She began kissing and sucking lightly, nipping at my earlobes. This made me tremble with desire and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from trying to push her a little farther.

Near the end of the movie she pulled her lips from my neck. She was panting and her voice sounded frustrated. "Bill," She whispered in my ear. "Are my boobs too small?"

"What?" I panted back, shifting myself in my seat, trying to reposition my painful erection.

"Don't you like them?" She asked. "Are they too small for you?"

"No Nina." I told her. "They're beautiful. Really. But why…"

"Then why won't you touch them?" She asked.

"What?" I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked why I couldn't concentrate real hard and levitate my body into the air.

"I've been trying to push them into you for the past twenty minutes." She told me. "All my life I've heard about girls getting felt up at the movies. I want to get felt up Bill. So put your damn hands on my tits!"

I looked at her, feeling an extra burst of blood going to my wang. This was Nina talking like this! Nina! Her words almost made me lose control of myself.

"I didn't think…"

"No you didn't." She breathed. "Now touch me. Show me how much you like them."

She leaned forward and kissed me again, her right hand taking my left. She placed it on the swell of her breast and I felt the softness, the firmness that I'd fantasized so much about. Even through the sweater I felt the hardness of the nipple pushing into my hand. I groaned and began to softly squeeze her. She moaned back into my mouth.

It was less than five minutes before my hand slid down to the hem of her sweater and found it's way underneath. Nina offered no protest, in fact she arched her back to give me freer access. I felt the soft, smooth skin of her stomach as my palm worked it's way upward. I felt the ribs beneath the flesh and finally the wire and cotton of her bra. With a practiced push of my fingers, my hand was beneath and her breast was against palm, her nipple pushing into it.

Her breathing became frantic as I caressed her, her tongue plunging deeper and deeper into my mouth. Her own hand slid beneath my sweater, feeling my flesh, caressing it. Finally it slid back down, her fingers hesitating at the waist of my pants. They pushed on and her hand found the bulge at my crotch. She gave it an experimental squeeze; a squeeze which almost made me come right there.

"Oh Bill." She whispered, breaking the kiss for an instant.

"Uhhh." Was all I could say in reply.

She continued to caress me through my pants while I continued to feel her bare breasts beneath her bra. I switched from one to the other, comparing them, touching them, relishing them. All too soon the music from the speakers picked up a notch and we looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. Around us other people were standing and heading for the exits. Reluctantly we broke apart, extricating our hands from each other.

She gave me one final kiss. "Good movie." She commented breathlessly.

"Yeah." I agreed. "The best I've seen to this point."

It was well before ten o'clock when I dropped her off in front of her house.

Our kiss goodnight was sedate and brief in deference to the fact that one or both of her parents were probably watching through the curtains. We exchanged "I love you's" and she stepped out of the Datsun. She paused at the front door, giving me one last wave. A second later she was safely inside.

I drove home slowly, my balls aching desperately, the pain increasing with each bump my sub-standard shock absorbers didn't absorb. The house was dark when I let myself in. I took myself upstairs and undressed. Ten seconds later I had myself in hand. Twenty seconds after that it was over. I rolled over and fell asleep.

She came over the next day to study for finals, which were coming up fast. We spread the books from our common classes on the coffee table and I put on a BTO album that I'd found in my Dad's record cabinet. I was actually interested in studying. I needed to nail down the Biochemistry test in order to keep my average high enough to qualify for the academic scholarship I had my eye upon. But Nina had other ideas.

She began kissing the side of my neck and rubbing herself against me. I could feel the press of her breasts against my arm and could remember how they'd felt against my hand.

"Nina." I protested playfully, not pulling away from her. "We're supposed to be studying."

She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers. Her eyes were shining. "This is Bio-chemistry, isn't it?" She asked, putting her lips to mine, licking out with her tongue.

"In a way." I agreed, putting my arms around her.

We kissed and licked on each other's necks and ears. I tasted the salty tang of her flesh, nibbled on the softness of her earlobe, kissed the back of her neck just below the hairline. My hand found it's way beneath her shirt and bra again. I caressed her breasts gently, with more care than I'd been able to show the previous night in the movie theater. Her nipple pushed insistently against my hand. Her breathing quickened at my touch and her arms tightened around my back. She leaned backwards into the couch, pulling me atop her, allowing me to feel her entire body pressed against mine. My erection pressed into her hip and I couldn't help but push it more firmly against her.

She felt this and shifted beneath me, bring one of her legs outward until it was resting on the floor. Suddenly the crotch of my jeans was pushing against the crotch of hers. Her hands dropped down to my butt and pulled firmly, grinding me against her.

I groaned at the contact and our kiss broke. We looked into each other's eyes. Her's showed desire and the realization that things were getting very serious. There was some fear there as well. Finally she put her mouth back to mine and pulled me against her, encouraging me with her hips to push myself to her. I did, finding the sensation pleasantly unfulfilling.

The sound of our garage door opening made us pull apart. Dad was home. Was he early? A quick glance at the clock showed that he was actually a little late. Time had slipped by that quickly. By the time he entered the house we were composed again and studying away. If he had any suspicions to the contrary, he kept them to himself.

Nina and I made plans to do some more studying the next afternoon. Some REAL studying this time. She told me that she would be a little later than usual.

"How come?" I asked.

"Oh, I just have a little something to take care of." She told me mysteriously. "It's nothing big."

"Fair enough." I replied, feeling mild curiosity at what that "little something" might be. But we talked no more on the subject.

She came over to my house about an hour later than usual. Dad was already home by then so we did nothing but study and exchange kisses on the porch as she was leaving.

As January wound onward Nina and I got together as much as we could. Usually it was at my house to study or to listen to music or to talk or to make out on the couch before Dad got home. On Saturday and Sundays, before I went to work, we would typically spend the day together doing something. Skiing was a passion we both shared and when the weather permitted we made the drive to the Idaho ski resorts and spent the day on the slopes. We would hold and kiss each other as we ascended on the ski lifts. We would cuddle together in the warmth of the lodge afterword, sipping coffee and talking of things that lovers talked of before making the long drive home. We were in love and the time passed quickly when we were together, slowly when we were apart. Our intimacies did not progress beyond my sliding my hand up under her shirt or her feeling the outline of my erection through my pants. Most of the time we merely kissed and held each other.

Things reached an uncomfortable impasse at the Blackmore household. According to Nina her mother no longer protested when she went out with me or went over to my house. She never withheld the car from her since she knew that I would simply come pick her up in mine if it was required. But she was obviously not very happy about her continued rendezvous with me either. Her mom and dad also stopped fighting with each other. But at the same time there was a strain in their relationship that hadn't been there before. She told me it was like they were constantly waiting for a hammer to fall, a hammer that simply kept hanging there above them. Nina felt considerable guilt for the way her parents were feeling, as did I when I heard her stories, but not enough to stop our visits. I only hoped that someday they would accept me as part of their family because I intended to be a part of it whether they liked it or not.

One afternoon after school we were watching television on the couch. Dad was not yet home from work and Nina was lying in my lap with her feet outstretched. I stroked her hair for a while and then her face. She cooed as I did this and I noticed that she had a few pimples near her nose and on her chin. They were not large or unsightly and she had done a decent job of covering them with make-up. I noticed them primarily because I'd never seen acne on her face before. She had one of those smooth complexions that just wasn't prone to it.

"Pimples." She said with disgust when she noticed me looking at them. "Are they bad?"

"Not at all." I assured her. "Every teenager gets them from time to time."

"I know." She answered, "But I've never had them before. Not until last week anyway."

"Maybe the stress of being in love has given them to you." I suggested jokingly.

She chuckled. "In a way you're completely right." She answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I'll explain later." She said.

"What do you mean?"

She reached up and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face to hers. "Later." She whispered, licking at my lips. "Your Dad will be home soon."

We made out in that position for a while and then finally twisted around so that she was lying atop me. As we kissed she rubbed her crotch gently back and forth across mine, arousing me greatly. My hands slid under her shirt once more, caressing her bare back, finally working around to her front. However this time, when they slid under her bra she winced as if in pain.

"What's the matter?" I asked, instantly withdrawing my hand, bothered by the thought I might have hurt her.

"It's nothing." She told me dismissively. "They're just a little sore."

"Sore?" I asked, remembering uncomfortably what that had meant when my wife had begun to complain of that. That certainly wasn't possible with Nina. If it was, I'd sadly misread her.

"It'll go away." She said. "Don't worry about it."

But the mood was broken for that day. When Dad came home he found us sitting together on the couch watching the Phil Donahue show while we held hands.

I was officially given an offer of employment from the trauma center on January 15. I accepted it later that day. When I went to work at the pizza joint that night I officially gave notice to the manager that I would be leaving his fine employ. He gave one more try at convincing me to stay, offering to make me an assistant manager and bumping my salary to a whole four and a quarter an hour.

"I know the hospital is offering you more than that." He told me. "But I'm offering you a management position. That looks awfully good on the old resume."

I respectfully declined his offer and he took it well. He told me that if I ever found myself in need of a job, that I should see him first. I told him I would.

January 24 was my last day there. I clocked out at 10:00 and turned in my uniform to him. We shook hands and he told me he would miss me. Though I didn't particularly like him, he had given me a job and had helped me earn money for college. I felt I owed him a little bit.

"You know what you need to do?" I told him just before I walked out the door.

"What's that Bill?" He asked.

"Get into pizza delivery." I suggested.

He looked at me strangely. "Pizza delivery? Nobody does that. It isn't financially feasible."

"If you do it right, it will be." I said, "You see, Americans are lazy. If they can get someone to drive their pizza to them, then they'll do it. There are two tricks to this that you need to employ. One, you need to make sure their pizza is still hot when it arrives. You'll need to come up with some sort of insulated carrier for that. Shouldn't be too hard," I assured him. "The technology is out there. The second thing you need to do, and this is hard for a business person to accept, is NOT charge people for the delivery."

He laughed. "That's very interesting Bill." He said. "But you don't know a whole lot about business. How could I NOT charge someone a delivery fee for driving their pizza to them? How would I pay for the driver? How would I pay for the gas?"

"Ahh." I said. "That's the thing. With all due respect, I know a considerable amount about business. It's what I'll be majoring in in college and I've studied quite extensively on my own. If you were smart, you'd listen to my advice. I'm not wrong about this."

He seemed more amused than awed by my speech. "Okay Bill." He told me patronizingly. "Tell me how I can magically deliver pizzas at no cost to the customer and still make a profit on them."

"It's simple." I said. "You hire an eighteen year old kid with a car and pay him four dollars an hour or so. You stipulate that he pays for the gas, insurance, and uses his own vehicle. His main job will be the deliveries but when there are none going on, you can also have him help out around here making pizzas for the regular customers, sweeping up, doing dishes, whatever. You will have to shell out a little cash for advertising to make it known to the general public in your area that you deliver. Your target group is those people that are too lazy or too busy to make food and who don't really want to go out to pick something up. They will be the people that would otherwise have made some hamburger helper or something instead of going out. If they know that they can call your number and have a hot pizza at their front door in less than an hour, they'll do it. Pizza will triumph over hamburger helper every time. When you do your ads you need to put in something like "guaranteed hot and fresh in forty minutes or less" or some crap like that. You also need to put in "no delivery fee". Your pizza sales will go up enough to cover the four bucks an hour that the extra employee makes and will give you considerable profit. Remember, you're snaring people who would not otherwise have come in here and bought a pizza.

That's the key to the whole thing. Your driver will get tips from those he delivers to since the public will feel obligated to give him a buck or so since there's no delivery fee. Your driver is happy because he's making reasonably good money and gets to get out. The public is happy because they don't have to go out and pick up their pizza. And you're happy because your sales are going up. You would do especially well on Friday nights, and on Sunday afternoons during football season. Trust me on this, it'll work and it'll work well."

He smiled condescendingly at me. "Well thanks for the advice Bill." He said. "I'll certainly take it under consideration."

"You do that." I smiled back, knowing that he would do no such thing. Oh well, his loss. In two or three years when the pizza delivery craze hit the nation he would undoubtedly think back on this conversation and wonder why he hadn't listened to me. You can't change the world.

When I stepped out of the pizza parlor I saw that a blizzard had blown in at some point. Cursing I got in my car and drove very carefully home. As I pulled into my driveway I stopped, staring down the street.

A smile formed on my face. In Anita's driveway a late model Buick was parked. A late model Buick I'd once crouched next to as I pulled a coil wire from Anita's vehicle. It was nearly 10:30 at night. Jack Valentine wasn't merely popping by for a visit. He was staying the night. Fate had reclaimed what was hers. And for once I was ecstatic about it.

My new work schedule was both better and worse than my old. I went to the hospital at 12:00 each afternoon, Monday through Friday. I worked straight through until six o'clock in the evening with only two ten-minute breaks. In a way it was an exploitation of labor laws. Thirty hours a week was just under what they had to consider full time and thus pay benefits for. And six hours a day was just under what they had to give a lunch break for. I didn't mind being exploited however, especially after I saw my first paycheck. At six bucks an hour times thirty hours a week minus the miniscule amount of taxes they took out I made damn near a hundred and fifty bucks; a small fortune for a teenager. When I subtracted living expenses from this I put three quarters of it into the computer stocks I was now investing in. I would do this on every subsequent paycheck. My day was coming closer and closer.

Dad too began investing. Like Tracy, once he knew the source of my information he had no problem acting upon it. He diverted all of the money that he had going into savings into the computer stocks. He also freed up some more money from Mom's paycheck and added that to it. When I explained the ramifications of the big play that was soon to come he became very enthusiastic, diverting every spare penny into the investments. Mom questioned this a little but Dad convinced her that I knew what I was doing without actually telling her how he knew this. Since she had seen me obsessively studying all aspects of business for the last two years she had no problem accepting the fact that my foresight was based only on my own common sense.

My new schedule did cut down on my time with Nina on the weekdays. Occasionally she would come over to my house after work and we'd spend a little time together either downstairs or in my room. These were nice times; all times were nice when I was with her, but there wasn't much of an atmosphere for intimacy. Even if my door was closed it felt decidedly weird making out while my parents were home. The most we ever managed was a few deep kisses and a slight dance of tongues.

The weekends however, were now completely free since I no longer had to work on Saturday and Sunday nights. Our ski trips became longer. We would head out early in the morning and drive to resorts further and further away from what we were used to. We trekked all the way up to the very northern fringes of the Idaho panhandle or to the western portions of Montana. We loved everything about these trips; the loading of the equipment in the frigid early morning air, the long drive as we shared coffee from my thermos, the standing in lines waiting for the lifts, the time in the lodge, but especially the long, tired drives home. We would switch off the driving chores but often as not, Nina would end up curled up on my shoulder as we approached Spokane, fast asleep, a contented smile on her face.

The ski trips are special memories of special times but we could not do them every weekend. Sometimes the weather would intrude upon our plans but usually finances did. Skiing is an expensive hobby and most of my money was tied up in my stocks, either growing with latex for college or growing with computer technology for my big move. But having fun does not necessarily have to cost money. Some weekends we would just go ice skating on the frozen lake, or we would take in a movie, or we would just hang around my house. We were in love and we didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

As the weeks went by Nina's complexion cleared up again, leaving her soft face unmarred. The pimples she'd had went nearly out of my mind. Her boobs continued to be sore for about a week and that too went away. Unfortunately I wasn't given much opportunity to touch them.

In late February we took a ski trip to western Montana and enjoyed ourselves so much that the sun was setting before we packed up and headed home. Nina volunteered to drive the first leg back and before she even got the car back onto I-90 I was fast asleep beside her, my hand resting on her knee.

The sensation of the car coming to a stop woke me some time later. I opened my eyes and saw that complete darkness had fallen outside. The stars were out and shining with a brilliance that can only be experienced at high altitude. Nina had pulled into a turnout beside the road, crunching over the gravel and finally coming to a stop behind a snowbank. From the other side the sound of traffic could be heard passing on the interstate.

"Where are we?" I asked, yawning, looking around outside. My ears popped as I yawned.

She turned off the headlights and pitch-blackness resulted, making the stars shine even brighter.

"We're in Idaho." She told me. "Up near the summit outside of Coeur d'Alene."

"Nina." I admonished. "You shouldn't have driven so far. Why didn't you wake me up sooner."

"I was okay." She told me, leaning back in her seat. "You looked like you were enjoying your little nap." She giggled. "You're cute when you're asleep. My eyes were starting to get a little tired though so I thought I'd rest. It's pretty here, isn't it? You can see all the stars."

"Yes." I agreed, looking around. It was a very pleasant spot. Even the sound of passing traffic added just the right amount of white noise. "Why don't you let me drive for a while. We're awfully late."

"I called Daddy from the ski resort before we left." She said. "He knows I'm going to be late. Why don't we just sit for a while? Enjoy the night."

I smiled, putting my arm around her and drawing her close. "If I didn't know better." I told her. "I'd think you were trying to put a move on me."

She snuggled up to me. "And what would you do if I was?" She challenged.

I shrugged. "Call the cops?"

"I don't think they'll hear you from here." She said.

"Well," I answered. "I guess the next best thing would be to give in."

We kissed, lightly at first, reacquainting ourselves with the taste of each other. Her arms went around my neck and mine went around her waist, inside of her coat. Before long our passion heated up and we were exchanging deep soul kisses, our tongues dueling back and forth. The gearshift and the parking brake lever were getting in the way so I finally pulled her over the top of them so she was sitting on my lap, facing me.

"I don't know about this." She said, bending her neck uncomfortable against the roof of the car.

"Here." I said, reaching down with my right hand and grabbing the seat lever. "Is this better?"

With a pull the seat reclined backwards until it was resting against the back seat. This put me almost horizontal and put Nina's body comfortably against me.

"Worlds better." She whispered, bringing her lips to mine.

We kissed contentedly for an unknown amount of time, our libidos shifting into high gear while the idling car engine kept us warm. The spring from the seat bit into my back and my left leg fell asleep because of her weight pushing down on my thigh but I was in heaven all the same. When she began rubbing her hips back and forth, putting pressure on my straining erection I groaned, letting my mouth find her neck.

"They're not sore anymore." She whispered to me.

"What?" I asked, kissing her earlobe and pulling her waist harder into me.

"My boobs." She whispered back, nipping at my ear. "They're not sore anymore."

Not needing to be hit over the head with a hammer, I slid my hands under her shirt. Her coat got in the way of this process so she impatiently sat up and ripped it off her body, tossing on the driver's seat. When she leaned back down the going was easier and my hands found her bare flesh.

"I like your hands on me." She said softly, kissing my eyelid.

"And my hands like to be on you." I assured her.

As I felt her under her clothing she sat up a little. I don't know who initiated the action but suddenly my arms pushed upward, hiking her sweater and her bra up to her shoulders. Her bare stomach and breasts were now exposed to me although it was too dark to see them in any detail. But my hands found them and began to touch them softly, feeling them unencumbered for the first time. As I've mentioned before, they were small, each hand covered a breast completely, but they were firm and very erotic to touch, the skin warm and moist from aroused perspiration. She moaned as I slid my palms back and forth across them, as my fingers gently touched and flicked her erect nipples. Her chest heaved as she panted with sexual excitement and the knowledge that she was showing a secret part of her body to me for the first time.

I let my hands slide from her breast to her armpits. I tugged gently upward and she slid forward. With a pull of my arms she leaned forward into me and her left breast was suddenly against my face, the nipple pushing into my cheek. I slid my tongue out and licked around the perimeter, finally touching the nipple, feeling the rough ridges of it. Nina jerked as if shocked at the contact.

"Oh Bill." She moaned.

I teased the nipple for the briefest instant and then gently sucked it into my mouth, suckling it as a baby would. It tasted divine against my tongue. I had sucked many a nipple in my two lives but never had one sent tingles through my body as this one did.

Nina's hands went to the back of my head and pulled me tighter against her chest. She moaned and cooed as I suckled, her fingers running spastically through my hair. I switched to the other nipple, bathing it with my saliva, my hand cupping the first. Nina's hips began moving in an involuntary rhythm on my abdomen as sensations that she was unfamiliar with assaulted her body.

I switched breasts again, allowing my hands to drop down to her stomach and flanks where my fingers slid slowly up and down upon the soft, sensitive flesh there. I could feel the gooseflesh that was covering her body beneath my fingers, hard, miniscule bumps of overheated skin.

And then suddenly she was pulling back from me, her fingers pushing off my shoulders, her nipple popping free of my mouth and leaving a trail of my saliva from it.

I looked up in confusion, my own arousal near a fever pitch. What was wrong?

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, near tears, her body trembling all over.

"What's the matter?" I asked breathlessly, still tasting the aftereffects of her flesh in my mouth.

"I…," She hesitated. With jerky motions she reached up and pulled her shirt and bra back down.

"Nina?" I asked gently.

"I got scared." She said miserably. "I've never done anything like this before. I'm sorry Bill."

"Nina, it's okay." I soothed, cursing myself for pushing things too fast. I should have known better!

"You must hate me." She said.

"No." I protested. "It's me that should be sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to push you that fast." I pulled her to me again, hugging her, patting her back.

"You weren't pushing me." She said into my ear. "I wanted to do that. I liked it. I've never felt anything like that before. But it just got kind of… overwhelming. I started to feel like I wasn't in control and it scared me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." I repeated soothingly. "We'll move at your pace. Whenever we're, uh, doing things you stop whenever you want to. I'll never try to push you. I promise."

She looked up at me. I could see just a hint of moisture in her eyes from the reflected starlight. "Isn't that frustrating for you?" She asked.

"Don't worry about that." I told her. "I love you and I'll move at whatever pace you want."

She kissed my cheek gently. "I love you Bill."

We hugged for a moment and then she sat up. "You suppose we should start heading for home again?" She asked.

"No." I told her. "Let's just sit here like this for awhile."

She planted a kiss on my nose, just a brief peck. "Okay." She whispered, putting her head back on my shoulder.

Another thing that suffered from my new schedule and my relationship with Nina were my study sessions with Mike. This bothered me at first until I realized that Mike didn't really need them anymore. His grades remained near the top of the scale and he had completely caught up with all of the concepts that he'd left behind. When our time was cut down I'd worried that he would slip back into academic purgatory but he held his own just fine, passing his finals with an upper B. Though I was never thanked for this accomplishment I felt immense pride in it. I'd pulled him out of the ranks of the dropouts and into the ranks of future college attendees if that was what he wished. By March of 1984 it would have taken a catastrophic event indeed to push him back into independent study. With only three more months of school left anyway, the allure of that particular thing would no longer be as attractive anyway.

It was the third week of March when Mike showed up at my door at 7:00 in the evening, just after I'd gotten home from work. His visit was unusual and I greeted him warmly. There was always a conflict in my personality when I hung out with Mike. On the one hand I had a genuine need to help him make something of himself, to keep him off of the path that fate had in store for him. But on the other hand he was still an immature seventeen-year-old and his conversation about phony sexual exploits and macho posturing quickly got old.

"Hey dude." He whispered to me at the front door, casting a wary eye upon my Dad, who was sitting in his favorite chair watching television. "Why don't we walk over to the school for a while?"

I knew what he meant by that. Around the corner from my house was an elementary school, the elementary school we'd both attended once. During it's off-hours it had served as a favored locale for smoking pot, drinking beer, or just plain fucking off. By inviting me there I knew that Mike probably had some marijuana in his possession.

"Sounds good." I nodded, figuring, what the hell? I told my Dad I was going to Mike's house, the standard excuse for such an endeavor, and he grunted in reply. Since our talk, Dad never questioned anything that I did. I'm quite sure he knew exactly what I was going to do.

I retrieved my jacket and we walked that way slowly.

"You got some buds?" I asked as we ambled down the sidewalk of the darkening street.

"Yeah." He nodded. "Got a joint of some pretty good green." He said. "Haven't smoked any in a while but I just felt the need today."

I looked at him. "You haven't smoked any in a while?" I asked, wondering if he was putting me on.

He shook his head. "Nope. I've been running a lot lately and it fucks up my lungs if I smoke cigarettes or pot too much. Makes it hard to breathe. I've quit the cigs completely."

"No shit." I said, suppressing a smile of joy. Mike WAS growing up at last.

"I been running three miles a day on the weekdays." He told me. "On the weekends I've been running the stairs over at the library with a back-pack full of bricks. I'm trying to get in shape for the physical agility test for the fire department. You know what they call the agility test?"

"What's that?" I asked, although I knew.

"The combat challenge." He said dramatically. "My captain told me that if I want to pass it I need to really work on my legs and my endurance. He said running should do it."

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. The combat challenge is the standard physical agility exam for most fire departments. It is a test designed to measure a prospective employee's physical ability to do the job of firefighter (and the cynical ones among us might think it is also designed to keep out women). And it is grueling indeed. I had once taken it as a young paramedic with hopes of joining the fire department and acquiring the increased security and pay that went along with it. You start off by putting on a helmet, turnout jacket, and an air tank. You then walk to an engine and pull out a hundred feet of inch and a half hose. It sounds easy but the hose is charged with water and is very heavy, especially as you pull more and more of it out. It is a real workout on the legs. You then walk over to a sled assembly and pick up a sledgehammer which you must use to force a steel beam backward three feet using chopping motions. You then go over to the wooden, three-story structure that is referred to as "the tower". Still wearing the air tank, which weighs about twenty pounds, you climb up the outside of the building to the third story of the tower on a ladder and then back down again. That complete, you pick up a forty pound roll of supply hose and go inside the tower, climbing up the stairs to the third story. Once there you drop the supply hose and hoist up another forty pound roll that is tied to a rope from the ground. You are not allowed to rest your elbows on the windowsill while you do this. You then lower the rope back down again, pick up the roll you carried up the stairs and carry it back down. The grand finale is to drag a one hundred and seventy-pound dummy twenty yards. You are given four minutes in which to do all of this.

I'd fancied myself in pretty good shape when I'd tried it. I was twenty-six, not smoking at that time, and was in the habit of running. The test defeated me easily. My endurance was strained to the limit by the time I got to the top of the tower. Somehow I'd managed to hoist up the rope and put it back down but the exertion of picking up the hose roll again was too much. By that time I had less than a minute left and I knew I wasn't going to make it. My lungs were burning, my heart was hammering in my chest, and my leg muscles were screaming from the abuse. My time expired as I sat there. For a week afterword I was sore. I never applied at the fire department again for fear of feeling the way I had at that moment.

"I've uh, looked into it before." I told Mike. "Your captain is right. Work on the legs and try to get yourself able to go hard for four straight minutes. Try windsprints."

"Yeah." He said dismissively, mildly offended that I was giving him advice. "No sweat. I'll pass it."

"So they're gonna be hiring for sure?" I asked him next.

"Filing starts May 20." He said. "Written test is June 12, combat challenge June 20. Good thing I'll have graduated before then or I wouldn't have been eligible. From there the oral interviews are scheduled. I'm as good as in the captain tells me. By this time next year I'll be out of the academy and assigned to my first station. A year after that I'll be off probation. A year after that I'm eligible to test for engineer. Two years after that I'm eligible to test for captain."

"Good for you." I said, wondering if he really was a shoe-in like he claimed. It was possible. If he'd made a good impression as an ROP student, and he would have had to make a damn good one after the marijuana incident, the word would filter upward to the powers-that-be in the department. The powers-that-be would see to it that his name was among the next hiring group. The pitfall of this was that the same thing worked in reverse too.

My Mom and Dad, as I've mentioned before, loved to go to parties with their co-workers. It didn't matter the occasion, if there was a party, they were there. One such party was for the opening day of baseball each year. They were in the habit of traveling to one of Mom's fellow worker's house, a woman whose husband possessed a large screen television, for opening day each year. In truth my Dad cared even less about baseball than Mom did. It was simply an excuse to get together with friends, drink lots of beer, eat fancy appetizers and drink more beer.

They left the house at 9:30 that morning and I would have been surprised to see them home anytime before 6:00 that night, riding in a cab of course. Nina and I decided to take advantage of the situation. She came over at 10:00 that morning and by 11:00 we were making out on the couch, our passion accompanied by the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, one of my Dad's albums.

Since that day I'd put my mouth to her breasts we'd been very reserved in our affections. We kissed a lot but didn't tend to go much further than that, even if we were alone. Only once had my hands gone beneath her shirt since then and that had been only because she'd physically picked them up and put them there. I was determined not to push her too far too fast. As a result I was actually getting used to the sensation of blue balls.

But on this day Nina was extremely passionate. Her hands were feeling me all over. She slid them over my chest, under my shirt to my back, to my butt where she squeezed brazenly as our tongues dueled. She ordered me to feel her tits and I gladly put my hand beneath her shirt while my tongue continued it's exploration of her mouth.

As I felt and kissed her she suddenly pulled her mouth from mine. She looked at me, blushing furiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, worrying I'd gone too far again.

She licked her lips nervously and then said, "Wouldn't you like to take my shirt off?"

I stared at her, searching her eyes, trying to determine if she was doing this because SHE wanted to or because she thought I wanted to. I saw nothing but passion there, mixed with a little nervous anticipation.

"Yes." I said, stroking her face, feeling the heat coming from the aroused blush. "But are you sure you want me to?"

"Take it off." She told me. "Do to me what you did that night."

Surprised to find my own hands trembling I reached for the hem of her sweater. I lifted upwards and she raised her arms to allow me to pull it off. Her white bra was only a few shades lighter than the pale skin of her stomach, skin which had spent the winter firmly clad in clothing. The sight made my mouth water. I stroked the exposed flesh above her bra cups softly, raising goose bumps on her, and then let my fingers slide around to the back. We kissed as my digits began the process of unclasping her bra snaps.

In a moment I would see my beloved's bare breasts, a sight I'd fantasized about so many times.

The phone started to ring, shrill, annoying decibels, cutting through the air.

We broke our kiss and looked at each other, my fingers freezing in place.

"You gonna answer that?" She asked, pushing her chest into mine.

"Hell no." I said, shaking my head, leaning in to kiss her again.

We tried to re-establish the rhythm and the passion we'd just had but the telephone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I didn't attempt to take off her bra while the infernal noise was going on because I didn't want my first view of her breasts in the light of day to be marred by the distraction of a ringing telephone. I wanted to drink in the sight, to relish it, to assign the entire being of my concentration to it. How long could a telephone ring? I wondered. Don't most people give up after ten rings or so? If nobody answers after ten rings they can assume that nobody's home, right?

But not this person. That phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. We would pause at the end of each ring, relishing the brief silence, expecting that another one would not follow and that we could then get back to business. But after two seconds or so another ring would always shatter the calm of the living room. Finally our mouths broke apart.

"I'm ripping that fucking cord out of the wall." I told Nina, pushing away from her.

"Bill," She said, obviously as annoyed as I, "Why don't you just answer it? Whoever it is must have something important to say or they wouldn't have let it ring so long. Maybe there's some sort of emergency."

"They're gonna have an emergency if they don't have a damn good reason for this shit." I proclaimed.

I walked over to the phone and picked it up roughly, cutting it off in mid-ring. I put it to my ear. "What?!" I almost yelled.

There was a brief pause. Finally, "This is the AT and T operator. Will you accept a collect call from Tracy?"

Tracy? Goddam her! This had better be good. "Yes." I said shortly. "Put her on."

"Thank you." The operator said, probably sounding much huffier than her supervisor would have cared for.

"Bill?" Came my sister's voice hesitantly.

"Hi Tracy." I said impatiently, looking over at Nina, who was sitting on the couch in her bra, her nipples poking at the material. I could vaguely make out the shadow of her aureole through the cotton. My dick was throbbing with desire. This had better be good.

"Uh…" She said uncertainly. "Are Mom and Dad home?"

"No they're not." I said. "It's the first day of baseball." I knew that Tracy would need no further explanation than that.

"Oh yeah." She said, giggling, her tone telling me she knew damn well what day it was and that Mom and Dad wouldn't be home. "It is, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I told her. "So they're over at Janice and Ken's. You might try them tomorrow. Probably later would be better. They're bound to be hung over."

"Okay." She said. "Oh, did you hear about Cindy?"

This got my attention a little. "No." I said. "What about her?"

"I got a letter from her yesterday. Her professor boyfriend is divorcing his wife. Cindy has moved in with him. Can you believe it?"

"Actually I can." I answered. This news didn't surprise me in the least. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.

"She's dropping out of college too." Tracy added. "I guess she figures she got what she went there for."

"I guess she did." I replied, casting another glance at Nina, disheartened to see that her nipples were losing their erection. "Listen Tracy." I said.

"I was kind of in the middle of something."

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'll let you go and get back to it."

"Thanks." I said.

"Umm?" She said hesitantly. "There IS one thing I wanted to ask you while I had you on the line."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Well," She said uncertainly. "The people that I hang out with here are having, well, a little baseball pool."

"A baseball pool?" I asked, exasperated. What the hell did she want to talk to me about this for?

"Yes." She answered. "For five bucks you can enter who you think will be in the World Series this year. If you're right, you win the pot in October."

"The World Series?" I asked, trying to glare through the phone.

"Yes." She said. "So I was wondering if maybe YOU could tell me who was going to be in the series this year? I know you have a real good head for this sort of thing Bill." She giggled knowingly.

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then cast a glance at Nina, who was looking at me expectantly, questioningly.

"Tracy," I told her honestly. "I don't have the slightest idea."

There was a long pause. Finally, pouting, "Bill, this doesn't hurt anything. How is this different than you taking advantage of stocks you know are going to go up? I could win twenty-five hundred bucks from this!"

"It doesn't Tracy." I said, lowering my voice a little so Nina couldn't hear. "If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't know."

"How could you not know?" She nearly screamed, pissed at my refusal to supply her with this information. "You've already lived through it! You know! You just don't want to tell me for some moralistic, bullshit reason."

The biting edge of her words cut through me like a knife, deflating my desire like a punctured balloon. "Tracy," I said carefully. "I really don't know. I'm not a baseball fan. I've never paid attention to baseball in my life, just like Dad. How the hell would I know who was in the series in 1984?"

"Because you've already been through it!" She cried. "You HAVE to know. You just don't want to tell me!"

"Tracy?" I asked, looking at Nina again, she was now definitely sensing that something was wrong. "Tell me who won the World Series in 1982."

"What?" She asked.

"You've already lived through it." I said, mocking her tone. "It's only been two years from your perspective instead of," I thought for a second, doing some quick mental addition, "Seventeen years from my perspective. So tell me, who won the series?"

"That's different!" She said desperately. "You're a boy. Boys know this shit!"

"This boy doesn't." I told her, feeling my own anger starting to rise now. "But let's put that aside. Let's ask you some girl shit. Who won best supporting actress in 1982?"

"What?" She asked, confused.

"You heard me." I whispered harshly. "That's girl shit if I've ever heard it. So who won it?"

There was silence on the line for a moment. "I don't know." She finally said.

"And I don't know who won the fucking World Series in 1984." I told her. "And if you call me back in October and give me the names of the two teams who are actually in the fucking thing, I still wouldn't know who won it. I don't watch baseball Tracy. I don't give a rat's ass about who was in it or who won it. You should know that. You're right, this information is harmless, and I would tell you if I knew, but I don't know. And I don't appreciate you screaming at me because of this. And I especially don't appreciate your indignant tone with me because of it."

The silence on the line was longer this time. "I'm sorry Bill." She finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"Goddam right you shouldn't have." I said.

"I just thought that maybe…, well, you know."

"Tracy," I told her, calming a little. "You're going to be all right. You don't need to be so greedy. Isn't it enough that you're alive?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of our conversation took less than thirty seconds. When I hung up, Nina was looking at me quizzically.

"Your sister?" She asked carefully.

I nodded.

"You seemed mad at her." Nina said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle." I told her.

"Bill," She said softly. "What's wrong? You can talk to me about anything you know?"

"I know Nina." I answered. "And usually I do. But this is something of a family secret if you know what I mean."

"Like what my Dad told you?" She asked sharply.

"Kind of." I agreed. "But much more secret than that. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." She said, pouting a little.

The mood for the day was effectively broken. By the time my parents got home that evening Nina was long since at her house and I was long since releived of my testosterone by my own means. I spent the rest of the day with Mike, drinking some beer he'd managed to get hold of. It was fun but not as fun as what Tracy had interrupted.

It was late April when I went to Nina's house to pick her up one evening. It was Friday night and we had a date to go see the release of the movie 1984 based on the Orwell novel that had been the basis of the first conversation we had shared. I pulled to the curb at her house at 6:30 and stepped out of my car, heading for the front door.

I was no longer nervous about picking up Nina at home. The impasse with her parents was holding strong. Nina had told me that her parents had gone back to their usual relationship, as I'd predicted, but that I was never discussed in their household. It was taboo apparently. When she told them that she was going out with me they would give a small grunt in reply and question no further. That they weren't happy about her continued relationship with me was obvious but they never tried to stop her or talk her out of seeing me. She said they treated it as a phase she was going through, a phase that would eventually end. The fact that they still, after all this time, didn't trust me, that they still, after seeing the obvious happiness of their daughter, didn't trust my intentions, spoke volumes about how badly they'd been stung by the Bob Simpson episode. They really thought that I still intended to dump their daughter like a bag of garbage. All I could do was hope that someday they would come around. Didn't they realize what they were doing to Nina?

Because of this impasse, an unwritten set of rules had developed about my picking up Nina for dates. I did not enter their house or speak with them in any way. Nina would simply answer the door when I was expected and then leave upon my arrival. They, in turn, would be out of the room when I arrived, keeping us from even having to look at each other. I expected nothing different on this day. But something different was what I got.

I rang the doorbell and stood patiently, waiting for the door to swing open.

It didn't. I rang the doorbell again, pushing longer this time and finally was rewarded with the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and there stood Nina. She was wearing a robe tied tightly around her. Her hair was a frazzled mess, as if she'd gotten out of the shower and dried it but had not combed it. She most definitely didn't appear ready to go to the movies any time soon.

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

"I'm sorry Bill." She said, her voice worried. "I don't think I'm going to make it tonight. Daddy's sick."

"Sick?" I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She shook her head. "He says it's just the stomach flu but I don't think so. He was sitting in his chair after dinner and he started getting all fidgety. Then he started throwing up. He's all pale right now and sweaty and he looks like he's not breathing right."

"Sweaty?" I asked, feeling an instant return of my paramedic instinct. When people were sweaty for no good reason, something was usually very wrong. That in conjunction with "not breathing right" made me immediately concerned.

"Yes." Nina nodded. "I've seen people in the ER that look like he does now." She told me. "And usually they're very sick. I'm worried about him Bill. I've been trying to get him to let me take him to the hospital but he's being stubborn. He's scared, I can tell, but he won't go. I want to stay here in case something happens."

"Let me see him." I said suddenly.

"Bill," She shook her head. "I don't think…"

I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I pushed past her and entered the Blackmore house for the first time in many months.

"Bill!" Nina protested.

"Where is he?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes scared, her own face pale. She pointed to the kitchen. "In the den." She said. "Through there."

"Come on." I told her, heading that way.

Mr. Blackmore's den was a room that had been built to house a bedroom. He had long since converted it to his own personal use. An oak, roll-top desk was the dominant piece of furniture. It sat against the far wall. It's surface was scattered with books containing lovingly placed stamps beneath plastic covers. On the wall above the desk a deer rifle sat in a rack. On either side of this were large racks taken from an elk and a deer. On a small love seat next to the desk was Mr. Blackmore.

"Jesus." I muttered, looking at him.

He looked worse than Nina had led me to believe. His skin was not merely pale but was gray and ashen. Sweat was glistening off of him, his shirt was damp with it. His mouth was open and he was breathing rapidly, seeming to struggle to get air in. His right arm was massaging his left shoulder.

"What are YOU doing here?" Mrs. Blackmore, who was sitting next to him, asked sharply.

I ignored her. "Mr. Blackmore." I told him, walking over. "You need to go to the hospital. Now."

He looked up at me. "Bill," He said, shaking his head. "I think you'd better leave. Sorry to have to postpone your little date." This last was said quite sarcastically.

I reached down and grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"You will LEAVE this house immediately!" Mrs. Blackmore told me, ripping his hand away from mine.

"I know what I'm doing." I said forcefully, meeting her gaze. We stared for a second and she finally dropped her eyes.

I took his wrist back, finding his radial pulse. It was beating rapidly and irregularly, sometimes not pulsating for as long as six seconds. I noticed that when I could not feel the pulsations, Mr. Blackmore's breathing became more ragged at the same time. Though I did not have a cardiac monitor on me, I had a pretty good idea of why this was happening.

"Nina," I said. "Go call 911 and get an ambulance here."

"What?" Mr. Blackmore said. "I don't think…"

"Do it now." I told Nina calmly and with unmistakable command in my voice.

She gave a quick glance towards her father. "No Nina." He told her. "I'll be all right."

"Do it Nina." I said firmly. "Tell them he's having a heart attack."

Nina was convinced. She rushed to the phone. Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore were not. They called once after her but quickly realized it was futile. When she was gone they turned to me.

"How dare you come into this house and…" Mrs. Blackmore started.

"What do you think you're…" Mr. Blackmore started.

"Quiet, both of you!" I barked. It had the desired effect.

"Mr. Blackmore." I said, looking at him. "Are you having chest pain right now?"

"No." He told me. "Just some indigestion. She made some spicy food tonight and it didn't agree with me."

"Uh huh." I nodded. "Why are you rubbing your shoulder like that?"

"It's sore." He said. "What business is this…"

"Show me where your chest hurts." I told him. "Point with your finger."

Rolling his eyes upward he put a finger right in the middle of his chest. "Right here." He told me. "It's just indigestion."

"Indigestion doesn't hurt right there." I told him. "It hurts down here." I put my finger just under his rib cage. "And it doesn't radiate up to your left shoulder either. And it doesn't make you short of breath or sweaty. It doesn't make you throw up. And it most definitely doesn't make your pulse irregular. Have you ever had heart problems before?"

"No!" He said.

"You're having them now." I said. "You're having a heart attack Mr. Blackmore and a very dangerous one if I'm right about what I'm feeling in your pulse. You need to get to the hospital, now."

"What the hell do you know about it?" He asked angrily. "You're just a kid."

I smiled, gazing at him meaningfully. "We've had this conversation before." I said. "Do we need to rehash it? I think you're having a heart attack. Go to the hospital with the ambulance when it gets here. If I'm wrong, then you'll get to say I told you so."

Before he could answer Mary Blackmore spoke up. "Jack." She said softly. "Why don't you do what he says?"

I looked over at her in surprise. She was the last person in the world I expected to have as an ally in this thing. I saw raw, naked fear in her eyes. I think she knew that I was right and she was terrified that she was about to lose her husband. So terrified that she was even willing to listen to me.

"Listen to your wife Sir." I told him. "You want to see your grandkids someday don't you?"

"Okay." He nodded. "Once again young man, you've stated your case well."

"You can't die Mr. Blackmore," I told him. "Until you learn to get used to me dating your daughter. I won't allow it."

He actually chuckled at that.

From outside came the sound of approaching sirens.

Chapter 12

The paramedic and the EMT that showed up were both strangers to me. Probably they were people that had worked briefly in the field and then had gone onto other things; the fire department, the police department, nursing, medical school. They came in the door shortly after the fire engine crew had barged in. I was glad to see that the paramedic took Mr. Blackmore's condition as seriously as I did. I stood back and said nothing, feeling confidant he was in good hands.

While the paramedic went through the routine questioning, questions I was very familiar with, his partner hooked up the EKG machine. It was an older model of the device, a model I was unfamiliar with since it had been replaced long before my debut in the medical field, but the display was the same. I saw the rapid complexes of his normal heartbeat intermixed with frequent premature complexes; beats that were not perfusing much blood, beats that were the telltale sign of a very irritated heart. Worse still was the fact that sometimes Mr. Blackmore would have fifteen to twenty of these premature beats in a row. This was known as ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, in medical circles and it was very dangerous. It was, in fact, only a step above complete cardiac shutdown.

The paramedic, a young, blonde man whose hair was probably a little longer than was allowed, saw the display and tightened up almost inperceptively. He glanced at his partner for a moment and a look was passed between them; a look that the ordinary citizen would not have even noticed but which I was well versed in. It was a look that said "Holy Shit!".

"Set me up an IV." The paramedic told his partner calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal request. It wasn't. Usually IV's were not started on scene.

"Right." His partner nodded, going for their medical box.

"Put him on high flow oxygen." The paramedic told one of the firemen.

He went mechanically about the task of installing the IV line into Mr. Blackmore, speaking soothing words to him the whole time, telling him what he was going to be doing. On the other arm a fireman was taking his blood pressure. He shouted out the reading when he had it.

"Ninety-four over forty." He said.

The paramedic digested this, chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a second. That was not the greatest blood pressure in the world in relation to a cardiac event. Finally he plugged in the IV and taped it down.

He injected some lidocaine into the IV port and watched the display on the EKG. The lidocaine was supposed to numb the heart a little, making it less irritable and less likely to throw premature beats, go into V-tach, or, worst of all, go into fibrillation. The runs of V-tach slowed a little, becoming less frequent and shorter in duration when they did come. Not the best thing in the world but better. Hopefully it would be enough to deliver him to the hospital alive.

"Let's get him out of here." The paramedic said.

Mr. Blackmore was loaded up onto their gurney and rushed out of the house to the waiting ambulance. Mrs. Blackmore was placed in the passenger seat by one of the firemen. Another fireman climbed in the back with the paramedic.

Again this probably seemed routine to the average person and again it wasn't. A paramedic only took a fireman in with him when he thought that he might need an extra hand on the way to the hospital. In other words, when he thought there was a good possibility that CPR was going to need to be performed at some point. Runs of V-tach had a nasty tendency to degenerate into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.

"Bill," She asked me. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I hope so." I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"

She nodded and rushed into the house.

We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.

"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"

Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No." She said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."

"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.

She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."

I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.

It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.

He invited Nina's Mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain bespoke the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.

"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction." The doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."

"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.

"It's too early to tell." He said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."

"What do you mean?" She wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".

"Well," He explained. "A heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure.

"But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."

"There are?" She asked.

"Yes." He nodded. "There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."

"So he'll be okay?" She asked hopefully.

"With a little luck," He said, "Your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."

"When do you start?" She asked.

"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen…"

He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.

As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?

We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?

After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.

"Thank you." Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.

"No cream, one sugar." I said. "Just the way you like it."

She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"

I smiled. "Nina told me." I answered. "She takes it the same way."

She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.

Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.

"We think we cleared the obstruction." He told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."

He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.

By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.

"Thank you Bill." Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."

"I don't know about that." I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."

"You saved him Bill." Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" She asked sharply.

"Nina, I…" I started.

"Hush." Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"

Mrs. Blackmore swallowed nervously and then reluctantly looked at me. "She's right." She finally said. "You did save him. We owe you our thanks."

"I did what any decent person would do." I told her, emphasizing the word "decent". "I'm glad he's going to be all right and I was glad to help."

She nodded and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"So." I said at last, breaking it. "Why don't we see if they'll let you two visit him for a bit? You're probably anxious to do that."

Only one visitor at a time was allowed in the recovery room. It was a rule the staff was very firm about despite my attempts at intervention using my adult voice. Finally Mrs. Blackmore went in, leaving Nina and I alone in the waiting room. We sat together and I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, yawning with weariness.

"Sorry we couldn't go to the movie tonight." She told me.

"Understandable." I assured her, stroking her hair.

A minute went by. Finally Nina asked, "Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know Daddy was having a heart attack?"

I had been afraid of this question, though I knew it was coming. I didn't enjoy lying to her.

"I read a lot of medical texts." I told her. "It's kind of a hobby of mine. I thought about being a paramedic once so I went through their textbook and studied it. Your Dad was having textbook symptoms of a heart attack and he was displaying the common response to it. Denial. When I felt his pulse and noticed the missing beats I was sure. That's another textbook symptom."

"You knew all this from reading a textbook?" She asked, her tone unreadable.

"Yes Nina." I said. "I have a good memory for written words."

"I see." She said softly. And she said no more about it.

We sat and talked softly for more than fifteen minutes, me continuing to hold her and stroke her hair. A slight cough interrupted us and we both looked up to find Mrs. Blackmore looking at us, taking in the manner in which we were seated.

"Hi Mom." Nina said, somewhat embarrassed. She broke free of me and sat up.

"How's Daddy doing?"

She walked over slowly. "He's a little groggy from the medicine they gave him but otherwise he's okay. They're going to take him up to his room soon.

We won't be able to visit him anymore until tomorrow. Why don't you go in and talk to him real quick?"

"Okay." She nodded, standing. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She left the room leaving me alone with her mother. We looked at each other for a moment and finally she took a seat next to me. She sat stiffly upright.

"You didn't have to stay you know." She told me.

"I wanted to." I told her. "Besides, how else are you going to get home? You know how much a cab ride would be from here?"

"We could've handled it." She answered.

"Like I said Mrs. Blackmore." I replied. "I WANTED to stay."

Another uncomfortable silence developed. There was so much I wanted to say to this woman next to me, so much I wanted to explain, but this was not the time. Not when her husband, a man I knew she loved deeply, was in a hospital room after nearly dying.

But Mrs. Blackmore apparently DID want to talk about it.

"You're a very strange young man." She said, not looking at me.

I nodded. "I've been accused of that." I agreed.

"I like to think that I've got you figured out." She said. "That I know exactly what you're like, how you'll act, what you'll do. I tried to tell Nina this when she started seeing you again. But she didn't listen to me, wouldn't hear a word of it. I tried to tell myself that it was teenaged rebellion, that she knew I was right but that she wouldn't listen because she thought she was in love with you and because her Mom was telling her these things."

"But?" I prompted, looking over at her.

"But now I'm forced to wonder if maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time." She admitted.

"Really?"

"Really." She sighed. "You see, I've been waiting all of this time for you to toss my daughter aside like an old shoe. That's what people like you do I told myself. You get them to fall in love with you and then, once you get what you want a few times, you get rid of them. I have speeches all memorized for the day that you finally do that; speeches I'll recite to her as I'm holding her while she cries. I'll tell her that someday she'll find someone who REALLY loves her for herself, not for her body. I'll tell her about how I found a man like that and how he came back to me even though I made a horrid mistake once. I'm well prepared for the day when you finally show Nina that you are nothing but slime." She stared over at me, her eyes softening. "But that's not going to happen, is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it's not." I said. "I love your daughter Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."

She nodded softly. "You know something?" She asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside.

But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.

"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."

"Do you know why I feel this way?" She asked me pointedly.

I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.

"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" She said.

This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh…"

She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."

"Look, Mrs. Blackmore…" I started.

"Call me Mary." She said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"

This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?

"Bill." She went on. "You know about Bob Simpson, right?"

I nodded. "Yes." I answered.

"I appreciate your honesty." She said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me.

I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."

"Okay." I agreed.

"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"

"Yes." I answered. "I do."

"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."

"I know." I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina.

Never."

"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."

"And then she went back to you." Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."

"And the rest is history." I said softly.

She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about Bill." She told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"

"No." I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.

"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina IS my future Mary. Can you understand that?"

"That's just it." She said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.

"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"

I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have." I agreed.

"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."

"Me?" I asked.

"You." She nodded. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her." She said.

"Yes." I nodded enthusiastically. "I do. That's what I've been trying to say all this time."

"I recognize that now." She said. "And I realize that you are not exactly Bob Simpson. But you're close. And just because I recognize it doesn't mean I like it Bill. I'm willing to acknowledge that you and Nina are in love with each other. But I can't forgive you for what you've done in the past and I have no proof that you are no longer doing such things. I still believe that Nina is heading for destruction by being with you."

"That's fair enough." I told her. "You think that we're too young to know what love really is and that I'll give in to the temptation to stray away from Nina, right?"

"Roughly." She answered.

"We are young." I said. "But tell me this, do you think that Jack knew what he wanted when he told you he wanted to marry you before he went off to the war?"

"What?" She asked.

"He loved you back then. Very much from what I understand. And though he didn't have the, uh, experience that I do, he was pretty certain that you were the woman for him. So do you think he knew what he was talking about?"

"Yes." She nodded, seeing where I was taking this.

"That's the same way I feel about Nina. I know she is whom I want to spend the rest of my life with. My experience has done nothing but show me that sex is nothing but hollow pleasure if it's not with someone you love. I don't plan to repeat those experiences. I am committed to Nina now and I will remain so. I'm the same age Jack was when he fell in love with you. Nina is older than you were when you fell in love with Jack. She's older than I am in fact since I got to skip second grade. Why do you think that you, of the previous generation, have some sort of all-knowing lock on what love is and that those of us in this generation are clueless?"

THE LOOK was strong upon her face. She smiled. "You are certainly a remarkable young man Bill." She said. "I'll give you that. Like I said, I'm not quite sure you're right for Nina and I'm not quite sure you are my idea of the perfect suitor. But there's little I can do about it. You've proved yourself worthy of my giving you a chance. So for Nina's sake I would like to extend you a welcome into our house for as long as you and she are together. Maybe someday I'll learn to love you. Or maybe I won't. But until we know for sure, you no longer have to hide on the porch when you come over. You're welcome in our house."

"Thank you Mary." I answered, touched by her cynical words. "I'll take you up on that. And be assured, you're not going to get rid of me."

"Time will tell Bill." She answered. "Time will tell."

Two days later Jack Blackmore was transferred to the hospital that I worked at in order to undergo bypass surgery. He was installed in a private room on the seventh floor. His spirits were reported to be high by Nina, who visited him daily after school, usually joining her mother there. I had not had opportunity to see him since the night he'd been taken away.

On the Tuesday following his heart attack I had a brief chat with my Dad before I headed off to school.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" He asked me, nearly appalled by what I was suggesting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it wise." I agreed. "But it's not dangerous. After all, the man's undergoing a bypass tomorrow. What can it hurt?"

Dad shook his head. "I'll concede to your greater medical knowledge." He told me. He did as I asked.

After work that night I went out to my car and put a few things into a plastic bag. I then went back inside. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and headed for the ICU where Jack was being stashed. Visiting hours were soon coming to a close and Nina and her mother had already gone for the night. I was unquestioned as I walked past the nurse's station. The surgical scrubs I wore saw to that.

I entered his room and stood in the doorway for a moment. Jack Blackmore was dressed in a standard hospital gown. IV's were installed in his arm and connected to a pump. Wires snaked from beneath the sheets and his gown and fed to a monitor on the wall above his head. He was sitting in the bed, which he'd adjusted to a chair position, watching a baseball game on the television. He looked over at me as I entered, his eyes taking a moment to realize that I was not just another hospital worker coming in to take his blood pressure or to get him to piss in a jar.

"Bill." He nodded when he recognized me. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I told him, coming in and closing the door behind me. "How are YOU?"

"Hanging in here." He said as I took a seat. "I never did get a chance to thank you for talking me into going the other night." He lowered his voice a little. "The doc tells me I might've died if I hadn't of come in."

Content

Al Steiner
Doing it All over

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12