"Oh, God, don't tell me you became a lawyer!", I said. He laughed at that.
I stood up and so did John Talbot. "Mister Talbot, I really want to apologize for getting you over here like this. I'll be discussing it with my chief of staff, but I do apologize."
"Please Congressman, these sorts of things happen. Don't worry about it. Maybe we'll both get lucky and you'll end up on Energy and Commerce, or Natural Resources, and you can owe me a meeting then."
"Maybe so." I showed him to the door, and ushered him out
Chuck came up and glanced into my office, where Marty was still lounging on my couch. "Congressman, you have another meeting in ten minutes."
"Nobody put anything on my calendar, Chuck.", I told him. "Therefore I don't have another meeting."
"But Congressman, we have you scheduled!", he insisted.
"Chuck, let me give you a hint. It's my life so I get to make the schedules. Unless it's the President of the United States or my wife, I'm not available. I will consider something from either the Speaker of the House, or Michel or Gingrich, but tell them you'll have to ask me first. Understand?"
"Congressman?!"
I left him standing there in confusion in the lobby, with a couple of secretaries staring at him and another smirking. I went back into my office and closed the door. "What an asshole!", I said quietly, as much to myself as to Marty.
"Problems?", he asked.
"Nothing I can't handle." I went over to a bookcase-hutch against one wall. I tugged on it and it unfolded into a hidden wet bar. "It must be five o'clock somewhere."
Marty stood up and grinned. "Scotch and soda if you have it."
"I have it, but I can't stand Scotch, so I don't know if it's any good." I held up a bottle. "Glenlivet. Any good?"
"It'll do.", he said with a smile.
I made a couple of drinks, Scotch and soda for him and a Seven and Seven for myself. I handed him his drink. "Here's to knowledge and thoroughness."
"Oh, Christ! Was that a long time ago!" 'Knowledge and Thoroughness' is the Rensselaer motto.
We sat back down around the coffee table. "So, what the hell are you doing in Washington?", I demanded.
"I could ask you the same question! The last I remembered, you were a math major working on your doctorate and going through ROTC training. I always figured you'd end up teaching somewhere. How the hell does that translate into billionaire investor and Congressman?", he asked.
"Yeah? The last I remember of you was when you moved to Houston, to work for Exxon at a refinery. You were a chemical engineer, right? Then, a year later, we all lost track of you, and now you're a lobbyist? What gives? You first!"
"Well, that's right, I went to Houston to work for Exxon at one of their refineries. Not quite a year later, though, I had an opportunity to go to Saudi Arabia and work for Aramco, at one of their refineries. Big money, and I had just gotten married to a woman with expensive tastes. That would have been, let me think, late '76 or so. Anyway, I worked over there for about five years, got divorced, came back home, and ended up back in Houston."
"Right back where you started from."
"That's what I said! I didn't just want to spend the rest of my life in a refinery, waiting for something to blow up, or getting cancer from some shit. I went to law school, and ended up here, junior lawyer in a lobbying firm. Money's better, too."
"You ever remarry?", I asked.
"I am a firm believer in the sacred rite of marriage. And divorce, now that I think about it. I married a second time and got divorced from her, too."
"You're just a sorry ass to have to live with."
"You'd be an expert on being a sorry ass. What about you? The last I remember, you were banging that little brunette with the nice tits."
"That would be my beloved wife and the mother of my children you're talking about.", I answered.
"And the tits?", he said, laughing.
"Even nicer!" We laughed loud and long at that.
"Good for you! So, how the hell did you ever end up in this shithole? I used to think you had principles!"
"Really? A Kegger with principles? Hard to even imagine!", I replied.
"Come on, give!"
I gave an elaborate sigh. "Remember the Grateful Dead, and that line about what a long, strange trip it's been? That would be my life!" I got up and made us another round of drinks, and then brought them back over. Marty was still sitting there waiting for an explanation. "Okay, when last you saw me, I was still at the 'Tute, working on my math degrees and dating Marilyn and planning to go into the Army." Marty nodded and agreed with this.
"So, that's pretty much what I did. I graduated on time, two years after you, and was commissioned into the Army, so I belonged to them for four years. I ended up in the 82nd Airborne, in a battery of 105s. You know what I'm talking about?" I had to explain that to Marty. "A year after I graduated, Marilyn graduated and we got married."
"So, you did your four years and got out.", he asked.
I gave him a wry look. "Well, that's the strange thing. Actually, I liked it, and was good at it. I decided to go career, but then I made a bad jump and screwed up my knee."
"You? Career Army? Holy Christ! You couldn't stay in?"
I shrugged. It was too much to explain, unless he had been Army himself at some point. "Maybe, in a staff job somewhere, but I was a combat officer, and a good one. It's like I told Marylyn, it'd be like working in an ice cream store and not being allowed to lick the scoop. So I got out."
Surprisingly, he nodded. "Okay, I can follow that. My old man was in Korea. He once said something like that to me, too. But how do you go from the Army to investment banker? I would have figured you for teaching college or going to work for Microsoft or something."
At that I laughed loud and long! "Oh, buddy, if you only knew!", I told him.
"Knew what?"
"Back at RPI, I was a millionaire. I'm really good at investing, really good! When I got out of the Army, that summer I flew out to Redmond, Washington, and wrote Bill Gates a check for five million dollars. You think I was going to work for Microsoft? I own just under five percent of Microsoft!"
Marty stared at me. After a few more seconds, he said, "Are you shitting me? You own five percent of Microsoft?"
I shrugged and smiled. "Technically, the Buckman Group owns the shares, but I own 75 percent of the Buckman Group."
"How much does that work out to?"
"What, the Microsoft shares? Well, the market capitalization is somewhere around $13 or $14 billion, so figure five percent times 75 percent, that makes what, $500 million or so."
"Holy Christ! You'd better go slow and start from the beginning. You were a millionaire in college? What the hell?"
I smiled and pointed at the wet bar. "You might as well bring the bottles and ice over here. This is going to be a long, long tale!"
While Marty laughed and went over to the bar, I pulled my cell phone out and hit the first memory button. I listened while the phone rang, and then was picked up. "Hello?" It was Charlie's voice, still high pitched and a little thin. In the background I could hear his sisters demanding to know who it was, at which point he yelled back, "SHUT UP! I'M ON THE PHONE!" I slapped my hand over my face in disbelief. Then I heard, "Hello?"