"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?"