"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."