"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.