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.