"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.
"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."
"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"
"An asshole?" I suggested.
"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."
"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."
I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.
"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.
"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."
"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."
"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."
"What do you mean?"
"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."
"You did?"
"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."
"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"
"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."
"What's that?" She asked.
I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.
"Anita." I said softly.
Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"
I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."
"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"
"Because of me." I said.
"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"
I nodded shamefully.
"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"
"Yes." I said.
"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"
I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."
"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"
"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.
Her eyes widened. "Yeah."
"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."
"God." Tracy muttered.
"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."
"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"
"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."
"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"
"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."
"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"
"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"
"But she hasn't?"
I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.
"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."
Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.
"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."
"It does?" I asked.
She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"
"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."