"Really?" I asked. "Does it show?"
"You're walking around looking like someone who's in the process of getting a blowjob."
I chuckled. "Well put." I said. "Actually I am in a very good mood."
"Really?" She asked. "And why is that? Have there been some developments since the last time I talked to you?"
"Many." I nodded. "It all started with this." I held up my hand for her inspection.
"Stitches." She nodded. "Mom told me the other night that you'd cut your stupid self at work. You'd think that after living in two lives you'd have learned to keep your hand away from surgical instruments. Why should that put you in a good mood?"
I told her about my make-up with Nina and about our date.
"Bill, that's absolutely radical." She squealed, giving me another hug. "Congratulations."
"Thanks Tracy." I smiled. I knew she was more than simply happy for me, but for herself as well. My improving relationship with Nina went a long way towards confirming the theory we'd discussed at Thanksgiving. I knew my next piece of news would make her even happier in that regard.
"And there's more." I told her.
"More?" She asked.
I told her what I had done for Anita. She listened with growing respect.
"Wow." She finally said. "You really are a conniving son of a bitch little brother."
"Thank you." I replied.
"Do you think it worked?" She asked.
"Time will tell." I shrugged. "I'll keep an eye out for his car suddenly parked in front of her house. If I see that, I'll know it worked. If I don't, then maybe I'll have to come up with something else."
She giggled. "My brother," She said. "The motherfucking hand of fate."
As we drove towards home Tracy seemed a little fidgety, as if there was something she wanted to say but that she didn't know how to begin. Finally I told her to spill it.
"Well," She started. "I know you've been putting money into the stock market and all."
"Yeah." I agreed.
"But I was wondering if you'd really thought about, you know, taking advantage of the knowledge you have."
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
"You could do so much more than just put a few bucks into the stock market." She told me. "You could actually 'invent' things that are going to be popular in a few years. You could patent them before the inventor does and then take the money from that and put it into your stocks. You could make billions if you play your cards right Bill. Billions! And I could help you. I'm going to be a corporate lawyer that specializes in…"
"Hold on a second Tracy." I interrupted, not liking the way she was talking a bit.
"What?" She asked.
"You're suggesting that I steal people's inventions and take the credit for them?"
"It's not really stealing." She protested. "You're just thinking of it first. And I'm not talking about the telephone patent or anything. I'm talking about shit like that." She pointed at the car in front of us. In its rear window was a small plastic sign shaped like a highway caution sign and colored yellow. It was stuck to the rear window with suction cups. BABY ON BOARD read the motto in black letters. "The fuckin' baby on board signs. Whoever invented that stupid thing must be raking it in. Something like that comes along every couple of years. There must be other stuff like that in the future, stuff you already know about. Why can't you just make the first move?"
"Tracy…" I started.
"Or what about books and music lyrics?" She went on. "You know what books are going to be best sellers! You know what songs are going to be number one hits! What if you wrote them first? What if you copyrighted the…"
"Tracy!" I barked, finally getting her attention.
"What?"
"I couldn't do that." I told her.
"Why not?" She asked. "Think about how much money you could make!"
"I'll make enough money from my stocks Tracy. I was a paramedic who was used to living on less than forty thousand dollars a year. My investments will be enough to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life."
"Fuck comfort!" She yelled. "Bill, you have the potential to become the richest man ever if you play your cards right."
"And what would that accomplish?" I asked her, surprised and slightly disgusted by this greedy side of my sister. "First of all my conscience will not allow me to do something like that. Despite what you say, what you are suggesting is stealing. Maybe the worst form of stealing a person could do."
"It's not…"
"It is!" I yelled. "But let's put that aside for a moment. Suppose I do as you ask and steal other people's thoughts in order to capitalize upon them. We've already discovered that fucking around with fate can have disastrous consequences. You're asking me to potentially increase those consequences tenfold. How many lives could I screw up by doing that? How many people throughout history could I potentially fuck over?"
"Bill," She said carefully. "You would be helping yourself and your family by doing it. You wouldn't be hurting anybody you knew."
"Anybody I knew." I repeated softly.
"Right." Tracy agreed.
Fighting to keep my eyes on the road to avoid glaring at my sister and to keep my voice level to keep from scaring her too badly, I said, "Tracy, when I was a paramedic I worked for a corporation. A large, faceless corporation that was based on the East Coast. They owned ambulance companies all over the United States, in damn near every state. And do you know what their prime motivation was? Do you know what was behind every decision they made?"
"Money obviously." She said, not getting me.
"Right." I nodded. "Money. Legal tender. The almighty dollar. That was what they were all about, that was their focus. Capitalism at it's finest, right?"
She shrugged. "That's what everything is all about."
"Uh huh." I nodded. "It is. But you see, I was the poor slob on the bottom end of the pile, the poor slob that was just trying to scratch out a living in this huge corporation. A worker bee. And like a worker bee I was expendable.
"I watched what happens when some group of people or some individual is only looking out for itself. I watched what happens when someone said to themselves, 'nobody I know is getting hurt' and then signed a piece of paperwork that laid off thousands of people that he would never have to look at. I saw many of my friends lose their jobs and have their lives destroyed, saw them have to go on welfare and unemployment, saw them lose their houses, their spouses even, because some fucking bean counter in corporate headquarters decided that the company wasn't making enough profit in the Pacific Northwest division. They would have to have a 'reduction in force', or they would say that 'positions needed to be eliminated'. They were rich fucks up in some office building in New York throwing around euphemisms about firing people so they could show a few extra bucks on the stockholder report."
"Bill… I…"
"I've been on the wrong end of what you're saying Tracy." I told her. "I used to think about people that sat in office buildings, making decisions based on money that would ultimately destroy people's lives. You know what I used to think about them?"
"What?" She asked quietly.
"I used to tell myself that they'd sold their souls. That they'd given up morality completely in order to be able to do what they do and sleep at night. I used to swear that there was no way I could ever do such a thing."
I looked over at her. "What you are asking me to do amounts to selling my soul Tracy. I would be taking something from someone else in order to further my own cause. I will not do that. I'll invest in stocks that I know are going to go up and I'll make money off of that. Sure, those companies are doing all of the things that I've just described to their employees. But I won't be involved in that. I will never have to knowingly destroy other people in order to get ahead. Maybe that doesn't qualify me as a saint, but at least I won't be selling my soul, do you understand?"