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My stomach churns. “But you can be different and still love each other,” I point out.
“Yeah, but you can’t lie about your differences,” Bill says. He hesitates, but then walks behind his desk and opens a bottom drawer. From it he extracts an old photograph, bent and fading.
He slides it across the desk, mouth twisting in a smile that could be mistaken for a grimace. It’s a photo of him and Marie, blurry in that dated ‘70s filter. Her arms are wrapped around his neck, looking into his eyes. He’s staring at the camera, a goofy, wide grin on his face. They’re both wearing odd, old-fashioned clothes, even for the time.
“Comic Con. 1979. Our first real date. We went as Brad and Janet from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We had no money. My car was a rusted 1971 Ford pickup. Computers were still something only nerds like us even thought about. It was the happiest we ever were.”
He takes it from my hands and puts it face-down on the desk, as if he can’t bare to look at it a moment longer. He swigs his drink.
“You don’t look that different,” I say.
“I didn’t think so either,” he says. “That tune changed once we started making something of ourselves. I guess Star Wars isn’t that cool when you can go wine-tasting in Italy. She grew up. I guess I never did.”
“You seem to get along fine,” I say. “With that… crowd.”
“With those blithering idiots?” he asks, anger sparking in his tone. “I’ve only ever done it for her. I guess that’s the one upside of all this. I don’t need to worry about embarrassing her anymore. And I can stop pretending like I ever gave a fuck about golf.”
Bill looks like he’s a moment away from doing something crazy, but after a tense second, he relaxes, sets his glass down, and rubs his eyes.
“We weren’t always like this, Rhett,” he says. “But it’s been years in the making. I just never thought this is what it would come down to — a bunch of half-wits instead of friends, a house too big for two people, bank accounts to be divided up. Though I suppose it’s easier than splitting up kids.”
The room is starting to feel claustrophobic, like some freaky future picture of Liz and me. Too different, not honest enough. What is Liz going to think if I can’t hack it at the bank? What if I am just a loser with a golden ticket? Disappointing to Dad, to Mother, to Liz.
“What would you have changed, going back?” I ask. It’s a selfish question when I should be supporting him, but I have to know.
“I wouldn’t have pretended,” he says. “There was a moment, in the beginning, where I made a choice.” He looks at me, cocks an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”
“Yes,” I say desperately. “Tell me everything.”
“All right then,” he says. “It was 1989 when the software finally took off. We scrimped and saved for ten years, living in a tiny backroom, working shitty jobs by day and coding side-by-side half the night. Watching dollar B-movies on the weekends and dreaming about the future together.
“And then, practically overnight — boom. We were in trade magazines, meeting with investors, getting invited to the biggest events in the business. We met our heroes, and suddenly we were heroes to people.
“And boy… the money. You’ve never been without, so it’s hard to wrap your head around it, but to go from practically nothing to tens of millions in the bank? It was overwhelming. We were on top of the world.
“But with that world came expectations. Golf. Garden parties. Rubbing elbows with people who never had to worry about paying the electric bill. And science fiction? Who has time for that?”
Bill is silent, staring out the window with faraway eyes, like he’s seeing directly into the past. “Then Comic Con came around again. I wanted to go as Hector and Regina from Night of the Comet. Not the greatest costume, but we barely had time to put things together. We’d always made everything ourselves, of course. And even though we had a lot of money, it didn’t seem right to go factory-made.”
“But Marie thought differently?” I ask.
“Bingo. Marie wanted to go as Alien and Predator.” He laughs ruefully. “It sounds ridiculous, but we got into a huge fight over it, and we didn’t end up going at all. It was the first one in ten years that we missed. And we never went to another one again.”
“It sounds like she still wanted to go though,” I say.
Bill shakes his head. “I thought so too, until I thought on it a bit longer. Why was she so insistent? Then it clicked. Those costumes have masks. We could go and not be embarrassed when our picture appeared in some gossip rag.
“I wish she would have just been honest about how she was feeling. I wish I would have been honest. Instead I got in my head. I was hurt and more than a little insecure. We were navigating this new world together and I was afraid of being left behind. So when Marie started playing tennis, I sucked it up and got into golf. And I tried to be happy that we were finally fitting in.”
He turns his hands up in defeat. “So there you go. That’s it. Wish it were more exciting, more dramatic. But I guess that’s not how life is.” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, and takes a faded yellow ticket from within the folds. He throws it on the desk, next to the worn photograph. It reads, Comic Con 1989.
“That fight drove a wedge between us, though it’s taken thirty years for us to finally break apart,” he says. “I used to think we were worth hanging onto. So I turned myself into someone unrecognizable and I’ve been miserable for it. Hanging on isn’t admirable, it’s stubborn. At least I can admit that it’s finally time for me to move on.”
* * *
Liz is already in the infinity pool when I get back to the room. Her back is to me, her long neck silhouetted by the setting sun.
Bill and Marie’s situation is the Ghost of Christmas Future, an echo of Mother’s dire words. Too different. One too serious, the other not serious enough.
