Ken Grimwood - Replay

"No, I built it up myself, from scratch." He laughed, starting to feel more relaxed with her, confident and proud of his achievements for the first time in years. "I won a lot of money on some bets, horse races and such, and I put it all into this company."

She regarded him skeptically. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-three." He paused a beat, realized he was talking too much about himself, hadn’t expressed enough curiosity about her. She had no way of knowing he already knew everything about her, more—at this point in her life—than she knew about herself. "What about you; what are you studying?"

"Sociology. Were you a business major at Emory, or what?"

"History, but I dropped out. What year are you?"

"Senior this fall. So how big of a deal is this company of yours? I mean, have you got a lot of people working for you? Have you got an office right in Manhattan?"

"A whole building, at Park and Fifty-third. Do you know New York?"

"You have your own building, on Park Avenue. That’s nice." She wasn’t looking at him anymore, was drawing daisy-petal curlicues in the sand around the beer bottle. Jeff remembered a day, months before they were married, when she’d shown up unexpectedly at his door with a bunch of daisies; the sun had been behind her hair, and all of summer in her smile.

"Well, it’s … taken a lot of effort," he said. "So, what do you plan to do when you get out of school?"

"Oh, I thought maybe I’d buy a few department stores. Start small, you know." She folded her towel, began gathering her belongings from the blanket and stuffing them into a large blue beach bag. "Maybe you could help me get a good deal on Saks Fifth Avenue, hmm?"

"Hey—hold on, please don’t go. You think I’m putting you on, is that it?"

"Just forget about it," she said, cramming her book into the bag and shaking sand from the blanket.

"No, look, I’m serious. I wasn’t kidding around. My company’s called Future, Inc. Maybe you’ve even heard of—"

"Thanks for the beer. Better luck next time."

"Hey, please, let’s just talk a little longer, O.K.? I feel as if I know you, as if we have a lot to share. Do you know that feeling, like you’ve been with someone in some previous life, or—"

"I don’t believe in that kind of nonsense." She threw the folded blanket over one arm and started walking toward the highway and the rows of parked cars.

"Look, just give me a chance," Jeff said, following alongside her. "I know for a fact that if we just get to know each other we’ll have a lot in common; we’ll—"

She wheeled on her bare feet and glared at him over the sunglasses. "If you don’t stop following me I’m going to yell for the lifeguard. Now, back off, buddy. Go pick up somebody else, all right?"

"Hello?"

"Linda?"

"It’s Jeff, Jeff Winston. We met on the beach this afternoon. I—"

"How the hell did you get this number? I never even told you my last name!"

"That’s not important. Listen, I’m sending you a recent issue of Business Week. There’s an article about me in there, with a photograph. Page forty-eight. You’ll see I wasn’t lying."

"You have my address, too? What kind of stunt is this, anyway? What do you want from me?"

"I just want to get to know you, and have you get to know me. There’s so much left undone between us, so many wonderful possibilities for—"

"You’re crazy! I mean it; you’re some kind of psycho!"

"Linda, I know this has started badly, but just give me the opportunity to explain. Give us the leeway to approach each other in an open, honest manner, to find—"

"I don’t want to get to know you, whoever the hell you are. And I don’t care if you’re rich, I don’t care if you’re goddamn J. Paul Getty, O.K.? Just leave … me … alone!"

"I understand that you’re upset. I know all this must seem very strange to you—"

"If you call this number again, or if you show up at my house, I’ll call the police. Is that clear enough?"

The phone slammed loudly in Jeff’s ear as she hung up.

He’d been given the chance to relive most of his life; now he’d trade it all for another shot at this one day.

The Mirassou Vineyards teemed with pickers working the slopes southeast of San Jose, great buckets of fresh green grapes atop their heads as they wound their way like harvest ants down to the crusher and the presses outside the old cellar. The hills rippled with wide-spaced rows of trellised vines, and here among the masonry buildings the oaks and elms were a splendor of October colors.

Diane had been angry at him all day, and the bucolic setting and arcane intricacies of the winery had done little to appease her. Jeff never should have taken her along with him this morning; he’d thought she might be fascinated, or at least amused, by the two young geniuses, but he was wrong.

"Hippies, that’s all they were. That tall boy was barefoot, for God’s sake, and the other one looked like a … a Neanderthal!"

"Their idea has a lot of potential; it doesn’t matter what they looked like."

"Well, somebody ought to tell them the sixties are over, if they want to do anything with that silly idea of theirs. I just don’t believe you fell for it, and gave them all that money!"

"It’s my money, Diane. And I’ve told you before, the business decisions are all mine, too."

He couldn’t really blame her for the way she’d reacted; without benefit of foresight, the two young men and their garageful of secondhand electronic components would indeed seem unlikely candidates for a spot on the Fortune 500. But within five years that garage in Cupertino, California would be famous, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would prove to be the soundest investment of 1976. Jeff had given them half a million dollars, insisted they follow the advice of a retired young marketing executive from Intel they had recently met, and told them to make whatever they wanted as long as they continued to call it "Apple." He had let them keep forty-nine percent of the new enterprise.

"Who in the world would want a computer in their house? And what makes you think those scruffy boys really know how to make one, anyway?"

"Let’s drop it, all right?"

Diane went into one of her petulant silences, and Jeff knew the matter wouldn’t really be dropped, not even if she remained silent about it from now on.

He’d married her a year ago, out of convenience if nothing else, soon after he’d turned thirty. She’d been a twenty-three-year-old socialite from Boston, heiress to one of the country’s oldest and largest insurance firms; attractive in a reedy sort of way, and able to handle herself quite well in any gathering where the individual net worths of the participants exceeded seven figures. She and Jeff got along as well as could be expected for two people who had little in common other than their familiarity with money. Now Diane was seven months pregnant, and Jeff had hopes that the child might bring out the best in her, forge a deeper bond between them.

The young blond woman in the tailored navy suit led them inside the main winery building, to the tasting room in one front corner. Diamond-shaped racks of bottled wine lined the walls, broken by softly lit recesses in which photographs of the vineyards were displayed, along with cut flowers and standing bottles of the Mirassou product. Jeff and Diane stood at the rosewood bar in the center of the room, accepted ritual sips of Chardonnay.

Linda had, apparently, meant everything she’d said after that disastrous meeting on the beach seven years ago. His letters to her had been returned unopened, and the gifts he’d sent were all refused. After a few months he had finally stopped attempting to contact her, though he added her name to the list of "Personal/Priority" subjects to be kept track of by the clipping service to which he subscribed. That was how he’d learned, in May of 1970, that Linda had married a Houston architect, a widower with two young children. Jeff wished her happiness, but couldn’t help feeling abandoned … by someone who had never known him, as far as she was concerned.