America 1982-Chapter 665 - 7: I don’t often mention her, but I often think of her.
Tommy arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona at seven in the evening, but he still received a warm welcome from Eric and his wife, who treated him to Flagstaff’s special secret-recipe meat-filled burgers and Red Rock Volcano ice cream.
Eric’s wife was from Texas and now worked as a professor at Northern Arizona University. Their children also lived in Texas because Eric’s in-laws owned a large farm there where the kids could ride horses, fly planes to spray pesticides, and be taken care of by their grandparents, saving a considerable amount in nanny expenses.
As for Eric, he was the same as when he was younger, spending more than half of the year flying around the world dealing with various geological formations. He found his job fascinating because earthquakes were even more unpredictable than people’s hearts.
The two of them talked about many fun incidents from their college days. Tommy told Eric that the recruitment tactics of the Stanford SSD were really crazy now. They would stuff coins into the rookies’ behinds, then another rookie would use a jackhammer to hit the top of their heads, making the coins fall out.
Eric laughed and said he would write to SSD to discuss which type of coin should be used, mentioning that he had seen the largest coin with a diameter bigger than an egg, which would be quite a sight if inserted.
Their conversation greatly shocked Mrs. Bell who had always thought her husband was a gentle, scholarly man.
After staying a night in Flagstaff, the next day Tommy drove through New Mexico and arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the evening, also jokingly called the "Land of the Living Dead," as it was America’s largest helium-producing area. At the same time, Pantex, America’s only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility, was located here. The over two hundred thousand residents lived with the possibility that a mishap in the disassembly of nuclear weapons could explode and turn them from the living into dead in an instant.
Holly Kina had planned to come from Austin, Texas, to meet Tommy, but he refused. Amarillo was not a good place for reminiscing, and it made more sense for Holly to continue to his next stop, Oklahoma City, than to come here from Austin. Besides, he and Holly didn’t have much of an old times to catch up on since they saw each other often.
Of the original five people from Actor Corporation, Jason had chosen to return to his hometown in Greenville, Mississippi, to enjoy his retirement after Susy’s accidental death three years ago. Mark Warren had taken over as president of Susan’s brokerage firm after she entered politics. Following her mentor Condoleezza Rice into politics, Susan had served as the mayor of San Francisco for two terms, one term as the Secretary of State of California, and was now a Republican senator for the California district in the United States Congress, thus barely maintaining her mentor’s political connections.
Only Holly had always been active in the internet and computer industry, frequently meeting with Tommy. The only difference was she had moved from Silicon Valley in California to Austin, Texas, and was now the founder of the Austin Center for Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. Simply put, she researched various high-tech medical devices to help improve patients’ living conditions, such as smart spinal implants, smart knee joints, hip joints, artificial hearts, and some ear, nose, and throat soft tissue repair technologies.
She no longer needed Tommy’s guidance and knew how to entice those with money to invest with her, like selling high-tech life science concepts to not-so-wealthy wealthy people.
Those not-so-wealthy rich people were unlikely to throw money into building exclusive medical centers like the Rockefellers, so the best option was for a group of them to pool their money and hire someone like Holly to research how to live longer for them.
After staying a night in Amarillo, Tommy picked up two hitchhiking backpackers on the road the next day, who didn’t mind their destination as long as it was further north.
They were an old man and a young one from California. The old man had lived his whole life in San Diego, supporting his family with a fast-food restaurant, without vacations, never leaving San Diego from birth until this trip, and had never seen real snow. Now that his children were settled and no longer needed his care and his wife had passed away, he decided to close the restaurant, take his savings, and hike north to see the snow. The young man was an active short-video blogger from San Diego, aiming to record the old man’s journey and willing to take care of him along the way.
In Oklahoma City, Tommy dropped them off and watched as they hiked with their backpacks towards the north. If the old man hadn’t mentioned it himself, Tommy would never have imagined that there were still many people in the world who had never seen real snowflakes.
Arriving in Oklahoma meant saying goodbye to the west of America and entering the lush Midwest. After getting his car serviced, he drove non-stop to Little Rock, Arkansas, to rest for the night, then continued south along the Mississippi River, reaching Jason’s hometown, Greenville.
If you’re unfamiliar with Greenville, just watch Quentin’s movie "Django," where the scene with Leonardo convincing a black slave to come down from a tree and then unleashing dogs on him was filmed in Greenville, Mississippi.
Half of the state is covered with forests and the other half with plains and farmland, truly a paradise for American slave owners; during the times of slavery, male black slaves were responsible for logging, female black slaves for cotton planting, while whites and dogs supervised, a perfect work arrangement.
This might still be the most traditional part of America, where residents are allowed to carry automatic handguns without a gun permit or background check, minors who commit serious crimes like murder can be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, the death penalty is still in force, and gambling is legalized.
When Tommy saw Jason, he looked very happy, and Tommy could understand why; Jason had nearly bought the entire town of over thirty thousand people. Now he lived in a mansion more luxurious than Leonardo’s in "Django," with thousands of black people working for him every day, harvesting crops or catching catfish. Looking from the outskirts, almost all the land and ponds in sight were his property. To ensure enough social interaction, he had even built a luxury floating private club on Ferguson Lake just to entertain friends visiting from afar.
All the beautiful girls in Greenville, both black and white, almost all worked as waitresses at his private club, and most of the time, with no guests, it meant they only served Jason alone.
"AIDS or cancer?" Jason asked earnestly when he saw Tommy.
Tommy looked puzzled, "What?"
"Testicular cancer? They have to remove it? Otherwise, why would you come all the way here to see me? I thought it was a final farewell," Jason said to Tommy.
Tommy sighed, "My balls are fine, Jason. I’m just back in Rhode Island for my wedding, and I wanted to invite you to my pre-wedding party along the way."
"You’re getting married again? To whom? The last time we saw each other, didn’t you bring that young girl?" Jason poured a glass of wine for Tommy, saying in a tone of shock, "That girl is only twenty. I think the hemorrhoids you got when you were thirty are older than her."
"Odelia," Tommy took the glass. "I’m marrying Odelia."
Jason’s face was full of disbelief, "You’ve slept with her three best friends and their mom, and she still forgives you? Have you brainwashed her enough to abandon all her dignity for you?"
"Not for me, maybe for the Hawk family, or maybe like you, tormenting yourself for Susy." Tommy surveyed the room’s decor, "This place doesn’t look like Susy was ever here. All traces of her are hidden in your head."
Jason leaned back on the sofa, reflective, "I don’t often mention her, but I think of her frequently."
"You should call those bastards back to the United States to enjoy some family bliss with you. Don’t miss her too much. Susy probably doesn’t want you to join her too soon. Maybe she’s up in heaven wearing leather, making God kneel and lick her toes."
"I don’t even know where they are, they’re none of my business. Their mothers took a sum of money and disappeared with them. In fact, I have thought about it—this big house should have a big family around me, so I wouldn’t have to keep missing Susy. We used to say, if one of us died, the other would keep enjoying life happily. So here I am, enjoying every day."
"You probably can still reproduce; it’s not like there’s a shortage of women here."
"I don’t want to breed. I haven’t even had sex for three years. Honestly, I wasn’t even this faithful when Susy was alive."
"It’s possible that Susy broke you before she died, it has nothing to do with the word ’faithful.’
At that moment, Jason’s phone rang. He answered it uninterestedly at first, brushing off the caller with a few words, then his face turned a bit angry, and finally to shock. After giving out his address, he just stared blankly and hung up the phone.
"Your face looks like you’ve just heard Susy is still alive," Tommy said, taking a sip of his drink.
Jason looked to Tommy, "That call just told me, now I have a big family."
"Your illegitimate children are all set to come claim your money?"
"I... uh... the call was from a man. He said he’s my son, forty-two years old," Jason replied.
"You’re the same age as me, which means you had this son at eighteen? That’s impossible. We had just started our freshman year at college, busy studying and setting up businesses. It must be a scam; you had no money to support a woman back then. Remember, you got those three girlfriends after OSS went public and you returned to Greenville for country girls. By then, you were nineteen."
"No, the caller was right, and so are you. I really had no money to keep a woman then, but there was a woman who funded... took care of my business. A forty-year-old, single wealthy woman with a Firebird, and I had an affair with her. With the money she paid me to spend the night, I even treated you to pizza," Jason admitted.
Tommy’s eyes widened in disbelief, "No! That’s impossible! The man on the phone―"
"That’s what he said, his mother was the single wealthy woman who patronized my gigolo business back in the day, and she got pregnant by accident. She thought she could never get pregnant, but it just happened. Then she considered it the greatest gift God had given her because she had had a child before, but it didn’t survive. So she decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and felt that the child didn’t need a father, she could handle it herself. Just like that, she quietly left California and settled in Canada, where she raised her child to adulthood."
"This year, his mother passed away. On her deathbed, she told him his father’s name was Jason White, a Stanford University student. Now, he wants to meet me, just a simple visit, no involvement with the estate, just because I’m his biological father."
