Marilyn said, “We’ll need to do the wash and repack. If we fly home on Sunday, I don’t see how we could travel again before Tuesday.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “If we fly home the following week, how do we get Charlie back? Fly back up to Utica?”
“Why not fly directly from the Bahamas to Utica, pick him up, and then fly home?” asked Taylor.
I had to laugh at that. “Won’t that freak out your parents!? They’ll never believe us when we have them drive over to the airport and see us climbing out of an airplane!” I looked at Taylor. “What kind of an airplane?”
“Well, the first weekend, the distance is so short, you won’t save any time in a jet. We can put you in a nice turboprop like a King Air. Going to the Bahamas is another thing. I’m figuring a Learjet for that.”
I looked over at Marilyn. “Holy Christ! I told you to stick with me and see the world!”
“I just can’t believe this!”
Taylor looked at us strangely. “Do you mind me asking a personal question?”
“Let me guess — what’s with us and this vacation?” I responded.
“Yes. You’re not my usual clients.”
I grinned and nodded. “Okay, short version. I’m a very good investor in the stock market. However, until now, for the last few years in fact, I’ve been the property of Uncle Sam. I was an officer in the Army, in fact. After I ripped up my leg, I was medicalled out. I’m still a very good investor, but now I plan to goof off a little.”
“You do realize what this vacation is going to cost, don’t you?”
“When I said I was a good investor, I meant it. My net worth is around $40 million right now, and rising. Start buying tech stocks, Taylor. We are at the start of a long boom period in American finance.”
Taylor blinked at that. “Wow! And you were a soldier?”
“Do you only want the poor people protecting you?”
“Wow!”
Taylor pulled out several colored brochures and spread them around the table. “Now, these are just a few possibilities. They’re a mix of things in the Bahamas. Like I said the other day, the Bahamas are a bunch of different islands, most of which are quite lovely and have a small airport on them. The biggest island, well, there really isn’t much of a biggest island. The capital is Nassau.” She pulled out a map of the Bahamas and pointed to an island in the center of the small archipelago. “There’s nice places here, but also some on these other islands. It all depends on what you want.”
I looked at my wife and shrugged. I had been to the Bahamas before with her, back on my first trip, but always on a cruise ship, where we never stayed on the land. I didn’t know much more about the place than what Taylor was saying. I turned back to our little lecture.
Taylor pulled out one brochure. “This is one possibility. It’s in Nassau, the Graycliff, five stars, very discreet, very upscale, an old time estate converted to a very nice resort. Then again, there are also some places nearby, more conventional resorts, but also very modern. That’s a possibility.”
Marilyn looked interested, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind. “What else do you have there? I was thinking of a sort of villa or house, not really a hotel. Something more private than that.”
“But not so remote as to be a desert island, right?”
I thought briefly back to my hike back through Nicaragua. “No, not that remote. Maybe a place we could get a nice car for the week and go into town if we wanted.”
Taylor nodded. She put away the brochures on the hotels and pulled a few others out. “Here’s something you might like. This is on Eleuthera.” She tapped the map on a different island. “This is called La Valencia. It’s a private estate that can be rented. It’s right on the ocean, almost a thousand feet of private beach, plus a very discreet staff.”
“How do you get there?” I asked. The place certainly looked lovely on the brochure.
“It’s near the island capital, sort of, called Governors Harbor, and there is a small airstrip there. It’s certainly large enough to fly a Learjet in and out of. It also takes flights in and out of Nassau and Miami,” she explained. “Rent a car for a week. Oh, by the way, they’re English originally, so they drive on the left.”
I snorted at that. “Maybe we can save on the jet fuel for the ride home if we die while driving on the wrong side of the road.”
“I’ll drive,” said Marilyn.
“Now I know I’m going to die!”
Charlie woke up at that point and we all took a break as Marilyn tended to our son. She came back down five minutes later with Charlie in a fresh diaper and a clean onesie. He was deposited in my lap while Marilyn scurried off to the kitchen to prepare a bottle. Taylor made a few funny faces at him, and then took him from me and played with him a bit.
Marilyn returned to find Taylor making raspberries with our son. “Typical man, get a woman to do your job for you,” she commented.
“He’s so adorable! Mine are all older than him,” commented Taylor.
“How old?” asked Marilyn.
“My oldest daughter is twelve and my son is nine. The baby is our youngest girl and she’s already seven.”
“What’s your husband do?” I asked.
“He works for the telephone company, but we don’t know whether he’ll stay with AT&T or go with one of the regional companies.”
“He should be safe either way,” I commented. “Ultimately the value of the various Baby Bells will be greater than that of the mother company. I put a flat million into shares of AT&T after the court agreement was made. I intend to stick with it after the breakup.” Taylor blinked at this announcement. While I couldn’t remember all the values and foolishness, for the next thirty years and beyond the various Bell companies and Baby Bells and the original national Bell bought and sold various pieces of each other and their competitors. The ultimate result was a very strong phone system and very valuable stocks.
This seemed like the kind of vacation I had in mind. Taylor told me she would make the various arrangements over the next day or two, and asked how I wanted to get them. It was at times like this that I missed more modern communications methods. Forget about computers — fax machines were still in their infancy! Modem speeds were practically nonexistent. Fiber optic didn’t exist yet. Cell phones had been invented but still hadn’t been rolled out to the United States. I told her to simply mail it to me. I gave her my American Express card number and we wrapped it up for the day.
The next few weeks went quietly. Andrea’s engineer did a perc test and the property passed, so we gave the word to John to start the work on the title and the closing. We would close on the property after we got back from vacation. Marilyn and her mother chattered frequently about the christening and they made arrangements to do a double christening. Mark and Lauren were christening their second child, Justin.
I spent quite a bit of time teasing Marilyn about what I was going to do to her once we got to the Bahamas. That got her very turned on for a few days, but then she had her period and that put a kibosh on any fun and games for most of the week before we left. Well, better than during our vacation week, which we both agreed on.
I converted part of the spare bedroom into an office, buying a desk, a small filing cabinet, and a small copy machine. Jake Junior had me bill this all through The Buckman Group, since it would be a business expense. Theoretically I could have claimed some portion of my home expenses towards office costs, but that’s one of those items the IRS red flags for special attention. At my income level, everything gets audited in any case, but why ask for trouble?
At some point I was going to have to ask John about actually running a business. Right now all of my money was tied up in the stock market, or some more liquid assets that I could tap for quick cash. As my wealth grew, however, was I going to need to hire an accountant or bookkeeper for the Buckman Group? What about a secretary? Get an office somewhere? That sounded like more of a pain than anything else. Right now it didn’t take all that much time, but would it be less expensive to bring it in-house rather than outsource it?