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I laughed at that. “One of the guys in my battery had a shirt like that, only it was written upside down and it read, ‘IF YOU CAN READ THIS, PICK ME UP AND PUT ME BACK ON THE BAR STOOL!’”

“I don’t know about riding. I’ll give it a year, but otherwise I’m heading back to New York in the summer. I did three years down in Fayetteville and it was too hot there!”

“Marilyn, that is why the Good Lord invented air conditioners! At least you never had to shovel snow!” She shrugged in agreement at that. “Besides, when we were kids, I can remember Willard Scott on the Today Show, every winter morning telling people where the coldest spot in the country was, and it was always one of two places, either Mooseprick, Minnesota, or Old Forge, New York. How far was it from your parent’s house to Old Forge? Thirty minutes? Less?”

“There’s no such place as Mooseprick, Minnesota!” she protested.

“That’s not an answer, that’s an evasion!” Tusker and Tessa laughed at that. Tessa remarked she had heard Willard talking about Old Forge a few times.

Tusker ordered out for a couple of large pepperoni pizzas, and Bucky surprised Marilyn and me by eating an entire piece by himself. Tessa commented, “He’s got a very healthy appetite!”

“Which he uses to run around madly!” added his father.

Marilyn and I looked at each other, and then over at Charlie, who was wide awake and looking around at the rest of the world. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked her.

“I’m not sure!”

“So what are your plans now?” asked Tessa. “After you move into your apartment?”

“Got anything lined up for work?” asked Tusker.

Marilyn looked at me. “Nothing specific. I’ll probably get involved in the stock market, investing, that sort of thing,” I said.

“Like in high school?” he asked.

For a second or two I was stock still, and then I tried to recover. “Huh? What?”

He grinned. “Thought I didn’t know, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The money, man! I knew you had some sort of gig making some serious bucks. What was it? You can tell now.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Tessa, looking at her husband.

I looked over at Marilyn and sighed. She said, “Go ahead, tell them. I still can’t believe it myself.”

“Tell us what?” Tessa asked.

“How’d you figure it out?” I asked my friend.

“It was the money. Your folks wouldn’t have coughed up for that apartment any more than mine would have. And you always had major cash on you. Whenever you had me pick up booze for you, you’d give me twenties or fifties. Who the hell back at Towson High in those days had fifties? You and the drug dealers, and you didn’t use drugs; I’d have known!”

I nodded. It was a habit with me when I worked for LeFleur Homes. I was always traveling and looking at job sites, eating on the road and paying for expenses with cash. I always kept three or four hundred in cash on me at all times.

I shrugged. “I’m pretty good in the stock market. I’ve had a brokerage account since I was a teenager. Remember that fight I got into on the school bus back in junior high?”

Tusker shook his head, but Tessa nodded. Tusker had gone to Cromwell Valley, I think. “Sort of. I remember three guys tried to beat you up,” said Tessa.

“Oh, shit! I bet that was a lot of fun! For them!” commented Tusker.

I smiled at him. “Maybe not so much. Anyway, the long and short of it was that I sued them and got some cash out of it. Not much, but some. The deal I made with my folks was that I would save it for college, but I didn’t put it in a bank, I put it into a stock brokerage account. I’ve been pretty lucky, too. I’m not going to get into details, but I don’t need to work for somebody else.”

Tessa looked stunned, but Tusker had an I-told-you-so look on his face. “I knew it! That’s why you knew so much about setting up our shop!”

I nodded. “That is correct! And that is why I am going to give you some more help. What are you planning to do there? Your business is too big for your location!”

“I don’t know yet, but we have to do something. I’m already looking to hire another mechanic, and I could use somebody in the lobby, but we don’t have enough room for the people we have,” he groused.

“And what did I tell you that you had to do way back when you told me you wanted a bike business?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, make a plan! You’re a real pain in the ass at times, Buckman!” he replied with a laugh. “Is he like this at home? Always making plans?” he asked Marilyn.

I laughed and answered for her. “Are you kidding? In the Army you can’t go to the bathroom without a five point action plan, to make sure you do it in a proper, efficient, and military manner!” Everybody laughed at that. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make a plan!” he said while flipping me the middle finger. Charlie reached out for it, which made Marilyn and Tessa laugh. Tusker dangled it in front of my son, who grabbed for it and tried to put it in his mouth. “That’s really gross!” commented Tusker.

“Dig out your old business plan and use that as a start. Your new goal is to get a bigger location. Outline what you want in a bigger location and be specific. It’s not just a bigger service bay, it’s ‘I’ve got 1,200 square feet now and I need 3,500 square feet plus a paint shop.’ That way when you go to the bank for financing, you can show them specifics.”

That got a grimace from both Tusker and Tessa. “That’ll be fun! It was like pulling teeth to get the bank loan for where we are now. I thought they were going to take Bucky as collateral,” she said.

“Standard operating procedure,” I commented. “If you need money they don’t want to lend it, if you have money they’ll lend you all you want!”

“Maybe I should borrow the money from you!” laughed Tusker.

Suddenly things began to move in slow motion, with a clarity to them, and I just sat there stock still for a minute, as the room revolved around me. Everybody else turned to face me, and it was Tusker who said, “Hey, Carl, it was a joke! Don’t sweat it!”

I shook my head and came out of the little trance I was in. “No, it’s what you said. There’s actually a name for that sort of business. It’s called venture capital, where you invest in new businesses in the hopes they grow bigger. They do it in Silicon Valley all the time, for computer companies and such.”

“I don’t follow,” said Tessa.

Her husband was just looking at us blankly. “What, sort of like a bank that loans money, but not a bank?”

“Sort of. It’s not really a loan, either, it’s capital in equity.”

“You’d better start using small words and big pictures, buddy.”

I grinned at him. “Okay, let’s say I have this idea for a new computer gizmo that’s going to change the world. I start a company and start to work on it, but the banks have never heard of it and won’t loan me any money, since I haven’t sold any yet. Following me so far?” The others nodded, although this was flying way over Marilyn’s head, I could see. “So, I go to a venture capital company and make a deal with them. They give me the money, and I give them a chunk of the company. They now own some of the stock in the company.”

Tessa looked over at her husband. “You mean they give away part of the company to the bank?”

“That’s pretty much it. The venture capital company is betting that my new gizmo will work and everybody will want one and I’ll sell lots of them and the company makes a fortune. At some point down the road, the company puts their shares up on the stock market and the venture capital company can sell their shares and make a buttload of bucks.”