13

Revelation

Jerry arrived home the following Friday, and Jackie ran to greet him as he got out of the car. She hugged and kissed him as they walked to the back door. “It looks like I was missed,” Jerry said. He had no idea how glad Jackie was that he was home. “Are the kids at your parents?” he asked.

“Yes, I dropped them off about four o’clock,” Jackie answered.

Jackie told Jerry everything that had been going on except the most important thing‍—Chris and her dream. Jerry sensed Jackie was disturbed about something, but when he questioned her, she just shrugged it off. They decided to go out for dinner and wound up at the local pizza place. By the time they were done eating, Jackie had some other activity on her mind.

As soon as they arrived home, Jackie took a shower and got into bed buck naked. She pulled the sheet up to her neck and called down to Jerry to come tuck her in.

Jerry came into the bedroom and shut the door. He walked to the edge of the bed and pulled the sheet down. “It looks like you’re ready for business!”

“Come into my bed and I’ll show you,” Jackie responded. This was the first time she could put the incident with Chris out of her mind. They made love two times that night.

Saturday morning found Jackie at ease and happy to greet the day. She lay next to Jerry and knew their relationship was strong. She felt secure, loved, and happy to be with him. She craved the closeness that most women want, and she needed the physical side of the relationship.

The hot summer began to give way as the school year approached. Jackie and Jerry had decided last spring that it was time for Jackie to return to teaching. She had stopped when David was born, but now Lisa and David were in school and Jackie wanted to resume her career. It wasn’t that they needed the money, but Jackie needed to be fulfilled. Jerry recognized this and suggested they hire a cleaning woman to come in on Saturdays to give a hand with the housework.

As it turned out, Jackie was rehired as a first-grade teacher. When she had left teaching, she was an art teacher, but there were no vacancies in art. The school district had started a policy where the elementary teachers followed the pupils for three years. Thus, Jackie would have the same class for first, second, and third grades. She would then begin with a new class in year four in the first grade. This was intended to be a better way for the teachers to help the kids achieve their full potential.

It seemed that Jackie’s return to teaching, and some added attention from Jerry, helped her to forget the problem with Chris. For the first time since the kids were born, Jackie seemed content and truly happy. Beth came every Saturday about nine o’clock to clean the house and do the wash. She got along well with the kids, and they had a game to see which one did the best job of keeping their room straight. Beth would bring little treats. The first prize was always better than the one for the runner-up, so there was competition to be the best.

The fall and winter passed quickly. Maybe it was all the kids’ activities, or maybe it was Jackie working. Whatever the reason, it flew by. One of the things Jackie and Mary had wanted to do was to get a reservation at the inn for both of them. By the time they called, there were no vacancies on the weekends that suited them. They pledged that they would make reservations for next winter just as soon as Jackie had the calendar for the school year.

Before long, it was spring. The snow in Princeton lingered, and it took the April rains to wash away the last reminder of winter. One morning in May, Jerry folded his paper so he could read it without disturbing the person next to him. It was a familiar sight to a commuter, and one that Jerry had repeated many times.

As he began reading the financial section, he spotted an article about Alpha Investments. This was a company Dave, his broker, had tried to get Jerry to buy six months earlier. The article described the success of this IPO. Since November, its stock had increased sevenfold. Jerry knew he had screwed up, but he wasn’t too disappointed because he knew there would be other opportunities.

Jerry got into the office about 8:45 and had just poured a cup of coffee when the phone rang. It was Dave.

“Did you read the article about Alpha in this morning’s paper?” he asked.

“Yes. I know you told me it was a great buy. I made a mistake,” Jerry acknowledged.

Dave and Jerry had been close since their days at Penn, and they kidded each other all the time.

“All is forgiven. I have a great one for you today. The firm is called Surgical Ventures. They have developed‍—‍”

“A glue that is used in place of stitches,” said Jerry.

“How in the devil did you know that?” Dave asked.

“You mean that is what they developed?” Jerry asked.

“That’s right. Did you get another broker?” Dave asked.

“You know I only trust you, Dave,” Jerry said. He had remembered his dream when Dave told him the name of the company and had just blurted out the part about the glue. Jerry asked Dave to fax the prospectus. “How many shares will be available?”

Dave responded, “I think I can get you five thousand at ten dollars per share. You’ll have to make up your mind fast so I can reserve the shares.”

After Dave hung up, Jerry began to recall his dream. My God, he thought, I also dreamt about the Alpha article. There were five thousand shares at ten dollars per share in his dream as well. What was happening? As soon as Dave’s fax arrived, Jerry asked his secretary, Tiffany, to hold his calls unless it was Dave or Jackie. Reading over the material, it was as if he were replaying his February dream. Jerry took out a pad and tried to remember how the deal had ended in his dream. He was a bit confused because he’d dreamt about three separate incidents that night, and he was having a little trouble sorting them out. He finally remembered he’d purchased the five thousand shares for ten dollars each and sold them four months later at eighty dollars per share, making a tidy $350K on the deal.

Jerry decided to jot down his recollection of the other two dreams as well. The Optiscan was intended to identify a person by scanning the iris of the eye. As he recalled, it had two cameras: the first located the eye with one camera, and the other zoomed in to scan the iris. It only took several seconds and worked through glasses and contacts. He remembered buying twelve thousand shares at fifteen dollars per share and that he was a little uneasy about investing that much money. However, Dave pointed out how well he’d done with Surgical Ventures, which convinced Jerry to buy all twelve thousand shares. He also remembered it had been December when he bought the shares and March when he sold them for eighty-eight dollars per share. That deal made him 875 grand.

Jerry’s thoughts then turned to his final dream, which was the market crash. This was the one from which he’d woken up in a cold sweat. It had started on Thursday, April 14. He was on the links with his boss when they both got calls on their cell phones. The Dow dropped twenty-five hundred points on the fourteenth and another three thousand on the fifteenth. The losses were twenty to one, and the crash was the result of a problem in the Middle East and a cutoff of oil shipments. He remembered how he’d lost most of his holdings and been sold out because he couldn’t meet the margin call. He also recalled that the market had closed at 2:00 p.m. on the fifteenth because of the near panic on Wall Street.

Jerry returned to reading the material Dave had faxed to him. He decided to sleep on the purchase and put the fax in his briefcase. Throughout the day, Jerry couldn’t help but think how bizarre this whole thing was. People didn’t dream about reality before it happened. How could the events of the day have been so close to that dream? He did recall how real the dream had seemed at the time.

Jerry didn’t generally discuss his investments with Jackie until after the results were complete. He hadn’t told her of his dream nor about the stock market crash. He didn’t want to upset her, and he decided not to say anything about the events of the day or his February dream at the inn.

After the market closed, Dave called again. He was disturbed that Jerry knew about his recommendation. “Why won’t you come clean with me as to where you learned about the glue? That was closely held. I only found out last night. You were the first client I called.”

“It just popped into my head, Dave.”

“Well, if you keep that up, I want you to go to the track with me,” Dave said.

Jerry told him he would let him know Monday morning about the IPO. Dave said that was fine, and they hung up.