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Seattle, 1988
Seattle. My old life. My former career. Director of Human Resources for an important tech company, and the spring of 1988 had been a hiring spree that bordered on madness. The company was growing so fast that I was running groups of five through orientation every week. I began to question my decision to move out of coding to head HR when Bill asked me to. But nobody ever said no to Bill.
It was nearly ten p.m. by the time I shut down my computer and headed into the parking lot. I stepped into the night. Of course it was raining—this was Seattle. The clean, freshly washed air held a tinge of spring to it. As I neared my car, a man a few rows over strolled along and bent down to peer at license plates. It was Bill. He had a habit of checking out cars still in the lot at late hours and on weekends, especially Sundays, to determine who were his most dedicated staff members. He had memorized each of our license plates. I hoped he’d already done my row so I could get a brownie point, but if not, I didn’t have enough energy left to care.
I climbed into my Mercedes 560SEC, a truly lovely high-performance car, and drove the ten minutes to home, an ultra-modern house of concrete, glass, and metal on the waterfront of Lake Sammamish. I’d only lived there a year, having gone from a Seattle apartment that I shared with two other coders until the company went public in March of ’86. That’s when everything exploded, most notably my bank account.
Inside, I disarmed the security system, dropped my keys and purse on the kitchen counter, and wandered to the living room without turning on any lights. Beyond the oversized front windows, the lake was a dark stain. The housecleaners had been there earlier. Everything smelled antiseptically clean, like a hospital.
The answering machine was blinking, but before I listened to messages, I rooted around in the fridge, found an open bottle of chardonnay and poured a glass. I sipped the cool, fruity wine and pushed the button on the answering machine.
It was the other Bill in my life. As if one wasn’t enough. In my head, I labeled them Bill #1 and Bill #2, the latter being the Bill who lived with me. No offense #2, but there was only one #1.
Later in our relationship, I began to think of Bill #2 in association with the other #2, as in what goes in the toilet bowl. But right now, we were still in love, and Bill #2 was still at work. He’d be there until at least midnight, which would make Bill #1 happy when he checked license plates. Bill #2 headed the coding department, where we had met five years before, and they were running on a tight deadline. But then they always were.
I dropped into an overstuffed leather chair, careful not to spill my wine, and gazed at the lake. I knew I should get something to eat but I just didn’t have the energy. I did, however, have enough energy to pour another glass of wine after the first one ran out. I was bone tired and had been for weeks. How long can you work fifteen-hour days seven days a week before you just wear out?
I had reached that limit. I promised myself that I was going to take Sunday off and drive over to Coal Creek Falls Trail for a proper hike.
I hadn’t hiked at all in high school. I’d been an absurdly studious teen. I didn’t date much, mostly just the big dances, like prom, and my dates were study partners from precalculus and chemistry. Nerdy, focused guys who didn’t know how good-looking—and rich—they would become when they grew up. Maybe that was me, a little bit. I had always been attracted to academia and I definitely wasn’t designed to be a cheerleader. No one would describe me as perky. I wasn’t bad looking in high school, but definitely not a stunner. My best feature? Great hair—long and wavy, ash brown with blond highlights. And lots of it. I was in science club, not Alpine Club, and hadn’t gone on my first hike until college.
I didn’t start small, but instead hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail called Section J. My two college roommates and I had gotten a ride to Stevens Pass ski area where the PCT passes through. We spent the first hour trying to find the trail, bumping around the hill like three blind mice. By the time we finally discovered the sign pointing the way, we were doubled over laughing, partly embarrassed but also worrying nervously about our ability to find our way along the seventy-mile section after such an inauspicious beginning.
As we trudged along the trail, sometimes soaked in the rain, sometimes raising our faces to the warmth of the sun, simply putting one foot in front of the other, I vowed to never put myself through this again.
Later, usually when the sun was out and the view stunning, breathing in the intense aroma of clean, fir-scented, oxygen-rich air, I was impressed with my own athletic ability at negotiating the steep climbs of an uneven, sometimes rocky trial. We were three women alone in the wilderness figuring out how to cross a stream using a downed log, learning how to poop without a toilet, watching a bear on the trail running away from us, as if we were the scary ones. At night, I contemplated the blackness of the sky when the clouds abated, revealing stars brighter and more abundant than I’d ever seen. Yet on day five, the last day, when my feet had ached and my shoulders felt raw from the straps of my backpack, I didn’t want it to end.
We had caught a shuttle down to Stehekin, a tiny wilderness community with a public bathroom and shower, a bakery and restaurant, cabins to rent and even a small hotel. The shower was without a doubt the best I’d ever taken in my life. We devoured beef stroganoff in the restaurant and celebrated with a bottle of wine we got from a tourist who had gotten there by boat and shuttle. He struck up a conversation with the three of us and, upon hearing of our feat, insisted we take the wine. We obliged.
To get back to Seattle, we had to take a boat. Near Stehekin, mountain goats perched precariously on steep, rocky cliffs. Farther downlake, the mountain terrain changed to forest, then finally the shore became lined with houses as we neared the town of Chelan, where a friend picked us up for the four-hour drive back to Seattle.
When the three of us were home in our apartment, we savored the experience. How tough we were. How challenging it had been. How much we loved it. And vowed to do it again soon. Very soon. Or at least start hiking around Seattle. But then classes started and there were boyfriends to hang out with and homework to be done and pretty soon the entire adventure felt like a distant dream that someone else had lived.
Half asleep, with images of the hiking trail lingering in my mind, I put my empty wine glass in the dishwasher and shuffled off to bed. Bill #2 crawled into bed sometime close to one a.m. He didn’t spoon me or even touch me, but instead stayed on his side of our king bed and began to snore softly. Who could blame him? We both had to get up in five hours and do it all over again.
I didn’t mind. Despite all my complaining, I loved my job. I loved the money. Just saying. How could I not? I had more money in the bank than my parents had ever had in their entire lifetimes. Since my social life had narrowed to only people who worked at the company, I got to see all my friends every day. Sure, we worked all the time to exhaustion, but it was good. It was all good.
Until the bad thing happened.
