The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning

by Ira Tabankin

  “No, bye.”

  Guess she’s really busy, I’ll wait fifteen minutes. I don’t want to tell our daughters before I tell Lacy, she’d kill me. Shit damn, we won! We can buy a house, a new car, she always wanted an SL, I can get one for her. Damn should we live here or move. I’ll try her again. Her direct line rings twice before she answers it, “Honey, is everything OK?”

  “Yes, it’s just I want to tell you something.”

  “Honey, we’re really busy today, I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Bye.”

  Click.

  Damn it, I have to tell someone. I’ll drive to her office and tell her in person. Yeah, I’ll get some roses and surprise her. I drive to a small florist in a strip mall on the way to her office “Hi, I’d like a dozen long stem red roses in the best vase you have.”

  “Sir, it’s Wednesday, we only have those in the case. We usually stock up for the weekend.”

  “I’ll take them. Do you have a box I can put them into?”

  “Of course, I’ll be happy to wrap them for you.”

  Lacy works in the rural D.C. office of a Dallas-based oil and gas fracking company. The high demand for oil and gas has kept her really busy. It’s only a few miles from the strip mall to Lacy’s office. Parking the car, I grab the roses and the copy of the winning ticket verification to show her. I ring the front door bell so someone will unlock the door, to let me in. Most of her coworkers know me because I usually drive and pick her up on Fridays. It’s our date night, after her work we go out to dinner. Joe, the receptionist, opens the door for me. “Hey, sport, what have you done now?”

  “Huh?”

  “Roses, the only reason a man hand delivers roses is cuz she’s busted you doing something nasty. What did you do? You cheat on her? Oh, man, if you did, she’s going to shove those roses up your ass. Man, I don’t want to be you.”

  “Joe, no. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah right, no one hand carries roses unless they got busted.”

  “No, really. I have some great news to tell her.”

  “You got knocked up?”

  “Joe, you’re an asshole. Where is she?”

  “Busy today, really busy. Something is going on at headquarters, they’re driving everyone crazy. No one even had time to go out for lunch.”

  “Can you just call her and tell her I’m here?”

  “OK, but it’s your head.”

  Lacy comes out of the inner office looking both happy and tired. I jump up holding the roses, “Honey, you’ll never guess what happened.”

  Lacy looks surprised seeing me in the lobby with the roses, “Hon, I love you, thank you for the roses, what did you do wrong? Did you break something at home? Didn’t I tell you I’m really busy today?”

  “Lace, just hang on a second, please give me just one minute. I promise just sixty seconds.”

  Getting annoyed, she crosses her arms across her chest, “Well, I’m waiting and very busy today, so hurry up. Everyone is waiting for me.”

  “We won!”

  “We won what?”

  “The LOTTERY. We won, we really won!”

  “Slow down, we won? How much?”

  I lean close, whispering to her, “We’ll net around $28 million.”

  “NO SHIT!”

  “No shit, really!”

  She dropped the roses and jumped into my arms, the vase broke on the floor, sending water, glass and roses all over the foyer. “We really won?”

  Joe looked up saying, “I’m not cleaning that mess up! You broke it, you clean it.”

  “Honey, look, here’s the verification.”

  I show her the confirmation printed from the lottery machine. Her eyes get as big as the full moon. “Oh my God, we really won!”

  “Yes, that’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Her manager entered the lobby saying, “Lacy, I’m sorry to break up your little rendezvous, but we’re really busy today. Jay, it’s good to see you, however, I’m sorry, but I need her to finish a project that’s on a time urgent status. Headquarters is screaming at us to finish it. I need her to write her section.”

  Lacy leans into me, “Honey, should I quit?”

  “Not yet, we’ll talk tonight. I’ll see you later.”

  She reaches up to kiss me, Joe laughs, saying, “I told you, I’m not cleaning up the mess you made on the floor.”

  Lacy and I bend down to pick up the roses, she says, “I’ll find something to put them in, you go home and rest. Don’t lose that ticket. By the way, did you get the items on the list for tonight’s dinner?”

  “Yes, but don’t you want to go out to celebrate?”

  “No celebrating until the money’s in our hands.”

  I leave Lacy with an armful of wet roses. Driving home, I listened, as I usually did to the all-news station. They reported on the election held three days ago in Greece. The announcer was saying, “If the new Greek government holds to their promise of not maintaining the current austerity programs, the German lenders are going to demand immediate repayment of Greece’s loans. Other European countries are watching the events in Greece very carefully as many would like to renegotiate the loans which bailed out their failed economies.” I thought to myself, I wonder if the Greek’s will try to write their debt off and if they do, I’m sure the other countries in Europe will do the same. If they do, it will crush Germany and Switzerland. This could be the spark that burns down the Euro, destroys the EU and ripples around the world causing a depression. Why worry about stupid shit, we won!

  A few minutes later I’m home. I pull out a pad and start making notes to myself, the first heading on the pad is, ‘where to live.’ We could live anywhere. Where should we go? If the Greece elections are the first rock in the lake which is the world’s economies, the coming economic tidal wave will impact where we live. If an economic meltdown is coming, we should prepare for it. We should live in a different location then if everything is going to be fine. I got so wound up thinking what to do, I lost track of time. Before I know it, Lacy arrives home. I look at my watch, realizing I’ve sat at the kitchen table for five hours filling pages in my notebook with notes and thoughts.

  Lacy calls to me, “Honey, what are you doing?”

  “Huh? Oh, just putting some thoughts down on paper.”

  “Can you put it away so we can make dinner?”

  “Sure. Are you sure you don’t want to go out?”

  “I’m sure, today was long and stressful. I just want to change and have dinner with a glass of wine.”

  “I’ll start it, you go change.”

  “Thanks, please turn on the news, coming home, I heard something about a problem in Europe.”

  “Okay.”

  Turning on the evening news, the talking heads are all saying the same thing, “Greece couldn’t just write off their debt, or could they? They wouldn’t dare write it off. If they did, it would cause the EU to break up, the Euro would collapse. Europe’s dream of a united continent could die because of a handful of selfish Greeks. Surely, cooler heads will prevail to avoid a worldwide monetary crisis.” Every station reported the same story. Every reporter thought the Greeks would use their election to win some concessions from their lenders, then everything would return to normal. The world would move on to the really important stories, Kim Kardashian's new photos.

  Lacy asked me, “Honey, do you think they're right? Will Greece screw up the economy in Europe? Why would the Greeks think they can just make their debt go away? Will it impact us?”

  “Most of them are socialists, they live on the government dole. They have an entitlement mentality, theirs is worse even than what’s developed here. They are used to having the government supply them with everything. Many in Europe never even try to find work, they’re happy living on the government dole; that is until the various European governments had to start cutting back on their payments and benefits. The reduction impacted their lifestyles which is wh
at led to the results of last week's election.”

  Sipping her wine, Lacy asked, “What happens if the Greeks decide to walk away from their debt?”

  “Greece will enter a state of technical bankruptcy, they will have to drop out of the EU and revert to using their own currency which won’t have any external value. Prices for everything in Greece will go up, the lives of the Greeks will be much worse than they were before the election. Store shelves will be empty even worse than they are now. Nothing will be imported because their currency won’t be accepted by other countries. Millions will lose their jobs, Greek unemployment will skyrocket.”

  “Then why did they elect a Marxist?”

  “Because they’re spoiled children, they only know they don’t like their current situation. They’d have voted for you if you promised them you’d restore their pay, jobs, and pensions. They want things back to the way they used to be. They want their lifestyle back.”

  “Well, let’s forget Greece for tonight, let’s talk about our winnings.”

  “Honey, what do you want to do with the money?”

  “Jay, I want to give some to the girls, some to my family, I want to buy a house, a new car, maybe go on a long vacation. Why don’t you give me a little time, I haven’t had a lot of time to think about what I want since you told me we won.”

  “Lacy, do you want to continue to work?”

  “I think so, I’d be bored with nothing to do, on the other hand not having to get up early every morning has a lot of appeal. I really don’t know yet. When do we get the money?”

  “We have to go to their office in Richmond to get it.”

  “Do they give us a single check?”

  “We have a choice, either 26 years of payments or a one-time cash payout.”

  “I think we should take the one-time payout. No one knows if we’ll be here in 26 years, or if the lottery will be able to pay it out that far in the future. Or what it will be worth if inflation continues to increase.”

  “I’m going to call Beth, our accountant in the morning.”

  While we’re chatting, the talking heads on the news show a video of the newly elected Greek Prime Minister laying flowers on the World War Two Memorial. I look at Lacy, “Oh, oh, he’s going to stir up problems now.”

  “Why? All he did is lay some flowers on a memorial.”

  “Honey, the German’s are the leading lenders to the Greeks, the new Prime Minister said he was going to write off the debt, which means he doesn’t plan on paying it back. By laying the flowers on the memorial, he’s telling the Germans he remembers their atrocities from the Second World War. He’s setting up a major confrontation between Greece and Germany. He was a communist in his early days. That may also have something to do with his actions how he acts towards Germany. There was a report on the news today that Greece is going to invoice Germany for damages done to it during World War 2. The damages exceed the amount of loans the Germans have given the Greeks, which has the effect of Greece not having any debt.”

  “Will it impact us?”

  “My gut says the other European leaders are watching what Greece does. If they see Greece getting away with writing off their debt and not getting penalized, they will do it too. That will cause the EU to break apart. The value of the Euro will collapse and that will cause a massive financial stress around the world. It could even lead the world into a new depression worse than 1929.”

  “I didn’t realize one country could cause another worldwide depression. Maybe we should ask the lottery to pay us in gold?”

  Smiling, “Not a bad idea, but I don’t think they will.”

  The next news report was about the war in the Ukraine. Lacy asks, “Is that still going on?”

  I frown, not liking what we’re hearing, “It looks like it's getting worse. Russia is saying they have proof NATO troops are fighting against their army in the Ukraine. If the Russians have proof NATO troops are fighting them, it will give Putin the reason he’s looking for to expand the war and possibly implement sanctions like cutting off natural gas deliveries to Europe. The Europeans depend on Russian gas for their heat. This is a horrible winter, over a hundred thousand could freeze to death without heat. Putin could even declare war against NATO, saying Russia was attacked first. This could be the spark that ignites World War 3.”

  “Aren’t we still in NATO?”

  “Yes, but we have nothing to worry about. President Obama told us there isn’t any fighting in the Ukraine, so how could the Russians have any proof we had troops there? Don’t you remember, he reminded us just a week ago, the world is more peaceful since he became President?”

  “Oh, you mean, just like he told us our health care costs were going to decline $2,500 a year and instead they increased, and we can keep our doctor, which we can’t.”

  “But they increased at a slower rate. Doesn’t that count?”

  We both laugh while ignoring the news, returning to our chatting about what we are going to do with our new-found winning.

  After exchanging a lot of jokes, I turn serious, “Lacy, I know I’ve asked already asked you, give serious thought to if you still want to work? You don’t have to.”

  “What about the insurance?”

  “I think we can afford to pay for it until you reach 65 and go on Medicare, which I hope will still be able to support us.”

  “I don’t think money’s going to be a problem for a while.”

  “Jay, I still can’t believe it’s real.”

  “I know, me too.”

  “I can’t just quit, it would create a burden on my entire team. Let me have a couple of days to think about it. Although, something is happening at the office.”

  “Lacy, what do you mean something is happening at the office?”

  “The big report we spent all day working on had to do with our financial future given the rapid decrease in the cost of oil. We bleeding cash like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Bad enough to cause layoffs?”

  “That’s my feeling. I heard a rumor that some staff are going to be released this Friday.”

  “Do you think you’re on the list?”

  “I don’t think so. But these days, no one is really safe. I guess we don’t have to worry about it now.”

  We both laugh.

  After cleaning up from dinner, we sit in the family room watching television. Lacy puts on her programs while I surf the web and look at various posts on different forums I belong to. Many posters are very nervous about the implications of the Greek election and their new Prime Minister. I open a note file to start listing items we ought to purchase, now that we can afford it. We can finally afford to increase our supplies. We’ve been preppers for a couple years, we had three to four months of food, water and medications stored. We also have a couple of ARs, shotguns, and handguns, in addition to twelve thousand rounds of ammo. We have first aid kits and portable stoves for cooking. I also have six extra propane tanks which we could use for heat, light or cooking on our BBQ grill. Three hours later, Lacy asks if I want to join her upstairs, saying she’s tired.

  “Sure thing, be right there, just shutting down, I hadn’t noticed how quickly time slipped by.”

  Turning off the light, I quickly fell asleep thinking about the prize and what to do with it.

  Chapter 2

  While we slept, the leaders in Europe were panicking over the Greek election results. The existing Greek Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras tended his resignation, saying, he didn’t think there was any reason why the people’s choice shouldn’t take office immediately. The Leaders of Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Portugal held a secret conference call to discuss the financial situation. Mariano Rajoy, the President of Spain, started off the discussion by asking the others, “If Greece can write off her debt, why can’t we? Why do they get a chance of starting over and getting out from under the punishing payments and the restrictive controls the Germans have placed on all of us? I say if Tsipras gets away with restructuring or
writing off any part of Greece’s debt we all should get the same or a better deal. We’ve been making our interest payments while the Greeks haven’t. I for one, am not going to explain to the Spanish people that the Greeks got a better deal than we did. I’m not going to accept any change in the terms of their loans without a better option for the Spanish people.”

  Charles Michel, the leader of Belgium, says, “I agree with you. The people of Belgium also won’t accept they have to tighten their belts even more than they currently are, so the Greeks have an easier time of it. If Merkel gives the Greeks any relief from the agreed to spending controls, we should all stop making interest payments. Merkel controls all of the banks. I suggest we line up support from every member of the Union to pressure Merkel into giving all of us a better deal. If Merkel sees we’re united behind Tsipras, she may blink. Tsipras is going to have to move very quickly to fulfill his campaign promises to the people who elected him. Does anyone think he’ll succeed where we’ve all failed?”