Storiesonline.net ------- My Brother's Keeper by Openbook Copyright© 2009 by Openbook ------- Description: A short story of family interactions. Codes: MF FF les bi het cheat slow ------- ------- Chapter 1 I knew we'd have to go through the entire ritual again. It always had to be a long and involved process with her. For some reason, one that I'll never understand, Kaitlyn needed to put us both through all the failed deceptions. "Jimmy, Danny's on the road, and I need to borrow some money from you. For food." Danny was my older brother, and Kaitlyn was his wife. They had three young kids, two boys and a girl, aged three, five and seven. I knew that Danny was on the road, since he worked for me, and I was the one who had sent him over to Arizona to pick up some furniture I'd purchased over the internet. That's what I did, bought and sold stuff. Whatever I could find to sell for a profit. I'd been at it for six years, ever since I finished high school. I was good at it too, and always made a comfortable living for myself. Danny had once worked in a box factory, but the company went under and Danny hadn't been able to find anything else on his own. I started letting him do things for me, trying to help him out until he found some steady work on his own. That had been three years before, and I still don't understand why he hasn't tried harder to find himself a better job. I knew Kaitlyn was lying about needing the money for food. I'd taken Danny over to the Ralph's and watched as he'd purchased $200.00 worth of groceries with the money I'd advanced him right before he left for Arizona. I knew there was plenty of food in the refrigerator and in the cupboards back at their rented house trailer. I didn't doubt that Kaitlyn needed some money, but I knew it certainly wasn't to buy any food. "I gave Danny money for food right before he headed off to pick some things up for me in Tucson, Kaitlyn. You couldn't be out of groceries already." "I didn't want to say what is was really for, Jimmy. Danny's been gambling again. He owes money out at the reservation. I've been getting some threatening phone calls about that." Kaitlyn was a terrible liar. I really never understood why she bothered trying it with me. Her lies never worked with me. "Rueben promised me he wouldn't ever let Danny back in the casino, Kaitlyn. You want me to give him a phone call and see if your story checks out or not?" Rueben Garcia was head of security out at the Indian Casino. He was a pal of mine, and he'd had my brother's name put on a list of problem gamblers that had voluntarily banned themselves from doing any further gambling at the casino. Danny and Kaitlyn both had serious problems with their addiction to gambling. Danny mistakenly believed he could play poker, and Kaitlyn was addicted to the slot machines. "I didn't say he gambled out at the reservation, Jimmy, just that he owes people money out there. He lost a lot in some home games. He told me he was going to get the money from you to pay those people off." I knew Danny hadn't been gambling. I knew all the same people he did, and I'd already warned all of them to not let Danny play cards in any of their games. They knew I wouldn't make good for any of his losses, and they also knew I'd be pissed off if any of them took advantage of his weakness. "Kaitlyn, I know Danny hasn't been playing. What do you really need the money for?" I stared right into her eyes, waiting for her to face up to the fact that I wasn't buying any of her bullshit. If she wanted me to help her, she was going to have to tell me the real reason. "I'm pregnant, Jimmy." The words slipped out of her mouth so softly that I almost couldn't understand what she'd just said. "Pregnant? How could you be pregnant, Kaitlyn? Danny got himself fixed after you guys had Angela three years ago. You telling me that his vasectomy didn't work?" "I'm not sure how it happened, Jimmy. I just know that they said I was pregnant last week when I had my appointment over at the clinic. They did some tests, so they're sure I am." "Okay, you're pregnant. I guess I have to believe you if you've had those tests and all. I'm thinking Danny is probably going to kill you when he finds out you've been fucking other guys. When are you planning to tell him?" I waited for her to quit her crying. She had to know that wasn't going to work with me either. It might work with Danny. It had certainly worked with him before. I couldn't even begin to count the number of times she'd screwed my brother over in the twelve years since they'd first met and had started hanging around with each other. Kaitlyn had always been trouble, ever since I'd first laid eyes on her. She'd cheated on him from the beginning, it was her way. Sure, she always came back to him, and he'd take her back, but everyone knew she'd keep on doing whatever she felt like doing. "It could be yours, Jimmy. It's possible that it is. What do you think Danny'd do to you if I told him you had been at me behind his back?" "It isn't mine, Bitch! I never got near you without having double protection condoms. No way I'd ever take a chance on knocking you up. Not to mention getting any diseases you might have picked up in your travels." "I need three hundred to get it fixed over at the clinic. Let me have the money, and Danny doesn't ever have to know about what we did." "Hell, go ahead and tell him if you want to. You think I'd care if you did? I think I'll just call him myself tonight and tell him before you get the chance to. Danny knows how you are, Kaitlyn. He'd be a little upset with me, but he'd mostly blame you for what we did." "Wouldn't it be simpler to just give me the money and let me get it fixed, Jimmy?" "No. If you are pregnant, and I doubt it, I'm positive the baby isn't either mine or Danny's. We'll just wait and have the baby tested to see who the daddy might be. It wouldn't surprise me if it was that neighbor of yours. I noticed he keeps a close eye on that trailer of yours the last time I was over visiting. You been letting that Kyle guy sample the goods too?" I could see it in her eyes that she had. "Please, Jimmy, I'm begging you. Just let me have the money so I can get this taken care of. It would hurt Danny too much if he finds out about what we've been doing." I stood up and reached down into my pants pocket, pulling out my money clip. I peeled off three hundreds and laid them on my dining table, walking away from her without saying anything. I heard my front door opening a few seconds later as she let herself out the door. When I took my empty glass back to my kitchen, I looked over to make sure she'd taken the money. Thirty minutes after she left, I got a phone call from out at the Indian casino. Reuben told me that Kaitlyn had just come into the casino. He asked me if I wanted him to bar her from them taking any action from her at the casino like I'd had him do with Danny. "No, let her have her fun. Danny's out of town for awhile, and she needed some time away from the kids to let off some steam. Make sure she gets out to her car all right after she blows her wad on those damned machines. Don't let her try to scam anyone for more money after she goes broke." I let the phone back down in its cradle. For what had to be the ten thousandth time, I wished that my parents hadn't both died in that car crash back when I was only eleven years old. Danny and Kaitlyn had raised me after my folks died. I owed the two of them something for that. The problem with that was I knew I'd be taking care of both of them for the rest of their lives. I'd grown up eventually, but I knew they never would. I'd known Kaitlyn wasn't pregnant. I can always tell when she gets that strong urge to go out and play those damn slots. I've done just about everything I can think of to try to wean her away from her addiction. So far, nothing seems to be working. I'll find a way to get her to quit gambling soon, I'm sure of it. Danny was even worse than Kaitlyn is before I figured out how to get him to quit. He really hated it when I told him I was going to fuck her any time he fell off the wagon and started back up gambling. It took about ten times before he couldn't take me doing that with her anymore. I wish I knew what it was going to take to get Kaitlyn to quit. ------- Chapter 2 I was at my house, going over the inventory notes that Danny and I had made when we visited the big storage shed I was renting in back of Ziggy's beer bar. I did more buying than selling, so I usually ended up with some odds and ends left over from the various deals I'd made. My phone started ringing, and when I reached over to pick it up, it was my brother, Danny calling me. "Jimmy, I'm glad I got you. Kaitlyn just called me from out at the rez. She said she won a big jackpot out there and they're refusing to pay her the money. She claims it's over ninety thousand. She says she hit five sevens on one of those dime progressives." I told him I'd make some calls and get back with him after I learned what was happening out there. I called Reuben Garcia, the head security guy out at San Ramon, and he came to the phone a few seconds after I'd asked to speak with him. "You heard about it already, Jimmy? Man, I was just about to get to the phone and call you. Your sister in law just won ninety six 'thou' on one of our machines out here." "Danny called me and said that she claimed you weren't paying her." "We can't pay her unless she has two forms of identification. Right now, all she has is an expired driver's license, which we can't use, and what she claims is her Social Security card number. We'll be more than happy to pay her what she has coming, just as soon as she provides us with some valid I.D." I drove over to Kaitlyn and Danny's trailer, which was only a ten minute drive from my house. Danny was sitting in the living room, close to their phone, watching the TV and letting his three young children run wild throughout their messy trailer. "Danny, I need Kaitlyn's passport, the one she got that time you went on the cruise ship." "I think she keeps it with our important papers. Why you need her passport? Is she taking off with that money she won? If she does, I'm really through with that bitch this time." Danny was already getting pretty upset just from his own mistaken conjecturing. I knew I needed to get him calmed back down again. "She isn't going anywhere, "D". They can't give her the money she won without her having some identification that proves who she is. Her licence is expired, or suspended, I'm not sure which, so they can't use that. I talked to Rueben, and he will accept a passport, and one of her tax returns showing her Social Security number. I already had a copy of last year's tax return, so all I'll need is her passport." While I was telling him this, I was also walking back to their bedroom, heading straight for the top drawer of their clothes chest of drawers. It took less than a minute of poking through all the crap they had in there for me to locate their passports. I took both of them, putting them in my back pants pocket, closing and buttoning the flap. As I walked back to the door to the trailer I told Danny that I had the passport, and would be back soon with Kaitlyn and the money. "Don't let her stay out there and keep playing, Jimmy. If you do, she'll end up giving it all back to them." "Don't worry, "D", I know what I'm doing. This is a lot of money, and there are places it needs to go. We'll be back here in less than an hour." It took about fifteen minutes at the cashier's cage to sign all the tax forms and get the money released. Reuben let me talk him out of keeping back any of the money for the IRS after I convinced him that Danny and Kaitlyn had enough prior losses to offset any taxes that might otherwise be due for this win. He knew that Danny and Kaitlyn were both degenerate losers, and had been for many years. When we left the casino, I had a large canvas bag with nine hundred and sixty hundred dollar bills in it. Kaitlyn was whining about needing me to at least give her what she referred to as "the extra six thousand" to spread around as tokes for the slot people and other casino personnel. That was how her mind worked, and also why she and Danny never ended up with any money left over whenever they did manage to book any win while gambling. "There isn't any extra six grand, Kaitlyn. You two owe me over fifty thousand dollars, and that money is coming right off the top." "Danny owes you most of that, Jimmy, not me. This money here, that's my money. You can't take my money to pay what he owes." "Oh really? You saw who Reuben gave the money to, didn't you? You may as well just get used to the idea that you aren't going to see any of this money, not ever. After you pay off some bills you have, and we buy some other things you need, I doubt there will be a single penny left over. If you're real lucky, you'll end up being out of debt and free and clear for the first time in anyone's memory." I almost had to fight Danny the next day when I wouldn't let him talk me out of any of the money either. They ended up a lot to the good from that unexpected windfall. I bought their trailer that they'd been only renting before. It was only seventeen thousand, and they'd been paying almost nine hundred a month for renting the trailer and paying for the space and utility rental. After they owned the trailer, free and clear, they only had to pay four hundred a month for that same space rental and all their utilities. I also paid off Danny's truck and Kaitlyn's mini van. I had been on the hook as the co-signer on both loans, so, in a way, paying off the loans benefited me as much as it did them. I also paid off their way past due medical bills, and gave Kaitlyn's mother back the twenty one hundred that Kaitlyn had scammed her for the year before, when she claimed she needed it as tuition for the cosmetology school she was enrolling in. It took me almost a month to track all the people down that I'd known either Danny or Kaitlyn had taken advantage of at one time or another. It was mostly a case of three hundred here and five hundred there, but it was a long list, and I'm sure I missed quite a few people that either hadn't complained to me, or had forgotten about being owed money because it had been so long since they'd lent out the dough. When I was all finished with making the payments to people, I prepared a two page list that accounted for all the pay outs I'd made. I put it in the mail to Danny and Kaitlyn. Danny had been refusing to do any work for me ever since his wife's big win, preferring instead to get up each morning and wait by the side of the road to be picked for any day labor jobs that people might have. My business ran just as well without him. When I needed someone to help me with something, I always had at least a dozen people more than willing to do whatever I needed them to do. I hadn't seen my brother or his wife for more than a month when Kaitlyn stopped by at my house to see me one morning. "Jimmy, Danny asked me to come over here to see if you had any work for him? We don't have any money to pay the bills, or even buy food. They turned off our cable, and we owe a month on the space and utilities." "If he wants to work, he can come see me himself. I'm not the one that's mad, that's you two. I did what I thought was best for everyone. If I hadn't stepped in, you guys would have pissed all that money away with nothing to show for it. This way, you bought yourselves a clean slate with that money." "You took most of it for yourself, Jimmy. You didn't even need that money, but you still took all of it from me." "If I hadn't of, you'd have thrown it back in those slot machines, Kaitlyn. This way is better." "It wasn't yours to just take like that. We didn't get to make any choices at all." Kaitlyn left and I didn't hear or see any more of either of them for another two weeks. When I did see them, it was Danny who came and asked me for something to do. I took care of their space rent and took him back to Ralph's to stock up on some groceries. The next morning, he left in one of my big trucks, loaded down with over four thousand dollars worth of carpet and padding that I'd sold to a dealer in Los Angeles. I got a call from the carpet guy at eight that night, telling me he didn't get his delivery, and demanding to have his payment money returned. I found out a week later that Danny had sold my carpet and padding for a thousand dollars to someone else who owned a carpet store in L.A. He sold my truck too, for another thousand, but when the guy contacted me to ask where the pink slip was, I told him about Danny's gambling problems and convinced him to sell me back my truck for the thousand he'd paid Danny. Danny lost the two thousand playing 3-6 Texas Hold Em over at the Commerce Club in Los Angeles. It took him nine days to piss away the money. I started a new account for Danny and Kaitlyn, debiting them for the four thousand I'd lost on the carpet as well as the thousand for the truck, and another hundred I'd had to pay the truck guys brother in law for driving his own car up to the high desert to bring the truck guy back to L.A. Danny and Kaitlyn were both upset that I'd added four grand for the carpet. Danny knew I'd only paid fifteen hundred for all the carpeting and pad I'd bought at a bankruptcy sale over in Barstow. He knew I'd sold half the carpeting to a retailer, in Hesperia, for three grand, two months before too. When they complained about this I refused to change it, telling them both that they were paying back the value they'd stolen from me, not my cost, but what I'd ended up losing because of what Danny did. Danny really hated it when I reminded him of the deal we'd made about what would happen if he went back to gambling. I told him there wouldn't be any more work for him until Kaitlyn came by to make things right again. I didn't get too much joy out of putting the meat to Kaitlyn. She was all right in bed, but her heart was never really in it when it came to sex. She was cleaning my spent dick with her mouth when I told her I'd give her three hundred dollars if she could make me come again in five minutes or less. It was like night and day the way her whole attitude changed after I made her that proposition. She didn't have a bit of trouble getting the job done well within the time allotted. I heard from Reuben that she dropped the whole three hundred while playing the dollar slots later that day. Danny came back and started working for me again right after he'd sent Kaitlyn out to me that time. I found out that he was still playing a little poker over at San Manuel, down by San Bernardino. He must have been playing real small though, since he wasn't coming to me asking for any extra money. Kaitlyn either called me or stopped by the house several times over the next few months. Each time she managed to bring up that bet I'd lost to her. She wanted to get me to offer her the same deal, but I didn't go for it. I did tell her that I'd bet her she couldn't get her trailer cleaned up enough to make it look like regular people lived there, and not a family of slobs. For some reason, she never would take that bet from me. ------- Chapter 3 Danny had gotten himself into another bar fight. This time it had been a biker over at Ziggy's who hadn't known enough not to tell my brother, right to his face, that he had been one of the many men, over the years, who had put the horns on Danny. It was one thing to know that the woman you'd married was a cheating slut, and Danny had certainly been made aware of that fact often enough through the years. It was quite another to have to endure some retarded ass hole's lewd comments while giving the whole bar a blow by blow description of what he and Kaitlyn had once gotten up to in the parking lot over at the Indian casino. Now, as a normal thing, I'd never describe my brother as being a man much given to violence. Still, with the right kind of provocation, almost anyone can be motivated to engage in fisticuffs. Danny not only punched the biker into a state of unconsciousness, something that no one at the bar would have made any fuss about, but he also managed to drive his pickup over the unconscious man's right leg after the altercation had supposedly ended. The biker had ended up getting his leg amputated about three inches above his ankle, and Danny now found himself a guest of the San Bernardino County jail. I had retained the services of a young criminal defense attorney on Danny's behalf, and he and I were in the office of a local bail bondsman, signing papers pledging collateral for the bail the judge had set in the case. I thought a hundred grand was excessive for bond in this case, but I was pretty certain that Danny wouldn't try to jump bail once he was out. It was costing me ten thousand dollars to make his bail though, and I'd never see any of that back, no matter how the case eventually turned out. This was the first serious criminal matter that Danny had ever been arrested for. He'd had a few minor misdemeanors over the years, but never a serious felony like he was now facing. I'd spoken to him right before his arraignment, and Danny swore he'd had no idea that he'd run over the guy's leg when he'd taken off in his truck. He hadn't been happy when the assistant D.A. had read off the charges he was facing. The lawyer for Danny said he could be looking at three to seven years on the worst count against him, and another two or three years of enhancements being added for the other two charges they'd tacked on. It took another two hours, after the bail was posted, for Danny to be processed out of the jail. The deputy at the jail apologized for how long it took to get him out, but told us that weekend nights were bad due to the overcrowding at the jail. I drove him home in my Lincoln, promising him that we'd get the best deal for him we could make. I'd never seen Danny as worried as he was during the drive over to his house trailer. I dropped him off in front of the trailer, not wanting to have to go in with him. I really didn't want to be forced to listen to he and Kaitlyn arguing about who was more to blame for this mess they were in. There was plenty of blame for both of them, but none of that would help Danny get out of the serious mess he'd gotten himself into. I knew a guy who claimed to have a lot of influence down at the courthouse. He never spoke about how things could be arranged, or the actual process that took place after he'd been paid to intercede. I knew another guy who had promised me that this guy really could help people who'd gotten jammed up with the law. The lawyer I'd hired for Danny seemed to have a very defeatist attitude about the case. He had been the one to first recommend that Danny make some kind of deal. After thinking about what had happened at the arraignment, I came to the conclusion that this lawyer wasn't what we needed if we were going to try to keep Danny from doing serious prison time. When I'd first gone to him on Danny's behalf, he was talking about getting Danny off with maybe thirty to ninety days in the county lock up. That was before we found out the biker's foot had been amputated though. ------- "Mr. Masters, I'm glad you came by to have this little talk with me. It is still very early days with your brother's case. The earlier in the process my associates and I become involved, the more we can usually do to effect a more favorable outcome. Giving that retainer to the young counsel to represent your brother at the arraignment won't have any detrimental bearing on how your brother's case is ultimately resolved." "The other lawyer, he said he thinks Danny might do up to ten years behind these charges, unless he takes some kind of plea bargain." "Any time someone involved in one of these incidents suffers a large loss, be it an eye, an arm, leg, or one of their internal organs, the severity of potential outcomes invariably rises. Ten years seems rather on the high side for what is being charged here. My best estimate is that, under normal circumstances, your brother would be sentenced to five years or even less. Two years is probably the most lenient outcome he could hope for under normal conditions, facing these level of charges." "Are you telling me that Danny would only get two years if I hire you to help him?" "No such thing! In the first place, I'm not an attorney, so you can't hire me to put on your brother's defense. What I'm saying is, absent my involvement, your brother should expect something on the order of two to five years in the state penitentiary." "That's better than Danny's lawyer was saying." "Well, you have to understand, a defense attorney, like anyone else, wants to look good after his client sees the results of his efforts." "You say that Danny would probably get between two to five years without your help. you didn't tell me what he could expect to get if you did become involved?" "Excellent. I can already see that you have a good understanding of how these situations can be manipulated. To answer your question, the final outcome really depends on what level of financial incentive is available for me to apply to his case's ultimate resolution. I'm not being coy with you, Mr. Masters. There truly is a sliding scale at work here. Let me give you a for instance. If I had, say, ten thousand dollars to work with, I have zero doubts about promising you that your brother would receive the most lenient sentencing terms that you and I previously discussed. That is to say, two years. He'd be out in sixteen months, and I could probably have some input as to where he'd be placed after undergoing his intake and preliminary classification." I was starting to get a little excited when he said this to me. For one thing, Danny's lawyer was wanting at least fifteen thousand just to keep representing Danny on the case. Ten thousand to this other guy seemed like it might be a better investment in Danny's future. "If you can get the lighter sentence for him with this ten thousand to work with, are there any other options open to me? I mean is there any other way to improve on what the ten would buy for my brother?" "This is a serious charge we're dealing with. There are multiple witnesses to what occurred, and there is your brother's own statements that were made when he was first brought in for questioning. Any less than two years, then we're talking time in County. I'm not saying it can't be done, because I've seen far more serious charges than these disposed of with County jail sentencing, or even probation. Even for a sentence of a year, this would entail some complex negotiating on his behalf. The more complex the outcome sought, the greater the incentives that need to be offered. For a one year maximum, I'd estimate a requirement of twenty thousand, perhaps as much as twenty five. Not in addition to the first ten though. Twenty to twenty five for the outcome of one year in County." "My brother's wife was the recipient of a large jackpot recently, over at the Indian casino. Most of it has been spent already, but I've been holding what's left over for them. After bail and that attorney's fee, they only have about fifteen left. I was wondering if there wasn't some way you could see if he couldn't get the County time with the money he has? Even if he got himself a year, I'd still have to take care of his wife and three children until after he finished doing his time and was released. I'm guessing it would run me about a thousand a month to help them stay in their house and have food on their table. That would stretch me out pretty well right there." "A year in county is really only eight months, unless the prisoner causes the authorities problems. If you were to add the other four months that you wouldn't have to assist your brother's family, wouldn't that come to nineteen thousand? I think we could manage what you're seeking for nineteen." "That's another problem. Danny, he sometimes does things without thinking about possible repercussions. Take what he's being charged with as an example of this. I couldn't count on him keeping himself out of trouble when he was serving his sentence. I see what you've been saying though, and to be perfectly honest with you, I like what you're telling me. What I really wish was that there was some way where I could give you the fifteen just for making sure he gets no worse than a year in County, and then giving you another thousand for every month he ends up having to do under that year." "What you're really asking me is to help him settle this case with no jail time at all then? Is that what you're asking for? He gets probation and I have twenty seven thousand to use to make sure everyone is cooperative?" "That is what I was hoping. I'd get the fifteen to you right away, and then pay you the rest when he gets sentenced to probation. If he gets some jail time, then we'll settle up when he gets out, for how ever many months he does less than the twelve I was figuring on." "I would have to trust you for this other money?" "Just like I'm trusting that you will do what you've told me you could do. If Danny ends up getting prison time after I've done what you've said I could do, then I'm going to be very disappointed. I'm not going to be going anywhere. I've lived here all my life. So has Danny. We have deep roots in the community you might say. It wouldn't make sense for me to do anything to jeopardize this relationship we're beginning here. I've heard that you are a straight shooter. I like to think I enjoy a similar reputation." It took seven months, due to continuances and delays, but when the case finally went to trial, Danny was represented by the Public Defenders office. Danny entered a no contest plea, and the judge accepted it. The terms of the plea were that the judge would base his sentencing on what the Probation Department recommended. Danny got a very favorable recommendation, three years of supervised probation. It was funny that the new probation officer had the same last name as the guy I'd gone to see to help with Danny's case. He even looked a little like the guy I'd spoken with. I got a phone call right after Danny's sentencing. The man who'd helped Danny said he was sending someone by my house to pick up the balance of his retainer. I already had the twelve thousand dollars ready, just waiting for the call. That pretty much was the end of the whole incident we thought. The actual ending came at one o'clock in the morning, about two weeks after I'd paid the rest of the money I'd owed. Someone came over to Danny's trailer and fired six or seven bullets into the back bedroom where Kaitlyn and Danny usually slept. Danny was on the road, making some pick ups and deliveries for me when the shooting happened. Kaitlyn was in the bed though, and was damn lucky not to be hit by any of the shots. I figured it was two or three of the biker's friends wanting to let Danny know that he shouldn't mess around with any member of their club. ------- Chapter 4 I should have had my head examined after I first decided that Kaitlyn's youngest sister, Bridget, might be a good choice for someone for me to start going out with. She was twenty four years old, less than a year older than I was, and of the four Keller sisters, was, without question, the pick of the litter. Unfortunately, being the pick of that particular litter wasn't the glowing recommendation that one might think it was. Bridget was very different than her other three sisters in many ways. For one thing, she was a college graduate. None of her other sisters had made it through high school, except if you counted GED certificates. Bridget had no tattoos or body piercing's either. Almost as importantly, she was without child. Each of her other sisters had at least three kids, and Mona, her oldest sister had five, by four different men. She was good looking too, with a nicely curved body, and a face that attracted many second and third glances wherever she went. To me, Bridget was the best looking of the four sisters, and that was really saying something. I'd always thought Kaitlyn was the least attractive sister, but knew my opinion might have been distorted by my animosity towards her. In any case, Bridget was a real looker. I really have no idea why Bridget really decided that she wanted to move back to Hesperia after she'd graduated college. I know the reason she told me she did, but that later proved to be another lie she had told. She had been on a full academic scholarship to Willamette University, a small liberal arts school somewhere up in Oregon. She had been gone from the high desert for over five years, having taken that long to finish up her studies. I first saw her again one morning when I drove over to Danny's place to ask him if he wanted to go to a bankruptcy auction down in Santa Ana. I usually went to these things by myself, but, this time I wanted to take one of the big trucks and see if I couldn't take care of picking up any purchases I might make with a single trip down there. Bridget was sitting in one of their plastic outdoor chairs when I pulled up in front of the trailer. She had Angela, Danny and Kaitlyn's youngest, sitting on her lap. Angela was drinking milk out of one of those plastic cups with a lid on them, and Bridget was smoking a cigarette. I had never smoked, and neither did Danny or Kaitlyn. I knew that Kaitlyn never allowed anyone to smoke inside her trailer. She was funny that way. She would commit adultery with some guy, almost in front of her three young kids, but she wouldn't allow the guy to smoke in front of them. I have to admit that just seeing Bridget did get my motor running. I'd had about half a crush on her for the past ten years or so. She had been a featured performer in at least half the fantasies that went through my mind when I engaged in acts of self abuse. I believe she was the girl I had on my mind the very first time I spanked my little monkey. I was thirteen years old at the time, and had recently seen Bridget topless. She had been changing into her swimsuit in the hallway of Danny's trailer when I had surprised her by coming out of the bathroom. I had only gotten a very quick peek before she turned her back to me and finished putting her swim suit top on, but that had been my first prurient live look at a young girls boobs. It was a memory high on my list of all time all times. "Hey, Bridge, when did you get back? More importantly, why did you ever come back HERE? If I ever leave, I'll never come back, not even for a visit." She was getting ready to say something when Danny came out of the trailer and started getting into my car. He looked pretty angry, and I think Bridget and I both knew instantly that things might be better for everyone if I started my car back up and left the trailer park right away. When Danny and Kaitlyn are fighting, the best thing is to put as many miles between them as you can. It turned out that Danny was upset because Kaitlyn had gone out the night before, supposedly to return her mother's portable sewing machine, and hadn't returned until three o'clock in the morning. She'd brought Bridget home with her, so Danny didn't get the opportunity he'd wanted to vent his anger over her leaving him with the kids for so long. She was always pulling things like that, saying she was going to just be a few minutes at something, but ending up being gone for a long time. At least once or twice a year, she'd go off on a "run" and be gone for a week or longer. When she got back, there'd always be another big fight with Danny. These usually ended up with her simply telling him that it was none of his business where she'd been. Her only explanation was that she'd had to get away because, otherwise, she'd have gone crazy and done something Danny would have really hated. We drove over to where I kept my two big trucks and Danny and I drove down the hill. We got to Santa Ana about an hour before the auction started, so I treated Danny and myself to an early lunch at this Mexican food place we both liked. I ended up buying up a lot of computer stuff, and quite a bit of office furniture. Some of it was real nice stuff, including seven nice top end laptops that I got a very good deal on. I usually hold off on bidding on the early merchandise, letting other people blow off their money on stuff that is being contested by several bidders. I prefer to be the only bidder whenever possible, and that occurs much more frequently towards the last part of these auctions. We were loading up the truck after the auction was over, and I was asking Danny questions about Bridget. All Danny knew was that Kaitlyn had brought her home that morning, and had told Danny that Bridget was going to help out with the kids, in return for living with them for a week or so. When we got back and had unloaded everything in my storage building, I drove Danny back home. When we got there, Bridget was sitting in that same chair, smoking another cigarette. It looked like she was in the same clothes she'd been wearing when I'd seen her that morning too. I wondered if she hadn't been sitting right there for the past eight or nine hours that we'd been gone. "Jimmy, can you give me a ride over to Stater Brothers and back? I need to buy some things, and it's too hot for me to walk." Bridget had gotten up from her chair as she started talking, and was reaching for the door handle on my Lincoln while she asked. I guess she just assumed I'd do her the favor. "Sure, hop in. So, you never did tell me why you came back, or how long you're planning to stay here?" "No job, and I ran out of money after I broke up with this guy I was going with. I've got a lot of my resume's out, and as soon as I get any kind of a job offer, I'm out of here." "What kind of job are you going after?" "I'm not really sure. Something in a big corporation though. Entry level for a college graduate. I'm thinking some kind of management internship or something." "What is your degree in?" "English, with a minor in early American poetry. I didn't really think about taking some courses that might make me better prepared to go out and actually earn a living. I thought I'd want to be a teacher, but I decided that I really didn't. I should have switched majors, but I enjoyed being an English major. I regret it now though. At school they told us that having a degree, no matter what it was in, would qualify you for most of the corporate entry level jobs." "There are a lot of company's down sizing right now. A lot of them going out of business too. We're in a pretty big recession right now, so it might not be easy to get your foot in the door. You might end up staying here for a long time if you're planning on getting a job just from sending out your resume." "That would really suck. I've been back for just three days, and I can already remember exactly why I wanted to get away from everything here. I don't think I can last here for long. It was worse at my mom's, but being in that trailer with those three kids is no picnic either. I don't know how Katie stands it." I didn't think it was my place to tell her the kinds of things Kaitlyn did to make her life bearable. She'd find out soon enough, once I sent Danny back out on the road to deliver some merchandise. Kaitlyn, with her sister available to sit with her kids, would be out having some fun within minutes of Danny being gone. Bridget must have known something like that would happen too, based on what she asked me next. "What would you think of me staying over at your house, Jimmy? Katie said you live alone in a pretty big house right off Hesperia Lake. I could stay out there with you, and maybe do some cooking and a little light cleaning for my room and board." "I enjoy living alone, Bridge. I live a simple life, no complications, and I like it just that way." "She said you'd say that if I asked you. She told me I'd have to offer you a lot more, if I was to have a realistic chance that you would go for it." "Well, she was wrong. I can't think of anything that would make me invite you to come stay at my place. I thought you were going to help Danny and Kaitlyn with the kids. Wasn't that the deal you set up with her?" "She wanted that, not me. I just wanted to get out of my mom's apartment. That creep she's living with keeps undressing me with his eyes. I'm afraid of what he might try to do someday when my mom is at work. I didn't want to be alone in the apartment with him." "Sounds to me like you'd be happier over with your sister then. She could probably use the company too. When Danny is on the road, Kaitlyn gets herself too worked up about little things. She panics, and, sometimes, she ends up getting herself in a jam with Danny." "She's a whore, Jimmy. You don't have to tell me about Katie. I've watched her operate for years. When your brother leaves town, she'll be out catting around first chance she gets. That's a good reason for you to let me stay with you at your house. If I'm not around, Katie will have to stay in the trailer with the kids more." "That just means she'll have visitors at the trailer. Personally, I think it would be better for those kids if they weren't exposed to their mother being such a slut." "When a guy does it, it's okay, but let a women have a little bit of fun, and she's a slut. I thought you might be different for some reason, Jimmy." "There is a big difference between going out and having some normal fun, and bringing guys home while your kids are right there and doing things with them that kids don't need to be seeing. I don't condone guys who fool around on their wives either. If people want to go out and fuck around with other people, they should either not get married, or else get a damn divorce. Kaitlyn is a slut, and she has been ever since I first met her." "Is Danny any better?" "Not really. I think Danny does it to try to catch up with Kaitlyn, but he's no angel either. None of this is any of my concern. They both know what the other one is like and they still stay together." "Katie told me you could be nice to a woman." "That isn't a recommendation I'm that proud to be hearing. I guess it goes to prove that she has no limits on what she'll do, and what it says about me, well I really don't want to think about that." I had pulled off of Main Street at the Stater Brothers shopping center and had parked while we were continuing with our conversation. Bridget didn't reply to what I'd just said, getting out of my car instead, and walking away towards the store. I waited in the car, the engine on, with the air conditioner running at full strength. It was after eight in the evening, and it was still more than a hundred degrees outside. My conversation with Bridget was worrisome. I knew well about my own weaknesses, and I really didn't want to end up like my brother had, involved with a woman having the morals of a cat in heat. Bridget was still attractive enough to me to be able to get me thinking about doing things with her. Doing so without proper regard to the possible consequences of my actions. She returned to my car, carrying a carton of Marlboro cigarettes and a small box of Tampons. I wondered why she hadn't gotten a grocery bag to put her order in. I'm sure one hundred out of a hundred guys would have put those Tampons in a bag, out of sight of anyone else. "Did you do any more thinking about me coming over to stay at your place?" "No. I'm sure it wouldn't work well for either of us. I'm not really a very sociable person. That's why I moved out of Danny and Kaitlyn's place as soon as I got out of high school. That's why I don't have any roommates either. You should look around some. I'm sure you could find someone who would want a cook and housekeeper. I'm just not in the market for that." "Would you change your mind if I told you that I wouldn't object to doing other things with you? I'm used to having someone around to help me out when I'm feeling affectionate. We could help each other out that way. I think they call it being friends with benefits. You should at least give it a try, see if you'd like it or not." "Hell, I know I'd like it. That's what I'm afraid of. I might end up liking it too much. It wouldn't be good for me to get to liking having you around me, then have you running off to somewhere else the first time someone offered you a job." "You have to start taking more chances, Jimmy. One of these days, you're going to want to settle down and have yourself a family. Letting me stay with you for awhile would be good practice for you. Get you used to having somebody besides yourself to be concerned with. In a way, I'd be doing you a favor by getting you better trained for whatever woman would be coming after me." I had been driving straight back to Danny's, ever since she'd gotten back into my car. I could feel the temptation she represented. Every word she said gave me a more vivid picture of what she was offering me. From what she'd already told me, I knew I could have her if I wanted. I wanted, but only if it could all be on my terms. "I might be willing to take you out sometime, just to find out if we could get along, socially. We could maybe go to dinner or something." "Why go through all that, Jimmy? It seems like a big waste of time. I want to get out of that trailer and live better than Katie does with all those kids of hers. You've got the space for me, and I know you'd love to take me to bed and have your way with me. I'm willing for that to happen, but I need a good place to stay, not a date or a free dinner." "Well, it was just a thought. I'll think about what you said, and let you know what I decide. Right now though, I'm leaning towards leaving things the way they already are." We had gotten back to my brother's place, and I was ready for her to get out of my car. We were negotiating, and we both knew where we stood at the moment. We left it like it was, both of us knowing that some kind of deal might be possible. I figured that Bridget would be the first to signal me that she was open to further negotiating. I also knew I'd be comfortable living alone in my house. It was what I was used to. "I can't believe you aren't more interested in what I'm offering you, Jimmy. I don't think you've had any better offers than this one. It wouldn't cost you anything to do this favor for me, and I'd really appreciate it." "I told you I'd think about what you said. I can understand how it might be hard for you to get much sleep out on their couch with those kids running around. The only problem I'm having is trying to justify getting my life all complicated up just so your living situation can be made a little more comfortable. Plus, if you were to move over to my place, Kaitlyn wouldn't have anyone to help her with her problems when Danny goes on the road for me." ------- A week went by after that conversation we'd had on that trip to the market. I'd made no attempt to contact Bridget, although I had sent Danny on a trip up to Utah and western Washington to deliver things that I'd sold online. He had been gone for three days, and wasn't expected back for at least another two days, at the earliest. I had gotten home at about nine that evening, tired out from a full day spent on my computer and on the phone. It hadn't been a very productive day, mostly because there was an imbalance between sellers and buyers, and all the buyers wanted to get what I had by paying me almost nothing. Instead of selling, I'd ended up buying more products at prices I thought were far too low. I was going to have to find myself more storage space if I didn't start selling more than I kept acquiring. I pulled up my driveway, noticing that Bridget had been sitting on the steps leading up to my front door. She stood when she saw me pulling in, and I saw her bring her hand up to her mouth to take another drag on the cigarette she was holding. I pressed my garage opener and pulled the Lincoln into my garage. My house has a nineteen hundred square foot fully finished garage. It has a toilet and a shower too. The man who built and first owned the house liked to work on his vehicles and clean up before going into the main house. I was proud of the house, from its two by six construction to the nine hundred and ninety two square foot master bedroom. The house had five upstairs balconies, and nice views from every one of the five bedrooms up there. It was a lot of house for a single man to live in, but I'd gotten a fantastic deal on it, and couldn't resist buying it. "Jimmy, you didn't call me, and you never answer your house or cell phone. I had Katie drop me off here after lunch, and I've been sitting here waiting for you since one o'clock. What did you decide about what we talked about? Can we hurry up and go inside? I really have to pee." I showed her the bathroom in the garage, and she hurried in, shutting the door behind her. Even through the closed door, I could hear she hadn't been exaggerating about her need to go to the bathroom. She came out a few minutes later, looking a lot less agitated. I had opened the door leading from my garage into the house proper. It took me about twenty minutes to give her a full tour of my house. I could tell she was quite impressed with the house and the furnishings I'd put in it. One good thing about what I do for a living, it was quite easy for me to pick up nice furniture at an excellent price. The house looked very nice, and I was proud of showing it to her. Compared to my brother's trailer, this house would seem like a palace. She turned back to where she was facing me, right after I'd indicated that the house tour was completed. "You didn't answer my question about what you'd decided, Jimmy. I guess that means you decided against me coming here to live?" "I'm still thinking about it. I haven't decided for sure yet, either way. Have you heard anything more back from those resumes you sent out?" "I haven't gotten any responses at all, not even any turn downs. That's so rude." "How are things over at the trailer? Are you settling in over there?" "I'm not staying there after today, Jimmy. Things were bad last night, and even worse this morning. I can't live like that. She doesn't care about anyone but herself. I ended up feeding the kids and taking them all out for a walk, after breakfast, while she was finishing up with the guest she brought home with her at two thirty this morning. You should have heard the two of them going at it. I feel sorry for those kids, growing up with a mother who behaves like that. I knew she was bad before, but now it's like she just doesn't care what she does. I saw the guy she was with, when he was leaving. He was a Mexican. I heard him talking to Katie, he sounded like he'd just gotten here from the old country. His English was heavily accented." "Nothing wrong with being a Mexican. Most of the ones I've known, they were real good workers." "She went to bed with him though." "Look, Bridget, this isn't the first time she's brought home a guy while Danny was on the road. I'm not that interested in the nationalities of men she takes to her bed. I don't think Danny worries too much about that either. He's against her fucking anyone else. I thought you college girls were more liberal than that?" "Not me. You'd never catch me giving it up to someone like that guy who was with Katie last night. Don't keep changing the subject on me though, can I stay here with you, or not?" "Not. I had no idea you were so prejudiced. That really turns me off about you. First it's the Mexicans, then the blacks. Pretty soon it will be anyone who isn't exactly the same as you are. Too bad you don't have any brothers. At least you'd know they're the same as you are." I offered to give her a ride back as far as Main Street, but she flipped me off and started walking back towards town. In some ways I was sorry to have deceived her about my own prejudices, which were, in all likelihood, even more deeply entrenched than her own. I called Danny that night on his business cell phone, the one I bought him that no one else is supposed to know the number to. I told him that Kaitlyn was acting up again, including coming home, drunk, with some Mexican, and fucking him all night, making so much noise that the kids had to have heard them. Coming from a lifetime of growing up in a place where mostly rednecks lived, I'd been exposed to far more than my fair share of prejudice against different races and ethnic types. I wasn't one of those Skin heads or anything, but I wasn't one of those liberals who believe all of us are equals either. Danny was much worse about stuff like that than I was. You had to draw the line somewhere I thought. If not, Kaitlyn would start believing she could really do whatever she wanted. It came as no surprise to me that Danny got physical with Kaitlyn as soon as he walked into the front door of their trailer. He really gave her an ass whooping from what I could gather. She ended up having to go to the emergency room and Danny wound up in the County for twenty three days. I didn't go his bail this time, and I didn't shell out for a private lawyer either. They tried to violate his probation too, but the judge said the two cases were too different to justify doing that. I had to pay five thousand for that, but I felt it was a good investment, considering all the facts of the situation. I did end up taking Bridget out three or four times, before she finally went back up to Oregon. She reminded me a lot of her sister in bed, more compliant than enthusiastic. She let me fuck her three times before she asked me to borrow four hundred to help her get back up to where her friend lived in Portland. I loaned her the money, knowing I'd have lent it to her even without the sex. She hasn't ever tried to repay me the money, but that isn't any big surprise either. It hasn't been so long that I'm ready to write the loan off as uncollectible. I'm expecting that Bridget will be back to visit one of these days. When she does, I'll make it a point to remind her that she still owes me the money. ------- Chapter 5 Danny wasn't real fond of the County lock up. I think he expected me to run right down and make bail for him just like I'd done the last time he'd been arrested. I had told myself I wasn't going to do that for him anymore. Danny had a bad habit of not learning from his past mistakes. Kaitlyn had spent the night in the hospital, more bruised and upset than anything else. They kept her overnight to give her time to get calmed back down again. Kaitlyn was always an excitable personality, and when she was upset, she made sure that anyone within hearing range of her voice was upset as well. When she's in the middle of one of her anger tantrums, many people begin to doubt her mental stability. Danny had worked her over pretty well, but he was also careful not to hit her face with his closed fist, and not to do her any permanent damage. No matter how upset with her he got, he still loved the woman, and he didn't really want to hurt her. Bridget and her mother had stayed overnight at the trailer, watching the kids and calling the hospital, to try to find out how badly Kaitlyn had been hurt. Danny would have gotten out on an OR release after two days in County jail if the probation department hadn't been coerced, by one of the assistant DA's, into filing against him for violating the terms of his probation agreement. If I'd had a suspicious nature, I might have suspected certain parties of using this as a way to get more money out of me. I did have a suspicious nature, and that was exactly what I was thinking as soon as I found out Danny had been placed on a probation hold. I let Danny spend another two weeks in lock up before I finally broke down and phoned that guy I knew to ask what it would cost to make the probation violation go away. He said it would take ten thousand minimum, and I told him that it looked like Danny would have to do the time then. "I can look into it for you, Mr. Masters, but when one of the DA's staff recommends a filing, that usually means they're serious and want to discourage the defendant from continuing on in this vein." "His wife wasn't really hurt. More shaken up than anything. I can't really blame my brother for getting after her, not when she went out and got tanked up and then brought some guy home with her and practically screwed him right in front of their three small children. Danny is normally more tolerant than most, but he really couldn't put up with that without taking her to task over it." "They usually treat and release victims that were just shaken up. As I was given to understand, they kept the women in the hospital overnight." "Because she was a raving maniac of a screaming nut case, threatening everyone at the top of her lungs. They kept her there as much for her own protection as for anything else. In any case, I don't have enough money that I can afford to throw away ten thousand for him right now." "Well, like I told you, I'll look into it and that will tell me more about what might be possible. Even if they do succeed in violating him, he'd probably get out in three or four months." "I can handle him being gone this time. Before, it would have screwed a lot of things up for me if he'd been gone for years like he was looking at that last time. I learned my lesson from that, and I have people in place now that could take up any slack his being away might cause to my business. He's my brother though, and I'd like to help him if I could justify the expense of doing it. I really don't blame him for doing what he did. In his place, I'm not sure I wouldn't have done a lot worse to her." He called me back a couple of days later to say it didn't look like anything could be done for less than the ten he'd quoted me earlier. I told him that was still too much for me to shell out. I thanked him for going to all the trouble to look into it for me, and hoped he wouldn't hold my inability to put up the money against me. Every chance Danny had to get near a phone he was calling me collect, pleading with me to help him get out from under the probation violation. I thought it was very strange that he kept getting phone access like he did. I'd heard it was very hard to get to a phone down at the county lock up. Hard or not, I was getting one or two calls a day from Danny. Danny's probation hearing was only two days away, and I hadn't called the guy who said he could help Danny back. I wasn't using not calling him as a ploy to get him to come down on his price. I was ready to let Danny do the three or four months if it came to that. I was getting back from a run I'd made to deliver some galvanized steel pipes to a contractor in Palm Springs, when Kaitlyn called me on my business cell phone. Few people even knew that number. Kaitlyn was definitely not one of the people I'd given it to. "Hello?" "Jimmy, it's Kaitlyn. Danny keeps calling me from down at the jail. He told me to call you and tell you that he really needs you to step up for him on this charge they've filed on him. He said I'm supposed to tell you that you should sell our trailer, if that's what you need to do to get him out. I'm telling you what he said, because I promised I would. Please don't do it though. We'd have no where to go if you sold our home." "I told him he'd only have to do three or four months, and they'd count the time he's been locked up since they arrested him. He might have only another thirty to forty five days after his hearing. That's if they decide to violate his probation. They might decide not to. I told him that he needs to hang in there and take his medicine." "What about me and the kids? Are we supposed to starve while he sits in jail?" "I don't know, Kaitlyn. Seems to me that none of this would have happened if you hadn't brought guys home to fuck, right in front of those kids you're so worried about now." "It wasn't guys, and nobody has ever proved I even did what Danny thinks I did." "I know three people who saw that fat Mexican coming out of Danny's trailer after spending the night shacked up with you. I got two phone calls from out at the park before his tail lights cleared the last speed bump before the exit. Don't even try to pretend that you didn't do something that was really wrong, Kaitlyn. You keep denying the truth and I'll get Danny all worked up just as soon as he gets out. I'll tell him you really need to be taught a lesson. He let you off a lot easier than I would have. I don't understand why he doesn't just kick you to the curb." "What are you going to do about what Danny asked you?" "I'm not selling the trailer. That wouldn't make any sense. I hope you find a way to keep up with the space rent though. I'd hate to see the four of you trying to live in that tiny apartment your mother and her knucklehead boyfriend are renting over there in Adelanto." "I don't have any money. What am I supposed to pay it with?" "Beats me. It isn't my problem is it? I'm getting pretty sick of having to step in and rescue you two every time one of you gets stupid about something. You guys are going to have to start looking around for someone else dumb enough to give a shit about you." "We took you in and raised you when your parents died. This is how you repay us for that?" "Fuck you, Kaitlyn! You think I don't know about the Social Security money you were taking in each month? Half the time when I lived with you, that Social Security check made me the biggest earner in the family. You were damn glad to have that money, and that's the only reason you agreed to take me in." "We treated you good, Jimmy. You can't say we didn't either." "Good by your standards maybe. You got paid to provide me with a place to live and food to eat. The money you got paid for everything you spent on me, and a whole hell of a lot more. You can't say I haven't helped you guys out since then either. I think I'm through doing that now though. You don't learn, and neither does my brother. You're both fuck ups and I'm tired of coming to your rescue all the time. You act like a whore half the time anyway. Maybe you should go ahead and turn pro and get the space rental dough that way." I ended the connection and turned my damn phone off before she could call me back again. I loved my brother, but Kaitlyn had worn through any warm feeling I might have once had for her. Sure, Danny was a fuck up, but most of what he did to get himself in trouble was the result of something she'd done to provoke him. Kids or no kids, he should have gotten rid of her a long time ago. She was trouble, and she didn't even care about the consequences her actions kept causing Danny. The next day I got a phone call from the guy in San Bernardino who could fix things for Danny. "Mr. Masters, I have some good news for you. Someone seems to have taken an interest in your brother. He's talked to some people on his behalf, and all that remains now is the regular court people who normally control these probation hearings. The DA's office has relented on the pressure they were bringing to bear on the probation department to trigger this violation. This came about primarily because of the good impression you made on a certain individual when we conducted that other transaction last year. If you do nothing, I think there is a fifty per cent probability that your brother will be released tomorrow, free to return to his home and family." "That is good news. I was speaking to Danny's wife yesterday, and she didn't know how her and the children were going to cope if Danny got sent away for even another few weeks. I'll go to the hearing, in case he does get released, so I can drive him back up the hill." "Well, that's it then. I hope it turns out well for your brother. If it doesn't, I'll try to make sure he gets the most favorable treatment possible over at the jail." "You said it was about fifty/fifty that he'll get to go home tomorrow. Is there any way I could do something to improve on those odds? Maybe pay a fine for him, or make a small donation to a charity, or contribute something to a political campaign?" He named a person who I knew was running for a County elected office. This was a high profile person who I'd personally voted for in past elections, back when he'd held different offices. "I know him. He's a good man. In fact, Danny and I both voted for him the last time he ran and lost that Assembly race. I see where he's back running for something more local now." "He needs some support if he's to have any chance of unseating the incumbent. I'd so a lot to see his chances of winning improve. Maybe we could help each other with our problems?" "I'm willing to write a check right now to help out with his campaign. Where should I send it?" I ended up donating three thousand the first time, and later, after he got released from the probation hearing, I had Danny write his own check for another two thousand to the campaign. It didn't do the guy any good though, he still lost. I took a tax deduction for the campaign contributions, and that saved me some taxes later. After things got back to normal again, I started taking two hundred a month out of what I'd normally be paying Danny for the work he did for me. He complained bitterly about it, as did Kaitlyn. I told them both that from then on, they were going to start paying for cleaning up any messes they made. When Danny got back home again, we threw a welcome home party for him. We rented out the banquet room over at the bowling alley in Victorville. A friend of mine had gotten his hands on a lot of top quality booze right before the party, and he offered to set up a bar at the party and serve all the drinks people wanted for four hours for $10.00 a person. There were twenty of us at that party, and most of them could put away a lot of liquor, especially liquor being served to them for free. I didn't drink, but then I'd told the guy running the bar that I wouldn't, so I made sure to drive Danny, Kaitlyn and Bridget home after the party. I let Bridget sleep over at my house that night, but I didn't even try to take advantage of her. She was as drunk as either of the other two. I think she was surprised and disappointed that I didn't make a pass at her. We started going out once in a while after the party. She got used to the idea that I wasn't going to let her come live with me. I did start sleeping with her after about half of the dates we went out on. Afterwards, I'd drive her back to either Danny's trailer or over to her mom's apartment out in Adelanto. Like I said earlier, she ended up borrowing some money to go back up to Oregon a few months later. One night Danny and Kaitlyn were having a cookout at their place, and I stopped by to eat with them. The two of them were stoned on something, probably cannebinol, since a lot of that seemed to be making the rounds at the time. We were sitting around waiting for the meat to cook and Kaitlyn started telling me these little known secrets about her sisters. "Mona and Claire, they were always boy crazy. They were both running wild at a very young age. Mona was thirteen the first time she got pregnant, thirteen. Lucky for her, she had a spontaneous abortion when she was about ten weeks gone. Claire didn't get pregnant right away, but it wasn't for not trying. She never used anything, not even rhythm. She was doing guys from the time she was like twelve, thirteen at the outside. Not just one guy at a time either. I'm the next oldest after Mona, and I had barely started when Claire suddenly decided she was old enough to start getting herself some too." "You were barely fifteen you told me. You said I was number three, but you were seventeen when we did it the first time." Danny wasn't good with the math. I'd have been willing to bet he was more like the twentieth than the third guy Kaitlyn gave it up to. "Only Bridget kept the boys off her. She was still a cherry when she went to her high school prom. She always used to complain that the boys made it doubly hard on her because she was a Keller." "She still a cherry when you finally got to her, Jimmy?" Danny liked to tease me about my going out with his sister in law. "I never asked, but it seems pretty unlikely that she would be. Kaitlyn would be a better source of information about that than I would." "Far as I ever heard from her, she never admitted to letting any guys get in her pants. She asked me questions about it when she was younger, but she never said much about what she did with anyone. We always thought she just liked girls from looking at who her friends were around here, before she went up to that school in Oregon. She never came right out and told any of us, but we all decided she was mostly a les, if not totally into that." "She wasn't totally into that. Jimmy drilled her and she kept coming back for more. Maybe she's one of those bi girls. You should ask her about that Jimmy. If she is bi, you could be onto a real good thing there. You should see some of the girls that are bi in the magazines and on the internet. You'd have threesome's coming out of your ass if she started sharing her girl friends with you." I looked over at Danny. He was drooling a little out of the side of his mouth. The side where he'd lost a few teeth. It didn't take much to get Danny to act stupid. Whatever drugs he and Kaitlyn had been doing had more than done the trick. It had been interesting to hear what Kaitlyn said about Bridget though. It explained the feeling that I'd always had about her lukewarm attitude when we had been having sex. She didn't seem to be getting much out of the experience. More a case of just laying there, tolerating what I was doing. It was interesting to think about that maybe being the case. If she was a lesbian, then she really had been giving me full value for the money she borrowed from me. I know I wouldn't do anything with another dude, not even for a hell of a lot more money than four hundred dollars. Somehow, thinking about her being gay made her all the more attractive to me. I knew it was perverse to think that way. It made her seem like a better risk for a relationship. All her sisters were basically party girls and sluts. I wouldn't trust one of them unless I was right there watching what they were up to. If Bridget was gay though, I wouldn't have to worry about her fucking other guys behind my back. It was something to think about. ------- Chapter 6 Things had settled back down to normal again. Normal for our family at least. Danny had been caught by Kaitlyn, swapping spit with some young bimbo over at the trailer park the night before. There was a tradition over at the park for big Friday get together's over at the community pool. This was where the transgression had occurred, This, as I stated earlier, was well within the "normal" range of behavior for my family. Kaitlyn had created a big scene, of course, but that was mostly just for show. She had an uncountable number of similar occurrences herself in that regard, and was really in no position to make too much of a fuss about Danny's. Danny had driven over to my place at about one in the morning, drunk, of course, and embarrassed that Kaitlyn had been able to enforce her edict that he find another place to sleep. A place far away from her and their three children. Danny was apparently "unclean" after being caught kissing that other girl. It didn't seem to matter to her that she had taken strange men home with her, when Danny was off somewhere working for me, and fucked them on their marital bed while the kids were present in the trailer. I left my house at six thirty the next morning, leaving Danny asleep in my upstairs guest bedroom. I drove over to Danny's trailer and let myself in with the spare key I kept for just such occasions. I walked back to the master bedroom, noticing that my two nephews and my niece were all safe in their beds and still fast asleep. I opened the sliding privacy screen that served as a bedroom door for Danny and Kaitlyn's bedroom, fully expecting to find her in the sack with some male low life from the trailer park. I had been fairly confident that Kaitlyn wouldn't want to let an opportunity for yet another adulterous tryst go to waste. I was right, but I was also wrong. There was someone else in her bed with her, but it definitely wasn't a male. I stood in the doorway admiring the naked recumbent form of a young goddess. I must have stood there for ten minutes or more, just taking in her physical perfection. She had long reddish brown hair. It reached down almost to her waist. Her breasts weren't too large or too small. They were perfect just the way they were. Her ass, and I could see all of it because she was sleeping on her stomach, was very full without being big. It had nice depth, without too much width, if that makes sense to you. It was my favorite kind of fundament. There were a pair of seemingly shapely legs that were only remarkable because of the greater than normal length. Her legs were definitely longer than would be usual for her torso. I couldn't see too much of her face, less than half of one side, because she had her arm up, with the hand obscuring her nose and forehead. I did notice that there seemed to be no skin blemishes on the one cheek of her face and that part of her neck I could see. I was too surprised by what I'd found to follow through with my plan to confront Kaitlyn about her participation in yet another infidelity. I had planned on using that knowledge to force her to agree to allow Danny to come back home right away. I wasn't up for yet another of his one to two week stays while he groveled enough to persuade his wife to forgive him. Danny was my brother, and I loved him. He was a terrible house guest though, and I didn't want to have to put up with living with him for one second longer than necessary. Kaitlyn too was naked. She was still a very attractive woman. Physically, she was very desirable to me. It was her personality and her absolute venal selfishness that kept her from having real beauty in my eyes. I don't know how much longer I would have stood there looking at this other girl if Kaitlyn hadn't woken up and noticed me standing in the open doorway. Her shriek of alarm could be heard throughout the trailer park. It certainly caused the girl in bed with her to awaken and sit up instantly to see whatever had upset Kaitlyn. The first thing I noticed, after she had turned to see what Kaitlyn was staring at, was that she made no attempt at all to cover herself up. The second thing I noticed was her green eyes, and then the wide smile she got on her face. "Is this one Jimmy?" She had turned to face Kaitlyn when she spoke to her. "Jimmy, what do you mean by sneaking in here and scaring the wits right out of me?" Just then, Troy and Carl, my two nephews, forced their way past me and went over to their mother to find out why she'd been yelling a moment before. Troy, the oldest at eight, asked her what was wrong. "Nothing is wrong sweetheart. Uncle Jimmy just surprised me, that's all. Take your brother out to the kitchen and get him some cereal for breakfast. Turn the TV on and let him watch some cartoons while the grown ups finish their conversation." Troy, satisfied now that his mother was okay, happily went out of the bedroom to comply with Kaitlyn's requests. Despite how messed up their parents lives were, all three kids were growing up, so far, to be pretty decent people. Angela, their youngest, was going to be a real heartbreaker by the time she reached puberty. Right then though, she was a precocious three and a half year old, full of vitality and fun. I could only hope that she would somehow escape the mindset and values that her mother and three aunts brought to living their own lives. "Hi, Jimmy, I'm Delilah. Katie told me that she would introduce me to you if I stayed up the hill with her when my ride went back to LA. I wanted to get away from some people who live down there for awhile, and Katie said you were looking for a housekeeper. I can do that. I kept house for an old woman for three years. Until she died." "I'm not really looking for anyone to clean my house. Kaitlyn must have thought that because her sister, Bridget, wanted me to let her stay with me for awhile and offered to cook and clean for her room and board." "I can cook too. If you let me work for you, for like three or four months, I'll do all the cooking, keep your house spotlessly, and I'll even sleep in your bed to cut down on the laundry." She struck a very sensual pose for me when she told me this, opening her legs just enough to allow me to see the lips of her pussy, right at the end, before taking the sheet and bringing it up to her waist. She left her chest uncovered though. "Kaitlyn, I assume you know that this makes you and Danny all even again? I'll be sending him home and telling him all is forgiven, right?" "I already told Delilah that Danny could come home now. She was the one I caught kissing him. She convinced me to forgive him." "Katie thought she was totally straight until I showed her what an educated tongue was capable of doing. I hope I haven't ruined her for your brother." Kaitlyn was extremely embarrassed. Her face was as red as I'd ever seen it. This from a woman who'd already had more than a normal lifetime's share of embarrassments too. I'd walked in on her once, back when I was fourteen, in bed with two guys at the same time. She was getting plowed from the back by one, and had the other guy's dick in her mouth. At that time, she'd just gotten mad at me for coming home from school too early and catching her. Later that day was the first time I'd gotten laid. Hell of a thing when a young boy's first time is sloppy third's. When Danny got home from his job at the box factory, later that same evening, he ended up getting even sloppier fourth's. Seeing Kaitlyn blush was a rare occurrence. "Delilah, grab your things and let's get on the road. I've got a ton of things I need to do today, and not enough time to get to all of them." She jumped up out of the bed and pulled on a pair of short shorts and a thin top that showed off her chest to best advantage. She had to look around to find a worn pair of flip flops which she then put on too. "Ready." "Where are your other things?" "They're back in LA. Let him keep them. I've got everything else I really need." She did a thing with her hands that indicated that her face and body were everything she really needed. I would have had to agree with her about that too. She was by far the best looking woman I'd ever been close enough to have a conversation with. She jumped right up into my truck without first asking me if it was mine or not. I thought that was strange, but didn't make any comment about it. As soon as we pulled up into my garage and had gotten stopped and parked, Delilah jumped down from the truck and went rushing over to the bathroom I had in my garage. She went in without closing the door and squatted down on the toilet to pee. I found this very strange too, because not that many people have a bathroom in their garage, and the door to it had been closed when we pulled into the garage. I took note of all this, but didn't make a comment about how she knew about the bathroom being there either. Once she came out of the bathroom I went up the stairs to my living room level and unlocked the door. Danny was sitting in my kitchen, drinking coffee and looking extremely hung over. "Hey, Delilah, how come you're here?" "Katie sent me over to let you know she's forgiven you. I already explained to her that we were just joking around when she saw us. I told her that Bridget told me to do it if I ever got the chance." "You know Bridget, Kaitlyn's sister?" I blurted the question out before I'd done any actual thinking about how her knowing Bridget explained a lot of things. "We were in school together at good old Sultana High. I took her cherry, and we've been close friends ever since. Even when she went off to Oregon to go to college, we've always kept in close touch. We both talked about moving back here and getting a place together. Trouble was, when she moved back here this last time, I wasn't really ready to leave LA yet. Now I am though." Danny had taken off upstairs to get his shoes and socks, wallet, and other things almost as soon as Delilah had told him that all was forgiven. I had noticed she didn't volunteer anything else about what she and Kaitlyn had done with each other. "Did Bridget ask you to turn out Kaitlyn to the lesbian lifestyle too?" She laughed, shaking her head side to side to indicate a no answer. "That was my own idea. Sometimes I like doing stuff like that. It's a challenge getting someone who's straight to try another girl for the first time." "I doubt strongly that you were Kaitlyn's first woman lover." "She told me that I was." "She told Danny that he was her third lover, and she was seventeen at the time they met. She also admits that she was either twelve or thirteen the first time she tried dick. I figure Danny was somewhere in the first hundred, but certainly not in single digits. Kaitlyn was my first though." "Bridget likes you a lot, did you know that?" "For a guy, you mean? I noticed that Bridget wasn't too much into guys when we had our little fling before." "Maybe she isn't, but I am. If I call her and tell her that I'm living here with you, she'll leave that other bitch that treats her like shit and grab a bus to get back here, just as soon as we hang up the phone." "I might try that, for a month or two, but not as some kind of permanent thing. I'd do it if it helped the two of you get things lined up for what you really want." "That's the thing, we both want different things. Bridget likes it just the two of us, but I'm very bisexual. I need a man around too. She and I talked about that, and it was her idea that I find out if you were enough to keep me from wanting more variety." "Not going to work for me though. I'm not even close to wanting to settle down." "No one's asking you to marry us. For now, we can just try living here with you, and saving up to get our own place. After we get our own place, I'll come over here and you'll help me take care of my personal need for some hard dick every now and then. You'll make out real well on the deal. I saw the way you looked at my body. I recognize that look. When Danny leaves, we'll go up to your bedroom and I'll give you a private audition." "No strings though, right? I get to fuck you first, then I can decide if I want the both of you here for awhile?" "Jimmy, you're just like Bridget described you. Why do you have to be so suspicious? Most guys would jump at an offer like this one. You already have plenty of room here, and feeding us won't cost you much. It isn't like any of us is going to fall in love, except for me and Bridget, of course. I'll keep this house nice for you, and you'll have all the pussy you can handle. All you have to do is keep on doing what you usually do, and enjoy the extra sex you'll be having. Bridget wants to find out if sex with you would be more exciting if I was there with you two." "I already said I'm willing to try it for a month or two." "Good. Here comes your brother now." I walked Danny out to his truck, telling him not to take any shit from Kaitlyn about what had happened the night before. If she got on him about it, I told him to give me a call and I'd straighten her right out. Sex with Delilah was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. When she was done with me, my muscles all felt like limp, wet, towels, and I ended up not getting anything else done that I'd had planned for the day. I'd had other women, probably more than the average guy my age too. None of them had been like Delilah though. I was unprepared for moving on up so many levels at once. I'd only experienced Little League sex before. Delilah was not only Major League sex, she was All Star Team sex. Whatever notion I'd had in my head about only letting them stay at my house for a month or two went right out the window. Delilah could stay as long as she was willing to. In fact, if she ever decided to leave, I was prepared to get down on my knees and beg her to remain. Hell, I would be willing to propose marriage if that was what it took to keep her in my bed. That afternoon, during the lull I'd pleaded with her to have, she placed the phone call to Bridget. Somehow, she convinced me to buy Bridget a prepaid one way plane ticket from Portland to Ontario airport for the next day's early flight. We would be driving down the hill early the next morning, a Sunday, to meet Bridget's plane. After that was settled, Delilah dragged me back upstairs to our bedroom for yet another bout of full contact sex. When we picked up Bridget the next morning, the first thing the girls did was ask me if I'd take them to the big mall off the interstate so they could buy some clothes for Delilah to wear. It cost me over a thousand dollars, charged to my Visa card, but I didn't even bat an eyelash about it. I wanted her to look as good as possible. As soon as we got back to my house Bridget and Delilah went into my upstairs guest bedroom and started putting all of Bridget's things away. When they were done with that, they went into my bedroom and started putting Delilah's things in my closet and in two, suddenly emptied clothes drawers in my large armoire. They kept a lot of the new clothes out because they needed to be washed before they could be worn. I'd waited down in my living room, sitting on my couch, watching some program on the Discovery channel. I saw the two girls walking down the staircase. The first thing I noticed was that Bridget had a lit cigarette in her hand. I'd specifically told her that I didn't allow any smoking in my house. She'd been here less than half an hour and she'd already started testing my mettle. She was similar to all her other sisters in that one way at least. All of them always tried to push the tolerance limits of anyone they came into contact with. "Bridget, either get rid of that cigarette, or else get your ass out of my house. I've told you before that no one smokes in my house, or in any of my vehicles. That's a very firm rule." "I forgot, sorry." "Come on, Jimmy. You have to give a little too. Bridget will be living here now. This is her home too. You want her to be comfortable here, don't you?" "Delilah, you don't know me very well yet, so I'm going to excuse you trying to play me like that this one time. I don't give a fuck how good your pussy is. I won't be talked into allowing anything I don't want. I hate the smell of smoke, and I won't tolerate it in my home, or anywhere else around me. If you think I'm kidding, then you can both run back upstairs and get all your shit right out of my house." "See, Dee, I told you how he'd be?" Bridget was moving to the kitchen to drown the burning ember on her cigarette in the water from the sink. She seemed ready to give in to me on the no smoking edict. "He doesn't really mean it, Bridget. You can't just change everything about you he doesn't like. You wouldn't be you anymore if you did." "I do mean it, Delilah. You're going to find out pretty quickly how much I mean it when you find yourself back out on the street with nothing but the clothes on your back too. This is my house, and I make the rules about what can be done here and what can't. If you have a problem with that, then get your ass out and find some place where people are willing to play by your rules." "I wouldn't have any problem finding a place like that, Jimmy, and you know that. I don't like being told what I can and can't do. I like to smoke some too. Mostly weed." "Not here, not ever. I'm thinking that all three of us are making a mistake here. How about I give you two some money to just go away? I'm not willing to put up with some fight over every little thing. I'll give you a thousand dollars to get your things and go." "A thousand dollars each?" Delilah started trying to work me for a better deal. I couldn't tell whether she was serious or not. We really hadn't been together long enough to learn things like that about each other yet. I was really starting to get angry though, so I decided to put an end to negotiations. "Never mind. Just get your things and go. I'm not spending another dime on either of you. Call Bridget's mom to come here and take you back to her place." I don't think either of them thought I was serious about them leaving until I told Delilah to give Bridget's mother a call. "Damn it, Jimmy. I put the cigarette out right after you told me. I forgot about you hating smoke so much. I don't want to leave; I certainly don't want to go back to my mother's apartment. Not while she's still living with him. I didn't break up with my friend in Oregon just to come down here and have you change your mind about us living here. I've burned all my bridges to come back down here to live with you." "Me too, Jimmy. I like it right here, just like we agreed. Now that we have all your rules straight, why don't we just forget about the cigarette? She won't smoke in the house, and I won't smoke here either. We just came down to get you so we could all go take a nap together." I knew that Delilah was lying to me. I knew they hadn't come down to get me so the three of us could take a nap together. She was just throwing me a bone to placate me. She thought the idea of me having a threesome with her and Bridget would serve as a distraction and get my mind off of how angry I'd been earlier. She was right. It did distract me from being angry. Bridget seemed much more enthusiastic in bed than she'd ever been with me before. This was particularly true once the three of us got over the awkwardness of not really knowing how to begin things. Delilah took over things by sliding across my chest and stomach and embracing Bridget. The vee of her legs was resting right on the head of my cock while she and Bridget were kissing and making out with each other. I lay there, watching the two of them, almost able to feel the palpable passion their kisses were generating. Delilah did something with her hips, gyrating against the growing lump between my legs. We continued like that until I felt the back of Bridget's small hand as it made it's way across my stomach and onto Dee's now moistened pussy. Once she got her hand in place, I could feel the movement as she fingered her long time on and off girlfriend. I'll confess to the fact that I was very turned on by being there and by seeing what they were doing to each other. I've always had more than a little voyeur in my psychological makeup. Delilah spent more than half an hour concentrating mostly on getting Bridget turned on and excited. She didn't totally forget me, but most of her concentration was on Bridget. When she had satisfied herself that Bridget was as ready as she'd ever be, she moved off of both of us and pushed a slightly protesting Bridget towards the center of the bed. Before I knew what she intended, Delilah had her hand on my cock, and her face between Bridget's widespread legs. It seemed to me that these were practiced and well choreographed movements on Delilah's part. I didn't resist anything she tried to accomplish, and soon found myself mounting a wildly excited and extremely well stimulated Bridget. It took just one stroke to enter her. I'm sure this was helped greatly by the tongue work and finger penetration that I'd watched Delilah doing for the past several minutes. She was extremely wet, and was totally relaxed and receptive to me this time. I could feel much more heat coming from her pussy than I'd felt on any of the previous times that I'd been with her. It took me only a minute or two to get my nut, once I'd gotten my dick wet. As soon as I'd stopped coming, Delilah rolled me off of Bridget and went back to eating her out again. After a minute or less of this, she reversed her position and the two of them were eating each other. I thought this was the best sex I'd ever participated in, including those times when it was just Delilah and me. In a few minutes, after both girls had orgasmed strongly, Delilah climbed off of Bridget and settled herself on top of my still hard cock. She sank down slowly, not because she couldn't take my length all in a single motion, but because she was enjoying the slower journey to full penetration. Needless to say, I too was relishing the whole experience. I had to take frequent pauses to try to regain some vigor, to allow myself time to recharge. During those times, the girls kept themselves fully occupied with each other. The girls would whisper things to each other, but I don't recall a single instance where either of them spoke a word to me that first time we were all in bed together. I fell into a deep sleep several hours after the three of us had come up to my bedroom to take our "nap". When I next awoke, about five the following morning, both girls were gone from my bed. I found them sleeping, both entwined with each other, over in the guest room where Bridget had put all her things the day before. I didn't try to fool myself that I was that important to either of them. I was simply a necessary component they had needed if they wanted to experience living together. I had the house for us to live in, and enough money to pay any necessary living expenses. In return, they let me have nearly unlimited access to their bodies, and their agreement to undertake all the domestic duties that I had been, heretofore, neglecting. It was an amazing deal for me, and one I truly hoped they'd also find rewarding. If this first day had been an accurate indication, they neither wanted nor expected any show of emotional commitment from me. Downstairs, drinking my coffee, and trying to plan out my agenda for the week, I couldn't quite succeed in getting the big grin off my face. I knew I'd hit the jackpot by getting such a great deal just handed to me like this one had been. I knew something would eventually come along to ruin things for me, but, until it did, I was bound and determined to milk it for as long as I could. ------- Chapter 7 For the next week or so, Delilah and Bridget got settled in at my house. The two of them did a top to bottom thorough cleaning of the place. They both worked much harder than I'd thought they would, and I became more and more pleased as my house started looking well cared for again. The sex kept getting better too, as we three learned new ways to bring greater pleasure to each other. Delilah was a master at subtle techniques to enhance and intensify our sensual responses. To express my satisfaction with the way our little arrangement was working out, I went to a friend who dealt in wholesale autos and purchased a pair of used Mustangs. They were both three years old, and had less than twenty thousand miles on each odometer. The cars had been part of a corporate executive lease return that my friend had purchased at a deep discount from the wholesale Kelly Bluebook price. I ended up paying three thousand in cash for the two cars, in addition to trading him a nearly new living, dining, and bedroom set of furniture that I'd picked up fairly cheaply at a bankruptcy auction down in Palm Springs. The furniture looked brand new, and probably cost at least fifteen thousand when first purchased. I'd paid a little more than eleven hundred for it. Basically, I'd gotten both cars for less outlay than either one had been worth by itself. The girls loved my surprise. Having their own means of transportation allowed them to start looking for jobs so that they could begin to start saving the money they'd need for when they went out on their own in the near future. Delilah was the first to find work, over in Victorville, for a small, independent, escrow company. A week later, Bridget started a trainee program for a well known stock brokerage firm. All wasn't sweetness and light though. It seemed like Kaitlyn and Danny were both envious of any expenditures I made on the girls. It got so every time I came into contact with either my brother or his wife, I had to listen to their complaints about how unfair it was that I kept throwing my money away on Delilah and Bridget when they had to make do with the bare subsistence wages I was paying my brother. I took it in the beginning, figuring that they would have their say and it would then blow over. It didn't work out that way though. "Jimmy, Katie and I have been talking, and we both think you need to start paying me more money for the work I've been doing. Katie thinks you should give me part ownership in the company too. Part of the reason you've been so successful is because I've always been willing to do anything you've needed to get done. We both think I should get a bigger slice of the pie." "What company are you talking about, Danny? I wasn't aware that I even had a company. I have two warehouses where I store some things, but I just rent them on a month to month basis. I don't even have a business license, so I'm not sure what you mean by this company you want me to give you a part of. What I do have is a little bit of money that I've saved up. I invest it in whatever I can buy that I think I can sell for a profit. I think of it as one of those hobby things that kind of grew to be bigger than I first thought it would." "It doesn't matter what you call it, it's still a company. We don't think you're being fair to just pay me whatever you think you want to. I've worked for you for four years now, and I think you owe me more than what I've been getting." "Danny, this conversation isn't really going anywhere. I've already been paying you more than I'd pay anyone else for doing the same job. I told you back when you first came to me that I'd try to find some things for you to do until you could find other work to replace that job you lost when to box factory went bust. As far as I know, you haven't even been looking for any other job. That wasn't what we agreed on. All this time I've been thinking I was bending over backwards to make sure you and your family had enough dough to keep a roof over your heads, food on the table, and some clothes on your back." "I'm not getting ahead any on what you've been paying me, Jimmy. My truck is ten years old, and that piece of crap Chevy we got for Katie barely runs at all. We drive around in vehicles that could quit running at any time, and you give both those girls of yours almost new Mustangs. You hardly even know those girls, especially Dee, but you've already spent more on each of them this month than you've paid me for working my ass off for you for the past six months." "We didn't get that car for Kaitlyn, Danny, I bought it and gave it to her. As for your truck, didn't I just sign the pink slip over to you when I bought my other truck four years ago? I don't remember charging you a penny for that truck. In fact, it seems to me that I paid to get it smogged and to transfer ownership over into your name. I don't think you have a real complaint about that truck. It isn't my fault that she never even gets her oil changed or checks the air in her tires. If you two took care of normal maintenance on your vehicles, they probably would be in a lot better shape than they are." "We would take better care of them, if we had any extra money to pay for it with." "If you want to make more money, Danny, then get a real job. I certainly won't do anything to stand in your way if you do that." "Is that your final answer?" "I didn't have many other choices, Danny. The girls needed some transportation to go get jobs. I made a good deal on those two cars. It was my money that I spent, not yours, and not your wife's. What I decide to do with my own money isn't a legitimate concern for either of you." "Katie told me I'd have to quit working for you if you don't do something to help us get out of the hole we're in financially." I looked at my brother, trying to decide if his threat was a serious one or not. As far as I could determine, I was the only one standing between him and an almost immediate loss of a place to live for his whole family. They were always teetering on the edge of financial disaster anyway. They were confusing their wanting with their deserving. "Danny, you can go ahead and quit if it will make you feel any better. We both know that the space rent for the trailer is coming due next week. If you don't work this week, how do you expect to come up with that money when the rent is due?" "I'll find a way. You'll see when the time comes. Don't call me when you need someone to drive loads for you. I'll be looking for that real job you told me to get. I won't be coming back to work for you after this time, so don't even bother asking me to." I watched him as he turned away and walked back to his pick up. I knew he was convinced, in his own mind, that I was shortchanging him for all the work he did for me. He didn't know or care that half the work he did for me was really jobs I'd created to keep him working in order to give him a full week's paycheck. I didn't know how many deals I'd made with that in my mind. Deals where all, or almost all, of the profit went towards taking care of Danny's paycheck. I knew that Danny quitting would have a positive impact on my overall profitability. I went down to both storage places and put new padlocks on the doors. Danny had been known to rip me off in the past, and I couldn't be sure that he wasn't planning to do something similar in the near future, as a way to get the rent and food money he'd soon be needing. After I was done with making the storage sheds harder for him to break into, I called Hector, a guy I sometimes used to make deliveries for me when Danny was already on the road somewhere else. I asked him if he was free to make a three day delivery trip for me, and he jumped at the chance. I always paid Hector a hundred dollars a day when he delivered for me. His wife was on welfare, and Hector was drawing some type of disability payment, so any work he did for me was always paid in cash, under the table. He was reliable too, never asking for anything special, or trying to hold me up for more money if he knew I was in a bind. After Hector and I loaded up the truck and I'd given him the manifest list, with all the delivery addresses, and instructions on the order which I wanted the deliveries to be made in, he drove off from the shed behind Izzy's, and I drove back to my house. Danny's actions had caused me to be in a bad mood. It always troubled me to see him making decisions which I knew were going to come back and cause me future grief. I already had a pretty good idea about how this situation would eventually play itself out. Somehow, I'd be on the hook to rescue him once again, putting up the money to keep them from being evicted from the trailer park. I stewed about this for an hour or so and then decided that the smart thing for me to do was to go down to the trailer park office and pay their space rent in order to save myself the forty dollar late charge. I told Mr. Jenkins, the park manager, to not tell either Danny or Kaitlyn that their rent had been paid. If they somehow came up with the money, I told him to hold on to what I'd given him, and to then use it the first time they didn't pay their rent on time. I'd heard that Danny had taken a job driving a tow truck for one of the services that did County contract work on the Interstate. He was supposedly working six twelve hour shifts, and being paid about five hundred dollars a week. This was the same as I'd been paying him for working around forty hours a week for me, and that didn't take into account all the money I'd had to spend to make sure there was food in their house and gas in their vehicles. It also didn't count the three hundred a month I'd been paying for their family health insurance coverage. I had paid the health insurance for the current month before Danny quit. I told myself it would be easier, and cheaper in the long run, to keep up with taking care of the health insurance premiums. It was another month before I heard another word from either my brother or his wife. This time it was Kaitlyn who came to my house, with her kids, to let me know that her car had a blown engine. She was driving her mom's car she said, but her mother needed her car back at the end of the week. Danny's pickup, which he seldom used with his new job, wasn't big enough to fit her and the three kids in the cab she said. I didn't say anything when she'd finally finished with her explanation about what had happened to her car. "I want you to make Bridget let me borrow her car until I can afford to get another one. She can ride to work with Delilah, and you can pick her up after work if she needs a ride home." "What did Bridget say when you asked her to loan you her car?" "She didn't say anything, because I knew it wouldn't do any good to ask her. She's always been selfish, so she'd say no because she doesn't care if your niece and nephews have transportation in case they need to go to the hospital, or if there's some other type of emergency. You bought the cars, so you can do what's right and let me borrow her car until I have another one of my own. You could buy me one of those cars too, if you don't want to let me have hers." "The car is Bridget's, not mine. If you want to ask her to loan it to you, then go ahead. Don't try to get me caught up in the middle of this. As for me buying you a car, I think I already did that, and I don't remember you even bothering to thank me for doing it." "I did thank you. Every time I let you take advantage of me, that was me thanking you. I know you're mad at me and Danny, but I thought you still cared about what happens with the children. I wouldn't ask you for anything, if it was just for me or Danny." I had an old Lincoln that I seldom drove. It was a 1996 four door Town car that looked a little beat up but still ran well. "You can use my Lincoln if you need something for just driving around locally. It looks like shit, but it runs okay." "I don't want that old Lincoln. It handles like a boat, and those rear air shocks both leak. Let Bridget drive the Lincoln, and make her lend me her Mustang." "I told you what I can do, take it or leave it." I had to listen to her screaming at me all the way back to her mother's car. Kaitlyn had never been one who could take any refusal well. I knew my decision to not give her what she wanted would result in her poisoning Danny's mind against me further. It didn't matter though, because the two of them had similar mindset's when it came to how much other people owed them for all their supposed past sacrifices. They tried to turn everything they ever did for me into far more than it had actually been. If you listened to either of them you'd come away with the impression that I was the most ungrateful person in the world. I knew this wasn't true, but it bothered me that they would keep putting that story out to every one they could get to listen to them about it. Another week went by and this time it was Danny who came over to my house to see about getting his old job back. He'd been caught by his new employer doing a little towing work on his own behalf. He would find someone stranded out on the Interstate and make his own little deal for cash to tow them to the nearest exit with a garage. He was just pocketing the money he got for doing it. There was no way Danny's boss could help noticing the slowdown in his business. The worst part of it was that Danny kept towing cars to the tow company's competitors, so the owner also missed out on the earnings from all the repair jobs and tire sales. "Business is pretty slow here right now, Danny. I only used Hector for two days last week. When things are slow, I only have to pay him for days when I can actually use him. I heard that there is a boat company over by Adelanto that's hiring. Did you go out there to apply?" "You have to wear masks around all that fiberglass, and the jobs they have now don't pay anything. I'm your brother, and you owe me, Jimmy. You shouldn't put strangers above your own family." "I wish I knew where you came up with this great sense of entitlement, Danny. You've never done a single thing for me that you weren't well paid for doing. When I was a kid, you got more than a grand every month from Social Security for keeping me. I never saw anything like a thousand dollars a month worth of value in what you provided me. When you talked about not putting strangers above family, I guess you didn't mean any of the people you lost money to playing poker, right? Those strangers seemed to get a lot more of your time, money, and attention than I ever did." "If you don't want me working for you, can you at least loan me a thousand dollars so I can get caught up with things?" "I don't have it, Danny. I spent all my spare money on buying cars for the girls. I already told you that business has been slow. If I can't sell anything, then there isn't any money coming in. Business will pick up one of these days, and when it does, maybe I'll start having extra money again. Until then, I have to be careful with whatever money I have, so it lasts me." "Sometimes, you enjoy being a big prick a little too much, Jim. Do you still have those fishing rods and reels we bought at that lien sale over in Nevada? I went over to the back of Izzy's but you'd changed the lock and my key doesn't fit anymore. I know some guys who'll give me ten bucks for each rig." "I have them, but I don't plan on letting them go for that little. The reels all by themselves are worth at least thirty apiece. When were you planning on selling them? Did you even plan on paying me anything for my property after you sold it?" "If you haven't sold them by now, they're just taking up storage space. You should let me sell them, and I'll use that money to make up for what you can't lend me." "I know that plan makes good sense for you, but I can't see how it makes any sense for me, so I'll have to give it a pass. Is there anything else we need to talk about? If not, I'm running late for a liquidation sale out in West Covina. I need to hurry if I'm going to get a chance to look things over before the sale begins." "I need to bring back something, Jimmy. Katie told me to not bother coming back unless I brought her some money for food. I know you're pissed at us, and I can see where, from the way you look at things, that, maybe, you have some right to be. We're family though, and we can get it all straightened out one of these days. Right? For right now though, I need to bring home a little something to get Katie off my ass. Even two hundred would shut her mouth for a day or two. I'm asking you, as your brother, to help me out here. Can you do that?" One of my biggest weaknesses is my inability to stop myself from doing what my brother asks. If it had been Kaitlyn who'd tried that corny approach on me, I'd have laughed in her face. Danny was really my only close family. In spite of what I'd told him about his never having done anything for me that he hadn't been paid to do, I still remembered all the nights he'd stayed up with me, after our parents had been killed, holding me as I cried out my overwhelming sorrow over the loss of them. It was that Danny that I still responded to, not to the man he'd eventually turned into. There was a time when he'd been all I had left to hold on to. He'd been there for me until I was once again strong enough to look after myself. I knew, even as I reached into my front pants pocket for my money clip, that Danny had just managed to work me again. It seemed like, no matter how much I was determined to tell him no, that he always, somehow, managed to get past my guard and under whatever emotional defence that I'd set in place to prevent him from doing what he'd just done. I peeled off the four fifties to hand him. I was careful not to look into his eyes as I handed the money over, not wanting to see him gloating about having, once again, gotten the best of me. "Are you going to have something for me to do starting next Monday? I don't care what it is. Whatever you want me to do is fine. I could really use some time away from her." "I can have a load ready for delivery to San Diego, and, on the way back, you can pick up a load of surf boards I bought last week in San Clemente. I've been meaning to get down there so I could bring them back up here for me to store until I can sell them. This is the last time I'm going to take you back though, Danny. You really need to get yourself a real job soon. I don't know how much longer I'm going to keep hustling around like this, trying to make myself a little money. What did Kaitlyn do about getting another car to drive?" "This guy she knows bought a used engine out at the junkyard and switched it in for the old one. He only charged her eight hundred for everything, and she said he offered to give her some time to pay him. We're supposed to give him fifty a month til it's paid up." "The car runs okay now?" "She says it does, and she's been driving it since she got it back on Wednesday. She needs four new tires though, so if you see any good deals on any be sure to let us know. She probably fucked that guy who put in the new engine. If she did, I guess I can't really blame her too much for it. She really needs a car for the kids. Too bad the guy doesn't sell tires too." "That isn't any way for you to be living, Danny. You really need to be thinking about what kind of example she's setting for your kids. What are they learning from her? Did you ever think about that?" "You have more choices about how you do things, Jimmy. You don't have to deal with not having any other outs like we do. We both know she isn't going to stop being the way she's always been. At least this time, she got something out of the deal besides a hosing. If I find out for sure that she did fuck him, he'll play hell before we pay him any of that eight hundred dollars we owe." After he drove off, happy to have some money to give to his wife, and with the good news that he was once again employed, I went upstairs to my bedroom. Bridget and Delilah were both at work, so I had the time and the privacy to work through yet another failure to stick to my guns about not allowing either Danny or Kaitlyn to manipulate me into supporting them again. I'd failed this time too, just like all those other times. I knew they'd continue using me like this, and I also knew that it was my lack of willpower that enabled them to continue on with acting like they did. I knew I wouldn't really consider myself fully grown up until the day I could stand up to them about something and really make it stick. I opened the little drawer on the nightstand by my bed and took out my mom and dad's wedding picture. I looked at their happy faces, wondering how they'd feel if they knew how things had turned out for Danny and me. I remembered my parents, but it was a fading memory, since they'd both been dead for more than half my lifetime. In many ways, Danny and Kaitlyn had been substitute parents for me. I didn't have to like it, but that didn't change a thing. I tried to tell myself that I had gotten away pretty cheaply this time around. Somehow, that wasn't very much comfort to me. I really wanted to crawl into my bed and take a nap to try to escape from thinking about what I'd just done, but I didn't have that luxury. I still had to find something to sell to someone in San Diego in order to give my brother something to deliver after he drove all the way down there. I got on the phones and managed to sell thirty of those fishing rods and reels to a sport fishing outfit that rented out deep sea fishing tackle. I only got forty dollars for each rig, but that was more than Danny would have sold them for. It would more than pay for Danny's trip, and I still had another couple of days before Monday rolled around. By the time the girls came home from work I was coming out of the funk that my talk with Danny had left me in. I talked them into going out for dinner. Both girls were wizards when it came to cleaning the house, but neither of them should have ever been allowed in a kitchen. They were both far worse cooks than I was, and that's really saying something. That night, the two of them managed to make me forget all my cares from earlier in the day. Bridget was getting more responsive with me, but it was only slow progress that she was making. Delilah though, as always, made up for any deficiencies that Bridget's lukewarm attitude towards me might have had. I think she knew that she needed to do more to make up for Bridget's lack of enthusiasm. In any case, at the end of our session I was very contented with what I'd received from the pair. ------- Chapter 8 I had known this day was coming ever since Delilah had talked me into letting her and Bridget move in with me. Knowing that day was coming was one thing, but being told that they were moving into their own apartment on the first of the following month was quite another. They'd lived with me for eight months by the time Delilah gave me the news that they'd rented an apartment over in Victorville. I knew it had mostly been Bridget's idea that they leave. Bridget had been insecure with our little arrangement, fearing that Delilah and I were getting to be too close to each other. Delilah had played into those fears by sneaking into my bedroom on some nights when she and Bridget were supposed to be sleeping alone in Bridget's guest bedroom. I think it was a game she liked playing, feeding into Bridget's insecurity. I had no complaints about their decision to leave. Just having them both living with me had been an eye opening experience. Always before, I had assumed that I wanted to be a loner. Living with Danny and Kaitlyn when I'd been younger had pretty much soured me on traditional romantic relationships or marriages. After having the girls there living with me, I had gotten a look at a whole different side of relationships. I saw how the girls were with each other, the love and the deep emotional attachment they felt for each other, and I knew what it was like to have the two of them being there with me. We'd had fun, and the three of us had provided each other with strong friendship and support. I'd gotten very fond of the two of them, and I knew that their leaving would mark an end to the longest sustained period of happiness I'd ever known as an adult. Delilah had assured me that she'd still be coming over for occasional sex visits with me. Each time she brought the subject up I saw Bridget looking unhappy with what she was telling me. Bridget didn't come right out and tell me so, but I had little doubt that she and I wouldn't be having a sexual relationship after they'd moved out. If Bridget had her way, Delilah and I wouldn't be having one either. When the day finally came, Danny and I helped them move all their things over to the little one bedroom apartment they'd rented. In eight months with me, they'd accumulated quite a bit of stuff. They had come with almost nothing, but by the time they left, both mustangs were stuffed with their clothing, and my pick up bed was crammed full with boxes of books, kitchen things, two computers, and miscellaneous lamps, tables, and other small household appliances. After we'd helped them unload everything, Danny and I went over to Izzy's to have a few beers. I didn't usually drink, but having the girls leave was an important occasion. I didn't want to get drunk or anything, but I did want to mark the moment in some way. I didn't really want to go back home right away to my now empty house. "I'm surprised those girls moved out, Jim, especially Dee. I thought for sure she'd want to stay close to her sugar daddy." "No, this was all planned by the three of us, right from the beginning. They were only going to stay until they had enough saved up to get their own place. I think they had enough saved to get the apartment three or four months back, but it was better for them to stay until they'd gotten enough reserve in case something unexpected happens." "Katie thinks those girls were just using you." "She's free to think whatever she wants. As far as I'm concerned though, I got way the best of it by having them living with me like they did. They can move back in anytime they feel like it. I'm going to miss having them around." "Did you love either of them, or both? Did you want to marry one of them?" "Shit, Danny, how do I know? I liked the arrangement we had. It worked for me. It doesn't have to be about anything else, you know? It was just a good deal all around, and we helped each other. They decided that they wanted to leave, and I'm okay with that. That was what we said was going to happen from the beginning." "How much did you end up spending on those two? Katie thinks it was like thirty grand for the two of them." "I didn't try to keep track, and I don't care how much it was. It was worth whatever I spent. We had some great times together. It would have been worth it if I'd ended up spending all my money. It made me happy being with them like we were." "Is it all over between you guys now? I mean is there still going to be a lot of the three of you hanging out with each other?" "I'm sure we'll get together some. Delilah said she'd still be stopping by from time to time. I'm not sure how interested Bridget will be in her and me getting together. It could be that the three of us might still be doing things together if something comes up that we'd all like to do." "In bed?" "Probably not the three of us together any more. We might drive over to Vegas together again. We had fun doing that before. Bridget likes the shows, and Delilah likes the nite clubs there. I got these offers for free room and shows from Caesar's Palace. The sent me an offer for two Jerry Seinfeld show tickets and a free room for next month. The show is on a Saturday, and the room is for Friday and Saturday, or Saturday and Sunday. I'll give them a couple weeks to get settled into their new place and then I'll ask them if they're interested in going with me." "How come they're giving you all this free stuff? Have you been gambling much when you go there?" "I've been playing some "21" and some Pai Gow Poker. Nothing big, but I hit a hot streak playing Pai Gow Poker the last time we went, and they had me using their player's club card. I guess they had me rated higher than normal because I played for about eight hours, and I was betting five hundred a hand for about half that time. I only ended up winning about six hundred at the last, but I was up quite a bit for a pretty long while." "Five hundred a hand? That's big money Jim." "It was the house's money I was betting. I'd never bet that much if it wasn't winnings. I started out betting twenty five a hand. I only started betting more after I was playing with their money. The only reason I still ended up with any money at the end was because I put a few of the black chips in my pocket when I first got some money ahead, and then I forgot I had them until we got back up to the room, after I had quit playing. I'm not really into gambling that much, but the girls thought it might be fun to do some gambling while we were there." "Did you ever think that Katie and I might enjoy a free trip out to Las Vegas to see a show and go out to those clubs? Did you see any big stars when you went to those clubs with the girls?" "Nah. We just went to this one, called Pure, and it was pretty early when we went there. It was mostly just tourists like us trying to see if any famous people were there or not. We saw some of those Chippendale dancers over at Harrah's, but they were just hanging around, showing off their muscles. They didn't do anything." "Maybe you should watch the kids for us, and let Katie and me use your free room and show tickets." "I think I'd have to be there in order to get the room and the tickets. I don't much feel like driving up and back just so you two can live it up in Vegas. With the girls, there's something in it for me." "Katie and I, we didn't take months of free hand outs and then desert you. Doesn't that count for something with you?" "Hell no! I wish you two would desert me. I wish you wouldn't keep trying to get more than you're getting from me. You aren't in some kind of competition with the girls, you know. I don't have to make sure I give everybody equal amounts of anything. It isn't a contest to see who gets the most from me. If it was, you and Kaitlyn would be way ahead of anyone else." "I was just saying that it would be nice, for a change, if you thought of us when you're passing out free stuff. That's all." I went home shortly after that. I didn't feel like sitting there, paying for the beers and listening to my brother complaining that I wasn't doing enough for him and his wife. It was funny that he didn't ever think of doing anything for me for free. He'd gotten me to pay him fifty dollars for the time he'd helped me get the girls moved into their new place. He hadn't done that much to help either. I could have gotten it all done without his help. His whining didn't do anything to cheer me up about the girls moving out either. The house sure seemed a lot bigger now that the girls had moved out. I hadn't been lonely at all back before they moved in with me, but now I was for some strange reason. I'd just gotten used to having people around me, I guess. For the next couple of weeks I tried to keep real busy with business. I spent a lot longer each day on the phones and on the internet, tracking down deals and finding buyers for the things I acquired. Business was good too, but it didn't seem to give me the same satisfaction as it used to when I made a particularly good deal. There was no one to share the news with. I kept waiting to hear from Bridget or Delilah, but I hadn't heard a thing during that first two week period they'd been gone. I'd been waiting for one of them to either call or come over, and then I was going to ask them if they wanted to go on the Vegas trip with me to use those Seinfeld tickets. I could have called them, I guess, but I didn't want to seem like I was chasing after them. I made a great deal sometime during the third week after the girls had moved out. I bought up a whole storage shed full of original oil paintings. Not the good kind by famous artists or anything, but the whole inventory of one of those starving artist auction places. There were over five hundred framed paintings and almost a thousand empty frames to go along with them. I got everything for nine hundred dollars, and then I sold off three hundred of the worst looking of those empty frames, to a guy I knew in San Bernardino, and got my nine hundred back. He sold things at swap meets, and said he'd take all I had at three dollars apiece. I had hopes of getting more for them as soon as I found someone who was in the original oil painting auction business. I found this company down in Los Angeles, and they agreed to buy everything for $7,000.00 if I was willing to drive it down to their warehouse and unload all of it for them. I got Hector and Danny to load everything on my two delivery trucks and we drove down to make the delivery. When we got there, the lady in their warehouse tried to give me a company check for the amount we'd agreed on. I told her that the agreement had been for cash, and told her I wouldn't deliver without getting the cash up front. We finally drove over to the bank that the check was drawn on and they cashed it for me. They charged me ten dollars for cashing the check, because I didn't have an account with their bank. When we got back up to Hesperia, I paid Hector the money he had coming, and then I had to deal with Danny's pouting because I wasn't willing to pay him a bonus, and his regular pay day was still three days away. He asked me again about the Vegas show tickets and room. "Look Danny, I already told you that I have to be there in order to get the free room and the tickets to the show. If I go, it won't be with you and Kaitlyn. I probably won't end up going at all. It was just an offer they sent me to lure me back there to lose my money. I thought it might be fun to go back there with the girls, but I haven't been talking to them, and I'd need to ask them if they wanted to go before I make any reservation commitments at Caesar's." "I told Kaitlyn about those show tickets, and now she's bugging me about getting them for us. She already got her mom to agree to come to the trailer and sit for the kids while we're gone." "Danny, it doesn't matter what Kaitlyn wants. Those tickets are mine. Even if I decide not to use them, and I probably won't use them, they aren't any good to anyone if I'm not there to sign in for the room and for the show tickets. You can't just invite yourself to something that's mine. It doesn't work that way." "The three of us can go. How long has it been since the three of us went somewhere together, on vacation?" "First, there's only one room. Second, there are only two free tickets. I checked on their website online, and I have about eighty bucks in free food credits too, but food is expensive in Las Vegas. Eighty bucks is about enough for three buffet's at the Rio. Two at Caesar's Palace." "You just gave Hector a hundred dollars for something that you and I could have handled alone. You seem to have plenty of money to give away to strangers, why don't you spend some of it on your family?" "If I'd wanted to help you load and unload all that crap, then, yes, I could have saved myself a hundred dollars. I could have also had you do everything except collect the money. Did you ever think of that? I got Hector so I wouldn't have to help you, and so you wouldn't have to do the whole thing all by yourself. You need to quit worrying about how I spend my money. It makes you sick enough not being able to figure out a way to get more of it from me already." "Jimmy, take me and Katie to Las Vegas, and I promise I won't ask you for any extras for a long time." "What's a long time to you?" "Six months?" "A year." "Okay, you've got a deal. Can I tell Katie that we're going?' "Yes, but you aren't getting any money to gamble from me. Don't ask. The same thing goes for Kaitlyn. I'll pay for meals, and you two can use those show tickets, but that's it. Also, I'm not getting a separate room for you two. There will be two beds, you can have one and I'll take the other one." "You'll give us some time in the room by ourselves if we want to have some private fun, right?" "I'm only expecting to be in the room when I'm ready to sleep. The rest of the time, you two can have all the privacy you want." Danny went home right after I told him that. He'd achieved what he'd set out to get. Part of the reason he'd succeeded was that I didn't want to waste that free offer, and it didn't look like I'd be hearing from the girls anytime soon. The trip to Vegas turned out pretty well for all three of us. Kaitlyn and Danny were both in very upbeat moods during the three hour drive to Vegas. The room at Caesar's was very nice. It was in the Palace tower, and there were actually two complete bathrooms in our room. Kaitlyn loved the Jacuzzi bathtub, and the first night I again got lucky at the tables. I started out by winning a thousand dollars at a "21" game, and then Danny took me over to a craps table and tried to teach me the game. I didn't understand all the things he kept telling me to do, but it seemed like almost every time I put some money down on something, someone would throw the dice and the dealer would push some money over to me. I put a lot of the black chips in my pants pocket, keeping only the red ones and the green chips to make more bets with. Kaitlyn was out at one of the pools while Danny and I were inside playing craps. She charged seventy dollars worth of drinks to our room while she was out there and we were playing in the casino. I picked up the Seinfeld tickets later on Friday, and the guy in front of us in line only needed one ticket for himself, because his wife had decided not to come with him at the last minute. He gave me his spare ticket, which I thought was a pretty nice thing for him to do. By the time we'd gotten our tickets, I'd had a chance to count the black chips in my pocket, and I was ahead over two thousand dollars, counting the "21" money too. We went over to the Bellagio for dinner at their buffet, and the food was excellent. For the money they were charging. it should have been. Saturday, we had an early dinner over at the Flamingo Casino in their steak house. Danny and Kaitlyn had the steak and lobster dinner, while I just had a rib eye steak. Mine was very good, and they both said theirs was great too. The Seinfeld show was pretty good, although he started off kind of slow. I actually liked the comic he had opening for him better than the main attraction. Danny and Kaitlyn were pretty excited to be seeing a headliner act in a nice showroom at Caesar's. After the show let out, all three of us went over to the Pai Gow Poker table. I played, Danny and Kaitlyn took full advantage of the frequent visits by the cocktail hostess. I gave the girl a five dollar chip every time she brought drinks for the three of us. Danny and Kaitlyn would take turns drinking my drink because I wanted to keep a clear head while I played. I played for about four hours. Mostly, I stayed about even until I hit a royal flush with ten dollars bet on the bonus. They paid me fifteen hundred for that, and I gave the dealer a hundred dollar tip. After I won that money I started betting one or two hundred every hand. Sometimes, when I was winning, I'd bet more, then I'd drop back down after I lost one or two hands. The most I ever bet on a single hand was four hundred. There were three other players at the same time I was there, and all of them were betting more than I was. I'm not sure where all my money went, but by three in the morning, I had lost all my chips, including the two thousand that I'd won earlier at craps and "21". We went up to bed after that. Danny and Kaitlyn were really bombed by then. I hadn't really been paying any attention to how much they'd been drinking while I'd been playing, but they were both staggering a lot when we walked to our elevator from the casino area. Sunday, we slept in until past the regular check out time. I called down to the front desk and they gave me until two P.M. for late check out. Surprisingly, Danny and Kaitlyn both seemed in very good spirits on the drive back home. I thought they'd both be tired and hung over, but they seemed fine. All three of us ate a lot when we stopped to get gas and there was a Jack in the Box right next to the service station. All in all, I had to admit that I'd had a good time with my brother and Kaitlyn. I hadn't really expected to, but I'd been wrong about that. It hadn't ended up costing me too much either. Just forty or so for the gas and another hundred or so in miscellaneous expenses. The food had either been comped for me, or else I'd paid it out of the money I'd been ahead when we were eating. I think the Jack in the Box was the only out of pocket expense for food, and that was only twenty bucks or so. Right after we got back, Kaitlyn must have called her sister to brag about me taking her and Danny rather than Bridget and Delilah. The day after we got back, Delilah shows up at the house and starts asking me questions about the Vegas trip. I told her about it, mentioning that I would have rather gone there with her or Bridget and her, but that I hadn't wanted to call either of them before they were ready to see me again. Delilah ended up spending the night at my house. She hadn't lost any of her enthusiasm in bed either. I guess I'd forgotten a little bit about what a tiger she was in bed. Maybe forgotten isn't the right word to describe what happened. I had tried to put it out of my mind, knowing if I dwelled on it too much, I'd end up feeling worse that they'd moved out. Delilah went home early the next morning, wanting to get changed for work. She asked me if it would be all right if she and Bridget came over that evening, hinting that the three of us could go out to dinner if they did. I guess the two of them were already sick of trying to eat food that they'd cooked themselves. I told her that I'd love to take them out to a nice dinner if they'd come over. That night, we went out and had a real nice dinner at this Mexican restaurant in Victorville that Bridget always liked. The girls came back to the house with me and the three of us spent the night in my bed. Bridget was not quite as enthusiastic as she'd been towards the end of their stay with me, and Delilah wasn't quite as energetic as she'd been just the night before either. Still, I'd missed having the two of them in my life, and having them back in my bed again was more than I'd been expecting. The next morning the three of us showered together, and then, after we'd gotten dressed, I walked them back down to Delilah's car, which they'd driven over in. "Next time you get one of those offers from Las Vegas, Jimmy, you should call us first. Okay?" Delilah was in my arms, having just given me a very nice good bye kiss just before she'd told me that. "Funny you should mention that. I checked my account on the website they have for player's invitations, and I have an offer for a room and two free tickets to see Elton John in concert at Caesar's. I was going to call Danny to see if he and Kaitlyn wanted to go again, but if you two want to go, we can just make the reservation ourselves and go. I think it's for Friday and Saturday, three weeks from last weekend." "Really? Elton John? We'd love to go, wouldn't we Bridge?" "Sure. He's old, but he had some good songs in his time." "There was another offer there too. One of those Cirque Du Soleil shows over at the Bellagio. I think it was "O", but I'm not sure of that. It was for the weekend after the Elton John show tickets." "I've always wanted to see one of those Cirque shows. I've seen parts of them on TV. Can you get us tickets to see both?" Bridget was more animated than I'd seen her in quite some time. Who knew she wanted Cirque Du Soleil tickets? "If that's what will make you happy, I can. Should I book us in for both shows?" The girls both agreed that they wanted to go to see the shows on the two consecutive weekends. Before they left, Delilah asked me if I wanted to take them out to eat that coming Friday. We decided to go down the hill to a favorite Italian restaurant that Delilah had over in San Bernardino. After they left, I started feeling good again. I knew that I would be spending more time with the girls from then on. They obviously had been missing all those free restaurant dinners we used to go to together. I could see they both liked having someone who was willing to take them out, someone who was always willing to pay money for them to do all the fun things they liked doing. Bridget was still going to be jealous of the time I spent with Delilah, but she now knew she had to give Delilah some room for her to do things with me, unless she wanted to take the risk of losing her. I was a practical man. I knew that I was purchasing their company. Bidding for their time and attention as it were. So what? I felt better right at that moment than I had ever since they'd moved out. In a way, my giving in to Danny about taking him and Kaitlyn to Las Vegas had been the catalyst for all that had followed after. On Friday, right before I went home to get cleaned up for my dinner date with the girls, I handed Danny his paycheck for the week. I saw him look at the amount, then I saw him looking over at me, obviously undecided about whether he should even mention the extra hundred dollars I'd written his check for. Finally, too curious to keep from asking, he did. "Did I finally get a raise, Jim?" "No, not a raise, more like a bonus from that art deal we did down the hill. I thought, since you seemed so worried about Hector getting paid something, that you'd feel better if I slipped you a little extra too." "This just a one time thing then?" "Just my way of thanking you for not causing me any problems for awhile. Things have been running pretty smoothly for awhile now, and I'm in a good mood because of that." "Katie already knows about you taking Dee and her sister to see Elton John and that other circus thing too. I don't think an extra hundred is going to stop her from thinking about that." "Let her think about it. Tell her if I keep feeling good about things I might remember that the three of us had a good time in Vegas before too. I'd much rather reward her for good behavior, than have to pay to clean up either of your messes. There's an offer in my account for New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. Supposed to be a big dinner party, one of those dress up things she might like. Tell her if she stays out of trouble, that party invitation has her name written all over it. Tell her if she earns it, I might have a couple hundred extra for her to try out those Las Vegas slot machines." "What about me? Don't I get anything if I'm good?" "I heard about these satellite tournaments for the World Series of Poker they have over at the Rio. For two hundred dollars or so, you get to play in one of those mini tournaments. First prize is ten thousand dollars, plus a seat at the main event of the World Series. If both of you are on your good behavior, she gets the two hundred for her slots and you get the buy in for one of those mini tournaments. I heard first prize for the big tournament was over eight million dollars this year." I saw that my offer had Danny already dreaming of what he'd do with the eight million. He'd never win it, of course, but that wouldn't stop him from dreaming about it. We all had to have our dreams. I decided that I'd have to work really hard from now on. I was already committed to three weekends in Las Vegas. Realistically, I couldn't count on winning or breaking even with my gambling. I had to figure on maybe losing two thousand dollars each time I went. I was confident that I could play for a long time with two thousand dollars at the Pai Gow Poker tables. If I got ahead, then I'd play for more money each hand. If not, then twenty five a hand would still last me a long time there. I was motivated, and I had a goal I was willing to work toward. It had already paid me meaningful dividends with my brother, Kaitlyn, and my two girls. More was on offer too, just as long as I kept getting invited back to Las Vegas for the free rooms and those nice shows. ------- Chapter 9 I was working hard again, anxious to get my working capital back up to what it had been before Delilah had come into my life. Kaitlyn had tried very hard to get a good estimate of what I'd so far spent on the girls, but her guess of thirty thousand had fallen a little short of what I'd actually spent on them over the eight month period when they'd lived with me. In addition to those extra expenditures, I'd taken far more time away from work to do things with them. All those three and four day weekend trips had prevented me from taking better care of my business. Now that I had a new plan of action, I knew I was going to need to generate a greater income if I wanted to make everything work out. I had to have more income if I wanted to keep up the level of spending I'd been doing. I'd been toying with the idea of hiring and using someone to work the phones for me. One of the limitations of my business was the fact that I could only be in one place at a time. I made all the purchasing decisions, and I wanted to keep it that way. Once I had something I wanted to sell though, I wasn't against the idea of someone else handling all the negotiations with prospective buyers. I could set a bottom price that an item could be sold for. Usually, the hardest part of any sale was finding someone who could use what you wanted to sell. I bought things cheaply enough that selling at a good price wasn't any problem. The only real problem I was having in trying to get someone to handle sales for me was in finding someone I could hire who could do a good job. I didn't see it as a salaried job, or one with any set hours. What I really wanted was someone I could give a list of my existing inventory of goods for sale to and have him start looking around for buyers to sell to. I knew it wasn't hard to do, but I didn't know anyone besides myself who could do it. If I could clone myself, making the other me into the seller while I stayed on as the buyer, I knew I could improve my business profitability greatly. Unfortunately, cloning myself wasn't an option. There was also the matter of trust issues that I had. My life, up until that point, hadn't exactly been filled with trustworthy role models. Danny and Kaitlyn certainly hadn't done anything to help me in that regard. Delilah and Bridget, as much as I was attracted to them, weren't people I'd place a lot of faith into either. This was the central problem that I needed to get around if I were going to be successful in expanding my business the way I was hoping to do. Over the next week or so I let this problem percolate in my brain. When, at the end of this week, still no closer to a solution, I finally mentioned what I was thinking to my brother, he came up with an idea I'd never have had. "What about that Leslie Ackerman? Weren't you always telling us how alike the two of you always were? Seems to me, if you're really looking at someone who can do what you'd do, that she'd be the first one you'd think of." Leslie Ackerman had been my first girlfriend. We'd been about ten years old. It was before my parents got killed. We'd been playmates ever since I could remember, but, when we were ten, Leslie had started acting funny around me. She started changing, acting more like a girl, even wearing dresses instead of jeans like the rest of us. Having her for a girlfriend had been a mistake. I wasn't really interested in girls at the time, and I hadn't wanted to go along with all the things she claimed boyfriends and girl friends did together. I wanted to run around outside, play and get dirty, not sit in the house watching TV shows and holding hands together. She had stopped being my girlfriend shortly after I told her I didn't want to sit around with her doing nothing. That put too big a strain on our other friendship too, and so we drifted apart after that. We didn't have any big fight or anything, it was more like the two of us decided to go our separate ways. Later on, while we were in high school, Leslie broke her back when she fell from her horse while horseback riding. She severed some nerves in the fall, and became a paraplegic, without any use or feeling in her legs. She spent the rest of high school in a wheel chair. I knew she'd gone away to college right after we graduated, but I'd also heard that she'd dropped out after a year or so, and had moved back home with her parents. I hadn't seen her at all since, which was pretty unusual, because Hesperia wasn't that big. Sooner or later, you ran into everyone. Danny was right about one thing though. Leslie and I were very closely alike when we were young kids. We read the same books and liked the same movies too. Leslie was also smarter than I was. I knew she could handle the selling part if she decided she wanted to bother with it. It had been five or six years since I'd last set eyes on her. It would be like meeting a total stranger. She certainly had no reason to be wanting to do me any favors either. Still, it wasn't that often that Danny surprised me by coming up with a sensible suggestion. It might be a good idea to check and see if Leslie would be interested. I figured I could trust her anyway. If not, she shouldn't be that hard to track down, being in a wheelchair and all. The next morning I drove over to the Ackerman's house on Orange street. Their house was just three houses down from where my parent's house had been. Danny had sold their house not too long after my parents had died. He'd spent the money too, but I'm not sure where it all went. Probably over at the old poker casino in Adelanto. He'd hung out there quite a bit, until it had finally closed down. Mrs. Ackerman, Leslie's mom answered the door when I rang the buzzer. She had gotten a lot older since I'd seen her last. She didn't seem to recognize me until I told her my name. I asked her if I could talk to Leslie, and she just started crying. It took her a minute to get herself back under control, then she told me that Leslie lived with her father, over in Victorville. She wrote the address down for me, and I took it and went back to my car. I probably should have asked Mrs. Ackerman some questions before heading over to Victorville, but she seemed pretty upset already by my just wanting to speak with Leslie. No telling what might have happened if I'd asked about what happened between her and Mr. Ackerman. None of my business anyway. I figured they must have gotten divorced, happened all the time. I guess I was a little surprised that Leslie would go live with her father though. This complicated things for me. It was one thing if Leslie lived close by, but the address in Victorville was ten miles away from where I lived out by Hesperia Lake. I needed someone easy to get to. I didn't feel like traveling all the way to Victorville whenever I needed to add or subtract something from my inventory. I would have probably just forgotten the whole thing right there if it hadn't been for the fact that I was now curious about what the story was between Leslie's parents. I'd always had this nosy streak, wanting to know everything that was going on around me. Leslie and I had gotten in trouble more than once because we'd gotten caught sneaking around hoping to find out what our parents were trying to keep hidden from us. Just remembering that made me laugh. That reinforced the desire I had to see Leslie again. It was weird, not even thinking about the girl for all those years, then having this strong wish to see her again. I couldn't explain it. It wasn't like me to be like that. Anyway, I drove all the way over to the address Leslie's mother had given me, only to find out that no one was at home. There was this wooden ramp built that went from the driveway to the front door of the house. I figured that must be for Leslie's wheelchair. I got a piece of paper from the car and wrote down a note for Leslie, including my home number and my cell number. I didn't mention what I needed to talk to her about, just that I wanted her to call me. She finally called me, three days later. I sort of recognized her voice, but was a little surprised at her hostile tone. "So, what did you need to talk to me about, Jimmy?" "Hi, Leslie, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I was talking to my brother, you remember Danny, right? I was talking to him about this problem I was having, and he mentioned your name. As soon as he did, it hit me that he was right." "Right about what?" "I was telling him that I wanted to build up my business, but I needed someone just like me to make that happen. He reminded me about how everyone used to say that we were so much alike, like two peas from the same pod. Remember, my mother always used to say that about us?" "What, when were seven or eight years old? We're not much alike anymore." "Maybe you're right. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. By the way, what happened, did your folks get divorced?" "Yeah, they got a separation from each other, back five years ago. My mother decided she'd had enough of him and me. She kicked us both out. You may as well tell me this idea of yours anyway. How was I supposed to help you with your business? What kind of business is it?" "That's the thing, it really isn't what you could actually call a business. I buy things, then I turn around and sell them. I've done it since I was in high school. When I graduated, I just started doing more of it. It started out like a hobby, but I got it up to the point where it makes money kind of like a real job would, and I can work my own hours at it." "So, you still haven't said what I'm supposed to be doing to help you with it?" "Time. See? I don't have enough time to do more than I'm doing already. Once I buy some things, I need to sell them to get my money back out again. If I don't sell them, then I don't have any money to go out and buy more stuff. Buying takes a lot of my time, and so does selling. I can do both or either, but I need someone else who can do one or the other, so I can make my business grow. I thought you could do the selling part and allow me to concentrate on only doing the buying." "Well, in the first place, I've never done any selling. In the second place, I don't want to sell things. I'm not even sure why you even thought I could." "Because I can. That's what Danny said, that we were so much alike as kids, that you could probably do anything I could do." "Except walk, and a few hundred other things you can do because your legs work." "I sell on the phone, Leslie. Ninety percent of the time I just call someone up and tell them what I have and how much I'm asking for it. Let's say I buy up some copper tubing from a bankrupt business. It might be five or six hundred feet of three eighths, or half inch tubing. I just call around to businesses that use copper tubing until I find someone who's interested. I quote them my price, then they buy it or they don't. If they buy, I set up a time for delivery and arrange for how they'll be paying me. It isn't hard, just time consuming. Plus, I need someone I can trust. That's the main thing." "Things must be pretty bad for you if you had to reach all the way back to when you were ten years old in order to find someone you trust, Jimmy." "Whatever. I didn't tell Danny I was looking for someone I could trust. He's sensitive enough about me not trusting him. Your name came up because people think you can do what I can. As soon as Danny said your name, my first thought was that you could do whatever I can." "I already have a job. Just for the sake of asking though, what does this job you have pay?" "Good question. I haven't really thought about it though. It would have to be a percentage of what you sell stuff for. Maybe ten percent of the net profits. Right now, in a good month, I'm making about eight to ten thousand dollars of gross profit. My out of pocket expenses have been about four thousand dollars. Most of that is to pay Danny, and to pay the rent on these two storage places I keep. There is also some money for my trucks and for gas and miscellaneous stuff like that. The rest, after I pay all my bills, has been mine." "You expect me to come to work for you for between four and six hundred a month? Hell, I make more than that putting together wiring harnesses at the handicapped center. I can make six hundred a month just from the piece work I do, and there I only have to work four days a week." "If I could spend all my time out buying up stuff, I'd make more money. I'm thinking more like fifteen or twenty thousand a month. My other expenses wouldn't go up as much, maybe to five thousand, six thousand tops. If you agreed to try it, I could put in a minimum guarantee, something like a thousand a month, and still pay you five percent of the net profits above that figure." "What about health insurance, or workman's comp insurance? How about vacation pay and paid holiday's?" I laughed. I didn't have any of that. I paid Danny five hundred a week. If his kids got sick, or him or his wife, they went down to the clinic and saw a doctor. I did the same, not that I'd needed to since I'd been just a kid though. "I'd hire you as an independent subcontractor. If you want any of that, you'd have to get it and pay for it yourself. This isn't a big corporation I'm running here. I'm just trying to make enough to pay my bills, trying to get by and keep my brother and his family getting by too." "What about that big house you own, out at the Lake? You call that just getting by?" "You know about my house? I got that house at one hell of a discount. It was worth four hundred thousand at one time, but I bought it just before prices started going up again. I only paid two ten for it. How'd you hear about my house, anyway?" "Remember Cheryl Liebert? She sells houses now. We're still friends from school. She told me about it once, and I drove by it to see for myself. That's a big house. How did you get a loan for it?" "I had a creative mortgage broker over off of Hercules Street. He got me one of those stated income loans where no one verifies anything you claim. I make my payment every month though. Never had a problem getting the money together either." "I'm going to tell you something, Jimmy. This is serious, so don't laugh. My parents only split up because of me, because I can't walk, or do some things for myself. My mother kicked me out, and my father went with me. He could have stayed, but he left with me. If I could get someplace to stay, on my own, he could go back home to be with my mother. They're both miserable with the way things are now. Cheryl told me about that big garage that's under your house. She said it's a lot bigger than a lot of people's whole houses, and she said it has it's own bathroom too. I'd need a place to work from if I went to work for you. If I lived in your garage, I wouldn't need any ramps or special equipment. If I could bring my chair into that bathroom, and you have a big enough shower door, I'd have everything I needed. I can cook on a hot plate if I have to, and I could wash my clothes at the same place I get my laundry done at now." This wasn't anything I'd ever expected to have to deal with. It wasn't what I'd wanted either. I had hoped to find someone to make my business better. I didn't want to complicate my life more than it was. This had come up out of nowhere. I knew I wasn't prepared to deal with any part of it. "I put my car and my pick up in that garage. I store a lot of merchandise there too. It's my garage, not some kind of apartment. Besides, I like living alone. How much is the rent where you live now?" "I don't want to live there anymore. The rent doesn't matter. I can't live on my own all the time anyway. There are things I still need people to do for me. This is the only way I'd even consider doing what you want. You want me to help you out, but you don't want to help me when I ask you." "What you're asking, that isn't some little thing. What makes you think I'd ever agree to something like that?" "I didn't think you would. You'd have to be crazy to agree to it." "That's right, I would. Besides, I go in and out of my house using that garage three or four times a day. I haven't used any other door since I first moved into the place. It would take me two weeks just to move everything around down there. How do I know, if I went to all that trouble, that you could even do what I'd want you to do for me?" "Talking to people on the telephone is so difficult? I don't think so. It isn't really selling anyway, not the way you described it. It doesn't sound that hard to me, calling people up to tell them you have something they need, for less money than they're used to paying. The hardest part for you is finding someone who'll do it and not try to rip you off." "What do you need people to do for you that you can't do yourself?" "I sometimes need help reaching things. Unless you build everything so people in a wheel chair can reach it, people like me need people who can reach things we can't. There's a few other things too, but mostly its just being able to reach things." It took me three weeks to make modifications to my garage. I brought in this guy who knew how to build cabinets and things for people with limited access handicaps. He built in a power ramp from the garage to my first floor, and rebuilt the bathroom in the garage so that anyone in a wheelchair could use everything without help. I ended up paying out thirteen thousand dollars. It was foolish, I knew that, but it had become something like a challenge for me. I converted my garage into a self contained apartment, including a small kitchen, with a stove and oven that Leslie could use. I still hadn't set eyes on her by the time her apartment was ready for her to move into. I hadn't told anyone besides Leslie and the handyman about what I was doing. Leslie told me to give her a call when I was ready for her to move in. Nothing else, no thanks, or assurances that I wouldn't regret what I'd decided to do. As time went by and the costs kept getting higher, I began feeling totally foolish for letting myself get started on such a ridiculous project in the first place. At least I wasn't neglecting my business. I was spending more hours on the phone, trying to sell as much as I could, while at the same time, tracking down upcoming sales where I could buy things to replenish my quickly depleting inventory of purchased goods. I worked so hard to compensate for the helpless feeling I kept getting whenever I stopped long enough to add up all the costs I'd committed myself to. When the handyman was done, he showed me exactly how everything was supposed to operate. The chair lift he'd built to move a wheel chaired person up the ramp from the garage to my first floor was simple to operate. All you needed was to clip the line on the chair, then push a button on the remote motor unit that operated the lift motor. This would start pulling the chain up the ramp while the door opened automatically. The chair would be pulled up until it had passed the door and the line was retracted as far as it went into the collector on the motor itself. To go down, all you had to do was reverse the direction by backing the wheel chair through the reopened door. Going back down was controlled by the same motor playing out the rope until the chair was off the ramp. There was a button for going up, one for stopping, and another one for going back down. I tried it myself, in a wheel chair the guy had brought over to test things, and everything worked perfectly. The day finally came when I called Leslie to tell her that her new apartment was ready. I thought she'd be pleased. She and her father drove over in separate vehicles. Leslie had a van with a lift gate on it. When she drove into the open door of the garage, the first thing she did was tell me that everything had to be switched to the other side, because her lift needed more room to lower her once the garage door was closed again. I quickly solved that little problem by taking out the couch, coffee table and a chair I'd put over in the second bay of the converted garage. After that, Leslie could drive into the garage and turn into what had been supposed to be her living room. She could then shut the garage door and have room to lower the lift right next to where I'd put her bed. There was one of those trapeze handles right next to the bed so that Leslie could swing herself onto and off of her bed from the chair. She looked at it the first time she saw it, then waved her dad over to lift her out of her chair instead. I could see right away that this wasn't going to be an easy transition for either of us to make. Leslie looked better than I had imagined she might. For one thing, she wasn't fat. I'd kind of expected that she would be, from sitting in a wheel chair all day. She looked pretty normal, except for her legs. They looked thin and frail. She was wearing a skirt and blouse. She had nice tits, that was another thing I noticed fairly quickly. Her hair was cut short, kind of a mannish cut, not coming down as far as her neck. I also noticed that she wasn't smiling. In fact, her mouth looked kind of pinched, like she'd tasted something offensive to her. Her father looked older than I remembered too, probably because he was older, by about ten or eleven years. He did come right over to shake my hand, then started warning me about all the things I'd have to watch out for and be careful about. I let him speak, but I really wasn't paying any attention. He turned away from me and said something to Leslie, then he turned and left. That was it. "All my stuff is packed up in the van, Jimmy. I left a lot of things I won't need at the apartment. Daddy says he'll keep them for me in case this doesn't work out." "None of this is happening like I thought it would. Now that you're here, I'm not sure about any of this." "Could you get all my boxes down here so I can go through my things and start putting them away?" "We need to find a different place to put your van. In here, it takes up too much of your living space. Couldn't you back it up, open the garage door, and then use the lift out in the driveway? With that van in here, it looks like it's still a garage. I had some dressers built in over against that far wall, and you can't get there in your chair with that van in the way." "I like the van where it is now. It's very convenient for me there. We'll find some way to work around that other problem. You'll see." As I'd been talking to her, I'd been taking packed boxes out of her van and putting them on the floor, behind where her bed was. There were twelve boxes. All of them had been fruit boxes at one time, mostly apples, pears and oranges. They had those lids that fit all the way down the sides. I left right after I finished unloading her boxes. I didn't try to move up the ramp the way I normally would. Instead, I went out a side door, into my yard, and went around to the picture window in my living room and opened up my screen door. It is very hard for me to explain how I was feeling. A lot of it was feeling let down, but that wasn't all of it. I wondered what I'd been thinking to even agree to doing any of this. Leslie hadn't even been a friend of mine for more than a dozen years. I'm not sure what I'd expected from her when she saw what I'd done to make the garage into a nicer living area for her. Whatever it was, it wasn't what I'd gotten from her. I didn't even want to think about what others were going to think once they learned about what I'd done. I ended up showering and going to bed at around nine that evening. I hadn't gone down again to see if Leslie needed anything. All I could think about was that this was the stupidest thing I'd ever done in my life. I should have been concerned about Leslie too. After all, I was now somewhat responsible for her. I couldn't make myself go down there again though. I'd give it one night, but if I didn't feel better about the whole thing in the morning, I'd have to do something to make her leave. This was ridiculous. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. Surprisingly, I fell asleep rather easily. ------- Chapter 10 When I woke up, nothing had changed as far as my feeling that this whole thing with Leslie had been a huge mistake on my part. What had I been thinking? I'd spent almost fifteen thousand dollars without having any assurance at all that I'd see even a penny's return on my investment. When we'd been younger, Leslie had been the one who usually took the lead and decided, for both of us, what we'd be doing for most of our play days. I had usually just gone along with whatever she'd decided. Mostly, because that was the easiest way. Besides, what she wanted to do was usually something I liked as well. We were that close in our likes and dislikes. Always had been, since the first day we met and became fast friends. My first thought, after waking up, was that I needed some plan to get Leslie out of my garage. The hell with any help she might be able to give me with my business. I just wanted things to go back the way they'd been before I'd first contacted her. Having her living in the same house I did was too much, and too soon. It had all been a big mistake, right from the beginning. My next thought was about how I could break the news to her. After I'd gotten cleaned up and dressed for the day, I had a bowl of cereal and thought about how I'd go about breaking the news to her. I'd decided that the direct way would be best. I'd tell her that her living in my house made me uncomfortable, that it changed the whole character of my home for me. Leslie was still in her bed when I opened the door to the garage, carefully making my way down the ramp I'd had installed. She was awake, because I saw that her eyes were tracking me from the time I'd appeared in the open doorway. "What time is it?" "Almost eight. What time do you usually get up?" "That depends. If I'm working, then around now. If not, then I usually sleep in until I get hungry or need to use the restroom. Did you want me to start work today?" "I've been thinking, Les, I'm pretty sure this isn't going to work out for me..." "Shit, Jimmy, you can't back out of things now! Hold on a minute, I have to pee." With that tiny bit of warning, Leslie reached up with one hand and grabbed onto the trapeze bar above her head, lifting her whole body up as she reached out with her other hand and grabbed onto the near arm rest of her wheelchair. In what seemed like one smooth motion, she swung her body around and plopped right down into the seat cushion of the chair. It looked both extremely complicated and amazingly simple. If I didn't know better, I'd think she'd practiced that maneuver ten thousand times or more. It was only when she had seated herself in her wheelchair that I noticed her free swinging, totally uncovered, breasts. She had a pair of white cotton panties on, but that was it as far as clothing went. I took close notice to the way her turgid areola was crinkled up, and how her raised nipple seemed to sit on top of her pear shaped boobs. They both pointed upwards, toward the ceiling. I hadn't seen breasts like that before, and found their shape a little bit fascinating. She paused where she was for enough time to permit me to get a good look at her before expertly wheeling herself to the bathroom. As she went by me, I heard her allowing herself just the slightest little snicker of laughter as she passed. "Take a good look, Jimmy, I don't mind." With that, she disappeared inside. A minute or so later, I heard the toilet flushing, and then I heard the shower door opening up, followed closely by the sound of water being turned on in the shower. When the shower had been changed, the handyman had installed metal bars on three sides of the new shower stall, with an indentation at the back that could serve as a seat. Fifteen minutes after she went into the bathroom, Leslie came back out. There was a towel wrapped around her neck, her hair was still damp, and the cotton panties she'd been wearing were sitting on her lap. Naked, she swung herself back onto her bed. The next few minutes were interesting as she managed to get herself completely dressed, including bra and clean panties. She seemed much more flexible in her back, able to reach all the way down to put her panties on her outstretched feet. I certainly couldn't have done what she managed if my legs didn't bend. Her legs seemed to be very skinny, withered, with very little sign of underlying musculature left to them. Her ass, on the other hand, looked well defined and normal. I had this unbidden, completely involuntary thought, suddenly wondering whether her pussy had retained any sense of feeling after her accident. For some reason, even having the thought embarrassed me. After she finished dressing, she took a comb out of her hand bag and started combing out her hair. It didn't take her long to do, and she didn't bother looking into a mirror as she combed it. "I'm ready for you to teach me how to do this thing you wanted me to do." "I changed my mind about it. I don't like having my garage be your apartment. I'd have to change everything about the way I live." "Tell me what changes you have to make." "Getting in and out of my house for one. Having friends over for another. I like being alone too, and its hard for me to relax knowing you're down here in my garage." "How important are those things when you compare them to what this will mean for me? Don't be so selfish! You can have anyone here that you want to. If having me here when you bring girls over bothers you, then tell me when they're coming, and I'll go out to a movie or something. Please don't try to convince me that having to use your front door is too much trouble for you to have to go through." "I don't want that van parked in here like this. I went to a lot of trouble to get this place set up so you could be completely independent down here. Having your van in here makes half of the stuff I had built completely useless to you." "I don't like people watching me getting in and out of my van. I'm not some freak to be gawked at." "This isn't going to work for me. I don't want to argue over each specific thing like this. There isn't anything I've done here that you couldn't have gotten done for yourself. You don't really need to live here." "You called me, Jimmy. You asked me to do something for you, and I told you what it would take to get me to do it. We both made a lot of changes to get to where I'm here now. Why don't you give me some time? If you still think this isn't working, after say a month, we'll talk again. Okay?" "You'll move out if I still feel the same way in a month?" "I said we'll talk if you still have a problem with me being here. I certainly wouldn't stay here to mooch off you if it turns out I can't do what you hired me for." I went back upstairs and got my folder that contained a list of all the inventory I currently had on hand to sell. I'd gotten my list better organized, providing necessary descriptions of what I had, along with prices I wanted to sell them for, the least I'd accept for each, and other information about color, condition, quantity, etc. Leslie and I went over the list carefully, with me describing everything she had questions about, and her taking notes about what I'd told her. I had her move her van out of the garage, which took fifteen minutes to do. Getting in and out of the lift when it was parked just outside the garage door wasn't any problem for her. When she saw that the van blocked anyone from seeing her from the road, most of her problems with leaving the van outside were eliminated. I'd had phone jacks installed in the garage for both my phone lines upstairs. I knew she'd need two lines when she was selling, just like I did. One line was strictly for calling out with, and the other was for people to call me back when I'd ended up leaving them messages. I brought down my spare lap top too, testing to make certain that my wireless internet worked down in the garage too. I brought back the sofa, the coffee table and the chair, setting them back up the way they'd been. I brought the phones over and put them on the coffee table. By the time I was done and had everything set up again, Leslie had wheeled herself over to the clothes dressers and the vanity I'd purchased, had modified, and gotten installed for her. She really liked the closet I'd had built in for her. Everything was reachable from her wheel chair. The garage was huge, over seventeen hundred square feet of finished room, including two by six construction, and R-39 insulation in the walls. Her bathroom had its own fifty gallon water heater too. "I'm sorry I didn't look at everything yesterday, Jimmy. You went to quite a bit of trouble and expense to make all this so it works out well for me. I don't know what to say. I could see me being able to live here all by myself. I wish my dad had seen all of it too. I was really nervous about everything yesterday. Usually, I'm really not such a bitch. I didn't want to take any chances on you not letting me stay here. For their sake, my parents, not so much for me." "I have to go down the hill and bid on some things. Do you have enough to get started now?" "How am I supposed to get the numbers for people to call?" I left her and went back up to the room I generally used for my office. I had a big rolodex up there with hundreds, if not thousands, of business cards with people's names and phone numbers on it. I used this a lot when making calls out to see who could possibly use something I needed to sell. I went back downstairs to put the rolodex on top of Leslie's coffee table, right next to the phones. "Who is the couch for? I can't use it, you know?" "Why not" I was curious about why she didn't think she could use it. I'd seen her get in and out of her bed with no problems at all. "My legs don't work. I can't get off the chair and onto the couch. If I did, how would I get back in the chair again?" "That's what the trapeze bar is for, so you can lift yourself on and off the furniture in the apartment." "It doesn't reach over here, Jimmy." I walked over to the trapeze and started guiding it over to her. I'd paid quite a bit extra to have those runners installed all over the ceiling, just so she would have a lot better mobility. I'd been a little surprised when she hadn't taken the bar into the bathroom with her. She must have relied on all those bars the guy had installed in that bathroom, but it must have been harder for her to get on and off the pot that way. When I put the trapeze bar over by her chair, Leslie was looking up, seemingly fully engrossed in the tracking lines of the runners the trapeze was attached to. "Wow. Who came up with this idea? How much did it cost you?" "This guy I hired figured out how to do it. There are bearings inside that the chain is attached to. Said he got the idea from working on a large assembly line floor. They used to move all their heavy tools around this way. Cheaper than having to duplicate expensive tools at every station, he said. You can pull the bar to wherever you want, almost anywhere in the garage. You can pull it through that gray plastic opening in the bathroom wall too. It closes back up after, so no one can take peeks in at you from outside here." "It must have cost you a lot. I can't believe you went to this much trouble. Why did you?" "Well, I didn't really plan to, not at first. I hired this guy and told him what I needed. Most of this came from ideas he had. I'd okay it for him to do one thing, and then he'd come up with another idea that made good sense to me. He kept on coming up with stuff, and, before I knew it, this thing got way over budget. There never was a good place to quit though, because everything he came up with seemed like you might need it. I remembered you telling me that you didn't want to need people to do stuff for you. I'm the same way about that, so I guess I could understand how you felt." "I don't see how I can do enough to pay you back for doing all this. You wouldn't believe how much this means to me." I left right after she said that. I felt bad about trying to kick her out like I'd wanted to do. I still didn't want her living in my garage, and I'd have been happier if she had left. I could see her side of things a little better too though. It had to be pretty crappy trying to live in a world set up for people who could do things you couldn't. I wasn't sure I'd be able to adjust if it was me who was in her place. If I was a more decent human being, I'd have told her right then that she could stay for as long as she needed to. I didn't do that though, because I still hoped she'd move out of my garage. I didn't get to buy too much down the hill that day. I was very strict with how much I'd pay for anything. It was my long held belief that you should never offer more than half of what you knew something had to be worth at even extremely depressed prices. I bought some accessories for power boats at a bankruptcy trustee's auction down in Newport Beach. None of it was very big, and most of it was new, and in the boxes they were sent out in from the factory. It was mostly fish locators and GPS's, along with a whole lot of chrome and steel marine replacement parts including about twenty propellers. No one else had made a bid, so I ended up getting all of it for three hundred dollars. I knew I could sell all of it, in bits and pieces, to small power boat dealers along the I-15 corridor. I guessed that I'd clear at least a thousand dollars once everything was sold. I ended up filling up the rest of my truck with over three hundred small fruit trees in two gallon containers. I bought these from a commercial nursery that was closing down in Corona. The guy had started off offering me one pear tree for seven dollars. I told him I'd buy twenty mixed trees for fifty dollars, my pick, and he'd countered with an offer to buy all his two gallon fruit trees for two bucks a pop. I told him I'd take them off his hands, for a dollar each, if he really wanted to get rid of them. I ended up giving him four hundred for more than three hundred trees, about $1.25 per tree. On my way back home, I stopped off at three different independent hardware stores that I'd done some past business with and unloaded sixty of the trees at five bucks each. I'd now gotten all but four hundred of my investment for the day back, and still had all the boat stuff, and another 275 trees left to sell. I'd need to sell off the trees quickly, because they needed care to stay healthy. The boat stuff, I could sell off all that as time permitted. When I got back to the house, Leslie's van was gone. I parked off to the side of the garage that she couldn't open, and went into the front door of my house. That was going to take some time to get used to. I called Danny and asked him to come over to the house and take the plants and boating stuff down to the shed behind Izzy's. I'd had him make a delivery into Los Angeles earlier that day, but he hadn't had a lot to do other than that. When he grumbled about having just gotten home, and told me I should have taken care of my truck by myself, I told him to forget it. "I'll get Hector to meet me down there, and we'll take care of it. Whatever I have to pay him is coming out of your check on Friday though. I'm not paying you a whole day's wages just to make a quick trip to LA and back. Expect your check to be about fifty bucks short on Friday." In the end, after more grumbling from him, and threats from me to dock his wages, Danny agreed to meet me over behind Izzy's. We both unloaded all the plants and the boating gear. It didn't take us more than an hour, and that included watering the plants before we left. I put the big truck back where I usually kept them, and then drove my pickup truck back home. When I got there, the van was parked in front of the opened garage door, and Delilah's mustang was parked over where I'd parked the big truck earlier. I ended up parking out at the curb at the front of my house. I went in through the front door of my house, but no one was there. I went to the garage door and pushed it open. I saw Bridget first, because she was sitting on Leslie's bed. I walked down the ramp and then saw Delilah and Leslie sitting on the couch, passing a joint back and forth. I almost lost it right there. The two of them smoking marijuana right in my house, with the garage door opened too, where anyone who was passing by might look in and see what the two of them were up to. Delilah saw the look on my face first, and she started giggling. That set off Leslie too, and it didn't take long for Bridget to get up off the bed and walk over to join in with their laughter. "Jimmy, I wish I had a camera. I told Leslie about how you felt about people smoking in your house. She said this was her apartment now, and she could smoke a little if she felt like it." Delilah was trying to make sure that I didn't blame her for what she knew was a big no no with me. "Leslie, I don't allow any smoking on my property. Not pot, not cigarettes, not anything else. Put that out, then take any more you might still have and put it outside in your van. Don't ever bring that shit into my house again." This set off another fit of giggles from all three of them, probably over my choice of the word shit to describe what they were smoking. Who knew what got them going again? They all seemed ready to laugh about anything. "I'm done now anyway, and I only had the two joints to begin with. Why are you so uptight, Jimmy? Weed isn't any worse than beer or any other kind of booze. It helps me when my legs get all cramped up. It relaxes me, so I'll be able to get to sleep tonight. You didn't ask me how I did today. Aren't you even interested?" "I don't want anymore smoking, Leslie, and I really mean that." "Okay, I heard you. I sold over four thousand dollars worth of merchandise today. Most of it to one place too." "Who did you sell to?" I was hoping she wouldn't tell me it was Russ over at R&H Liquidations. I'd had a lot of trouble with that guy. He never paid what he'd promised, and when he did pay anything, it was only after you'd chased him down and had threatened to beat him to death. I never did business with him unless I was truly desperate. "Russ Collier, over in Victorville. I called him this morning, and we went over the whole inventory list on the phone. I'd describe what I had, and what you wanted for it, and he'd make me an offer on it. A lot of his offers were high enough to take too. He said he'll come by tomorrow to pick his things up. He didn't want to wait for us to deliver to him." "Did you agree on how he was going to pay us?" "He said he'd bring a company check with him and we'd settle up at your warehouse. Isn't that okay?" "His check might be good, nothing's impossible. I only do business with him for cash though. He's more of a competitor than a client. We don't usually do much business with each other now." "I checked all of the prices he offered. Most were higher than the minimums you wrote down for me to go by. All of them are at least as much as what you said was the least you'd take for an item." "I'm not complaining, Leslie. You did good. I didn't get a chance to go over every name on that rolodex with you. No harm done as long as he hasn't gotten his hands on any of the merchandise yet. He might end up buying everything you sold him, but it won't be by handing over one of his checks. If he wants my stuff, he'll have to come up with the cash. What else did you sell?' "I sold those two trampolines. I sold one of them to Mr. Catskill over at the high school, and I sold the other one to a gymnastic's place down in Rancho Cucamonga. I got five hundred for the biggest one, and three fifty for the smaller one. Mr. Catskill bought the big one for the diving team to practice on. He'll have a check when you deliver, drawn on the athletic department. The other one, they're supposed to pay us in cash when we deliver. I got another fifty dollars to cover their delivery charges. I told Mr. Catskill that we'd deliver to the high school for free. Was that okay?" "Both of those deals are fine. Usually, just for your future information, on big items, or for deliveries far away, you should check with me about what freight will cost. fifty dollars is good for Rancho Cucamonga, and we drive by there all the time anyway." "Dee was telling me that both she and Bridget are your girl friends, and that they have a thing going with each other as well. Isn't that interesting? I told them that I was your first girl friend. Right?" "Look, I have to go upstairs and start getting something together for supper. I guess I'll see you girls before you leave?" I was looking over at Bridget and Delilah when I said that. It was a little unusual for the two of them to come over together like they had. It usually meant another threesome, and those were times I always looked forward to. I hoped that Leslie being here wasn't going to change their minds about staying the night if that was what they'd planned. "We'll be right up, Jimmy. What are you cooking?" Bridget looked over at the way Delilah and Leslie were sitting so close together on the couch when she spoke to me. I could see she was even insecure around Leslie when it came to Delilah's affections. "I took some chicken breasts out of the freezer this morning. I was thinking about stuffed chicken breast with my favorite mushroom sauce." I made this nice dish with a can of cream of mushroom soup and a few herbs and spices that I added to some boneless and skinless chicken breasts. It was quick, and it seemed to please the most discriminating female palette. I could eat almost anything, but the girls liked something nice when they came over. It was always little enough I could do to keep them interested in coming to see me. "Would it be okay with you if Leslie joined us, Jimmy? We need to get caught up on old times with her." I looked over at Delilah, knowing that she already knew how this would play with Bridget's insecurity. She didn't seem to care about that right then though. "I have plenty of chicken, so sure, I'd love to have her too." "You don't have to, Jimmy. I know you want time alone with your guests." "Don't worry about that, Les, we usually don't get down to the fucking until long after we've finished our dinner. Bridge and I are staying over until morning. We'll have all the time we need to get all of Jimmy's problems sorted out. Did we tell you he's taking us to Las Vegas on Friday? We're going to see Elton John at Caesar's Palace. Jimmy gambles there, and they give him free rooms and tickets just for coming to play there. He took Bridget's sister and his brother there to see Jerry Seinfeld a few weeks ago. Next weekend we're going to see one of those Cirque Du Soleil shows over at the Bellagio. He gets all this stuff for free, can you believe it?" "That's nice. I've never been to Las Vegas. I don't imagine I ever will either. You're lucky that you have such a rich boy friend." "Rich and generous both. Which reminds me, Jimmy, remember what you told me about knowing someone who fixes cars? Every time I get my car up past seventy or so, the car starts shaking really bad. Do you know what that is?" Delilah looked over at me, confidently expecting that I'd take her problem and make it my own. "Sounds like it might be a separated tire, or else one that is out of round. Take it to your tire guy and let him take it for a test drive. He'll know what it is." "I don't have a tire guy, Jimmy." "The guy up on Main Street near the Stater Brothers center is the one I use. Take it to him and see what he tells you. He won't charge you just for taking it for a test spin. Call me after he tells you what it is." "How about if we talk about it later, after we get you in a better mood? You know I don't know how to talk to these car people. If I take my car in, they'll just try to take advantage of me. If you do it, they'll know better than to try to fool you with their high estimates." The next morning I got two new tires and had the front end aligned on her car. Later that day, after I found out that the car still shook at higher speeds, I went back and had them put two new wheels on the car. After that it ran smoothly all the way up to one hundred miles an hour. It only ended up costing me the trade of a used tire balancing machine that had been sitting in one of my sheds for almost six months. A fair trade I thought, since I didn't have more than about sixty bucks invested in the machine. Delilah was appropriately grateful when she came back the next evening and exchanged my pickup truck for her car. By the next Friday, before I left for Las Vegas with Delilah and Bridget, Leslie had settled into her new job. She had phoned Russ Collier, early the morning after selling him all that merchandise, to let him know that the usual payment rules were back in place. We would need to get the cash before he could pick up any of the stuff he'd purchased. He was more than welcome to pay by check, she told him, but we wouldn't release his goods until after our bank let us know the check had cleared his bank. He ended up bringing enough cash to pick up the things he really wanted right away, and gave us a company check for the remaining goods that he said he wanted to pick up after Leslie called to tell him that his check had cleared. Leslie disposed of the fruit trees by selling them all to a local nursery for four dollars each. She told the woman who owned the nursery that she'd be running a big ad in the free recycler newspaper offering the trees to the public at five dollars each if she didn't take them off her hands. I managed to find a home for most of the boat accessories with five or six boat stores between Hesperia and Corona. I did about as well as I'd expected to do, but was disappointed with myself for not sticking strictly to the purchasing side of the business. I hadn't quite gotten confident enough about Leslie's abilities to leave all the selling to her. Before I left for Vegas though, I had to listen to Danny and Kaitlyn as they warned me about what I was letting myself in for by allowing a stranger to live in my home. They were willing to leave their trailer while I was gone, offering to bring their kids and themselves over to my place to house sit for me any time I was away. I thanked them for their concern, telling them that I'd had a new lock put on the door from the garage to the first floor. I knew Leslie would be staying down in the garage while I was absent from my house. ------- Chapter 11 Las Vegas, with Delilah and Bridget, was much more fun for me than traveling with Danny and Kaitlyn. Part of it was the sex, I'm sure, but even more of it was from the fact that the girls were interested in the three of us enjoying ourselves. Danny and Kaitlyn were mostly concerned with themselves, not me. Of course, the girls and I had a different relationship than what I had with my brother and his wife. I didn't go with them to see the Elton John show. We only had the two tickets, and I didn't care enough about his music to want to pay for my own ticket separately. The girls loved the show though, and were both in a mood to go out and party after it let out. We ended up over at the club at the Rio. Drinks were expensive, and the place was loud and crowded beyond belief. Other than those few things, it was perfect. We all enjoyed ourselves, and ended up back at Caesar's at five on Sunday morning. I'd done some playing Friday night, before dinner, and had played some more early on Saturday and later, while the girls were watching their show. I'd had a small run of good fortune on Friday, but nothing much on either of my Saturday sessions. I'd discovered that you could get your average bet amount raised by inquiring from the floor person for your section about how he'd rated your play. I'd done that Friday, finally getting an average bet amount of three hundred a hand. I knew it was actually less than that, but I figured the higher my average bet was, the better chance I'd get invited back for future offerings. My two session on Saturday were rated for much less per hand. A hundred a hand in the first case, and seventy five per hand for my last session. I'd gotten in eight hours of play, and I had to hope it was enough for them. The trip ended up costing me about fourteen hundred dollars. Most of this was the losses I'd suffered during those two Saturday sessions. The rest was for food, drinks, and gasoline on the drive there and back. The girls assured me that they'd had a great time, and were really looking forward to the next week's trip too. We left Las Vegas a little after three, and didn't get back to my house until seven thirty, because of all the traffic. The girls wanted to stop and visit with Leslie before they left, so I let them out at the driveway in front of the garage before pulling around to park at the curb along the side where my front door was. I went into my house, and everything was just as it should be. I opened the door leading down to my garage and walked down the ramp to find out if the girls wanted to tell me anything before they took off. I'd been hoping they might decide to stay over, but both girls had said they had a lot to take care of before their work started up again in the morning. "Jimmy, tell Leslie that she's welcome to come to Vegas with us next week. She's never been, and she won't believe any of the stuff we're telling her. I told her about those chips that look like casino money that all the whores have those people on the street handing out as we walk by. She doesn't believe me. I knew I should have gotten some to bring back with us. We can get a room with two beds like before, and then get one of those beds on rollers they bring if you ask them to. If they don't have any of those roller beds, I'll sleep with you and Bridget can sleep with Leslie. Bridget's probably worried about what would happen if I slept with Leslie. By the way, Les, does your pussy still work? I mean, can you feel anything down there?" The next few minutes were a strain on all of us. I'll give Delilah credit, she said what she wanted to say. She didn't care. Leslie never answered her, but that might have been because Bridget got so loud and upset over her asking Leslie a question like that. The three of us said our goodbye's and left not long after that. I went back up the ramp, not wanting to get involved in the argument that Delilah and Bridget were having. An hour later I got a phone call, it was from Leslie, asking me to come down to her apartment. I figured she wanted to complain about what Delilah had said to her, or else wanted me to know that she hadn't tried to invite herself to go with us to Las Vegas. "Just so you know, I still have some very limited feeling in my legs. The upper legs mostly. It isn't a lot of feeling, but I do have some. What Dee said, about whether or not my vagina works, well, it does. I have some feeling there too. More than in my upper legs. Maybe there are different nerves there or something. If everything goes just right, I can give myself these little orgasms if I take the time to work my way up to it slowly." "It wasn't me that wanted to know that Leslie. Delilah was the one who got curious." "I'm not interested in sharing that information with Dee or Bridget, Jimmy. I wanted you to know, in case you were wondering." "I guess I'm glad for you, that you can have fun down there like other people, I mean. I'd hate it if I couldn't do anything down there." "My boobs are real sensitive. I'm sensitive in almost any place where I have feeling. You know what I've always wanted to try? That movie, Deep throat? With Linda Lovelace? The one where she could only cum when she had a cock lodged down in her throat, because her clitoris was supposedly in her throat? I always wondered if my mouth and throat would be more sensitive because of my legs being out of commission. I had a guy kiss my neck and throat once. My shoulders and back too. He was another gimp like me, and necks, shoulders, and backs were about all we could reach, sitting up in our chairs like we were. I didn't even like the guy too much, but I sure did react to what we were doing. I've just wondered about the rest of it too." "You know, I've never really thought about the mechanical part of sex much before now. I guess it would be a lot harder for you to experiment with those kinds of things than it was for the rest of us. From what you just told me, I take it you'd be interested in finding out more about these kinds of things?" "Desperate for it, you mean? Hell yes! I've had to listen to people like Dee and Bridget all my adult life. To them, getting orgasms is as common as breathing is for most people. If you listen to them talk, its like they don't think it's anything strange for them to be able to cum five or six times in a night. I'd like to just have one good one. One that was strong enough to make me certain about what it was. I wouldn't even care much about how it happened, or who was responsible for it. One really good cum, and then, maybe, I could sit quietly and just listen whenever someone like Dee starts talking about what a great sex life she's had." "Most people don't pay any attention to what other people have to say about sex. I think this applies to Bridget especially. Delilah really is something of an expert I'd have to say, at least by my very limited experience in that regard. She puts a lot of energy into it. Much more than anyone else I've ever known." "I see that you're trying to sidestep that other issue I tried to bring up. That's okay, I don't mind you doing that too much. Sooner or later, I'll find someone who is just as curious about it as I am." "It wouldn't be that hard for you to find someone, Les. You should be careful though, because there are diseases out there that can kill you." "If I was sure that I'd find out what a real orgasm feels like, it would be worth taking a small risk for. I've had tingling down there before, and some friends tell me that's what a cum feels like for them too. There has to be more to it than that though. They wouldn't write all those songs or books about it if it were just a series of mildly pleasant tingles." "It can be more than that, a lot more. I've had times when it was so good, that I couldn't stand any more of it. I felt like I needed to crawl out of my skin to get away from how intense it was. And I'm just a guy. Everyone pretty much agrees that it gets a lot more intense for a woman." "Nice one, Jimmy. Make the poor little crippled girl miss what she's never going to get even more than I already do." "The worse thing you could do is to build it up into more than it can ever be for you. You shouldn't make it seem too important, or else you'll end up disappointed." "That's very patronizing of you. Why can't it end up being every bit as fulfilling for me as it is for you or Dee? Also, while we're on the subject, would it really be that much to ask for me to be able to use your cock to find out if my performing deep throat on you would get me off?" "I don't look at it that way. I don't just lend it out to every curious female who asks me either." "Really? How many have you refused?" "Today, this month, this year, or during my lifetime?" "How about just this year?" "None this year, but it's been an especially slow year so far. Last year I had one though. A girl who was drunk at a party over at Danny's pool, over in the trailer park where they live. Before that, I've had a few. Maybe six or seven in total, over the past five years. Not all guys are interested in having sex with anyone they meet." "How many girls who are in wheel chairs?" "You're probably the only girl in a wheel chair that I've ever known well enough to talk with. If I wasn't positive that you'd be disappointed, I'd do it. Deep Throat wasn't that good a movie. The premise really was stupid." "You don't think I've coped with disappointment before? I still want to try it." I stood there looking at her as she sat in her chair. I felt uncomfortable with this line of banter. I knew she was really interested, but I knew what she expected from this wasn't realistic. I'd let girls who were a whole lot less attractive than Leslie give me blow jobs before. I wasn't ever certain why I felt such a sense of reluctance about the prospect of her doing that for me. "Promise me you won't get all down in the dumps if all you wind up with is a sore jaw and a mouth full of my jizz?" She promised me, then swung up out of her chair and onto her bed. It took her very little time to take off her blouse and bra. She left her shorts and panties on. She directed me to take a seat in her wheel chair. I wondered if there was some symbolism in me being in the chair for her. I pulled down my trousers and spread my legs as far as I could, trying to make it as easy for her as possible. It didn't take long for her to raise up with her trapeze swing and get her head in the right position. She reached down and locked the wheels on her chair at the same time. As blow jobs went, it wasn't the best or the worst. I couldn't fault her willingness or her enthusiasm. She managed to bring me off before she started looking like she wanted to quit. I didn't warn her or say anything to encourage her to pull off me when I went over. She took it out just seconds after my first blast, just in time to catch the second one on the bridge of her nose. The third ended up on her arm, and the rest was just a series of tiny dribbles that ended up on her hand. "How was it?" "Okay. I take it you had no joy from it?" "Getting one of those in your throat is a lot harder than they make it look. I thought I was going to throw up with all that gagging. Do regular girls really put it in their throats?" "Not usually. Most gag like you did. Delilah can swallow it down easily, and then she does this humming thing while she keeps her tongue right on my balls. She's a freak of nature though. Kaitlyn can deep throat too, but not like Delilah." "Your sister in law, that Kaitlyn?" "Yep. She's a real slut. She was my first, and she still comes around when she's in trouble, or if she needs me to do something for her." "Danny knows?" "He knows. He hates it, but he knows how she is. I'm not the only one she cheats on him with." "You do know how twisted and perverted that is, right?" "Do you want to talk about that, or do you want to see if you can get off if I lick your pussy?" "Get out of my chair first. I need to rinse off if you're going to try doing that." I got up and watched her as she swung up into her chair. She reached down and released the brake before rolling herself over to the bathroom. She grabbed the Trapeze swing before she took off. It only took her a minute to figure out what was needed to get the chain through the rubber opening. I heard the water coming on, and waited patiently for her to finish up in the shower. We spent about forty minutes with me using my tongue and fingers on her down there. She told me it felt good, but not as good as it felt sometimes when she used her own fingers. I was a little disappointed that what I'd done hadn't worked for her. I'm sure it was a much bigger letdown for her, on many different levels. I felt like I'd singlehandedly destroyed some of her most closely held dreams and ambitions. I'd done the best that I was capable of doing, but it hadn't been enough. I could tell that she wanted to be left alone. I'd been in those kinds of moods often enough myself. I got up to leave. "Delilah could make you cum if anyone can. If she does you and you don't cum, you might as well give up." "I'm not into girls. They don't do anything for me that way." "Up to you. I mentioned it just in case what we just did hadn't turned you completely off the idea of having further experiments with sex." "Do you think she'd want to try? With me?" "That girl loves a challenge. Couldn't hurt for you to ask her. Just make sure that Bridget isn't close by when you do. Bridget is very possessive. If she finds out that you two got it on, it might end up being the last orgasm you have, as well as your first." "Are you going to be all right now that we tried this, Jimmy?" "I'm fine. It's you I'm worried about. In the interest of fairness, I probably should let you know that I'm not known anywhere in the world as a particularly great lay. Just because you didn't feel the magic with me, that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't magic out there somewhere for you." Back up in my living room, I went over the actions I'd taken with Leslie. I didn't particularly regret making the attempt with her. At least we now knew that it wasn't going to be that great between us. I was a little sad though, because this time reminded me quite a bit of that other time, years before, when she and I had decided to break up. This was different, but aspects of it seemed eerily familiar. ------- Chapter 12 Delilah and Bridget ended up going to Vegas with me. Leslie begged off from the trip, telling us that she didn't feel up to spending all that time in a vehicle. I paid an extra hundred dollars for another ticket to the show over at the Bellagio, and it was a good thing I did. It was a great show, with a lot of aerial things, and people diving into this big pool of water. We went to the nite club at the Bellagio afterwards, and Bridget and Delilah finally saw some famous people who were there. I didn't see any famous people that I knew anything about, but there were at least forty or fifty girls there that were absolutely gorgeous. I saw Delilah and Bridget checking out all the foxy ladies too. I did some gambling at the Bellagio too, getting one of their player's cards so they could rate my play. I had spent six hours on Friday playing "21" at Caesar's. I'd been lucky at the beginning, winning at least two thirds of all the hands I was playing for the first four hours. My luck changed after that though, and I watched my big pile of chips shrinking for the next two hours. In the end, I lost a thousand dollars. The supervisor of the blackjack pits came over and introduced himself during my lucky streak, handing me his business card and telling me to let him know if I needed anything. At the time, I'd been betting either five hundred or a thousand dollars a hand. I'd been up over twelve thousand when he'd come over to introduce himself. On Saturday, playing at the Bellagio, I was never up enough to start playing bigger than one hundred dollars a hand. Later, back at Caesar's, I played some Pai Gow Poker and won eight hundred in about an hour. We went up to our room at about three on Sunday morning. We got an early start heading back on Sunday, getting up at nine, and then having the breakfast buffet before we checked out of the hotel and left. We drove straight through after leaving Las Vegas, getting back home just after two o'clock that afternoon. During the drive back to Hesperia, Delilah and Bridget were both asking me if there were other places, besides Vegas, where we could go for a weekend. I think they were starting to get a little bored with Las Vegas, wanting to go somewhere that they hadn't been before. We discussed San Francisco, and going to the Colorado River. No one was too excited about seeing either of those places. It ended up with them telling me to look for someplace we could all go to for a weekend. I let them out by Delilah's car over in my driveway. Leslie's van was missing, so the girls just got their travel bags and transferred themselves and their stuff over to the car. Thinking about how we'd left things, I decided that the girls and I might need a break from each other. Maybe spending so much time together over the past ten days had been too much. I decided that I'd be better off concentrating more of my time and energy in my business, letting the girls come to me whenever they started missing going places with me. Vegas had been fun, and I'd enjoyed the time we spent together, but I couldn't see myself enjoying too steady of a diet of that either. My relationship with Leslie had settled into a nice groove. There was none of the awkwardness that I'd more than half expected from our sexual experimentation session together. She got better at her job quickly, seldom being guilty of repeating an earlier mistake. She was a better negotiator than me, as well, not as anxious to let product go as I usually was. As a result, her efforts started bringing in higher profits than I'd have gotten for the same goods. She concentrated only on the sell side, not interested in what I was doing, other than for how my efforts produced more product for her to dispose of. For a month after our little sex session, Leslie and I spoke of nothing that wasn't somehow related to business. I was relieved. For the first month, my results didn't show a real dramatic improvement. I only ended up grossing three thousand more than I'd done, by myself, the month prior to hiring Les. I wasn't aware of it then, but Leslie had mostly been concentrating on trying to sell off the inventory that I'd had the longest. Some of what she sold had been in my warehouse for a couple of years or longer. During that first month, I'd been acquiring about twice as much as I usually did, by dollar volume, and it appeared to me that Leslie's sales weren't keeping up with what I'd been purchasing. I wasn't running low on working capital yet, but it was less than it had been when I'd first hired her. "Les, both the storage places are getting too full. Danny's been complaining that it takes him too long to dig through our inventory to get to what he's supposed to be delivering. Before, we kept open pathways in those sheds, so we didn't run into that problem. Do you need some help selling off part of the inventory?" "Maybe I've been doing it wrong, Jimmy. I've been concentrating on selling off the stuff you've had the longest. I haven't really gotten around to trying to sell the stuff you've been buying lately. Is that the wrong thing to do?" I went over the inventory list with her after she told me that. We found that the majority of what she'd been selling had been odds and ends and leftovers from bulk purchases that I'd made a long time before. She was right about almost none of the new purchases having been touched. I tried to explain to her the problem with what she was trying to do. I told her that the new stuff was usually the easiest to sell, that the old stuff was product that people had already passed over. I always sold everything, eventually, but it didn't make sense to get on the phone to try to sell off a hundred square yards of half inch carpet padding after all the rest of the carpet and padding had been sold. "You need to concentrate on selling all the new stuff, that's where the real money is. The older products, the leftovers, you can sell them after you've sold enough to clear up space for my new purchases to be stored. Look at some of the purchases I've made in the past two weeks. All of it should be easy for you to find buyers for. This is how I keep my working capital healthy, by getting all my purchase money back out of product sales right away. I make money based on the number of times I turn over my working capital. The way you've been going at it, I'd run out of money to buy more products soon." I exaggerated. In fact, Leslie had already freed up several thousand dollars of new working capital that I wouldn't have available by doing things my usual way. I could see that she could really start bringing in a lot more money once she struck a comfortable balance between selling off the new, right away, and then going back through old inventory, finding a way to release the money I still had tied up in those items. After our conversation, she and I spent the early part of each day, finding buyers for freshly purchased goods. In the later morning and early afternoons, I'd go out doing some buying, but early each morning, she and I would go over the new inventory lists, discussing who we should call to get the best prices for what we had to sell. By the end of her second month, we had turned a big corner in the operation of the business. I'd learned a lot from seeing how organized she was, and how methodically she worked through the process of controlling the sales. Leslie's bonus for the first month had been six hundred and change. With her thousand dollar a month base, she earned sixteen plus. For the second month, her bonus check alone was for three thousand. My expenses, not counting the costs of acquiring new products, had risen from a little over four thousand a month, to more than ten thousand a month. The good new was that my overall net was eight thousand better than it had ever been before, even after paying out Leslie's wages and bonus money. Delilah had driven over to see me twice in the past month. Once, she spent the night with me, and the other time it was just for a quickie. That time, the reason she'd come to see me was mostly because she needed to ask me for a favor. She had a friend from LA who wanted to come up for a visit, but Bridget, who knew the girl, didn't want her sleeping over at their apartment. Delilah wanted to know if the girl could stay at my house for a few nights. Once Delilah assured me that the girl wasn't a smoker of any kind, and didn't use drugs, I gave my reluctant permission. How to describe Delilah's friend? Flamboyant, definitely. She had long hair, dyed dark purple. She had piercing's in both eyebrows, on her tongue and on her bottom lip. I later discovered that she had pierced nipples and a ring through her clit. Connie had a very fair complexion, was about five feet five or so, and a little on the plump side, maybe twenty pounds over her ideal weight. Her face could be called cute, but it was more exotic looking than anything else. She had big boobs, and I never once saw her wearing anything other than a sports bra. She had twin barbell things through her nipples, but I found that out later on in her stay. Connie worked in Hollywood, as an assistant hairdresser on movie sets. Her two bosses, both gay hair stylist's, were always in demand to work on movie productions. Connie was up in Hesperia as a negotiating ploy, to get her bosses to pay her more money, and to try to get herself some name recognition in the movie industry by having a small on screen credit beneath the one for her two bosses. She had already been offered the increase in money, but she was determined to hold out for having her name appear on the crawler that trailed all the movies. I wondered who read those things. When I saw a movie, I never paid any attention to those things. Connie insisted that people "in the industry" paid more attention to the crawler than they did to the actual film being shown. Somehow, I seriously doubted that. Delilah brought Connie over to my house early one evening. The three of us had dinner together at this little Italian place in Hesperia. Connie was very funny. Some of her gossip stories were outrageous, and I was certain she made most of that stuff up anyway. Delilah left right from the restaurant, telling both of us that she had to get right back to avoid having another fight with Bridget for being gone too long. When we got back to my house, Leslie's van was parked by the garage, and the garage door had been left open. I parked my truck on the other side of the driveway and took Connie in to meet Les. I introduced the two, then sat back on the sofa, for the next two hours, as the pair of them proceeded to get acquainted. Connie wasted no time getting to the task of asking Leslie all kinds of questions about her injury. Both girls had ridden horses throughout their youth. Connie told this long story about how her first crush was for this stallion that was being boarded over at the place where her parents boarded her mare. She described all the time she spent looking at the horse in his stall, and how seeing his big, multi-colored, dick hanging down had been her first foray toward acknowledging the sexual side of her adolescence. She'd been all of ten at the time, she said. "So, I grew up with all my ideas about sex and love using this stallion's, Ranger's cock, as my reference point. I really think that had more to do with my being gay than any other single contributing factor. Compared to his cock, all the boys I knew paled by comparison, and none of them got me as excited as just being around his stall used to make me." "I never had any thoughts like that about horses. I did like the way riding on them made me feel though. I used to try every way I could to rub myself on my saddle. I really miss riding." Leslie had a wistful tone in her voice, more than a hint of sadness and regret. I remembered how much she'd liked riding when we were kids. "I had this girl friend, when I was about thirteen. She was partially paralyzed too, but from Polio or something. Maybe it was a muscle disease or something, I really don't remember. Anyway, she had very little feeling, down there, between her legs. We tried everything to get her off, but nothing worked. I used to feel sorry for her about that, but then I found out, a few years ago, that she'd gotten married to some guy, and was really happy with him. It turned out that her ass worked just fine. A mutual friend told me that she discovered that one day when she was frustrated by trying to fool around with herself." "You hear that, Jimmy? Maybe we were going about it the wrong way before?" Leslie's comment, in front of Connie, really surprised me. Of course, how much discretion did you really need to use around a woman who'd just gotten through telling two people who were practically strangers, that she had her first sexual beginnings looking at a stallion's cock in a horse barn somewhere? "The ass is a very sensitive erotic area. Someone told me once that there are more nerve endings in a girl's ass than there are in her pussy. I like to put things in my own ass at times, but it's always been hard for me to trust other people around there." Connie had volunteered this information, treating it as just a normal continuation on the theme she'd been discussing. "Jimmy told me that Dee could make me orgasm if anyone could. Do you think he's right about her?" Connie looked over at me, looking like she was trying to decide whether she wanted to get into a discussion of Delilah's sexual prowess or not. "Hard to tell. Usually, the person who wants an orgasm is the one who determines if they do or not. I don't have a problem most times, but, when I really want to be certain I'll come, I won't rely on anyone else but myself." "I came closest with myself too, but it was just these little tingly feelings, and it always takes me so long to work up to even that much." "There are plenty of women in this world who are non-orgasmic. There are just as many who can only get off by their own hands. Not all people are wired the same way. People seem to put too much emphasis on whether they get off or not. I'm not sure that's healthy." "You might feel differently, if you were like me and hadn't ever had a strong orgasm." "Are you all right with her sitting here complaining about how lame you are in the sack?" I laughed. What else could I do? "I haven't always gotten complaints. I'm not sure we had the proper atmosphere the one time we tried to do anything together. I'll admit that it didn't work very well that time though." "I get in the mood to try out a guy about once every ten years or so. Dee told me something about you that has me curious enough to want to see for myself. You want to go up to your bedroom so we can see if we can make something good happen?" A proposition that came zinging in unexpectedly. I looked over to Les, to see how she'd reacted to it. She had a big grin on her face, and was waiting for my answer, just as expectantly as her new friend, Connie was. "Tell me what Delilah said that you're curious about first." "I promised her that I wouldn't repeat what she said. It was a pretty big compliment though, coming from her." "Did she tell you that she thought she could give up girls, if it was me that she was living with?" "How did you know that? Did she tell you that too?" "She told Bridget that once. She only said it to make Bridget feel bad. Bridget is gay, and Delilah is bi. Delilah likes getting to Bridget that way. Bridget hasn't got any way to worry Delilah, because she really only loves Delilah. She can tell you that because she knows it isn't ever going to be tested." "You should sleep with her, Jimmy. After, she can tell me whether or not I should have had an orgasm from what we did. He ate me out for almost an hour, and he used his fingers too, but it didn't make me come." "Now I'm definitely not going to do it. If Connie gets off, then you're going to feel even worse that you weren't able to." "Maybe she won't, then I'll know you weren't the right guy for me to try it with." "I'll tell you both what, the two of you stay down here and have a go with each other. If you do, I'll spend tomorrow night in bed with Connie, then all three of us can compare notes after. How's that?" "Sounds okay with me. I'm curious about how sensitive her ass is. If she's like my friend turned out to be, we might have the answer to her problem figured out already." "How about you, Les, are you willing to let Connie have a shot at you?" I stood up, ready to leave to go up to my house, no matter what Leslie answered. I had a feeling that she would decide to go for it. I couldn't see where she had much to lose by finding out. I knew she wouldn't have her hopes up as high as they'd been with me that time. If she did manage to have a good come, then that would be a good thing. If not, then I don't think she'd really be expecting to anyway. Leslie didn't answer me, but she raised no objections when Connie moved over to the bed where Leslie was. I saw her sitting there, looking a little frightened, but otherwise all right, then I went up the ramp to my first floor. ------- Chapter 13 I went to bed earlier than usual after leaving Connie and Leslie alone together down in the garage apartment. I'm not certain if I expected Connie to spend the night in Leslie's bed or not. I think it was more a case of my not anticipating her sleeping needs. I hadn't shown her the guest bedroom she'd be using. Her two suitcases were still downstairs in the living room where she and Delilah had dropped them when they'd first come to my home. I woke up at about three in the morning. Connie had come upstairs, and was softly calling out my name in the darkness. "In here, Connie." I called out to her. The next thing I knew, she was in my bedroom, having turned on the light switch over on the wall by the door. While my eyes became adjusted to the sudden light, I couldn't help noticing that Connie was naked, her clothes clutched to her stomach by one of her hands. "I left my bags downstairs. Is it okay if I just bunk in here with you until morning?" I nodded that it was, and, as soon as she saw me do that, the light switch got flipped back off and, a few seconds later, I felt her weight as she came onto the bed. "You need to scoot over some, Jimmy, so I can get my ass all the way on the bed." This was accompanied by a not very subtle push against my back, reinforcing what she wanted from me. "You could have just gotten in on the other side, you know. This is the side I always sleep on." "It's my side too, and I'm the guest. C'mon, move over and give me some room." Reluctantly, I did as she had asked, although I stayed more in the center of the bed than over against the other side. It wasn't a big thing, not having my own side of the bed to sleep on, but it wouldn't have hurt her to have gone to the other side in the first place. It didn't take her long to get comfortable and settled in my bed. I was happy about that. Some people, like Bridget and Delilah, they can't seem to find any place on the bed where they feel comfortable enough to just go to sleep. Connie wasn't like them though, and was soon settled in and quiet. I had almost gotten back to being asleep again when she started talking to me. "That Leslie is a pretty weird chick, isn't she" Her words brought me back to a state of alert consciousness right away. "How do you mean, weird? What happened?" I was getting very used to having Leslie working for me, starting to really value what she was doing to increase my business. I didn't want anything too upsetting to happen to her. "She has some really distorted ideas about how things should be. Anything that doesn't fit in with all her very finely established definitions of "normal" makes her extremely uncomfortable. No wonder she can't come, She only has this one pathway that's acceptable to her." "I take it that you weren't able to please her either?" "I never had the chance to even try. We spent all this time talking about what she didn't want and wouldn't allow. What it came down to was about three hours of my giving her kissing lessons. She does have some seriously nice breasts though." "I know. Unusual shape to them too, don't you think?" "She needs to take a chill pill and learn how to relax. She made me feel like I was trying to rape her, and all I was doing was trying to help her." I felt her turning over in the bed, and then felt her hand, first on my chest, before it started moving down until she had located my boxers. It didn't take her very long to insert one of her hands into the pee flap in front. A few seconds after, I could feel her examining my semi erect tool with her fingers. It didn't take her very long to get it growing out to its fullest potential. "Did she get you frustrated?" "She didn't. The situation did. I'm not used to having to work so hard for such a small payoff. That girl is seriously repressed. She won't allow herself to relax." "Was she all right with everything by the time you left?" "I don't know. She was asleep, so I didn't think to wake her to ask." "Sounds to me like she was able to relax, if she managed to fall asleep like she did." "Look, are we going to stay up all night talking about her, or are we going to try to make the most of what we've got going right here? Somebody needs to get me off tonight, and it looks like you're my last real hope." I've always been a sucker for any kind of sexual temptation. Don't know why that is, but I just have to accept it. Connie was different from most girls I'd been with before, maybe more predatory than any of the others had been. In some ways, she reminded me a little bit of a younger Kaitlyn, thinking about sex only from the standpoint of what she wanted or needed. It wasn't something she cared to complicate unnecessarily. She was super responsive to some things, but had little tolerance or patience for other things that didn't bring her any immediate pleasure. I did find out that she liked being teased, having me pretend I was going to put it in, then change my mind at the last possible second, moving my cock away from her pussy and going somewhere else, in a different direction. I'd found, in the past, that most girls liked a little teasing, but they'd let you know when they'd been teased for long enough and wanted the real action to begin. Connie wasn't like that. She never tired of being teased. It didn't take me very long to find out that Connie was primarily concerned with herself when it came to sex. Kaitlyn was like that as well, usually interested in making sure she came, but not really caring if you did or not. Kaitlyn admitted to being like that, saying she had learned to be that way from the men who acted that way too. It was probably some time around five in the morning before I finally got my whole dick wet. As is the case when two people, who have little else in common, try to fuck, it is strictly a physical act, and one that ends up with the participants engaged in a selfish race to the finish. Connie won that race, but I was so close behind her that I managed to squeeze mine off too before the window of opportunity closed itself completely down. "Now I believe you about Dee just saying that to hurt Bridget." "Thanks. Somehow, I just knew you'd say something like that to me." "You aren't all that in bed, boy. Believe me when I tell you that." "I never claimed to be. I like to think that Delilah sees more to me than just my tremendous sexual potential. She also tells me that I'm very easy going, and not any problem to live with. We have all these other compatibilities, not just the sexual ones." "She'd never leave Bridget anyway." "Probably true, but not a certainty. Bridget is taking a big chance by always reacting as if her worst fears were actual facts. Delilah doesn't like that. Sooner or later, Bridget's insecurity will end up driving a wedge between them." "You pay a lot more attention to things than I gave you credit for. What about Leslie, what will happen to her?" "Don't know yet. Too soon to make any predictions. A lot will depend on whether she decides to change the way she approaches her life. She has to really want to change if it's going to do her any good. I don't think she's really ready to make those kinds of changes yet. Maybe she won't ever be." "I can see some of what you said about why Dee likes you, but I still don't believe it has anything to do with the sex she gets from you." "She is different than you are about sex. She embraces it, then devours all of it. You are too selfish to do that." "Ha. That's the pot calling the kettle black. I noticed how long you lasted, after I finally let you get it inside. Its a damn good thing I'd already been ready by the time you got started. Otherwise I'd have been left high and dry like what you did with Leslie." I knew that we'd have our separate ideas about which of us was the one most at fault for our failure to get greater pleasure from our coupling. It didn't matter much to either of us. We'd both managed to come, and there was little else either of us had targeted as goals. We both turned away from each other and went to sleep. I had a short dream about Leslie. In my dream, she was as old as she now was, but able to walk around with healthy legs. In my dream, she always kept herself on the other side of whatever street I might be on. It was very frustrating for me, because, in my dream, I really wanted to talk to her about what had happened to get her fixed up and out of her wheelchair. Connie spent another week at my house. She quickly grew bored with the pace of living up in the high desert. Most of her waking hours were spent texting her friends and other people that she worked with. She spent every night in my bed. Most nights we'd have sex. Once, right near the end, both of us dropped our guards just enough to permit something more than totally selfish physical gratification. I don't know how she felt about that time, I certainly never talked to her about it after it was over, but it kind of scared me. It had been pretty intense for me at the finish, one of the strongest comes I'd ever had. I was happy when she finally announced that she was giving up visiting friends in Hesperia as a negotiating tactic for her work. She left, having gotten another, smaller, boost in salary in lieu of getting a screen credit in recognition for her work. It was awkward telling her goodbye when Delilah drove over with Bridget to take her back to Hollywood that following Saturday. I think she'd been as frightened as I'd been by the intensity of that one session of lovemaking we had. We had become something more than friends, but not something that had any chance of growing much from where it stood. Leslie and I started spending more time together right after Connie left. I'd taken to coming into the house through her garage door while Connie had been staying with me. Usually the three of us would either stay in the garage, talking, while I'd order some delivery food for dinner, or else we'd all come up into the main part of the house where I'd cook something up for the three of us. When Connie left, it was just Les and I, but we kept up the same routine. From some of the comments she made, and questions she asked me, I got the distinct impression that Leslie was jealous of what Connie and I had been doing. She hadn't ever seemed jealous of Delilah or Bridget whenever they came over and slept with me. I found it difficult to believe that she saw Connie as more of a threat than Delilah and Bridget were. I wanted to talk to her about it, but never got up the nerve to do so. It was about a week and a half after Connie went back home before Les turned our conversation back around to sex again. "When you fucked Connie, was it good?" "Depends on what your definition of good is. If you're asking whether we both had comes or not, then it was good. Mostly, except for this one time, it was just physical release for each of us. Kind of like sport fucking." "How was the other time different?" "I'm not sure how to explain it really. It just was. The best way I can think to put it is that we weren't so guarded around each other. We let ourselves be more open, more vulnerable to things." "This made it better?" "It did for me. I think it did for Connie too, but we never talked about it." "I was vulnerable that one time we tried things, but I didn't come." "Different type of vulnerable, I think. Yours was more of a nervous vulnerable, not an emotional vulnerability." "She told me she liked sleeping in the same bed as you. She told me it was more restful than sleeping alone. I wouldn't mind trying that." This last she said in a more halting way, obviously unsure of her position in my life. "Get a bigger bed then. Yours is too small for two people to sleep together in." "If I got a bigger bed, does that mean you'd stay down here and sleep with me?" "We could try it out I guess. You don't mean all the time, right? You mean just so you could try it. Just once or twice, to see if you liked it?" "I wouldn't mind getting a bigger bed anyway, maybe one of those queen sized ones. Would that size be big enough for two people to sleep on?" "If you're going to get a queen size, you may as well go all out and get one of the king sized ones. They both take up about the same sized space, and with a king sized one, you could fit three people a lot more easily." We didn't talk about it anymore after that, but, about a week later, I came home to find a new bed where her old one had been. It turned out to be a queen size, which made me laugh. Leslie wasn't above making her own little statement about how many people she wanted in her bed. I started sleeping down there with her on most nights. She didn't bring up the subject of sex with me the first few times we slept together. She did ask me to help her stay turned over on her side, by spooning my body up next to hers. I also decided that I liked to fall asleep while toying with one or both of her breasts for awhile. She liked that, and made it a point to encourage me to do more of it. She liked to touch my cock sometimes, after I'd played with her tittie's for awhile. Most of the time, when we were in bed together, before we fell asleep, we'd end up discussing something about the business. Leslie was very focussed and organized, something that wasn't necessarily true of me. During our conversations she'd say things that she just took for granted I knew, but many times they were nuggets of very useful information that I would have never given any thought to. I'd had no idea that she'd put together a data base that kept track of every single purchase and sale, by lot number, and had such valuable information about how long we'd had the product, the percentage of profit we'd made, and how each lot's results compared to every other lot. It was a little disconcerting to first realize that Leslie now knew more about my business than I did. One night she made me get up out of bed to bring her my laptop. We'd been arguing about whether or not it was profitable enough for me to keep bidding on used office furniture and equipment. To me, a lot of what I bought at those sales was big and bulky, and often as not, hard to sell in the condition a good part of it was always in when I went to pick it all up. I had argued that it might not be worth the time or the trouble. Leslie was showing me that I usually bought everything for less than the scrap metal value, and that the real profit was in selling off whatever was in real good shape, then scrapping out the rest instead of storing it. She had built up a list of several scrap metal dealers in our area who would come by and pick up loads big enough to make it worth their while. When I looked at her figures showing how much she'd gotten for scrap metal that month, I completely changed my mind about where some of my best profit returns were coming from. I had been passing over a lot of heavy metal objects in poor condition, because I saw no profit in buying them to try to sell to any of my usual buyers. I knew I'd be making small bids for any of that I encountered in the near future. It was on one of these nights when we'd stayed awake in her bed discussing business, while I toyed with her boobs, that Leslie asked me to stick my cock in her. She just started pulling on it, bringing it closer to her butt, when she told me to put it in her. She'd been touching it while she talked before, and I'd been rubbing her boobs and tweaking her nips while I listened. I had to do all the work of lifting her leg up so that she could fit me to her opening. Once I'd gotten it in enough, I let her leg fall back down like it usually would be. At first, it was very disconcerting, because she resumed talking about the business, and brought my hand back to one of her tits, and told me to kiss her back and neck, and to squeeze her tittie harder. I tried moving in and out with my dick, but she seemed much more interested in what I was doing with my hand and mouth than she was with what was happening to her down below. To make things even more complicated for me, the business thing she had started talking about was something that I found fascinating. It was hard for me to concentrate on keeping my boner, playing with her tits, and kissing her neck, back and shoulders, while still trying, as much as I could manage, to keep my attention on what she was telling me about the business. Something had to give, and it turned out to be my hard on. It shrunk back to almost nothing, but Leslie didn't seem to notice it. I started noticing that Leslie was beginning to have trouble keeping track of what she was telling me. She started acting like she was getting worked up over what I was doing to her. My dick had fallen out of her some minutes before this happened, but I'd kept up all the other stuff I'd been doing. It was just about the time that I first noticed Leslie starting to lose her train of thought that I also discovered that she had brought one of her hands down between her legs and had begun frigging her clit with her fingers. My initial reaction to her doing that was to re-energize my hard on. I think the first idea that she had that my dick was no longer in her pussy was when I again lifted up her leg and pushed it back in her, and when I pulled on her hip to increase my contact and connection with her. We were back in business as far as really fucking was concerned. Leslie was moving around more now, and making a lot more of the sounds that most girls make when they really are starting to get close to something during sex. I kept on with the tit twisting and squeezing, and started using my tongue more behind her ears and in that little hollow area of her neck. I knew she liked that from earlier. After about ten or fifteen minutes, all of it was getting really good for me. I was afraid I'd end up coming, leaving Leslie high and dry like the other time we'd fooled around like this. I started trying to slow myself back down, but Leslie was having none of that. "Keep doing what you're doing, Jimmy. Pound it in me harder. I feel something, so don't even think about stopping." I kept after it, determined that, if we failed again, I could honestly claim to have given it my all. Up to that point, Leslie's pussy hadn't exactly been much of a factor in my pleasure. It was there, it was well lubricated, but it wasn't really doing anything, if you know what I mean? It didn't feel, at least to me, that it was participating in the fucking, except as an uninvolved receptacle for my cock. All that came to an abrupt change when Leslie first started getting her come. That pussy of hers finally started coming to life. I could feel it beginning to spasm, and actually start to pulsate a little. I can't tell you how much of a turn on that was for me. I felt like Jesus must have felt when he raised Lazarus up from the dead. For a woman without the use of her legs, Leslie was sure moving her upper body quite a lot. If I hadn't been so busy with trying to get the most out of the moment for myself, I would have liked to have watched her to see how she managed to get enough leverage to push her ass back against me like she was doing. Things got awfully busy for me about then though, and my eyes were tightly closed as I pushed back at her, trying to get the best possible seal with her so that none of my prodigious spend escaped from her suddenly tightly clasping and burning hot pussy. "Could you feel me, Jimmy? I could sure feel you. I've never felt anything like that before, it was absolutely incredible! It just started building up, and then it was like this explosion going off up inside me." "Don't worry, I could feel it. When you get off, you really get off, don't you?" "That was my first time having a guy up in me. It really didn't feel like anything much until something happened, and then it did. I wish I'd known that this was all it took. I could have saved myself years of frustration." "Are you taking anything to keep from getting pregnant?" "No, why would I? You don't think I can get pregnant do you? I mean, how could I take care of a baby? Can we do something to make sure that I'm not?" Leslie turned her head to try to look at me as she asked me those questions. There was a look of absolute terror in her eyes as she did so. "When was your last period?" "I'm not exactly sure, but my next one is going to be really soon, unless what we just did keeps it from coming. I'm pretty sure it's due in the next day or two. It feels like it usually does when its almost coming." "If you're nearly due, then we don't have to worry. You should go to the clinic and get on the pill or something. If you're planning on doing more of what we just got done doing?" "I am. Why wouldn't I want to do more of that? Are you saying that it was just this one time for us?" "No, I'm saying you need to get on birth control if you still plan on having sex, and you don't want to get pregnant. There is a name for women who have sex without being protected, it's mommy." "I want to do it again. When will you be ready?" I knew I could be ready again in a few short minutes. I wanted to wait though, before we did it again. I had no idea of how much of a strain what we'd done would have on her system. It had to be a shock to it. I'd never seen her body as active as it had been while she was starting to get her come. I didn't want to take any chances on injuring her further. "No more tonight, I'm afraid. We need to wait and make sure everything we did is all right with your body. You were moving around quite a bit back there, and you don't want to hurt anything." Leslie didn't respond to me when I said that. I knew she was thinking about what I'd said. She was a pretty sensible woman, usually, and she'd understand I was mostly worried about her safety. "Do you want to see if eating me out again will feel better to me after the orgasm I had? It feels real sensitive right now, and I'd hate to waste it." I had to laugh. It struck me for the first time that Leslie might be counting on what had just happened to have changed a lot of things it wasn't going to change. I hoped she wasn't going to end up frustrated and disappointed if my eating her out didn't bring her another good come. It actually took more time for the two of us to get her legs and body positioned for me to eat her than it took for her to start climbing up the excitement ladder, heading straight towards her second big "O". Her first one had made her more sensitive, that's for sure, and her response to what I was now doing to her was many times stronger than she'd felt during my first, failed, attempt at this. Three more orgasms later, she told me that she'd had all she could tolerate from my nearly numb tongue. I had no trouble at all falling asleep, once I'd crawled up from between her held open thighs and had gotten her resettled back onto her side so that the two of us could resume our usual spooning position. Leslie told me the next morning that she's lain awake for most of the night, wanting to think about what had just happened to her. I wasn't usually in the habit of thinking too much about social things. I pretty much was used to taking things as they came up. To me, what had happened down in that garage apartment had been a good thing for Leslie. That isn't saying that I hadn't enjoyed it too, but I didn't see where anything had happened that would necessitate me changing the way I led my life. I certainly didn't think it was necessary for me to change how I was going to be relating with any of the people in my small social circle. Evidently, Leslie had remarkably different ideas about all of that. ------- Chapter 14 "Katie told me that you've been fucking, Leslie, is that true?" Danny was helping Hector and I unload the back of the second truck we'd filled and emptied since this morning. I'd bought a lot of government surplus crap at an auction held out at the old March Air Force base by Moreno Valley. Most of it was pure crap, with a capital "C", but it was heavy crap, and I planned to make all my money back, and a whole lot more, just from what the majority of it would bring me as scrap metal. We'd brought up two full truckload's today, and tomorrow we'd fill at least another two, maybe more. I had seventy two hours to get all my purchases out of the base warehouse, where they were being stored. "Your wife has a big mouth. Where'd she hear something like that?" "She said Bridget told her that you guys have been keeping house together, down in the garage. Katie wants to know if you're ever going to go back to living in the upstairs part? Said I should ask you if you'd mind if we spent some time living there next month when we're getting our trailer fumigated?" "Hell yes, I'd mind. She's got a lot of nerve putting you up to asking me something like that. I'm still spending a lot of time living there myself. You tell her there's no way I'd ever even consider it." "I knew you were going to be like that. So, is it true or not, about fucking Leslie?" "If you worked as much as you flapped your gums, I'd be a lot happier about paying you, come Friday. Bridget's just making up things because Delilah found out that Leslie bought herself a new bed, and Bridget jumped to some wrong conclusions. If you want to find out anything else about what Les has been doing, you're going to have to ask her about it yourself." "If you weren't fucking her, you'd just tell me you weren't. Since you didn't, I'll have to go by what Katie told me. Is it any good? I mean with her legs being like they are and all?" "You aren't going to give this a rest until you force me to fire your ass, are you?" "You can't fire me for asking you a question." "I can and I will. You think I'm paying you so you can sit around gossiping about things your wife tells you? I don't waste your time asking you about how many other guys she's fucking at the moment, do I?" "You have no call to bring Katie into our conversation like that, Jim." "You brought her name up, not me. I didn't even want to be having this conversation in the first place, but you seem to think everybody should go around talking about who everyone else is fucking. We get finished with your wife, we can get around to talking about what you've been up to. Someone told me that you were seen getting cozy with that little brunette over at the titty bar in Victorville, the girl who's husband is locked up down at County. He said you were buying her drinks, and asking about driving her home after her shift ended on the night you told me you had all that trouble with the truck. He told me that was the real reason why you ended up getting back from Barstow so late that night." "Don't you go spreading those kind of rumors about me, Jim. You know how crazy Katie is liable to get if she was to hear any of those kinds of stories?" "Yes, I do know, and I know it gets even worse if the story turns out to be true, like this one is." "I was just kidding with you, that's all." "Me too, Danny, me too. Let's stop kidding, okay? We still have a lot to do today." It wasn't like I was ashamed of what Leslie and I were doing. I've always been something of a private person, and I didn't like people going around telling stories about me out of school. We weren't kids anymore, and Danny should have known better than to bring any of that up in the first place. Leslie had asked me about whether either of us should tell anyone about what we'd been doing. I'd told her to wait before she started talking about anything. When I got back home that evening, I was going to find out whether or not she was the one who put that particular bug in Bridget's ear. "Danny asked me today if we were fucking." "What did you tell him?" "I didn't tell him anything. Nobody's business if we are or we aren't. He shouldn't have asked me, and that's what I told him." "You sound pretty mad. He knows about you being with Dee and Bridget. How come you aren't hiding what you do with them too?" "Who said I was hiding anything? I don't have to hide anything I do. Those girls lived with me for eight months, and Bridget is Kaitlyn's sister. Of course they know about them. No way to keep it quiet under those circumstances." "I'm not sure why you're mad then." "I'm going upstairs tonight. I don't want us to have a fight about any of this." "Running away from this isn't going to settle anything, you know?" "Don't push me on this, Les. I'm just not in the mood for it. Let me take some time to think about things, about how much I want people knowing about my private business." "We could stop too, you know? Nothing says we have to keep doing what we've been doing." "That's always an option too. If you feel like we should consider that, I'm willing to treat it as an option." "You're acting just like a ten year old, Jimmy. Calm down so we can talk about this." "I'm going upstairs for tonight. I'm all talked out about it for right now. Maybe we can talk about it more tomorrow, we'll see." "You think I've been telling people, don't you?" "I don't know. Have you?" "I may have said something that might have given it away, to Bridget, on the phone yesterday, when she called about them wanting to come over here today." "What was it you said?" "I said that I'm your girl friend now, and that you weren't seeing other people like that anymore, sexually I meant." "Remind me again of when we ever decided any of that?" "I know. It just came out is all. I didn't mean to tell her that. It just slipped out of me." "I'll talk to you tomorrow, Leslie. Doing what you did was a big mistake, if you expect to continue being friends with me. I'm not usually in the habit of letting other people make those kinds of decisions for me. You seem to be taking one whole hell of a lot for granted, and I really don't like it much." That was the start of more than a week long estrangement from her. I had decided that I wasn't going to be the one to back down about any of that. She'd been totally out of line with what she'd done. The next day I called Delilah, at her work, and made a date for Bridget and her to go out to dinner with me that night. We ended up just going out to Alberto's for burritos, and the three of us laughed about Leslie thinking she could decide who I could see, socially, or try to dictate to me what I could do with anyone else. I felt better that they both seemed to understand that all those things were totally up to me to decide. Right before I said goodbye to them, after our meal, Bridget asked me if I had found any place where the three of us could go to spend a fun weekend yet? I told her that I'd been too busy, with work, to spend much time thinking about going on any more trips. She looked at me in a funny way, after I told her that, but then Delilah grabbed her shoulder and reminded her that they needed to get going. I found that I really missed all those business discussions that Leslie and I used to have in bed at night. I also missed the mattress on her new bed. It was a lot more comfortable than my old one was. I was considering buying a new bed set, with a mattress just like hers, only bigger, but I wasn't sure yet if I should do it right away, or maybe wait to see if I could pick one up on the cheap. I usually bought all my furniture at those bankruptcy sales and dealer auctions that I went to. I already knew the brand name of the mattress, and knew I'd save myself a bundle if I waited I had gone back to using my front door again, mostly to avoid having to inconvenience or embarrass Leslie. I sent her all the updated purchase manifest's by scanning them onto my computer and then emailing them to her. We still spoke on the phone several times a day, but both of us were careful to keep the subject of the calls strictly about business. Our conversations were somewhat strained, but I didn't believe the business was suffering much because of it. Danny got himself picked up for his second DUI, and was taken down to the County lock up. He was going to get a big fine, and thirty days in jail, at the bare minimum. I was still pissed with him for bringing up the subject of whether or not I was fucking Leslie. If he'd just kept his mouth shut to me about it, none of the problems I was currently having with her would have needed to happen. I sat on my hands, refusing to hire him a lawyer, go down to visit with him, or to even accept any of his collect phone calls. Kaitlyn came over to ask me to do something for her and the kids, but I sent her home after telling her that I'd pay her space rent, and give her three hundred every two weeks for food, and for whatever else she absolutely needed for the kids. I ended up giving the food money to Bridget, telling her not to let her sister have any of it in cash, because I wasn't in any mood to have to deal with her blowing the money on herself and then coming to me to beg for more. Danny actually wound up doing forty days before getting his release. When he came by my house, after getting out, he looked better than I'd seen him looking in a long time. He'd lost more than twenty pounds while in jail, and he actually looked like he was better rested than he had looked for the past ten years or so. I was still pissed off with him for driving one of my trucks when he was drunk. If he'd crashed and hurt or killed someone, I'd have been the one who would have taken all the financial hit. "We need some money, Jim. Katie needs to give her mom back some of what she's had to borrow before the first of next month. Can I get a little advance on my next few checks? If you let me have four bills, you can take fifty out of each paycheck until we're square again." "I paid two months space rent for you, Danny, and I spent another thousand dollars more making sure your kids had some food to eat while you were sitting down there in San Bernardino. Who's going to pay that money back to me? Remember the last time when I told you that I wasn't going to give you your job back if you screwed up again? Guess what? I really did mean it. I'm through with having to pay my good money out for you every time you take it into your fool head to do something stupid. You aren't working for me any more, and that's final." He took it better than I thought he might, almost as if he'd expected it. He didn't even try to argue with me, or to hit me up for some money to tide him over until he found something new to work at. Instead, he got back into his old pick up truck and drove away. A few days later I heard that he was working for a moving company down the hill in Rialto. He wasn't driving for them, just working at loading and unloading their moving vans. Danny may have accepted what I'd told him, but his wife sure didn't. She kept calling me to give me a piece of her mind every chance she got. To make it even more laughable, whenever she ran out of new insults to yell at me, she'd always ask me for money for things her kids needed. I don't know how much money she got out of me through her sister, Bridget's, coming over either. Thirty here for new shoes for their kids, another fifty for the two oldest for their school supplies, eighty bucks for some kind of insurance they needed to have from their school. It seemed like those kids needed money from me just about every day of the week. Bridget was always coming over with a note in one hand and the palm of her other hand opened, and facing up, for me to put the needed money into. I went along with most of it, dumb ass that I was, only drawing the line whenever Bridget came over asking me for something that I knew was just a scam to get Kaitlyn some extra spending money. After that first week of me avoiding Leslie, things settled down a little. The drunk driving thing happened with Danny, and I was kept way too busy trying to find someone to replace Danny in my business to want to spend all the extra energy it was costing me to keep my feud going with her. We started back to talking about regular things again, but I didn't make any moves to spend time with her in the garage, and she didn't ask me any questions about what our personal relationship status was. We both just left things like they were. I saw Delilah and Bridget once or twice a week, usually going out to eat dinner together somewhere. I didn't ask them to come home with me and I didn't try to fuck either of them. I knew I could have talked Delilah into coming over, several times, but I didn't even attempt to. It was a few weeks after Danny got out of jail that Leslie started going out with this guy. I kind of recognized his face from back when we all went to high school together, but I didn't remember his name, or anything else about him. He was just some guy who looked familiar to me. I did notice that he'd come over in his car, and then they'd leave together, to go somewhere in Les's van. She was always the one who did the driving. They went out a few times, for about a week or so, and then, one night, Leslie didn't come home after they went out together. I saw her drive up at around nine the next morning. I'd been up and down all night, worried that she might have gotten into a wreck or something. When her friend got out of the van and went inside the garage with her, that prevented me from going down there to see her and telling her that I was closing down my business and wouldn't need her working for me any longer. He left about a half hour after going into the garage with her, driving off in his piece of shit Dodge Intrepid. I was going to go down right after he left, to give her the news about closing down the business, but I was feeling tired, so I decided to get myself a nap. I wanted to take some time also, hoping to figure out a better way to get her to move out of my garage, if I could. I didn't really want to shut down a profitable business just to have an excuse to get rid of her. When I woke up again, at about three in the afternoon, I made a phone call to Delilah, asking her to come over for dinner, and telling her that I hoped she could stay over and spend the night with me. She asked me if my invitation was for Bridget too, or if it were just for her to come over. "Better just the two of us this time. Come in through the front door, I'll leave it unlocked for you. I don't want a big scene with Leslie if you try to come up from the garage." Delilah came over and we ate some of my justifiably famous spaghetti and meatballs. After dinner we went into my living room and watched a little TV and finished off the last of the second bottle of wine I'd served with dinner. By the time we went upstairs to my bedroom, neither of us were feeling any pain at all. Sex was okay, I guess. Delilah was her usual self, full of energy, and willing to do anything to bring me pleasure. I was in the mood too, but, for some reason, it just wasn't the same as it used to be. We did it only the once, then we talked a little and went to sleep. I think Delilah understood that I was having other problems. She didn't comment about what they were, but she let me know that she hoped I'd get them taken care of soon. I had told her that I was thinking of shutting down my business for awhile, and maybe taking a long vacation somewhere. I hadn't had any vacation of longer than a few days, since before my parents were killed. I told her I was thinking about going to Hawaii, for a month or more. I'd always heard it was a great place to go for a vacation, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to go there if I waited for too long to find a way to take the time off. When I woke up the next morning Delilah had already left. I still wasn't certain about what I should do, but shutting down the business and taking that vacation was starting to grow on me. It had enough appeal that I decided to stop making any more purchasing trips until after I'd decided for sure that this was the way for me to accomplish what I was now after. A few days later, having decided that shutting down the business for a few months was definitely the way to go, I told Leslie, over the phone, about what I'd just decided. I told her that she could remain in the garage apartment while I was gone, but that I'd appreciate her being moved out by the time I returned. I told her that I'd be working on selling off as much of the inventory as I could before I left, since I was going to stop leasing the smaller storage building at the end of the month. I'd keep paying rent on the building behind Izzy's, because I'd still need a place to store whatever we hadn't sold, and I needed a place to keep both my big trucks until after I got back from Hawaii. We cleared out quite a bit of merchandise before I left, much more than I'd thought we'd sell. Even the storage shed behind Izzy's was almost completely empty. Leslie's final bonus check was for over six thousand dollars. I had my airline ticket all set, and all I really needed to do was set up some kind of account where I could get money to Bridget quickly, just in case Danny and his family really needed it. ------- Chapter 15 Hawaii was excellent, and very expensive. I spent time on three of the islands. Five days on Oahu, seven on the Big island, Hawaii, and nine days on Maui. I didn't really do much of the typical tourist sightseeing that people expect you to do. Instead, I went around looking for things that could be easily bought and sold. When I first got to the islands, one of the first things I noticed was that, by and large, the residents weren't very active when it came to buying and selling things outside of stores. I found a lot of things that I could have bought and made a good profit selling. If I lived on any of those islands that I visited, I could easily make a good living doing much the same thing I did back home. Several times I stumbled upon things that I would have loved to buy, especially at the prices being asked for them. If I'd had access to a truck, there was this antique cherry wood dresser being offered for sixty bucks. It was in excellent condition, easily more than a hundred years old. I knew a woman down in Lake Elsinore who'd have paid me five hundred for it, without even batting an eye. I saw quite a few whalebone artifacts this one guy had for sale in his home. These were mostly old carvings, done by whalers, back before the turn of the twentieth century. His grandparents had been collector's, but he had no interest in keeping it all together as a folk art collection. When I spoke with him about the carvings, his position was that most of them were amateurish looking, not as well crafted as samples he had seen in some of the tourist oriented gift and souvenir stores. I did buy up eight of the smaller pieces, paying him less than a hundred dollars for the lot of them. All eight pieces, even well wrapped, fit inside a toiletry kit I purchased at a garage sale right after I bought these carvings. Mostly, I did a lot of walking around. I'd get up in the morning and go out walking on side streets and paths away from the tourist centers. I had no interest in seeing any hula dancers, or in going to one of those commercial luau's I kept seeing advertised. I almost went on one of those charter fishing boats when I was staying on the big island, but they wanted three hundred dollars for the day. The three hundred wasn't for me to go out alone with them either, they said I'd be going with either one or two other people who wanted to go out fishing, and they'd be paying the same amount I would have been. It looked like it might be fun, but that was a lot of money just to go out fishing for a day. I'd brought my laptop to Hawaii with me, and there were lots of places that had free wireless connections to the internet. I mostly used the computer to keep in touch with how things were going back home. It was from an email Delilah sent me that I learned about Danny almost dying from having a ruptured appendix that had burst on him while he was helping carry a couch up the stairs leading to an apartment a friend of ours was moving to. He wound up spending almost a month in the hospital, mostly because the surgeon's accidentally cut into a part of his bowel when they performed an emergency appendectomy, and he got a really bad infection afterwards, when waste from that leaked out into his body cavity. When I talked to Danny about it later, I came away convinced that he had mostly acted like it was more painful than it really was, because, whenever he complained about having too much pain, they kept giving him some kind of strong pain reliever to help him with easing it. Danny had always liked his drugs, but, when all he had to do to get them was to make a complaint, I don't think he would have ever voluntarily allowed them to discharge him. They finally kicked him out when they could no longer find any trace of either infection or fever in him. Delilah wrote me another email, letting me know that Leslie wasn't acting like she was planning on vacating her apartment in my garage. I'd asked her, before I left, to drive by once in awhile to make sure nothing bad was happening to my house. When I finally got bored with Hawaii, I changed my plane ticket to an earlier flight, and flew back to Los Angeles. At the LA airport, I bought a round trip ticket to Seattle, Washington. I stayed there for three nights before deciding I'd had enough vacation to last me for awhile. Seattle's weather hadn't agreed with me. I much preferred the dry air of the desert. Seattle was cold and damp, with overcast skies the whole time I stayed there. Back in LA, I got my truck out of the long term parking lot where I'd left it, and drove myself back home to Hesperia. I'd been gone less than a week short of a month, and I figured that was definitely long enough. Two days before I'd left Seattle, I'd emailed Leslie, telling her that I was going to be on my way back home in the next day or two, and that I expected her to be completely moved out of my garage by the time I got back to my house. I could see her van still parked in my driveway as I drove up to my house. I can't say that her not being moved out was a complete surprise to me. I'd known that she seldom did anything she didn't really want to do. She was mentally tougher than most people, probably to compensate for being so much weaker than everyone else, physically. It was my property she was now squatting on though, and I wasn't really in the mood to put up with any foot dragging on her part about going somewhere else to live. I'd never asked her for a penny in rent, so that made her a house guest, and thus not a real tenant. I'd also given her plenty of notice that she needed to be moved out by the time I got back from my vacation. The fact that she hadn't moved out already spoke volumes to me about how she believed that she was the one in control of things, not me. That was what had started our original problem, and I could see she hadn't learned anything, despite the consequences of her earlier actions. I finally got myself worked up enough to go down there to have it out with her about her failure to move out like I'd asked. "Hi, Jimmy. I see you're back. Have you had enough time to quit pouting yet?" "I sent you that email telling you I was coming back. I thought we'd agreed you'd be moved out when I came back from my vacation?" "You must be having delusions then. I never said I was going to leave. Why should I? I know you have some right to be mad about what I said to Delilah and Bridget, but it wasn't enough to justify you throwing such a big tantrum over. I got jealous, and maybe I didn't have any right to, so I'm sorry, okay?" "You can't just keep living here, Leslie. It was different before, when we were working together. Now we aren't, so you'll have to move." "Are you mad about that time I stayed over at Richard's house? We didn't do anything, if that's what you were thinking. I would never have even let him kiss me. He's my cousin anyway, so that would have been too creepy." Suddenly, after hearing her tell me that, this big painful lump that had been sitting in my stomach for the past month, started dissolving. I tried not to give away the huge amount of relief I felt after she explained that the guy was a relative of hers. That put a whole different perspective on some things. "I don't know who you're talking about, and, for your information, I haven't been keeping track of where you go, or who you see. The problem I have is with you thinking that you have some kind of a right to go ahead and tell people things we both agreed we wanted kept quiet. Plus, you have no right at all to tell people that they aren't welcome to come see me. Delilah and Bridget are both close friends of mine." "Who you just happen to be fucking. Don't forget that little fact." "It doesn't matter whether I'm doing that with them or not. I'm free to see whoever I feel like seeing. The last thing I need is having some girl around who thinks she wants to take over control of my life." "I said I was sorry. I was wrong, and I won't do that again. I've never been in that position before. I acted without thinking. If you'll just let that one time slide, I really promise that I won't act like that anymore. I've really missed you. I missed having you with me in bed at night. I missed having all our talks too." "You're only a guest here, Les. Being a guest doesn't give you any legal rights. You don't have the right to decide not move out if I tell you that you have to." "Where could I go? My parents are just starting to get used to being back together. This place is perfect for me. You don't realize how hard it would be for me to find anything even one tenth as convenient and livable as this place is for me. I could accept it if you decided that you didn't want to be close friends with me, or even if you decided to bring someone else here to live upstairs with you. I might hate it, but I could accept you doing that easier than my having to move out of here." "I think you got the wrong idea before. I'm not looking to settle down with just one girl in any kind of relationship. I thought we were both just helping each other out, not getting started with anything serious. If anything, I'd have to say that Delilah, Bridget, and I are the ones who have a relationship, and what we have is mostly just the three of us being friends, three people who happen to sleep together on occasion." "I already told you I wasn't going to talk to anyone that way again. What I want is to go back to work like we did before. I'll live here and help you with your business. I was thinking while you were gone, that it isn't fair for you to keep paying me the thousand dollars a month, then all the bonus money on top of that. It would be better if I just live here for free, and you pay me a straight five percent of whatever your gross profit turns out to be each month." I was touched by her offer to take a pay cut. It seldom happened that anyone agreed to take less money than I was willing to give them. Mentally, I was already considering ways that I could back down from some of my previous positions. I could easily reverse my decisions about closing down my business, and of the need for getting her out of both my life and my garage. The time I'd spent away from my business had taught me a lesson about how much my business was an integral part of my whole life, a part of me. "If I do decide to give you one more chance, there'd have to be some big changes. For one thing, I think it would be better if we started keeping things more business like between us. I think we kind of let the lines get too blurred there before. It usually isn't a good idea to mix your business life up with your personal life. If something happens, it gets very messy for both at the same time, and that isn't a good thing." "I don't think I could stand doing that, Jimmy. Everything that happened was a part of what made it all work as well as it did. You shouldn't mess with something that worked so well for us. I don't mean we should sleep together every night, but, I don't think we should automatically go completely the other way either, never doing anything with each other except discussing business things. To be honest, I think some of the personal stuff we did was a big part of the reason that the business things worked out as well as they seemed to. I had a better attitude, and a lot more energy, whenever I started getting a good night's sleep. Having those orgasms really relaxed me, and they helped me get more solid hours of rest afterwards. Sleeping on my side made me sleep better too, even when it was without me having any orgasms." "It can't go back to being like it was before. I have my other relationships too. We can talk, and sometimes eat together maybe, but, I think that whole sleeping together thing is the main reason why we had the big problem. I still think you have to separate having a business relationship with having any sort of a personal friendship." "Do I get any choice about this?" "No. We already tried doing things the other way, and it turned out badly. I've got these other responsibilities, my brother and his family, my other friends. I'm not in any position to add other things to everything that I already have to worry about." I felt bad, because I really felt I was denying myself more than I was denying her. I was right though. There was just no way we could go back to the way things were before that big fight. I really did have my responsibilities, and Leslie had started making me forget them. She had quickly grown in importance to me, at a time when that was the very last thing I needed or wanted. Delilah and Bridget wouldn't ever represent the same kind of threat to my lifestyle that Leslie did. I knew that the three of us were just having some fun together, that none of us took any of it seriously. It would always be Delilah and Bridget. I was just along for some laughs, and to provide the means for a much more lavish recreational life for them. We were using each other, and all of us knew it. My mind and emotions weren't ever going to get that involved with those other two. With Leslie, I'd found myself beginning to feel something very strong, and it had frightened me. I knew that what I had tried to run away from were those emotions, probably as much, or more than, anything else. Nothing had changed now, other than the fact that Leslie had given me a way to get back to having the two of us once again doing things from within the safety of my business together. That wasn't perfect, but it was more than I thought I'd end up when I'd come back home. I had to try to find some way to make it enough. ------- Chapter 16 The six months that followed the return from my vacation in Hawaii, were some of the most troubling and trying of my life. It began to seem like nothing I did was ever enough for any of them. Business was great, and was really the only part of my life I managed to get much real satisfaction from. Leslie was selling everything I'd managed to buy, and all of it at higher prices than I would have gotten if I'd been the one doing the selling. Now that she knew most of the buyers, she seemed to have a real knack of matching up products to potential purchasers. Like I said, the business was the only real bright spot I had going for me. I'd given Danny his old job back, but, as before, it didn't seem to matter to either him or Kaitlyn how much I was trying to do for them, they always wanted me to do more. They hated it when anyone besides themselves got so much as a single penny of my money. Things had always disappeared from my storage places. Mostly small things that I was nearly certain Danny was taking to sell to people. Mostly, I'd look the other way, unless he started getting too greedy. When that happened, I'd be forced to step in and give him some kind of a slap on the wrist. Usually, I'd deduct, what I thought of as fair value for whatever he'd stolen, from his weekly check. He'd end up yelling at me, protesting that he hadn't done what I was accusing him of doing, but, in the end, he'd accept my punishment. Kaitlyn was still calling me, or even worse, coming over to my house to speak with me about whatever happened to be troubling her at the moment. I hadn't been having sex with her ever since back when I first started doing things with Delilah and Bridget. Because of that, Kaitlyn had surrendered one of her most potent bargaining chips with me. She hadn't given up in that regard though, finding plenty of opportunities to try to lure me back to using her body for my pleasure. Kaitlyn was a very sexy looking woman, as well as a skilled temptress. She also had a willingness to stoop to nearly any level in order to get whatever it was she really wanted. In my case, it was me. She felt like she needed the two of us to be having sex together, in order to maintain some degree of control over my actions towards her and her family. Mostly, I helped them because Danny was my brother, and their three kids were my nephews and my niece. Having sex with Kaitlyn had always been a very mixed pleasure for me. I felt guilty, knowing that what I did with her was something that hurt my brother. When I was much younger, I felt like it was excusable, because she was always going out behind Danny's back anyway. I thought I may as well help myself to some of what she was spreading out to all the others anyway. When I got older, it was one of the ways I used to punish Danny for those times when he did things that ended up creating problems for himself and the rest of us. I rationalized what I was doing, but in truth, the real reason why I fucked her was to satisfy my own sexual urges. She was convenient, and the most attractive woman I knew who's let me fuck her. All the while that these problems kept going on with Danny and Kaitlyn, Delilah and Bridget were starting to turn up the pressure on me to help them more in their lives. Delilah had lost her job at the escrow company, shortly after they started having a big slow down in their business. Apparently, Bridget kept demanding that she take anything she could get in the way of work, in order to be able to pay her fair share of their expenses. Finally, being fed up with Bridget's constant complaining about money, Delilah came to me, asking me to let her move back into my house. When she came to me, she'd made it very clear that she was asking just for herself, that she wasn't expecting, and didn't really want, Bridget to be joining us. When she came over to ask me if she could move back, Delilah told me that she was only asking to be able to stay with me for long enough for her to find another job that paid enough for her to get her own apartment. At the time, about two weeks after I'd gotten back from my vacation, I saw no reason to tell her no. Later that day, she moved all her own things back to the spare guest bedroom that Bridget had used before, when the two of them used to live with me. I thought it a little strange that she didn't put all her things back in my bedroom like she'd done before, but I didn't say anything to her about it. When Delilah moved back in with me, Leslie and Bridget both got very upset. Leslie didn't say anything, but I could tell she didn't like it that Delilah had moved back into my house. Bridget, on the other hand, said plenty. To me, and to Delilah both. I had to endure many screaming matches between those two women, almost every time that Bridget came over to visit with Delilah. They would talk a lot on the phone, seeming to resolve all their differences, then, after Bridget would come over, either for dinner, or just for a visit with Delilah, the two of them always ended up getting into it about something. Bridget got mad at me because, by giving Delilah a place to live and food to eat, I was making it too easy for her to just sit on her ass and do nothing productive again. I was having sex with Delilah regularly. She'd come into my bedroom and we'd fuck, but, afterwards, she'd just get up, kiss me good night, then take off for her own bedroom. I could tell that she wasn't too happy to be away from Bridget. After a month of this though, I asked her if she was ever going to get out and start looking for another job. I didn't mind supporting her, but it seemed to me that Bridget was mostly right that it was bad for Delilah to sit around the house doing almost nothing, day after day. She was a young woman, and needed to try to make something of her life. While all this was going on, Bridget was hitting me up, regularly, for enough money to take up the slack of not having a roommate paying half of the expenses for the apartment. It wasn't that much money, and I could afford to do it, but that wasn't the point. After three straight months of loaning her money to help with the rent, money that wasn't being repaid, I finally just told her no. A week or so after I refused her, Bridget found herself a new roommate. As soon as she did, Delilah got very unhappy about it, certain that Bridget was doing the same thing with her new housemate as she'd done with Delilah when she'd lived with her. Since it was only a one bedroom apartment, I had a pretty good idea that Delilah was correct in her assumptions. After Bridget got the new roommate, both girls started to ratchet up the level of their screaming and arguing. Neither of them seemed happy about anything. Then, there was Leslie. Where to begin with her? I've already mentioned that she hated me letting Delilah move back in with me. She stopped accepting my invitations for her to eat with us, and didn't seem willing to even speak to Delilah anymore. When she did speak to her, it was just enough to not seem totally impolite. Delilah seemed to think Leslie's attitude towards her was hilarious. She knew that Leslie and I had enjoyed more than just a simple working relationship at one time, and she still remembered that Leslie had tried to keep her and Bridget from being able to come over to visit me. She enjoyed rubbing in the fact that she lived upstairs with me, and made plenty of comments to make sure that Leslie knew that she and I were fucking each other. I tried to get her to quit doing that, but she kept it up anyway. The whole situation placed a lot of strain on my working relationship with Leslie. I knew she was very unhappy with how things were, but I was still very determined to keep our relationship as a Platonic working one. We still talked to each other, usually many times each day. When it was just the two of us talking together, there were no problems between us. If Kaitlyn, Bridget, Delilah or any other woman was around, Leslie would retreat into some kind of a shell, refusing to participate in anything more than the bare minimum necessary to avoid making me upset with her. It went on this way for months. There was a lot of tensions and emotions, both on and below the surface. As time went by, the toll it was taking on my nerves got to the point where I started dreading whatever might be coming next. It all started unraveling about six months after my Hawaii vacation was over. Danny went out to a bar and got himself drunk. Nothing unusual in that. When he came home, Kaitlyn accused him of having been with another woman. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. When Danny didn't grovel and beg for forgiveness soon enough to satisfy Kaitlyn, she started screaming at him, and that quickly turned into her throwing pots and pans at him. Danny, still very drunk, neglected to duck out of the way quickly enough to avoid a thrown cast iron skillet, and ended up getting a nasty gash just above his left eye from the handle on the pan. In a panic from seeing all the blood spurting out from the wound, Kaitlyn called 911 for an ambulance. This time, it was Kaitlyn's turn to be arrested. Danny was taken to the emergency room at the hospital, treated for his cut and then released. I got the call from the hospital to come get him. Bridget was at Danny's trailer after Kaitlyn had phoned her before they took her away, asking her to come over to watch the kids. Kaitlyn had been arrested at five o'clock in the morning. I went to get Danny, to give him a ride back to his trailer, at ten. When I tried to drop him off at his trailer, at ten thirty, Kaitlyn's mother was there, helping with the kids, and calling all the people she knew to try to see about getting Kaitlyn released on bail. She got into it with Danny, screaming at him and claiming all of this was his fault, and telling him that he'd ruined her daughter's life. Danny, being Danny, started going off on his mother in law, and on what he called the four whores she'd raised up as her daughters. He cited chapter and verse about everything he knew that the four Keller girls had ever gotten up to in their lives. In Danny's diatribe against the four sisters, Bridget came out as the one with the fewest black marks against her name. She didn't get off completely free, however, as Danny raked her over the coals for everything she and Delilah had ever done to me, calling them both leeches for having milked me for as much as they possibly could. I found Danny's long spiel fascinating, especially when he compared all four sisters, claiming each as having been bed partners of his at one time or another. I'd had no idea that he'd ever nailed Bridget or Claire. All of us had fucked Mona and Kaitlyn at one time or another. Mona had been my second piece of ass. I was still fourteen, and it had happened about a month after Kaitlyn did it with me that first time. Mona was the oldest, and she was probably twenty eight or nine years old at that time. She came over to the trailer where we were all living at the time. This trailer they were just renting, and it was very small. I slept out on the sofa in the living room, because there was only the one bedroom. This was before Danny and Kaitlyn had any kids. I think Kaitlyn was pregnant with their oldest at the time. Mona was definitely pregnant then, with her second or third kid I think. Mona had driven over to ask her sister for money to buy gas for her car. Of course, Kaitlyn denied having any money, other than what she absolutely needed to buy that night's supper with, then telling her sister that she needed to catch a ride with her to go up to the store. Mona refused to take her unless Kaitlyn loaned her a couple bucks for gas. Finally, just to stop them both from yelling at each other, I pulled some money out of my front pocket and handed Mona three dollars. I tried to put the rest of my money back in my pocket before either woman noticed how much there was, but both of them had seen there was more left and started asking me about it. Having lived with my brother and his wife for the past three years, I knew enough to know better than to let either of them know I had any money. I'd messed up badly by taking out my roll in front of these two women. I tried to initiate damage control by refusing to answer any questions, and by not taking my money out so they could count how much I had. When they couldn't get me to show them my money again, they left to go up to the store, and I really thought I'd dodged the bullet. I should have known better. Mona came right back to the trailer after dropping her sister off. She came inside, telling me that she wanted to thank me for loaning her the gas money. Her first thank you was a blow job. She wasn't as talented with that as her sister was, but I knew enough not to mention that to her. After I came, she asked me to let her borrow twenty dollars, for one week. I told her I couldn't, since I needed all the money I had left to buy these three bikes some guys I knew were selling. They'd gone in together to buy this car from another guy, and they were selling off all their games and toys in order to get enough money to get that car of theirs running again. I remember I had about fifty dollars to my name at the time, and I had agreed to pay them twenty for those three bikes of theirs. "Loan me the twenty, Jimmy. If you do, I'll let you have something really nice for the interest on it." "I told you I need all the money I have left, Mona. I told some guys I'd buy some stuff from them later today. I'd loan it to you if I had it, but I don't, so sorry." Right after that was when she raised up her maternity skirt and pulled down her panties. She was about four or five months pregnant, and was showing pretty well by then. Before I really could react to her, she was pulling down my jeans and rubbing her pussy against my cock, which was already coming back to life. At least when I fucked Mona, I didn't feel all guilty about it like I had those other two times before, after I'd just fucked Kaitlyn. I ended up loaning Mona that twenty, not knowing how I could keep telling her I couldn't after she'd already paid me the interest. She never did repay any of that money, but she did pay interest on the loan, three or four more times after that first time. I went out and bought those three bikes later that afternoon, selling them over the next two or three days, getting my twenty dollars back, plus another fifteen in profit. I ended up taking Danny back to my house, afraid that he would get into a fight with Kaitlyn's mom if I didn't. He ended up spending two weeks living at my house before Kaitlyn finally realized she wasn't getting any of his money as long as he was living at my place. After he left, to move back home with his family, I refused to help either of them with Kaitlyn's legal problem. All she got was a fine, some unsupervised probation and a court order for her to take some classes in anger management. She went back to court later, crying poor mouth to the judge and got her fine suspended. She still had to take those classes though. All in all, those months of tension got the better of me after awhile. I started getting mad at most of the people around me. I started feeling like all of them were ganging up on me, trying to make my life as miserable as theirs seemed to be. I didn't appreciate being made to feel that way, and so I started pushing back at all of them. I ended up firing my brother again because of some hateful comments he directed Leslie's way. She had informed me that Danny claimed she had made mistakes about three new sets of tires she said we had in our inventory. I remembered buying those tires from a bankruptcy sale at a tire distributor's warehouse over in Walnut. Danny claimed that Leslie had probably sold them, and then forgotten to scratch them off the list. Leslie called around later and found the place where Danny had taken the tires and sold them. "Who are you going to take the side of, Jim, me or this fucking twisted up cripple of yours? You know she can get those friends of hers to tell all their lies if she asks them to? I'm your brother, and she's just some bitter little cunt that you should never have taken pity on anyway. Look at her, I just can't believe you'd take her side about this." I couldn't believe he would spout off about Leslie like he was doing. Usually, despite his many faults, Danny wasn't a mean person. All three of us knew that Danny had stolen those twelve tires, sold them, and then pocketed the money. He'd certainly done the same, or very similar, to me enough times over the years. Leslie wasn't the kind of person who'd try to frame someone else for something like this. I hated what he'd said in front of her. She didn't deserve to have things like that said about her. "You need to get out of here, Danny. Now! Isn't it bad enough that you get caught stealing from me again? Do you have to try to drag everybody else down to your same level? I'm done with you. No matter what I do for you, it's never enough, is it? You always need to take more than I'm already giving you. You just can't seem to stand the fact that I've got more than you do. I'm finished with that now. Go find someone else who'll put up with all your crap, I'm done." "I didn't steal those tires, Jim. I swear I didn't." "Mr. Driscoll has a copy of the receipt that Danny made out to him. You can go over to his place and ask to see it." Leslie spoke up finally. She'd been silent ever since Danny had first started in on her. "Receipts don't prove anything. I give out receipts all the time. You could have forged that receipt, or else altered a real one, for all we know." Danny wasn't very convincing in his protests. I figured he'd mostly gotten the wind taken out of his sails after I'd fired him. He was just going through the motions now, hoping to maybe salvage something. "Get out of here, Danny. Leave the truck too. I'm taking the price of those tires, whatever you got for them, out of your final check. Don't go making any fuss, and I won't try to evict you from your trailer. You guys can stay there, but don't come to me for any help with food or space rent anymore, because you won't be getting any from me." After he finally left, I felt like shit. I wasn't sorry for what I'd done, it needed doing, but still, he and his wife and kids were most of the family I had left on the planet. Anyway, rightly or wrongly, what had just happened left me feeling extremely depressed. I went upstairs to the main part of my house. "Jimmy, I need some money to buy some new clothes. I'm going to need them if I'm supposed to be out looking for work. Can you let me have one of your credit cards too?" Delilah had stood up, and had her hand out the minute I walked through the door from the garage. "I don't think so, Delilah. You've got enough clothes already. Why don't you go out and get a job first, then see what else you might need for the job you already have?" "Come on, Jimmy, why be that way? When's the last time I asked you for money for me to buy any clothes?" "It doesn't matter, Delilah. Why should I be the one who has to buy all your clothes? I don't mind so much that you live and eat here, but I don't see why you think I should be doing everything for you. You aren't disabled. Get up off your lazy ass and go out and get yourself a damned job. You've turned into nothing more than a leech." I guess she must have thought the gravy train would never end. She had this confused look on her face when I lashed out at her. I didn't really care about anyone's feelings anymore. I was tired of everyone feeling like it was up to me to see that their lives turned out okay. I didn't go around expecting anyone to take care of me. I'd never asked Delilah to come into my bedroom and fuck me. Whenever she came in, it was because she'd decided to, not because I'd requested it. Maybe she thought the sex was how she paid her rent. Hell, maybe it was. It didn't matter though, because, whatever the sex was to her, it didn't include all new clothing too. She could come or go, didn't matter one way or another to me. Same way with the sex, because I wasn't making her giving me sex a part of any agreement she thought we had. Less than an hour after Delilah and I had our little set to, Bridget came over, and the two of them drove off in Bridget's car. Delilah came home late that same night and went to her room without coming over to my bedroom. The same thing happened for the next five or six nights. I started eating out more, or only cooking enough for one person when I cooked. Right after the first of the month, Kaitlyn came over to try her hand at prying some money out of me. She met with no satisfaction at all. I told her, when she first started asking me, that there was no way that she or Danny were ever getting another penny's worth of help from me. She tried to tell me that I was punishing her children for something they hadn't had any part of. "I'm not punishing anyone. I'm just through being a sucker for every time you and Danny get it in your head that you want more. If you want to have more, then find a way to earn it. You live like you do because you and Danny have this silly idea in your heads that someone owes you a better life, and that you should live better than you do, in spite of the fact that you don't produce enough of value to make that possible. You aren't my responsibility, and I refuse to act as if you were anymore." "What about the kids? Are you going to make them suffer because of what Danny did?" "How am I making your kids suffer? You keep trying to accuse me of it, but I can't see it. Those are your kids, and I'm pretty sure that at least one or two of them are my brother's, but I know they aren't mine. Why should I have to help them when you and he piss your money away on gambling, booze and dope? If either of you had ever shown any real attempt to change how you do things, maybe I wouldn't have given up. You didn't change though, and I have given up. If your kids are suffering, you and Danny are the ones to blame, not me. Go home, Kaitlyn, get your own house in order. You and Danny both need to grow up and learn what it means to be a parent and an adult." I actually felt better by the time she finally gave up and left. I'd resisted all her attempts to guilt trip me into doing what she wanted. I'd laughed at her when she claimed I still owed her for all the fucking and the many blow jobs she'd given me. Possibly for the first time in my adulthood, I began to believe that I wouldn't weaken again, or revert to my old ways. I was finally starting to realize that all the help I'd been giving them hadn't really been help at all. Rather, it had allowed the two of them to continue down the path of shirked responsibilities and out of control behavior. They needed to see the full consequences of their actions, not expect to be bailed out of every bad situation they'd created for themselves. It was a few weeks later, after that talk I'd had with Kaitlyn, that Delilah moved back down to Los Angeles. She never mentioned she was leaving, just going ahead and packing up all her stuff, and some of mine too, then leaving. I found a note later, in the kitchen, telling me where she'd gone, and thanking me for letting her stay until she found something else. Nothing she ended up taking of mine was very important to me, and I was just as happy to see her leave. She'd started coming back to my bedroom once or twice a week, a couple of months before she left. I knew she was there to take care of her own itches, and not just for my benefit. I never turned down her offer, and I always enjoyed myself immensely those times I was the recipient of her talented skills in that area. Bridget came over a few days after Delilah left for LA. She seemed upset, sad that Delilah was gone. I think she might have wanted to sleep with me. Not because she wanted sex from me, but because she missed her friend Delilah, and thought being with me would somehow bring her closer to the memory of being with her. Whatever she might have been after, I did nothing to encourage her when she sent out her tentative feelers. She stayed for three or four hours before she finally got up and went back home again. Leslie had kept track of what was happening with my personal life. She perked up some after Delilah left. I think she thought Delilah's leaving would have a positive effect on the two of us resuming our previous social relationship. Whatever she might have thought, I still kept pretty much to myself. I was going through a tough period in my life, feeling cut off from anything other than my business. It was during this time that I first realized that making a lot of money, having a lot of money, just wasn't that important to me. I already had everything I needed as far as material goods went. How many steaks could a man eat in one day? How many houses or vehicles did he need? I didn't have the answer to those questions, but I already knew I had enough for myself. In the past, I'd always felt like I needed a reason, some justification, for giving so much of my money away to my brother and his family. During this period I was going through, I finally realized that my mistake wasn't so much in giving away my money, rather, it was with what my money was being used for after I'd given it away. I started trying an experiment right after coming to this conclusion. It just came to me that it might be a fun thing to do, so I phoned Kaitlyn and told her I was heading down to Los Angeles, to the garment district, and asked her if she and the kids wanted to go with me to buy them some new clothes for school? The first thing she said to me was that she didn't have the money to be buying any new school clothes for her kids. "This would be my treat, Kaitlyn. I just thought you might want a chance to get them some nice new clothes for school. I'd buy them myself, but I don't know squat about buying kids clothing. I heard they have some great deals down there for clothes." "So, why are you suddenly changing your mind about helping us out with the kids, Jimmy? Guilty conscience?" "Sorry I called you, Kaitlyn. I can see your thinking hasn't changed any from the last time we talked. I don't have anything to feel guilty about. I have a free day today, and was wondering if you'd had a chance yet to buy new clothes for the kids to have for school. I know buying kids clothes can be a financial problem for parents at times, and I thought you could possibly use some help in that regard. I'll let you go now, bye." "Wait! Jimmy, don't hang up yet, okay?" "I'm still on the line." "Okay, let's start over again, okay?" "Fine with me. I'm thinking about leaving in half an hour. Can you and the kids be dressed and ready to go by then?" "We can be ready. What about Danny, can he come too?" "He can come if he wants to. Is he home now?" "He's sleeping, but I can wake him up. He just finished up over at the furniture place last night at one o'clock, but he's off now until tomorrow afternoon. I know he'd like to see you, Jimmy. He still feels bad about the way you two ended things before." "Wake him up and ask him if he wants to go or not. I'm taking my pick up, so it will be pretty tight with all six of us in there." My pick up was a crew cab, with two bench seats that would seat six people. Angela, their youngest, still needed one of those children's car seats since she was less than six years old still. The two boys were both old enough to sit without a safety chair. We ended up with their oldest and Danny sitting up front with me, and Kaitlyn and the two younger kids in the back. We ended up spending the rest of the day down in Los Angeles. We ate lunch at this Mexican restaurant on the way, one that had pretty good food, and a great selection of hot sauces to put over everything. Danny and Kaitlyn drank a lot of beer with their meal. All three kids ate everything our waitress brought them. I was happy that none of them looked like they were turning out to be picky eaters. Danny and I were a little strained when we first laid eyes on the other one again. Kaitlyn did all she could to try to make sure neither of us said anything to ruin the trip to LA for her or the kids. She needn't have worried. Both Danny and I wanted to put the bad feelings behind us. Not seeing or speaking with each other like we'd been doing had been hard for both of us. In spite of everything, we both were painfully aware that we were the last of our kind. Not getting along with each other was the same as being totally cut off from all our blood relatives. Well, Danny had his kids, and I guess they were probably all blood relations to me too, except Danny and I both had our doubts about that middle kid of theirs. In any case, we'd both missed being in touch. Shopping in LA was a fun thing. I let the kids make the final choices of the things that Kaitlyn was picking out for them to wear. Angela made out like a bandit when we went to this one store that sold all these pretty girl's dresses. All those stores claim to sell at wholesale, but this one store really did. Even Kaitlyn was surprised that they could sell everything so cheaply. The boys made out well enough too. They got a lot of new shirts that fit them well, three pair of new shoes, two of them tennis shoes and the other dressier ones, and six pair of new jeans. I bought a couple dozen pairs of the same size and color of socks for each of them too. I bought different colors for each of the boys so they wouldn't steal from each other. I remembered how all my socks used to keep disappearing when I was a kid. I never knew why Danny liked to stretch out my socks with his big feet. Later I figured it might have something to do with the fact that Kaitlyn didn't like to do laundry. On the drive back, we stopped off and had steak at one of those Outback Steakhouse restaurants. Mine was excellent, and the kids all ate what was on their plates. Again, both Danny and Kaitlyn took fullest advantage of the free drinks. I was in a good mood, and didn't say anything about it. Later, when I dropped them all off at their trailer, Kaitlyn and all three of the kids thanked me for taking them on the shopping trip. I felt good that my money got used for something I knew would help the kids. With Danny and Kaitlyn, you never knew if the money you gave them would actually be used for what they told you it was for. I had enjoyed the day, enjoyed seeing and speaking with my brother again. Danny was working for this furniture store, driving and doing deliveries for them. He got a lot of overtime in, and liked the work. He started at noon, and sometimes, if they were really busy, stayed on in the warehouse helping them load trucks for the following day of deliveries. Danny, when he wanted to be, could be a damn good worker. He was very strong, and he wasn't afraid to sweat, or to get his hands dirty. I parked right next to Leslie's van when I got home, noticing that she'd left the garage door opened. Two things struck me as I was getting out of my truck. The first thing, was the most surprising, when I realized that neither Danny nor Kaitlyn had asked me to loan or give them any money during the whole day. They'd definitely let me pay for lunch and dinner, and all the clothes for their kids, but they hadn't asked me for anything other than the things I'd offered them already. The second thing I noticed was that it was pretty late for Leslie to be having her door opened like it was. I decided to look in on her, just to make sure everything was all right. She was in her wheel chair, reading something, when I ducked under the mostly opened up garage door. "I saw the door opened, and wanted to check to make sure you were all right. I can see everything is okay, so I'll leave you in peace, good night." I turned around to go back through her door. I'd left the door from the garage to my first floor locked, like it usually was now. "Why don't you come in so we can talk, Jimmy? There's something I need to discuss with you." I turned back and went back in, sitting on the couch, facing her as I did so. "What did you need to talk to me about, Les?" "Where were you today? I tried calling you, but your phone always went directly to voice mail." "I went down the hill today, with Danny and his family. I turned my phone off because I knew I wouldn't be available to go anywhere today. I probably should have warned you. What did you need to tell me when you tried calling?" "Nothing important, just some business things I wasn't sure about. I made some pricing decisions when I couldn't get you on the phone. That isn't what I wanted to talk with you about though. What I wanted to ask you is if I could still live here if I didn't work for you anymore? I'm thinking of going back to school, down the hill in Claremont. I could pay you some rent, maybe seven hundred a month?" "Wouldn't it be easier for you to live down there?" "No, besides, I really like living here. I'm just getting to the point, age wise, where I know I won't ever go back and finish my studies if I don't go back pretty soon. I've been saving most of the money you've paid me, and I think I might have enough, with the Vocational Rehab money, and a few grants I can get, to make it financially this time. I won't go though if it means I have to give up this apartment." "In the first place, this isn't an apartment, it's a garage. As far as you quitting goes, I guess I can struggle along without you if I have to. It won't be as profitable if you go, but I'll manage. If you think you want to go back to school, then I guess that's what you should be doing. Have you decided what you want to study yet?" "Marketing." "Marketing huh? Isn't marketing what you're doing for me? You already know more about that than I ever did. Why would you want to spend good money to go to school to learn about something you already know about? It doesn't make sense to me." "I don't know, I just do. Besides, there's a lot more to marketing than just being able to sell things over the telephone. A lot more." "I guess the real question is whether or not I'll let you continue living here, right? I guess I'm used to you now. You can live here if you want to. I'm not used to parking my vehicles inside anymore anyway. Forget about paying rent. You can use the extra money to make it easier on yourself to stay in school. We'll call it your severance pay." "I'd have stayed if things had turned out differently between us, but it doesn't look like they ever will." "I guess not. Besides, you'll probably be able to find yourself someone who's a whole hell of a lot better catch than I'd ever be, once you get over to that college you're heading off to attend. This little burg is where I belong, but you can try for something a lot better than this. I'm pretty much just a bum who has this knack for buying and selling things, and that's about all I'll ever amount to. If it wasn't for that knack I have, I'd probably be just like my brother and all his friends. You could do a lot better. You should do a lot better." "You definitely aren't a bum, and you're nothing like your brother. You'd make a success at anything you cared to try your hand at. You have a very good heart, and though you try not to show it, you'd go out of your way to help anyone who needed it. Like I told you before, if things had worked out with us, I wouldn't be going back to school. I have to take steps to make sure I have some kind of life though. You don't know how hard it is being here and knowing I can't ever have what I really want." I left it like that, knowing that it was better for Leslie to get out and make a new life for herself. I was trapped here in Hesperia, or else some place pretty much like it. I could do what I did in most places, but my roots were all here. I'd already made all my choices, a long time before, when I'd decided not to leave right after high school. Danny and his family were here, and I knew I had to stay here to watch and make sure they got by okay. If it hadn't been for that, maybe I'd have gone off to college myself. It wasn't bad here, and I'd ended up living in a nice house and having enough money to be free to make lots of choices. I was still young yet, and there was plenty of time left for me to find something else I wanted to do. I could go to college a few days a week if I wanted to. The problem was, I was already doing what I most liked to do. I knew damn well that I would miss having Leslie helping me with the business. She never caused me problems, and she'd always made me more money than I paid her. I'd miss her in other ways as well, but that decision had already been made. ------- Chapter 17 Leslie started back at the college, making the trip up and down the Cajon Pass five days per week. I got myself back into a familiar routine, doing all my buying early in the day, then selling what I'd just purchased during the late afternoon and early evening. My relationship with Danny and his family remained somewhat spotty. If I thought of something I wanted to do with them, or saw something I thought the kids might like to have, I either invited them to do it, or else went ahead and purchased what I wanted to give them. Neither of them ever refused to accept any gift I brought over for the kids. We took several outings together, including a four night cruise down to Mexico. I shared my room with their oldest son, while Danny and Kaitlyn had the other two in their stateroom. It ended up that the real cost of the cruise turned out to be seventy percent higher than I'd figured on, due to the mandatory tipping policy the ships have in place, and all the extra costs of doing something after the ship ties up at a port and passengers go ashore. In spite of all the costs, we had a good time. It pleased me to see the kids getting to participate in a more normal vacation. As far as I remembered, the only time they'd been on a vacation before had been for a day trip down to Disneyland. They'd only gone that time because Kaitlyn's mother had given them all some pre-paid tickets to the park for a Christmas present. I remember listening to Danny telling Kaitlyn that he'd been unable to find anyone who wanted to pay him a decent price for the tickets. I'd treated the cruise tickets the same way, not allowing either of them to have any opportunity to sell others the cruise instead of going on it themselves. Leslie had insisted on making some payment for my letting her stay in the garage. What we worked out was having her go over the purchased goods manifests and write up her suggestions about who I should be calling for the sale. I made certain that she didn't spend more than a few hours a week going over the paperwork I left for her to look over. Generally, with her help, the time I needed to spend looking for potential buyers was cut in half. Unlike the first time she'd gone off to college, this time Leslie was fully prepared for the obstacles she'd need to overcome in order to succeed in her classes. Before she signed up for, or ever attended, a single class, she made certain that it was wheel chair accessible, and easily within her capability to get there in time from any previous class she might be traveling from. She concentrated a lot more on the logistics of getting her education. When she'd first tried college, she hadn't been able to handle all the frustrations that came from having a poorly thought out class schedule. She had been able to handle her course work, but hadn't been physically strong enough, or mentally prepared enough to handle all the moving around required to get from here to there to attend her classes. Getting back into the rhythm of attending classes was easily handled, now that she'd made sure she was well prepared to move around on campus. When she was back home again, I always made it a point to not disturb her until she'd finished preparing for the next day's classes. When she was finished, she'd call me, and I'd come down to the garage, carrying the paperwork for whatever I'd purchased that day. If she didn't finish before nine in the evening, she didn't call me, and I'd hold off on showing her the paperwork until the following evening. This way, I made very sure that she wasn't devoting too much time to my business. One of the ways I did this was by taking all the paperwork with me when I left. I never spent longer than an hour with her on days when she had classes the next day, and usually, the time spent with her was closer to half an hour anyway. On weekends, I'd either cook us a meal we could enjoy while we went over invoices, or else I'd take her out somewhere where we could eat a meal and finish up any business discussion we needed to. I found myself looking forward to the weekends. She had started back to school in the late Summer, and everything seemed to be going very well for her right up until the time when her school recessed for the Winter break. I came down to see her the day after her break started, just in time to catch her sitting in her wheel chair crying. "Les, what's the matter?" I came down the ramp, moving a little faster than I normally would, once I saw that she was upset about something. "Nothing's the matter. Sometimes I just get so tired of not being able to do simple things. I wanted to buy my dad this new driver for Christmas. He was talking about how he thought it might be just what he needs to cure his slice." "What kind of driver are we talking about?" "A golf club. Anyway, I just called that golf store over on Avenue "I", and the man told me they don't have a ramp to get in and out of his store. I hate to bother you, but do you think you could go over there and buy the club for me?" "Why would you want to do business with a company that obviously doesn't care whether or not they do any business with you? If they did, they'd make sure they had a ramp so you could shop there." "Jimmy, golf is a game for people who use their legs. Why would they go to all the expense of putting in a ramp for people who can't walk?" "Tell me about the club. How do I make sure I have the right one?" "My dad is left handed, so it has to be a left handed Driver. The one he wants is a Taylor Made R-9 with a draw bias. It needs to have a senior flex shaft, with a 460cc head." "Call some sporting good stores down the hill, Les. Find one that has wheel chair access, and also has some of those driver things in stock, and we'll drive down and pick it up today. I need to buy some presents for Danny and them too, so we can make a day of it. I need to ask you about this idea I've had anyway, and I can do that while we're driving." Leslie looked at me kind of funny, but she didn't say anything at the time. Instead, she picked up her laptop and started scrolling on Google for some places that might have this club she wanted for her father. While she took care of that, I went back upstairs and changed my clothes. I figured as long as we were going down the hill anyway, I might as well clean myself up enough that we could go eat at a nice restaurant. When I was done with sprucing myself up, I went back down to the garage. "You find a place yet?" "I found two, one in Santa Ana, and the other one in Brea. The Santa Ana one says they're having a sale, and the club is a hundred dollars off all this week. The Brea one is closer to us though." "Is it a hundred dollars closer?" Leslie laughed, shaking her head that it wasn't that much closer. When she noticed that I'd changed my clothes, she asked me if I could wait long enough for her to take a shower and get ready. She started moving around, heading over to her dressers to find some clean clothes to wear, while I picked up the phone and dialed my brother's number. "Kaitlyn, this is Jimmy. The reason why I'm calling is because I'm heading down the hill today, doing my Christmas shopping, and I wanted to ask you if you had any ideas about what I might get for the kids, for their Christmas presents?" "Presents? I don't know, maybe some games for the boys, and Angie loves dolls and doll clothes right now. Danny and me, we bought a DVD player for them, and it came with three kids DVD's. Larry is a big fan of Spider man, so anything with Spider man on it, he'd love. Roger is more an outdoors type. He's been asking for some baseball stuff for ages. He wants to play Little League in the spring. He wants a glove, and some Little League shoes, the kind with rubber bumps on the bottom?" "There are different kinds of gloves. What position will he be playing?" I heard her yelling at Roger in the background, asking him what position he played in baseball. I guess his answers were unsatisfactory to her, because a minute later and my nephew was on the line. "Uncle Jim?" "Hi, Rog. I was just talking to your mama and she told me you wanted to play some baseball in the Spring. What positions do you play?" "I'm mostly a catcher, but I do some pitching too. I like catching the best though." "Did your dad ever tell you that he used to be a catcher too?" "He said he was. Said he played in high school. He never wants to play catch with me though." "He was varsity for three years. Hell of a hitter too. I used to go to all his games when he played. He could teach you a lot about catching if you asked him to. What size cleats do you wear?" "Cleats?" "Baseball shoes." "I'm not sure. I wear a men's size seven tennis shoe, so maybe a seven? They have to be the Little League kind, else I won't be able to wear them." "Okay, put your mother back on the line for me." "Jimmy?" "Where's Danny?" "He's out doing something. He didn't tell me where or what. Left early, so maybe he has some part time work with Hector or something." "You tell him to come see me and I'll give him some money to take Roger to get some baseball stuff for Christmas. Danny could be a big help to him for Little League if he wanted to take the time for it." "I'll tell him, but don't count on him doing any baseball stuff with Roger. You know how he feels about him." "I know. Hell, I used to think the same thing myself. Roger doesn't look a bit like Danny, and he probably never will. That isn't any fault of Roger's though. Danny should be used to that by now, and he's for damn sure the only daddy Roger will ever have." "You said you used to think that, does that mean you've changed your mind?" "Hell no! I still think he has a different father than Danny, but what difference does that make? Danny's raising the boy, and he shouldn't treat him any different than the other two. The time for him to have raised a fuss is long past. Roger is his son now, if not by blood, then by all those years of living together." "I've always believed he was Danny's. I know he doesn't favor Danny in how he looks, but he doesn't favor me at all either, and I know for damn sure that he's my son. You watch the two of them walking from behind them sometime, then tell me who you think Roger's dad is." Leslie came out of the bathroom and started getting dressed then, so I got off the line. I couldn't help noticing that her boobs were still looking fine, although this was the first I'd seen of them, naked like that, for a year or longer. Leslie noticed me looking, but she didn't take any steps to turn away or cover them up. We drove down to Santa Ana first, getting that golf club for her father. I bought some presents at a different sporting goods store for Danny's kids. The place where we got the golf club was a golf store, and that was all they sold, golf stuff. Leslie and I went to this other store in Santa Ana that had a big selection of dolls and doll houses. I'd have bought this one doll house, if it hadn't been for the fact that I knew there was no room for it in Danny's trailer. It was a big sucker, at least five feet tall, and about four feet long and wide too. I bought Angela five dolls, and quite a few doll outfits to go with them. The doll clothes were hand made, and cost more than the dolls themselves did. I was in the process of buying Larry one of those video game machines, with eight or nine different game cartridges that I had to purchase separately. Before I bought it though, I saw this kid who was playing the demo model for that particular machine they had operating in the store. He looked about Larry's age, so I asked him which cartridges were good, and which ones were lame. He seemed pretty excited about the ones he pointed out for me to buy. I thanked him for all his help, then handed him a twenty, telling him to get a cartridge for his own game. He took the money, telling me he had a different game at home, one that was a lot better than the one I was planning to buy. I put everything back, then followed him over to look at the game machine he said he owned. This time it took him only five minutes to gather up the eight best game cartridges for that particular machine. It cost a little more than the other one, but not that much more. Since we were so close, we drove down to Newport Beach and found a restaurant overlooking the bay for our place to eat lunch. The food was only so so, but the view was nice, and the weather was fairly mild for a December day, so we could sit out on the patio overlooking the bay. We watched the boats going by as we ate. The bay didn't have the best smell to it, but it wasn't terrible or anything. "You were going to tell me about this idea you have?" "Right, I almost forgot. I ran into some people a few months ago, Asian people from Chino Hills. The whole family makes these wind chimes. I met them at the fairgrounds, trying to sell their chimes to people going to the fair. They were having no luck at all, mostly because they all spoke really poor English. They've only been in this country for about a year. I was fascinated by these wind chimes though, and ended up buying a few after I got them to understand I was interested in buying wholesale only. Back where they come from, these wind chimes are supposed to ward off bad spirits or something. The whole family makes them, part of their heritage they told me. What I was thinking is that you might be able to give them a hand with marketing these things, kind of like that project the professor assigned you, except we could make some money at the same time while you write up what you did. Theoretical for your class, and actual for our business." "Our business?" "Sure, why not? See, these people spent almost three thousand dollars, probably most of the money they have in the world, trying to sell exactly the wrong product to people who came to the fair for a much different reason than to buy wind chimes from a bunch of foreigners. The girl, their daughter, she told me they hadn't even gotten back a third of what they's spent, and the fair was nearly done when I went to it. Less than a thousand in gross sales, and that didn't include what it cost in materials and labor to make those things. She told me the family can make five thousand of them a month, if they had the orders. They were selling those chimes for ten bucks a copy, but they sold me mine for four bucks each. That was their wholesale price. I asked the girl how many I could buy at that price and she told me all they had, or could make. I called the number they gave me after the show was finished, and purchased the eleven hundred they had left. It made their day when I showed up with the cash and carted those boxes of chimes away." "You bought eleven hundred sets of wind chimes?" "I bought and took delivery on eleven hundred. I wrote up a contract to purchase another sixty thousand a year, beginning in April of this coming year. All their production. Five thousand each of twelve different designs. They're going to be delivering the first five thousand on the first of April. I already gave them ten thousand dollars as an advance payment, so they could buy up the materials. All of it is stuff they import from their old country. All dirt cheap too, you wouldn't believe the prices they get stuff for. No wonder Walmart does so much business over there." "Jimmy, you can't be serious. You're telling me that you've committed a quarter of a million dollars for buying wind chimes?" "I'm not crazy, Leslie. I signed a contract to buy sixty thousand over the whole year, but I have an out clause in case my marketing plan runs into difficulties I haven't correctly anticipated." "An out clause?" "Right. I do have to buy the first three months production, for sixty thousand dollars, but if I run into problems selling enough to pay for the next three months worth, I can ask for a three month delay. Eventually though, I do have to buy the whole year's production from them." "What were you thinking when you made this deal?" "Well, I didn't have any problem selling off the first eleven hundred. It took me less than a month to sell those, and I made out pretty well on the price I sold them at too. I'm planning to sign up for some trade shows to sell them in larger quantities. There are nine big shows across the country where thousands of buyers come to look over products just like these. These are unique, Les, I've never seen any others that look as good or have such a good sound to them." "What price did you get for the ones you sold?" "Six bucks each, with half a gross minimum purchase. Each sale I was guaranteed to make almost a hundred and fifty profit." "Have you had much repeat business yet?" "Not yet, but I was planning to wait until after the first of the year before calling around to check up on their sales." "Jimmy, you don't have anything close to a quarter million dollars. What were you thinking?" "You should have seen them, Les. I've never seen four people so beaten down in my life. It was pathetic. If what they were selling had been junk, I wouldn't have tried to get involved. This is high quality product though. You couldn't make a chime a third as nice as these ones for less than ten dollars, just for the parts, I guarantee it. People who know their wind chimes go crazy when they see these designs. I was driving up the coast, and stopped at a place called Oxnard Shores. I ended up selling over three hundred chimes there, in less than two days. This one shop I sold to, the lady was taking them out of the box to look at them, and customers were trying to buy them from her even before she'd decided if she'd be buying any from me. She ended up pricing them at nineteen ninety nine each, and I saw her sell off at least ten of them before I left her store. That's a hell of a mark up, right?" "How come I never heard you talking about these wind chimes before? Is that what you were doing when you said you were taking that vacation in July?" "I had to test market them, didn't I? Yes, to that other question too. I spent two days a week on it for three months. I've been to San Diego, Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, Oceanside, San Juan Capistrano, and a lot of smaller places in between. Wherever I went, people were interested. I could have sold out a lot quicker too, if I hadn't had such a high minimum order. The Santa Barbara trip was the one where I left for a week. I sold more than seven hundred units on that one trip alone." "Tell me about these shows you want to sign up for. Why shows, if what you did before worked out so well?" "Because trade shows bring all the buyers to one place instead of you having all the expense of going to see each one yourself. They're expensive, especially in the beginning when you're trying to build a market following for your product. Once you start selling though, these buyers become your customers. The wind chimes will just be our first product. We'll add new things as they come along. That will be my job, finding new products that we can add to our product brochures. Your job will be to handle all the sales, and to make sure we have everything we need to fulfill all the orders you get. This isn't that much different from what we've been doing, except that now we'll be in control of the source of the products we sell." "You keep saying we. It might have been better if you'd first bothered to consult with me before you tried to drag me into this. Where am I going to get the time to do all this and go to classes too?" "I know that. This is why I'm starting out so small, with only one product and a dozen designs. Later, after you've graduated, we'll expand. By then though, we'll have a good foundation built up, and a huge list of stores as our client base. You'll see, it all fits together perfectly. I have this whole thing mapped out in my head for the next ten years. After that, we'll both have all the money we'll need for whatever we decide to do next." "It seems to me that you're taking a lot for granted. Especially about me taking part in it all, You can't just spring this on me and expect me to go along with all your plans. I have my own plans too, you know?" "I'm not springing it on you, I'm telling you my ideas so we can discuss them. I'm open to making some changes. About things like products and timing. I thought you'd see what I'm excited about, Les. This is a whole new direction for the business, and yet, it really isn't very different from something we both know we're already good at. I know we'll have to take other things into consideration, nothing ever works out exactly like you've planned it. I thought we could work together on this, make it our business, instead of the way things are now." "What exactly am I supposed to be contributing to this so called business of "ours"? My wheel chair, my van?" "Not hardly. I'd expect something a lot more valuable from you than those things. I need you to make this thing work for sure. I get worried sometimes, especially when I start to doubt that I'm capable enough at what I do to see this plan through to a successful conclusion. I'm not sure I can, not alone anyway. That worried me some at the beginning, and it bothered me a lot that I couldn't be sure about any of this, if it was just me, on my own. I thought about it some, and that's when I realized that I didn't need to be alone for this. If you're with me, then, together, I know we can do this." Saying this to her, I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. I wanted her to be sure about what I was finally getting around to saying to her. I knew she wasn't going to be motivated by the chance to join with me in just another business relationship. We'd tried that, and it had turned out not being enough for either of us. There had been a time when all I had going for me was my business. Everything else wasn't working out for me. When I started getting rid of some of the problems I couldn't successfully deal with, and the unhappiness coming from all the people I'd decided I really wasn't helping, all I had left was the business. That's when I started understanding that the business, by itself, couldn't provide me with everything I needed to be happy. That was also when I first started understanding that what I liked best about my business was working with Leslie. Being around her made everything about my business better for me. It made my life richer as well. It was just about the time that I first began to figure out who and what was important to me, that Leslie told me she wanted to quit the business and go back to school. I knew, as soon as she told me this, that my life's plan had just been torpedoed. I guess I always had it somewhere in the back of my head that I had all the time I'd need to change the way I lived my own life so that I could be a better fit for Leslie, changing myself into the man I someday hoped to become. I expected that I'd have to improve both the environment I lived in, including all my usual associates, and myself, as a person, to make me worthy of having someone as special as she was, as a part of my life. Her announcement about quitting had caught me totally unprepared. The only thing that prevented me from instant panic had been her request to continue living in my garage. The fact that she wasn't just leaving gave me hope, but it also caused me to revise my ideas about how much time I had to make those changes I'd been considering. Leslie looked down at my hand covering hers. Her face had taken on a deeply pinkish color as she did so. She looked on the verge of pulling her hand away from mine. "I'm a little confused, Jimmy, what exactly are you asking me to do right now?" "Right now? Nothing. Nothing for the business at least. I can handle the business things for right now. All you have to do is keep up with all your studies. Later is when I'll need you for the business. The one thing I do need, right now, is some commitment from you that we can work together." "On the business?" "On everything. We tried keeping things separate. It didn't seem like it worked as well as the other way did. I know I have to make some changes, and I will. I've already made some changes about how I do some things, and about who I do them with." "Everything covers a lot of ground. Can you be more specific about what everything means when you apply that term to you and to me?" "Everything means that we don't try to keep anything separate anymore. There's the old business, the new business, and there's us. We'll work on all of it, together, and when we aren't working, then all the other stuff we do, that will be together also." "Is this like a proposal? If it is, its a very strange one. If it isn't a proposal, then what is it, exactly?" "Its more like a merger than anything else. That doesn't prevent us from getting married later, if we both want to, but I'm not making that a condition for us agreeing to working together on these other things I talked about. What I'm really asking is whether you want us to work together again, like before, or if you want to stay separate like we have been this past year or so? What you want is what will determine what I want." "A merger? Do I continue to sleep alone under this merger of yours, or will we go back to you sleeping in my bed at night?" "In your bed." "Every night, or just when its convenient for you?" "Every night when I'm home. I expect I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling while you're finishing up with your schooling." "We'll be doing more than just sleeping together in my bed at night too, right?" "Just like it was before we decided it was better for us to be separate before." "I never decided that, you did. Are you still going to get to make all those decisions if I agree to this merger?" "We could take some time to think about those kinds of things. I don't really need your decision yet. What I'm really looking for is some indication from you that you might be open to the idea of us doing this merger." "I'm open. I'm very open to it, except for that part where only one of us gets to decide about important things." I've already reversed myself on that decision, which is the whole point of us having this conversation we're having. I was wrong, and I want us to go back to where we were before, then go forward from there. Now that you've already told me that you're open to the idea, we can fill in all the details as we go along. First, we need to agree on the merger. Once we do, then we can start to take action to implement it." "Is us going to bed and having sex part of the merger plan, or is that part of the implementation phase?" "That's all implementation. We won't get to that until after we have the merger I'm asking you about." "In that case, I'm in favor of an immediate merger." "Me too." "Good, then its settled. Pay the bill and let's get out of here. We need to drive back home and start implementing this merger of ours." I stood by the chair lift behind her van, watching as it slowly made its way down to the pavement. I wondered how much trouble and expense it would be to put in a faster hydraulic system? It was at least an hour and a half's drive back to Hesperia, and, I, for one, was impatient to begin the implementation phase of our recently concluded merger. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2009-08-03 Last Modified: 2009-08-27 / 11:52:21 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------