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.