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."