Chapter 10: This is Our Love

October 6th, 1995, 9:30 AM CT, Joe’s Diner, Houston, TX

They had woken up less than an hour before. Everyone was tired from the long drive and day, not least of all Miguel who had done a good deal of the driving, and had been up before the crack of dawn the day before. But they had gotten up because they didn’t want to sleep the day away and not be able to sleep on the train. That would have been a poor choice given the long ride from Houston to Los Angeles. The kids sleeping as much of the trip as possible would be ideal.

Miguel, Sharon, and the kids sat together. Miguel was thinking. He really wanted to get with Sharon. She was a really warm and caring person, he could tell. She deserved a good man, and he liked to think of himself as a good man. He hoped she could honestly find what she wanted and needed in him. He didn’t want to force himself upon him; if he was not what she was looking for, he would understand. Be he really hoped that things could be otherwise.

He also wanted to get to know these kids. He knew they had been abused by their father, and yet none of them seemed bitter. They were cheerful kids; playful, and very close to each other. They were something of a bound group; they seemed to genuinely be friends with each other, not just siblings. From his experience growing up on the farm, he didn’t think that was particularly common.

“Sharon, we were in such a rush yesterday,” Miguel said, “You never really introduced your children.”

“Oh. Well, ok,” Sharon started, “James is my eldest. He’ll be 18 in a few months. Everyone calls him Jimmy, he gets annoyed if you call him James. So don’t do that.””

Jimmy was a good looking guy, fit and handsome. He had been helping a lot yesterday, and working hard for his family despite the difficult circumstances, but if he wasn’t so nice, Miguel would have taken him for a jock. James seemed to regard Miguel with some degree of suspicion, but seemed like he’d be willing to let him prove himself. Given that Jame’s father was such a prick, it was reasonable to treat another potential father figure with suspicion.

“Then there is Jessica, she’s my Christmas baby. She was born on Christmas morning in 1980. She is, of course, 14. She’s a bit of a red neck, but she’s really sweet.”

Jessica was really good looking for a fourteen year old, Miguel suspected. It was hard to tell. She was dressed, as she had been yesterday, in a white, stained t-shirt, and a set of loose and tattered overalls that didn’t do anything to show her figure. Her whole personality screamed tomboy. Her mother didn’t seem to be one. Perhaps she got it from her father’s side. Something told him she already liked him.

“Jackie is the brains of the family, seriously. Book worm, she’s always reading. She’s nine years old, and she’s already read entire Agatha Christie cannon, and she’s working her way through Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. She really loves mysteries. She probably knows more than I do about everything.” Sharon smiled, obviously proud, and with good reason.

She was definitely nerdy looking, Miguel thought. She was wearing a dirty oversized t-shirt and beat up tan pants. All of these people’s clothes were tattered, he noticed. He wondered if it was uncaring, poverty, or both. She seemed scared of him, and he couldn’t figure out why. He knew it wasn’t his fault; he felt sorry for her that she was in a position in life where she was scared of men almost automatically. David must have been a really scary piece of work.

“Jeff is also a bookworm, and he’s seven. He’s very shy, but he’s wonderful if he gets to like you.”

Jeff looked like he had to be a nerd too. He looked like he read a lot, and he was only seven. Jeff seemed to be in mortal terror of Miguel.

“And lastly, Jenna is my little devil. She is five, and the most precocious, playful, friendly, and intelligent child I’ve ever seen, and not just because she’s mine. She’s in love with you, so watch out,” Sharon grinned.

Jenna was the most adorable thing on two legs, and she had been incredibly friendly. She was already calling him Uncle M. This after knowing for barely a full day. Miguel thought a lot of himself, overall, but he figured it said a lot more about her than about him.

“Alright, Miguel, now that you know something about my kids, why don’t you introduce yourself to them?” Sharon said, looking at him pointedly, “After all, they didn’t really get a chance to meet you either, yesterday. Driving Chex is not a job that allows you to socialize much.”

“No,” Miguel laughed, “It isn’t. Ok, let me give them the boring lecture version,” he smiled.

“The boring lecture version?” Sharon asked playfully, “I was expecting you to put on a puppet show or something.”

“Can you get me puppets?”

“No,” she said, “But I wish I could. I would love to see you try.”

“Shame, I would have loved to have tried,” Miguel grinned, “Anyway, my name is Miguel Rodrigo Ramos Abaca. I was born on November 5th, 1955 to migrant workers working for the Weisensteins on their farm. My mother died in childbirth, so I never knew her. Everything I have, I owe to the Weisensteins. Gladys took me in, and she was almost a mother to me; no, thats not right: she was a mother to me. I worked there my entire life, and I loved working the farm. My life for the past 10 years has been taking care of Ms. Weisenstein, the kindest, sweetest, most generous, and nicest woman in the world, possibly besides your mom.

“I’m a mechanic, and Mrs. Weisenstein sometimes called me Miguyver because I seemed to be able to fix anything,” he pronounced it ‘Meh-gwy-ver, ‘ “I loved the problem solving of fixing things. It gave me great joy to get something that was broken and not working going again, preferably entirely on my own. I really like you guys; you are the sweetest kids I have ever met. The Weisensteins were really nice, but their kids were horrible rotten spoiled people.”

Breakfast came and they ate it with some relish; the kids putting away food in that unique way children seem to be able to. They had their fill, which took some doing. Joe’s diner provided surprisingly good food for a place that screamed “choke-and-puke” in every way possible. When they were done, Miguel again insisted on paying the bill, to Sharon’s increasingly loud objections, and they went on their way back to the motel. Miguel liked to give to people; it was his nature.

Miguel went out and came back a little bit later with a Monopoly game, fresh wrapped in the plastic. Jenna was too young for a real game of Monopoly, and went into the other room and watched TV. Jackie and Jeff wrinkled their noses at her in distaste over her choice of entertainment, but their disdain was clearly more playful than serious. They then proceeded to produce books and laid closely together on one of the beds, apparently snuggling while each read their individual books. They seemed like they were really close siblings. Miguel wondered if they were perhaps too close; he made note of it and decided to keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, Miguel, Sharon, Jimmy, and Jessica took the two chairs from one room, made a four person table, and set up the Monopoly board. They had a lot of fun playing Monopoly. It was a game of patience, skill and resource management in addition to luck, and was famous for how long a game could actually take when playing with the right people. Sharon smiled when Jessica, as always, won by a landslide. She might be a bit on the rednecky side, but she was also very screwed and intuitively intelligent.

The group got along swimmingly given the addition of an entire new party. It was as if Miguel had been part of the group for years, not just a few days. It was weird, and yet it felt completely right. Sharon wasn’t sure whether she wanted to initiate a romantic relationship with Miguel; once bitten, twice shy. But she knew that he was a good person to have along to help with taking care of her kids; she needed the help. She couldn’t do it on her own; five kids was too much for her; even kids as good and as cooperative as her kids were.

October 6th, 1995, 1:30 PM CT, Biga On The Banks Restaurant, San Antonio, TX

Last night, Josh and Akilah had slept together in a different relationship than they had been in the night before. As Josh had said, no more questions, no more wondering, no more dithering. They were in love, and more than that they were engaged. There were no more doubts. No more questions about what would be right and what would be wrong. They were right together. That night was a night of discovery.

They discovered each other, and even more, they discovered themselves. They learned more about how their bodies responded to each other. They learned how to send the other into seemingly endless thralls of pleasure; even ecstasy. They learned how to manage to work their pleasure together, so that their joy became one. They learned of taste, texture, and scent. They learned of each other’s fears, and worked to overcome what was left of them. They learned that satisfaction of the other brought its own kind pleasure.

They learned more than this, though. They learned trust. They learned to fully trust the other’s intention, something that didn’t come naturally to either. They were both deeply repressed souls, tortured by their compatriots in the worlds where they came from. They were both extremely jealous of themselves, scared to mete out bits of who they were for consumption by anyone else. But they learned to forego that between themselves; they learned that the others love, understanding, and admiration was boundless.

Faster than seems possible they began to meld into extensions of one entity; theirs. When they finally fell asleep together, as if symbolic of this, they fell together in a total tangle of their bodies, so fully wrapped up together that were it not for their very different skin tones, it would be impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. They woke up the same way. By the time of their waking up that morning, they had lost what had been a major component of their makeup- their fear. They were no longer scared of their futures, because they would be together, and they were no longer scared of the outside world, because they could face it together.

Akilah and Josh were beaming about their new relationship as they came out of their bedroom that morning. Seeing it, George took Josh to a jewelry store and loaned him the money to buy a nice but simple ring to give to Akilah. Josh felt a bit awkward taking the money, but George insisted, and told him he could pay him back at his leisure, if he insisted, or could forget about it he didn’t. Josh was the kind of man who would insist, though.

Akilah glowed brighter then the sun when Josh gave her the ring; somehow it made it all the more real. Whenever she looked down at it, her heart fluttered; it was a constant reminder that, as she had sung, she had met the boy she was going to marry. He really was all she had ever wanted and even more. She felt completed, she had found what had been missing from her life. She wanted for nothing more.

The kids went out and spent the morning exploring the famous San Antonio River Walk. Amtrak had called them to tell them to expect the train to arrive late at night on the 7th or early, early in the morning on the 8th. So they went to the River Walk and walked along it, looking at the many shops and stores, as well as the interesting atmosphere of it all. George didn’t think it all that hot, to be honest. He was a New York City type. New York City is what a big city should be, in his mind. He wasn’t totally enthralled by big cities as a rule, but if it had to be a city, The City was the one.

San Antonio was inefficient, dirty, messy, and a little bit cold. It seemed to lack the intimate feeling of New York, as well as the sheer resilience. This place seemed to be more flashy, and the anger wasn’t a facade the way it was in New York. People here didn’t have that New York hospitality or anything of the sort. It had a very Texas feel to it, and that was not the most enjoyable of feels. But they weren’t there to live, the were there to visit as tourists, and that is what they did.

As the day wore on, they got hungry and decided to get something to eat. They found a place that looked pretty good and they stopped there to eat. “Biga on the Banks,” it called itself. It sounded interesting, as did many of the menu items. They were reluctantly shown in to the restaurant, after George showed the slightly pompous maître d’ his American Express Platinum card. Or rather, his dad’s card, but they didn’t know that. Not that his dad would mind. Prior to him showing that bombastic symbol of wealth and power, the maître d’ acted like they had no businesses being anywhere near their restaurant.

Akilah and Josh’s glow when they woke up continued all day long; it was like they were walking on sunshine. It was obvious they had sex at some point. George and Jill were happy for them. Nobody was sure if they were in love yet, but that would come in time. They certainly really liked each other.

When the waiter finally came, George ordered San Pellegrino for the entire table. Generally, George didn’t cotton to bottled water, but in his mind San Pellegrino was in a different category. It had an elusive complexity of flavor and didn’t taste like bottled tap water. In his mind, most other bottled waters did. However, this particular spring in San Pellegrino Terme, Italy had a certain flavor and feel to it that made it worth the extra money.

Shortly afterward, the waiter came to take their orders. He had that certain efficient pomposity that waiters at establishments such as this one seem to develop as if it was ordained by the God of Expensive Restaurants. It wasn’t the most pleasant of manners, but the food other people ordered looked really good, so they all decided to try the food anyway.