Chapter 33: I’ll Take These Apples And All The Cash

I stood there for a minute. The house seemed too empty and quiet. Funny how used I’d gotten to having her here in just two days. I could only hope she’d come by one evening this week after I got off work.

I’d put Barney off for too long. “Barney! Want to go for a walk?” Foolish question. I heard the mad scramble of toenails on the wood floor, and Barney came sliding to a stop at my feet, panting. It doesn’t take much to make Barney happy. Humans should be more like dogs.

I grabbed the leash and some plastic bags and off we went. I let him lead me wherever he wanted to go while I thought about Karen.

First, we had had that odd connection where I was feeling what she was experiencing. None of the other women I’d had sex with had even hinted at that happening, though I could see how that might be a difficult topic to raise. “Say, did you just get that feeling like you were in my mind just now?” But I would like to think it was special with Karen.

This was difficult to admit, but I was thinking that maybe I had been a little crude with the use of these new talents, mostly because I just tried the first thing that worked to get my partners to feel good and have great orgasms. But it was like using a broadsword and a mace when a scalpel and tweezers were the right tools.

Women have been having orgasms since we were living in caves, so maybe I needed a little finesse here, just clearing the track for them rather than carrying them over the finish line.

I decided that the baseline states, Foundation and Rowboat, were okay, since they were more relaxation and enhancement states, rather than orgasm commands, so I could keep using those, but in the future I should look for ways to see what my partner needed to get them to the finish line, the things that would stimulate their own orgasms.

So I would need to sense or search for the things that turned them on, like with Karen’s ass slapping, and let them take it from there. I had some new skills to work on, then.

Barney had found a particularly attractive section of sidewalk to take a dump so he paused to do so. I cleaned up after him and we did one more pass around the block and headed home. Barney lapped up some water, leaving an equal amount on the floor, then headed for his bed to take a nap.

I went upstairs and pulled the bedclothes off, found some new sheets and put them on, then took the used ones down to the washing machine and started a wash.

I made a sandwich while I waited for the laundry, and thought about finesse and subtlety. What did I know about finesse, and how was I going to learn to do it? I suppose that pleasure meter thing would be useful if I could learn to read it better.

Then I thought, what about situations that aren’t sexual? What, for example, if I’m trying to talk a teacher into giving me an extension on a term paper and they’ve already said that they expect that students will submit their assigned work on time or be penalized.

How would I find the particular arguments which would appeal to them and convince them to make an exception? I couldn’t just linkcast them a sudden desire to give me an extension, because they’d eventually question why they had done that. The idea had to come from them.

I could see this was going to take some research, but I could also see that it could be a very useful tool, in school, in business, in life. It would be worth figuring this one out.

I wish this mind thing had come with an instruction manual, I mused, as I tossed the load of laundry in the dryer. My head hurt from thinking about it, so I did what I usually did in those situations, I looked for something mindless to watch on cable.

Later I cooked a frozen pizza for dinner and read up on calculus and multi-variable integration. After that I took Barney out for his evening constitutional and went to bed early. Didn’t know why I was so tired.

Monday I read some more until it was time to go to work. I had started concentrating a little more on the flow of the language, which I could understand fairly well now, with occasional words I didn’t know, but I was having trouble speaking it with the same easy rhythm that Marco and his father traded back and forth. After an hour or so of listening in increasing frustration, I brought it up with him, and told him I just wasn’t comfortable with the speed of the language.

“Tom, how long have you been doing this now? A month? And you’re complaining you can’t speak well enough? Do you know how long it took me to learn to speak English without sounding like I just got off the bus? You’ve picked up more Spanish in four weeks that I did English in a year. It takes a little time. I understand your frustration, but really, you’re underestimating how much you’ve learned. And how much you still have to learn.”

But he said that he thought it might be good for me to get a little more practice in speaking it, since I seemed to be okay at understanding it, so he and his father would try to include me in their conversations. The more you do it, he said, the easier it becomes. I wasn’t certain about that, but said I’d try. And thanks.

And they did include me. At first it was simple things, like did I agree with what one or the other had said. Then slightly more involved, asking for more information, such as had I ever had a real Mexican burrito, not the stuff they serve in Taco Bell. And I was sweating just a little as I tried to recall syntax and vocabulary. But I got through it.

We continued like that for the rest of the afternoon, while I went about my chores. I can’t say I got noticeably better at it, but I got less nervous. And as I thought about it, I remembered my struggle with French conversation until I had had that sudden insight in Mme. Connolly’s French class. I tried to remember what I had done differently that gave me that sudden ability to converse.

Part of it was having memorized the basics of sentence structure, verb forms, basic syntax and vocabulary, and then combining them to form ideas and responses.

Oh, and I had looked into her epicenter while she was speaking and thinking in French and at some point I had picked up enough familiarity with the language that it seemed somehow ‘natural’.

I did not understand the mechanics or the theory of this language gift, but felt that it was somehow important to investigate this further. At the end of the day, I put away my apron and thanked them both for being patient with me -- in Spanish -- and got big smiles in return. They liked someone making the effort to learn an important part of their culture. They called out that they’d see me tomorrow. In Spanish.

I did hapkido class, then went home to Barney, who was delirious with delight at seeing me. Well, at seeing anyone. He’d been alone for a few hours, and he was a very social dog. So we went out for a walk where he left his mark and his calling card, I cleaned up after him, and we went home for food, for both of us. I read and watched some cable TV until almost midnight.

Still no word from Karen, but I got a call from Uncle John who asked how things were going. I told him things could not be more boring. He answered that he wished that were so on his end.

Apparently Andrea was not happy with the amenities at the institutions they had visited so far. She had evidently thought that student accommodation would be more of a four-star ranking than had proved to be the case, and was aghast at the sudden realization that she would have roommates, and that she could not choose them. Life had always been difficult for Andrea.

Tuesday proved less boring. I had a lazy breakfast and walked Barney, then read a little before leaving for work. I greeted Marco and his father -- who lately seemed to be spending more time in the store than previously -- and put on my apron.

I started sweeping up while Marco detailed the things that had to be done today, unloading and stacking some fruit and produce, breaking down and bundling the cardboard boxes they came in, and so on. Nothing terribly difficult. The two of them started their usual friendly back-and-forth banter about friends, sports, politics, all in Spanish, of course, and were careful to ask me for my opinions periodically.

I still struggled with it, but had to admit it was less of a fight than earlier.

Around three, a young guy came in and picked up a shopping basket and looked over the fruit, selecting a couple of items. Moments later, another guy came in who didn’t look like he ate much fruit, but who am I to judge.

I was getting a vibe from them, because now it seemed that they knew each other. They didn’t behave as one would around strangers. The first guy took his items up to the register where Marco’s father was sitting with his coffee, and put it down on the counter.

Marco’s dad started to tally up the fruit when the guy pulled a gravity knife out of his pocket and put it in the old man’s face. The other guy had moved quickly across the floor to where Marco was approaching and pulled a hooked pry-bar or crowbar out from under his jacket and raised it up in front of Marco, daring him to move. The first guy said, “Open the register and gimme all the cash, now. Do it and you won’t get hurt.”

Marco’s dad had not gotten where he was by yielding to bullies, even ones with knives. It was hard to turn off seventy years of pride and integrity, so he started arguing with the guy with the knife, asking why they wanted to make life hard for small store owners.

That was the wrong thing to say, because the first guy grabbed him by the front of his shirt and told him, “Now I’m gonna cut you, old man, because you don’t listen.” Marco looked like he was going to try to get past the guy with the pry-bar to help his old man, but he wouldn’t make it before being hit. This was not going to end well.

I was halfway up the aisle, but I needed their attention on me as the larger threat, so I dropped my broom so the handle made a sharp slap on the floor, which drew their gaze to me, and walked directly at them.

“You, you just stay where you are!” he shouted.

I kept moving until I got closer to the guy with the knife. He now had two threats, but now that he was focused on me, I could get inside his epicenter. He was looking for quick cash so he could score, he needed a fix pretty soon, and this place was as good as any other.

But worse, I was reading that the money was the most important thing, and he didn’t mind hurting people to get it. He was thinking, maybe it’s better if there are no witnesses.

I said, “Leave the old man alone, he doesn’t speak English well and probably didn’t understand you.” Now he was focused solely on me and let the shirt go.

He said, “You get the money, then.”

“There isn’t enough there to make it worth your while. You’ll get caught and go to jail for the few dollars in the register. This isn’t our busiest day.”