Chapter 42

Day Forty-two - Sunday

Sue was murmuring, making sounds as if she were talking in her sleep. She was also holding me to her, clutching me tight enough that a nipple was jammed against one of the big arteries, I think they're called the carotid arteries, in my neck making me get light-headed.

When I pulled back a little to let blood flow, Sue said, "No, no, don't go, no." Pulling her back into me, holding her so her womanly form wouldn't restrict my breathing or blood flow, I kissed her neck and cheek to reassure her I wasn't leaving. That must have penetrated her dream as her eyes opened with her dark brown eyes peering into mine.

At first, there was fear in her eyes then, as she became more aware in her awakened state, her body became less tense and she began to relax. Sue kissed me on the cheek, "That was a horrible dream. I don't usually have bad dreams, but that one was terrible. We fought over something, I don't remember what it was, but you were stuffing things in your duffel bag, saying you were going back to the platforms. I was holding you, trying to keep you from leaving."

There were actually tears in her eyes with one running down her cheek. I hugged her to me, moving up so I could kiss her eyes, "I love you, Sue, I know everything has been fast and loose, but I love you dearly. We are partners, friends, and lovers."

Sue told me a little tearfully, "When we got together, Steve, you unlocked something in me. I had hidden away, especially from men; I was ashamed of my looks, being fat, my oversized breasts, my scarred leg and face. But you somehow appeared at the exact right time. I had lost weight, I was confidant that my business was going to support me, and it seemed like the scars on my face just disappeared. Then when we got together, it was so special, so sexy, so erotic, I thought I would burst. When we were at Ruth's that first day, I got jealous thinking she was going to take you and I wouldn't be able to have you, but I stole you away and I've enjoyed you as I've never enjoyed a man." "Then the night we were in the hot tub with Charlie and Shawna, I realized how much I loved you and how much you really loved me. You trusted me to enjoy myself with another man. When he pushed inside me I was looking at you with Shawna and knew I loved you so very much. That's when I first really realized how much, and that's when I told you I loved you, remember?"

I kissed her on the forehead again, "I remember well and have even laughed, thinking of how funny it was for me to be feeling so close to you, while thumping the guy's wife who was inside you. I was looking at you enjoying your pleasure and watched, with a soaring heart, when you mouthed "I love you" to me."

"This has been fast, hasn't it? You have been on vacation now only six weeks and look what all you've done. When I walk around this place, our new home, then go out on our new patio, I feel like a queen in my domain. That's the only way I can describe it. I just wonder what we could possibly do for an encore."

"I like all of the space and the patio too. Most of all, I love all of our friends enjoying it with us. When I add the pool table, we're going to have a very complete game room."

All of a sudden, I had an idea. I sat up in bed and said it, "What do you think about us picking up a couple of video games, and maybe a pinball machine? We could even find one of those pong coffee table games. I think we should get rid of some of the lawn furniture and get a couple of couches and chairs with end tables and coffee tables, so that part of the patio would feel like a family room. We could still have the patio furniture, but it wouldn't be the center of activity. What do you think?"

"The games sound neat but I don't know about the couches," Sue contemplated. "Everybody seems to like to sit at the tables. Maybe even more tables, small tables like nightclubs have, with four chairs around them. If we had four of those, they could still be close together so there wouldn't be anyone left out of a general conversation."

"Let's watch and see how people use the big table and the little tables. I think if we make changes now, it should be gradual, to keep the place comfortable."

"I agree honey," Sue said giving me a kiss. "I have to pee, let's take a shower. It's almost time for coffee."

The shower was soothing, playful, and degenerated into some really good fooling around. Sue complained that even with the shower, stuff was going to run down her legs for an hour.

We both dressed in shorts and T-shirts, knowing we were going down to show off the shop this morning to everyone. With coffee made, I walked out onto the patio and turned on the lights over the patio furniture and the end of the long table.

Tiny and Ruth were first this morning, dressed to go to the shop. Glenda and Martin came over, already dressed as well. I said I was going down to the Seven-Eleven to get some donuts real quick, and jumped in my pickup to get them. I was back in less than five minutes, but that's all the time it took for the other four couples to get there, dressed and ready to see the shop. Abe and Alice were pulling up as I put the donuts on the table.

We drank a few pots of coffee and ate up the three dozen donuts. We cleaned up the crumbs and prepared to go. Sue and I would take Charlie and Shawna, Tiny was taking Glenda, Martin, Jim, and Hanna in his big Suburban, and Tom, Betty, Al, and Joan were riding together. Abe and Alice followed.

The convoy left the park, and after the short drive, pulled into the parking lot of the freshly painted building. The big S&S sign really stood out. Charlie laughed and said, "Good thing you have enterprises underneath or the other S&S we know and love might have a problem with your name."

I agreed, "I thought of that, but there are other companies with the same name, but none with enterprises."

I opened the big front doors. Everyone walked into the showroom. Since it was two floors high, it felt very expansive. The first thing you saw though, was the S&S embedded in the floor. I said I thought we would display a race car frame hanging from the ceiling tilted to give everyone a look at the cage to see how it is formed. Underneath it I wanted to put a frame with painted sheet metal and wheels and tires. The car would be the S&S special. We would number it "13" or something like that.

On the other side, I'd like to hang a bike frame from the ceiling, with a drag bike underneath it, and then put one of the smaller mobile generators in the center to highlight our rebuilding ability.

I showed everyone the two offices in the rear of the showroom and how they had big windows that looked out into the shops. We went through the big swinging double doors into the shop area. I turned on the shop lights and you were almost blinded by the bright white walls, ceilings, and floors. There was a blue and black stripe running completely around the room at the height of the area between the first and second floor of the offices. There were two distinct work areas that had giant S&S logos embedded in their floors as well. The place looked and smelled brand new.

I explained that one side would be for welding, and the other devoted to sheet metal at this point. If the sheet metal idea I had didn't work out, we would find something else that did. I told them to picture all our equipment and supplies stored along the walls.

Next was for Abe. I had everyone wait a second while I led Abe into his area and turned on the light. I thought he was going to cry. The place was beautiful, all white except the tops of the workbenches. I pointed out how I thought he might arrange his parts washer and bead blaster. He couldn't get over that on the far end there was a place already set up for parts, complete with various sizes of bins and drawers. This was a technician's dream.

When everyone else came in, Charlie, Shawna, Jim and, Martin all went nuts, saying they wanted to work for me too. I told them that the one who might eventually do a lot here would be Shawna. I showed everyone the extra large door opposite the one we had come in to the shop, and described what was going to be out that door in a few days. As soon as I said dual paint booths, Jim and Charlie looked at each other and Jim said, "That does it, we're coming to work here." Charlie said, "We met at a body shop school. We were both Harley junkies so we ended up going to MMI in Orlando. Jim landed the job at the dealership, while I liked working in a small shop like Jan and Dell's.

I told them the paint booths were for Abe's big mobile equipment and for the sheet metal. We would do the basic painting for the customer before delivery and they would do all the fancy painting.

I looked at Shawna then said, "But, I want to go take a bunch of pictures of one of Gene's cars and have Shawna do her thing with the air brush. I'm going to have her do it on our showroom car to practice."

Shawna's blue eyes were shining and she showed a lot of teeth while smiling big at the coming opportunity.

Pointing up toward the second floor of the office area, I told them to note that not only did the first floor offices have a view of the shop so did the second floor.

We took the shop stairs to the second floor office area. The room we entered was the lunchroom, complete with a view out into the shop. It had a sink, a place for a stove and a refrigerator, plus a big area for tables and chairs. I made a mental note to get what was needed right away so the guys would have a place to eat lunch.

When you left the lunchroom, directly across the hall was a large room with a conference table and chairs remaining from the former owner. The room had windows on the two outside walls and a big window looking out onto the showroom. I said I planned on leaving this to be a conference room, as I'm sure we would have a need for it over time.

The hallway was really a balcony over the showroom. You could look down onto the showroom floor and out the front windows while walking back and forth.

There were four good-sized offices off the balcony. Each had a big window that looked out into the showroom area and each had a window to the shop. If you were at a desk you wouldn't be able to see the showroom floor but the window would give you daylight and make the office less claustrophobic.

The end office, nearest the stairway was pretty fancy. The first thing you realized was that it was considerably deeper than the other offices. I figured out that this office was over the old tool room where the welding supplies had been. The room had a lot of built-in bookshelves, a private wet bar area that had folding doors, and a cabinet area, also with folding doors, that was built for a TV. The woodwork was very expensive. The contractor had painted what walls he could and he had taken time to polish all the woodwork. It looked really nice, complete with huge corner windows that gave a panoramic view of the entire shop, as well as a side window to the outside.

Tiny asked, "Is this going to be your office?"

"I don't think so," I said undecided as the room was really nice. "I think I would rather be on the first floor, close to everything that's going on."

"I was thinking that office was probably going to occupied by some guy I'll hire as CFO in the future. It won't be long until I'll need a person to just handle the finance part of the business. As it is, I'm going to have to have a bookkeeper to help with the payroll and stuff. I would rather focus on building the business, and training people to train more people, instead of messing with the books."

Tiny and Ruth were looking at each other funny. Ruth said, "I was a bookkeeper when I met Tiny. I can do that kind of work. Hire Tiny to set up your books and I'll do the paperwork. You probably only need me a couple days a week at first. Get real big, then hire Tiny to sit in that big office."

"That might be a great idea, Ruth. I'll think on that a little and talk to both of you later."

We walked back downstairs on the showroom staircase and looked around again to picture the place with product being shown and people milling around.

Shawna asked, "How soon are you building the paint booths?"

"Monday," I said getting an even bigger smile from her.

Shawna looked at Charlie before saying to me, "You know you have room on the other side of the building to have another shop like Abe's. I'll bet you could probably find a guy to build motorcycles in there for you. Or with your welding business, you could have some kind of body shop."

"Shawna, don't be saying stuff like that. I have a good place to work, and so does Jim. We don't need to complicate our lives," Charlie said trying to rein in Shawna's daydreams.

"I might build on something like that so it could be used part time by a little redheaded motorcycle mechanic. If you produced bikes like mine, you would be busy."

"I'll do it." Shawna jumped on my comment. "Jan and Dell don't like us working together all the time anyway. They only pay me for part time even though I'm usually there every day. You make me a work area and I'll bet we can get the work."

Charlie said, "There goes my ace motor and tranny builder. I'll probably have to sub out work to another shop. Jan and Dell will have to start paying to have a whole job done instead of just pocketing the extra for the heavy work."

Jim added, "We need another shop to do some of our extra work. We've been too busy to do everything ourselves so we have been looking for a good motor and transmission rebuild shop. Get Shawna to head up a shop like that and I'll get you plenty of work."

"Something to think about, that's for sure," I said thinking these guys were all pushing me even faster than I pushed myself.

"Oh yeah, let's go out the back, I want to show Abe what I bought yesterday."

We walked through the shop. I pushed the button for the big overhead door to lift before leading everyone to the forklifts. Abe had big eyes while looking at them.

"My thinking is that we would keep the big one to lift the big mobile units around, as well as the other fork lifts. We probably will want to keep one of the others for running around in the shops. What do you think Abe, want to rebuild some fork lifts?"

"Damn right. I know every nut, bolt, and circuit in those things. Shoot, you have more than I can do now, I'll never get caught up," Abe said thinking of the work ahead.

"Not to worry, like I asked you before, we're going to look for some more people to help rebuild stuff. Come look at the generators and compressors I bought."

Abe just stared, "With the stuff I have to do at the storage place and all this, there's more than a year's work here, a lot more."

"Not with four or five helpers under your direction. I think we could probably turn out eight to ten units a month," I said giving Abe my optimistic appraisal of what we could do.

"That would be big business, Steve. Somebody would have to be on the road full time, buying used equipment and selling it to dealers. That is probably at least two more people."

"You could be right, Abe. We'll see where it leads us," I said turning to point at the new big truck. "How do you like that thing to haul your equipment around on? It has a hydraulic bed that slides down like the tow trucks, only this one's is bigger and heavier duty."