Chapter 9

I was working hard again, anxious to get my working capital back up to what it had been before Delilah had come into my life. Kaitlyn had tried very hard to get a good estimate of what I'd so far spent on the girls, but her guess of thirty thousand had fallen a little short of what I'd actually spent on them over the eight month period when they'd lived with me. In addition to those extra expenditures, I'd taken far more time away from work to do things with them. All those three and four day weekend trips had prevented me from taking better care of my business.

Now that I had a new plan of action, I knew I was going to need to generate a greater income if I wanted to make everything work out. I had to have more income if I wanted to keep up the level of spending I'd been doing.

I'd been toying with the idea of hiring and using someone to work the phones for me. One of the limitations of my business was the fact that I could only be in one place at a time. I made all the purchasing decisions, and I wanted to keep it that way. Once I had something I wanted to sell though, I wasn't against the idea of someone else handling all the negotiations with prospective buyers. I could set a bottom price that an item could be sold for. Usually, the hardest part of any sale was finding someone who could use what you wanted to sell. I bought things cheaply enough that selling at a good price wasn't any problem.

The only real problem I was having in trying to get someone to handle sales for me was in finding someone I could hire who could do a good job. I didn't see it as a salaried job, or one with any set hours. What I really wanted was someone I could give a list of my existing inventory of goods for sale to and have him start looking around for buyers to sell to. I knew it wasn't hard to do, but I didn't know anyone besides myself who could do it. If I could clone myself, making the other me into the seller while I stayed on as the buyer, I knew I could improve my business profitability greatly. Unfortunately, cloning myself wasn't an option.

There was also the matter of trust issues that I had. My life, up until that point, hadn't exactly been filled with trustworthy role models. Danny and Kaitlyn certainly hadn't done anything to help me in that regard. Delilah and Bridget, as much as I was attracted to them, weren't people I'd place a lot of faith into either.

This was the central problem that I needed to get around if I were going to be successful in expanding my business the way I was hoping to do. Over the next week or so I let this problem percolate in my brain. When, at the end of this week, still no closer to a solution, I finally mentioned what I was thinking to my brother, he came up with an idea I'd never have had.

"What about that Leslie Ackerman? Weren't you always telling us how alike the two of you always were? Seems to me, if you're really looking at someone who can do what you'd do, that she'd be the first one you'd think of."

Leslie Ackerman had been my first girlfriend. We'd been about ten years old. It was before my parents got killed. We'd been playmates ever since I could remember, but, when we were ten, Leslie had started acting funny around me. She started changing, acting more like a girl, even wearing dresses instead of jeans like the rest of us.

Having her for a girlfriend had been a mistake. I wasn't really interested in girls at the time, and I hadn't wanted to go along with all the things she claimed boyfriends and girl friends did together. I wanted to run around outside, play and get dirty, not sit in the house watching TV shows and holding hands together.

She had stopped being my girlfriend shortly after I told her I didn't want to sit around with her doing nothing. That put too big a strain on our other friendship too, and so we drifted apart after that. We didn't have any big fight or anything, it was more like the two of us decided to go our separate ways.

Later on, while we were in high school, Leslie broke her back when she fell from her horse while horseback riding. She severed some nerves in the fall, and became a paraplegic, without any use or feeling in her legs. She spent the rest of high school in a wheel chair. I knew she'd gone away to college right after we graduated, but I'd also heard that she'd dropped out after a year or so, and had moved back home with her parents.

I hadn't seen her at all since, which was pretty unusual, because Hesperia wasn't that big. Sooner or later, you ran into everyone.

Danny was right about one thing though. Leslie and I were very closely alike when we were young kids. We read the same books and liked the same movies too. Leslie was also smarter than I was. I knew she could handle the selling part if she decided she wanted to bother with it.

It had been five or six years since I'd last set eyes on her. It would be like meeting a total stranger. She certainly had no reason to be wanting to do me any favors either. Still, it wasn't that often that Danny surprised me by coming up with a sensible suggestion. It might be a good idea to check and see if Leslie would be interested. I figured I could trust her anyway. If not, she shouldn't be that hard to track down, being in a wheelchair and all.

The next morning I drove over to the Ackerman's house on Orange street. Their house was just three houses down from where my parent's house had been. Danny had sold their house not too long after my parents had died. He'd spent the money too, but I'm not sure where it all went. Probably over at the old poker casino in Adelanto. He'd hung out there quite a bit, until it had finally closed down.

Mrs. Ackerman, Leslie's mom answered the door when I rang the buzzer. She had gotten a lot older since I'd seen her last. She didn't seem to recognize me until I told her my name. I asked her if I could talk to Leslie, and she just started crying. It took her a minute to get herself back under control, then she told me that Leslie lived with her father, over in Victorville. She wrote the address down for me, and I took it and went back to my car.

I probably should have asked Mrs. Ackerman some questions before heading over to Victorville, but she seemed pretty upset already by my just wanting to speak with Leslie. No telling what might have happened if I'd asked about what happened between her and Mr. Ackerman. None of my business anyway. I figured they must have gotten divorced, happened all the time. I guess I was a little surprised that Leslie would go live with her father though.

This complicated things for me. It was one thing if Leslie lived close by, but the address in Victorville was ten miles away from where I lived out by Hesperia Lake. I needed someone easy to get to. I didn't feel like traveling all the way to Victorville whenever I needed to add or subtract something from my inventory.

I would have probably just forgotten the whole thing right there if it hadn't been for the fact that I was now curious about what the story was between Leslie's parents. I'd always had this nosy streak, wanting to know everything that was going on around me. Leslie and I had gotten in trouble more than once because we'd gotten caught sneaking around hoping to find out what our parents were trying to keep hidden from us.

Just remembering that made me laugh. That reinforced the desire I had to see Leslie again. It was weird, not even thinking about the girl for all those years, then having this strong wish to see her again. I couldn't explain it. It wasn't like me to be like that.

Anyway, I drove all the way over to the address Leslie's mother had given me, only to find out that no one was at home. There was this wooden ramp built that went from the driveway to the front door of the house. I figured that must be for Leslie's wheelchair. I got a piece of paper from the car and wrote down a note for Leslie, including my home number and my cell number. I didn't mention what I needed to talk to her about, just that I wanted her to call me.

She finally called me, three days later. I sort of recognized her voice, but was a little surprised at her hostile tone.

"So, what did you need to talk to me about, Jimmy?"

"Hi, Leslie, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I was talking to my brother, you remember Danny, right? I was talking to him about this problem I was having, and he mentioned your name. As soon as he did, it hit me that he was right."

"Right about what?"

"I was telling him that I wanted to build up my business, but I needed someone just like me to make that happen. He reminded me about how everyone used to say that we were so much alike, like two peas from the same pod. Remember, my mother always used to say that about us?"

"What, when were seven or eight years old? We're not much alike anymore."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. By the way, what happened, did your folks get divorced?"

"Yeah, they got a separation from each other, back five years ago. My mother decided she'd had enough of him and me. She kicked us both out. You may as well tell me this idea of yours anyway. How was I supposed to help you with your business? What kind of business is it?"

"That's the thing, it really isn't what you could actually call a business. I buy things, then I turn around and sell them. I've done it since I was in high school. When I graduated, I just started doing more of it. It started out like a hobby, but I got it up to the point where it makes money kind of like a real job would, and I can work my own hours at it."

"So, you still haven't said what I'm supposed to be doing to help you with it?"

"Time. See? I don't have enough time to do more than I'm doing already. Once I buy some things, I need to sell them to get my money back out again. If I don't sell them, then I don't have any money to go out and buy more stuff. Buying takes a lot of my time, and so does selling. I can do both or either, but I need someone else who can do one or the other, so I can make my business grow. I thought you could do the selling part and allow me to concentrate on only doing the buying."

"Well, in the first place, I've never done any selling. In the second place, I don't want to sell things. I'm not even sure why you even thought I could."

"Because I can. That's what Danny said, that we were so much alike as kids, that you could probably do anything I could do."

"Except walk, and a few hundred other things you can do because your legs work."

"I sell on the phone, Leslie. Ninety percent of the time I just call someone up and tell them what I have and how much I'm asking for it. Let's say I buy up some copper tubing from a bankrupt business. It might be five or six hundred feet of three eighths, or half inch tubing. I just call around to businesses that use copper tubing until I find someone who's interested. I quote them my price, then they buy it or they don't. If they buy, I set up a time for delivery and arrange for how they'll be paying me. It isn't hard, just time consuming. Plus, I need someone I can trust. That's the main thing."

"Things must be pretty bad for you if you had to reach all the way back to when you were ten years old in order to find someone you trust, Jimmy."

"Whatever. I didn't tell Danny I was looking for someone I could trust. He's sensitive enough about me not trusting him. Your name came up because people think you can do what I can. As soon as Danny said your name, my first thought was that you could do whatever I can."

"I already have a job. Just for the sake of asking though, what does this job you have pay?"

"Good question. I haven't really thought about it though. It would have to be a percentage of what you sell stuff for. Maybe ten percent of the net profits. Right now, in a good month, I'm making about eight to ten thousand dollars of gross profit. My out of pocket expenses have been about four thousand dollars. Most of that is to pay Danny, and to pay the rent on these two storage places I keep. There is also some money for my trucks and for gas and miscellaneous stuff like that. The rest, after I pay all my bills, has been mine."