Chapter 3

I woke up at five, crap, perhaps in a week or so I'll get to sleep till six or later. Knowing I needed to exercise for my cardio rehab therapy, I put on shorts, kept on the T-shirt I slept in, and put on socks and my tennis shoes.

The morning was a little cooler after the scorching heat of the day before. Taking my pills was first, then I took off, walking slowly and built up speed for five minutes until I was walking at a fairly fast pace. I walked completely around the big park, ending up where there were some nice homes on a private street. I figured these houses were the owner's and family. I was back at the trailer, after a forty-five minute walk. I showered and shaved while some coffee was dripping.

Not knowing how long it was going to take, I ate a quick bowl of cereal, had a cup of coffee, and headed out. I stopped at the Seven Eleven out on highway forty-one to get some donuts, as requested by Sarah, and headed for downtown Tampa.

It was early enough that traffic wasn't too bad. I was able to park in the lot behind her building for two bucks and went around front to find out what floor her office was on. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out. The directions for numbers had me entering a dark office at eight. I said, "Hello, Ms. Perkins? Mark Robins here."

A voice from the back said, "Come on back, I'm making coffee. Did you bring donuts?"

I was laughing as I put the bag with a dozen donuts on the counter. The lady said, "You didn't have to get so many. Just one for me, and one for my secretary, was all I wanted. Now I'll have to have at least two. What do you want, a fat lawyer?"

I just smiled.

"Come into my office while the coffee is brewing. Janet will be in any second. I always beat her. She really doesn't start until eight thirty. Now where did I put those papers?"

Sarah read a bunch of stuff then asked, "Do you want to hurt her or do you just want a fair deal."

"Fair would be nice. I have no reason to want to her hurt. I don't think she should get everything though. I worked a long time for the money I sold the business for. When we remarried, we re-incorporated so it could be a woman owned or minority owned business, but she hasn't worked in the business for over fifteen years."

Sarah said while looking at the papers, "That shouldn't be a big deal. Fair is fair, so it should be at least 50/50 right down the middle. Now if you were some lady who was really crapped on by a sleaze husband, I would make the husband eat shit."

I nodded.

Sarah continued, "Look at these numbers as to the amount of the various accounts and the appraisal of your house. I've listed the vehicles you own, including the car now registered in Atlanta. We can exclude that if you want since that's your daughter's."

These were the numbers that I had given her. Luckily I had just checked balances of the personal and business accounts. I still had the receipts from the ATM machine outside the bank Monday morning. I fished those from my money clip and attached those. That got me thinking, she must have taken off Monday to do all this stuff. Oh, that's why she was early getting home. Not just to tell me we were splitting, she had not gone to work that day.

I mentioned to Sarah that by Monday evening, the accounts had me excluded already.

Sarah had me sign a bunch of papers that were mostly power of attorney. She looked up at me and asked, "Do you know the name of the guy she's seeing?"

I smiled and said, "I do. Now, that guy I'd like to hurt. He left a wife and three kids with nothing. He was such a sleaze that he had my wife object about me buying them milk and some groceries and mowing their lawn while she was trying to sell the house. She got nothing in the divorce because he didn't have anything. I'd bet he isn't paying child support either."

"Can you get hold of the ex-wife?"

"I sure can, I keep in touch to make sure she's okay and her kids are alright. She's staying with her folks right now, and is working at a clothing store. She's taking some night classes to become a dental hygienist. I hope she makes it."

"Get hold of her and have her call me. If I can, I can go back and get something off him. If nothing else, I'll put him in jail." She laughed, "I can be mean."

She shuffled the papers, tapped them together, and slid a paper clip over them. "Okay, you're done. If you get rich, I'll charge you accordingly, but you're already trying to help someone else, so we're probably gonna be even."

"How can you do all this pro bono work?"

Sarah said smiling, "A little while back, I made a great big fee suing a fat cat that was abusive. Now I still charge people, but I can do this stuff for women and you for free and enjoy it. Now get, I have work to do. Call me."

That reminded me, I needed a phone. On the way back to the park, I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a cheap phone with a thousand minutes. That should be plenty for a long while

I used the new phone to call Sarah's office and gave the secretary the new number.

Back at the park, I was about to call the cable company for my own internet connection but instead, I used my laptop to see if I could figure out whose connection I was using. I couldn't without getting into their hard drive and I didn't want to do that. I would ask around and perhaps split it with them.

I decided to make up my PC and go to the used store to get what else I needed. I needed a new hard drive, another gig of ram, an external hard drive for backup, and a wireless network interface card. The computer store had a deal on a better, faster ready built box that was about the same price of the junk I was going to buy, so I bought it with a used LCD monitor and the external hard drive. I had to make an extra trip to get my used stuff back to the store as my trade-in.

The folks included a keyboard and mouse, so I was fixed.

At home, I set up everything and discovered the store had pre-loaded XP so all I had to do was load my old Office professional 97 and then download Firefox. I connected to the internet, downloaded what I needed, then set up an Excel spreadsheet for my budget. I figured I would just start a list and keep adding to it until I had everything that I needed.

I checked my yahoo account and Judy had forwarded several e-mails that were mostly spam. My sister forgot and sent stuff to my home address. There was note from Judy,

Mark,

I didn't mean for you to have to leave so fast. I thought we might have a last supper on Friday evening since I'm off Friday. Come by about six and we'll have a nice supper together and talk about our individual futures.

Judy

Whew! That was strange. That was as nice as she's written to me or talked to me in virtually years. I wondered what this was all about. I doubted it was really for my benefit.

Just for fun, I forwarded the note to Sarah Perkins telling her that I had received this today.

Someone was knocking on my door. An elderly gentleman was standing outside, so I went out. He introduced himself, "I'm Donald Krause. I live across the street there. I wanted to welcome you to the park. I heard you helped Betty."

"Yes Sir, I did."

"That was very nice of you. If you want, I'd love for you to see if you can make my old Mercury run better. It's missing something fierce. They want over a hundred dollars just to do a tune-up and you know they will find more. Come over and get it when you can look at it for me. My wife, Prissy, will wash and iron for you in return. How about it?"

"I'll look at your car for you, but your wife doesn't have to wash my clothes. I'm a big boy, I know how to do that."

"It'd make us feel better if you help us. We don't have much money; we're kind of short lately."

"No problem, Donald, or do people call you Don?"

"Either one, Prissy is the one who always calls me Donald."

"Let me get your car over here and let's see what needs to be done."

The car could hardly drive across the street it was running so bad. It only had thirty-four thousand miles, but that could be a hundred and thirty-four. The car was so clean and perfect, I'd bet on thirty-four.

After popping the hood and looking at the engine compartment, the problem was obvious. Squirrels or rats had gotten up into the engine compartment and chewed through most of the plug wires. I pulled a plug to find they were probably the originals. The oil looked like ink and the air filter was caked. Well, I guess I was going to have to spend some money. I ran next door to the auto parts store and bought, plugs, plug wires, a rotor cap, pcv valve, and gas, oil, and air filters. The auto parts guy showed me where the gas filter was on his computer diagram so I could find it.

The whole thing didn't take but about forty-five minutes. I remembered something else and went for some gas treatment for the fuel injectors as well as some gas rejuvenating additive. I was sure the gas was old. I poured the junk into the tank then took the car for a little drive. It ran good. I didn't need to do any timing adjustments, but ran it down the street and came back, noting the car was heating up.

Back in the driveway, I checked and found the two main radiator hoses were dry rotted, so I pulled the car to end of the street and pulled a water hose to it, letting it run while I loosened the petcock on the bottom of the radiator. Once the engine was flushed, I went back to the parts store to get anti-freeze and the two hoses. I put the car back together then went to Donald.

A elderly lady came to the door and smiled at me, "You're Mark, aren't you. People call me Prissy. Won't you come in?"

"I'm done with the car, Ma'am. Perhaps Donald and you would like to take a drive. It should run fine."

"I saw you take it out then do some more to it. What was so bad on it?"

"Well the worst thing was that the car isn't used enough. The other bad thing is that squirrels were eating up the wiring. You need to feed the squirrels some kind of treat that will keep them away."

"We've had to start doing that. They were eating the telephone and cable wire from underneath the house. We haven't seen any lately. I know there are so many we'll always have them, but I'll just keep feeding them."

"Good, here's your keys. Tell Don the car's ready to roll."

"I will, Mark, thank you so much. Now you be sure to bring your dirty clothes over here so I can wash and iron them for you. That will make me feel a lot better."

I just smiled and said, "Yes, Ma'am." Old folks have pride too.

I cleaned up my tools and put everything away then cleaned myself up in clean jeans and shirt. I got the receipts together and wrote Donald and Prissy Krause on a note and paper clipped them all together.

Thinking that Martin may help me meet this guy who pays for parts, I walked over to Betty's and found her sitting out on her little patio. "Hi, Betty. I want to go see Martin. Could you tell me where he lives?"

"He's two streets over, the third house from the end on our side of the street. You can't miss it because of Steve Sharp's place. The Sharps have a huge home with a big patio. Martin may even be over there. If no one is home, go to the patio and go in and ask for him. You'll probably see him and Glenda sucking up a beer sitting on the glider."

I began to leave as Betty said, "Wait a minute, I'll walk over with you. I want to tell Steve and Sue how nice you were to help me out with my car."

"Don't tell them that. I did it as a favor to you."

"They need to know. They like to know the folks that live out here."

We walked around to the entrance to the street where Martin lived and walked down. It was right at lunch time and golf carts were buzzing down the street, stopping just ahead in a group by a large manufactured office building. The closer we got, the more it looked like a manufactured home and not an office. As we passed by, I could see a huge patio with a lot of people at tables. We were almost to Martin's trailer when he called us from a patio door. "Hey, Mark, Betty, come over here. Mark, you have to meet Steve and his family. They're just back from sailing all the way to Hawaii and back. They're showing pictures on the TV while we eat lunch."

I got up closer and said, "We'll come back after lunch, Martin. I didn't mean to interrupt a meal."

"Shoot, your not interrupting anything. Everyone comes to eat here. Come on in before the soup gets cold."

I was really embarrassed. Just the way to meet a nice guy you want to put the arm on. Mooch lunch.

Martin pulled me right over to a nice looking guy sitting between two very nice looking women. One looked at you as if she could see through you, and the other was pure sweetness with Grand Canyon cleavage. Martin said, "Steve, Sue, Mercy, everybody, this Mark Robins. He just moved in and has already been helping people. Yesterday, he fixed up Betty's car and today, I heard he was fixing Don and Prissy Krause's car."

Steve stood and stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Mark. Good to see you, Betty, you never come over. Sit, have some lunch. We always have enough."

It looked like they did, so as people cleared out a space across from Steve, Betty and I sat. Martin said, "This is my wonderful wife, Glenda,. She's responsible for a lot of good eating around here."

I stood and shook hands with the nice older lady. Glenda said, "Betty, have you found a single guy you can chase?"

"Sort of, Glenda, he's a little young, I might have to throw him back. Shirley and Caroline think he's just about right for pickin' though."

I was blushing when the lady named Mercy who kept looking inside my head said, "Don't listen to those ladies. They love to tease men. If you let them you'll have a red face all the time."

Steve asked, "Do you work or are you retired?"

"Well, I had a business, but I sold it with the intention of retiring, but something came up that's going to require me to find a job. I have a line on a couple."