Chapter 15

As I had expected, even though it was only a used car, Tina's excitement over having her own vehicle was much greater than it ever would have been for someone more used to having such material things as an everyday part of their lives. Even Anita had nothing bad to say about the Honda. As soon as the two women managed to fit the base unit for the infant seat into the back seat, Tina, Anita, Connie, and Mike left the farm to take the little car for a spin.

I had already written the check, and Rob was heading back towards town with the previous owner of Tina's car. Rob had volunteered to go to the DMV for us to handle getting the new ownership and registration papers taken care of. I'd later place a call to our insurance guy, to give him the new VIN# and other necessary information.

The girls and my son were gone for over three hours. At supper that night, Tina was still giddy with the excitement of having her own car, but worried at what leaving it out in the sandstorms we frequently got would do to the car's paint finish. Rob promised to look into finding her one of those portable garages, while reassuring her that where she had parked the car would keep it shielded from the worst of that particular problem. The new building itself would protect the car from the worst of the wind, he told her.

Now that I was being a bit more observant, I noticed that all the girls living on the farm seemed to derive pleasure from one of their own number having her own transport. Theresa had her own car, but allowed no one, other than herself, to make use of it.

Rob and I had both been talking about being in the market for new trucks. His Yukon was getting old now, and starting to show its age, in terms of its exterior appearance, and with some noises the engine now made when he drove it. My own truck was even older, and while it still seemed to run all right, had seen much better days as far as the interior and exterior appearance. Rob told me that he could get us both a deal for zero percent financing for six years on a couple new GMC products. All we'd need to do was put down twenty percent, using the farm's credit rating, to swing the deal. He told me the combined payments for two new Yukon's, both fully equipped, would run less than twelve hundred a month.

Most of the money we'd made had been reinvested back into the farm, putting up new structures, paying for farm improvements, like the new lake and irrigation equipment, or else buying new land when it became available. We seldom indulged ourselves in anything we didn't really want or need. We needed new trucks, but we both realized new Yukon's were an extravagance.

"If I got a new Yukon, I'd let Connie have my old one, if that's okay with you?" Rob and I were outside talking about where we'd put one of those portable garages if he managed to find one at a good enough price. "They wouldn't give me that much for it as a trade in anyway. Connie could use it to haul her and her sisters around whenever they needed to go into town for anything."

"My old pick up wouldn't be worth much either, as torn up as the insides are, and with all the little dents and ding's I've put on it over the years out here. It still runs all right though, and it would be a shame not to keep running it until it quits on us."

"Raul's old crew cab is pretty beat up too, but he keeps it running okay. Your old truck isn't really any better than his. Lupe's truck is nicer than yours too."

"Anita doesn't have anything, not since she sold off that old black narrow bed step side of hers. I could give it to her, save us from having to lend her one of ours, whenever she needs a vehicle to go anywhere. Of course, that's if she'd even stoop to take it. The way she thinks, it would probably be an insult to her for us to buy new ones for ourselves, and just give her our hand me downs. I think I'll just keep it as an extra farm truck, and just let her use it, whenever she comes trying to borrow one of ours."

"You should try to give it to her first, then, if she refuses it, do what you said, and just keep it here for when anyone needs to use it. Anita might surprise you, if it was you offering to give her something. Connie told me that she doesn't talk as mean about you with the other girls when its just them alone together. She saves all her worst venting for when you're close by enough to hear her. Did you catch how she was walking all around that Honda of Tina's, and couldn't think of one bad thing to say about it?"

By the time we came back inside, we'd talked ourselves into buying those two new Yukon SUV's. I wasn't that confident that Anita would even want my old truck, but it wouldn't hurt any to ask her. Rob and I had decided we'd both go into the GMC dealership together, in the morning, to see whether or not we could get everything we wanted, at the price Rob had been saying we could.

I'd ridden into town with Rob, and, after a brief stopover, at his office, to check on things, he and I headed over to Victorville to see about getting our new vehicles. There was a brief hassle over financing, mostly because they didn't want to put Rob's truck on the farm's account, since he wasn't, strictly speaking, a farm employee, when we threatened to leave and go somewhere else to buy our two new trucks, the general manager came out of his office and found a way to get everything done just the way we wanted it.

Rob and I had new Yukon's, and the farm had a new obligation to pay out eleven hundred and ten dollars every month for the next six years. We also left them a check for twenty thousand dollars, to cover the down payment, tax, title registration and DMV fees. We'd just coughed up right at a hundred thousand dollars for trucks that, to be perfectly candid, were an extravagant indulgence on our part. I felt good, and I could see Rob did too.

Sometimes, when a woman finds herself unhappy, she'll go out and buy herself a new hand bag, a dress, or maybe a pair of shoes. Let a man get unhappy, and he'll go out and buy a big, expensive, new toy. Mine even had two of those DVD players built in, for playing movies for the back seat passengers on long trips. I figured Ricky Ricardo would just love that, and so would Mike, as soon as he was a bit older.

Anita surprised me with how willing she was to be given my old truck. I guess she figured anything was better than having to go around asking people to borrow their vehicles whenever you needed to go somewhere. She even managed to say thank you, which made me happier about having filled up the gas tank before I offered it to her. Tina seemed almost as happy that I'd given Anita my old truck as she'd been to get her new car. I didn't see Connie's reaction when Rob gave her his old Yukon, but he told me that she couldn't stop thanking him for an hour. I noticed he was limping more than I remembered him doing prior to giving her his truck too.

The next morning I needed to run down to a farm equipment supplier over in Norco, to pick up this new rotor for one of the wheels on our original old nut harvester. I'd managed to locate it on the internet, but only after several weeks of looking. Somehow Emay, Alicia, and Ricky Ricardo were waiting by the side of my new truck when I came out of the house to make the trip down to pick up that rotor. Emay had two DVD's clutched in her hand. The first was some kid's movie for Ricky, and the other was a movie she and Alicia wanted to watch together, on the second of my built in DVD players.

We had to drive over to Lupe's, to pick up Ricky's car seat. The round trip took about three hours, counting the time I spent inside the farm equipment place, discussing other things I was on the look out for with the old guy who had sold me the rotor. Right when I was getting ready to climb up to the Cajon Pass, Emay asked me if I could stop somewhere because she needed to use a restroom. I found a fast food place at the last turnoff, the one right before you started climbing the last steep leg through the Pass, and turned off to let her go. When she got back, instead of going back to where she'd been sitting, she got in on the front passenger seat side and fastened her seat belt.

"You sitting up here with me now, Emay?"

"Movies all over with, and I was feeling a little car sick. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not a bit. How have you been?" I had started the truck back up, and was pulling back onto the interstate.

"I'm fine. How come you moved Tina out to the recreation room?"

"We still have some issues we want to work out, and I thought it might help if we put a bit of space between us."

"Do you still love her?"

"Yes."

"As much as you did?"

"Why are you so curious all of a sudden, Emay? Are you applying to take Tina's place?" She colored a little in her face and looked down. Acting like a child who'd just been caught doing something bad.

"I was just wondering, that's all. Anita told us that you were letting Tina do tune up's again. Are you?"

"No. Tina has always been able to do them. I never asked her to stop doing them, just not up in our bedroom. Now that she's staying over in the tune up shop, she doesn't have any reason not to."

"If Tina says its all right, can I maybe come up to your room some time, and do the other thing, with you?"

"By other thing, do you mean make love with me?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, Emay, and I'm very flattered by your question, but I'm afraid I can't do that with you right now. It wouldn't be right, because, in spite of our problems, Tina and I are still married, and I still love her. I don't want to do anything I'd wind up regretting afterwards. Because I still love her, being with anyone else would trouble me."

"She doesn't seem to mind being with other people. She's been tuning up with Connie, and with Anita too. Why is it different for her than it would be for you?"

"I'm not sure why it is, but I just know it wouldn't feel right for me to do something like that now. Things might change, and if they do, I'll remember your expressed interest, and you'll be the first one I'll come ask. It might never happen, so don't just sit around waiting for me to come for you, okay?"

"Alicia says she wants to try it with you too. Can she go second, after me?"

"You and Alicia are very small. Aren't you afraid it might hurt you?"

"Connie said it didn't hurt her a bit, and Rob's bigger than you. You didn't hurt Anita or Tina, and they are both built the same as us, in their pussy's. Besides, we've used things in there before, when we were being tuned up."

"I'll certainly keep that in mind. You know, speaking of Rob, did you ever think to ask Connie if she might be willing to share? Rob would probably be a lot more willing to help satisfy whatever curiosity you and Alicia might have."

"If you had turned us down, flat, he was the next choice we had. After him, we were going to ask Elena if we could try Enrique. She's always after all of us to tune her up, so we figure she must not really love Enrique that much. The trouble with asking Rob is with Connie. For right now, I'm pretty sure she'd say no if we asked her about seeing if Rob would want to do us."

"I think it would be all right for you to take my current refusal as a flat turn down. I'm pretty sure it would take me a long time, maybe a year or more before I'd even start seriously considering doing that with you. When I'm trying to fall out of love, it usually takes me at least that long. Took longer, back when Anita and I broke up."

"Oh. I didn't know you were thinking about it taking that long. A year's such a long time. I don't think Alicia and I want to wait that long to try it. From what Connie says, it has regular tune up's beat by a mile."

"I've never watched a tune up, but, if I had to guess, I'd guess both ways will get the job done. Tina, Anita, Connie, Elena, and Theresa have all tried both, and they've all kept doing tune up's too. Don't you think they'd want to stick to just one or the other, if either was that much better?"

"Hey, I never thought about that. Even so, we still want to see for ourselves about what Connie's been telling us."

As soon as we got back to the farm, Alicia and Emay took off running back to their trailer. I took Ricky Ricardo, and his car seat, back over to Lupe's house. He looked like he wanted to take a nap, so I knocked on the door and woke up his mother. She'd been using this unexpected free time to catch up on her sleep. I guess running around all day trying to keep up with a three year old can be tiring. She didn't seem as happy to see Ricky back safely as I thought she'd be.

Tina waited a week after we'd talked the day I bought her the Honda before she announced, at the dinner table, that this was Miguel's night to come visit with me, and she'd come too, because he still needed to be fed, and I wasn't equipped for doing that. The sex was soft and sweet, and very satisfying. The only thing that marred the evening was seeing the expression on Tina's face when I opened the condom wrapper. Perhaps she believed that nursing mothers couldn't conceive, but I'd seen too many children with year older brothers or sisters, belonging to women who were nursing mothers.

Luckily, that expression quickly changed back to a happier one in a very short time. I had the most restful night I'd had since Tina and Mike had moved over to the tune up shop. The next morning, Tina brought up what she'd heard of my conversation with Emay, the one we'd had on the ride back from Norco.

"You don't have to disappoint her on my account, Kyle. She has to find out sometime, and none of us want Enrique to be the one to teach those girls. I don't think Enrique will be over at Uncle Raul's for much longer either. He isn't making any effort at all to go get another job, or to do casual labor to help out with living expenses for him and Elena. Elena told us she doesn't still want to marry him. She says he's lazy in bed now too."

"I'm just waiting for the right time. When it comes, I'll know it, just like I did with you."

"When was that, the night I first pulled your dick out of your pants, and started sucking on you?"

"It was before that. The night we first started kissing, and I didn't think about Anita at all."

"The first night we were kissing, or the first night we were kissing, when you didn't think about Anita?"

"You don't think they were both that same night?"

"Maybe we should have a repeat from last night, before Miguel starts to wake up? This is going to have to hold us both, until who knows when."

Of course, as if right on cue, Mike starts fussing and Tina has to go get up, bring him over to the bed, and start feeding him. There's a good reason why all those Madonna and child pictures in the art museums are so popular with men. Watching a woman nursing a baby can be a very stirring experience. As soon as Mike finished up and went back to sleep, Tina and I finished up what we'd almost gotten started earlier. When Mike woke up again, we got everybody dressed and I walked them back over to the tune up shop. As Tina and the baby were going inside, Anita was coming out. Elena was right behind her, and not a bit happy to see me standing not five feet away from her. Anita didn't think anything of it though.

"Was it as good as you were expecting, Tina? Did he rock your world?"

"I'll tell you later. Let me get Miguel inside before he wakes all the way up again. Thank you, Kyle, we both had a good time visiting." With that, Tina and Mike disappeared inside, and Elena finally stepped outside, so Tina could close the sliding door behind her.

"It must have been really great, or else you two have been fighting all night. Which is it?"

"How was Elena? Did you tear her a new one, and ring her chimes?"

I watched Anita as she swept by me and over towards the equipment shed. Elena looked at me with pure fear on her face.

"What? I was just giving her back some of what she dishes out. I'm sure I don't care what the two of you were doing in there last night. For all I know, you came over to teach Anita how to sew. I've been hearing reports that Enrique has stopped looking for farm work. I know I never see him coming over here to lend a hand to us anymore. If he isn't making you happy, why don't you just throw his ass out, and stop letting him mooch off of you and your parents?"

"I'm afraid he'll hit me or something if I try to do that. He twists my arms and slaps my breasts, sometimes, if I do something he doesn't like, or if I try to talk back to him."

"Did you tell your father he does this?" She shook her head no, looking down at her shoes as she did this. "Jesus, Elena, you don't have to put up with crap like that from him. Tell him to get out and leave you alone. If you want me to, I'll come over with you and make sure he doesn't start up with you?"

"I can't do that, we're engaged. I don't want to end up like Theresa, and Enrique might be my last chance not to."

"That's not thinking very clearly, Elena. You might be passing up your next chance, because you're wasting too much time on Enrique. Send him packing, and hang out a sign, letting the guys know you're open for new business again. Start going out and being seen by some new people. You and Theresa can start going over to those dances they hold over in town. You never can tell, you might meet someone over there who will treat you better, and maybe follow through with his promises. Theresa might get lucky at those dances too."