Chapter 1

Yaz

I'm sometimes amazed how I got here, but here is a place I'm quite happy. I'm writing this story at work, sitting inside my office, while my wife is out in the store and sells. We've been married for a few weeks, but have been together for many many years. She just turned 18, and we made it legal. It all started 12 years ago, when her parents started selling at a market I sold at...

The world of a flea marketeer is something the average human couldn't comprehend. These were the days when it still made sense. I was mostly shooting for a goal of early retirement, and as a result was very careful with expenses. Her parents showed up at my Saturday market- I was a nomadic flea market guy who worked six days a week and restocked on Mondays.

Back then most vendors were like me- Jewish, ex-salesmen or ex-buyers who knew contacts for where to get merchandise cheap, had a flair for negotiating, and a natural talent for selling. We bought distressed or close out merchandise for a quarter what it cost in the store and sold it for half what it cost in the store- or better. I was a nomadic outdoor vendor, and most vendors like me did all the same markets. Some might take off more than others, but we all did the same markets.

With my main goal in mind, I was keeping my costs at an absolute minimum. I had bought my truck, at a deep discount (naturally) from a moving company that had greatly underestimated the need for capital reserves and went out of business after just six months. It was a nearly new 2000 International 4300 with a 28-foot moving body with attic and two side access doors, one near the front.

I had partitioned the box at the front side door so as to create a small apartment with a pair of bunk beds, a personal storage locker in the attic, a heater that ran off of diesel fuel, a reefer unit reconfigured to serve as an A/C, a small utility office space and a tiny hot-plate kitchen for cooking cheap food. That left 20 feet of box to store merchandise in.

At the time I was selling mens designer clothing, something I would sell until quite recently, actually. I had girlfriends from time to time, mostly younger flea market vendors. I had never fallen in love with anything but money. With my tiny living expenses (No rent, no property tax, no major utilities, and no reported income, thank you!) money piled up in a rapid fashion, so I was indulging that love quite adequately.

By this point I had been selling for over 20 years, ever since I had a drivers license, and had several million in merchandise in various warehouses, but no cash- I had kept that in my last truck, which I crashed and caught on fire. I had to make sure all the money burned, lest the police find it and ask me where I got it. I had since gotten wise and started storing it in fire safes in each warehouse. I learn, trust me.

Also, by this point, the party had started slowing down. I was still making gobs of money, but the days when my yearly sales exceeded a million dollars were a few years in the past. I don't know how much money had quite burned up with the truck, but I am pretty sure it was at least $5 million.

Anyway, her parents, Mahmoud and Shekiah Shomani, were (obviously) Arabs, a breed of people that were starting to show up at markets. By the late 2000s, most vendors were Arabs or Asians. Some of them were very nice. More nice Arabs then nice Asians, but still, most of the Arabs were decent people who were friendly, and partook in the friendly neighborliness that tended to occur in flea market circles.

As an aside, most flea market Asians, then as now, were FOBs who barely spoke English and were working with the Triads. They were not friendly, they were greedy, and they used the pretense they spoke no English at all as a screen to hide all manner of impolite behavior in violation of the Flea Marketeers Code of Ethics, like table stealing. Also, they usually sold garbage of a quality that gave the markets bad names.

Anyway, Mahmoud wasn't one of the nice Arabs. He was friendly to other vendors, so I didn't have a social problem with him. But he liked to fuck the living tar out of his customers. Shekiah was no better then him in that department. They had a daughter, at that time six years of age, and her name was Yasmin. She was cute, as six year olds go, and very friendly.

Now, in order to explain that, I have to explain the phenomenon known as market children. Parents engaged in flea marketing often do so six days a week, live nomadicly, and don't send their children to school. They home school them, or simply stay off the radar. Market children, who are often not supervised very well, pollute the market and grow up among the drudgery of the markets. They are not nice places, with stolen merchandise, fakes, illegal items, and drugs changing hands.

With so much nastiness around, naturally, there are pretty nasty people, too. You grow up fast. Too fast, really. You have to learn how to survive among all these nasty people. You see things that are really not meant for young eyes to see- like pornography, which is rampant in the markets. You see thefts, you see fights, and you see all matter of depravity.

Fights that send people to the hospital break out over a few inches of display space. Its a hard way to grow up. Most of the market children are equally nasty people, because they grow up with the internal belief that fucking people is the way of the world.

The Shomanis started off at my saturday market, but quickly fell into market habit. They bought a Ford van of questionable roadworthiness (the standard market vehicle, really) and went around selling at all of the same markets I did. I had noticed them around for a while building up a decent inventory base. They first started out in their apartment in a nearby city, but quickly gave it up and spent their nights in various motels near the market they were selling at.

In those days, money was easy, and the money made allowed for sleeping in motels. Even for grade C vendors like the Shomanis.

Mahmoud was a first rate salesman/con-artist and he quickly moved up to the point where that Ford van wasn't big enough for his operation. After being a Ford Van Vendor for eight months, he bought a used U-haul 16 footer, and moved somewhat closer to me. It was at that point that I saw Yasmin often enough to actually really define her as a person.

Eight months had shown on her. We all aged fast, it was part of the game. I was 36 going on 50, for example. But the kids aged faster, and the intelligent ones the fastest of all. Not outwardly, of course. While the kids who worked would age markedly with the rest of us, the ones to young to do heavy work would age only mentally.

By then, she had the wisdom of mid-age teenager, and the slightly cynical nature of any person who has been on the flea market circuit eight months.

I was a 36 year old with deep sun wrinkles, a sense of humor developed to ingratiate me to customers, a slight baldness from all the sun exposure, and the muscles of an ox. I unloaded a truck, with an employee who lived with me in the truck, full of enough merchandise to fill a 1500 square foot spot. I had dress shirts, polo shirts, jeans, khakis, and dress pants, of all sizes up to super-extra-large sizes. Not to mention a full haberdashery worth of accessories. Unloading and reloading 5 tons of cargo every day builds the muscles. And the sun tan.

And incredible cynicism. So many customers had tried to screw the pants off me in so many ways. I had collected at least $15,000 worth of counterfeit bills over the past 20 years. I had lost $150,000 worth of merchandise, to my knowledge, to shoplifting. And that was just to my knowledge.

But I was an honest vendor. I treated my customers properly, with the respect they deserved, or didn't deserve, depending on the customer. I offered returns, fashion advice, and all of it. I had a strong following. That was one of the reasons I had survived the market turmoil that had only just begun.

Mahmoud sold over priced poorly jerry-rigged repaired electronics. Most of it was shit that broke not long after you got it home, and he did not take returns. Period, end of discussion. He ran every scam in the book to get people to take the merchandise for more money then even a properly working variant was worth. That was why I didn't like him on a personal level.

I don't know what attracted Yasmin to me as a kid the first few years, but something did. She liked me, even then. To me, then, she was just a kid who sometimes hung out in my stand and played with me. I'd tell her jokes, or stories, and she'd do the same. We weren't that close, then. But we were friends, or as close to friends as a 36 year old vendor could be to a 6 year old market kid.

A year and a half later, Mahmoud had expanded his business again, and replaced his truck with an ancient Isuzu Forward with a 20 foot box. With the expansion came a new spot, which in three of the markets we did, were next to mine or across from mine. Mahmoud had reached what we called Grade A status, much to my astonishment.

Part of the reason for his expansion was being pulled over in the U-haul at a weigh station. His truck had been over 4000 lbs overweight, incredibly. It was an under-rated U-haul registered personally as an 8500 lb truck. It had been slightly over the chassis capacity at 12,700. At $2 a pound for the weight fine, and a $1900 non-commercial registration of commercial vehicle fine, Mahmoud started playing by the rules.

It was a little over a year later, Yasmin was about 9 and a half, when we really became good friends. By this time, she was an adult in a child's body, in terms of intellect. She was still a small child in some emotional ways, but she was mature and generally speaking, an adult.

I had seen in many times before, but usually she had not been in earshot of her parents. It was a common scam, and the Shomanis weren't the only ones who used it. Shekiah was presiding over a customer looking at a big screen TV worth, perhaps, $500 in good condition. (It wasn't, but there was no way for the customer to know that!) Shekiah asked Yasmin to ask her dad (who was on the other end of the store) what the price was, and came back with the price of $390.

The customer was pleased, and agreed to buy it. At which point, Shekiah called Mahmoud over. Mahmoud was absolutely shocked as to how the price of $390 had been stipulated. He had, in fact, paid $516 for it. He would sell it to the customer at his cost, because his daughter had made a mistake. He was ever so sorry.

This was all BS. It was the scam he was running to get the customer to pay more for the infernal thing then it was worth. For a while then Yasmin had been complaining to me about what a schmuck her father had been cheating all of his customers. I had told her that there was nothing she could really do about it, except to consider it an example of what not to do.

Yasmin, looking pissed, faked a little girl voice and said, "But daddy, you only paid $125 for it."

Her father, looking suddenly incensed, replied, "Yasmin, you are mistaken, you are thinking of something else," and then smiled at the customer with a alligator grin.

"No, I'm not mistaken," she replied, "I remember you paid $125 for that."

The customer, realizing he was being taken, walked away.

Mahmoud then took her into their truck and closed the door. I assumed he was going to give her a talking to.

I was wrong. I heard her squeal in pain from inside the truck, and I ran from my spot and threw open the door to the truck, Shekiah behind me asking me what I was doing.

Yasmin was being held against the wall by one of Mahmoud's hands and being punched with the other. Her nose and lip were bleeding. That was all I saw before I kicked Mahmoud in the balls from behind, yanked him off of her, and shoved him against the other wall of the truck.

"SHOMANI," I roared at him, "If you EVER, EVER, touch that girl again, I will call DYFS and then kill you."

He was basically a coward, and he mumbled something about how a father was supposed to be allowed to discipline his child.

"Bullshit," I replied in an even, calm, and detached voice, "First of all, that wasn't discipline, that was abuse. Second, you are beating your child for being a good, kind hearted person. You are a dishonest toad. You are the lowest type of being on earth. You cheat and steal and take for yourself!"

Chapter 2 »