Chapter 2

After she walked over to me, we both walked back to my truck. I opened the door for her and she climbed in. She was still a tad on the short side- it would change - but she was so used to climbing into and out of trucks that it was a smooth and graceful motion.

Then I climbed in my side. Joint arthritis had already started to affect me- part of the common maladies that get to people who do this kind of work. But I was still acceptably nimble.

After starting up the engine and shifting into first, we set off from the truck stop. The market was only 10 minutes away, and the sun was just starting to come up. Driving a big truck requires some concentration when you are in traffic, and so I wasn't looking at her. I'd wrecked more then my share of market vehicles over the years, and I do learn.

This machine was now six years old, and had logged over 240,000 miles. It was starting to need repairs from time to time. But it still ran, and frankly, of the big trucks in use at the markets I went to, mine was in perhaps the best shape.

"I..." she started, but couldn't seem to finish.

"Was both expecting that and shocked at the same time?" I postulated.

She sat there contemplatively for a couple of minutes.

"Yes, exactly," she replied.

"I know how you feel," I said, "I've been slowly been falling in love with you over the years. I had started thinking that way a while back, but just in a if-only-you-came-along-when-I-was-your-age kind of way. But recently, I was moving more and more into just wanting to love you. But I kept telling myself it was crazy, and you didn't agree."

"Its complicated," she said, "I'm not ready for so much, and yet, I know who I want to be with. I mean I really, really know."

"And if I was your age-" I started.

"We'd be moving into it at the right pace," she concluded.

"Yaz," I risked a small glance at her face, concentrating and confused, "Just because I'm old enough for what you're not ready for doesn't mean I can't wait until whatever you are ready for whenever you are ready for it."

She nodded thoughtfully.

This was complicated. For one thing, her father would kill me if he figured out how we had been for the past few months, let alone what happened this morning. Not that I blame him- if she had been my daughter, and I hadn't fully seen everything as it had been, I woulda killed me, too.

With a normal kid, this would be depravity. Perhaps, to an extent, it still is. A normal kid would not be ready for this, mentally, emotionally, or physically. It would be abuse to try any of it. Taking advantage mentally, wrecking emotionally, and injuring physically.

But Yaz was not a normal kid. If she was a normal kid, I wouldn't be in this predicament, because she would be just a normal, immature, childish girl, out playing games and lusting after celebrities. She wouldn't be able to really understand what this relationship was, what it meant, or whether it was right.

She was a market kid. An intelligent market kid. She had grown up mentally so fast, the rest of her was still trying to catch up. Mentally, she was a full adult. She had seen too much to not be. She had to fend for herself in a world even worse then Mos Eisley.

Emotionally, she was a late teen. She knew how she felt, and she understood the emotions she was experiencing. But she was still sufficiently immature to not be sure of herself. Like a college student, she didn't quite yet have the emotional strength to be completely responsible for the future.

Physically ... well, she was an 11 year old prepubescent girl.

And I didn't find her body particularly physically attractive. I've heard, over the years, questions from people as to why one particularly handsome guy was with some homely woman or other. The answer is that beauty is really more than skin deep- and so is the perception thereof. Her smile and personality made her attractive. I loved Yasmin Shomani. You could fill a room with 5 clones of her that grew up differently in a different world, and they wouldn't remotely interest me.

I understood all that. When you love somebody, you can wait to get physical gratification, and I wasn't even that strongly looking for it, anyway. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to talk to her, to interact with her, to be a part of her life.

Physically, I wanted to hold her. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to make her know, KNOW, that I loved her, and that I wanted her to be by my side until the day, not as long from now as I'd like, that I'd die.

I wanted to protect her. And I wanted to make sure that when I retired, I had enough money to make sure she'd never again have to live among the flea market world.

I was worried, though. I'd had young female friends before, including when I was their age, and I remembered. They were sexually immature- including wanting to find out "what it was like." Before they were actually ready for it.

That would probably be among the harder things in this relationship- make sure she didn't jump the gun on anything. I could wait. I'd waited 41 years to fall in love. I could wait more until she was ready for the relationship to progress.

Time for silent thought was drawing to a close as I pulled the truck through the flea market gates and pulled up to my spot and backed the big truck in. I'd have time to think later. Right now, we had to build a store.

Yaz and I got out to the back of the truck, let down the liftgate, and opened the door. This was a total-breakdown market, so everything had to be rebuilt afresh. Between the two of us, we managed to throw all the poles out of the truck, the tubs full of fittings, the anchor blocks, the tarps, the bungies, and the sales stand. With those out, I set about building the tent, while she was tasked with unloading all of the racks.

Flea market tents fall into two categories: the easy-up kites that take 3 seconds to go up, take 10 seconds to turn into a kite and go flying through the air, and 15 seconds to crash down into an expensive and broken pile of aluminum and cheap plastic tarp. And pole tents.

Pole tents are the favored selling medium of the professional vendor for several reasons. First of all, it is infinitely adaptable. I don't have a "tent" in my truck. I have bunches of poles in different lengths, fittings of various kinds to connect them, tarps of various sizes to cover them, and bungies to secure the tarps. And anchor blocks to weigh the thing down.

The fittings are sold in various configurations by flea market supply people. They are used at flea markets and in very few other places. The poles are 3/4 inch or 1 inch electrical conduits purchased from Home Depot and cut down to size. The anchor blocks, as I call them, are buckets of cement with a fitting stuck into them to allow a pole to be inserted. Any of these pieces cost $5-10 a piece, and if something goes wrong and it breaks, you have to replace a $5-10 part, not the tent. Also, because it is so heavy- a 1500 square foot anchored tent weighs about 500 lbs - it doesn't kite if assembled properly.

At heavy wind markets when a new vendor naively uses a pop-up tent, we wait until it kites, and then chorus at them with off-key recitals of "Lets Learn To Fly A Kite". Nothing ruins your day more then the sudden destruction of a $250 tent, often by either smashing into your truck and fucking it up, or worse, doing the same thing to a neighbors truck or merchandise. Or a customer.

It took me an hour to properly assemble my tent, as per usual. In that time, Yaz had gotten all of the racks out- a mix of salesmans and circles- and had started setting them up and moving them into position. Physically, I realized, she wasn't quite like other 11 year old girls. No, she was a hell of a lot stronger.

A salesman's rack is a type of straight rack (a straight bar or pair of straight bars onto which you hang clothing) that comes in two or three pieces. The base is on wheels and folds flat. The clothing bars slot into the base poles. The whole thing can comfortably fit into the trunk of most sports cars or sedans. Salesmen would use them. They'd pull up to a potential sale in a snazzy sports car or sedan, remove the rack, put it together in 3 seconds flat, and then hang his samples on it. Then he'd wheel the rack into the building. They break easily, but take up very little space.

A circle rack is a folding rack. It consists of a base in the shape of an X if you look at it top down. A circular bar slots into teeth on each of the X ends. Its very common in department stores. It is much more durable, but takes up more space and weighs three times as much.

After I was done, I started unloading the heavy boxes and cases and positioning them (they were labeled) next to the racks that the clothing would go on. Yaz would then unpack all the pre-hung-and-dust-covered clothes and put them on the racks in size order.

We had done this routine many times before. When I was done I put up the huge signs out above the tent. It had taken us three hours to fully set up the store. It was now nine o'clock. Technically the market was open, but it would be another hour or so until the customers started really storming the place.

Which means that now, after shoving all of it into the back of my mind through the use of rote routine, all of it was flooding the forefront of my mind and making me think about this whole crazy thing.

I handed Yaz some money and sent her out in search of breakfast. Flea market food is highly variable. Some of the food is excellent, some of it is inedible. Almost all of it is safe. Some of it isn't. Prepared on site food generally is, depending on state. They have to meet the same codes as anyone else, and they actually watch them.