XII

Free of the Material Plane

Rose Berry had been around the block on the investment, equity, and creative financing thing. She viewed the game board in terms of inevitable victory if she could keep energizing the positive as only a spirit-based, urban woman can do. That is, a winner among women will know in her gut how to move the pieces to rise above the mundane, workaday world. Not that she was poor or downtrodden, but a gal wants to exhale sooner or later—wants to ease into something more, something better, something fuzzy or frilly, something plush or flamboyant—something to show for her effort. Because a game gal is on, every day.

Youthful energy wasn’t what it used to be, but Rose could still compete in a society ruled by corrupt, white men.

She would not see this messy relationship with Juan Valdez as two horny people deferring to convenience. Yes, he was a subsistence Mexican enamored by a classy gringa; and yes, she was a classy gringa with a taste for salsa picànte. But it was more than mutual infatuation and sex, much, much more. For one thing, the sex represented deeper meaning than mere friction of an intimate nature, much more, considering her recent issues of self-esteem. In fact, the sex proved she still has what it takes to attract a man and keep him in the home cucina at mealtime. Anyone dismissing Juan Valdez as a greaser would only be jealous of his incredible virility, his Latino machismo, his cut, his scent, his leer, swagger, threat, and truck. Only a heterosexual man would write him off, or a lesbian.

For another thing, getting involved with Juan Valdez confirmed her wits, still the most proven fundamentals of her survival to date. Maybe she dismissed him at the outset as well, but that wasn’t racism; the guy was just so obviously on the make for white pussy. She did not appreciate that phrase one bit, but in the context of the misery, hardship, and deprivation his people had been through, white pussy took on new meaning, less heinous and sexist than when hatefully used by the general population. Juan brought a different value set to bear on the overall context—more compensatory, a balance in nature, a just reward—reparation, as it were. Or his usage could be simply idiomatic and phonetic: pu-sē. To him the potentially vile word was merely English.

After the fact it hardly matters. A guy that macho, that virile, that oppressed and exploited, a guy who rings the bell and keeps it ringing, can call it white pussy or sideways sloppy Joe, cooter, snapper, hairy taco or whatever he wants to call it …

But God, she hates that language, and he’s white too, in the racial sense, unless the Mestizo influence makes him … Who cares? He’s more man than she’s ever had, and she only points out the importance of perception relative to preconceived prejudice in the socio-racial matrix because, in this case, she was right!

A guy comes on staring at your breasts, your crotch, your eyes. What does he want, approval? You size him up for violence and write him off as a no-count scum who’s bound for friction with a woman or his hand before midnight. The streets are crawling with those guys.

Or maybe he’s bound for a swift kick to the gonads, if he insists.

Then you play what you might think is a smarter angle—or at least a safer one—than the one you played with what’s-his-name, the stuffed shirt, the prissy-priss-paper-pusher, Professor Smoke ’n Mirrors, who taught the accelerated course in hocus pocus, with a bang on the head and again in the shorts. You get swept off your feet and left for dead. You try to stand up from down, and short of that, you just crawl out of the mess. Then you get back in stride a bit smarter, a bit tougher, which is maybe all you ever need to do.

Anyone who ever played Monopoly can learn about money: She who finagles the most properties rules the world. It’s easy if you get the ivories to lay down right.

Rose Berry never wanted to rule the world, and she would likely decline the opportunity if offered. She merely wanted to improve her position and maybe her love life and place of residence. Is it so unreasonable for a woman to have the same opportunities as a man, to expect a nice place to live with above-average-to-excellent accessories, professional and artistic neighbors who have dinner parties, and a heterosexual male mate with a six-figure income closer to seven figures than five, whose manners and apparent love for his woman are envied by all other women, whose body fat does not exceed eighteen percent, and whose stamina and appetite for romance are impressive and from time to time exhaustive?

No, that is not unreasonable, which is to say it is reasonable. She was, however, sick and (excuse me) fucking tired of lonely nights after tedious days of nothing to show but chump change for eight hours’ work—by the clock! My God, where’s that at?

Nowhere is the short answer. And nowhere was where she felt stuck, watching the world wallow in prosperity, while she worked away the endless, awful hours in one menial job after another. America got richer and richer, and she got the rest. Hostess in a medium chic restaurant, manicurist, dog walker, exercise class for fat women leader, temp, substitute teacher, fashion clerk in a massive department store, telephone solicitor, shampoo station girl, and on and on and on …

Bo-ring.

Every day the news lamented gas, groceries, tuition and real estate, all up, up and up. But who kept coming up with the cash to make those markets? Does not supply reflect demand? Wouldn’t prices fall if nobody could pay? And who got the higher prices?

Let’s face it: America is filthy (excuse me) fucking rich. So how could a smart woman get her share of the plunder?

That was the question.

Here, too, the obvious answer was so simple that very few could see it: she would borrow. What better time to jump off the high board than into a pool full of money? No better time was the answer, which just so happened to be the time she’d had her eye (and her heart set, somehow, some way) on possibly the most fabulous Victorian house in San Francisco. Sure it was in Noe Valley, which is thick as it gets with hip, chic, radical, political, artistic, and prohibitively expensive essence. But the place was so quintessentially delicious, scrumptious, perfect and then some. Talk about classy digs and hot and cold running hetero men.

I mean, those 1930s classic kitchen cabinets with the white frames and antique glass were perfect, and the huge deco bathrooms, which isn’t Victorian, I know, but still, make the place more perfect.

It was a tantalizing, exasperatingly exquisite example of the hip-prosperity movement that fueled the run on Noe Valley. Imagining life in such a house felt warm and fuzzy and perfect—and stimulating without end. How could anybody get tired of that stuff? It reeked of attention to detail, and if ever a thing existed that had to be possessed, and a person simply had to have it, this was that, the match made in Heaven—or Noe Valley, a little lower than the angels, maybe, but not by much and so much easier to relate to, if you knew what was up.

Prospects tingled on her skin, signaling the receptive mind that maybe, perhaps, if the goddess within was willing, it was meant to be. And maybe it would be, but you can’t make a down payment with a tingle. Well, you can put the tingles out there, meaning that you can visualize a thing to facilitate its evolution, and that’s an important step, and if you think it’s not, then you’re the (pardon me) fucking fool.

And don’t think for a minute that a material item does not evolve into ownership by a particular person, because it does. It’s the same as spontaneous generation, like when they made flies happen on that meat. That was flies for chrissakes, and this was a Noe Valley Victorian. It was a wish upon a star either way, but different; this was grown-up and really real. Besides, at two point six million, what difference could it make? She couldn’t afford the point six, much less the two. So putting it out there and having a little fantasy fun didn’t hurt anybody. Did it?

Till she had a date with Rommel Dunbar—his real name, he insisted, and so she challenged, “Swear to God?” He sneered but would not swear, and she later learned his real name: Randy Davis, and that he’d upgraded on the name issue to enhance compatibility with the high-end, dominance-based real-estate market, focusing on your better blocks in Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, the Upper Haight, and so on. He said he wouldn’t trifle with Noe Valley; “It’s so, well, we won’t go there.”

“We could at least talk about it.”

Rose and Rommel met by chance, though both shopped at the Marina Safeway for better odds on the random payout of the relationship-based society they lived in. They lingered in produce for the freshness and fertility most ambient and suggestive there.

Dairy could also be productive but remained second to produce with all variables factored, because of your lactose intolerants, which, let’s face it, are more prevalent in the mix than you might imagine. Would you hate to miss a fabulous catch because of that?

Gluten is another matter altogether, and you simply can’t know till it’s too late.

Meanwhile, in produce, they browsed broccoli heads, on sale, with subtle touching and peripheral observing leading to brief eye contact confirming common knowledge of life and its organic niceties, cruciferous vegetables not the least among them. She agreed to meet him for wine in spite of the obvious age difference. He couldn’t be more than thirty. Maybe thirty-five. But he was cute, peevish, and foppish with his studied lexicon referencing debentures, take-out paper, underwriting and, of course, IPOs relative to maturity or pre-maturity.

Pre-maturity? Isn’t that a sexual problem?

She didn’t ask, immersed in the initial phase of romance, where discretion and good taste rule, speaking of which, this guy knew how to present. Overall was his cashmere topcoat with the tag hanging out the collar, maybe to show that it cost four grand on its initial offering. She read it aloud, apparently pleasing him.

“Oh, that,” he reached back and plucked it off. “I didn’t really want it, but it got cold and I was passing by Wilkes Bashford and Harold, my main man there, was standing in the doorway hugging himself and he called out that I looked chilled, and you know, he was right, and I could just, you know, put it on my running charge there. So, what the hey?”

She took his meaning to heart. This casual declaration of vast expenditure en passant to effectively marginalize a surface discomfort, on the fly, as it were, literally defined him as impulsive, playful, tasteful, appreciative, and warm—and he had no charge limit at Wilkes Bashford, which meant all his drawers were top drawers, just off Union Square. How could anybody not admire such an up-and-comer who transcended the discretionary with the supremely, casually convenient?

She smiled playfully, surmising that this pup was a cutie, and she just might go All. The. Way. He would at least be more durable than the men she usually met. Or should be, anyway, given his tender age. And a woman likes a bit of, you know, staying power, if only in the short term.

Rommel mentioned the Victorian in Noe Valley also en passant, which seemed to be his preferred mode of reference. It was their first really meaningful talk of lifelong dreams: retiring at thirty-five for him, allowing forty if the money was good enough to keep him on the job—and the job could keep him stimulated. Owning a Victorian was her passion, her dream, her lifelong wish and desire, as soon as possible. She loved the idea of a single house costing two point six, but it might as well be eleventy point twelve for her.

He scoffed at the notion of anyone’s life on hold, with so much money at hand, with so much to be enjoyed right now for a measly three mil, which would be more the case with closing costs, remodeling and furniture, realistically. But what’s the diff, two-six, three-oh? It wasn’t chump change, that was for sure, but it was hardly an amount to retire on or lose sleep over, not in this arena, not with the vision and the daring and the …

He paused to catch her, eye to eye. The … let’s face it, the balls to call yourself a player in the Bold Economy.

In a week Rose would consent to sexual relations with Rommel in gratitude for his help and to silence his plea. Rommel lamented that he’d never known love and couldn’t be sure what it was or when he would feel it, but he felt something; he was sure of that, and he thought, maybe, this was it. God knew: this was something.

He sent a dozen long-stemmed roses, with scent, the hundred-fifty dollar variety. She sniffed and blushed. He blushed too. She imagined a romance starring him and her, beginning with her showing him the nature of gratitude and a thing or two about true, lasting love. She felt light as gossamer and as delicately lovely. Sensations warmed her heart from within, like tequila can do.

His thought bubble was a single, boyish scene of pornographic sex over the caption: So what? You work. You go to school? What?

At least Rommel Dunbar’s mannerly good taste made him more tolerable, once she swallowed his high-finance affectation. And he must have been smart; he’d done so well. That is, the roses seemed heartfelt but in their way also casual. And he’d secured the Noe Valley Victorian with such easy facility, on two phone calls.

What? That’s all there was to it? Well, he was admittedly loose with the term “secure” but a verbal on a rate lock was nearly money in the bank. Just you watch. He’d get it closed, which would be a great favor for him to do for her, though the transaction was of such, shall we say, small proportion.

“Small? Three million dollars?”

“Well, it’s not like … real money, you know.”

“It’s not like real money?”

“No. It’s a number. That’s all it is. A relatively small number.”

“Yeah. A number of dollars.”

“No. It’s not dollars. That’s where most people fail—in their perception of danger. You know I’m a Kaidofu master, but I don’t want to go there, except to tell you that we train with wooden knives, so that we can see a wooden knife, even if the attack is with steel. You see? It’s not real dollars. It’s ink on paper. Or a blip in the ether, if you will. It’s not the same as cash. It’s a simple measure of faith, or, more accurately, it’s a measure of the faith no longer necessary in our mixed free enterprise system, because we have more money than faith requires. Listen, dear: America is swollen fat with money. The money is pouring over the flood banks. This economy has more money than Niagara Falls has water—and the difference is that Niagara Falls keeps a fairly constant flow where we, America, are flowing stronger every day. You think you can dam it up? You can’t. So you jump in and ride the current. Get it?”

“You mean like over the falls?”

“Now you sound like one of the workadays who can’t see the forest for the trees. Let me ask you something: Do you like cashmere? Do you like caviar? Do you like Noe Valley?”

“Well … yes.”

Just like that, the very next evening materialized with Rose dining at Rommel’s to sign docs on the deal that was going more secure all the time. Sho’nuff, he wooed her, answering the door in silk briefs and a cashmere sport jacket. Allowing no time for reaction, he led her to his computer and sat her in his plush, doeskin throne with twenty-two ergonomic adjustments including lumbar support, a moveable ottoman, and a subtle massage function that rolled the sides of the lower back. “I call it Dunbar lumbar. What do you think?” He didn’t wait for her thoughts but told her she was in the driver’s seat. She liked it.

She recalled the first time her daddy let her steer the DeSoto and how the two experiences were remarkably similar in causing a giddy titillation to rise on her skin.

Reaching over her shoulder, her new daddy punched up his website. “Look at this.” He’d initially called it urbanfox.com, for his namesake the Desert Fox, who wasn’t a bad Nazi, really. “I mean, they all were, but he was cool, you know.” Urbanfox.com also scintillated with double entendre, hinting that he was dumb like a fox, or that he was foxy, though that one could be troubling, taken the wrong way, you know. At any rate, it didn’t catch on and needed more focus on the object at hand, which was strategic maneuvering in a minefield laced with gold, or a goldfield laced with mines, depending on, well, you know.

So he changed it to winwinwin.com, what it should have been in the first place because that’s what it was, a devilishly clever extension of the old win-win situation, with one more win, as you can see. “Now it’s catching on. Let me show you how it works.”

Just like that, Rommel Dunbar let his jacket fall to the floor—it was so unseasonably hot—as he created before her eyes the most creative form of creative financing yet created in your creative segment of California commerce. The bank allowed for the down payment to be loaned by the bank and secured by a second mortgage, held by the bank, behind the first mortgage, also theirs. That would have made you blink in the past, since no lender wants to be in second position, especially not to themselves. But that thinking was flawed, because second position is first position, if it’s second to yourself. Don’t you see?

Not to worry; by holding the first mortgage, the bank secured the property, so it made no difference, really, who held the second mortgage, and the bank was happy to hold it because it charged out at five points higher than the first. So they’d make even more money by separating a small portion of the loan and calling it a second. Risk? In this market? If prices went any higher, we’d need to leave town just to find more stuff to buy!

The beauty of this arrangement was that Rose would need to make no payments, not on the first or second mortgages, not with property values rising quicker’n Jack’s beanstalk—a subtle flourish of excitement at this juncture included brief contact between his own beanstalk and her shoulder, the operative word here being brief, which went along with natural, and not exactly stiff but in the semi-ready phase that was so amusing and cute in the young ones.

Anyway, he wouldn’t go there either, just yet, with momentum gaining on the simple success so available to those who could wake up and smell the gardenias. “Are those gardenias?”

“Yes. Good nose. I have them flown in. Don’t you love them?”

“Yes. They make me … They make me…”

“I know. Me too.”

Anyway, the bank, ultimately happy to serve, just like it said on TV, would simply reappraise the house upward every other month, increasing Rose’s debt on the technical side, but who gives a flying fuck (Rommel’s rhetorical question) on the practical side, since she could sell the place anytime and make a profit(!)?

Don’t you see? Everybody wins, including the bank, the buyer, and the house! That’s why I call it winwinwin.com.

In the meantime, she could live there for free, just riding the note a month late like a big wave surfer hanging ten till the odd month reappraisal, and boom, she’s in there clean again on a sixty day cycle. “Now, I don’t mean you just live there,” Rommel said.

“Oh, boy,” she murmured. “Here comes the catch.”

His silk-clad nub rested on her shoulder at this juncture, perhaps more obtrusive than natural, though casual contact was the attempted effect. His dingdong on her shoulder was meant to be incidental, unthinking, perched there by chance in the soft flurry of excitement. “You’re not just living there, if you’re living your dream,” he crooned. This last sentiment rang true and then some; it echoed from the figurative hills and bounced off the walls of her heart. It numbed her shoulder to the swelling bratwurst resting on it. It shut her up and opened her mouth on a whimper as her eyes virtually beheld all the crazy wonderful images of herself living in Noe Valley in the most fabulous Victorian ever. Such a montage was indeed enough to counterbalance and make sense of the red knob that somehow, someway, effortlessly if not magically had slipped around the corner while unveiling itself to fill the gap in her expression of delight and proceeded to tap her tonsils.

It wasn’t so bad. Rommel Dunbar, or Randy Davis as she came to call him in the end, had the romantic sensitivity of a pneumatic dildo. But he would not tire, even as he loped headlong to tiresome durability. “Yeah, yeah, you’re the cock o’ the block,” she would moan assuredly three times over the next six months, once after each reappraisal upward, till, alas, reality in California, like all trips eventually will, adjusted downward yet again.

Rommel’s next appeal was for a small, short-term advance, not even thirty days, much less ninety, on a few bucks to get him through a closing next week that would set things straight again. He’d pay back two points over, which, if you cared to punch the numbers with a twelve-month amortization extrapolated on the back end just for fun, would come out to over a hundred percent return on investment, and besides, it was the least she could do, given the dire straits little Miss Smarty Pants Rose had got him into.

“Sounds like junk bonds, unsecured,” she said, because she’d learned a thing or two in her days of money meditation.

“Secured? You want security? I’ll give you security. How about you make me this friendly little loan, and I’ll keep the roof over your head.” His bleak attempt at civility left them both with the shakes, but downside potential is present in every scenario, and it waited in the wings for this one. She should also make arrangements to make a few payments, he said. It wouldn’t be that many payments, but a few to keep the shit from hitting the fan. Not to worry, those few payments would be interest only. Of course, payments on three point three are higher than on two point six, but that difference was also technical since the appraised values were still greater one month to the next, and anyway, payments on neither value would be practical or possible.

“I have a better idea.” She attempted nonchalance but couldn’t quite quell the shakes. “How about you make payments up your ass. Then take that stupid, overblown house and stick it up your ass. Then take your little loan and stick it up your ass too.” She was bailing out, as they say in the business.

“You can’t bail! You own that house! And you owe me!”

“Fuck you, Randy. Fuck you. Fuck the bank and fuck you. You can use that for your new website: fuckfuckfuck.com. Get it?”

That language didn’t come easily to Rose Berry, or at least it didn’t use to, before her exposure to unscrupulous moral standards.

Is that an oxymoron? I mean, if you have standards, aren’t you scrupulous, I mean, by nature?

Oh, fuck it: the awful ring of truth hung in the air like roach spray, causing a wince but ridding the kitchen of varmints too. So she felt well rid of Rommel Randy dumbass, or whatever his name was. What a buffoon. What a blowhard. That guy couldn’t tell which end was up, who was who, what was money, and the difference between owned and owed? Or a debit and a credit? Boy, what a debit. No, wait … Never mind; he was a liability, not an asset, so goodbye, good riddance, so long, adios—like the song says.

So a woman walked away in the most spiritual sense, letting go of her heartfelt desires, or their vestige remnants at any rate.

Walking away from the material plane felt good and was a known remedy for life’s problems, though few people manage to find the simple solutions most available. Walking away wasn’t the same solution to life’s tedium as borrowing two point six million by signing a fax document. It was different. It was letting go. It was casting fate to the wind. Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be … What a great song that was, and oh, how true.

And who would be waiting right outside, idling at the curb in the getaway car to take off with the loot for a new life of romance and luxury? None other than Mr. Reality himself, who was just as surprised as she was, because that’s how the fates play it, by chance, just when you thought you were down—and don’t forget destiny, karma, the cards and, of course, the goddess within.

Under any other circumstance, she would have sounded the alarm: pervert, stalker, rapist. His tit-scan was trumped, however, by what, in actuality, was meant to be. Yes, he appraised her, chest included, before murmuring as only he could, “¡Hola, Señora!”

Of course, a lady doesn’t ride off in a truck with a strange man. But a woman of spiritual and material means could sense synchronicity when it came her way. She knew when things were taken care of. So, yes, she would take a ride with him. Because a gal who could ask the tough questions would be open to good fortune. Where did she need to be? Out of town, the farther the better. How could she get there? With a ride, and there it was, bringing up the closing question at last: Why the fuck not?

Besides, there was a kid in the back. How bad could the guy be? I mean, I’d have gotten in if it was a dog back there, because you know a man with a dog is okay. But it was a kid. How much better was that?

Besides, how weird could he be, with fine art, along with the kid? I mean, if that was weird, then I was too. I mean, really. The kid was staring, but still …

“What is your name?”

“Rose.”

He nodded once. “Rosa.”

She loved that—Rosa. “What’s your name?”

“Call me Juan Valdez.”

“Oh, God. You’re kidding!”

“No. I kid you nada. I am him.”

“Jesus. I mean, you know?”

“I go south. You go south?”

“Yes. South will do.”

So she blinked out of a dream gone bad into a dream of adventure, to the soulful side, far from urban dandies, fops, buffoons, and banks. As if for safe measure, the karmic goddess had sent her a ride down the road in the vehicle of her redemption to Santa Cruz, everybody’s lifestyle Mecca, where a shoebox bungalow in a surf slum could run three million, or four if you hesitated. Then you could stare at waves rolling under young dudes going agro day after day till next year when you could ask five million or seven. It was so real, so elite, and refreshingly unique from that superficial Noe Valley scene.

“I am Panchito.” This from the kid, at last, his bugging, blinking eyes seeking approbation of something or other, like maybe his thick, Mexican accent. But he was a cute kid and, better yet, he had a cute dog. “Esto es mi perro, Cisco.”

“¿Que? ¿Panchito y Cisco? Ustedes esta mas … uh … young. You’re too young to remember Pancho and Cisco.”

The kid didn’t comprehend, but give a girl a break.

Her Spanish wasn’t that bad. Well, whatever. It just felt right; an old beater truck with a kid and a dog. What could be wrong? Headed south at that. A woman had to trust her instincts, and right then she felt nothing but relieved. Ugh, when she thought of that guy and his fake names and cashmere coats, laying his dingdong on her shoulder and calling it romantic. Ugh. Good riddance. And a good lesson too: you can’t get blood from a turnip, though she did try.

And a woman’s most merciful critic should be herself. It was okay to mess things up—it was bound to happen now and then—as long as she came out a little bit smarter. Sure, it seemed like life’s critical juncture, in which a gal needed a new place and still does. But buy? Are you kidding? She’ll rent, thank you very much. That whole down payment, leverage on paper, no worries, and odd-month-reappraisal routine was a fool’s paradise. Better to let the vehicle of your destiny hit the pastoral landscape of America resurrected and be free! She nearly trembled at the prospect of downsizing to ten cents on the dollar—and updating the décor and furnishings next year. Or the year after. Maybe. Now there was an alternate reality to Noe Valley. They ought to call that place unreal estate. Ha! Give a country girl the outskirts any day. And a country girl is just exactly what this gal had decided to be.

Next stop: Watsonville, a farm town with sidewalks thinly populated by thickset people in overalls and flowered gingham, where outdoor work was daily and most workers spoke Spanish first. It felt better, even as a concept, what might be called a lifestyle model: a little town in the country where real estate meant fulfillment of the dream and not a hotshot promising blue sky and a killing—make that a regular fucking massacre. And it was not Latino, not East LA or Watts. It was Mexican, like it has been and is and would be, rural for chrissakes, so it would change slowly instead of by urban reclamation, gentrification, and reactive anger.

Watsonville felt like the end of the line and farther from delusional turmoil than mere miles can measure. Beyond the peninsula and sprawling suburbs and way yonder of the hip, chic, avant-bankrupt delusion, the place felt clean and simple. And so she arrived at where a woman can live free and breathe easy.

How blessedly it began, with the most fabulous enchilada plate and a quiet night in a hotel so cheap they’d never believe it a hundred miles up in el Norte. Juan Valdez’s harmless flirtation and playful abrazo only made a girl feel good, if anybody wanted to know. Then he went home like such a gentleman, kind and sincere, maybe because he still had the kid in tow, but that only proved his decency, because kids usually do.

He picked her up in the morning for a passable latte but rancheros to die for, again with his charm, saying the kid was in school, and so they enjoyed their breakfast like none she could remember in the city; he was so simple and honest and straightforward and … masculine. He didn’t even mention fleshy favors for another hour or insist for ten minutes after that. She wasn’t ready, but then what woman is ever ready to be swept off her feet? It wasn’t that she didn’t mind by then. She did, but she gave it up in a process she thought of as adaptation, and she was frankly ready for a different go than what she’d recently endured—not so swanky-panky and a whole heap more man. Some guys understand the meaning of no and oh, oh, oh.

In farm country she could live simply, loving the basic beauty of the place and the lifestyle it had to offer: a little rain, a little sun, some dirt under the nails, and light perspiration across the brow and upper lip. It felt like a hundred years ago or something, like when Miss Kitty took Marshal Dillon up to the second floor of the Long Branch Saloon. Miss Kitty owned that place, because a woman could make something of herself even then if she’d a mind to. This place did seem a tad over the top on the deferred maintenance issue. The lace curtains could have been original. But it could all be updated! Moreover …

It was a lovely patina on him too, across his chest and incredible arms. It looked more like that stuff they spray on in the movies to accentuate muscle definition—not that this guy needed accentuation; God, the way his pants hung off his hips with that bulge and those eyes. What girl wouldn’t be curious? And a truly mature woman will prefer more mature guys every time.

Soon she wished he would put his shirt back on, like in twenty or thirty minutes, she wished. That’s the thing about Mexican guys: they know how to look at a woman, like, with romance instead of sizing her up for sex. Sure, he already knew her size, and could likely assess her inclination, or maybe he only assumed as much, but still. Those trucks always seemed so silly, but in a working farm town they seemed to fit. After all, those guys are Mexican and everything. It felt more real than the charade up north. Warmer too. So a woman let her defense internal ease up for a while with thoughts that maybe this was it, or could be it or … Never mind: this was the moment, and in no time it would be another moment, and there you go. It was so cute, the way he had to park right in front and kept looking out the window at it, like he loved that truck just as he would if it was his horse.

Things felt honest, so different than that goofy guy with his frilly things and endless name-dropping and unspeakable greed and god-awful smell of Right Guard and cologne. And, truth be told, all the stamina of a city boy. Ha! This was different; this was salt o’ the earth, which was who she’d become, just that quick, because puzzle parts fitting neatly together make the big picture clear. The third world, cutting-edge art made it even better, more of an overlay than a synthesis, or maybe it was juxtaposition, but maybe that was just her, lingering for a while in the intellectual wallow so popular with urbanites. He smelled better too, more like a goat—a living goat, a muscular goat who lived hard and …

Whatever, it all … felt … or … ganic … Oh, oh, God!

Oh …

It was like all of life before Juan was a fogbank of amorphous, vague images and inconsequential recollection and then came a truck bound for Watsonville, as life stretched onward with clarity and meaning in the most beautiful way. And it happened by chance! Which proves the adage that magic happens, and so it did.

Sure, a change that big meant a few growing pains. For one thing, a gal needed to make a living, but that should be easy. Nobody could starve to death in farm country. And this wasn’t just any farm country. This was the Fertile Crescent West. You couldn’t walk a quarter mile in any direction without coming onto one crop or another. She wouldn’t want to steal produce long-term. But she could always do massage, maybe not in Watsonville, because salt o’ the earth folk don’t get massage, and besides, why hoe this hardpan with such premium topsoil just up the road? Big bucks, that is, and it’s still an up-charge for outcall.