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But why not?
All I know is that Beatrice has been very caring.
During one of our earlier conversations, she hinted to me that she wanted to take me out for one of her music evenings, “Pretty different from the music you play,” she teased.
She was very nonchalant about asking me if I had been back to the club where we first met.
Where she picked you up! Ha! That’s a great memory …
She wanted to know if I was continuing to play every once in a while at the club.
We had a whole conversation about that, but she wasn't telling me what her karaoke “music evening” was all about.
I'm sure that woman has secrets and stories that will take years for me to hear.
Lord knows I’ve been keeping a few of my own.
I arranged a date with Beatrice for dinner the next evening to make up for our interrupted meal. I was so happy to see her that I couldn't take my eyes off her for the longest time. To such an extent that she ordered for me because I hadn't even looked at the menu.
“My dear, starstruck man! Holy guacamole! Are you sure you don't want to order for yourself? The menu is right there … You know, in your hand? That thing dangling at the end of your arm?” she teased me. But as I gazed at her beautiful face and luscious body and felt such love for her …
Love?! Yes, you fool. L.O.V.E.
Well, I just shook my head and waved for her to order for me.
Beatrice asked me about my associates. I must have looked at her funny because she specified, “Jared, Trey, and Luz. And whoever else is lurking around you that you don’t talk to me about.” That shook me out of my love-struck haze and gaze.
She wanted to know in what way they were my associates, and what I was doing with them that made them call themselves my associates.
“Hendrik, are you in a business with them?”
My, “Yes. And no,” was absolutely not satisfactory to her. As we ate our food, I dove in to the story.
I explained how I had moved into a neighborhood a long, long time ago that was less than safe at the time. “I moved there because it was cheaper than my dorm room and closer to my classes than my father’s house,” I said. I told her how I’d been mugged and knifed quite badly. About my four days in the hospital. About how I met Jared a few days after my hospital release at our gym.
What I notice quite clearly is that my Lady Fair is dumbstruck. It's not that I don't let her get a word in edgewise. She looks like she doesn't know what to say at all.
Well, this is all new to her. A new side of you that she is seeing.
“I was just finishing up college. And I had started a business while in college that was doing well enough, but I wanted to save money and just put it back into the company. So I lived here. I stayed here. And 15 years have gone by and I'm still here.”
Finally she speaks up, “And so the attempted break-in the other day? Was that your house?”
“Calling it a house is a big exaggeration! It's actually a small apartment building, and I have been in a small first-floor studio apartment of it for all these years."
I go on, "When I met Jared, he was just stepping up in his gang into a leadership role. But he didn't want his crew to be a criminal gang. He didn't want them to be poor. He didn't want them to be uneducated. In other words, when I met him, he had goals for himself and his crew that he didn't know how to reach. So, it just kind of evolved between us. In exchange for his crew making sure my building was safe at all hours by posting what I used to call Sentinels on the block, I figured out a way for them all to get educated and take care of themselves. And I started at the bottom. I found a method that has had international success in teaching adults how to read, so I got the method for them. Taught it to them. And then they started teaching it to each other, which is the goal of the method in the first place. I think they call it ‘each one teach one.’ From there, Jared himself and most of his crew started feeling more confident and wanted to know how to start e-commerce. Since that's what I started, sort of, in college, I knew how to make some money online. So I gave them some tips. They had all the ideas for their businesses. But I got them organized.”
Beatrice stepped in again, “So that is why they call you Professor, huh?” I nodded. “Later, a couple of the crew approached Jared saying they didn't wanna do digital businesses. Trey, for example, wanted a limo business. So with Jared and a couple of the other fellows who were also interested in being professional drivers, we discussed the kind of business they dreamed about. Trey wanted a high-end business catering to the richer resident. He wanted to be the best driver in this big city of ours. And he wanted his own fleet of limos and town cars.”
Beatrice shared, “Yes, Jared and his wife bragged that Trey is trained and certified by a couple of stunt driving schools.”
“True. It was his own idea, and one other of his drivers is now in the program as well. They can offer that benefit to their high-ticket passengers. It's a marketing tool, but in the city here, anyone who has spent any time in the driver’s seat or been a passenger knows that defensive driving is an absolute need. Trey and his team provide that to their passengers.”
I say that this all started happening while I was dating Carly. That Carly and I never lived together.
“These men are like the brothers I never had. A number of them have married since we met, and their wives cluck over me like mother hens. So, that is who they are. You’ll meet more of them soon, I think. They are very curious about the woman I call My Lady Fair.”
Then I laughed and at Beatrice’s perplexity, I said, “The women in the crew just can’t understand why they haven’t met you yet!”
