When the stores started rolling in I went to a party down the street at Bill’s (though I didn’t like him), Becky's former husband. I met two Americans that day, both claiming to be electricians, and hired them on the spot, Irving and Mike.

Irving was ten years older than me, with a heavy New York city accent, bald, Jewish, full of jokes and constant talk. He proved himself a dependable worker from my first to last stores there, becoming a good friend. He’d been a business partner with Bill years earlier. Now he was visiting the island on a whim, with no future plans. With this job offer he decided to stay on the island another five years. He rented a nice, two bedroom apartment in Rincon and his two interests were smoking pot and having eighteen year old waifs move in with him, one after another, being a somewhat lecherous old man.

Some lasted months, others nearly a year, depending on two counterbalancing concerns, like weights tipping a scale one way or the other in their fragile, fickle, girlish minds. The first was his kindness in providing them a nice place to stay and feeding them. The second, his hinted, amorous proposals, a wrinkled, old man in the next bedroom. I doubt he pressed them too much, but he was always hoping one would hop into his bed. This never happened, as I would surely have heard of it, he was such a constant gab. But just seeing one pass from the shower back to her bedroom in her underwear or a towel was an event for him. He’d tell us excitedly the next day at work what an angelic sight it was, in great detail. On a less lustful level, he also told us how much he enjoyed their company and talk at his dinner table, the life of a lonely old man, still horny.

There were plenty these young girls in supply, most coming to Rincon with a poor surfer boyfriend in early Winter and being ditched in Spring, when the boy had to go back to work in the States, broke. There was no work in Rincon. A few of his girls almost got him into trouble with the police, for his pot stash. The police in P.R. didn’t mind Cocaine or any other drug, but arrested anyone caught with Marijuana on the spot, (I have no idea why). It was hard to find on the island and expensive because of this. He had a secret supply, (perhaps Bill) and made the mistake of letting a few of these girls sell some in their surfer circles. I remember two close calls he told us about, (each time his place searched, and nothing found). But he always ended these stories with: “but she was so cute, she was worth it. Then I had to kick her out.”

One more story he graced us with was this. He made one very lucrative transaction between Mexico and Arizona some twenty years earlier, his glory days. He had a saying, oft repeated: “In my younger days I sometimes made a lot of money. Then I’d spend most of it on drugs, sex and rock and roll. The rest I spent frivolously”. On this occasion, he followed his precept to a tee, with a hundred thousand dollars in a bag he was carrying with him.

He walked into a bar near the University of Arizona, in Tucson. It was early summer, sometime in the late seventies. School was just out. He saw two beautiful college girls sitting at the bar. He approached them and after introductions, a few drinks and seeing they were free and loose, he proposed: “how would you two like to spend the summer with me on a beautiful yacht, sailing down the Pacific coast to Baja, from L.A., just the three of us, all expenses paid?” Then he showed them the large wads of money in his bag. To his surprise, they both agreed. He said it was the best sex vacation he ever had, money all gone in two months, but well worth it. That was Irving.

I paid him ten dollars an hour, way above any construction job on the island at that time. I paid all my workers well, starting apprentices at six, eight for those with some experience, ten for good electricians and twelve for two, Mike and Caesar, excellent workers who never needed a word of advice, just the blueprint. I paid them this much because I could still make a good profit and wanted their devotion to the job, which I won. But most of my Puerto Rican employees, who’d never been to the States, actually thought I was crazy, overpaying them wildly, as they’d be making four dollars an hour anywhere else. A few of them even told me this.

Mike was a tall surfer lad, twenty-five, blond and handsome, perfectly nice and proved in the next few weeks to be one of the best electricians I ever met, amazing me in the speed he could install conduit, faster than me, which is saying a lot as I never met my match in all my Union years working beside hundreds of other electricians. He was six feet tall with long arms which worked in perfect synchronicity, tirelessly all day when he was sober. Unfortunately, he had a penchant for crack Cocaine. He’d just arrived on the island and just discovered it. For the first six months he was my best worker, but over time he became a complete crack head.

A year later I was sending him back to L.A. to his parents. He was going to die there if I didn’t. He made me lots of money, being about three times better and faster than my next best worker. He really was amazing to watch on a scaffold, sliding it along the floor with his hands on the ceiling, one hand with a screw gun, and a screw in his mouth, a ten foot stick of conduit in his other, then holding it up, sliding it into the last stick put up, the connector already on, then screwing in the strap, in perfect fluid motion, actually putting the screw on the tip of the drill bit with teeth and tongue and in seconds fastening it in place, job done. I tried to imitate that trick but soon gave up, the fear of swallowing the screw and the metallic taste that lingered deterring me.

Through him I met Rachel. She showed up in Rincon about four months later with her six year old daughter, Vanessa. They met and fell madly in love. By now Mike and I had no secrets. He started smoking crack on his own but was soon spending every Friday night on my kitchen deck, under the moonlight, smoking his vial of crack. I didn’t pick Willy up till Saturday morning, arriving late Friday evening from San Juan, both of us with our pay for the week in our pockets and driving home together. One stop along the way got him his crack and me a twenty dollar bag of coke for the drive, one other stop worked for beers and a bottle of rum to share on the porch. We enjoyed our company richly and often talked till about one a.m. Then I’d drive him to his shack, then back home to get sleep for Willy the next morning.

When he ran into Rachel on the beach she had just moved into a cheap, upper story apartment on a road near his shared pad above the North-end beaches, pure surfer territory. It wasn’t a week before they were living together. He was the perfect blond surfer boy and she a starry-eyed, dark haired Spanish girl, with a pretty face and shapely body. Both of them were twenty five and fell completely in love. I watched the whole scenario play out, as I took him there after work and was often invited in for a beer. At this time we worked a job near Rincon so this happened every night. She spoke perfect English and when she first brought out her daughter, timid and shy, from the bedroom, I told them I might have a friend for her, my son, the exact same age. The next weekend I brought Willy over. They disappeared into the room together and after that day were inseparable friends. From then on Vanessa spent most weekends at my house, befriending Ben and Jeff. Mike wanted privacy with Rachel, and they found it.

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