I Used To Have Money One Time

Author's notes:

1. This story is very loosely based on an actual person. Dawn, I still remember you looking fine in that red dress. Your ex was an idiot to turn his back on you.
2. Thanks to my Muse, RiverMaya, and to the wonderful JuanaSalsa
3. All sexual activity 18+
4. Trigger Warning: story mentions past domestic abuse

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I used to have money one time

Life of adventure and crime

I used to have money one time

Now I ain't got a dime

But who's gonna tell a fool,

That he ain't cool?

- Jimmy Buffet

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Chapter 1 -- Palo Alto, California

I'm Paul Scott. I'm 5'11", 170 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, not too bad looking if I do say so myself. My early years were spent growing up in California's Central Valley not far from Fresno, shoehorned in a double-wide trailer with Mom and my two younger siblings, brother Eric and sister Janet. What was worse, our trailer lot was on the edge of a mobile home park about 500 feet from the Southern Pacific railroad tracks.

Mom got off her shift as a cashier at the BuyMart Supermarket at 5:30pm, would come home and start making supper; the ground shaking from the 6:00pm freight train by was the signal for us kids to stop playing, go inside, and set the table.

We'd moved there after my father, Jack Scott, divorced Mom and took off to go live with his tramp girlfriend, so it was just Mom doing the parenting. Other than his negligible child-support payments, we never heard from our dad after that. Despite all the broken home turmoil, somehow my sister and I stayed out of trouble and made it through high school and college.

Thanks to a modest academic scholarship, I'd graduated with a BA in Marketing. My sister got a better scholarship, eventually getting her Juris Doctorate and became a lawyer. As for my little brother Eric, I can only assume got an Associate's degree in Douchebaggery from Shithead University.

In case you haven't figured it out, while my sister got along fine with Eric, my brother and I weren't exactly close. For some reason he'd always be jealous of my successes, despite the fact that with his blond hair and blue eyes he was clearly better-looking. The jobs he'd held -- grocery stock boy in high school, residential construction as an adult - weren't anything to be ashamed of, but as an adult he seemed to lack the drive to climb the corporate ladder. He did OK for himself, but never reached my income levels.

Timing being everything, in 1985 I was fortunate enough to get hired as a Marketing Associate by a little California start up that grew to be an online monster in the early days of the Internet; 16 years later I struck gold when it was acquired by global media giant.

By the point of the buy-out, I'd worked my way up to Vice President of Marketing, and so walked away with executive-level stock option and severance money, i.e., crazy money. It was buy a house for my mother, travel the world, drive a Porsche convertible, eat steak and lobster tail, live in a multi-room mansion with a pool in Palo Alto kind of money.

Alas, it was also high maintenance trophy wife with lip filler injections and silicone breast implants kind of money. Life was good, until such time that my wealth became incredibly expensive divorce kind of money when it turned out that trophy wives cheat.

I have to hand it to Tiffany, she'd timed everything perfectly. Since we'd gotten married just weeks prior to me receiving my severance payout, half of my newly-acquired fortune was now hers. Along with that, in exchange for no alimony in the settlement I had to give her the paid-off deed to the house, and put the title to my beloved Porsche in her name.

It would have been 18 years of child support-money for Paul Junior as well, if not for my lawyer wisely demanding a DNA test. The test shockingly revealed my beautiful son was in fact my nephew. Turns out Tiffany's affair partner/baby daddy was my younger brother Eric -- who happened to be married with two kids of his own.

This was actually a shame, because the 3 months I spent taking care of Paul Junior were the happiest of my life. Losing him hurt me worse than losing Tiffany, and made me realize how much I loved being a father. It also resurrected emotions around my own father: if being a Dad was so great, why did he leave my siblings and me? I made it a personal goal to piss on the old bastard's grave after he died. (If you happen to read this, old man, make sure they bury you in a raincoat. You're going to need it.)

At least my brother Eric didn't escape unscathed. See, Tiffany wasn't just a homebody, she was also a homewrecker, both mine and my brother's; the same week that Paul Junior's DNA results were revealed, Eric's beautiful Indian wife Amrita took their two girls and flew back to India to live with her parents. Thanks to my lawyer, not only was I able to dodge child support, but the court ordered my name taken off the baby's birth certificate and replaced by Eric's. Sadly, the boy was legally no longer Paul Junior, he was now just 'Little Paul'.

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Overall, it had been a pretty shitty year. Little Paul had been born in April. I'd discovered the affair in mid-June after becoming suspicious and hiring a private investigator, and filed for divorce the first week of July, and it was granted in August, with a finalization date of March 1st the following year.

Depressed and filled with self-doubt, I left behind the smoldering wreckage of my moneyed life and headed to New Mexico, to start my life over. Why New Mexico? Primarily because New Mexico was ranked as one of the cheapest states to live in America. I wasn't exactly poor, but because of how I grew up I wanted to stretch the remaining money as far as I could.

Before I left, I did allow myself one splurge. In a fit of nostalgia, I bought a mechanically restored white 1974 Volkswagen Transporter van, which is what I drove all during high school and college. While the mechanical parts were restored, the body was pretty rough and patina-covered, and the rips and tears in the interior panels looked worn out. This was perfect. I needed it mechanically sound, not pretty. If it looked like shit, then nobody would want to steal it.

Setting off from California, I drove about 950 miles through Arizona and into New Mexico until I reached Gallup. I did the trip in two days, sleeping in the van one night in a truck stop in Kingman, Arizona. A popular location in the 1940s and 1950s for Hollywood Westerns, Gallup had a population of about 21,000, with an average income of $35,000. Not too big, not too small, and affordable. It was perfect.

Once I arrived in Gallup, I spent one night at a cheap motel; the next day, I drove around to various mobile home parks, looking for a place to live. I found a single-wide one bedroom/one bath 620 square foot trailer with an attached carport at the Western Skies Mobile Home Park. The mobile home was dingy and weather-beaten on the outside, but the roof was sound, the inside was furnished, overall it looked to be in decent shape. After writing a check for $5,273, it was all mine!

As I was unpacking, I noticed my neighbor in the next trailer over, a small woman with long dark hair, parted in the middle and tied into a ponytail. Looking to be neighborly (and longing for a female companion that wasn't a blonde cheating whore), I ran out and picked up a flower arrangement and some fresh-made sugar cookies from the local food store, the La Montanita Market. Now equipped with neighborliness, I went over and knocked on the screen door.

A small boy with jet black hair, his skin copper from playing outside, answered. I introduced myself. "Hello, I'm your new neighbor Paul, and I came to say hello!" The boy didn't say a word, he just looked at me like I was some kind of carnival freak show.

The woman I'd seen earlier came up behind him, a suspicious look on her face. "Can I help you?" She was smaller than I first thought, maybe 4'11, 85 pounds, wearing a simple shapeless light blue dress and rubber sandals. Based on her looks and her accent, I guessed her to be a Filipina.

She had only a half-smile, the left side of her face drooping slightly as if from some kind of nerve damage. She wore budget-framed eyeglasses, held together across her nose by duct tape, and I noticed her left eyelid also sagged a bit. This did not diminish her looks at all, in my eyes she was very pretty. For the first time in two months, I felt a hint of optimism.

Turning on the Scott charm, I introduced myself again, "Hi, I was just telling your boy that I'm your new neighbor Paul, and I came to say hello." Looking in her nice brown eyes, I'd forgotten about the gifts. "Here, these flowers and cookies are for you."

She took them, and her suspicious look began to crack as a smile formed. "Thank you, that's very gracious of you. I'm Aurora Santos, but my friends call me Dawn." She nodded at her still-staring son. "That's Jacob. He's 4. Don't mind him staring, he does that with men, started doing that after his father went away."

She invited me in and made coffee for me while Jacob enjoyed the cookies. She explained that her ex-husband was in jail for domestic abuse, which is why she was divorced. He'd gotten drunk and beaten her, with the resulting nerve damage being the cause of her palsy-like symptoms. She only had a high-school-level education, and so at 32 she was working as a drug-store cashier, taking the bus to work because she didn't have a car. Her job didn't pay that much, so she had to supplement her income with food stamps.

I shared with her how I was a newly-divorced bachelor, and how my wife had cleaned me out pretty much after cheating and trying to saddle me with a baby that wasn't mine. I also shared that the part that hurt me most was not losing my wife, but losing the baby that I thought was mine.

After 2 hours of chatting, I definitely felt like we were friends. When she hugged me goodbye, the smell of the shampoo in her hair and the warmth of her small body made me wish we could be more than friends, but it was too soon for that. Still, when I went to bed that night, I pleasured myself to images of Dawn's naked little body moving under my own.

The next day I went and bought a new mattress, pillows, and sheets. I also picked up some kitchen utensils like pots, an iron skillet, cutlery, hot pads and a spatula. After a quick trip to the grocery store, I had provisions. I also bought a TV; it was getting towards the end of the year and the models were being phased out, so I got a sweet deal on a 32" flat screen.

Then, it was time to find a job. I had half of what used to be a huge amount of money, but thanks to Tiffany, was now merely a sizeable amount money, most of it tucked into savings. My credit rating was still in the 800 range, so I was doing OK, but knew it wouldn't last forever. I didn't need an executive position, just something that would buy me groceries; using a temp agency, I managed to snag a position on the loading dock of a shipping logistics company.

As the weeks wore on, I got settled in to my new routine. Most days it was breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, watch TV -- sports or a movie -- then sleep. Saturdays I would go grocery shopping, and since I had a van I'd always invite Dawn and Jacob to come with me. It wasn't actually a date, but I enjoyed spending time with both of them. Jacob was my pal. If he wanted something and Dawn told him 'no', I'd have him put it in my cart and buy it for me -- then we'd share it after we got home.

Sundays, after Dawn and Jacob got home from church, were laundry days. Dawn, Jacob and I would take our baskets of clothes and walk down to the Western Skies laundry room. Dawn was doing laundry for two people, so her laundry always took longer; after finishing mine, I'd hang out to play with Jacob and help Dawn fold hers. Also, this allowed me to sneak peeks at her underwear, picturing what she'd look like in them. (Come on now, it's not like I stole any, I was just...imagining!)

Dawn and I started keeping an eye out for each other. When she had to work overtime she'd call me, and I'd pick up Jacob from daycare and babysit him until she got home. I actually got pretty good at getting him through his bedtime routine and reading him stories until he fell asleep. Sometimes it would hurt when I'd think that if only Tiffany hadn't cheated, I could have been doing this with our baby, but I quickly put it - and the pain that little Paul wasn't my child - out of my mind.

We had keys to each other's trailer; when I caught the flu and was bedridden for a few days, Dawn popped in after not seeing me. When she found me sick as a dog from the flu, she changed my bedding, put clean pajamas on me, and made me chicken tinola, a delicious Filipino chicken soup. The few times I'd been sick when I was married, aside from bringing me the occasional Tylenol if I asked, Tiffany left me to my own devices. As September turned into October, I realized I wanted to be more than just Dawn's neighbor; thanks to my insecurities, I hesitated to broach the subject with her.

Then one Saturday while grocery shopping, a rude cashier gave me the courage to make a move. Dawn was ahead of me in the checkout line, and when she got her food stamps to pay the cashier sneered and muttered, "Another leech". I could see Dawn's hand holding her foods stamps shake slightly, and she lowered her head in shame. Suddenly, I was pissed.

Going around my cart and squeezing past the candy bars and the tabloids rack, I whipped out my 'platinum level' card (a holdover from my days as a Vice President) and handed it to the snotty bitch, declaring, "She's no leech, she's my girlfriend. I'll pay!" That shut the cashier down fast. I paid for Dawn's groceries and then mine, and we were out of there. In retrospect, I was using money as an easy fix to a problem that I should have solved differently, but my social instincts were overridden by my strong feelings for Dawn.

In the parking lot, I loaded up our groceries as Dawn wiped her tears away with a facial tissue. "Thank you, Paul," she said quietly, "you didn't have to do all that."

Playing dumb, I replied, "Do all what?"

"Paying for my groceries, and lying to that woman about me being your girlfriend." The way Dawn's soft Filipina accent made it sound like 'girlfren' just warmed my heart. No two ways about it, after a couple of months living next door to her, there wasn't much I didn't like about my pixie-sized neighbor.

"Dawn, you're a good woman who doesn't deserve to be treated like that. I don't mind taking care of you and Jacob." I paused, lowering my voice. "Besides, it doesn't have to be a lie, you know."

Her eyes grew wide in surprise. "What do you mean?"

Right there next to the shopping cart collection area, I impulsively made my move. For the first time I gathered her up in a genuine embrace with my lower body pressed against hers, instead of a chaste and platonic friendly hug.

"What I'm saying is, it's entirely up to you if you want to be my girlfriend, because I sure would like to be your boyfriend." There it was, I'd put it out there and had taken my shot.

She gently pushed against me, and I let her slip out of my arms. My impulsiveness had clearly caught her by surprise. Me too, actually, but I wasn't sorry at all. On a deeper level it meant I was finally ready to move on from the torment my ex-wife had put me through. "I... I don't know," she stammered, "I have to think about it. I mean, I never expected this."

While Dawn climbed in the front seat, I turned my attention to getting Jacob secured in his child safety seat, then got in the driver's seat. Jacob was busy enjoying the small bag of animal crackers I'd opened for him; the chirpy noise of my Volkswagen's flat-four engine was the only sound as we drove home.

Back at the trailer, Dawn got Jacob out of his safety seat while I unloaded the groceries. After I put her groceries in her kitchen, I unloaded my own. I was putting away my Twinkies, (some people smoked cigars, some people drank hard liquor, but my forbidden pleasure happened to be golden sponge cakes with a creamy filling, so shut up) when there was a tapping at my door. To my extreme delight, it was Dawn.

"Come in, but if you were my girlfriend, you wouldn't have to knock," I teased.

Dawn came in and sat at my table, her grim face as serious as an undertaker, and said "I asked Mrs. Meyer to watch Jacob for me so I could come talk to you alone. Paul, were you joking about wanting me to be your girlfriend?"

I sat across from her, and took her little hands in my big ones. Now it was my turn to be grim faced. "Dawn, I swear on my grandmother's grave I'm 100% serious. Yes, I want us to be a couple."

She shook her head in denial. "Why do you want me, of all people? It makes no sense! A man like you could have any woman he wanted. I'm a broke single 32-year-old mother on food stamps. I have the figure of an ironing board, and I'm disfigured! If I don't use a straw when I drink, I drool out of the left side of my mouth. My left eyelid doesn't close all the way; I have to wear an eyepatch at night so it doesn't dry out while I'm sleeping. You should be embarrassed to be with me!"

I threw back my head and groaned in exasperation, not only at what her bastard ex had done to her physically, but also what he'd done to her self-esteem. To persuade her she was full of shit, I gave her a piece of my mind. "Aurora Dawn Santos, that's your opinion, but frankly, it's wrong. I thought you were pretty the first day we met, and as I've gotten to know you, I found out also you're sweet and kind."

I got up out of my chair, walked around the table, pulled her to her feet, grasping her shoulders with my hands. "On top of everything else, I find you sexy as hell. You said I could have any woman I wanted. Well, here's a newsflash: I want YOU." It seemed like a good time to kiss her, so I pulled her to me and did just that.

Since the left corner of her mouth didn't work so well, kissing her was a different sensation, but one I definitely didn't mind. Now I held her firmly pressed into me, and unless she was paralyzed below the waist she couldn't miss my erection pressing against her belly. After our kiss ended, to belabor the point I pressed my face into her hair and whispered, "You're flawless."

I must have convinced her. She sighed, telling me, "You're a man, Paul Scott, and men are usually always wrong, but I really want to believe you."

Intellectually I was offended that her response was such a sweeping generalization about men, but my thoughts were drowned out by the applause from my stiffening erection. Then she gave me her definitive answer. "I'll be your girlfriend, but I'd like it if you started coming to Sunday Mass with me and Jacob. If you want to be my boyfriend, you need to be a good role model for my son." Pulling me close, she kissed me again, another long, soft and slow one.

These days I wasn't religious in the least; in fact, the last time I'd been in a church was when I got married and, given how shitty that turned out, had zero motivation to return. That last kiss, however, had given me all the motivation I needed. "Agreed," I whispered, unsure what being a role model for a small boy meant, exactly, but if that's what this woman in my arms wanted, I would not disappoint her.

My now brand-new girlfriend interrupted my reverie, telling me, "Right now I have to go and make dinner for Jacob. Tomorrow, I need you to take me back to the store. I need a few things to make my new boyfriend a special dinner."

Then she quickly kissed me again and told me, "Please take things slow with me, Paul. I really like you, but I've been through a lot. I'm afraid your feelings for me may not last. I'm not some big-city Manila girl, eager to spread my legs to trap a man. As handsome as you are, my boyfriend, if you really want my heart you're going to have to be patient with me."