CHAPTER 11
Bob and I took the bus on in to Los Angeles. Tina, Douglas' wife had given us the phone number of her cousin Nando, and called to tell him we'd be coming. We didn't know what to expect, but at the Los Angeles terminal Bob phoned Nando and he sounded gleeful. "Coming now for you! Wait out front. Tina tell me what you look like, si?" After 30 minutes or so Nando drives up in an old pickup truck with plants in the back.

"Sorry you wait so long, heh? Traffic bad today. You hungry? We eat at the house, okay?" At Nando's house his wife Angelina laid out a meal of beans and rice and tortillas and cerveza. Nando then took us to the backyard to an old two car garage. Inside were cots and a sink with cold runnning water, and a toilet partially partioned off--someone had made a home of it. "You welcome here!" He gestured around the garage proudly.

Nando scratched his head. His friendly brown grandfatherly face creased with smiles as he showed us around. He had gold caps on his incisors. "Ah, had two cousins living in garage and helping me," he explained. "They got deported, for two or three months, they gone--I need help--you, heh?"

Nando had a lawn care/landscaping business, and we were needed. He took it for granted we'd be willing to help. Tina must have given us spectacular recommendations. "I pay you good--same as the cousins, heh? No rent, two meals a day, heh? Start tomorrow, 5am."
Nando ignored our protests that we didn't know a thing about landscaping. "I teach you, heh?"
He left and Bob says "Just for Tina's sake, we'll stay and help him for a while, and maybe make a little money." (Little came to be the operative word.) So agreed, we settled into our first home in Los Angeles.

susil