When I awoke the next morning Cindy was already awake watching the news on TV. She had insisted that I sleep in the small bedroom. I thought at the time that it was because the room was the safest. At that moment I realized, it had been so that she would watch TV. If she slept at all, it was in her clothes on the unmade sofa. It could not have been comfortable. I was sure her sleepless night had nothing to do with protecting me. Cindy seemed to have demons independent of me.

Two hours later she tried to walk me into one of those chrome and glass chain store type restaurants. "No way I'm going to eat in that place," I said as she pulled into the parking lot."

"Oh really, and where do you plan to have your breakfast, because I'm eating here." She made a point of it so as to let me know who was in charge.

"Look Cindy I know you want to be rid of me, so that you can get back to your own life." Actually I didn't know that at all. "So let's say if you start trying to shove things down my throat, I am going to become uncooperative. At the least it will make your life miserable. Why not just go along with me on the stupid restaurants where we eat. I will go along with you on other things."

At first her face was flushed as if she were about to have a stroke. I suppose that after thinking about it, while sitting in the parking lot, she decided that it made better sense than to sit in the car all morning. "Alright where to?" she asked resigned to her breakfast fate.

"Just drive toward the downtown, we are bound to find a better place." We did find a better place. We found Oscar's breakfast house in a strip mall.

The place could have used an oil change before it got a new coat of paint inside. There had to be an accumulation of at least ten years cooking grease on the walls of the dining room. I noted that it had a 99.7% sanitation grade. My thinking was anything over 95% was good enough.

The eggs were perfect, and the hash brown potatoes were crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Oscar used highly spiced sausage and it too was delicious. Cindy opted for the smoked bacon with her breakfast. She ordered extra crispy and I could tell from the smile she tried to hide that the breakfast pleased her as well.

We spent the rest of that day with realtors and rental agents. Ones who had time to run all over the area showing us abandoned gas stations and grocery stores. Most of them dumped us after the first stop. Then we found one agent who was pretty chubby and sweaty. Most likely there weren't many appointments on his schedule, so except for a two hour lunch break, he spent most of the day with us.

It took a second day before he showed us what must have, once upon a time, been a service station and country store combination. That would have been before the state cut a new road around Monkey Junction. There was no town just a couple of buildings along the edges of the crossroads. The country store service station had one service bay, and a much larger room which must have been the grocery store part. It had only one bathroom, but it was a large room so it would work fine for me. I had hoped for a building in which I could live, but the building I saw would only work for the small business I hoped to open.

"So is this for sale or rent?" I asked.

"Both," the agent replied. "According to the listing information the owner is willing to rent it as is, or will do a small amount of renovations for a sale at full price."

"And what is the price and the rent?" Cindy asked.

"The asking price for the sale with all needed repairs is $95,000. To rent it as is with just minimum repairs, like patch the roof it is leaks, is $700 a month."

Cindy pulled me out of earshot of the chubby agent. "I'm not an expert, but this building is not worth that kind of money either way."

"I am absolutely sure that you are right. It's concrete block is likely from the forties, so it's probably sound enough. The floor is concrete with only one water source so there won't be a lot of floor to break up for plumbing repairs. The roof is wood frame with shingles which is pretty ordinary construction.. There is no ceiling in the shop so I can see how it's made. It has leaked for sure. the ceiling in the store part has water stains. The building probably has country water and sewer, if not those need to be checked and repaired as well. So if I got all that checked an repaired, plus repainting the place, I would be comfortable with a price of say $75,000 for a quick sale."

"Let me get an inspector and appraiser out here before you make an offer. I'm worried about the gas tanks as well," Cindy said referring to the above ground tanks which had been used to store the gas sold by the service station/country store. I was confident that they had been drained years before. Being above ground would make it easier to get them inspected and passed by the EPA.

"Let's make the offer just like that and add price to be reduced to appraised value if it is less. That should satisfy everyone. " It was the best suited of the places I had seen. Being ten miles from town would give me some problems, but I hoped not too many.

So that was the offer I made. The government was going to help me secure real estate and small business loans. My plan was to supplement that with money from the off shore bank. Cindy didn't need to know that part. As far as they knew the twenty thousand in my bank account when I went into the federal prison camp was all the money I had. The feds might suspect more but they couldn't find it.