The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 20 – Of Insights and Honky Tonks

She looked up at the façade of the building they were standing in front of. It was painted with colours which had no doubt been brilliant when they had first been applied. Now they were faded, but still pretty, soft green and red with a splash of yellow where the name of the establishment was painted. "Cha Cha Cha Café?"

"Yeah, come on," he said, tugging at her hand.

"You gonna vouch for this place too? You sure do have a habit of picking restaurants that don't look like much on the outside."

"You ever gonna learn to trust me?"

"I do trust you. But you'd eat anything, so I just don't know if you're the best judge of what's fit to eat."

"This place does a lot of business, so if they were poisoning people, I don't think they'd have been in business for the last fifteen years, and as busy as they are. We're only gonna get a table at this hour of Friday because—"

"You know someone, I get it," she cut him off mid-sentence. It was kind of cool to know someone who 'knew someone' almost everywhere you went when it got you good tables and other perks though. Even if the way he'd met all those people was more than slightly dubious.

"Stop runnin' that mouth for five minutes so we can get a seat and get some food, ok?"

"Fine," she sighed and allowed herself to be dragged through the front door by the hand.

They were seated quickly, given to the fact again that Vince 'knew someone' she was sure. They were handed menus, and then the waitress walked off. Tempest quickly found her menu taken from her. "Hey!"

"You won't be needing that. I'll pick for you."

"I'm capable of deciding what I want to eat."

"Yeah, but for tonight you don't get to decide anything. It's my turn." He seemed to consider that for a moment. He handed her back her menu, the back page facing up. "I guess you can decide what you're having to drink."

"Gee thanks mister. Have you always been so generous, or did you have to work at it?" He made a sarcastic face at her, but didn't have a verbal retort. She let it drop, choosing to look over the menu whether he was going to let her order on her own or not. There was a surprising quantity of food that sounded really good. Had she been picking her own meal, she knew it would have taken her some time to decide. She finally did as she had been instructed to do in the first place, and flipped to the drink menu. "What're you having to drink?"

"What's that matter?"

"Just curious," she answered. She met his eyes and he gave her a look she just knew was telling her the answer was obvious. "Corona?"

"See, you're smarter than you think."

"Ok, well I don't do beer. What's Sangria?"

"Some sort of wine punch. It's supposed to be good, if you like fruit drinks."

"But of course, you don't."

"Not when there's beer. Are you feelin' ok?"

She shook his hand off her forehead. "No, I'm feelin' frustrated because I'm trying to have a conversation with you."

He laughed. "You wanna try the Sangria?"

"Sure," she answered. He went back to reading his menu while she looked around the interior of the restaurant. There were festive touches all over the place. It felt almost like they'd stepped off a particularly dirty L.A. street and straight into the fresh air of the Caribbean. There were shrines to the Madonna and to southern American soccer stars all around the place, and beaded necklaces hanging off the walls. There were no overhead lights to speak of. The whole place was lit only by candles and mini-lights hanging from the walls. It was fun, and funky. It wasn't all that romantic, not in the least, but it was interesting, and there was enough space between the tables to lend an air of privacy, but not enough to make the place feel posh. It wasn't a place to cater to someone who expected crystal glasses and linen tablecloths, but it was perfect for what they were looking for. Or at least what she assumed they were looking for. Fun and friendly without the overtone of serious interest that a nicer place might have given off.

The waitress came back and Vince ordered for both of them, and since she hadn't even really been allowed to spend much time looking at the menu, she didn't have a clue what he picked. Their drinks arrived first, and she picked up the ice cold glass of red liquid she was presented with. She sniffed it first, bringing it under her nose. It smelled pretty good, considering she didn't even like wine. She looked over at Vince before taking a drink and found him chuckling. "What?"

"Do you sniff everything before you put it in your mouth?"

"Yes," she answered defensively.

"Why?"

"To make sure it smells like good to eat, that's why." She looked at him, daring him to find fault with that.

"It's a drink. Of course it smells good to eat."

"It's a drink I've never had before so how do I know that until I sniff it?" She was saved from hearing his answer by the arrival of their food. Or at least the appetizer portion of their meal. There was a huge platter of many different foods and a salad, which was placed in front of her. "You tryin' to imply I need to watch my weight?"

Vince looked up in shock. Even he knew better! "No," he was quick to assure. "Why?"

"You get a heap of deep fried food and I get salad."

"You like salad. You can help me eat this stuff too."

She raised one eyebrow and looked at him in question.

"Ok, you can help me eat this stuff too if you help fast."

She laughed. "I might wanna try a few of those things, but I guess the salad smells good." It had fruit in it, and the dressing smelled of pineapple, one of her favourite foods. She snagged a bunch of stuff off the platter and put it onto a napkin before she tried her salad. She then nibbled at something that turned out to be a deep fried banana as far as she could figure.

Vince watched her eat. He was always surprised by the delicate way she ate when there was nothing delicate about the way she did anything else. She took tiny bites, chewed very well, and ate slowly. She didn't make any kind of mess, and used her napkin frequently.

"Is this a banana? Is this really a deep fried banana?"

Her question brought him out of his thoughts. "No, it's a deep fried plantain. It's almost the same thing, but not quite."

"It's good and all, but who ever thought up deep frying fruit?"

"Dunno. If it's good, just eat it. Did you try any of the dip?"

"No, what is it?"

"Its dip Trouble." He rolled his eyes at her. "Just try it and if you don't like it don't eat anymore." He watched as she dipped one of the plantain chips into the mole dip and sniffed it before putting it in her mouth. The blissful look that crossed her features did odd things to his body. "Good?"

She moaned lightly and nodded in answer. "Give me more deep fried banana with whatever that is on it and no one gets hurt."

He laughed at her answer before stuffing his mouth full again. He fought a desire to scoop her up and take her home to make her moan some more. With perfect timing, just as they polished off the appetizers their waitress arrived with the main course.

Whatever it was she was eating was delicious, and she had to give Vince credit. He'd managed to pick out a vast variety of things she liked, even if she had no idea what they were and had never seen them before in her life. When they finished and the waitress offered the dessert menu she tried to say no, but Vince wasn't hearing of it.

"I'm too full for desert."

"Tough, you better find room. I won't eat desert in front of you if you don't order something and I'm having desert."

"Fine, whatever." She caved easily. Her stomach was full of good food and the wine drink in her glass never seemed to disappear. Every time she figured she must be almost done of her glass it seemed to be full again. She was thinking that it was some very creative serving, instigated on Vince's behalf which was responsible. She surprised herself by making a respectable dent in her tropical fruit flan when it arrived.

They sat around making small talk for about half an hour after their meal. Tempest was glad, she knew there was no way she could ever have gotten up and walked anywhere without waddling right after eating so much food. "So what now?" she finally asked.

He shrugged. "Wanna go for a drive?" In truth he hadn't really planned anything beyond dinner. Well, maybe he'd planned how he'd like the night to end, but since it was only ten, he figured he had a few hours to fill in first. Assuming she didn't plan to make him pay a while longer for the fights they'd had.

"Yeah, let's go."

They left the restaurant and started the walk to the car. As they walked down the sidewalk he looped an arm over her shoulders. "So, you been right downtown yet?"

"Nope. Jess seemed to think that it was too dangerous for me to go down there. He's likely right about the getting lost part of what he told me, but I don't think it'd be too dangerous."

"He was right not to let you take off downtown on your own. But we can cruise around down there now if you wanna."

"I'd like to be able to say I saw the place when I go home. I don't wanna admit to my friends and family that I got to the beach once, car races four or five times, and mostly worked in a garage. And not even a nice garage as far as garages go."

"How is Dom's garage not a nice garage?" Vince felt himself get defensive on his friend's behalf. Mr. Toretto had built that garage, and he'd learned all he knew about cars there.

"Don't get your panties in a twist Slick. But as far as the garages I've worked in go, it's just not that nice. It's not well lit, it has no lifts. My work at home has eleven bays, all of them have lifts less than five years old. We have in floor heating and the place is lit up like midday all the time, with florescent lighting and with actual windows to the outside world. We have a six car wash bay and a three thousand square foot body shop. We have six computers all on the internet, a bulk oil dispenser, an alignment machine, and two of our hoists can handle up to twelve thousand pounds."

"Dom doesn't need any of that stuff."

"If you worked there more you wouldn't say he didn't need hoists. You'll never go back to rolling around under a car on a creeper once you've learned what it's like to be able to raise them six feet off the ground safely and have all that space to work in."

"Dom does ok the way things are."

"Calm down V. I wasn't trying to put down Dominic or his shop, ok? Shit." She shook her head. "I was just saying I didn't have to drive over three thousand miles to work in a garage when I work in a better equipped one day in, day out back home. My family and friends are used to me clomping home in work boots with dirt under my nails, grease in my hair and tears in my clothes, ok?"

"Sure," he answered, surrendering to the fact she hadn't meant to insult Van's shop, even if in his mind she had done so. They reached his car then and he helped her into the passenger seat before going around and sliding behind the wheel.

"You better watch out," she warned, laughter in her voice.

"For what?"

"I'm about to think you're a gentleman. What then?"

"I'm sure it won't take me long to do something else that has you changing your mind in a hurry."

"You're likely right," she agreed.

They pulled away from the car. "Can I ask you somethin'?"

"Shoot."

"Why won't you move down here to be with Jesse? He really wants you to, and you could get a pretty good job. Not to mention the money you could rake in racin' the Skyline."

"Well," she blew a forceful breath out through her nose. "That's a long, touchy, personal answer. You sure you wanna go there?"

"Yeah, why not? You about to tell me you go two kids no one knows about hidden in some hick city in Canada?"

"No," she chuckled at the thought of her having kids, let alone two. "It's just not something that I really talk about a lot. I'm always thinkin' that it makes me look bad, that it'll make people think less of me. Well, people who know me now and didn't know me back in school."

"Why would it?"

"Ok I'll tell you! Shit. Ok. My whole way through grade school, I was a perfect student. I always got E's in elementary, which stood for excellent and was the highest you could get. I tutored the other kids on the computer and on reading. I wasn't much for spelling, but it was my only weak spot really. Other than I was never much good with sharing, so I got some 'does not play well with others comments. But I only didn't skip a grade or two because my mom didn't want to let me."

"You're a brain, you told me that already."

"Yeah, but I was a real brain. I'm not just sayin' that. I graduated from both junior high and high school with honours. I don't think I missed more than five days of high school over all three years. And I took all the hard courses, calculus, geometry, advanced chem. and biology, and physics. I thought I was going to the Veterinary college, so I needed good grades and a lot of science. I was a total geek. My only saving grace was at least I wasn't a band geek too."

"I thought you took auto tech in high school? How'd you have time for all that other stuff too?"

She wrinkled her nose in thought. "Well, you gotta know that school where I went to school isn't like school here. Auto shop was just a class I took. It wasn't like I got a technical education and left high school knowing cars. I just had one class of instruction in it. Same as I took a class in typing and one called arts and crafts. I mean, I couldn't take math and literature and science all day long. I needed some easy courses."

"I don't think Mia took an easy course her whole life."

"Mia wants to be a doctor and if she didn't take a single bird course she's far more dedicated than I am. But I also held down a full time, or practically full time job the whole time I was in high school."

"Why?" he asked, shocked that anyone taking such a heavy course load would also work a full time job.

"'Cause my mom worked her ass off just to keep us in a nice place to live and make sure we had good food to eat, and that I had all the things I wanted. There wasn't extra money for me to have the designer clothes I wanted and there certainly wasn't enough money for me to have a car. Not if I was waiting for my mom to buy it for me. So I went out and got a job to pay for my own car and insurance and clothes and to have money to hang out."

"Liquor money," he laughed.

"No. Not at all. I didn't start drinking until last summer when I turned nineteen. That's the legal age where I'm from. I didn't drink in high school because I wasn't old enough. That's what I mean. I was the perfect student, the almost perfect child. The stereotypical good girl who rarely stepped outta line. Worst I ever did was mouth off and speed."

He found that hard to juxtapose with the woman who was sitting in his car now. The one who'd been drinking illegally all over dinner, for one thing. "So then what happened?"

"I hit university to get my first degree, the one I had to have to apply to Vet college. University was a total culture shock for me. I went from a totally regimented life to one where none of my professors cared if I showed up or not. The freedom went to my head. I started skipping classes. I failed, flunked out. The first time I'd ever failed at anything, let alone anything education related. It only took a few weeks of full time working at fast food to know I couldn't do that for the rest of my life. So I went to college and took auto tech. But for those two weeks that I was workin' at a hamburger joint full time I was a total wild child. I guess I never totally got over it. How it made me feel to fail. It was like my whole life spent being a good girl had been a total waste. After all, where had it gotten me? I'd failed at something that I had, at one point, really wanted to do. Something that by all rights I should have been able to sail through. I'd always sailed through school. I'd never had to work for it. I just showed up, wrote tests and got ninties. I never studied, I never did homework. I just floated through. Then I failed at school. It was unheard of. It was like that failure made me decide that being good really didn't have any advantages. But at least it did make me turn my life around as far as picking a career. But failing at school for the first time hit me pretty hard."

"And now you're happy, so none of this explains why you won't move down here and make good money to do what you trained to do."

"Because when I was taking my college course I swore to myself that I was wasn't a failure. That I wouldn't fail at anything else. That I would make it as a technician, and be just as good as all the guys I learned with. But I can't just say I am because I know I am. I have to prove it."

"You have. You worked just as hard as the rest of us at the shop the other day. You did just as much work as the guys did on your Skyline."

"Well, thank you for noticing and for telling me that, but that's not how I want to prove myself. I want to get my licence just like all my classmates so that no one will ever be able to tell me that I'm not as good as they are. I'll have passed all the same tests, done all the same things, and there'll be no question that I'm good at what I do."

"Why does that matter?"

"Dunno, but it does. It has something to do with how the people where I'm from are different. It was still next to impossible for me to find a job back home because the vast majority of the people around didn't think a woman had any business working in the trade. Most of them didn't even doubt I was capable. They just didn't think it was right for me to do it. But a lot of them think I jus plain can't too. All just because I'm a chick. They think that I should cut hair or be some man's secretary. And while those are both fine jobs, they aren't what I want to do with my life or my time. When I have my licence I'll know I didn't fail at this. I'll know that this time I was successful."

"How long until you're done of your licence?"

"Another two years."

He nodded. "And then?"

"And then, if I still think I'd like to give Cali a try, and Jesse is still after me to move down here, I'll think about it."

"But you told him that you'd think about it now."

"I know I did. But it's so hard to say no to that face."

Vince laughed and she joined him. "Yeah, he can be hard to say no to, can't he?" he asked.

"Always was."

She realized around then that downtown had slowly crept up and surrounded them. They took to the inner city streets and cruised around for awhile. He pointed out some places that he thought might be of interest to her and she looked suitably impressed with the size and populace of America's largest city. After an hour of driving around observing the city at play, they caught a red light and stopped to wait it out.

When Tempest started to giggle while looking out her window, it snagged his attention. "Wha?"

"That guy in the Civic next to us wants to race you."

"How'd you figure?"

"He's revving his engine, pointing at the car and laughing. He's rolling down his window now."

Vince used his master control to roll down his own window. He then leaned around Tempest and looked at the kid next to him. "Yeah?"

"I just wanted to tell you," the guy in the Civic snorted. "Um, nice ride."

"Yeah, you too," Vince laughed.

This angered the young man in the car next to them. "I have a thousand that says I can take you from here to the set of lights four intersections down."

"You're on. Hope you got the cash to pay up." Vince rolled up the window and adjusted his position in his seat.

"You're going to race him through downtown Los Angeles?"

"I sure ain't gonna let him talk smack to me and then beat me in front of you and the whole city."

"Men are such creatures of their egos." She laughed.

"You can't tell me you'd just take his insult and then let him beat you. 'Cause even if you decided not to go with him and just let him take off, he'd still think he beat you."

"I know." She turned her attention to the road. "Watch, it's gonna go green."

"I know that," he growled, getting ready to launch the car.

The light went green and both cars took off. It didn't take very long before the Civic fell away from them. They caught the first two lights they had to pass under while they were green. That wasn't to say they just had a straight line path toward the finish either. It was Friday night and traffic was thick. They had to zigzag in and out of other cars. There were times they had to switch onto the wrong side of the road, and once they almost ended up on the sidewalk. At the third intersection they ran a red light, narrowly missing being hit by a late nineties Ford sedan. In the end they won, as she had been quite sure they would from the moment she saw Vince behind the wheel with his 'game face' on. He took it quite seriously when he was really racing.

They pulled into a parking lot and waited for the kid in the Civic. When he pulled in Vince got out of his car and so did the other guy. Tempest turned the key over far enough to allow her to put her window down so she could try to hear them talking. All she picked up on was the kid asking Vince what he'd done to the Maxima to make it so fast, and Vince refusing to answer with a smirk. He got his money and got back in the car. They took off out of the parking lot and Vince turned the car back toward home.

She figured that was the end of their evening. She turned out to be wrong. He parked the car in front of a local bar. A bar which looked a great deal like a dive. He got out of the car and leaned in the open driver's door to look at her where she was still sitting with her belt done up. "You comin' or are you gonna sit in the car alone all night?"

"I can't go in there dressed like this. Look at that place."

"Aw, come on. I likely know everyone in there so it's not a big deal."

She undid her belt reluctantly and got out of the car. She just knew she was going to end up the center of attention, and it wasn't a position she wanted most of the time. She flung her door closed with a flick of her arm and met Vince at the nose of his car. "You come here often?"

"Yeah, when I go out without Leon and Dom. This ain't really their kinda place."

"You better watch out," she warned.

"What now?"

"Your pickup truck is showing. This place looks like a honky tonk bar."

"I guess it kinda is. But I ain't ever gonna drive no pickup truck."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."

"You have?" he asked incredulously.

"Lots of my friends have big trucks. We need them to get around in winter."

"I thought you lived in the city."

"I do. But there've been days where I went to bed and there was a dusting of snow, and when I woke up all I could see of my car was the little ball on the end of the antenna. When you have as many dirt roads, farms, fields and breakdowns as we do up home, a truck is something that never fails to come in handy."

"I can't see you behind the wheel of a four by four."

"That's just because you've never seen me in my natural habitat. Lot's of people drive trucks."

"Yeah, but not people who also have Skylines and RX-7's and Altimas."

"I guess not."