"There. Now we are all set and ready."Diamond walked toward me and placed a neat stack of money in the palm of my hand."Honey. Count it and make sure ...t's all there. I'm really sorry I forgot to pay you yesterday when we were at the hotel. It's just that I had an appointment to get to and had to leave in a hurry."I quickly counted the money, there was an extra grand.“Why the extra grand? We agreed on two, not three.”“Honey, the client was so pleased with your performance, he popped with a 2K. Back then, Debbie had been a little plain and a little overweight: but now, four years later, with her natural hair colour dyed something more exotic, wearing subtle make up and with all the adolescent puppy-fat gone, she was an altogether different person. Despite her friendly disposition at the earlier age, she'd always seemed to have difficulty integrating with her peers, but after that disco, things were definitely different:"Do you know that you literally changed my life, Paul!" she. I asked Tessa if she was figuring to graduate from college in two years, and she said yes. “Tusker’s going to take a little longer, but he got started late, and only goes part time.”I looked over at my old friend in surprise. “You’re going to college?”“Don’t look so surprised! You’re the one who said I should.”I nodded in agreement. That was true. A year ago, we had been talking and I had urged him to at least go part time to community college. “And you listened to me? Nobody listens to. She had just watched her eldest daughter get into the back of yet another expensive car with a group of friends heading to god know where for some sort of concert. Her other two daughters had already left for school and shouldn't be back till the afternoon. All that was left to worry about was where was her husband. Money wasn't tight but he hadn't been home for days. She didn't know what to do if he never came home and the money dried up. She didn't know if she could find a job as a middle.