The Deal (pt. 3)

The next day, the woman messaged me that her boyfriend was out and had looked at the problems we noticed on the RV. She said that he said that it was just air in the line and he was totally qualified to bleed the brakes for us and he wanted to show us around the RV himself. She also insisted that there was no oil in the RV which, as you, dear reader, might remember from pt. 2, had just been replaced by a mechanic.

So I once again wake up Franklin to ask WTF and he insisted that he saw the mechanic put oil in the engine, which I relayed. There was much back and forth while I tried to pass along info between the two people who actually understood the subject, and a not insignificant amount of panicking. We began to make plans to get an Airbnb up in Daytona (where the RV was still currently parked) to spend the weekend up there to work directly with the boyfriend on fixing whatever needed to be fixed.

Eventually, we learned that they were mistaken about the oil, that it was apparently so clean that he did not even see it on the dipstick on his initial look, and that he was confident he could take care of the brakes. We also learned that we had already made a bunch of plans for this weekend and could not return until Monday at the earliest.

We finally scheduled another trip across the state to meet the boyfriend and talk in person about the state of the motorhome. So, once again, we woke up early (for us) and drove across the state with our daily thunderclouds pressing down upon us.

We pulled into the fae vehicle graveyard and met, let’s call him Jack. A tall, young-looking man with a commanding bearing and a kind face. Like the woman, he greeted us amidst a whole cadre of feral children, some of whom we had met before but others were new. I think this is just what fae children do. He talked engines and brakes with Franklin and showed us the RV as if we hadn’t already inspected it, which turned out to be helpful because he could explain parts of the vehicle that the woman, let’s call her Jill, had not. Such as what parts were accessible via which compartments, what parts did not work and what parts would work under which circumstances.

We then attempted to go to the DMV, where it turned out that Jack had not finished the transfer of the RV from the previous owner into his own name and that would have to be completed before he could transfer it into mine. We also learned more of his story.

During the last hurricane that flattened Central Florida in the fall of 2024, Jack lost 3 of his trucks for his trucking business and his restaurant. He and all his kids, and Jill and all her kids, have been living in FEMA housing for nearly a year, awaiting the resolution of assistance to get back on their feet. That, of course, came with all kinds of complications.

One such complication was that FEMA had run out of time for the housing they were putting people in and had to move them to hotel rooms, which were smaller and also more expensive. Many of these expenses had to be paid by the individuals and hopefully reimbursed by FEMA at some point.

Another was that Jack had been driving around a rental car this whole time. Because it was FEMA-related, he had a contract or an arrangement of some sort where he was paid up through the end of the month (or possibly through the next month), but some computer glitch somewhere said the car had not been paid since the previous month. Since this was midway through the month, the rental agency sent police out to pick him up for driving their property without “paying” for it.

Jack had a whole paper trail proving that he was not in debt and had a current valid contract, but naturally it wasn’t in his pocket when he was picked up, and even if it had been, it’s for the judge to decide at some later time. Because this is America and that’s how we do things – arrest you first, prove your case later, but first you need all the money up front to get out of jail and get an attorney and put together your case. All Jack needed was the bail money so he could come home, gather his records, and show them to the judge. Hence the sale of the RV.

Which he was able to do when we agreed to pay half the money up front. He was released, he went to his arraignment, the judge dismissed everything, and now he had to try and fight with an increasingly defunded FEMA over all the other things.

Hearing this story directly from Jack, with his earnest sincerity, greatly relieved Franklin, and we proceeded with the rest of the sale. But the further complication with the title transfer meant that we still could not complete everything today.

Once more, we headed back home, sans fae chariot, still not entirely sure whether this deal with the fae was a good one or a bad one. Would we ever bring her home with us? Would yet another roadblock jump in our path? At this point, however, I was starting to tentatively tell people that I *may* have just purchased a new RV. But we’ll see in a few days.