The Way It Works by William Kowalski Page A

know what to say.”
    â€œHow about you tell me about this big business idea of yours, Mr. Urban Courier?”
    â€œWhat? How did you know about that too?”
    â€œIt’s on your name tag, genius,” says Yolanda.
    â€œOh, right,” I say. “I forgot. Listen… how about I tell you all about it over dinner tonight? If you’ll give me another chance, that is.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    L ong story short…she gave me another chance. And this time, I didn’t screw it up.
    It’s a year later. Yolanda and I are in the same Chinese restaurant we went to on our first date. But we’re not eating. We’re dancing. Lots of my old friends from the shelter are there. So are some of my best customers. All her family members are there too. Everyone is watching us dance. There’s a DJ playing a Roberta Flack tune: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
    Yolanda is wearing a white gown.
    I’m in a tuxedo.
    We just got married.
    A lot’s happened in a year. My business has grown. It’s too big for me to run on my own anymore. I have twenty employees now. Most of them are people who used to be homeless and unemployed. Now they all have jobs. They can afford places of their own. They’re off the street and supporting themselves. They’re productive members of society. You can see the difference in the way they carry themselves. They feel alive again.
    I have a new business partner too. She’s the woman in my arms right now. Yolanda runs the administrative side of things. She takes care of the office. She’s even got her own secretary to help her. Without her help, I’d be lost. She’s smart and capable. She’s my partner in every sense of the word.
    I spend a lot of my time dealing with clients now. I still go around drumming up new business. But it’s on a whole new level. Instead of knocking on doors, I sit in fancy boardrooms with executives of large corporations. I like it. It feels natural. Like it’s what I was meant to be doing all along.
    Scooby is still with me too. He’s in charge of the employees now. He doesn’t call himself Scooby anymore. Now he’s back to calling himself Samuel. That was his name before he lost everything. He told me just the other day that he hasn’t felt so good about himself in years. And he thanked me for giving him a chance. I told him he didn’t have to thank me. He was helping me by doing such good work.
    It makes me feel so good to look around the room at all these people. Parnell performed our wedding ceremony. I could see by the look on his face how proud he was that we were getting married. He’s still protective of his little girl, of course. But it helps that he thinks a lot of his new son-in-law.
    Mrs. Jefferson is standing next to him. If she smiled any harder, her face might fall off. She’s been teaching me a lot of Mandarin. We can have a whole conversation now. She says I’m a natural. If we have kids, Yolanda and I want them to speak both languages.
    And Yolanda wants kids. A lot of them.
    I look down into Yolanda’s eyes and smile.
    â€œHow you doing?” I ask.
    â€œI’m great,” she says. “How you doing?”
    â€œSorry I’m such a lousy dancer.”
    â€œThat’s okay. You’re good at other things.”
    â€œDid I mention this is the happiest day of my life?”
    â€œAbout a thousand times.”
    â€œWell, I’m going to say it again. In case you forget.”
    â€œI won’t forget.”
    The song ends. Everybody claps. Then the DJ puts on some livelier music, and the floor fills up with people. Chinese, blacks, whites, Hispanics. It looks like the lobby of the United Nations. It’s the oddest collection of people you’ll ever see. And one of the happiest too.
    Everybody starts to boogie like dancing is going out of style. The DJ switches back and forth, from soul and rap tunes to