“What was the name of that place you took me to, anyway? It was out in the desert,” he said. “It was somewhere out there. It was some old mafia place?” he asked. “A mafia hideout or something?”

“Rancho Diablo. I took you to the Devil Ranch. How’s that for a Catholic girl? Hey! Let’s go to the Devil Ranch. Let’s go to the No-Tel Motel! Let’s go to the Biker Bar and while we’re at it, I want you to take me to this other place, even though I’m not supposed to be there. And if you get caught, you’ll go to federal prison but never mind that. Take me out there anyway, because I want to go! Jeez man. That’s some Catholic girl you’ve got!”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess you were your own kind of Catholic girl, weren’t you?”

“I was. And you weren’t much of a Catholic boy, come to think of it. Because you did all that stuff with me. It was my idea to go to the biker bar. It was your idea to try to get in a fight there! I just wanted to go see what it was like. I wanted to meet the people,” I said. “I just wanted to go in there and say hi or something,” I said. “You know. Hello! I’m Elsa! Nice to meet you.”

“And I wanted to kick some ass!” he said. “I was a young punk and I wanted to fight some people! We’re lucky we didn’t get killed, P. Goin’ in there the way we did. Do you have any idea why we didn’t get killed?”

“I don’t know. Probably because we were grinning. That’s my guess.”

“Well that may be part of it,” he said. That goes along with my theory. My theory is they didn’t mess with us because we were crazy. You know. Most sane people won’t mess with a crazy person and we definitely must have seemed crazy. We went in there and just started yelling. We were screaming at the top of out lungs… all these Harleys parked outside and we go in there and start yelling. “ANYONE WHO IS ANYONE DRIVES A KAWASAKI!” He laughed. “Now how crazy is that? That’s crazy, P. We were crazy. You weighed like 125 pounds, soaking wet. 130 tops. I didn’t weigh much more than that, myself! And yet we think its okay to go in some biker bar and start yelling our heads off like we know something.”

I laughed. “Well I thought it would be okay. That was funny! If you’re going to go somewhere you don’t belong, may as well make an entrance! What happened anyway? I don’t remember. Did we get in trouble?”

“No. We got in trouble some of the time but not that time. We got in no trouble at all and we were asking for it, obviously. We were begging.”

“Not me. You.”

“Yeah, it was me this time. You didn’t fight. The only person you ever fought with was me. But what happened was this: We went in there just a-yellin’ out heads off about riding Kawasaki. COW-AH-SA-KIS! Should we spell it for you? Do you want us to spell it? Because if we need to, we will!”

He laughed and I roared. “What did they do?”

“Well, they just looked at us. The whole bar. All these gnarly bikers and they’re just staring at us. I swear, P. To this day I don’t know why they didn’t stomp up into the ground. Because they were big and we were these little piss ant kids.”

“Yeah, but we had grins. We had dimples! So what happened anyway? They let us go?”

“No. No they didn’t let us go. They actually wound up buying us a beer!”

I snorted. “Well, okay!”

“Yeah. I guess they thought we were gonna sit and talk to them or something. You know. They thought we’d sit down and shoot the shit, but that’s not what we did. We weren’t going to talk to them.”

“You’re kidding. You mean we weren’t cordial?”

Of course we were cordial. We’re polite, P. We’re not rude people. We just don’t want to talk to you!”

I snorted and busted up laughing. “Why not? Why not talk to them?”

“Because we wanted to talk to each other, I guess. That’s what I’m saying, P. Where ever we went it was me and you, me and you, me and you. What do we want to talk to some bikers for? No reason. So we just sat at our table, drank our beers and then left on the Kawasaki. Bye! We said bye to everyone on the way out,” he chuckled. “We’re going to leave now. We’re going to get on a reeeeal bike… a Kawasaki, that is and we’ll see you people later!”

I laughed. “Then what? We left to do what next?”

“I don’t know, P. We left to go do the next thing we were going to do. That’s how it was back then. We just did whatever we wanted. We went wherever we wanted to go, whenever we wanted to go there and as long as we were together, no one ever bothered us. So that was Rancho Diablo, eh? An old mafia place?”

“That’s the story I heard. It was where these mafia hit men would go when things got hot. In the 50’s I mean. And I don’t know what else it would be. Why else is there a huge resort in the middle of the desert at the end of an unmarked dirt road? And I heard it was active for years… maybe ten. But then they got found out and closed up shop. Abandoned.”

“That place was cool.”

“Yeah. It had lots of energy, that’s for sure. I can send you pictures.”

“You have a picture of that place?”

“I have several.”

~~
I think people left us alone because we have dimples and knew jokes, but it also could have been the Cardinal Grand Cross that is formed when you put the two charts together. I call it “The Fortress Effect”.

Pictured - Rancho Diablo. That’s me in the dress, because I have Libra. What else would a girl wear to meet and greet ghosts?

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