Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

Another buzzing at my waist.

Amad 9:37.

I walked down Main Street, suddenly excited for work. I smelled the sun, and the salty Pacific stink. I would prove, today, this day, that Amad and Teri were wrong; this would be the start of the long-awaited resurrection of Otter Computer Incorporated. Of me. No more idle hands.

Then a buzzing, and a text from Amad.

“I’ve been watching you dawdling for the last five minutes. I can see you from here.”

I watched Amad through the plate glass window. He was speaking with a large bald man in clam diggers, and he was wearing one of his ill-matched sweat suits. Clean white sweatpants rolled up high near his knees, and a bright poppy-red sweatshirt. He checked his watch and smiled, holding up an ergonomic keyboard. When Amad had first walked in the store, this was how many years before, after answering an ad I placed in the L.A. Pennysaver, I said, So, tell me about your work history. He crouched, started rummaging through motherboard stacks, and silently assembled a desktop system. Hardware and software, it ran Solitaire in twenty-five minutes. I knew my way around a computer, well enough, but really my reason for being in the business was happenstance. I was lucky. Then again, I was always good at selling. It was in my blood. My father was a born salesman, always selling me on the idea that I was special. I bought it, for a while anyway. I’d been giving sermons since I was seven because I had a knack for commanding attention, and I liked it. Even still, I can turn it on but rarely do. If I’d been born into a more practical family, I likely would have run for class president, or started a small business at twelve. The entrepreneur’s toolbox is not so different from the preacher’s. I say that with respect. And so I sold computers — processors, hard drives, and memory — and this turned out, at first, to be a lucrative and very special service. Inside the computer waits every future mapping of the world. Amad had tried to explain the inner workings to me many times. It’s easy, he’d say, all very easy. I would stop him cold.

He looked up when he was finished, and said, “My name is Amad. This is how I work.”

Then he said, “Forgive me, I wanted to kill the ugly man that was driving right behind me, but now I feel much better. Praise to all that is.” I remember him nodding and making a sweeping-away gesture.

I once said to him, “I want to be more like you. You’ve got it all figured out.”

He said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The big stuff, I mean.”

“Big stuff doesn’t interest me. What big stuff?”

That first week we opened, a customer referred to him as Gandhi. He said, “You mistake me for someone else. Please, my name is Amad,” and he put out his hand.

I said, “You are an unacknowledged master, a crackerjack Sufi. You help me recognize the world.”

He called me a “foking tommy.”

He said, “I’ll kick you right in your balls if you don’t stop that bullshit. I’m hungry and I’m going to lunch.” Three hours later, I found him across the freeway, getting drunk on Budweiser. He raised a glass as tall as a nightstick and said, “Back home I was a rocket scientist.” Then he belched. “It’s not a joke.” A few years later, he named his dog Little Josie so that I would have a role model. This also wasn’t a joke, and when I look back I see the good sense it made. Little Josie loved every day, no depressions! If I’d paid more attention to the pup it probably wouldn’t have taken me so long to snap out of my stupor.

I knocked on the plate glass window.

I watched the bald man leave as I entered the store. I waved, and Amad nodded back: So, you’re actually here. He walked over to a display table sparsely stacked with boxes for external tape drives, cabling, wireless mice. The boxes were empty, and a pale ray of light painted a band across the table.

“Here I am,” I said. “I told you.”

He turned and walked to the back counter, obviously displeased. “And you’re late. I thought you were going to watch the bikini girls all day.”

A short, squat woman in wraparound sunglasses walked in and quietly waited. Her wide waist was cinched in a pleated denim grip. One size fits all.

“Guess what, I talked to Sarah today.”

He raised a finger to his lips and walked toward the woman.

I saw my reflection in the mirror behind the counter, and the digital numbers, the red reversed clock numbers on the shelf behind me.…

“Please make yourself useful.” He was suddenly beside me holding a clipboard. “Josie.”

I shook away and took the checklist.

He said, “Inventory. Please.”

Behind me, the woman said, “My husband says our old computer is fine. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.” I turned. She wore a baby-blue sun visor, crowned with explosible rust-colored curls, and they fought the visor’s hold like blood boiling over.

“You are here,” Amad said, “because you know that your husband, he is dead wrong.”

I watched her for any signs of customer discomfort. She took off her sunglasses.

“Mr. Amad,” she said, “why do you say that?”

“This is not a joke.” He put one hand flat on the counter. “For your husband to privilege the old computer simply because it has worked in the past, simply because it is dependable, it is to take it lying down. It is to die.”

A bit persistent.

He said, “It is we who change, not the world.”

“My daughter,” she said. “Her cell phone’s more like a pacemaker. I don’t think she’s ever seen a typewriter. I say, learn all we can. Let me run next door and tell her where I am.” She patted his hand like, you just wait right here.

I watched her leave, and said, “That was really something. The hard sell.”

He picked up a fallen cable from beside my foot. “You’re late. You dawdled. And somebody has to make the money here. What can I say?”

“But I’m here. You owe me a breakfast burrito. And a coffee.”

“You mean Teri does.”

“Teri isn’t here.”

“She will be. And if you want to ask her yourself, feel free. Myself, I’d be very afraid.”

I laughed, and said, “Today’s supposed to be our anniversary, and guess who calls.”

“How is she?”

“We’re having dinner tomorrow. Maybe.” I gave him a look like, is this a dumb idea? Please tell me it’s not a dumb idea.

“You are what they call a necrophile. You love what is dead. And my very pregnant wife is fine, thank you for returning the favor and asking about her.”

“Oh, stop. How is she?”

“Too late.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. You are way too late. And she’s fine, giving me acid in my stomach. Do you know how expensive a preschool is?”

“I told you it would be crazy.”

“What did you tell me? You told me nothing. You have nothing to tell me. Do me a favor and put on a chicken suit, and stand out front. We need customers. Unless of course you would like to make an effort here.” He motioned toward the door.

The woman had returned and now she was dragging her daughter along. The girl was fifteen, maybe sixteen, gangling, and popping gum, a perfect picture of bulletproof teenage oblivion.

“This is my daughter, Alison, Mr. Amad. I’d like her to meet a person like yourself. And I’d like to buy her a portable computer for school. Like we talked about.”

“Hello, Alison.” Amad extended his hand.

But the girl just looked at it.

“Take his hand, young lady.”

The girl reluctantly extended one hand, cell phone snug in the free palm.

Amad said, “This is Josie. My boss who is very late.”

I set the clipboard on the counter. “I’ll be right outside.”