“Hey, Lou. How’s it going?”
He looked up from the desk through the open door. “Hi, Carl. Everything’s great. How are you?”
“I’m good. You got a minute? I think you’ll want to see something.”
They went to Carl’s office, the prominent feature of which was his mammoth phototypesetting machine. The whole setup included a large metal desk, a keyboard, something like a television, but not exactly, and a bulky cabinet attached to one end. But this was not what Carl wanted to show Lou.
“Back here,” he said, scooting past the phototypesetter to a smaller desk in the back.
Lou went up to the desk to have a look.
“What have you got here?”
“That is a TRS-80. A microcomputer.”
“Huh.” Lou had heard of these. Never seen one. Didn’t know what to think. “What does it do?”
“Different things. You can track inventory on it, and do accounting, and store different kinds of information. Like membership lists. You can even play some games on it.”
“Huh.”
“It’s still pretty new. People are writing more programs for it.”
“What’s a program?”
“It’s like instructions that tell the computer what to do.”
“Huh.”
“So, that’s it. I thought you’d be interested.”
“Yeah, I am. I’m not sure what to think about it.”
“I get it. I still gotta figure it out.”
“All right. Well, I guess you’re the first one to try this thing. Let me know it goes.”
“Will do. Take care, man.”
Lou headed out, then stopped at Carl’s doorway and turned around.
“Hey, Carl. What happens if that thing breaks down?”
“Good question. I don’t know.”
“Okay. Just wondering.”
“Guess what I saw today, Jax.”
“What?”
“One of those microcomputers. A guy at Cascadia Market got one.”
“Oh. What does he do with it?”
“I’m not really sure.” Lou realized he didn’t have much to say on the subject. Which was boring, anyway. “I also saw these Russian jugglers.”
“That’s sounds more fun.”
“They were great jugglers, and pretty funny. They were trying to juggle weird things. I mean weird for a juggler. Like light bulbs and water balloons. A crowd started to form, so these Russian guys said they would try to juggle anything we had. Someone gave them a garbage can. Then someone else gave them a lit cigarette. They just juggled the cigarette into the garbage can. Then this guy took off his shoe and dared them to juggle his foot. They went along with the joke and tried juggling his foot until the guy fell down laughing.”
“You always have these entertaining stories from over there.”
“It can get wild. Although today there were a couple of creepy guys walking around, taking pictures. People were asking them questions, like ‘who are you guys,’ and ‘who do you work for.’ They didn’t answer. So someone from the Filmmakers Co-op came out with her camera and started filming them. Then they left right away.”
“Who do you think they were?”
“Probably FBI. That’s what we all assume.”
“What are they down there for? Are they looking for someone?”
“People think they’ve had their eye on the building for a long time. They probably think we’re all just hippie radicals plotting to overthrow the government.”
“Promise me you won’t try to overthrow the government without telling me first.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Tomoko and Nobody came home to find Lou stretched out on the sofa. News was playing on the radio.
“Anything noteworthy on the news?” asked Nobody.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to it.”
“We have some news,” said Tomoko. “If you want to pay attention.”
Lou sat up. “Sure. What’s up?”
“We looked at a house for sale. It looks perfect from the outside.”
“How does it look on the inside?”
“I don’t know. It was locked up. We couldn’t go in.”
Nobody added, “Of course, this is all Tomoko’s thing. I’m just along for the ride.”
“There was a ‘For Sale’ sign with a real estate agent’s name on it.”
“You probably want to get your own agent. Someone to look out for your interests.”
“I don’t know any agents. Do you?”
“No, I don’t. But I do know who would. Hang on.” Lou picked up the phone by his side and dialed a number. “Hi, Switchboard. I was wondering if you can refer me to any real estate agents…Okay…” Lou picked up a pad and pen from the end table while he waited. “Yeah…okay, yeah…okay, great...An Organic Alert? What for?...What!...Uh-huh…yeah, okay. Thanks a lot.” Lou sat unmoving, his hands holding the telephone and pen in mid-air. The uncaring hum of a dial tone remained.
“Lou?”
His eyes had gone wide. “Uh, the good news is they gave me three names of real estate agents.”
“What’s the bad news, Lou?”
He looked up from the sofa, his voice shaky, not ready to believe his own words.
“WECU has been embezzled.”