Chapter 2

2.

A week later, at eleven at night, there was a knock at my door. Linda was standing there with a plate of sliced oranges, smiling so hard her eyes were slits.

“Artie, have some oranges. They’re very sweet.”

She walked in without waiting, set the fruit on the coffee table, and sat down. She chatted about the weather for a minute, then mentioned Leo had landed a big project for a local tech firm. Thirty thousand dollars, due in two days.

Then she changed her tone.

“So, Artie, Leo’s laptop has been acting up. He says it’s getting slower and keeps showing a blue screen. When do you have some free time to take a look?”

My heart sank. That SMART data from last week―four hundred sectors―meant the spare pool was empty.

“What was the stop code on the blue screen?”

“What code? It just goes blue and restarts.”

“Linda, Leo’s drive isn’t just slow. The SMART alarm is going off. The hardware is failing. It’s not a software glitch; the physical disk is dying.”

“Well, so just fix it for him.”

“It’s not that simple. We need three things: a brand new SSD for a swap, and a professional data recovery license to pull the files off the dying drive. The SSD is about three hundred, and the software license is eight hundred. I’ll only charge you exactly what it costs me.”

Linda’s smile vanished instantly.

“I thought you didn’t charge people?”

“I can eat the cost of an ethernet cable, Linda. But I’m not a software developer or a hardware manufacturer. I have to buy those.”

“Eleven hundred dollars?” Her eyes widened. “Artie, you’re charging a neighbor for parts and labor? Aren’t you ashamed to tell people that?”

“Linda, tell Leo to back up his files to the cloud or that thumb drive right now. That’s free. It doesn’t cost a dime. We can swap the drive after he’s backed up.”

“Backup, backup... he’s busy coding! He doesn’t have time for that,” she snapped, waving her hand. “Besides, don’t you have that software already? Just install it and be done with it. Why does it cost eight hundred dollars?”

“The software belongs to a company, not me. I have to pay for the activation.”

“Heh.” She let out a cold laugh and stood up, grabbing the plate of oranges. “Just say you don’t want to help.”

She marched toward the door. At the threshold, she turned back and glared.

“Artie, do you even have a business license or a certification for computer repair?”

The question caught me off guard. I hesitated.

“I worked at Cisco for twenty years. I have professional engineering certifications.”

“Cisco? That’s just a company name.”

She nodded slowly. “But do you have a state-issued technician’s license? If you don’t, isn’t fixing computers in this building technically an illegal, unlicensed business?”

I looked her straight in the eyes.

“Linda, what exactly are you implying?”

“Nothing. Just curious.” She smirked. “By the way, Artie, you’ve been doing this for years. Are you telling me you really never took a dime? I heard you went out for a fancy dinner with Harvey after you fixed his data last month.”

“Harvey insisted on buying me dinner. I didn’t ask for it.”

“Sure you didn’t.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She walked out with her oranges. As the door closed, I heard her mutter in the hall, “Cheap bastard thinks he’s so slick.”