Short Squeeze by Chris Knopf Read Free Book Online

little company. Actually, not so little.
    My cell phone had a record of the number. I pushed the send button.
    “Ya’ello.”
    “Hey, Harry.”
    “You’re canceling.”
    “Why’d you say that?”
    “Because I disappeared for two years and you can’t get over it.”
    “I’m curious about where you went and why, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
    “Okay.”
    “Do you have a car?”
    “I do,” he said. “I have a Volvo station wagon.”
    Most excellent. A real car. A safe, roomy, comfortable car. With shock absorbers and power windows.
    “What’re you doing tomorrow?” I asked.
    “Distributing mainframes.”
    Harry moved stuff around for a living. Big stuff, like full-scale manufacturing facilities prefabbed in Japan and assembled in Massachusetts. Or lots of stuff, such as forty thousand cots, ten thousand tents, a lakeful of water, and enough food to feed thousands of earthquake survivors for a year. This is how he explained logistics. Or rather, rhapsodized about it. Harry loved his work.
    “How would you feel about shipping me to Atapougue and back?”
    “We call that custom handling.”
    “No handling, buster. Just lively and engaging conversation.”
    “Still have the old truck?” he asked.
    “I might.”
    “Should I be feeling used?”
    “Yes. But appreciated. How does nine sound?”
    I first saw Harry at the Memorial Day parade in Southampton. Ormore precisely, the middle of his back, which was completely blocking my view. I reached up and tapped on his shoulder and he almost knocked me over when he turned around. At a little over six foot eight, with the wingspan of a condor, a bald head, and black wraparound sunglasses, he looked like an alien sent down to monitor the ritual customs of us pathetic little earthlings.
    Until he blasted me with a smile that somehow conveyed the totality of his big-sky, earnest, mirthful—though slightly obsessive-compulsive–self.
    Six months later we moved in together. Six months after that, I was putting his toothbrush, silk dental floss, extra-hypoallergenic sweater, special imported teas, and They Might Be Giants CDs in a box for him to pick up off my doorstep. I thought almost immediately that was a mistake. Mine, not his. But I didn’t know I’d have to wait two years to properly calibrate how bad a mistake it might have been.
    “Nine is fine. Though I’ll have to stop along the way and jump on the wireless. IBM will want to know where their computers are.”
    “Of course, hell yeah. Plenty of time for that. You’re still a mensch, Harry. You can’t help it.”
    “You’re still a commotion,” he said.
    “And you mean that fondly. Don’t answer. See you at nine.”
    I might’ve been using him. But I also wanted to see him. I thought a ride in the car in the daylight might be a better way to catch up and reorient than a dark restaurant where I had to chitchat and chew at the same time.
    Plus, as I thought about it, having him along to meet the nasty FuzzMan in the flesh wasn’t such a bad idea. You can rent cars, but it’s pretty tough to dig up six-foot-eight aliens whose shoulders are too wide to fit through a normal door but could still fit into his army fatigues. At least the last time I saw him.
    I worked until after midnight to catch up and then get ahead of my regular client load. The people who were actually paying me todo things for them, boring things on the whole, but usually not to them.
    So I slept late, and when nine in the morning came around, I wasn’t exactly ready to go. I was mostly wet, with a towel on my head and a bathrobe sticking to my skin, when I answered the door. But there he was.
    “Hey, Harry,” I said, straining my neck to look him in his sparkly blue eyes.
    He’d still be able to fit into his field jacket, that was obvious. And that bald pate still shone like a glazed vase. And when he lifted me off the floor and kissed me on the forehead, he still switched on that little electric switch. Damn