“No problem.”

Karl looked at Mitch as if he was a hopeless case. “You know, we’re having a church picnic on Sunday morning. There’ll be some nice girls there…”

Nice girls. What good were they? “I’m scheduled Sundays, but thanks.”

Karl left, after thanking him again. Mitch turned back to the computer. He flipped through the inventory sheets for the plasma TVs. There were fourteen of them. He punched in twelve and slipped the last two into his pocket.

“HERE’S WHAT YOU do,” Mitch said. He let out a stream of pot smoke and passed the bong to Kevin. “You pull up to the loading dock, hand them that piece of paper, and they’ll put a forty-two-inch plasma TV in your truck.”

Kevin looked dubious. “I’m still on parole, man. I don’t know about this.”

“Dude, it’s no-risk. You’re not really doing anything wrong. Worst comes to worst, just say I gave you the slip to pick up the TV. If you don’t want to do it, just let us borrow your truck. We can’t use my car, because the loading dock guys know my car.” Mitch shrugged. “Doug’ll do it.”

Doug nodded. “I’ll do it. But I’d like to have Kevin with me.”

“Just keep him company,” said Mitch.

Kevin still looked dubious.

“Dude, it’ll be over in, like, five minutes. The only thing is, you have to park in the parking lot first and switch license plates. I’ll get you a fake plate. I’ve got one in the basement, an old Nevada plate, like from the seventies or something. You just have to put that on the car, for the loading dock security cam. Hand ’em the paper, and you’ve got a seventeen-hundred-dollar TV.”

“And then what?”

“Well, you keep it in the basement here for a few days. We can watch a playoff game on it next Sunday. Then I’ll have to give it to my landlord.”

Since adjusting the inventory sheets a few hours earlier, Mitch had developed a complex plan with his roommate, Doug. Originally they had wanted to keep the TV, but they had decided that would be too risky. Then, out of the blue, their landlord had dropped by and asked Mitch, with a wink, if he could get any “discounts” from Accu-mart, and a fence operation was born. In exchange for two months’ free rent, at $500 a month, he would take the TV.

Kevin stared into the bong. “What do I get out of this?”

Doug and Mitch looked at each other. They were discussing practical issues now. It was becoming a possibility. “Two hundred,” Mitch said, and Doug nodded.

“You guys get a thousand, and I only get one fifth? That’s bullshit. It’s my truck.”

They looked at each other again and shrugged. “OK, one third. Three thirty,” said Mitch.

“Three thirty-three,” corrected Kevin. “And thirty-three cents. Point three repeating.”

“Hell,” said Mitch. “You know what? You can have three thirty-four.”

“Three thirty-five, even,” Doug said. “But you have to keep me company.”

They heard Linda come home, heard footsteps in the kitchen above them. She walked down the first few basement stairs and stared at the three of them, high on the couches, suddenly quiet.

“Hi, Doug,” she said, then retreated back into the kitchen.

Doug waved.

Kevin looked at Doug. “Why the hell did she say hi to you?”

Doug shrugged.

Mitch, who also thought it was odd, quickly turned the conversation back to the issue at hand. “OK then, we do this next Monday. I’ll get you the license plate tomorrow morning.”

“Let’s do it Friday,” Kevin said. “Then we can watch the Steelers game over the weekend.”

“We can’t. I dated the stock slip for Monday.” Mitch was glad to hear Kevin push the date ahead, because he felt that Kevin was either reluctant or only half-listening, not as involved as he and Doug. “If you give them a stock slip dated three days ahead, they might notice.”

“They’ll notice that we’re TV buyers from the future,” Doug said into the bong, and giggled at his own joke.

Mitch felt the battle plan might degenerate into giggling and joking, so he quickly added, “We have to wait until it gets dark. Like six o’clock or so. Sound good?”

Kevin was baked, staring at his own TV, which was on but muted. He was smiling, which could have been in appreciation of Mitch’s excellent plan or from seven bong hits of White Widow. Mitch was watching his expression carefully. “Shit,” Kevin said, and shook his head, chuckled. “Nevada license plate. You’re funny, Mitch.”

ON THE WAY back to their apartment, Doug and Mitch stopped at the All Night Fillerup for cigarettes and so Doug could stare lovingly at his Mexican girl. There was a girl who worked behind the counter whom Doug obsessed about, but in a year of buying cigarettes from her he had never spoken to her. He was biding his time, he explained. Didn’t want to rush things. Months ago, Mitch and Kevin had made fun of him, told him she would be married with grandchildren by the time he struck up a conversation. Kevin, who despite being married, had a better way with women than either of the other two, had even offered to talk to her for him, which had sent Doug into a panic. Mitch and Kevin had just looked at each other and shook their heads, convinced it was never going anywhere, just another one of Doug’s fantasies.

“Just wait,” Doug had said.

“We have waited. Are you going to do something about this or not?”

“When the time is right.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, seriously. Just wait.”

Mitch was getting concerned for Doug, who was showing more and more of a tendency to live in his head. After getting what he felt was an unnecessary speeding ticket a few weeks ago, Doug had talked incessantly about all the things he was going to say to the judge. He was going to put the whole traffic system on trial. If he was going to pay $150, he was going to have his say, about how speed traps were just an unfair form of taxation, how the only people who benefited were the insurance companies and the tax collectors, how working people were getting victimized by an unfair power structure which could charge whatever it wanted. One hundred fifty? Why not five thousand? He had rehearsed his speech over and over at every one of their smoke-out sessions for weeks until Mitch and Kevin were rolling their eyes. Then he had gone to court on his date and quietly paid the ticket. “I just wanted to get out of there,” he had explained. “The place was, like, uh, crawling with cops.”

Mitch was sitting in the driver’s seat, bopping his head to Def Leppard, when Doug came back to the car. Mitch turned the radio down. “Your girl there?”

“She was there,” said Doug, handing him the smokes and his change.

“You talk to her?”

“She was busy. Tonight, like, wasn’t the night.”

Mitch nodded. Better to say nothing. Wasn’t it always? They drove home, the windows down despite the snow flurries, with “Pour Some Sugar on Me” shaking the glass and bolts of the car.

“MITCH, DO YOU know anything about computers?” Apparently, when Mitch had answered that question the previous day, he had been in stealth mode, invisible and inaudible. Sutherland’s employees frequently found themselves in stealth mode when they were talking to him, the real conversation going on behind Sutherland’s eyes, the employee’s existence unnoticed.

“Yes. I punched in all the inventory sheets yesterday.”

“You don’t seem… to have any allergies today.” Sutherland stared into his eyes.

“They usually don’t kick in till after lunch.” Mitch lifted a heavy case of tire bolts, placed them on a stack, and turned to face Sutherland. Why did this guy keep dropping by? Car accessories could run itself. It was almost as if Sutherland was lonely.