"Well, you came from back East, didn't you? From one of them big cities?"
"No. We were at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center for a couple of years. Before that we lived in Germany."
"Oooh, Germany," he said. Then, moving so suddenly that he made Eleanor startle, he stood up straight, clicked the heels of his work boots together, and jutted his right arm out in a Nazi salute. "Sieg Heil!" he hollered. He dropped his arm and a smile spread across his face as he watched Eleanor's reaction. "Lots of those kinds of people there? You know, National Socialists?"
"You mean Nazis?"
"Well, that's kind of a slang term, but yeah, that's what I mean."
"Never saw one there," Eleanor said. "If you're finished, you can leave now."
Strang raised his eyebrows fastidiously. "Well, technically speaking, I'm not finished with the installation until I have hooked up the TV set and gotten it running to the satisfaction of the owner."
"My husband is an engineer. He'll get it running. If we're not satisfied, we'll call the cable company."
"But before I leave, I have to get your signature on this document," Strang said, holding up an aluminium clipboard, "which states that the installation is complete and you are satisfied with the quality of service."
"I'll sign anything, at this point."
"You sure?" Strang said, wiggling the clipboard just out of Eleanor's reach.
"Positive."
"We could test it right now if you could get a TV set."
"For the eight hundredth time, I do not have a TV."
"I'll bet you could get one, though."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Strang looked out the windows of the living room, down the block. "Must be some other houses around here that have TVs. I'll bet you could figure out a way to get your hands on someone else's TV set, if you really wanted it."
She just stared at him, narrowed her eyes, shook her head in amazement.
He continued, "Course now that y'all are out here in the nice part of town, I'll bet you don't do that kind of thing no more. But I'll bet you still got the skills. Y'all are just a little rusty."
"I'm gong to call the cable TV company and they are going to fire your ass," she said.
"They can't," he said. "I don't work for them. I'm an independent contractor. Just a small-time entrepreneurial businessman struggling to make my way."
"Then I'll make sure they never hire you again."
"Your word against mine," he said, "and even if they believe you, there's plenty of other cable systems out here in Colorful Colorado that keep my services in high demand."
She knew it was crazy for her to be arguing this with him. She should just throw him out of the house. But her parents had raised her to talk things out. They had worked their fingers to the bone paying for an expensive Catholic education so that the nuns could teach her to be a rational, intelligent citizen. She could not get over the impulse to make Erwin Dudley Strang see reason. "Why shouldn't they believe me?" she said. "Why would I bother to call in such a complaint? It's not something I would do for fun."
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," he said.
"What!?"
"I seen the way you been looking at me," he said. "If you want a taste, why don't you just ask for it?"
"Oh, Jesus," she said, "get out of my house. Get out now. Just get out."
"Upstairs bedroom has some nice carpet in it. Almost as good as a bed."
Then she astonished herself by kicking him in the nuts. Hard. A direct hit. His mouth formed into an O shape, his eyes got big, he stuck his arms down between his thighs, sank to the living room floor, and lay down on his side, sucking in quick, short breaths through his puckered lips.
She went right out to her car, rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and started the engine.
After a few minutes, Strang came out, walking in little tiny baby step, climbed gingerly into his van, and after sitting there in the front seat for a few ominous minutes, backed out of the driveway and went away.
Later they found out that he had forged Eleanor's signature on the work order form. She didn't care.
The next time Eleanor saw Erwin Dudley Strang, he was on television, his name was Earl Strong, and his complexion was frighteningly, unnaturally smooth, as if he had been lovingly spackled, buffed, and polished. The white skin of his cheeks was luminous under the lights of the television studio, and almost fuzzy, like an off-focus beauty shot of an aging movie star. As if the camera could not find any feature or blemish to focus on.
She saw his face on the local public-access cable TV channel one night when she was flipping through the channels after Harmon and the children had gone to bed. It went without saying that the cable had never worked perfectly ever since Strang installed it. It was always a little snowy, with a bit of fuzz in the audio, and whenever the wind blew, the picture started to jump. But putting up with bad television was preferable to phoning the cable TV company and having them send him back to fix it.
It was creepy and ironic to be flipping through the channels, cursing the bad reception, cursing the man who had installed it, and suddenly to have him show up on screen, in a full talking head shot, wearing a business suit.
She looked at him for a moment and flipped on to the next channel. She didn't want to see the man. So he was wearing a business suit. He had found some other profession to give a bad name to. She didn't care.
But a few nights later she saw him again, and this time the letters EARL STRONG were superimposed on the bottom of the screen, and finally she had to stop right there and watch.
It was some kind of talk show. Not a slick network production by any means. Just a sheet-metal desk in front of a big piece of blue paper with a Goodwill sofa next to it where the guests sat.
But Earl Strong/Erwin Dudley Strang wasn't sitting on the sofa. He was sitting behind the desk, in a cheap folding sheet-metal chair that creaked whenever he shifted his weight. He was the host.
Eleanor had to go and dig up the little channel guide, the little slip of cardboard that Strang had given her years ago, to find out what channel she was watching. It said CH. 29 - PUBLIC ACCESS CABLEVISION.
Earl Strong was talking politics with an assortment of off-brand philosophers who drifted across his little stage, seemingly following their own cues. The camera angle never varied. Clearly there was only one camera taping this thing, and it was sitting on a tripod, running on autopilot. It was comically inept, just the kind of thing that he would throw together.
The title of tonight's broadcast was "The Three-Fifths Compromise: Error or Inspiration?" Eleanor could only listen to about thirty seconds of it before she was overcome by an odd combination of boredom and fury.
The name of the show was Coming on Strong. Earl Strong kept coming on, week after week, year after year. It seemed that every time she happened to flip past his little program, he looked a little different: he did something about those crooked teeth. Got his chin lengthened. Fixed the nose. Bought a narrower and more conservative set of neckties. Played endlessly with his hairstyle until he found one - close-cropped but carefully sculpted - that worked. Bought himself a chair that did not creak. Moved to a better studio, got a two-camera setup, then a three-camera setup. Got commercial sponsorship from Ty (Buckaroo) Steele, a prominent local purveyor of cut-rate used cars, and made the jump from public-access cable to one of the local commercial stations.
And at each step of the process, Eleanor laughed and shook her head, remembering him curled up on the floor in her living room, sucking in short little breaths, and she wondered how long it would take for this man to be found out for the shabby little fraud he really was. Each time he attained a little more success, Eleanor was shocked for a moment, even a little frightened. Then she calmed herself down by reminding herself that the higher he got, the harder he would fall in the end.