Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,3

are hundreds of people with pets, living all over Baltimore. You’ll find another place, trust me.”

There was a silence. He could make out the voices of children at the other end of the line, but they had a faraway sound. She must be out on the playground; it must be recess time.

“Cass?”

“Well, thanks for listening,” she said abruptly. She clicked off.

He stared at the screen a moment before he slid his glasses back down and tucked his phone away.

* * *

—

“Am I the very dumbest old biddy among all your clients?” Mrs. Prescott asked him.

“No, not at all,” he told her truthfully. “You’re not even in the top ten.”

Her wording amused him, because she did look a little bit henlike. She had a small, round head and a single pillowy mound of breasts-plus-belly atop her toothpick legs. Even here at home she wore little heels that gave her walk a certain jerky quality.

Micah was sitting on the floor beneath her desk, which was a massive antique rolltop with surprisingly limited work space. (People put their computers in the most outlandish locations. It was as if they didn’t quite grasp that they weren’t still writing with fountain pens.) He had unplugged two of the cords from the tangle attached to the surge protector—one cord labeled MODEM and the other labeled ROUTER, both in his own firm uppercase—and he was gazing at the second hand on his wristwatch. “Okay,” he said finally. He reattached the modem cord and went back to studying his second hand.

“My friend Glynda? You don’t know her,” Mrs. Prescott said, “but I keep telling her she ought to get in touch with you. She is scared of her computer! She only uses it to email. She doesn’t want to give it any information, she says. I told her about your little book.”

“Mm-hmm,” Micah said. His book was called First, Plug It In. It was one of Woolcott Publishing’s better-selling titles, but Woolcott was strictly local and he didn’t have a hope the book would ever make him rich.

He reattached the router cord and began extricating himself from underneath the desk. “This here is the hardest part of my job,” he told Mrs. Prescott as he struggled to his knees. He grabbed on to the desk frame and rose to a standing position.

“Oh, pshaw, you’re too young to talk that way,” Mrs. Prescott said.

“Young! I’ll be forty-four on my next birthday.”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Prescott said. And then, “I did tell Glynda you sometimes give lessons, but she claimed she would forget it all two minutes after you left.”

“She’s right,” Micah said. “She ought to just buy my book.”

“But lessons are so much more—oh! Look at that!”

She was staring at her computer screen, both hands clasped beneath her chin. “Amazon!” she said in a thrilled tone.

“Yep. Now. Were you watching what I did?”

“Well, I…Not exactly, no.”

“I turned off your computer; I unplugged the modem cord; I unplugged the router cord. See there where they’re labeled?”

“Oh, Mr. Mortimer, I would never remember all that!”

“Suit yourself,” he said. He reached for his clipboard on the top of her desk and started making out her bill.

“I’m thinking of ordering my granddaughter an African-American baby doll,” Mrs. Prescott said. “What do you think of that?”

“Is your granddaughter African-American?”

“Why, no.”

“Then I think it would just look weird,” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Mortimer! I certainly hope not!”

He tore off the top copy of her bill and handed it to her. “I feel bad even charging you,” he told her, “what with the piddly amount of work I did.”

“Now, don’t you talk that way,” she said. “You saved my life! I ought to pay you triple.” And she went off to fetch her checkbook.

The fact was, he reflected as he was driving home, that even if she had paid him triple, this job barely supported him. On the other hand, it was work he liked, and at least