me give you a hand,” he offered.
“Gladly. We’ll have to lug these boards around to the side. I’d like to get them into the basement before it starts raining again.”
“You said something about opinions,” he said, while we were untying all my knots.
I outlined the basic setup while he helped me off-load the lumber, ending with the no-no list: “No booze, no dope, no loud music, and no fooling around on the premises. The term they use is ‘hanky-panky.’ Their main objective is to keep the noise level down so that everybody can concentrate on study.”
“I could probably live with that,” he told me as we carried the boards around to the outside basement door.
“You’re a student, I take it?”
“It wasn’t entirely my idea,” he said glumly. “I work for Boeing, and they leaned on me to go to grad school. It was too good a deal to pass up, so I’m stuck with it. They cover the tuition and pay me my regular salary to hit the books. In theory, my major’s aeronautical engineering, but I’m not supposed to talk about what I’m really working on.”
“Top-secret stuff?”
“Sort of, yeah—Star Wars kind of crap.”
“I’m Mark Austin, by the way.”
“Charlie West,” he introduced himself, and we shook hands. “Are the Erdlund girls thinking about total prohibition?” he asked then. “I usually have a few beers after work, so I probably couldn’t always pass a breathalyzer test.”
“They don’t take it quite that far, Charlie,” I assured him. “They just don’t want us getting all lushed-up on the premises. Far as I know, we’re not talking about blue-nosed puritan morality here, just peace and quiet.”
“I can go along with that. Do they get worked up about cooking in the rooms?”
“It’s a room and board setup. The girls do the cooking and the laundry.”
“What do the guys do?”
“The heavier stuff—plumbing, carpentry, that kind of thing. That’s why we’re lugging all these boards inside: I’m building bookshelves. Right now they’re on the lookout for somebody who knows a little bit about fixing cars. They’ve been burned a few times by mechanics who specialize in making out the bills. Do you know anything about auto mechanics?”
“I could probably build a car from the ground up, if I really wanted to. That’s my pickup out front. It doesn’t look too sharp on the outside, since I haven’t gotten around to the paint job yet, but you should see the engine. You don’t hardly ever come across a Mach-3 pickup.”
“You’re kidding, of course.”
“I wouldn’t swear to it. I’ve never punched it all the way out. The speedometer only goes up to 120, and I can bend the needle in about two blocks.”
“That sort of makes you a serious candidate, Charlie. Would living in the same house with a black man give you any problems?”
“No. A green one might make me nervous—they tell you to watch out for them. They’ve got all kinds of bad habits—mating with spruce trees, eating public buildings, worshiping sewage treatment plants, all the weird crap. What’s your major, Mark?”
“English. Do you think Boeing might want to pay me to sit around reading Chaucer?”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, but with Boeing, you can never be sure. Who’s the black guy?”
“James—he’s in philosophy.”
“Heavy,” Charlie said admiringly.
“You wouldn’t want to mess with him,” I cautioned. “He’s got a George Foreman build, and he backs up the Erdlund girls by looking mean and flexing his muscles. When Trish says ‘jump,’ James tells you how high. He handled most of the evictions when the no-booze policy went into effect. You usually only have to throw a guy downstairs once to get your point across.”
“This sounds like a real fun place to live.”
“The girls should be back before long. I’m not sure exactly where Sylvia is—possibly over in the psych lab trying to drive all the white mice crazy.”
“Is she another one of the Erdlund girls?”
“No, they’re Swedes. Sylvia’s Italian—in abnormal psych.”
“Fun group.”
“Are you interested?”
“You sound like a recruiting sergeant.”
“We’ve just got one empty room left, and I’d like to get somebody in there before classes start. If it stays empty, Trish might send the rest of us out trolling for prospects. I’m a little busy for that, what with putting up all these bookshelves. Trish likes the idea so much that I’ll probably be building bookshelves in bathrooms and closets before the end of the school year. I just hope that wood screws are going to be beefy enough to hold the weight.”
“Use lock screws,” he suggested. “They expand when you tighten them, so they’re locked in place. If you put your shelves up with those babies, they’ll outlast the house itself.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
We were coming back around the house when the Erdlund girls pulled up out front. Trish was driving, and her car was stuttering and popping as she drove up.
“Little problem with the timing,” Charlie noted.
“Can you fix it?” I asked him.
“Piece of cake.”
The girls got out of the car and started hauling out bags of groceries.
“Hey, babe,” I called to Trish, “this is Mr. Goodwrench, and he’s thinking about signing on.”
“Why does everybody think he’s a comedian?” she said, rolling her eyes upward.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “This is Charlie West. Boeing’s paying him to go to graduate school, and he tinkers with cars in his spare time.”
“Really?”
Charlie was looking at the tall Erdlund girls with an awed expression. “Swedish girls come by the yard, don’t they?” he muttered to me. “I bet those two could play a wicked game of basketball.”
We went over to the car, and I introduced the girls to Charlie.
“How did you get Boeing to pay your way?” Erika asked him.
“It was their idea, not mine,” Charlie replied. “Boeing’s always interested in guys who might come up with ideas they can steal and patent. I’m involved in a program I’m not supposed to talk about, and if I happen to stumble across some whiz-bang new technology, Boeing’s going to
