Free The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein by J. Michael Orenduff

can’t be serious.”
    “Sometimes they put the money in your hand and try to cop a feel at the same time.”
    “Geez, how do you stand it?”
    “It doesn’t happen that often. Usually you can spot them in advance, so when I pick up the check of a weirdo who’s been leering at me, I take the coffee refill carafe along, and if he gets too close, I accidentally on purpose spill hot coffee into his crotch.”
    Susannah is a woman with gumption.

12
     
     
    My nephew Tristan lives in a student ghetto on Gold, just a few blocks from the University where he studies – of all things – computer science. It’s hard to imagine we came from the same gene pool.
    He doesn’t look like me either. I’m short and compact with straight brown hair trimmed short and combed close to the scalp. He’s tall and slightly pudgy with black hair that hangs down in loose ringlets. He also has olive skin and what the girls think of as bedroom eyes. He’s a genuine person, and girls like that even better.
    He’s not really my nephew. He’s the grandson of my Aunt Beatrice, but I call him my nephew and he calls me Uncle Hubert. He supports himself with periodic gifts from his Uncle Hubert and by doing odd jobs having to do with computers. One particular task he is often paid for is called de-bugging. It doesn’t involve insects, but that’s all I know about it.
    Given that I’m on the wrong side of forty-five and live alone in the back of my shop, Tristan is about as close to a son as I’m ever likely to have. I enjoy his company. I also turn to him for help when technology intrudes itself into my life, and it was for both those reasons that I dropped by his apartment. I waited until I thought he was awake – noon – and came with a gift of tacos filled with the last of Emilio’s barbacoa . No jalapeños in this case. Tristan doesn’t share my taste for comida pecosa .
    I also had my laptop with me because he had told me to bring it when I had called about the current matter. You may be surprised that I have a laptop.
    So am I. Tristan gave it to me because I had some security issues in the store and he hooked up a camera that takes a picture when anyone enters and sends the picture to the laptop where it is displayed by some black magic on the screen along with the time of day when the person entered. All of which is triggered by a laser beam across the door. Theoretically, I could use the laptop for all sorts of other techie stuff like swamping the internet, playing games and sending email, but I’m not interested in those things.
    Tristan was eating the tacos and drinking something called a Jolt Cola which he said used to advertise itself as having “all the sugar and twice the caffeine.” He would probably have preferred a beer but he told me he had class that afternoon.
    “You never take morning classes,” I noted.
    “Interferes with my circadian rhythm,” he said.
    “And all that caffeine doesn’t?”
    “Nah, it just gets me going.”
    “When I was a student here,” I began and could already see his eyes rolling back in their sockets, “most of the required courses were in the morning.”
    He smiled at me. “I think you may have mentioned that before. But now everything you need is offered in the afternoons.”
    “I guess the faculty finally gave in to the sleeping habits of students,” I lamented.
    “Actually,” he corrected, “it’s the faculty who drive the schedule. They refuse to teach early classes.”
    I was preparing a biting remark about the faculty when I remembered that I often eat breakfast at ten in the morning with my shop closed and dark.
    He finished the tacos and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, saw me see him, and said, “I’m doing laundry today.”
    “I suppose you need some quarters?”
    He allowed as how he did, and I gave him four hundred of them in the form of a single bill with Benjamin Franklin on it. I noticed that Ben’s picture is now off to one side, the