Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff

from Julie’s face. “Is something the matter?”
    Rudy came back up the stairs, lugging a cardboard box with U.S. ARMY SURPLUS stenciled on its side. “Here,” he said, thrusting the box at Julie. She moved quickly to take it from him.
    â€œThanks, Rudy. I really appreciate this…”
    â€œYeah, yeah…you two introduce yourselves?” Rudy asked, with a nod to Mouse.
    â€œUh, yeah,” Julie said. “We were just getting acquainted…Mouse says you keep her pretty busy.”
    Rudy chuckled. “She keeps herself pretty busy. Hardest worker I ever hired.”
    â€œReally…Does she just do hardware, or can she debug code, too?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNo reason. Just curious…”
    â€œDon’t get any ideas,” Rudy warned. “I have a hard enough time replacing mediocre assistants.”
    â€œIdeas?” Julie beamed an innocent smile at him; but Rudy, past flirting now, answered her with a scowl. “All right,” he said, “I think it’s time you and your not-stolen property hit the road.”
    â€œOn my way,” said Julie. “See you around, Mouse…” She walked out, and Rudy followed her, pulling the door shut behind him. Mouse turned up the radio and got back to work.
    The rest of the afternoon passed in no time.
    Mouse didn’t go home after work that day; instead, as instructed by her list, she went over to the Elliott Bay Book Company. She found an empty table in the bookstore’s basement café and got a cup of Earl Grey tea. While the teabag steeped, she set up a laptop computer on the table. The laptop had been in Mouse’s possession for some time, though she couldn’t have said exactly how long, or where it had come from in the first place. But she didn’t worry about that now—just switched it on and started up Microsoft Word.
    As the program was loading, Mouse glanced at the clock on the café wall; it was 6:25. The next time she looked up, the clock read 7:13, and Julie Sivik was standing beside her again.
    â€œâ€”anybody home?” Julie passed a hand in front of Mouse’s eyes. “Mouse?”
    Mouse reached out hurriedly to fold down the laptop’s screen. She got a brief glimpse of the file she’d been working on—the title bar said “Thread.doc”—before it dropped out of view. Only after the laptop’s latch clicked did she look directly at Julie.
    â€œHello,” Mouse said.
    â€œHello,” said Julie, eyeing the laptop. “I’m interrupting again, aren’t I?”
    Mouse didn’t answer, just stared, waiting for Julie to state her business. After a moment, Julie said: “Well listen, first off, I wanted to apologize for being so nosy today at the shop…”
    â€œNosy?”
    â€œYeah…you seemed kind of upset by my questions.”
    Mouse shook her head. She remembered being uncomfortable, but not upset.
    â€œWell,” said Julie. “Well anyway, I did want to apologize, and also—”
    â€œHow did you find me here?”
    â€œMy car broke down,” Julie explained. “Triple A’s got it at a garage right now, a few blocks from here. Supposed to be ready by eight o’clock. I came in here to kill some time; finding you was just good luck.” She smiled.
    â€œ Any way,” Julie continued, “I really don’t want to be a pest, but seeing as I have run into you, I’m still wondering about that last question I asked at Rudy’s.”
    â€œAbout the power supply?” Mouse chewed her lip nervously; though she knew she’d finished repairing the broken PC sometime after Julie’s visit—the machine’s owner had picked it up just before closing—she still had no idea what had been wrong with it.
    â€œPower supply…?” Julie said, then shook her head. “No. No, not that. The question I asked Rudy, about whether you