The Switch

1

The security line snaked on forever, coiling around and through the rat maze of stanchions and retractable nylon strapping.

Michael Tanner was in a hurry, but LAX wasn’t cooperating. Usually he went TSA Precheck, as well as Global Entry, and every other way you could speed up the security line hassles at the airport, but for some reason his boarding pass had printed out with the word “precheck” ominously missing.

Maybe it was random. Maybe it was just a personnel shortage. They never explained why. His flight was about to board, but he was near the end of a crawling line of harassed travelers trundling roll-aboard cases and shouldering backpacks.

“Shoes off, belts off, jackets off, laptops out of your bags,” one of the TSA agents, a large black woman, was chanting from the front. “No liquids. Shoes off, belts off...”

Tanner traveled constantly for business, and he was good at it. He glided through the lines, a travel ninja. But this time? Shoes off! Belt off! He realized he was out of practice. How long had it been since he’d gone through the whole indignity? He yanked his belt off, slid off his loafers, put them in the gray plastic bin, and shoved it along the roller conveyor, padding along in stocking feet. He took his laptop out of his shoulder bag, put it in a gray bin of its own, watched it disappear into the maw of the X-ray machine. His jacket, too, he remembered. Pulled it off and shoved it into another gray bin. Tried not to slow down the line.

He glanced at his watch. His flight to Boston was boarding, had to be. If he re-shoed and re-belted and grabbed his stuff quickly, and raced to the departure gate, he’d make it onto the plane before they closed the doors.

He patted down his pockets, found a few stray coins, took them out and put them into a plastic bowl and onto the conveyor belt, to the apparent annoyance of the well-dressed middle-aged woman just behind him.

Tanner passed through the metal detector without a hitch, and he was on his way.

Until one of the X-ray attendants on the other side of the conveyor belt picked up his shoulder bag and said, “Is this yours, sir?”

“Yeah,” Tanner said. “That’s mine. Is there a problem?”

“Can you pick up your things and meet me over there?”

Shit. Something in his shoulder bag must have looked funky in the X-ray machine. He couldn’t afford this two or three minutes of scrutiny. But there was no questioning authority. He grabbed his stuff — belt, laptop, shoes, change, jacket, and shoulder bag — and met the TSA guy at the metal table. The man pulled out a wand of some kind and ran it around the edges of Tanner’s bag. The wand was connected to a machine that was labeled SMITHS DETECTION. It was obviously designed to check for traces of explosives. He waited patiently for another minute, suppressing the urge to make a crack, until the guy finally said, “You’re all set,” and handed the bag back.

Tanner unzipped the bag, slipped his MacBook Air into it, zipped it back up, then slotted his belt into his pant loops while stepping into his shoes, resisting the impulse to glance at his watch again.

He arrived at the gate to find no one waiting there, just a couple of airline personnel, a man and a woman, the man behind the counter and the woman next to it. “Flight three sixty-nine?” the woman said.

“That’s right.”

“All right, sir, you’re the last to arrive.” She said it disapprovingly, like she’d caught him smoking in the lavatory.

Finally he took his seat on the plane, sat back, exhaled.

He’d made it; he’d be fine; he’d get to Boston around nine thirty in the evening, and the next day he’d be back at work.

He wasn’t sure whether the LA trip had been worth it. He’d had a pitch meeting with a famous celebrity chef, Alessandro Battaglia, star of the Food Network, master Iron Chef, part owner of six restaurants. Chef Battaglia had said he cared about the quality of the coffee they served. Most restaurateurs didn’t. When it came to coffee, they tended to care about cost and profit margins more than anything, even in the best places.

Their restaurants brewed generic swill from cheap blends, mostly Brazilian and Costa Rican, and their customers, sated from dinner, usually couldn’t tell the difference. But Chef Battaglia knew what good coffee tasted like.

Tanner had brought a couple of different single-origins, a Kenyan, an Ethiopian, and a Guatemalan, each roasted differently three days ago. All ground fresh in a Baratza, in front of the chef, each poured over, each distinctly different, and each delicious. Tanner had come to LA himself — the founder and CEO of Tanner Roast — instead of sending Karen, his sales director. Battaglia was too big a deal.

Standing there in his green Crocs, Alessandro waited for the coffee to cool, knowing that the best way to sample it is at room temperature. He took a loud aerating slurp, like a pro. He liked the Kenyan best of all. Tanner agreed that was the brightest, best structured, most balanced.

Battaglia seemed particularly interested in Tanner Cold Brew, which was a coffee concentrate Tanner was proud to have invented. It could be used for iced coffee, for nitro, and for hot coffee, too, and without any of the usual bitterness. They sold it by the keg.

A lot of people made cold brew, but it was never quite right. It didn’t work very well as hot coffee when diluted with hot water. But Tanner’s did. He’d devised an original process. The result was a clear, bright flavor, fruity and floral and chocolaty. Not roasty and heavy like everyone else’s cold brew. Way better than Stumptown’s — no comparison, really.

Battaglia wanted that too. All systems were go. A deal was at hand.

But he wanted to talk to his partners. Which really meant further haggling over price. He was no better than the manager of an Applebee’s. Tanner Roast coffees cost more than institutional coffees, but all specialty coffee did. Chef Battaglia knew he was paying for individually sourced, impeccably produced, meticulously shipped green beans, roasted carefully in small batches... the whole deal. A cup of coffee from the Big Green Chain usually tasted burnt. Compared to the Technicolor taste of a Tanner Roast, theirs was a black-and-white photograph. The expense was worth it.

Easy for him to say, of course.

Tanner was operating on a few hours of sleep. He was exhausted, so tired that he didn’t need to take an Ambien.

He arrived at his South End house raw eyed and headachy and punchy.

The house, five floors including the basement, seemed echoey with Sarah gone. He switched on some lights in the kitchen and, standing at the island, opened his laptop. He’d made some notes on it he wanted to e-mail himself. The computer was off, which surprised him, because he rarely powered the thing down. Had he shut it off in the cab on the way to LAX? Maybe. Maybe he’d spaced out. It was no big deal. He pressed the power button, and a minute later an unfamiliar screen came up: a globe and the name “S. Robbins” and a blank for the password.

He stared at the screen for another minute or so until the realization sank in: this wasn’t his laptop. In the rush to grab his possessions in the security line, he’d taken someone else’s identical MacBook Air. Belonging to one S. Robbins.

While S. Robbins probably had his.

The perfect glitch to cap off a frustrating day.

There was a faint perfume smell to the laptop, a good and familiar white floral scent, a woman’s perfume he’d smelled before. S. Robbins was probably female.

He closed the laptop a little too violently, got up, and went over to the dry bar in the sitting room to pour himself a scotch. Then he remembered, glancing at his watch. It was Thursday, which meant beer night at the Albion with a couple of friends. Which he’d been planning to skip, figuring he’d be too tired from the flight.

He was tired, yes, but even more, he needed a drink.

He took out his iPhone and punched the speed-dial number for Lanny Roth.

Lanny answered, music blasting in the background. “Tanner! You still in LA?” For some reason, Tanner’s closest friends, including his wife, Sarah, called him Tanner, and only strangers, or his employees, called him Michael or Mike.

“Just back,” Tanner said. “Sounds like you’re at the Albion.”

“Coming over? I just got here. Brian already got dinged trying to pick up a BU girl, so the night is young.”

“Save me a seat,” Tanner said.

Something tickled at the back of his mind, and he picked up the MacBook Air. He’d remembered right: on the bottom of the laptop was a tiny pink square, a Post-it note. He’d put it back where he found it.

Now he peeled it off the metal case and saw a jumble of letters and numbers: 342Hart342.

He wondered...

He opened the laptop again and entered the characters in the password space, and sure enough, the screen opened up with the default Apple background photo of a mountain peak.

“Got it,” he said aloud.

Then he closed the laptop and grabbed his car keys.