The Switch

3

The Albion was a subterranean pub on Beacon Street on the edge of the Boston University campus. It was dimly lit, except for the stroboscopic flicker of the TV sets mounted high on the wall, both tuned to the Red Sox game. The place was meant to resemble an English pub, but the décor — a couple of British pub signs and some brass rails — was halfhearted. It looked like a college bar, which was basically what it was.

The guys were in their usual booth, the first one on the left. Carl Unsworth and Landon Roth he’d gone to BU with. Brian Orsolino, a sales manager at a tech company who was ten years younger, played in a basketball league with Carl. Thursday nights at the Albion was a ritual and had been for years. Tanner would join them occasionally, off and on, though recently he’d been more on. Since Sarah had moved out.

“Glad you could make it,” Carl said. “Was your business trip cut short or something?” He was a mixed martial arts instructor, ran a small studio in Newton where he taught Krav Maga. He was tall and, of course, fit, and balding, and colored his remaining hair an unfortunate orangish brown. The poor guy was also going through an interminable divorce, the Bataan Death March of matrimonial dissolution.

Tanner shook his head. “Flight got in on time and I figured why not.”

“No wife there to stop you from having fun,” said Carl.

Tanner just heaved a heavy sigh. They all knew Sarah, and they liked her. Even he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.

Still, when she’d moved out, they’d reacted predictably. Carl had congratulated him, pleased to have company in the lonely-guy game. Now they were all single guys, all four of them. Lanny had offered genuine condolences. A metro reporter for The Boston Globe, he was single and embittered, prematurely wizened, and he dated desultorily. Women usually figured out pretty quickly that he was damaged goods. He was professionally single and probably would always be. Brian attempted to cheer him up by telling him about all the awesome new dating apps and the hundreds of women available with a mere swipe of his iPhone.

“I think I’m going to break with tradition and get a glass of pinot noir,” Brian said.

“But it’s beer night,” said Carl.

“Wine’s supposed to make for healthier sperm,” Brian said.

“Heh, if you believe what they tell you,” Lanny said. He was always saying that. Tell him they say we should all eat more kale, and Lanny would say, “If you believe what they tell you.” That was his reflexive rejoinder. It fit perfectly with his jaded, cynical reporter attitude. He was incurably skeptical, trusted no one, took nothing at face value. “You sell some coffee?”

“I think so.”

“I’m telling you, you should have sold your company to Starbucks. You’d be a rich man and you wouldn’t have to fly all over the place, hustling for business.”

Tanner shrugged. “That’s what Sarah kept telling me.”

“I saw Tanner Roast at Whole Foods,” said Brian. “Fresh Pond.”

“Yeah, they’re a customer,” Tanner said.

“In the coffee aisle. But on the bottom shelf. What’s up with that?”

“Hey, they order four cases a week; that’s all I know,” said Tanner.

“Well, yours is the best, dude,” Brian said.

“Thank you.”

“Says the guy who spends half his time in Dunkin’ Donuts,” Carl said.

“I like Dunks,” Brian said. “So what?”

“Why are you even here?” Carl said to Brian. “Shouldn’t you be screwing some chick?”

“A guy’s gotta take a break once in a while,” Brian said. “Recharge the batteries. Replenish the bodily fluids.” Some weeks, according to Brian, he had a date with a different woman each night. Brian, a beefy blond, was not particularly good-looking, but he was a closer. Better with women than with the database software he sold, though.

“You should try Tinder, dude,” Brian told Tanner.

“Yeah,” Tanner said, “not yet. It’s only been a month.”

“What are you waiting for?” Brian said.

Tanner shook his head, sighed. It was odd, he reflected. He’d told his buddies all about Sarah moving out but not about the trouble his business was in, how it was on the bubble. Business problems he preferred to keep to himself. He’d always been the successful one in the gang, the guy who’d founded this coffee company that Starbucks wanted to buy, once, and he didn’t want to correct their image of him.

The subject needed to be changed — too unpleasant — so Tanner told them about what had happened to his laptop.

“You have no idea where yours is?” Carl said. “Nobody called?”

“They can’t open it without a password.”

“And you didn’t leave it on a sticky note like an idiot,” Brian said.

“Shit, what are you going to do?” Carl said.

“It’s no big deal,” Tanner said. “Not urgent. It’s all backed up. And I rarely use my laptop anyway, except when I travel. At work, I mostly use my iPad and my phone and my desk computer.”

“There’s something called Find My iPhone. Ever hear of it?” Lanny said. “I think it works on laptops too. Find My Mac or something.”

Tanner shook his head. “It only works when the computer’s online, and it’s locked with a password. So it’s not going to be online.”

“So you can find out who the guy is by poking around on his computer.”

“Sure,” Tanner said listlessly. “When I’ve got a minute.”