Pinball, 1973 Read Online Free PDF Page B

a gray work outfit, helmet tucked in the hollow of his arm like you’d cuddle a puppy.
    “I’m from the telephone company,” the man said. “I’ve come to change the switch-panel.”
    I nodded. The guy had a permanent five-o’clock shadow, the sort of face you could shave and shave and never get clean-shaven. His whole face was beard, right up to his eyes. I felt sorry for him, but more than that, I felt just plain sleepy. I’d been up until four in the morning playing backgammon with the twins.
    “Could you possibly come back in the afternoon?”
    “No, I’m afraid it’s got to be now.”
    “How come?”
    The man searched through his pants pocket, and brought out a black notebook. “I’ve got a set number of jobs to do in a single day. As soon as I’m through here, it’s off to another area, see?”
    I glanced at the addresses in the book, and even though it was upside down I could see that, as he’d said, mine was the only apartment left in the area.
    “Just what kind of repair work is it?”
    “Real simple. Take out the switch-panel, cut the wires, hook up a new panel, that’s it. Be done in ten minutes.”
    I thought about it a moment, then shook my head.
    “There’s nothing wrong with the present one,” I said.
    “The present one’s the old type.”
    “Doesn’t bother me any.”
    “Now, listen,” he began, then reconsidered. “That’s not the point. That’d only make problems for everyone.”
    “How?”
    “Look, all the switch-panels are linked by a big computer back at the main office. But your switch panel, it sends out different signals from everybody else’s, so it fouls up the whole works. Got it?”
    “Got it. It’s a matter of matching up hardware to software.”
    “Now that we’ve got that straight, how about letting me in?”
    At which point I decided I might as well open the door and let him in.
    Then it occurred to me to ask, “But what makes you so sure the switch-panel’s inside my apartment? Shouldn’t it be in the superintendent’s room or some place like that?”
    “Ordinarily, yes,” said the man, scanning the walls of the kitchen for any sign of the switch-panel. “You see, most people seem to find switch-panels a real nuisance. They’re nothing you’d generally have much use for. They just get in the way.”
    I nodded. The man got up on the kitchen stool in his socks and checked around the ceiling. Nothing there.
    “A regular treasure hunt. Switch-panels get stashed away in the most unbelievable places. It’s a crime. And then what do people do? They turn around and fill their apartments with mammoth pianos and dolls in glass cases and what have you. It just doesn’t make sense.”
    I sympathized. The man gave up on the kitchen, and proceeded to stalk through the other room, craning his head into this corner and that, and before I knew it he was opening the door to the next room.
    “For instance, take the switch-panel in the last condo I visited. Let me tell you, that was a case! Where do you think they’d shoved the thing? I mean, even I–”
    The man’s words trailed off into a slight gasp. There in the corner of the room, in that enormous bed, the twins’ heads were poking out from under the covers where they lay on either side of the depression I’d left. Dumbstruck, the repairman just stood there with his mouth open for fifteen seconds. For that matter, the twins weren’t exactly bubbling with conversation either. I figured it was up to me to break the ice.
    “Uh, this gentleman does telephone repairs.”
    “Pleased to meet you,” said the one on the right.
    “Much obliged,” said the one on the left.
    “Well, yes ... likewise, I’m sure,” the repairmen said.
    “He’s come to change the switch-panel.”
    “The switch-panel?”
    “The what?”
    “The device that connects our telephone circuits.”
    Which meant even less to them, so I handed over the rest of the explaining to the repairman.
    “Um... it’s like this. A whole