Boys & Girls Together by William Goldman

in a robbery or a mugging, P.T. would have likely gone along, and from there, who knows? But luck was with him (luck was always with him, only he did not know it yet), for at precisely four-fifteen on that April afternoon of nineteen and seventeen, P. T. Kirkaby stumbled (quite literally) into his salvation.
    It was a toaster.
    Someone had left a toaster on the sidewalk, and P.T., blind, had stumbled over it. For a moment he was tempted to kick it to bits with his fiat feet, but he didn’t. Instead he stared at it—it didn’t look all that old—eventually stooping, picking it up, tucking it under a strong arm. Then he began to wander again. At half past five he paused on the sidewalk in front of Kindall’s Garage.
    “Hey, P.T.” P.T. turned at the sound of George Kindall’s voice. George had been a friend, more or less, in high school, until he quit at the age of sixteen to tend his father’s garage.
    “Hey, George.”
    “Watchagot?”
    “Toaster.”
    “Looks broke.”
    “Is.”
    “Hey, you enlisting today?”
    “Flat feet.”
    “Oh. Sorry, P.T.”
    “Can I use the toolroom?”
    “Why not.”
    P.T. nodded and walked to the toolroom in the rear of the garage, closing the door tight behind him. Setting the toaster on a workbench, he examined it a while. He had no actual knowledge of its workings, but soon he started taking it apart, confident that he could get it back together without much trouble; he had faith in his fingers. And wires and bolts and plugs never bothered him much; he understood them somehow. This part just had to fit into that one, and the two of them together went snugly over this dingus here. Like that. He understood. Concentrating fully on the toaster left no room in his mind for the beaten captain. First making certain that the door to the toolroom was still shut, P.T. began to sing.
    The sound was surprising. It seemed to have no connection with his speaking voice, which was ordinary. The singing voice was sweet and pure and most at home with Irish ballads. “The Last Rose of Summer” or poor, fat “Molly Malone.” It was his father’s voice—theirs were so similar as to be identical—and on occasional evenings when the monkey was still, they would sing old songs, sitting close together in the oblong room, harmonizing tenderly until the crazy lady living downstairs banged her broom into her cracked ceiling, quieting them.
    At a few minutes after six, P.T. left the toolroom, toaster in hand. “George?” he called.
    “All finished?” P.T. looked around, finally locating the feet extending from below the running board of a black Chevrolet. P.T. waited, and in a moment George Kindall rolled out into view. “Fix it?”
    P.T. held out the toaster. “Better ’n new.”
    “Buy it from you?” P.T. was about to say “You can have it,” but again luck was with him (luck was always with him), because before he could speak George Kindall said, “A buck,” and he reached into his overall pocket, pulling out the money.
    “Done,” P.T. said, and they swapped.
    “If it don’t work, I get my money back.”
    “Yeah-yeah-yeah.”
    “O.K. See you, P.T.”
    “See you, George.” He left the garage and started slowly toward the oblong room. Halfway there he stopped dead. Jerking the grease-stained bill from his pocket, he stared at it. A dollar ! And for what? Just a little tinkering. Hell, at that rate he could be a millionaire in no time.
    It was almost that simple.
    The next morning he was up by dawn, scavenging from the streets. By noon he had found an iron and several coffeepots and by nightfall he had fixed and sold them, “Better ’n new.” Profit: six dollars. By the end of the first week he had made nineteen dollars. The following week he entered into negotiations with a small junk shop on the South Side, so after that he didn’t have to scavenge anymore. He worked all day every day in the toolroom of the garage, paying George Kindall five dollars per week for rent. When