Make Me Work by Ralph Lombreglia

playing for obsolete memory chips. They wouldn’t let me play for my bill.”
    Out front, Dwight signs the slip and the clerk heaves three identical computer printers onto the counter—big old ones from the dinosaur days of the daisy wheel. Each of us grabs one of the brutish, heavy things and staggers into the parking lot. “Why are we buying these crummy printers?” I ask, on the way to Tempesto’s van.
    â€œBecause Tempesto has made an amazing discovery,” Dwight says. “This particular old crummy printer happens to contain exactly the right gears—”
    â€œWith exactly the right spindles and teeth and ratios,” adds Tempesto.
    â€œFor gearing up a Makita electric belt sander. The kind of belt sander we’re racing tonight. No other machine known to man contains those gears.”
    The most astonishing variety of junk—part electronic, part lumber, part dirty clothes—is tumbled in Tempesto’s van. He heaves his printer in with a crash. Dwight and I heave ours in, too.
    â€œI’m starved,” Dwight says. “Anything in the fridge?”
    â€œI’ve got leftovers you wouldn’t believe,” Tempesto says. “Did a big dinner last night. Had a lot of people over. There’s a feast waiting for you guys.”
    â€œTempesto’s a great cook, Walter. Wait’ll you see.”
    â€œYou are, Tempesto? Really? What’s your cuisine? Tuscan Transistor?”
    For a minute, his incredulity grapples with my incredulity. Then I see that his feelings are hurt. “You never came to my house?” he says. “You never ate my food?”
    Tempesto’s apartment is basically Tempesto’s van on a grander scale, without wheels and with electricity. A lot of electricity. Things are plugged in at Tempesto’s place in a way the early electrifiers of America never intended. Power strips are scattered across the floors in every room, not a single empty socket left for one more computer, or television, or synthesizer, or CD player, or oscilloscope, or neon sculpture to take suck, from this address, at Boston Edison’s breast.
    Copies of The Journal of Irreproducible Results are lying on the counter in the kitchen. “I thought you made this up,” I say, leafing through an issue of it.
    â€œI don’t make things up,” Tempesto says. “There’s too much that’s real already.” He’s pulling plastic-wrapped dishes out of the fridge and sliding them onto the counter. He calls out their contents as though announcing the guests at a ball. “Roasted eggplant with herbs and garlic. Veal Marsala, sautéed broccoli rabe. Chicken breasts with red peppers. Marinated mushrooms, mozzarella in brine, sun-dried tomatoes in virgin olive oil. Green beans in tomato sauce.” He pulls a big flat bread out of a drawer—“Focaccia,” he says lovingly—flips open the microwave, cranks up the conventional oven, gets a double boiler going on the stove. When everything’s warmed up, we leave the kitchen for the living room, where the table is covered with circuit boards and schematic diagrams. Tempesto pushes it all aside, and we sit down with plates of food and big goblets of Corvo table white. He is a great cook. These are the best leftovers I’ve ever had. They’re better than most things I’ve eaten the first time around.
    â€œDrama factoid for you, Walter,” Tempesto says, raising his glass. “This serviceable vino is exactly what Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons drink in the lunch scene of the film version of Betrayal.”
    â€œWhat happens in the lunch scene?” Dwight asks.
    â€œThat’s where Ben Kingsley has just found out that Jeremy Irons has been sleeping with his wife for, like, years,” I say. “But Jeremy Irons, who’s his best friend, doesn’t know he knows.”
    â€œThey drink a load of this wine in that scene,”