Make Me Work by Ralph Lombreglia Page A

says Tempesto.
    â€œWhatever happened to free love?” Dwight asks. “I kind of miss it.”
    â€œIt was just an introductory offer,” Tempesto says.
    â€œSpeaking of cheating,” I say. “Are you guys fixing this race?”
    â€œCheating?” Dwight says. “Progress is cheating? Early man ties a rock to a stick and he’s cheating ‘cause he has a hammer?”
    â€œDid you ever consider the seminary?” Tempesto asks me. “You did, didn’t you? You know how I know? I did, too. It’s the truth. I was gonna be a priest. I never really escaped it—the red lights, the magic. They may get me yet. I can always spot a brother.”
    â€œI never knew that about you, Walter,” Dwight says. “Maybe you shouldn’t be doing corporate video after all.”
    â€œI probably shouldn’t. It’s probably a place I’m passing through.”
    â€œOn your way to the priesthood,” says Tempesto.
    Dwight has one rule for eating—stop before it hurts. Failing to observe it, we finish our supper and waddle to Tempesto’s workroom. In the middle of his bench is a plastic gallon jug lying on its side, a power cord coming out its spout, machinery dimly visible through its translucence like a ship in a bottle. The words “Veritas Grit” are written along each side in red Magic Marker. Tempesto holds it up for my admiration. The jug’s bottom side has been sliced off, and a belt of sandpaper occupies the rectangular opening.
    â€œThat’s a belt sander? What happened to it?”
    â€œWe modified it, Walter,” Dwight says. “This is no longer a street machine.”
    It doesn’t look anything like a belt sander. The plastic hood hangs around it like a lady’s hoopskirt. “Didn’t that used to be a jug of milk?”
    â€œSpring water, actually,” Tempesto says merrily. He puts a screwdriver bit in his drill and reverse-engineers one of the old printers until the precious gears are out. Then he removes the sander’s pearly housing and puts the gears in there. “Makes it like lightning,” he says. “Except that after a few minutes the teeth start to shear off the gears, which is why we need a steady stream of these printers.” When he’s finished, he hooks it up to some kind of tachometer on his bench. I don’t know what’s normal for a belt sander, but when he revs this one the needle flies right off the scale. “Yow!” he says.
    â€œYou’re gonna cream those poor guys,” I say. “You’re gonna sand their faces off.”
    â€œYes!” says Dwight.
    The sun is going down on the beautiful city. We’re heading east on Memorial Drive—me in Dwight’s passenger seat, Tempesto in the back with the sander and video gear and two of his famous lasers. Red-gold light suffuses the Bonneville through its rear window. This is Dwight’s favorite stretch of road in Boston, especially at this time of day; the sunset has turned the buildings of Back Bay and Government Center into fiery pillars blazing in the air—geometrical solids made of light, pure as Tempesto’s holograms or computer graphics. Their painterly twins shimmer in the silver-blue river below. The traffic is thick and fast at MIT, then thick and slow down around Lotus and Lechmere and the optimistic new structures of East Cambridge. It’s a scorching Friday in August, and the prosperous people are making their break for the Cape. We escape the throngs by swinging past the Museum of Science, wherein some of Tempesto’s creations are displayed, and on into the tattered margins of Somerville.
    Our destination is a block-square brick building five stories tall, its entrance shadowed by an elevated piece of Route 93. Dwight carries the video camera and a black plastic garbage bag with the Makita inside. Tempesto has the two lasers. I have the tripods and the cables