“Aha!” the Greek said.
“Look, if that’s a deal breaker, I’ll personally come by every day and give you a dollar for the juice. Come on, Larry—the box we want to put in, it’s just a repeater to extend the range of the network. The network already reaches to here, but your box will help it go farther. You’ll be the first merchant in the Market to have one. I came to you first because you’ve been here the longest. The others look up to you. They’ll see it and say, ‘Larry has one, it must be all right.’”
The Greek downed his coffee and smoothed his mustache. “You are a bullshit artist, huh? All right, you put your box in. If my electricity bills are too high, though, I take it down.”
“That’s a deal,” Andy said. “How about I do it this morning, before you get busy? Won’t take more than a couple minutes.”
The Greek’s was midway between his place and Kurt’s, and Kurt hardly stirred when he let himself in to get an access point from one of the chipped shelving units before going back to his place to get his ladder and Makita drill. It took him most of the morning to get it securely fastened over the sign, screws sunk deep enough into the old, spongy wood to survive the build up of ice and snow that would come with the winter. Then he had to wire it into the sign, which took longer than he thought it would, too, but then it was done, and the idiot lights started blinking on the box Kurt had assembled.
“And what, exactly, are you doing up there, Al?” Kurt said, when he finally stumbled out of bed and down the road for his afternoon breakfast coffee.
“Larry’s letting us put up an access point,” he said, wiping the pigeon shit off a wire preparatory to taping it down. He descended the ladder and wiped his hands off on his painter’s pants. “That’ll be ten bucks, please.”
Kurt dug out a handful of coins and picked out enough loonies and toonies to make ten dollars, and handed it over. “You talked the Greek into it?” he hissed. “How?”
“I kissed his ass without insulting his intelligence.”
“Neat trick,” Kurt said, and they had a little partner-to-partner high-five. “I’d better login to that thing and get it onto the network, huh?”