The auction had begun on a Thursday and would last over the Labor Day weekend through Monday. The first day the prices were reduced 30 percent, and they would keep declining, until on Monday you could buy most of the machines for 80 percent off. It was now Friday.
The machine I wanted, a hard-disk version of my Victor 9000, would be $2,400 Sunday—40 percent of the original list price of $6,000.
“Don’t buy it Sunday,” said Steve. “If God intends you to have a hard disk, He’ll let you get it for $1,200 Monday.”
There were two hard-disk Victors, one new, one used, both selling for the same. So far only one other person seemed to be showing the amount of interest that I did, a husky, gray-haired man in a T-shirt. He was trying the used machine. I wondered if he’d seen the new one and was trying to distract me from it. This could be the stuff of nightmares:
A whistle blows that Monday. T-shirt pushes a frail young auction staffer aside and races toward the new Victor. I overtake him, however. Just as I’m about to lay hands on the machine, T-shirt throws a punch toward me. I duck. T-shirt grabs the Victor monitor.
“Listen,” I say, “that computer isn’t yours unless you get the main part. The monitor won’t do.”
An auction staffer nods.
I unplug the main machine from an AC extension[extension] cord. T-shirt, however, sets the monitor down and moves closer, as if to grab the part with the disk drives and the central processing unit.
“Look,” I tell the auction staffer, “it’s my machine.”
“First come, first serve,” he says. “First to the counter gets the computer.”