Outside the Lines(13)

I internally grumble and take a step forward. Fuck you, Cameron, for making me do this. I close my eyes, inhale, and channel my inner Hermione. She never gave two shits what anyone thought of her and she ended up being even more badass than Harry, even if the books don’t admit it.

Mindy scoots a big leather chair out from behind the dark oak desk. There’s a picture of her holding a toddler, smiling up at the camera. Of course she’s married and has the world’s cutest kid.

“I thought someone named Marissa was coming out,” she starts and enters her password into the computer.

“Yeah, she’s having a baby or something,” I say. “I’m just filling in.”

She nods. “Do you remember me? I’m pretty sure we went to high school together.”

Of course I remember her. She, along with her popular friends, made my life hell for a few years. I turn and look at her, as if I have to recall her face, as if she hadn’t impacted me as she did.

“Mindy,” I say like the name suddenly came to me. “Yeah, I remember you.”

She smiles. “Thought so. And I did totally see you at that store the other day.”

I keep my eyes on the computer screen, wincing at how outdated everything is. Seriously, Windows XP? I shrug. “Maybe. So, what’s the problem you’ve been having?”

“I think it has a virus,” she says. “We bought some sort of Kasper-something or other but I don’t think it works. Everything is so slow and I can’t get onto the internet without clicking on this a million times.” She points with a manicured nail to the Wi-Fi icon on the screen. “The website you guys made won’t load, and I can’t update it. So you can get rid of the virus and put new protection on then make the site work?”

I laugh. “It’s not that easy, but let me run a few checks and see what’s going on.” I scoot the big chair closer and after a few clicks know one of the problems is the lack of memory and the old systems the gallery is using. It’s not compatible with the website. The server can’t support pretty much anything done in the last five years.

“When did you move to Grand Rapids?” Mindy asks. She’s hovering over my shoulder, watching me work. It’s fucking annoying.

“About half a year ago,” I say.

“I’ve been here for four years,” she says, like I care. “My husband got a job at the hospital here.”

I nod, trying not to notice the way she accentuated the word “husband.”

“And I’ve been here for a while. I just needed something to do, and Ben is so talented.”

“Ben?”

“The artist,” she says. I catch her rolling her eyes. “He owns the gallery.”

“Gotcha,” I say.

“He has a computer in his office that has the same virus. Same issues. Slow, bad internet connection.”

“That doesn’t mean a virus,” I say. “Where’s the router?” When Mindy doesn’t answer, I turn to look at her. Her eyes are wide open.

“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be able to figure that out? You’re the expert here. Maybe in ‘my documents’?”

Thank you, Mindy fucking Abraham, for reinforcing the pretty and stupid stereotype.

“It’s not in the computer,” I say. “It’s a little box-looking thing. What other computers do you have?”

“There’s this one, and one in Ben’s office.”

“I’d guess the router is in there. Is he in there too, by any chance? I can go take a look at it now.”

She looks at me like I just asked for free backstage passes for a sold-out concert. “No. He’s busy, and he doesn’t like to be bothered when he’s busy.”

Sounds like a nice guy. “Uh, okay. You don’t have a virus, but your computer is horribly out of date. It can’t support the site, which is why you can’t get it to load.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “You can tell that already?”

“I’ll run a full diagnostic test,” I say. “But I promise you that’s the issue.”

“Is it going to take long? Because I have stuff to do.”

“I’m not sure how long it will take yet. Your computer needs a lot of updates, and the lack of memory is going to make that hard. I’ll see what I can do.”

Mindy leans in. “Can you put more memory on it? I have a Google Drive thing.”

“That’s not really the same,” I say and feel like I’m talking to my grandma. “It can help if you delete things from your hard drive, but it would have to be a substantial amount.”