Wade Changed The Locks While The Tournament Players Waited Outside

I knew the lock was new before my key stopped turning.

The old one caught halfway. I had meant to fix it after I fixed the left flipper on table six. That Friday, the new brass face shone under our crooked porch light.

Through the glass, Wade raised one hand. He kept talking to the players gathered around him.

"Tessa handled cleaning," he said. "I'm taking the business in a more skilled direction."

I stood there holding a tool bag that weighed nineteen pounds.

I was a broad-shouldered Black woman of thirty-eight, with deep brown skin, close-cropped curls, and a pale burn mark across my left thumb.

That mark came from a soldering iron. My work shirt said TESSA WHITFIELD, PINBALL TECHNICIAN. Wade had bought the shirts himself, back when my name helped him sell things.

"Open the door," I said.

He came out sideways, letting the door shut behind him.

Wade was a forty-year-old white American man with sandy hair, a soft chin, and a smile that showed one crooked front tooth.

"Don't make this ugly," he said.

Behind him, a relay chattered inside Cotton Queen, the blue machine by the window. Two clicks, a drag, then three fast clicks. Its hold switch needed work.

I could find that fault with my eyes shut.

"You're running her with a bad relay," I said.

"See? Always a complaint."

We had opened Tall Pine Amusements eleven months earlier in a brick storefront south of downtown Little Rock. I repaired machines. Wade sold parties, league nights, and his vision of a bright future.

We each owned half the company. We had never been married, though he used "my other half" in his sales pitch often enough to confuse people.

"You can't vote me out on the sidewalk," I said.

"My lawyer says we can sort out your interest later."

"Does your lawyer have a name?"

He looked toward the players.

"The tables belong to the arcade now. You've had free storage here for almost a year."

My thumb pressed against the seam of my tool bag.

In its front pocket was a small brass washer. I kept it there because it had come from the first machine I ever rebuilt. When I needed to think, I tapped it twice against my screwdriver, then waited.

Tap, tap. A pause.

"That's what you think?" I asked.

"Business property. Business rules."

The nine tournament machines stood behind him. Each had a little white number tag beneath the coin door. Wade hated those tags. He said they looked cheap.

I had told him numbers mattered more than looks.

A woman in a yellow raincoat pushed through the players. Celia Boone carried a clipboard in a clear plastic sleeve. She was fifty-two, a Black American woman whose warm voice made even a complaint sound like an invitation to supper.

"Wade, honey," she said, "why is my technician out here?"

"Former cleaner," he said. "We're making a change."

Celia looked at my shirt. Then she looked at his face.

"My regional opens next Saturday," she said. "Seventy-two players. Nine inspected tables. You promised me access tonight."

"And you'll get it."

"You also promised Tessa would run the floor. I wrote that down on August ninth."

He gave her his warmest smile.

"We'll find somebody."

"Who?"

He didn't answer.

I asked Celia to come to my truck. Wade called after us that I was stealing his customers.

"They aren't socket sets," Celia said. "They can walk where they please."

At the tailgate, I set down my bag. My hands had begun to shake. I let them.

"Did you hear him?" I asked.

"Every word."

"I built those tables. Bought them, hauled them, rebuilt the boards."

"I know."

"He knows too."

Celia waited while I tapped the washer against my screwdriver.

Tap, tap. A pause.

"What did you put in writing?" she asked.

I opened the truck's locked document box. Inside sat my insurance card, a tire receipt, and the thin folder I carried whenever a table traveled.

I showed her a copy of our equipment schedule. Wade's initials sat beside all nine serial numbers. His full signature filled the bottom line.

"He wanted a copy for his insurance agent," I said. "So did I."

Celia read without speaking. Then she pointed at one sentence.

"You need someone who handles business disputes. Today."

Across the lot, Wade taped a sheet of paper inside the window. Under NEW MANAGEMENT, he had printed my name beside DO NOT ADMIT.

My phone buzzed before I could turn away.

It was a message from him, with a photograph of a bill for $4,200.

"Pay back storage by noon Monday," he wrote, "or I start selling your old junk."