Blake sat at the office desk, on hold, phone in his hand, squinting out at the lot where sunlight had hardened and calcified on the row of windshields facing him.

"Your name again?" a young guy on the phone asked.

"Blake Gannon."

Dead air.

"I met with Talia Burgess a couple weeks ago," Blake said, hoping to jog his memory. "About the Assistant Art Director position. I thought she was gonna call last week, so--"

"They're not gonna fill that position. Talia's no longer with the agency. Maybe you saw it in The Business Times. Big layoffs."

Blake lowered his head, resting his forehead in the palm of his hand.

"Probably more to come. Good luck." The young guy ended the call.

Blake turned when he heard Damon's lumbering footsteps.

"Is that driveway getting steeper or what? I'm gonna have a fuckin' heart attack." Damon dropped heavily into a chair, perspiration darkening the neck of his T-shirt. "It's almost seventy degrees in November? What the hell?"

Blake shrugged. "I think they said snow maybe next week."

"About time." Damon scrolled through his phone, catching his breath.

"I gotta get out of here," said Blake. "This place is crushing my soul. Some dude rolled in here in a totally trashed-out old Subaru. Had two different color fenders, a cracked windshield, duct-taped tail light. That car was worse than mine. He wanted a quote on a trade-in then he says, 'Is this gonna take long? I got stuff to do."

"So, what'd you say?"

"I said I'll see if one of our mechanics is available to look it over. So he called me a whore and left."

"Sounds like maybe he just needed a hug." Damon continued his phone search. "Here it is. I was gonna send this to you but I can't even text you from down in that pit. It's like workin' in a coal mine down there." He showed his phone to Blake. "I found a rebuilt engine for under seven hundred."

"Wait. The whole engine?"

Damon deflated. "I mean by the time I replace the gaskets, the valves, and manifold--"

"Seven hundred dollars?"

"Dude. Rebuilt engines are like three grand. I'm savin' you stacks."

"What about if I just leave it?"

"You can't leave it down in the garage. Mateo's already up my ass."

"No, I mean just leave it as is."

Damon raised his eyebrows. "That car might not make it up the driveway, let alone up ninety percent of the streets in this city."

########

When Rachel pushed open the door onto the second floor, she encountered Mrs. Caputo waiting for her in the hallway smelling of bleach. In addition to her perpetual scowl, she wore yellow rubber gloves and gripped a bulging plastic garbage bag.

Rachel flashed a phony smile on her way past.

"That's two." The landlady called out at an unnecessarily high volume, weaponizing her shrill voice.

Rachel turned.

"Twice he's been late with the check," Mrs. Caputo squawked. "That's strike two."

"Won't happen again." Rachel found the apartment keys in her shoulder bag.

"You tell him," the landlady hollered.

"You have a wonderful night," Rachel replied as she unlocked the door.

She entered the apartment to find Blake on the couch, stripping the insulation from a USB cable. A YouTube video was cued-up on his laptop. He hit "play."

The guy in the video instructed, "Connect them to the contact points on your remote control. White on the internal antenna... red on..."

Rachel stepped closer, watching the project in progress over Blake's shoulder. "How to hack a garage door opener?! Really? We're doing this?"

"If this works," he replied. "If not... I got nothing."

The USB's exposed metal strands and sections of the garage door opener lay scattered on the coffee table.

"Somebody's been busy," she said, impressed by his resourcefulness and determination.

Blake sighed. "I can wire this thing, but I don't get these random cracking codes."

"What codes?"

He played the video.

"Seems like it should work," she said.

He drummed his fingers on the coffee table.

She leaned against him, her cheek against his. "Let's try it out tomorrow."

"I'm not gonna be able to sleep." He closed the laptop. "Let's find out now."

"Now? I'm tired, Babe."

"Come on. We'll take a quick ride. Ten minutes."

She covered a yawn.

"Unless you're too sleepy. I got this."

"No. No, it's totally cool." She shouldered her bag.

He tucked the laptop under his arm and slipped the wired remote control in his jacket pocket. "You got gas in your car?"

He drove Rachel's Honda out of the city to a suburban neighborhood a few miles from their apartment building. They rode in silence, Rachel sitting in the passenger seat with Blake's computer on her lap, the garage door opener wired via the USB cable.

He steered to the curb across the street from a random brick home with a two-car garage then switched off the car's headlights. The street smelled like the suburbs, with freshly-cut grass and lawn chemicals.

Rachel surveyed the quiet, dark neighborhood. "All clear," she whispered.

He flipped open the laptop then aimed the remote at the garage door. A list of codes appeared on the computer screen and began scrolling.

"Keep the button pressed," she said. "It's looking... It's looking."

Lines and lines of indecipherable code continued scrolling up the screen.

"Come on, c'mon," he said under his breath. The computer beeped and a message popped up: INPUT DETECTED

When the garage door opened, they exchanged victorious smiles.

There was a part of him that hoped the garage door hack would have ended in bitter disappointment, that the game was shut down and they'd move on to the next thing. But now there was no turning back. Proof of concept stared right at them from across the street in the form of an illuminated garage with its mouth wide open.

She closed the laptop. "Let's go."

He drove a few blocks away and steered into the lot of a high-rise condominium, looking for a place to park.

She glanced up at the light pole. "Security cameras. Go."

Blake circled the lot and exited. A couple of miles away, they came upon an office building with a FOR RENT sign in the front window. Blake drove through a vacant lot immersed in shadow around to the side of the building where they located a garage.

"See any security?" He peered through the windshield.

"Nope," she said, their voices never rising above whispers. She flipped open the laptop and he pointed the remote at the garage door.

Again, a list of codes appeared, scrolling up the screen. Thirty seconds later, the computer beeped, signaling the message: INPUT DETECTED.

The garage door glided open on its rails.

"Look at us." She grinned. "We're totally killing it."

As he drove out of the lot, he said, "There's one more garage I need to try."

"Now?"

"I'm taking you home first. Just in case.

Her lips thinned into a small smile that disappeared before she shrugged and said, "It's your call."