A Simple Errand

Chapter 1:

Gerald Hoffman had not stepped inside an electronics store in over four years.

The last time was December of 2021, when Diane was still alive and they needed a new printer because the old HP finally gave up after eleven faithful years. Gerald remembered standing in the printer aisle at Best Buy, overwhelmed by the options, while Diane sat in the car because her knees were bad that winter. He called her twice from inside the store. She laughed both times and told him to just pick the cheapest one that wasn't a piece of junk.

He picked a Brother. It still worked fine.

Now it was a Tuesday afternoon in late September, and Gerald was walking into Circuit Depot on Bellmore Avenue because his granddaughter Olivia needed a laptop for college. Not wanted. Needed. The girl had been using a borrowed Chromebook from her community college's library, and last week it finally died mid-essay. She called her mother crying at eleven at night, and Linda called Gerald the next morning.

"Dad, I know it's a lot to ask—"

"How much does a decent one cost?" Gerald said.

"She doesn't need anything fancy. Maybe six, seven hundred?"

Gerald had eight hundred and forty dollars in his savings account. His pension check from the pipefitters' union came on the first. He could make it work.

"I'll handle it," he said.

"Dad, you don't have to—"

"Linda. I said I'll handle it."

He heard her exhale on the other end. That particular exhale that meant she was trying not to cry. Linda was thirty-four years old, a segment producer at Channel 9 News, divorced, raising Olivia alone, and she still made that same sound she made when she was eight and fell off her bicycle on Greenwood Drive.

So here he was. Circuit Depot. A place he'd driven past a thousand times without ever going in. It was one of those mid-size electronics chains that wasn't quite Best Buy but wasn't a pawn shop either — clean enough, bright enough, with rows of laptops and tablets on white display tables and a staircase in the middle of the showroom that led up to a second floor where they apparently sold home theater equipment and appliances.

Gerald was wearing his good blue shirt. The light blue one Diane bought him for their thirty-second anniversary. It was a little tight across the belly these days, but it still had all its buttons and the collar was clean. He wore dark pants and his brown shoes, the ones he wore to church and to doctor's appointments and to any place where he felt like he should look like he had his life together.

He walked in and nobody greeted him.

He stood near the laptop display for a full minute before a young man in a blue polo shirt with a Circuit Depot logo walked past him carrying a box of phone cases, glanced at him, and kept walking.

Gerald cleared his throat. "Excuse me. I'm looking for a laptop. For my granddaughter. She's in college."

The young man — his name tag said DEREK — stopped, looked Gerald up and down in a way that Gerald recognized immediately. It was the look. The one that measured you by your shoes, your belt, your watch, and decided in half a second whether you were worth the commission.

"Laptops are right there," Derek said, tilting his head toward the display tables Gerald was already standing beside. "The tags have all the specs."

"I was hoping someone could walk me through a few options. I don't know much about—"

"Marcus!" Derek called across the showroom. "Customer needs help with laptops."

A taller man came around from behind the service counter. Thirty, maybe thirty-one. Good-looking in a sharp, aggressive way — the kind of man who smiled with his mouth but not his eyes. His blue polo was tighter than Derek's, and he wore it like he thought he looked good in it. His name tag said MARCUS.

"What's your budget?" Marcus said. No hello. No how are you. Just: what's your budget.

"Around seven hundred," Gerald said. "Give or take."

Something shifted in Marcus's face. A micro-calculation. Gerald had seen it before, in union negotiations, in contractor meetings — the moment someone decided you weren't important enough to impress.

"Seven hundred's gonna be tight," Marcus said. "Most of the good ones start around a thousand."

"She doesn't need anything fancy. Just something reliable for schoolwork."

Marcus pointed at a silver laptop on the end of the display table. "That Acer's on sale. Six forty-nine. It'll do basic stuff."

Gerald touched the keyboard. The laptop was light, thin. He thought about Olivia carrying it in her backpack, sitting in the campus library, typing papers about American literature. The girl wanted to be a teacher.

"Can I see it turned on?" Gerald asked.

Marcus sighed — not loudly, but Gerald heard it — and opened the display model. While it booted up, Gerald noticed Marcus exchange a look with Derek across the showroom. Derek smirked and looked away.

Gerald had been a pipefitter for thirty-one years. He'd worked with men who thought they were smarter than him, tougher than him, better than him. He learned early that the ones who smirked were usually the ones with the least reason to.

He didn't say anything about it.

The laptop seemed fine. The keyboard felt decent. The screen was bright enough.

"I'll take it," Gerald said. "A new one, not the display."

"Sure," Marcus said. "I'll grab one from the back. Meet me at the register upstairs — we process laptop sales up there because of the inventory system."

Gerald didn't know if that was true, but he had no reason to question it. He nodded and headed toward the staircase.

The staircase was tall — at least ten or eleven steps, with glass railings on both sides and metal edges on each step. It was the kind of staircase that looked modern and impressive but felt slippery under leather-soled shoes. Gerald gripped the railing with his left hand and climbed slowly. His right knee had been giving him trouble since July, and stairs were not his friend.

He was three steps from the top when he heard footsteps behind him. Fast footsteps. Two sets.

Then hands. Two hands on his back, shoving hard between his shoulder blades.

Gerald's feet left the step. For one impossible second, he was weightless. His arms reached forward for something to grab and found nothing. The glass railing was too far right, the left railing was behind him, and the ceiling lights blurred into white streaks as his body pitched forward and then — horribly, completely — backward.

He hit the steps on his right side. His hip took the first impact, then his ribs, then his elbow. The world became noise — clanging metal, the crack of something hard against something harder, his own voice making a sound he didn't recognize. His silver laptop, the one he'd been holding in a Circuit Depot bag, tumbled out of his hands and bounced down three steps. His smartphone flew from his shirt pocket and skittered across the metal edges like a stone skipping water.

He came to rest on the sixth step, lying sideways, his cheek pressed against cold metal, staring at the glass railing through one half-open eye.

Above him, at the top of the staircase, two figures stood on the landing.

Gerald couldn't see their faces. The overhead lights behind them made them into silhouettes — two men in blue polo shirts, arms at their sides, looking down at him.

One of them said something. Gerald couldn't make out the words. The ringing in his ears was too loud.

Then they moved. Both of them, coming down the stairs. Not rushing to help. Moving with purpose. One of them picked up the laptop bag. The other grabbed the smartphone.

Gerald tried to speak. His mouth opened. Air came out but no words.

The one holding the laptop — Marcus, Gerald could see his face now, close up, leaning over him — looked at Gerald the way you look at a spill on the floor.

"Hey," Marcus said, almost softly. "You okay? Looks like you tripped."

Gerald's hand reached toward his laptop. Marcus pulled it away, stood up, and turned to Derek.

"Get these to the back counter," Marcus said. "Before someone slips on them."

Derek nodded and took the phone and laptop toward the service counter at the bottom of the stairs. Marcus stayed for one more second, looking down at Gerald, and then he walked down the stairs, adjusted his polo shirt, and disappeared behind the counter.

Gerald lay on the staircase.

The showroom was not empty. There were four or five other customers browsing the phone displays, testing speakers, looking at tablets. A woman with a toddler in a stroller glanced toward the staircase and then looked away, as if what she saw was too uncomfortable to acknowledge.

Nobody came.

Gerald closed his eyes. The pain in his hip was becoming specific now — sharp, focused, the kind of pain that whispered something might be broken. His elbow throbbed. His ribs ached when he breathed.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, beneath the pain and the ringing and the humiliation, a small clear thought formed:

They pushed me.

Those two men pushed me down the stairs, and then they took my things, and now they are pretending it didn't happen.

He opened his eyes.

Across the showroom, half-hidden behind a tall display shelf of Bluetooth speakers, a young woman in a blue Circuit Depot polo was crouching with her phone raised, pointing it directly at the staircase.

She saw Gerald looking at her.