I put my keys on the table.
“Excellent question.”
The next morning, I came up with an idea.
But first, I needed proof.
I wanted to know whether I was being unfair.
Maybe Denise was right.
Maybe the motor had simply died because of age.
So on Monday, I took the mixer to an appliance repair shop.
The man behind the counter was named Greg.
He looked like he had been repairing machines since mine was new.
He turned the mixer over.
Opened the housing.
Checked the gears.
Inspected the motor.
Then asked, “What were you mixing?”
“I wasn’t.”
He looked up.
“My neighbor borrowed it.”
Greg paused.
“Ah.”
That single syllable contained an entire opinion.
“What happened?”
He pointed inside.
“The motor overheated.”
“Because it’s old?”
“Not exactly.”
He looked at me.
“This thing was under heavy load and somebody kept running it after it started straining.”
“So it didn’t just die?”
Greg laughed.
“These old mixers are tanks.”
For some reason, I felt proud.
He continued.
“Age is age, sure. But this isn’t normal wear. Whoever was using it should’ve stopped the second the motor started sounding different.”
I thought of Denise saying she had eleven people waiting for cake.
“How much to repair it?”
Greg wrote down the estimate.
Three hundred forty-seven dollars.
I took a picture.
Then I texted Denise.
Repair shop says the motor was damaged from overload and continued use after it started straining. Repair is $347. Please send me the money.
Her reply came twenty minutes later.
