This is the second story featuring the character, Strathmore York Fynn.

Vaughn was killing my buzz.

“Bruh, can you please go back to your office? I’ve really gotta finish my work,” I told him none too gently. Vaughn was a friend, but one who could easily outstay his welcome. He also sometimes needed to have things spelled out pretty clearly before any penny will drop into the drain that passes for his brain.

“Yoh, you’re rude, man,” he now condemned but granted me the boon of leaving.

I sighed in sincere relief. I love my job; solving other’s people’s IT issues gives me a high that no drug can achieve. I was facing a particularly thorny puzzle that I was determined to beat into sublime submission. Lynnette, the adorable Coloured beauty with the mocha skin from the Accounts Department of Capita SA had dropped it on my desk this morning. It was an enigma disguised as a conundrum, parading as a deception. But I am Fantastic Fynn; no IT menace has bested me yet.

“Hi, Fynn,” Lynnette had greeted me, giving me her Colgate smile that sent flutterings of pure lust through my loins. Although my name is Strathmore, most of my colleagues addressed me by my surname. It didn’t bother me.

“Lynnette,” I had said in a carefully neutral tone.

It just wouldn’t do to reveal to the woman that I fancied her. And dear lord, did I fancy her! Those dark brown eyes of hers that seemed to pierce my fool’s heart with every glance made me tongue-tied and loose-limbed. A graphic sexual fantasy about her had sped lightning fast and completely without warning through my perverted mind, leaving me feeling as if I had just done the dirty deed on steroids.

I’ve never understood why anyone would bother to make a pornographic film that lasts longer than ten minutes. All men are of the ‘Wham, bam! Thank you, Ma’am’ variety, as my imagination had just proven.

I had sheepishly met her Medusa-like gaze.

“Any new tats you got recently?” she had asked inquisitively. Everybody seemed to be obsessed with my tattoos, but I liked it. After all, that’s why I got inked.

I had pushed away from my desk, gotten up, lifted the right leg of my jeans and proudly displayed the latest addition on my calf. It was the silhouette of the head of a howling wolf in front of a full moon. I thought it was whack.

“Wow! That’s really stunning,” Lynnette had said. Then she had brushed her fingers across the tattoo. I nearly had an instant climax. As matters stood, I barely managed to stop my leg from trembling, but only barely. Lynnette had probably felt the slight tremors, for she had instantly stopped stroking my … er… touching my calf.

She had straightened up and smiled flirtatiously at me. To burst the uncomfortable bubble of tension, I had become all business-like.

“So, what seems to be the problem?” I had asked. Although I had a particularly handy ability to predict a client’s IT issue before they told me about it, for some unknown reason, that usually reliable flair of mine inevitably abandoned me at the first sign of Lynnette, she of the ample bosom and lots of junk in the trunk.

“Fynn, I’ve given up on this damn laptop,” she had expressed herself in frustration. I had wanted most desperately to say, “Baby, let Big Daddy save you. Just put yourself in my capable hands and all your troubles will vanish.” Obviously, I had said nothing of the kind.

“Although I can access all my folders, I can’t get into my Downloads folder,” she had revealed. “I can click on the Folder icon on the Task Bar, and it opens without any issue. However, when I click on the Downloads folder, I get that dreaded blue circle that spins and spins without any luck,” she had finished.

“No problem,” I had boasted. “I will have a look at it and get back to you by this afternoon,” I had promised.

Thirty minutes later, I was still trying to solve the puzzle. This was unheard of for me, as the longest I’ve ever taken to find a solution to a computer problem was twenty minutes. I blamed Lynnette’s sex appeal … and my raging libido.

Although the challenge was a good one, it was not really causing me any great concern or stress. I was in my element and relishing it, until Vaughn had shown up. He had come moaning about his girlfriend refusing to have sex with him unless he had her name tattooed on his left butt cheek. I was amused at her specificity, but I didn’t have time for Vaughn’s hilarious love life. Hence the reason for me unceremoniously booting him out of my office.

I was about to be victorious by defeating the mystery of the recalcitrant Downloads folder when my cell phone rang. I looked at the phone in annoyance, but that instantly changed to curiosity. The call was from my ex, Gabrielle, who had sworn that the day she would ever contact me again would be the day Hell freezes over. “Hmm,” I mused, “I guess I must not have received the memo that Hell had frozen over.”

I let the phone chime a few seconds more while I deliberated about taking her call or ghosting her. My damn inquisitive nature forced my hand.

“Hello?” I answered in as off-hand a manner as possible. I had inflected my voice just enough to make my greeting sound like a query, as if I didn’t know who the call was from.

“Strath, hi. It’s me, Gabby,” Gabrielle stated. It seemed that she thought I must have deleted her number, so I decided to play out the deception a bit more. I could be infuriating like that at times. It’s a character flaw, I freely admit.

“Gabby? Gabby who?” I asked. I could practically see her face turning scarlet on the other end of the line.

“Don’t play dumb with me! As if you know any other Gabby but me,” she swiftly responded. Having dated her for nearly a year, I had come to know Gabby’s tones most intimately. This one told me if I didn’t halt the pretense immediately, her next sentence would consist only of expletives.

“Hi!” I said cheerily. “Nice surprise,” I lied. I knew she would say, “Nice surprise my ass!”. That’s what she said. Then she jumped right to the reason for the call from an iced over Hell.

“I hate to ask, but could you check out my brother’s laptop, please? You’re the best and Conrad doesn’t trust anybody else to work on his laptop,” she revealed in an aggrieved, reluctant tone. Conrad and I had been best buddies while I was dating his sister, but once our relationship had gone belly-up faster than a torpedoed submarine, he and I had had to end our friendship as well. It was an unfortunate victim of circumstances.

“Conrad’s here; I’ll put him on speaker,” Gabby explained. It was good to hear Conrad’s voice after nearly two years.

“Strathmore, howzit?” Conrad spoke in his usual friendly manner. He was cool, easily one of the most relaxed guys I knew to chill out with. “Dude, you’re the only one I know who’ll be able to fix my damn laptop,” he immediately said. I could nearly feel the tension in his voice.

Conrad had a very high profile job at Carampako Inc. It was one of the top-rated accounting firms in Cape Town, offering internal audit, advisory and financial accounting services. Conrad was an internal auditor who handled the portfolios of millionaires. I instinctively knew that he must be out of his mind with stress; his laptop contained highly sensitive information.

“Hi, Conrad. Sure, I don’t mind having a look at it,” I replied. “Can you at least tell me what’s wrong with it?” Right then, my uncanny talent kicked in like a bomb blast: I knew without a whisper of hesitation what Conrad would say. He would say something like “I think it’s been hacked”, or “I can’t get it to boot up from the drive”.

“Strath, man, I can’t get the laptop to cycle up. The red ON light activates, but the screen stays dark. I’m sure I’ve been hacked, buddy,” he said.

I took a deep breath to calm myself down because the juices were racing through my body. I instinctively knew what was wrong; my adrenaline was in overdrive because I could fix the problem in seconds.

“Conrad,” I said very quietly, slowly and in a studiously restrained voice, “could you do me a favour, please?” I asked in a deceptively reasonable tone.

“A favour?” Gabby suddenly butted in, her voice revealing her indignation. “I called you to ask you for a favour, and now you want my brother to do you a favour?” she practically shrieked at me. The damn harridan. I wondered how the heck I had ever found her sexy AF.

“Gabby, cool it,” Conrad quickly intervened. “What do you need, Strath?” he asked me.

“Nothing, actually,” I said, a smile in my voice. “I just want you to open your CD-ROM drive and remove the CD that’s in it,” I explained. There were a few seconds of silence on the line while Conrad did as I had asked. Then I heard him say “Bloody hell!” in the background.

“You’re a bloody genius, do you know that?” Conrad said as he came back on the line. This time I could hear the profound relief in his voice.

“How did you know the laptop was trying to boot up from a CD?” he asked incredulously.

“When you mentioned that the ON light works, I knew the laptop was booting from the wrong drive,” I explained. “Anyway, everything should be cool now,” I added. “If there’s anything else you need help with, lemme know,” I generously offered.

“Thank you, Strath,” both Conrad and Gabby said.

I felt as if I were soaring on the fluffiest cloud above a bright, blue, beautiful planet. As if she knew that was her cue, Lynnette sashayed sexily into my office.

“You look like someone who has just had the greatest climax in the world,” she declared. I only laughed heartily, then pointed to her laptop. I had fixed her problem while I had been on the call with Conrad.

“It was malware,” I stated with a slight shrug of my bony shoulders. “I ran ‘Malwarebytes’ on your laptop and everything is now clean,” I said and winked lasciviously. I just couldn’t help myself.

“My hero,” Lynnette breathed in my ear. Then she whispered, “See you tonight at my apartment. Seven sharp. Don’t be late, Fynn.”

I smiled goofily from ear to ear. I had finessed another successful day.

Image: Luis Villasmil (www.unsplash.com)