Taking Care of Business. Kathy Lyons

slice of it.” Roger pulled a black pen out of his pocket and passed it to Sam. “Sign here and here and here.”

      Sam frowned and reached up to the huge, lighted, magnifying glass that swung above his desk. It was meant for people to use when doing detailed circuit board work, but Sam needed it for more than just that.

      “Why don’t you get glasses like a normal person?” Roger asked.

      Sam started scanning through the pages. “I have contacts.”

      “That need reading glasses instead of that huge monstrosity.”

      “This is bigger. Can’t lose this or sit on it,” he responded as he flipped a page in the contract, doing his best to concentrate as he read.

      “You’re a multimillionaire,” Roger groused. “You should get stylish lenses that make you appear sophisticated and—”

      “Geriatric.”

      “Better than a doofus.”

      Sam didn’t answer. He had a rare eye condition that left him visually impaired. Fortunately, technology and medicine had advanced enough that he could read a monitor and see distance objects with the aid of hard contact lenses that reshaped his eyeballs and magically filled in the ripples in his cornea. Close-up work, however, required a shift in magnification or a different pair of lenses. That was one of the reasons why he’d first started working on circuit boards so long ago. Everyone needed to use a lighted magnifying glass to do that, so he hadn’t felt handicapped.

      Right now, he had on his distance lenses so he could watch Julie on the monitor. That meant he needed help to read the contract. Instead of reading glasses that made him feel like an old man, he chose to use the massive wall-mounted contraption that made him look like an engineer.

      Sam sighed and scrawled his signature on the appropriate lines, then leaned back in his chair. He had to get his mind off of Julie and back onto his company. “So, do you really have Thursday-morning depression to report? More than a general I-hate-this-economy?”

      Roger swooped up the signed contract and popped it into his briefcase. “Sadly, yes. We’re not selling enough robots.”