Every morning, Mr. Tom would come out from his office–which was really just a hole in the cave–carrying a slip of paper upon which was jotted the profound inspirational quote that would guide the rest of us through the day.  There was a remote-control/keypad he kept locked in his desk that he used to enter the quote into a scrolling LED ticker.  He wouldn’t even notice me, Lazar and Ashley standing around, awaiting with anticipation the words that would spill out of the red display like a booming voice from God.  As soon as the message was entered, he’d scurry back to his hole and lock up the remote.

“Do you know where he gets those?” Ashley asked.

“Ummm.  Nope.”

“They’re from a calendar his wife got him for his birthday.”

“Ah.”

“Ghar-rhon,” Lazar would wave his hands from side to side, palms up and slightly tilted toward Ashley, “what issss….?”

I don’t know why he always wanted me to translate everyone else’s English into Lazar-speak.   But I always did.  After a few months, I even found myself affecting a pseudo-Russian accent when I did it.

“She speak, ” I pointed at the sign, “Mr. Tom, big dogshit!”

“Ahhh!  Ha-Ha!”  Lazar would walk back to his bench, nodding and laughing and relishing my nuanced translation.

All during this, Judd would be staring intently at some affiliate porn site/link farm he was working on, leg vibrating like the wings of a hummingbird on meth.  Probably oblivious even to his fifteen-millionth playing of that god-damned John Mellencamp CD I hated even more than Lazar did: “Ghar-rhon, big fuckinuh dogshit!” and he’d spit on the floor, pointing at the speakers.  There was one lyric in particular, that went “honey, honey… something… something”  Lazar would always sing over it in a tone of disdain, “honey, honey… money, money…”

It took me a while, but I eventually figured out the significance of this.  It seems Lazar had picked up the American capitalist system far better than he had picked up the language.  The longer I worked there, the more often he would come to me throughout the day with some memory card, expansion card, gadget or dvd.  “Ghar-rhon, what iss…?”

I’d carefully look over the component and give my assessment:  either, “dogshit” or “ahhhhh, vey-y nice!”

If it was “dogshit,” Lazar would scoff, “gahhh!” and toss the component on the floor.  If it was “vey-y nice,” then he would grin, a twinkle in his eye, and the object would never be seen again.

The one exception to the “dogshit,” “vey-y nice” categorizations was when Lazar brought me an odd-looking hand-sized keyboard.  I instantly recognized it as the same remote control Mr. Tom used to program the LED sign, it was from an identical contraption except the display for this one was beyond repair.  “Holy shit!  Lazar, me keep!” I said, in hushed, excited tones, pointing at the LED sign.

Lazar’s eyes lit up, “aahhh!  yaaaaa!!”

I hid the remote away in the bottom of a dirt-encrusted box under my bench.

Much later, I learned Lazar’s enterprise wasn’t limited to small gadgets.  Every week, Lazar would present a collection of televisions, dvd players, cd players, synthesizers, drum machines, esoteric scientific equipment–virtually any electronic product one could imagine–to Mr. Tom:  “Dogshit!  Me buy!”

And, intimidated by Lazar’s volatile temperament and the prospect of losing a brilliant technician who was making less than the janitor, Mr. Tom would sell it to him at scrap price.  As soon as Lazar got the stuff home, he would magically be able to repair it and sell it to various mysterious contacts.  I discovered all of this when I helped him close on a new house (translating between the banker’s English and Lazar-speak, “intelest rate dogshit!”) and went to help him move.  Lazar pointed at the astonishing collection of items in his garage, “Ghar-rhon, you no speak!”

I chuckled and shook my head, “me no speak.”

As for his volatile temper, this was demonstrated for all of us (except Judd, who was, as usual, obsessing over the internet).  It was an open auction day, when anyone could come through the cave and look at all of the junk we had piled up and could then negotiate a price with  Mr. Tom, or the manager of whatever department was handling the crap in which they were interested.  There were several regulars–musical instrument dealers, computer dealers, car dealers–who came by every week and bought large volumes of garbage.

Lazar despised Bob, the musical instrument dealer.  Lazar loved musical instruments.  One day, Lazar had a violin laying on his bench and Bob casually walked over to it and picked it up.  Lazar leapt from his chair, grabbed the instrument and carefully put it back on his desk then, with all of us watching by now, he grabbed Bob by the throat and pushed him against the wall, “no Bob!”

Mr. Tom stuttered and trembled, Ashley stood with her mouth agape in shock and I giggled to myself.

As quickly as he had jumped up, Lazar sat back down like nothing had happened.  With nobody saying a word about the incident, he bought the violin and took it home with him that night.

It was a few mornings later and I remembered the remote control hidden under my bench.  I fished it out and waited for Mr. Tom to come out and program the sign.  Lazar saw me and came over to my desk to watch.

On schedule, Mr. Tom came out of his hole and held the piece of paper where the quote was written.  He aimed the remote at the sign and started punching in the letters.  I had practiced this, so I was ready.  My plan was to replace Mr. Tom’s keystrokes with my own and have a laugh as he wondered why his words were being translated into something else.  The practical joke didn’t quite work out that way:  Mr. Tom didn’t look at the sign as he typed, he would only look at the written quote, then at the remote control as he pushed the letters.  I was somewhat disappointed, but in the end, it was just as well.

As planned, Mr. Tom would press a letter and I would erase it and replace it with my own.  When he was finished, he simply hit the save button and scurried off to his hole.  Only what he saved was what I had typed in my remote.

It was two hours before Mr. Tom realized the quote scrolling by on the sign was “D-O-G-S-H-I-T-!”