Part 30 (2/2)

”I'm sorry. Sorry, OK? I didn't mean it that way. But it's tragic, isn't it, that the dream ended? That they're all living out there in the boonies, thinking of their glory days?”

”Yes, that *is* sad. But that's why I agreed to do the ride -- not to freeze the old projects in amber, but to create a new project that we can all partic.i.p.ate in again. These people uprooted their lives to follow us, it's the least we can do to give them something back for that.”

Perry stewed on that the rest of the way to Tjan's, staring at the sleet, hand resting against the icy window-gla.s.s.

Sammy checked in to a Comfort Inn tucked into the thirty-seventh storey of the Bank of America building in downtown Boston. The lobby was empty, the security-guard's desk unmanned. B of A was in receivers.h.i.+p, and not doing so hot at that, as the fact that they had let out their executive floors to a discount business-hotel testified.

The room was fine, though -- small and windowless, but fine: power, shower, toilet and bed, all he demanded in a hotel room. He ate the packet of nuts he'd bought at the airport before jumping on the T and then checked his email. He had more of it than he could possibly answer -- he didn't think he'd ever had an empty in-box.

But he picked off anything that looked important, including a note from his ex-, who was now living in the Keys on a squatter beach and wanted to know if he could loan her a hundred bucks. No sense of how she'd pay him back without work. But Mich.e.l.le was resourceful and probably good for it. He paypalled it to her, feeling like a sucker for hoping that she might repay it in person. He'd been single since she'd left him the year before and he was lonely and hard-up.

He'd landed at two and by the time he was done with all the bulls.h.i.+t, it was after dinner time and he was hungry as h.e.l.l. Boston was full of taco-wagons and kebab stands that he'd pa.s.sed on the walk in, and he hustled out onto the street to see if any were still open. He got a huge garlicky kebab and ate it in the lee of a frozen ATM shelter, wolfing it without tasting it.

He went and scouted the location of the new ride. He'd gotten wind of it online -- none of his idiot colleagues could be bothered to read the public email lists of the compet.i.tors they were supposedly in charge of oppo researching. Shaking loose the budget to get a discount flight to Boston had been a major coup, requiring horse-trading, blackmail, and pa.s.sive-aggressive gaming of the system. With the ridiculously low per-diem and hotel allowance he'd still go home a couple hundred bucks out-of-pocket. Why did he even do his job? He should just play by the rules and get nothing done.

And get fired. Or pa.s.sed up for promotion, which was practically the same thing.

The new ride was in an impressive urban mall. He'd spent his college years in Philly and had pa.s.sed many a happy day in malls like this one, cruising for girls or camping out on a bench with his books and a smoothie. Unlike the c.r.a.ppy roadside malls of Florida, there had been nothing but the best stores in them, the property values too high to make anything but high-margin, high-turnover, high-ticket shops viable.

So it was especially sad to see this mall turned over to the junky stalls and junkier ride -- like a fat, washed-up supermodel sentenced to a talk-show appearance for her shoplifting arrests. He approached the doors with trepidation. He was resolved not to buy anything from the market -- no busts or contact lenses -- and had stuck his wallet in his front pocket on the way over.

The mall was like a sauna. He shucked his jacket and sweater and hung them over one arm. The whole ground floor had been given over to flimsy market-stalls. He skulked among them, trying to simultaneously take note of their contents and avoid their owners' notice.

He came to realize that he needn't skulk. It seemed like half of Boston had turned out -- not just young people, either. There were plenty of tweedy academics, big working-cla.s.s Southie boys with thick accents, recent immigrants with Scandie-chic clothes. They chattered and laughed and mixed freely and ate hot food out of huge cauldrons or off of clever electric grills. The smells made his stomach growl, even though he'd just polished off a kebab the size of his head.

The buzz of the crowd reminded him of something, what was it? A premiere, that was it. When they opened a new ride or area at the Park, there was the same sense of thrilling antic.i.p.ation, of excitement and eagerness. That made it worse -- these people had no business being this excited about something so. . . lowbrow? Cheap?

Whatever it was, it wasn't worthy.

They were shopping like fiends. A mother with a baby on her hip pushed past him, her stroller piled high with shopping bags screened with giant, pixellated Belgian pastries. She was laughing and the baby on her hip was laughing too.

He headed for the escalator, whose treads had been anodized in bright colors, something he'd never seen before. He let it carry him upstairs, but looked down, and so he was nearly at the top before he realized that the guy from the Florida ride was standing there, handing out fliers and staring at Sammy like he knew him from somewhere.

It was too late to avoid him. Sammy put on his best castmember smile. ”h.e.l.lo there!”

The guy grinned and wiggled his eyebrow. ”I know you from somewhere,”

he said slowly.

”From Florida,” Sammy said, with an apologetic shrug. ”I came up to see the opening.”

”No *way*!” The guy had a huge smile now, looked like was going to hug him. ”You're s.h.i.+tting me!”

”What can I say? I'm a fan.”

”That's *incredible.* Hey, Tjan, come here and meet this guy. What's your name?”

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