Part 29 (1/2)
”User experience. I help design their interactive stuff. How's Ottawa?”
”They pay you for that, huh? Well, nice work if you can get it.”
Art believed that Audie was being sincere in her amazement at his niche in the working world, and not sneering at all. Still, he had to keep himself from saying something snide about the lack of tangible good resulting from keeping MPs up to date on the poleconomy of semiconductor production in PacRim sweatshops.
”They sure do. How's Ottawa?”
”Amazing. And why London? Can't you find work at home?”
”Yeah, I suppose I could. This just seemed like a good job at the time. How's Ottawa?
”Seemed, huh? You going to be moving back, then? Quitting?”
”Not anytime soon. How's Ottawa?”
”Ottawa? It's beautiful this time of year. Alphie and Enoch and I were going to go to the trailer for the weekend, in Calabogie. You could drive up and meet us.
Swim, hike. We've built a sweatlodge near the dock; you and Alphie could bake up together.”
”Wow,” Art said, wis.h.i.+ng he had Audie's gift for changing the subject. ”Sounds great. But. Well, you know. Gotta catch up with friends here in Toronto. It's been a while, you know. Well.” The image of sharing a smoke-filled dome with Alphie's naked, cross-legged, sweat-slimed paunch had seared itself across his waking mind.
”No? Geez. Too bad. I'd really hoped that we could reconnect, you and me and Alphie. We really should spend some more time together, keep connected, you know?”
”Well,” Art said. ”Sure. Yes.” Relations or no, Audie and Alphie were basically strangers to him, and it was beyond him why Audie thought they should be spending time together, but there it was. *Reconnect, keep connected.* Hippies.
”We should. Next time I'm in Canada, for sure, we'll get together, I'll come to Ottawa. Maybe Christmas. Skating on the ca.n.a.l, OK?”
”Very good,” Audie said. ”I'll pencil you in for Christmas week. Here, I'll send you the wish lists for Alphie and Enoch and me, so you'll know what to get.”
Xmas wishlists in July. Organized hippies! What planet did his cousins grow up on, anyway?
”Thanks, Audie. I'll put together a wishlist and pa.s.s it along to you soon, OK?”
His bladder nagged at him. ”I gotta run now, all right?”
”Great. Listen, Art, it's been, well, great to talk to you again. It really makes me feel whole to connect with you. Don't be a stranger, all right?”
”Yeah, OK! Nice to talk to you, too. Bye!”
”Safe travels and wishes fulfilled,” Audie said.
”You too!”
25.
Now I've got a comm, I hardly know what to do with it. Call Gran? Call Audie?
Call Fede? Login to an EST chat and see who's up to what?
How about the Jersey clients?
There's an idea. Give them everything, all the notes I built for Fede and his d.a.m.ned patent application, sign over the exclusive rights to the patent for one dollar and services rendered (i.e., getting me a decent lawyer and springing me from this d.a.m.ned hole).
My last lawyer was a d.i.c.khead. He met me at the courtroom fifteen minutes before the hearing, in a private room whose fixtures had the sticky filthiness of a bus-station toilet. ”Art, yes, h.e.l.lo, I'm Allan Mendelson, your attorney. How are you?