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tribute to the Three Stooges."

  20.

  Three days later, Art finally realized that something big and ugly was in theoffing. Fede had repeatedly talked him out of going to Perceptronics's offices,offering increasingly flimsy excuses and distracting him by calling the hotel'sfront desk and sending up surprise massage therapists to interrupt Art as hestewed in his juices, throbbing with resentment at having been flown thousandsof klicks while injured in order to check into a faceless hotel on a facelessstretch of highway and insert this thumb into his asshole and wait for Fede --*who was still in fucking London!* -- to sort out the mess so that he couldpresent himself at the Perceptronics Acton offices and get their guys preppedfor the ever-receding meeting with MassPike.

  "Jesus, Federico, what the fuck am I *doing* here?"

  "I know, Art, I know." Art had taken to calling Fede at the extreme ends ofcircadian compatibility, three AM and eleven PM and then noon on Fede's clock,as a subtle means of making the experience just as unpleasant for Fede as it wasfor Art. "I screwed up," Fede yawned. "I screwed up and now we're both payingthe price. You handled your end beautifully and I dropped mine. And I intend tomake it up to you."

  "I don't *want* more massages, Fede. I want to get this shit done and I want tocome home and see my girlfriend."

  Fede tittered over the phone.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Nothing much," Fede said. "Just sit tight there for a couple minutes, OK? Callme back once it happens and tell me what you wanna do, all right?"

  "Once what happens?"

  "You'll know."

  It was Linda, of course. Knocking on Art's hotel room door minutes later,throwing her arms -- and then her legs -- around him, and banging him stupid,half on and half off the hotel room bed. Riding him and then being ridden inturns, slurping and wet and energetic until they both lay sprawled on the hotelroom's very nice Persian rugs, dehydrated and panting and Art commed Fede, andFede told him it could take a couple weeks to sort things out, and why didn't heand Linda rent a car and do some sight-seeing on the East Coast?

  That's exactly what they did. Starting in Boston, where they cruised Cambridge,watching the cute nerdyboys and geekygirls wander the streets, having heatedtechnical debates, lugging half-finished works of technology and art through thesopping summertime, a riot of townie accents and highbrow engineerspeak.

  Then a week in New York, where they walked until they thought their feet wouldgive out entirely, necks cricked at a permanent, upward-staring angle to gawp atthe topless towers of Manhattan. The sound the sound the sound of Manhattan rangin their ears, a gray and deep rumble of cars and footfalls and subways andsteampipes and sirens and music and conversation and ring tones and huckstersand schizophrenic ranters, a veritable Las Vegas of cacophony, and it made Lindauncomfortable, she who was raised in the white noise susurrations of LA'sfreeway forests, but it made Art feel *wonderful*. He kept his comm switchedoff, though the underfoot rumble of the subway had him reaching for it a hundredtimes a day, convinced that he'd left it on in vibe-alert mode.

  They took a milk-run train to Toronto, chuffing through sleepy upstate New Yorktowns, past lakes and rolling countryside in full summer glory. Art and Lindadrank ginger beer in the observation car, spiking it with rum from a flask thatLinda carried in a garter that she wore for the express purpose of being able toreach naughtily up her little sundress and produce a bottle of body-temperatureliquor in a nickel-plated vessel whose shiny sides were dulled by the soft oilof her thigh.

  Canada Customs and Immigration separated them at the border, sending Art for afull inspection -- a privilege of being a Canadian citizen and hence perenniallyunder suspicion of smuggling goods from the tax havens of the US into thecountry -- and leaving Linda in their little Pullman cabin.

  When Art popped free of the bureaucracy, his life thoroughly peered into, hefound Linda standing on the platform, leaning against a pillar, back arched, onefoot flat against the bricks, corresponding dimpled knee exposed to the restlesswinds of the trainyard. From Art's point of view, she was a gleaming visionskewered on a beam of late day sunlight that made her hair gleam like licorice.Her long and lazy jaw caught and lost the sun as she talked animatedly down hercomm, and Art was struck with a sudden need to sneak up behind her and run histongue down the line that began with the knob of her mandible under her ear andran down to the tiny half-dimple in her chin, to skate it on the soft pouch offlesh under her chin, to end with a tasting of her soft lips.

  Thought became deed. He crept up on her, smelling her new-car hair products onthe breeze that wafted back from her, and was about to begin his tonguing whenshe barked, "Fuck *off*! Stop calling me!" and closed her comm and stormed offtrainwards, leaving Art standing on the opposite side of the pillar with athoroughly wilted romantic urge.

  More carefully, he followed her into the train, back to their little cabin, andreached for the palm-pad to open the door when he heard her agitated comm voice."No, goddamnit, no. Not yet. Keep calling me and not *ever*, do you understand?"

  Art opened the door. Linda was composed and neat and sweet in her plush seat,shoulders back, smile winning. "Hey honey, did the bad Customs man finally letyou go?"

  "He did! That sounded like a doozy of a phone conversation, though. What'swrong?"

  "You don't want to know," she said.

  "All right," Art said, sitting down opposite her, knee-to-knee, bending forwardto plant a kiss on the top of her exposed thigh. "I don't."

  "Good."

  He continued to kiss his way up her thigh. "Only..."

  "Yes?"

  "I think I probably do. Curiosity is one of my worst failings of character."

  "Really?"

  "Quite so," he said. He'd slid her sundress right up to the waistband of hercotton drawers, and now he worried one of the pubic hairs that poked out fromthe elastic with his teeth.

  She shrieked and pushed him away. "Someone will see!" she said. "This is aborder crossing, not a bordello!"

  He sat back, but inserted a finger in the elastic before Linda straightened outher dress, so that his fingertip rested in the crease at the top of her groin.

  "You are *naughty*," she said.

  "And curious," Art agreed, giving his fingertip a playful wiggle.

  "I give up. That was my fucking ex," she said. "That is how I will refer to himhenceforth. 'My fucking ex.' My fucking, pain-in-the-ass, touchy-feely ex. Myfucking ex, who wants to have the Talk, even though it's been months and months.He's figured out that I'm stateside from my calling times, and he's offering tocome out to meet me and really Work Things Out, Once And For All."

  "Oh, my," Art said.

  "That boy's got too much LA in him for his own good. There's no problem thatcan't be resolved through sufficient dialog."

  "We never really talked about him," Art said.

  "Nope, we sure didn't."

  "Did you want to talk about him now, Linda?"

  "'Did you want to talk about him now, Linda?' Why yes, Art, I would. Howperceptive of you." She pushed his hand away and crossed her arms and legssimultaneously.

  "Wait, I'm confused," Art said. "Does that mean you want to talk about him, orthat you don't?"

  "Fine, we'll talk about him. What do you want to know about my fucking ex?"

  Art resisted a terrible urge to fan her fires, to return the vitriol thatdripped from her voice. "Look, you don't want to talk about him, we won't talkabout him," he managed.

  "No, let's talk about my fucking ex, by all means." She adopted a singsong toneand started ticking off points on her fingers. "His name is Toby, he'shalf-Japanese, half-white. He's about your height. Your dick is bigger, but he'sbetter in bed. He's a user-experience designer at Lucas-SGI, in Studio City. Henever fucking shuts up about what's wrong with this or that. We dated for twoyears, lived together for one year, and broke up just before you and I met. Ibroke it off with him: He was making me goddamned crazy and he wanted me to comeback from London and live with him. I wanted to stay out the year in E
ngland andgo back to my own apartment and possibly a different boyfriend, and he made mechoose, so I chose. Is that enough of a briefing for you, Arthur?"

  "That was fine," Art said. Linda's face had gone rabid purple, madly pinched,spittle flecking off of her lips as she spat out the words. "Thank you."

  She took his hands and kissed the knuckles of his thumbs. "Look, I don't like totalk about it -- it's painful. I'm sorry he's ruining our holiday. I just won'ttake his calls anymore, how about that?"

  "I don't care, Linda,