Lost Boys (11 page)

"Mine," said Dicky immediately.

"No," said Ray Keene quietly.

Step watched how Dicky immediately stepped back to let Ray Keene go and face the tiger. But Dicky's outward compliance was not from the heart. Step could see how Dicky's jaw was clenched. How he held his pose of nonchalance a bit too long, with a bit too much effort. He hates Ray Keene, Step realized. And why shouldn't he? Ray undercuts him at every stage of his work. Ray undercuts everybody at every stage. But Dicky is determined to hang on. Dicky is determined to bear it, without showing Ray the slightest sign of resentment.

But Dicky is also going to take it out on somebody.

Me.

Well, I won't be around when the ax falls, thought Step, unless of course the stupid, illegal attempt to steal Hacker Snack was the ax, in which case it's a dull blade indeed, since I never signed over the rights. No, the Hacker Snack project was almost certainly done with Ray's knowledge, so Dicky's nastiness toward me, when it comes, will take some other form. Some slyer, pettier form that will have no profit in it for anybody except for the nasty satisfaction it would give Dicky Northanger.

"You're not supposed to be impressed at all," Ray was saying to Neddy Cranes. "This is only something for the common people, not for computer experts with big expensive systems."

Ah, Ray was deft indeed, for Cranes could hardly let himself be painted as a computer elitist. His pose was that of the populist, looking out for the little guy. So the bandsaw voice came back again at top volume: "Don't tell me about common people! I can see you've got those little Commodore boxes here-paperweights, that's all they are, because you can't do a damn thing with 'em! Stealing money from the little guy, that's what Commodore's doing, stealing money while Kmart drives the getaway car!"

"We're making sure that when people get this paperweight home, Mr. Cranes, they can run a full- fledged word processor on it, a word processor for which the y paid no more than thirty bucks, and if they buy it direct from us, twenty bucks."

"What, is the manual an additional fee of fifty dollars?" demanded Cranes. "Or do people have to pay a hundred bucks to get the extra module that allows them to print things out?"

"It's all in the same package," said Ray. "Not a pretty package, of course. But that's part of why we can sell it cheap. Try it out."

Step watched in awe as Ray got Neddy Cranes to set his fingers on the keys of a Commodore in order to write something using Scribe 64.

"Come on, let's get out of here," said Glass.

"Don't you want to see what Cranes thinks of Scribe?" asked Step.

"Come on!"

Glass was really agitated. Clearly he had no desire to stick around for Neddy's verdict. "I'm hungry."

"I'm not," said Step, but he followed Glass away from the booth, and when Glass found a line of people waiting for a hot dog that looked like it had been made in the 1950s from the a hooves and noses of diseased warthogs, Step stood in it with him and got a hot dog with mustard and onions.

"If you put this mustard on your car it'd take three paint jobs to cover it up," said Glass.

"That's OK. The onions are the secret ingredient in Ex-Lax."

They ate every bit of the hot dogs.

"Did you check us into our room?" asked Glass.

"What?" asked Step.

"Our room," said Glass. "When I got here I had to come straight to the booth, so my bag is under the table."

"We're sharing a room?" asked Step, horrified.

"Dicky said he told you," said Glass. "Ray says Eight Bits Inc. isn't big enough to fly first class or have private hotel rooms."

"Bet your little butt he's got a private room."

"No, his wife's with him," said Glass. "Hey, I knew you'd hate sharing, so I made sure they assigned you with me. See, I'm not addicted to cigarettes, so I won't smoke in the room with you."

"Thanks," said Step. But it wasn't just the issue of smoking- it was the fact that Step loathed the idea of having no privacy. Undressing and dressing in front of someone else was unthink able. He had hated it in high school even before he was old enough to go through the temple, and now that he wore the underclothes that symbolized the covenants he had made there, Step never put himself in a position to arouse questions or ridicule toward something that he took so seriously. If he had i been warned that he was going to share a room, he would at least have brought pajamas, so he could change in the bathroom and leave Glass thinking that he was simply shy. As it was, Step had no idea what he was going to do. Pay for his own private room? Right -- with nothing left on the Visa, that was likely!

"Man, it really bothers you, doesn't it," said Glass.

"Yes," said Step. "Not rooming with you, just sharing a room at all. I mean, they didn't tell me, not a hint. I don't share hotel rooms. I can't believe a company as cheap as this."

"I'd rather have my thousand-dollar bonus than a private room, I'll tell you that," said Glass.

Step looked at him oddly. "A thousand dollars?"

"I wasn't supposed to tell," said Glass. "Oops."

"How often do you get this?" asked Step.

"At the first of the year," said Glass. "Please, don't tell anybody else. Dicky told me that people would quit if they realized how big a bonus I was getting."

"Glass, a thousand dollars is nothing," said Step. "A thousand dollars is like peeing in your hand."

Glass looked at him- his turn to be stunned.

"Do you know what my royalties on Hacker Snack were, at its peak, every six months?"

Glass shook his head.

"Forty thousand," said Step. "And Scribe 64 has sold far more than Hacker Snack ever did."

Glass muttered something that might have been a prayer, because it was addressed to God, but Step didn't think the tone was reverent enough for that.

"By the way," said Step, "I told you what my royalties were in strict confidence, too."

"Right, no talkee, no tellee, no catchee hellee," said Glass.

Step hadn't heard that since the days when Reader's Digest still published ethnic humor. "Where'd you pick that up?"

"My dad," said Glass. "Whenever I'm not paying attention, I turn into my dad."

That hot dog turned out to be supper. Contrary to any reasonable expectations, Ray didn't allow his people to have a supper break from duty in the booth. He, of course, with Dicky in tow, went to a fancy restaurant dinner for several of Eight Bits Inc.'s distributors, but that was business, as Ray patiently explained to Step-the eating part of it was merely incidental. And there'd be plenty of time to have supper at the hotel coffee shop after the show closed down for the night.

By the time they were through at the booth they were both too tired to hang out at the coffee shop long enough for a meal, and besides, the meals were not charged to the room-Step would have to pay cash and then turn in his receipts back in Steuben for a reimbursement. It seemed like a churlish limitation, but he was getting a pretty good idea by now of how Ray Keene was able to live so high off the earnings of, really, one best-selling program. Glass didn't mind skipping supper, either. He had apparently cleaned all the salted nut rolls out of the candy machine at work, so he had plenty to eat in the room. Step decided that he didn't like salted nut rolls, and said so, and thus could not eat any without shaming himself. It was a way of keeping himself from gaining any more weight than he had to on this trip.

When Glass went into the bathroom, Step got on the phone and called home--collect, since Eight Bits Inc.

had arranged for all the phones to be blocked against long-distance calls charged to the room. DeAnne sounded tired- it was well after midnight in North Carolina, but Step knew she wouldn't sleep, or at least wouldn't sleep well, until he called. "Sorry I didn't call before," he said. "The y didn't exactly give me time."

"That's OK," she said. "I wanted to hear your voice tonight anyway. I miss you."

"I've only been gone twelve hours," he said. "I work longer days than that half the time."

"I know," she said. "Why d'you think I miss you?" Then she seemed to force herself to wake up a little more. "Talk to any other companies today?"

"They have me sharing a room with Glass here."

"Glass? Oh, the wizard kid."

"Actually, he's a combination knight and thief."

"What?"

"Nothing, he's just into Dungeons and Dragons and that's his character, a knight who's also a thief."

"Real Round Table material," she said.

"And he's-what was it?-chaotic but good."

"Ah, to be young again," she said. "Still, even if you can't talk out loud, you can answer my questions. Did you talk to any other companies about Hacker Snack?"

"Nope," he said.

"Too busy?"

"Yep," he said.

"What about tomorrow?"

"Same thing, probably."

"Oh no!"

"It'll happen somehow or other," he said. Though he was not at all sure he could bring it off. "How are things with the kids?"

"Fine," she said. "Call me tomorrow, OK? And I'm sorry you have to share a room. I know how you hate having a roommate."

"There's one exception," he said.

"Yes, but you hated having me for a roommate at first."

"Not after you finally stopped leaving shoes out in the middle of every room in the house."

"Now that you're away I've taken every pair I own and spread them all over, just to celebrate."

"Ah, the cat's away."

"This mouse does all her best playing when you're here," she said, in a cuddly voice that made him both horny and resentful at the same time. If she could act sexy after midnight when he was away, why couldn't she ever bring it off when he was home? He quelled the thought at once.

"How's the baby?" he asked.

"No kicks since that first one, but he sloshes a little now and then."

"Come on, you can't really feel that."

"Can so."

"So he's a swimmer?"

"I can wait awhile for the kicking, to tell the truth. Elizabeth nearly broke my ribs from the inside."

"Well, get your sleep now," he said.

"I know, it's long distance, but I miss you," she said.

"Love you, Fish Lady," said Step.

"Love you, Junk Man," said DeAnne.

"You hang up first," he said.

"No, you," she said.

When they were younger, just courting, that game could go on for a long time-a hundred and fifty dollars worth, in fact, the summer that she went to San Francisco to work while he was still getting his master's at the Y. Wiped out what little he had saved from the fellowship job, writing papers that went out under a full professor's name with not a single improvement from the old coot and not a speck of credit for Step, since he wasn't even ,a doctoral candidate yet. But even with no money, Step cadged twenty bucks from his folks and drove out and picked her up from the friend's house where she'd been staying in Orinda, and took her to meet his aunt and uncle in San Mateo, and then drove her home. It was on that drive home to Utah that he had proposed to her. And she had said thank you, let me think about it. Four and a half months of thinking- it was two days before New Year's when she said yes. A miracle they ever got married. But his mom was sure it was a marriage planned by God. "God never said he'd make life easy," Mom always said.

But they weren't kids anymore, and the game couldn't go on. He would have to hang up first, even though he knew that it hurt her feelings a little bit that he was always the one who could hang up first. I wouldn't be, he told her once, if you'd just hang up for once. But she couldn't do that either, apparently.

He hung up.

"Fish Lady?" asked Glass.

Step could not believe he would be rude enough to admit so openly that he had been listening.

"Oh," said Step, "was I talking that loud? I hoped I'd be quiet enough that you wouldn't be forced to hear what I was saying."

"Naw," said Glass, oblivious to the implied rebuke. So much for the Miss Manners method.

"Give me a salted nut roll," said Step.

"I thought you hated them," said Glass.

Oh, yes, thought Step. I'm not eating them. "Yeah, I didn't want to eat it, I wanted to break it into pieces and jam them into every aperture of your body."

"Kinky," said Glass.

"If you don't listen in to my phone calls, I won't listen in to yours."

"But that's hardly fair," said Glass. "I don't have anybody to call."

"Not your mom?"

"Dad would never let her accept the charges."

"I thought you made more money than God."

"But God doesn't own the credit card companies," said Glass. "No sweat, Mom knows I'm OK. How are the kids?"

"Fine," said Step.

"Must be tough on the two of you, having three kids and all that."

"Sometimes," said Step.

"You need some time together," said Glass.

"Marriage counseling now?"

"Everybody does."

"Your mom and dad?"

"Sure. She needs to have a chance to cry over his grave for an hour on Sundays." Glass grinned at Step's look of embarrassment. "A joke, son, a joke."

"Son?"

"OK, then, Dad. I really meant my offer to tend for you so you two can have some time together."

"I know you did."

"Yeah, but you blew it off," said Glass. "I know you did, and I want you to know I mean it. I love kids, I get along great with kids. I never had any younger brothers or sisters, and so I really like to take care of them now. Never had a baby in the house-but don't get me wrong, I'm real good with babies. I've tended a lot. There was this neighbor family I watched their kids all the time when I was a kid myself- not that I'm, like, grown up or anything now. But you know what I mean."

"Yeah," said Step. What he was thinking was, Am I going to sleep in my clothes on the top of the bed? Or try to undress real fast and hope Glass doesn't notice my underwear. That wasn't too likely-Glass was apparently in a mood to notice everything. And he'd ask, and there'd be a long conversation, and it made Step tired to think about it. Besides, Glass must have known what they were doing with Hacker Snack. He must have provided the other programmers with a copy of his commented disassembly of Step's Atari code for the program, as a basis for their work. So it wasn't as if Step could trust him.