"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 damned 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 damned hole).
My last lawyer was a dickhead. 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, hello, I'm Allan Mendelson, your attorney. How are you?
He was well over 6'6", but weighed no more than 120 lbs and hunched over his skinny ribs while he talked, dry-washing his hands. His suit looked like the kind of thing you'd see on a Piccadilly Station homeless person, clean enough and well-enough fitting, but with an indefinable air of cheapness and falsehood.
"Well, not so good," I said. "They upped my meds this morning, so I'm pretty logy. Can't concentrate. They said it was to keep me calm while I was transported. Dirty trick, huh?"