"Let's go meet Fede," she said. "I hope he wasn't expecting anything special,
I'm not really dressed for it."
He stifled a snotty remark. After all that, she was going to go and meet Fede? So what the hell were they arguing about? On the other hand, he'd gotten his way, hadn't he? He led her by the hand to his office, and beyond every doorway they passed was a V/DT Experience Designer pretending not to peek at them as they walked by, having heard every word through the tricky acoustics of O'Malley House.
"Fede," he said, stiffly, "This is Linda. Linda, this is Fede."
Fede stood and treated Linda to his big, suave grin. Fede might be short and he might have paranoid delusions, but he was trim and well groomed, with the sort of finicky moustache that looked like a rotting caterpillar if you didn't trim it every morning. He liked to work out, and had a tight waist and a gut you could bounce a quarter off of, and liked to wear tight shirts that showed off his overall fitness, made him stand out among the spongy mouse-potatoes of the corporate world. Art had never given it much thought, but now, standing with Fede and Linda in his tiny office, breathing in Fede's Lilac Vegetal and Linda's new-car-smell shampoo, he felt paunchy and sloppy.
"Ah," Fede said, taking her hand. "The one you hit with your car. It's a pleasure. You seem to be recovering nicely, too."
Linda smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, a few strands of her bobbed hair sticking to his moustache like cobwebs as she pulled away.
"It was just a love tap," she said. "I'll be fine."
"Fede's from New York," Art said. "We colonials like to stick together around the office. And Linda's from Los Angeles."
"Aren't there any, you know, British people in London?" Linda said, wrinkling her nose.
"There's Tonaishah," Art said weakly.