"Hey," I said. "Look, I don't understand what's going on here, but I really need to take a leak, you know?"
She looked right through me as if she hadn't heard.
"I'm serious, if I don't get to a can soon, I'm going to have an ugly accident. It's going to get pretty smelly back here, you know?"
She turned to her colleagues, a little huddle of three of them, and they held a low conversation I couldn't hear over the fans from the computers.
She turned back to me. "Hold it for another ten minutes, then you'll each get a piss-call."
"I don't think I've got another ten minutes in me," I said, letting a little more urgency than I was really feeling creep into my voice. "Seriously, lady, it's now or never."
She shook her head and looked at me like I was some kind of pathetic loser. She and her friends conferred some more, then another one came forward. He was older, in his early thirties, and pretty big across the shoulders, like he worked out. He looked like he was Chinese or Korean -- even Van can't tell the difference sometimes -- but with that bearing that said American in a way I couldn't put my finger on.
He pulled his sports-coat aside to let me see the hardware strapped there: I recognized a pistol, a tazer and a can of either mace or pepper-spray before he let it fall again.
"No trouble," he said.
"None," I agreed.