Waldo picked up his paper and pointedly read it, breathing heavily.
“Thanks for your time,” Avi said and left.
“That’s bullshit,” Kurt said. “Christ, those people—”
“I assumed that there was some kind of politics,” Austin said, “and I didn’t want to get into the middle of it. I know that if I could get a chance to present to the whole group, that I could win them over.”
Kurt shook his head angrily. His shop was better organized now, with six access points ready to go and five stuck to the walls as a test bed for new versions of the software. A couple of geeky Korean kids were seated at the communal workbench, eating donuts and wrestling with drivers.
“It’s all politics with them. Everything. You should hear them argue about whether it’s cool to feed meat to the store cat! Who was working behind the counter?”
“He wouldn’t tell me his name. He told me to call him—”
“Waldo.”
“Yeah.”