“Okay,” she said. She looked indecisively around, then seemed to make up her mind and she hugged him hard. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
It struck him as funny. “I can take care of myself just fine, don’t worry about me for a second. You still looking for fashion work? I think Tropicál will be hiring for the summer. I could put in that phone-call.”
“No,” she said. “No, that’s okay.” She looked over his shoulder and her eyes widened. He turned around and saw that Krishna and Link had spotted them, and that Krishna was whispering something in Link’s ear that was making Link grin nastily.
“I should go,” she said. Krishna’s hand was still down the little girl’s top, and he jiggled her breast at Alan.
The reporter had two lip piercings, and a matt of close-cropped micro-dreads, and an attitude.
“So here’s what I don’t get. You’ve got the Market wired—”
“Unwired,” Kurt said, breaking in for the tenth time in as many minutes. Alan shot him a dirty look.
“Unwired, right.” The kid made little inverted commas with his fingertips, miming, Yes, that is a very cute jargon you’ve invented, dork. “You’ve got the Market unwired and you’re going to connect up your network with the big interchange down on Front Street.”
“Well, eventually,” Alan said. The story was too complicated. Front Street, the Market, open networks… it had no focus, it wasn’t a complete narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. He’d tried to explain it to Mimi that morning, over omelets in his kitchen, and she’d been totally lost.