"I love you."
"You too." Chest pains. He hung up the phone and picked up the bottle.
"It was the Scotch," he said to the empty room, then uttered a painful chuckle that bordered on hysteria and threatened to overtake him if he didn't get a grip. He busied himself looking for the bottle's cap, but saw that he wouldn't need it. The bottle was empty.
And so was he.
Wallaby. Kate. These things came to a man only once in his lifetime. Had become his lifetime. Once you've lost them, he reckoned as he began to drift off to sleep, you never again get, or deserve, anything as good.
Teetering on the edge of consciousness, he struggled to remember the lyrics of an old song he used to listen to, something about you can't always get what you want, but if you cry sometimes, you get what you need.
Not quite, but close enough.
And so he cried.
Chapter 6
William Harrell's meeting with his advisers had been taxing. Both had recommended that ICP begin the accelerated development of the prototype BPX ultra-portable computer - a product, were William to give its development the go-ahead, that they felt could compete directly with the advanced features of Wallaby's Joey. And, his technology adviser stressed, the BPX wouldn't suffer from the problem that currently plagued the Joey, of too few available third-party software applications. ICP's magnitude could garner pre-announcement commitment from software developers, said the adviser, to begin creating BPX programs for the computer immediately.