to see her doing her thing, quickly andefficiently taking people's money, answering their questions, handingthem receipts, counting out change... He would have loved to have hadsomeone like her working for him in one of his shops.
Once the little rush at the counter was cleared, he eased himself intothe shop. Natalie *was* working for him, of course, in the impromptuassembly line in Kurt's storefront. She'd proven herself to be asefficient at assembling and testing the access points as she was atrunning the till.
"Alan!" she said, smiling broadly. Her co-worker turned and scowledjealously at him. "I'm going on break, okay?" she said to him, ignoringhis sour puss.
"What, now?" he said petulantly.
"No, I thought I'd wait until we got busy again," she said, notunkindly, and smiled at him. "I'll be back in ten," she said.
She came around the counter with her cigs in one hand and her lighter inthe other. "Coffee?" she said.
"Absolutely," he said, and led her up the street.
"You liking the job?" he said.
"It's better now," she said. "I've been bringing home two or threemovies every night and watching them, just to get to know the stock, andI put on different things in the store, the kind of thing I'd never havewatched before. Old horror movies, tentacle porn, crappy kung-fuepics. So now they all bow to me."
"That's great," Alan said. "And Kurt tells me you've been doing amazingwork with him, too."
"Oh, that's just fun," she said. "I went along on a couple of dumpsterruns with the gang. I found the most amazing cosmetics baskets at theShiseido dumpster. Never would have thought that I'd go in for thatgirly stuff, but when you get it for free out of the trash, it feelspretty macha. Smell," she said, tilting her head and stretching herneck.
He sniffed cautiously. "Very macha," he said. He realized that the otherpatrons in the shop were eyeballing him, a middle-aged man, with hisface buried in this alterna-girl's throat.
He remembered suddenly that he still hadn't put in a call to get her ajob somewhere else, and was smitten with guilt. "Hey," he said. "Damn. Iwas supposed to call Tropicál and see about getting you a job. I'll doit right away." He pulled a little steno pad out of his pocket andstarted jotting down a note to himself.
She put her hand out. "Oh, that's okay," she said. "I really like thisjob. I've been looking up all my old high school friends: You wereright, everyone I ever knew has an account with Martian Signal. God, youshould *see* the movies they rent."
"You keep that on file, huh?"
"Sure, everything. It's creepy."
"Do you need that much info?"
"Well, we need to know who took a tape out last if someone returns itand says that it's broken or recorded over or whatever --"
"So you need, what, the last couple months' worth of rentals?"
"Something like that. Maybe longer for the weirder tapes, they only getchecked out once a year or so --"
"So maybe you keep the last two names associated with each tape?"
"That'd work."
"You should do that."
She snorted and drank her coffee. "I don't have any say in it."
"Tell your boss," he said. "It's how good ideas happen in business --people working at the cash register figure stuff out, and they telltheir bosses."
"So I should just tell my boss that I think we should change our wholerental system because it's creepy?"
"Damned right. Tell him it's creepy. You're keeping information youdon't need to keep, and paying to store it. You're keeping informationthat cops or snoops or other people could take advantage of. And you'rekeeping information that your customers almost certainly assume you'renot keeping. All of those are good reasons *not* to keep thatinformation. Trust me on this one. Bosses love to hear suggestions frompeople who work for them. It shows that you're engaged, paying attentionto their business."
"God, now I feel guilty for snooping."
"Well, maybe you don't mention to your boss that you've been spending alot of time looking through rental histories."
She laughed. God, he liked working with young people. "So, why I'mhere," he said.
"Yes?"
"I want to put an access point in the second-floor window and aroundback of the shop. Your boss owns the building, right?"
"Yeah, but I really don't think I can explain all this stuff to him --"
"I don't need you to -- I just need you to introduce me to him. I'll doall the explaining."
She blushed a little. "I don't know, Abe..." She trailed off.
"Is that a problem?"
"No. Yes. I don't know." She looked distressed.
Suddenly he was at sea. He'd felt like he was in charge of thisinteraction, like he understood what was going on. He'd carefullyrehearsed what he was going to say and what Natalie was likely to say,and now she was, what, afraid to introduce him to her boss? Because why?Because the boss was an ogre? Then she would have pushed back harderwhen he told her to talk to him about the rental records. Because shewas shy? Natalie wasn't shy. Because --
"I'll do it," she said. "Sorry. I was being stupid. It's just -- youcome on a little strong sometimes. My boss, I get the feeling that hedoesn't like it when people come on strong with him."
Ah, he thought. She was nervous because he was so goddamned weird. Well,there you had it. He couldn't even get sad about it. Story of his life,really.
"Thanks for the tip," he said. "What if I assure you that I'll come oneasy?"
She blushed. It had really been awkward for her, then. He feltbad. "Okay," she said. "Sure. Sorry, man --"
He held up a hand. "It's nothing."
He followed her back to the store and he bought a tin robot made out ofa Pepsi can by some artisan in Vietnam who'd endowed it with huge tintesticles. It made him laugh. When he got home, he scanned and filed thereceipt, took a picture, and entered it into The Inventory, and by thetime he was done, he was feeling much better.
#
They got into Kurt's car at five p.m., just as the sun was beginning toset. The sun hung on the horizon, *right* at eye level, for an eternity,slicing up their eyeballs and into their brains.
"Summer's coming on," Alan said.
"And we've barely got the Market covered," Kurt said. "At this rate,it'll take ten years to cover the whole city."
Alan shrugged. "It's the journey, dude, not the destination -- the actof organizing all these people, of putting up the APs, of advancing theart. It's all worthwhile in and of itself."
Kurt shook his head. "You want to eat Vietnamese?"
"Sure," Alan said.
"I know a place," he said, and nudged the car through traffic and on tothe Don Valley Parkway.
"Where the hell are we *going*?" Alan said, once they'd left the citylimits and entered the curved, identical cookie-cutter streets of theindustrial suburbs in the north end.
"Place I know," Kurt said. "It's really cheap and really good. All thePeel Region cops eat there." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, I wasgoing to tell you about the cop," he said.
"You were," Alan said.
"So, one night I'd been diving there." Kurt pointed to an anonymouslow-slung, sprawling brown building. "They print hockey cards, baseballcards, monster cards -- you name it."
He sipped at his donut-store coffee and then rolled down the window andspat it out. "Shit, that was last night's coffee," he said. "So, onenight I was diving there, and I found, I dunno, fifty, a hundred boxesof hockey cards. Slightly dented at the corners, in the trash. I mean,hockey cards are just *paper*, right? The only thing that makes themvaluable is the companies infusing them with marketing juju and glossypictures of mullet-head, no-tooth jocks."
"Tell me how you really feel," Alan said.
"Sorry," Kurt said. "The hockey players in junior high were realjerks. I'm mentally scarred.
"So I'm driving away and the law pulls me over. The local cops, theyknow me, mostly, 'cause I phone in B&Es when I spot them, but these guyshad never met me before. So they get me out of the car and I explainwhat I
was doing, and I quote the part of the Trespass to Property Actthat says that I'm allowed to do what I'm doing, and then I open thetrunk and I show him, and he busts a *nut*: 'You mean you found these inthe *garbage?* My kid spends a fortune on these things! In the*garbage*?' He keeps saying, 'In the garbage?' and