Tjan sent him email all the time telling him about this group or that, where he was supposed to go and give a talk, but he'd never seen a calendar. But who had time to look at the website anymore? "I suppose. I knew I was supposed to get on a plane again in a couple weeks." "So that's what a leader is -- someone who gets people mobilized and moving." "I met a girl in Madison, Wisconsin, you'd probably get along with." Thinking of Hilda made him smile and feel a little horny, a little wistful. He hadn't gotten fucked in mind and body like that since his twenties. "Maybe I'll meet her. Is she working on a local ride?" "You're going to go to the other rides?" "I got to write about something, Perry. Otherwise my pageviews fall off and I can't pay my rent. This is a story -- a big one, and no one else has noticed it yet. That kind of story can turn into the kind of money you buy a house with. I'm speaking from experience here." "You think?" She put her hand over her heart. "I'm good at spotting these. Man, you've got a cult on your hands here." "What?" "The story people. I've been reading the message boards and blogs. It's where I get all my best tips." Perry shook his head. Everyone else was more on top of this stuff than him. He was going to have to spend less time hacking the ride and more time reading the interweb, clearly. "It was all Lester's idea, anyway," he said. She looked down with an unreadable expression. He hazarded a guess as to what that was about. "Things are getting tight between you two, huh?" "Christ it doesn't show that much does it?" "No," he lied. "I just know Lester is all." "He's something else," she said. Suzanne needed some sundries, so he directed her to a little bodega in the back room of one of the houses. He told her he'd meet her at the guesthouse and took a seat in the lobby. He was still beat from the cold and the jet-lag, the work and the sheer exhaustion. On the road he'd had momentum dragging him from one thing to the next, flights to catch, speeches to make. Back at home, confronted with routine, it was like his inertia was disappearing. Eva Kettlewell thundered down the stairs three at a time with a sound like a barely controlled fall, burst into the lobby and headed for the door, her back rigid, her arms swinging, her face a picture of rage. She went out the door like a flash and then stood in the street for a moment before striking out, seemingly at random. Uh-oh, Perry thought. # Sammy didn't dare go back to the ride for weeks after the debacle in Boston. He'd been spotted by the Chinese guy and the bummy-looking guy who said he'd designed the ride, that much was sure. They probably suspected him of having sabotaged the Boston ride. But he couldn't stay away. Work was dismal. The other execs at Disney World were all amazingly petty, and always worse before the quarterly numbers came out. Management liked to chase any kind of bad numbers with a few ritual beheadings.