Lester got up and went to find Kettlewell and Tjan and Suzanne -- oh, especially Suzanne -- again. He didn't think for one second that Death would have invented that. In fact, it was just the sort of brave thing that the gutsy little kid might have had the balls to report on. Every step he took, he saw that ruin of a face, the compound fracture, the luminous blood around his groin. He made it halfway to the guesthouse before he found himself leaning against a shanty, throwing up. Tears and bile streaming down his face, chest heaving, Lester decided that this wasn't about fun anymore. Lester came to understand what it meant to be responsible for people's lives. When he stood up and wiped his face on the tail of his tight, glittering shirt, he was a different person. # Sweating in the suffocating afternoon heat, his re-casted arm on fire, Hilda had shown him the article about Death Waits while they were being screened for their connection at O'Hare. The TSA guy was swabbing his cast with a black-powder residue detector, and as Perry read it, he let out an involuntary yelp and a jump that sent him back for a full round of tertiary screening. No date with Dr. Jellyfinger, though it was a close thing. Hilda was deep in her own phone, probing ferociously at it, occasionally picking it up and talking into it, then poking at it some more. Neither of them looked out the windows much, though in his mind, Perry had rehearsed this homecoming as a kind of tour of his territory, picking out which absurd landmarks he'd point out, which funny stories he'd tell, pausing to nuzzle Hilda's throat. But by the time he'd absorbed the mailing-list traffic and done a couple phoners with the people back in Madison -- particularly Ernie, who was freaking about Death Waits and calling for tight physical security for all their people -- they were pulling in at the ride. The cabbie, a Turk, wasn't very cool about the neighborhood, and he kept slowing down on the side of the road and offering to let them out there, and Perry kept insisting that he take them all the way. "No, you can't just drop me here, man. For the tenth time, I've got a fucking *cast* on my *broken arm*. I'm not carrying my suitcase a mile from here. I live there. It's safe. God, it's not like I'm asking you to take me to a war-zone." He didn't want to tip the guy, but he did. The cabbie was just trying to play it safe. Lots of people tried to play it safe. It didn't make them assholes, even if it did make them ineffectual and useless. While Perry tipped him, Hilda pulled the suitcase out of the cab's trunk and she'd barely had time to shut the lid when the driver roared off like he was trying to outrun a sniper. Perry grimaced. This was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. He was supposed to be showing off his toys, all he'd wrought, to this girl. The town was all around them and they were about to charge in without even pausing to consider its Dr Seuss wonderment.