Perry went down in a crouch before him. There was something funny about his eye, the whole side of his head. He smelled a little sweaty and a little gamy, but the face was the one Lester knew so well. Perry held out his strong, leathery hands, and after a moment, Lester grasped them and let Perry drag him to his feet. They stood facing one another for an uncomfortable moment, hands clasped together. Then Perry flung his arms wide and shouted, "Here I am!" Lester laughed and embraced his old friend, not seen or heard from these last 15 years. # Lester's workshop had a sofa where he entertained visitors and took his afternoon nap. Normally, he'd use his cane to cross from his workbench to the sofa, but seeing Perry threw him for such a loop that he completely forgot until he was a pace or two away from it and then he found himself flailing for support as his hips started to give way. Perry caught him under the shoulders and propped him up. Lester felt a rush of shame color his cheeks. "Steady there, cowboy," Perry said. "Sorry, sorry," Lester muttered. Perry lowered him to the sofa, then looked around. "You got anything to drink? Water? I didn't really expect the bus would take as long as it did." "You're taking the bus around Burbank?" Lester said. "Christ, Perry, this is Los Angeles. Even homeless people drive cars." Perry looked away and shook his head. "The bus is cheaper." Lester pursed his lips. "You got anything to drink?" "In the fridge," Lester said, pointing to a set of nested clay pot evaporative coolers. Perry grinned at the jury-rigged cooler and rummaged around in its mouth for a while. "Anything, you know, buzzy? Guarana? Caffeine, even?" Lester gave an apologetic shrug. "Not me, not anymore. Nothing goes into my body without oversight by a team of very expensive nutritionists." "You don't look so bad," Perry said. "Maybe a little skinny --" Lester cut him off. "Not bad like the people you see on TV, huh? Not bad like the dying ones." The fatkins had overwhelmed the nation's hospitals in successive waves of sickened disintegrating skeletons whose brittle bones and ruined joints had outstripped anyone's ability to cope with them. The only thing that kept the crisis from boiling over entirely was the fast mortality that followed on the first symptoms -- difficulty digesting, persistent stiffness. Once you couldn't keep down high-calorie slurry, you just starved to death. "Not like them," Perry agreed. He had a bit of limp, Lester saw, and his old broken arm hung slightly stiff at his side. "I'm doing OK," Lester said. "You wouldn't believe the medical bills, of course." "Don't let Freddy know you've got the sickness," Perry said. "He'd love that story -- 'fatkins pioneer pays the price --'" "Freddy! Man, I haven't thought of that shitheel in -- Christ, a decade, at least. Is he still alive?"