Perry shrugged. "Might be. I'd think that if he'd keeled over someone would have asked me to pitch in to charter a bus to go piss on his grave." Lester laughed hard, so hard he hurt his chest and had to sag back into the sofa, doing deep yoga breathing until his ribs felt better. Perry sat down opposite him on the sofa with a bottle of Lester's special thrice-distilled flat water in a torpedo-shaped bottle. "Suzanne?" he asked. "Good," Lester said. "Spends about half her time here and half on the road. Writing, still." "What's she on to now?" "Cooking, if you can believe it. Molecular gastronomy -- food hackers who use centrifuges to clarify their consomme. She says she's never eaten better. Last week it was some kid who'd written a genetic algorithm to evolve custom printable molecules that can bridge two unharmonius flavors to make them taste good together -- like, what do you need to add to chocolate and sardines to make them freakin' delicious?" "Is there such a molecule?" "Suzanne says there is. She said that they misted it into her face with a vaporizer while she ate a sardine on a slab of dark chocolate and it tasted better than anything she'd ever had before." "OK, that's just wrong," Perry said. The two of them were grinning at each other like fools. Lester couldn't believe how good it felt to be in the same room as Perry again after all these years. His old friend was much older than the last time they'd seen each other. There was a lot of grey in his short hair, and his hairline was a lot higher up his forehead. His knuckles were swollen and wrinkled, and his face had deep lines, making him look carved. He had the leathery skin of a roadside homeless person, and there were little scars all over his arms and a few on his throat. "How's Hilda?" Lester asked. Perry looked away. "That's a name I haven't heard in a while," he said. "Yowch. Sorry." "No, that's OK. I get email blasts from her every now and again. She's chipper and scrappy as always. Fighting the good fight. Fatkins stuff again -- same as when I met her. Funny how that fight never gets old." "Hardy har har," Lester said. "OK, we're even," Perry said. "One-one on the faux-pas master's tournament." They chatted about inconsequentialities for a while, stories about Lester's life as the closeted genius at Disney Labs, Perry's life on the road, getting itinerant and seasonal work at little micro-factories. "Don't they recognize you?" "Me? Naw, it's been a long time since I got recognized. I'm just the guy, you know, he's handy, keeps to himself. Probably going to be moving on soon. Good with money, always has a quiet suggestion for tweaking an idea to make it return a little higher on the investment." "That's you, all right. All except the 'keeps to himself' part." "A little older, a little wiser. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."