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 this interaction, like he understood what was going on. He'd carefully rehearsed 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 harder when he told her to talk to him about the rental records. Because she was shy? Natalie wasn't shy. Because -- "I'll do it," she said. "Sorry. I was being stupid. It's just -- you come on a little strong sometimes. My boss, I get the feeling that he doesn'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 on easy?" She blushed. It had really been awkward for her, then. He felt bad. "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 of a Pepsi can by some artisan in Vietnam who'd endowed it with huge tin testicles. It made him laugh. When he got home, he scanned and filed the receipt, took a picture, and entered it into The Inventory, and by the time he was done, he was feeling much better. # They got into Kurt's car at five p.m., just as the sun was beginning to set. 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 act of organizing all these people, of putting up the APs, of advancing the art. 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 to the Don Valley Parkway. "Where the hell are we *going*?" Alan said, once they'd left the city limits and entered the curved, identical cookie-cutter streets of the industrial suburbs in the north end. "Place I know," Kurt said. "It's really cheap and really good. All the Peel Region cops eat there." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, I was going to tell you about the cop," he said. "You were," Alan said. "So, one night I'd been diving there." Kurt pointed to an anonymous low-slung, sprawling brown building. "They print hockey cards, baseball cards, monster cards -- you name it."