He turned and pulled the chair from under his desk and sat at his computer, his right foot toe down, behind him and to the side. He had to click three times before the mail popped up, the tremor in his hand was back worse than ever. Nothing meaningful in the inbox. He brought up his browser and checked his page at match dot com. Another wink from the fat chick in Encinida, a working girl that he went down to see every couple months. He felt bad. He thought about setting up a new profile, but he’d have to get another photo first, and he wanted to lose a few pounds, quit smoking. He closed the browser, exhaling through his nose. In the activity monitor at the side of his screen the bars were throbbing, the network was purring. Healthy. The status was all quo.

He looked up from his screen for a minute studying the corner of the wall and ceiling, his lips pursed, then leaned forward and brought up the ZDI mail server, navigated to the archives. What was in Dice’s inbox, he wondered… and what was in his outbox.

He sorted Dice’s mail by domain, looking for stanford.edu. Nothing under ‘s.’ He did a search for "Arthur," and found three emails from an ahoffman@cedric.stanford.edu… Two were jokes, lame jokes, and the other one was a note inviting Dice for Easter dinner. It will be a family-only affair, the note said, please don’t bring any of your ‘friends’. Spider’s chest felt very tight, it felt like there was air in his blood. This doesn’t make sense, there should be something here about the grant. Something, anything.

Spider licked his lips. He wanted that envelope in his hands, he wanted to count the money again. He was going to read all of Dice’s mail tonight, but right now he wanted to feel that money in his hands again. His system archived all the mail, regardless of what the recipients thought about deleting … if they got the mail, he would have a copy. But first he needed a smoke, and he needed to get the envelope out of his car. He looked up at the lights swirling cheerfully in the racks, then stood up and coughed, wiped his hand on his pants and left the room, closing the door gently so the latch wouldn’t catch.

The hall was dark, but he could see well enough by the light coming from under the door to the stair. He kept to one side, against the wall, moving with purpose, but not hurrying, his sneakers quiet on the smooth clean floor.

He took the stairs two at a time and he was a little out of breath when he opened the door to the parking lot, digging in his pocket for the cigarettes, for his lighter. The rain was back, a faint mist, the parking lot was wet and shiny, and the reflections of the lights on the overpass across the street made wavering orange stripes diagonally across it.

Over near the front gate he could see Hector in his little booth, silhouetted in the window, a black figure in the yellow light, leaned over a tiny flickering tv, endlessly watching Univision alone in the night. He lit the cigarette and coughed, hard, coughed again and spit, and began walking toward his car. He saw Hector stand and stretch, then move to the door of his booth. He hurried his pace and threw away the cigarette. As it hit the pavement, the embers were an orange splash and then were gone.

The big white tents set up in front of the hanger caught him by surprise when he got to the corner of the building. He should have noticed them on the way in. Tomorrow was the press conference, the IPO announcement. There were some long black trucks parked behind them, a tour bus, wheeled racks with a couple hundred white folding chairs on them. There was a raised dias draped in white in the center of the largest tent. One of the trucks was dieseling, loose bearings grinding. It bothered Spider that he hadn’t noticed them on his way in, sometimes he missed things. Little things, big things. Sometimes it could be so hard to tell the difference.

He reached his car before Hector was halfway across the lot, unlocked the door on the passenger side and reached under the seat for the envelope. When his fingers first touched it he was relieved, but as he felt the bulk of it in his hand the fear inside him lept up like a sudden shadow.

"Mister Spider, busy night, eh?" Spider twitched when he heard Hector. He looked around, his eyes wide, pushing the envelope into his pocket.

"What? Yeah, Hector. Busy." Spider’s mouth was dry.

"Is a big day tomorrow, eh?" Hector’s teeth were rimmed with gold wire. His black eyes were sad and friendly.

Spider smiled with his mouth and he nodded. His throat was dry. "Starting early, too, Hector. We’ll be starting before the sun comes up."

Hector stood there, grinning slightly, imperceptibly swaying on his feet. "How is your mother doing these days, señor?"

Spider looked at the ground. "She’s fine, Hector, she’s doing much better, thank you… How is Rosie?" Spider’s palms were itchy, and he sneaked his right hand inside his pocket and squeezed the thickness of the envelope in his fingers, then extended his fingers and laid them alongside the length of the envelope in his pocket, pressing it against his thigh.

Hector’s smile went away into the distance. "Doctor says we will know in two weeks. He says she is a strong girl, Mister Spider, a very strong little girl." Spider coughed and his mouth worked, but he would not interrupt Hector to spit. Hector’s eyes were inwards, though, and he said softly, "en las manos del dios, eh?" Spider nodded, his feet fidgeting. Spider knew that ZDI had paid to bring Hectors parents into the country two months ago when Rosie first got sick, to help with the family -- orders from the B -- but Hector didn’t know that Spider knew. Rosie had MS, just like his mother, and this made Hector feel he shared a special bond with Spider.

Spider looked at his watch."I guess we all are that," he said, wishing he thought it was true. "Hector, I have a lot to do tonight, I’ll see you before I leave."

"OK, Mister Spider, see you later, eh? You know where to find me." He laughed, it was their joke, he said it every time.

"I know where to look for you, Hector. I know where to look." His part of the catechism. Hector smelled of stale beer and something else.

Up above them on the wall inside their plastic domes, the security cameras whirred. Inside the server room upstairs the little lights were twinkling furiously. And across the parking lot the diesel of the caterer’s truck was steadily grinding it’s bearings to powder.



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