Eastern Standard Tribe

something?

'Let's start over,' he said, grabbing both of her hands in his. 'I need to get my jacket from my office. You can come with me if you want to, and meet my friend Fede. Otherwise you can wait in the lobby, I won't be a minute.'

'Let's go meet Fede,' she said. 'I hope he wasn't expecting anything special, I'm not really dressed for it.'

He stifled a snotty remark. After all that, she was going to go and meet Fede? So what the hell were they arguing about? On the other hand, he'd gotten his way, hadn't he? He led her by the hand to his office, and beyond every doorway they passed was a V/DT Experience Designer pretending not to peek at them as they walked by, having heard every word through the tricky acoustics of O'Malley House.

'Fede,' he said, stiffly, 'This is Linda. Linda, this is Fede.'

Fede stood and treated Linda to his big, suave grin. Fede might be short and he might have paranoid delusions, but he was trim and well groomed, with the sort of finicky moustache that looked like a rotting caterpillar if you didn't trim it every morning. He liked to work out, and had a tight waist and a gut you could bounce a quarter off of, and liked to wear tight shirts that showed off his overall fitness, made him stand out among the spongy mouse-potatoes of the corporate world. Art had never given it much thought, but now, standing with Fede and Linda in his tiny office, breathing in Fede's Lilac Vegetal and Linda's new-car-smell shampoo, he felt paunchy and sloppy.

'Ah,' Fede said, taking her hand. 'The one you hit with your car. It's a pleasure. You seem to be recovering nicely, too.'

Linda smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, a few strands of her bobbed hair sticking to his moustache like cobwebs as she pulled away.

'It was just a love tap,' she said. 'I'll be fine.'

'Fede's from New York,' Art said. 'We colonials like to stick together around the office. And Linda's from Los Angeles.'

'Aren't there any, you know, British people in London?' Linda said, wrinkling her nose.

'There's Tonaishah,' Art said weakly.

'Who?' Fede said.

'The receptionist,' Linda said. 'Not a very nice person.'

'With the eyes?' Fede said, wriggling his fingers around his temples to indicate elaborate eye makeup.

'That's her,' Linda said.

'Nasty piece of work,' Fede said. 'Never trusted her.'

'You're not another UE person, are you?' Linda said, sizing Fede up and giving Art a playful elbow in the ribs.

'Who, me? Nah. I'm a management consultant. I work in Chelsea mostly, but when I come slumming in Piccadilly, I like to comandeer Art's office. He's not bad, for a UE-geek.'

'Not bad at all,' Linda said, slipping an arm around Art's waist, wrapping her fingers around the waistband of his trousers. 'Did you need to grab your jacket, honey?'

Art's jacket was hanging on the back of his office door, and to get at it, he had to crush himself against Linda and maneuver the door shut. He felt her breasts soft on his chest, felt her breath tickle his ear, and forgot all about their argument in the corridor.

'All right,' Art said, hooking his jacket over his shoulder with a finger, feeling flushed and fluttery. 'OK, let's go.'

'Lovely to have met you, Fede,' Linda said, taking his hand.

'And likewise,' Fede said.

15.

Vigorous sex ensued.

16.

Art rolled out of bed at dark o'clock in the morning, awakened by circadians and endorphins and bladder. He staggered to the toilet in the familiar gloom of his shabby little rooms, did his business, marveled at the tenderness of his privates, fumbled for the flush mechanism-'British' and 'Plumbing' being two completely opposite notions-and staggered back to bed. The screen of his comm, nestled on the end table, washed the room in liquid- crystal light. He'd tugged the sheets off of Linda when he got up, and there she was, chest rising and falling softly, body rumpled and sprawled after their gymnastics. It had been transcendent and messy, and the sheets were coarse with dried fluids.

He knelt on the bed and fussed with the covers some, trying for an equitable-if not chivalrously so-division of blankets. He bent forward to kiss at a bite-mark he'd left on her shoulder.

His back went 'pop.'

Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and unforgiving pop, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his groin, and he collapsed.

He barked with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn't known he could make, and the rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. 'What is it, hon?'

He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided, and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that the pain would return.

'It's my back,' he gasped.

'Whah? Your back?'

'I-I put it out. Haven't done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There're some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those.'

'Seriously?'

'Look, I'd get 'em myself, but I can't even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice this down now before it gets too inflamed.'

'How did it happen?'

'It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice.'

Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench. 'Thanks,' he said.

'What now? Should I call a doctor?'

'He'd just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I'll probably be like this for a week. Shit. Fede's going to kill me. I was supposed to go to Boston next Friday, too.'

'Boston? What for? For how long?'

Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn't meant to tell her about Boston yet-he and Fede hadn't worked out his cover story. 'Meetings,' he said. 'Two or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too. Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?'

'You're going to work now?'

'I'm just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants. There's a twenty-four- hour chemist's at Paddington Station that delivers.'