"Was it that bad today?"
"Not bad, just weird," he said. "Don't worry about it. There were a couple of minutes that I just felt like quitting, but what can you expect? I haven't worked for anybody but myself in so long now, of course I felt rebellious and frustrated." He took a bite, but she didn't say anything. "And then coming home and having Stevie so mad at me-and I thought, He's right. I should have been home. I should never have taken this job, we.
should pack up whatever we can fit in the car and drive back to Indiana or back to your parents' place and I should sit down in the basement and teach myself to program the stupid Commodore 64 and somewhere between here and bankruptcy maybe I'll come up with a hot game and we'll be rolling in undeserved money again, like we were a year ago."
"That wasn't undeserved money," she said.
"Oh, you know what I mean," he said.
"If you want to quit, then do it," she said. "If we have to move, then we'll move."
"No," he said. "You think I haven't thought it through? We can't afford another moving van, we don't even have enough cash to get through the month, let alone get to another state. All of our credit cards are to the hilt.
We've got no choice unless we want to go be street people. or something. I go back to work tomorrow, and Stevie goes back to school, and if he hates me for not being there, then that's just one more part of being a father" He laughed bitterly. "Sons are supposed to hate their fathers. It just isn't sup posed to start so young."
"He doesn't hate you," said DeAnne. "He was just- frustrated."
"Call Dr. Mariner before it gets any later."
She looked up the number and called. It was well after nine o'clock, and she might have gotten the principal out of bed, but Dr. Mariner was a southern lady, so she denied that she had been inconvenienced at all, and as DeAnne told her of Stevie's problems that day at school, Dr. Mariner clucked in sympathy. "I'll tell you what," she said. "Tomorrow I'll keep Stevie in my office, to take some tests that we need him to take anyway.
Placement tests, to see if he should be in our gifted program-his records from that school in Indiana were quite impressive, you know. And while he's taking those tests, I'll talk with Mrs. Jones. And either we'll change his assignment, or Mrs. Jones will make sure that things go more smoothly in the old class. How will that be?"
"You're wonderful, Dr. Mariner," DeAnne said, trying not to gush in her gratitude. "Thank you."
"All in a day's work, Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you for calling. Good night."
"Good night."
DeAnne hung up the telephone and slumped into a chair.
"Good news, I take it," said Step.
"She's going to keep him out of class, taking placement tests," said DeAnne. "And then either reassign him or work things out so it'll go better in Mrs. Jones's class."
"Well, see? You were right. Calling her tonight was exactly the right thing. That's why I chose you to be the mother of my kids, because you're a thousand times smarter than I'd ever be."
"It's not that I wanted to send him to school tomorrow, Step."
"I know."
"I wanted to keep him home."
"I know, Fish Lady. You have a heart so soft that you'd die of terminal compassion if you ever let it get out of control."
"Now you're making fun of me."
"You're a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother and now you better go tell Stevie the good news so he won't get an ulcer before morning."
"Come with me," said DeAnne.
"He doesn't want to see me."
"Step, don't be as petulant as he was."
"What about my sandwich?"
"Let it dry out. I'll poach you those eggs."
"I ate two candy bars at work, it's not like I need dinner," he said as he followed her down the ha ll to the boys' room. "I'm going to get fat working there. There's a candy machine right around the corner from my office. Twenty steps and I have a Three Musketeers in my mouth."
"Well, don't do it," said DeAnne. "You worked too hard to get down to this weight."
Stevie was still awake, of course. DeAnne explained what Dr. Mariner had suggested. "Isn't that wonderful?"
Stevie nodded.
"She really is a good principal, Stevie. So you remember, you do have at least one friend at school already."
He nodded again. Then, glancing at his father, he reached out and put his hand behind her neck, to draw her close, so he could whisper in her ear. "You didn't tell Dad that I cried, did you?"
She almost told him that Step had wanted to keep him home from school; but they had decided years ago that they would never hint at disagreement between them on decisions dealing with the children, so that they'd never get the idea that they could play one parent off against the other. So instead she just shook her head. "But even if he guessed it," she whispered, "that's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I know," he said softly. "But don't tell." He lay back down and she tucked him in again and turned off the light.
"Leave the hall light on!" said Robbie loudly.
"Are you still awake, Road Bug?" asked Step.
"Don't nobody go to school tomorrow," said Robbie. "Not Stevie and not you either, Dad!"
"Don't I wish," said Step. He left the hall light on.
5: Hacker Snack
Here is how Step's days were spent: Most days he drove to work, leaving the car for DeAnne only when she knew she was going to need it for shopping. He would rather have left it all the time, but he was never sure when he'd be coming home, and it was hard to carpool with such an uncertain schedule.
He always began the workday by drifting into the programmers' pit, a large room with even more computers than Gallowglass's office. Most of the machines were already up and running, usually with lines and lines of assembly language on the screen, though sometimes there was a screen filled with the faded-looking colors of the 64. As he moved from machine to machine, the programmers would point out what they were doing, and sometimes they'd have a problem and Step would pull up a chair beside them and help spot the flaw in the code or find some simple, elegant solution. Step usually felt inadequate at this, because all the programmers knew the workings of the 64 better than he did and quite often he had to ask, What are you getting from this register? Or, What does it mean to store that value in that location? And they'd kind of laugh and say That's the current location of the character set, or, That's the wave- form for the sound, and the tone of their voices always suggested that everybody knew that.
But the truth is that while they knew the 64, Step had a gift for code and he knew it and they knew it. He could look at a routine for a few minutes and then rewrite it to cut the amount of memory it used in half, or make it run twice as fast, or make it smoother and more responsive on the screen. Back when he'd been working alone on programming, he thought of himself as a clumsy amateur, and he was always vaguely ashamed of his code. But now he realized that he was pretty good after all, or at least good enough to be better than the caliber of programmer that Eight Bits Inc. was able to attract.
Still, it wasn't too smart for him to keep thinking of himself as a programmer. Because whenever Dicky poked his head into the pit, Step had to drop back into manual-writer mode, asking questions of the programmer he was with about how the game worked. As often as not, he was asking about the very things he had just shown the programmer how to do, and as soon as Dicky left, the others in the room would erupt in silent laughter. But Step didn't think it was funny. It made Step feel dirty and cheap, to be playing a continuous trick on Dicky like that. And so many people knew about it he could not believe it was possible that Dicky would never find out. In fact, he suspected that Dicky already knew. Yet he dared not test the hypothesis, because what if he was wrong? So Step kept up the charade.