That hot dog turned out to be supper. Contrary to any reasonable expectations, Ray didn't allow his people to have a supper break from duty in the booth. He, of course, with Dicky in tow, went to a fancy restaurant dinner for several of Eight Bits Inc.'s distributors, but that was business, as Ray patiently explained to Step-the eating part of it was merely incidental. And there'd be plenty of time to have supper at the hotel coffee shop after the show closed down for the night.
By the time they were through at the booth they were both too tired to hang out at the coffee shop long enough for a meal, and besides, the meals were not charged to the room-Step would have to pay cash and then turn in his receipts back in Steuben for a reimbursement. It seemed like a churlish limitation, but he was getting a pretty good idea by now of how Ray Keene was able to live so high off the earnings of, really, one best-selling program. Glass didn't mind skipping supper, either. He had apparently cleaned all the salted nut rolls out of the candy machine at work, so he had plenty to eat in the room. Step decided that he didn't like salted nut rolls, and said so, and thus could not eat any without shaming himself. It was a way of keeping himself from gaining any more weight than he had to on this trip.
When Glass went into the bathroom, Step got on the phone and called home--collect, since Eight Bits Inc.
had arranged for all the phones to be blocked against long-distance calls charged to the room. DeAnne sounded tired- it was well after midnight in North Carolina, but Step knew she wouldn't sleep, or at least wouldn't sleep well, until he called. "Sorry I didn't call before," he said. "The y didn't exactly give me time."
"That's OK," she said. "I wanted to hear your voice tonight anyway. I miss you."
"I've only been gone twelve hours," he said. "I work longer days than that half the time."
"I know," she said. "Why d'you think I miss you?" Then she seemed to force herself to wake up a little more. "Talk to any other companies today?"
"They have me sharing a room with Glass here."
"Glass? Oh, the wizard kid."
"Actually, he's a combination knight and thief."
"What?"
"Nothing, he's just into Dungeons and Dragons and that's his character, a knight who's also a thief."
"Real Round Table material," she said.
"And he's-what was it?-chaotic but good."
"Ah, to be young again," she said. "Still, even if you can't talk out loud, you can answer my questions. Did you talk to any other companies about Hacker Snack?"
"Nope," he said.
"Too busy?"
"Yep," he said.
"What about tomorrow?"
"Same thing, probably."
"Oh no!"
"It'll happen somehow or other," he said. Though he was not at all sure he could bring it off. "How are things with the kids?"
"Fine," she said. "Call me tomorrow, OK? And I'm sorry you have to share a room. I know how you hate having a roommate."
"There's one exception," he said.
"Yes, but you hated having me for a roommate at first."
"Not after you finally stopped leaving shoes out in the middle of every room in the house."
"Now that you're away I've taken every pair I own and spread them all over, just to celebrate."
"Ah, the cat's away."
"This mouse does all her best playing when you're here," she said, in a cuddly voice that made him both horny and resentful at the same time. If she could act sexy after midnight when he was away, why couldn't she ever bring it off when he was home? He quelled the thought at once.
"How's the baby?" he asked.
"No kicks since that first one, but he sloshes a little now and then."
"Come on, you can't really feel that."
"Can so."
"So he's a swimmer?"
"I can wait awhile for the kicking, to tell the truth. Elizabeth nearly broke my ribs from the inside."
"Well, get your sleep now," he said.
"I know, it's long distance, but I miss you," she said.
"Love you, Fish Lady," said Step.
"Love you, Junk Man," said DeAnne.
"You hang up first," he said.
"No, you," she said.
When they were younger, just courting, that game could go on for a long time-a hundred and fifty dollars worth, in fact, the summer that she went to San Francisco to work while he was still getting his master's at the Y. Wiped out what little he had saved from the fellowship job, writing papers that went out under a full professor's name with not a single improvement from the old coot and not a speck of credit for Step, since he wasn't even ,a doctoral candidate yet. But even with no money, Step cadged twenty bucks from his folks and drove out and picked her up from the friend's house where she'd been staying in Orinda, and took her to meet his aunt and uncle in San Mateo, and then drove her home. It was on that drive home to Utah that he had proposed to her. And she had said thank you, let me think about it. Four and a half months of thinking- it was two days before New Year's when she said yes. A miracle they ever got married. But his mom was sure it was a marriage planned by God. "God never said he'd make life easy," Mom always said.
But they weren't kids anymore, and the game couldn't go on. He would have to hang up first, even though he knew that it hurt her feelings a little bit that he was always the one who could hang up first. I wouldn't be, he told her once, if you'd just hang up for once. But she couldn't do that either, apparently.
He hung up.
"Fish Lady?" asked Glass.
Step could not believe he would be rude enough to admit so openly that he had been listening.
"Oh," said Step, "was I talking that loud? I hoped I'd be quiet enough that you wouldn't be forced to hear what I was saying."
"Naw," said Glass, oblivious to the implied rebuke. So much for the Miss Manners method.
"Give me a salted nut roll," said Step.
"I thought you hated them," said Glass.
Oh, yes, thought Step. I'm not eating them. "Yeah, I didn't want to eat it, I wanted to break it into pieces and jam them into every aperture of your body."
"Kinky," said Glass.
"If you don't listen in to my phone calls, I won't listen in to yours."
"But that's hardly fair," said Glass. "I don't have anybody to call."
"Not your mom?"
"Dad would never let her accept the charges."
"I thought you made more money than God."
"But God doesn't own the credit card companies," said Glass. "No sweat, Mom knows I'm OK. How are the kids?"
"Fine," said Step.
"Must be tough on the two of you, having three kids and all that."
"Sometimes," said Step.
"You need some time together," said Glass.
"Marriage counseling now?"
"Everybody does."
"Your mom and dad?"
"Sure. She needs to have a chance to cry over his grave for an hour on Sundays." Glass grinned at Step's look of embarrassment. "A joke, son, a joke."
"Son?"
"OK, then, Dad. I really meant my offer to tend for you so you two can have some time together."
"I know you did."
"Yeah, but you blew it off," said Glass. "I know you did, and I want you to know I mean it. I love kids, I get along great with kids. I never had any younger brothers or sisters, and so I really like to take care of them now. Never had a baby in the house-but don't get me wrong, I'm real good with babies. I've tended a lot. There was this neighbor family I watched their kids all the time when I was a kid myself- not that I'm, like, grown up or anything now. But you know what I mean."
"Yeah," said Step. What he was thinking was, Am I going to sleep in my clothes on the top of the bed? Or try to undress real fast and hope Glass doesn't notice my underwear. That wasn't too likely-Glass was apparently in a mood to notice everything. And he'd ask, and there'd be a long conversation, and it made Step tired to think about it. Besides, Glass must have known what they were doing with Hacker Snack. He must have provided the other programmers with a copy of his commented disassembly of Step's Atari code for the program, as a basis for their work. So it wasn't as if Step could trust him.