Vaporware by Richard Dansky Page B

assets.”
    “We
are?” Terry’s face lit up with hope. “Are they staying on the network?”
    I
thought about it for a minute and took a couple of steps toward the door.
Coincidentally, this took me a couple of steps closer to the still-seated
Terry. “I don’t know. Eric didn’t tell me how we’re going to handle things,
though I think we might just back up the database and pull it off Perforce. But
BlackStone isn’t taking the assets. So who knows? Maybe someday we’ll be able
to resurrect the game and do it properly.”
    He
nodded, a little too eagerly, and uncoiled from the chair in a cloud of knees
and elbows. “That would be great,” he said. “If we could work on it again some
day. Thanks for your time, Ryan. I really appreciate it.” He grabbed my hand,
shook it, stood, then shook my hand again and walked off with a particularly
energetic, stiff-legged gait. Just watching him go made me nervous. It reminded
me of water striders and Daddy Longlegs and things that live under the bed when
you’re six years old.
    A
ping from my system told me that it had finally finished shutting down. There
was no reason to stay in the building, not any longer. I might have given Terry
the party line, or at least some of it, but there was still a lot of thinking I
had to do for myself.
    The
lights in my office suddenly seemed much too bright. I turned them off and
left.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
     
     
     
    I'd
made it almost halfway to my car when my iPhone started blowing up with text
messages. A quick look told me they were all from Leon, and all variations on
the theme of MAN WHERE R U?
    GOING
HOME, I texted back, and made it maybe ten feet further toward my car before
the response hit. “WRONG ANSWER. EVERYONE @ MONTAGUES. WAITING ON YOU.” Then, a
second later, “RUNNING OUT THAT FRUITY BELGIAN CRAP YOU LIKE. HURRY.”
    In
spite of myself, I laughed, then sent back a response. “NO THX—MICHELLE.” It
zipped into the ether with a ping, and I crossed the rest of the distance to my
car.
    It
was silver (mostly) and looked new (mostly), at least until you peeked inside
and saw the impressive amount of crap strewn around the back seat. Fast food
wrappers, abandoned electronics packaging, unopened mail, dog-eared books, and
more rattled around back there, accurately reflecting my state of mind most
days.
    The
phone rang as I was swinging myself inside. “You’re kidding, right? Nobody uses
phones to actually talk anymore, Leon.”
    He
snorted. In the background, I could hear yelling and the clatter of glasses,
overlaid with a thin coat of jukebox George Thorogood. “You text too slow.
Shelly said just call you and end the drama.”
    I
shut the door and pulled my seat belt on. “You seriously think I’m going to
swing by so Shelly can take another swing at me?”
    He
laughed. “You asked for that one, Ryan. But if you apologize real nice, I think
she might let you buy her a beer and tell her you’re sorry.”
    “I’m
not supposed to be buying my ex-girlfriend beers, Leon,” I said, hitting the
ignition button. “Or had you forgotten that?”
    I
could almost hear him shrug. “Details. Just get over here, all right? I’ll see
you when you get arrive.”
    “Sarah—”
I started, but he cut me off.
     “She
knows. I called her and told her you needed to get pissed, and she gave her
blessing after I promised I’d get you a ride home.” He paused. “You got a smart
woman, bro. Now come on over to the ‘gue, get stupid, and get it all out of
your system before you go do anything stupid. No argument.”
    He
cut the connection before I could protest, and I flipped the phone onto the
passenger seat. I thought about it and decided that if Sarah was good with it,
I’d better be good with it, too. Besides, Leon was right—better to talk things
through with people and maybe come to an informed, reasonable decision before
talking to Sarah about the future.
    None
of the other folks walking across the