"What, now?" he said petulantly.

"No, I thought I'd wait until we got busy again," she said, not unkindly, and smiled at him. "I'll be back in ten," she said.

She came around the counter with her cigs in one hand and her lighter in the other. "Coffee?" she said.

"Absolutely," he said, and led her up the street.

"You liking the job?" he said.

"It's better now," she said. "I've been bringing home two or three movies every night and watching them, just to get to know the stock, and I put on different things in the store, the kind of thing I'd never have watched before. Old horror movies, tentacle p.o.r.n, c.r.a.ppy kung-fu epics. So now they all bow to me."

"That's great," Alan said. "And Kurt tells me you've been doing amazing work with him, too."

"Oh, that's just fun," she said. "I went along on a couple of dumpster runs with the gang. I found the most amazing cosmetics baskets at the Shiseido dumpster. Never would have thought that I'd go in for that girly stuff, but when you get it for free out of the trash, it feels pretty macha. Smell," she said, tilting her head and stretching her neck.

He sniffed cautiously. "Very macha," he said. He realized that the other patrons in the shop were eyeballing him, a middle-aged man, with his face buried in this alterna-girl's throat.

He remembered suddenly that he still hadn't put in a call to get her a job somewhere else, and was smitten with guilt. "Hey," he said. "d.a.m.n. I was supposed to call Tropical and see about getting you a job. I'll do it right away." He pulled a little steno pad out of his pocket and started jotting down a note to himself.

She put her hand out. "Oh, that's okay," she said. "I really like this job. I've been looking up all my old high school friends: You were right, everyone I ever knew has an account with Martian Signal. G.o.d, you should *see* the movies they rent."

"You keep that on file, huh?"

"Sure, everything. It's creepy."

"Do you need that much info?"

"Well, we need to know who took a tape out last if someone returns it and says that it's broken or recorded over or whatever --"

"So you need, what, the last couple months' worth of rentals?"

"Something like that. Maybe longer for the weirder tapes, they only get checked out once a year or so --"

"So maybe you keep the last two names a.s.sociated with each tape?"

"That'd work."

"You should do that."

She snorted and drank her coffee. "I don't have any say in it."

"Tell your boss," he said. "It's how good ideas happen in business -- people working at the cash register figure stuff out, and they tell their bosses."

"So I should just tell my boss that I think we should change our whole rental system because it's creepy?"

"d.a.m.ned right. Tell him it's creepy. You're keeping information you don't need to keep, and paying to store it. You're keeping information that cops or snoops or other people could take advantage of. And you're keeping information that your customers almost certainly a.s.sume you're not keeping. All of those are good reasons *not* to keep that information. Trust me on this one. Bosses love to hear suggestions from people who work for them. It shows that you're engaged, paying attention to their business."

"G.o.d, now I feel guilty for snooping."

"Well, maybe you don't mention to your boss that you've been spending a lot of time looking through rental histories."

She laughed. G.o.d, he liked working with young people. "So, why I'm here," he said.

"Yes?"

"I want to put an access point in the second-floor window and around back of the shop. Your boss owns the building, right?"

"Yeah, but I really don't think I can explain all this stuff to him --"

"I don't need you to -- I just need you to introduce me to him. I'll do all the explaining."

She blushed a little. "I don't know, Abe..." She trailed off.

"Is that a problem?"

"No. Yes. I don't know." She looked distressed.

Suddenly he was at sea. He'd felt like he was in charge of this interaction, like he understood what was going on. He'd carefully rehea.r.s.ed what he was going to say and what Natalie was likely to say, and now she was, what, afraid to introduce him to her boss? Because why?

Because the boss was an ogre? Then she would have pushed back harder when he told her to talk to him about the rental records. Because she was shy? Natalie wasn't shy. Because --

"I'll do it," she said. "Sorry. I was being stupid. It's just -- you come on a little strong sometimes. My boss, I get the feeling that he doesn't like it when people come on strong with him."

Ah, he thought. She was nervous because he was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned weird. Well, there you had it. He couldn't even get sad about it. Story of his life, really.

"Thanks for the tip," he said. "What if I a.s.sure you that I'll come on easy?"

She blushed. It had really been awkward for her, then. He felt bad. "Okay," she said. "Sure. Sorry, man --"

He held up a hand. "It's nothing."

He followed her back to the store and he bought a tin robot made out of a Pepsi can by some artisan in Vietnam who'd endowed it with huge tin t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. It made him laugh. When he got home, he scanned and filed the receipt, took a picture, and entered it into The Inventory, and by the time he was done, he was feeling much better.

They got into Kurt's car at five p.m., just as the sun was beginning to set. The sun hung on the horizon, *right* at eye level, for an eternity, slicing up their eyeb.a.l.l.s and into their brains.

"Summer's coming on," Alan said.

"And we've barely got the Market covered," Kurt said. "At this rate, it'll take ten years to cover the whole city."

Alan shrugged. "It's the journey, dude, not the destination -- the act of organizing all these people, of putting up the APs, of advancing the art. It's all worthwhile in and of itself."

Kurt shook his head. "You want to eat Vietnamese?"

"Sure," Alan said.

"I know a place," he said, and nudged the car through traffic and on to the Don Valley Parkway.