“Oh, this and, uh…”
“Good stuff?” I asked, knowing damned well it wasn’t. My life didn’t work like that.
“Well, you know.…”
Crap.
Chapter Fourteen
The table and the glass and the freaking flowers should have clued me in, I thought sourly. “What?”
“See, you’re already mad. I knew that was gonna happen,” Ray complained.
“Then why bring it up?”
“’Cause I don’t have a choice. We have to talk. But I’m not good at it and I don’t want to piss you off, ’cause you’re already looking a little…tense. So this probably isn’t the right time, but if I don’t get to it soon, someone else will and that could be bad depending on who we’re talking about—”
“Pencil,” I said, as distinctly as I could, which apparently wasn’t distinct enough.
“What?”
“Pen. Cil.”
“Oh. I don’t—wait. I got a pen,” he said, pulling one out of his jacket.
I took it and wrote SHUT UP on the tablecloth.
“Oh, well, that’s nice,” he said, twisting his head around to look at it. “Pen don’t come out, you know, and that was one of the last decent tablecloths you guys had. And anyway, I just told you, I can’t. I gotta figure out how to start this, and you’re not helping with the shut ups. I know you’re probably tired, but there’s some stuff you need to know and—what’s that?”
He twisted his head some more to look at my latest doodle.
“Is that a butt? Are you calling me a butthead? Because that’s great; that’s real mature. I’m trying to be serious here and you’re—”
“Portal,” I said, around a mouthful of roll.
“What?”
I swallowed. “It’s a portal, damn it.”
“That’s a portal?” He squinted. “Then why does it have that crack up the middle?”
“That’s a person. Coming through.”
“A person?” He transferred the squint from the doodle to me. “Where’s the head? Where’s the legs? I think you’re shitting with—”
“It’s abstract!”
“Yeah. You know who does abstract art? People who can’t draw, that’s who.”
Ray, I decided, really did have the devil’s own luck, because I needed the fork too much to stab him through the eye with it. “Tell me about the hacking Cheung wants you to do,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah, well, that’s…yeah. I guess that could work,” he said. “We can start with that.”
“Start?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“So okay. You know about portals, right? Like how when you open ’em you get that big whoosh of power?”
I shrugged and went back to eating.