“Sue you?”
” Us. ~
“Huh,” said Creedmore, absorbing this. “You in an ugly place.”
“Maybe not,” said Rydell. “Matter of witnesses.”
“I hear you,” said Randy Shoats, “but I’d have to talk to my label, see what the lawyers say.”
“Your label,” said Rydell.
“That’s right.”
Their beer arrived, brown long necks. Rydell took a sip of his. “Is Creedmore on your label?”
“No,” said Randy Shoats.
Creedmore looked from Shoats to Rydell, back to Shoats. “All I did was poke him one, Randy. I didn’t know it had anything to do with our
– – deal.”
“It doesn’t,” said Shoats, “long as you’re able to go into the studio arid record.”
“Goddamn, Rydehl,” said Creedmore, “I don’t need you comin’ in here and fucking things up this way.”
Rydelh, who was fumbling under the table with his duffel, getting the fanny pack out and opening it, looked at Creedmore but didn’t say
anything. He felt the Kraton grips of the ceramic switchblade. “You boys excuse me,” Rydell said, “I’ve gotta find the can.” He stood up, with the ClobEx box under his arm and the knife in his pocket and went to ask
– – the waitress where the Men’s was. ~A~ALL TOMORROW S PARTIES 101 For the second time that day, he found himself seated in hut not using a toilet stall, this one considerably more odorous than the last. The plumbing out here was as makeshift as any he’d seen, with bundles of scummy-looking transparent tubing snaking everywhere, and NoCal NOT POTABLE stickers peeling off above the sink taps.
He took the knife out of his pocket and pressed the button, watching the black blade swing out and lock. Then he pressed it again, unlocking the blade, closed it, and opened it again. What was it about switchblades, he wondered, that made you do that? He figured that that was a big part of what made people want them in the first place, something psychological but dumb, monkey-brained.Actually they were kind of pointless, he thought, except in terms of simple convenience. Kids liked them because they looked dramatic, but if somebody saw you open one, then they knew you had a knife, and they’d either run or kick your ass or shoot you, depending on how they felt about it and how they happened to be armed. He supposed there could be very specific situations in which you could just click one open and stick somebody with it, but he didn’t think they’d be too frequent.
He had the GlobEx box across his lap. Gingerly, remembering how he’d cut himself back in LA, he used the tip of the blade to slit the gray tape. It went through the stuff like a wire through butter. When he got it to the point where he thought he’d be able to open it, he cautiously folded the knife and put it away. Then he lifted the lid.
At first he thought he was looking at a thermos bottle, one of those expensive brushed-stainless numbers, but as he lifted it out, the heft of it and the general fineness of manufacture told him it was something else.
He turned the thing over, finding an inset rectangular section with a cluster of micro-sockets, but nothing else except a slightly scuffed blue sticker that said FAMOUS ASPECT. He shook it. it neither sloshed nor rattled. Felt solid, and there was no visible lid or other way to open it. He wondered about something like that going through customs, how the GlobEx brokers could explain what it was, whatever that was, and not something full of some kind of contraband. He could think of a dozen 102 kinds of contraband you could stick in something this size and do pretty well if you got it here from Tokyo.
Maybe it did contain drugs, he thought, or something else, and he was being set up. Maybe they’d kick the stall’s door in any second and handcuff him for trafficking in proscnbed fetal tissue or something
He sat there. Nothing happened.
He lay the thing across his lap and searched through the fitted foam packing for any message, any clue, something that might explain what this was. But there was nothing, so he put the thing back in its box, exited the stall, washed his hands in non-potable bridge water, and left,