ing the
cinderblocks that hold its apron down and giving it the shoulder. I could dump
rattling handfuls of gravel down its maw and wake the psychotics below.

I could, but I won't. Maybe I don't want to go back just yet.

They cooked it up between them. The Jersey customers, Fede, and Linda. I should
have known better.

When I landed at Logan, I was full of beans, ready to design and implement my
war-driving scheme for the Jersey customers and advance the glorious cause of
the Eastern Standard Tribe. I gleefully hopped up and down the coast, chilling
in Manhattan for a day or two, hanging out with Gran in Toronto.

That Linda followed me out made it all even better. We rented cars and drove
them from city to city, dropping them off at the city limits and switching to
top-grade EST public transit, eating top-grade EST pizza, heads turning to
follow the impeccably dressed, buff couples that strolled the
pedestrian-friendly streets arm in arm. We sat on stoops in Brooklyn with old
ladies who talked softly in the gloaming of the pollution-tinged sunsets while
their grandchildren chased each other down the street. We joined a pickup game
of street-hockey in Boston, yelling "Car!" and clearing the net every time a
fartmobile turned into the cul-de-sac.

We played like kids. I got commed during working hours and my evenings were
blissfully devoid of buzzes, beeps and alerts. It surprised the hell out of me
when I discovered Fede's treachery and Linda's complicity and found myself
flying cattle class to London to kick Fede's ass. What an idiot I am.

I have never won an argument with Fede. I thought I had that time, of course,
but I should have known better. I was hardly back in Boston for a day before the
men with the white coats came to take me away.

They showed up at the Novotel, soothing and grim, and opened my room's keycard
reader with a mental-hygiene override. There were four of them, wiry and fast
with the no-nonsense manner of men who have been unexpectedly hammered by
outwardly calm psychopaths. That I was harmlessly having a rare cigarette on the
balcony, dripping from the shower, made no impression on them. They dropped
their faceplates, moved quickly to the balcony and boxed me in.

One of them recited a Miranda-esque litany that ended with "Do you understand."
It wasn't really a question, but I answered anyway. "No! No I don't! Who the
hell are you, and what are you doing in my fucking hotel room?"

In m