NEAL STEPHENSON

Even with ths backlighting, she can tell it is the man with the glass eye.

“What do you want?” she says.

“What I want,” he says, looking her up and down, “and what I need are different things. Right now I’m working, see, which means that what I want is not important. What I need is for you to get into this truck along with your skateboard and that suitcase.”

Then he adds, “Am I getting through to you?” He asks the question almost rhetorically, like he presumes the answer is no.

“He’s for real,” Jason says, as though Y.T. must be hanging on his opinion.

“Well, there you have it,” the man with the glass eye says. Y.T. is supposed to be on her way to a Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates franchise. If she screws up this delivery, that means she’s double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience.

She hands her stuff-the plank and the aluminum case-up to the man with the glass eye, then vaults up into the back of the semi, ignoring his proffered hand. He recoils, holds up his hand, looks at it to see if there’s something wrong with it. By the time her feet leave the ground, the truck is already moving. By the time the door is pulled shut behind her, they have already pulled onto the boulevard.

“Just gotta run a few tests on this delivery of yours,” the man with the glass eye says.

“Ever think of introducing yourself?” Y.T. says.

“Nah,” he says, “people always forget names. You can just think of me as that one guy, y’know?”

Y.T. is not really listening. She is checking out the inside of the truck.

The trailer of this rig consists of a single long skinny room. Y.T. has just come in through its only entrance. At this end of the room, a couple of Mafia guys are lounging around, the way they always do.

Most of the room is taken up by electronics. Big electronics.

“Going to just do some computer stuff, y’know,” he says, handing the briefcase over to a computer guy. Y.T. knows he’s a

170

Stephenson, Neal
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