Chicken Little Read Online Free PDF Page B

there's no need to worry on that score.' And that was it. Couldn't think of anything to say. Didn't have time. Gone in a flash. Out the door. Limo. Nice babu to tell me how good it had been for the monster, how much he'd been looking forward to it." He struggled up onto his elbows. "How about you?"
    Leon didn't want to talk about Ria with Brautigan. He shrugged. Brautigan got a mean, stung look on his face. "Don't be like that. Bro. Dude. Pal."
    Leon shrugged again. Thing was, he liked Ria. Talking about her with Brautigan would be treating her like a... a sales-target . If he were talking with Carmela, he'd say, "I feel like she wants me to succeed. Like it would be a huge deal for everyone if I managed it. But I also feel like maybe she doesn't think I can." But to Brautigan, he merely shrugged, ignored the lizardy slit-eyed glare, stood, pulled on his pants, and went to his desk.
    ***
    If you sat at your desk long enough at Ate, you'd eventually meet everyone who worked there. Carmela knew all, told all, and assured him that everyone touched base at least once a month. Some came in a couple times a week. They had plants on their desks and liked to personally see to their watering.
    Leon took every single one of them to lunch. It wasn't easy -- in one case, he had to ask Carmela to send an Ate chauffeur to pick up the man's kids from school (it was a half-day) and bring them to the sitter's, just to clear the schedule. But the lunches themselves went very well. It turned out that the people at Ate were, to a one, incredibly interesting. Oh, they were all monsters, narcissistic, tantrum-prone geniuses, but once you got past that, you found yourself talking to people who were, at bottom, damned smart, with a whole lot going on. He met the woman who designed the moss in the Living Room. She was younger than him, and had been catapulted from a mediocre academic adventure at the Cooper Union into more wealth and freedom than she knew what to do with. She had a whole rolodex of people who wanted to sublicense the stuff, and she spent her days toying with them, seeing if they had any cool ideas she could incorporate into her next pitch to one of the lucky few who had the ear of a monster.
    Like Leon. That's why they all met with him. He'd unwittingly stepped into one of the agency's top spots, thanks to Ria, one of the power-broker seats that everyone else yearned to fill. The fact that he had no idea how he'd got there or what to do with it didn't surprise anyone. To a one, his colleagues at Ate regarded everything to do with the vat monsters as an absolute, unknowable crapshoot, as predictable as a meteor strike.
    No wonder they all stayed away from the office.
    ***
    Ria met him in a different pair of jeans, these ones worn and patched at the knees. She had on a loose, flowing silk shirt that was frayed around the seams, and had tied her hair back with a kerchief that had faded to a non-color that was like the ancient New York sidewalk outside Ate's office. He felt the calluses on her hand when they shook.
    "You look like you're ready to do some gardening," he said.
    "My shift at the club," she said. "I'll be trimming the lime trees and tending the mint patch and the cucumber frames all afternoon." She smiled and stopped him with a gesture. She bent down and plucked a blade of greenery from the untidy trail-edge. They were in Central Park, in one of the places where it felt like a primeval forest instead of an artful garden razed and built in the middle of the city. She uncapped her water bottle and poured water over the herb -- it looked like a blade of grass -- rubbing it between her forefinger and thumb to scrub at it. Then she tore it in two and handed him one piece, held the other to her nose, then ate it, nibbling and making her nose wrinkle like a rabbit's. He followed suit. Lemon, delicious and tangy.
    "Lemon grass," she said. "Terrible weed, of course. But doesn't it taste amazing?"
    He nodded. The flavor lingered in his