Eastern Standard Tribe Read Online Free PDF Page A

your phone again? Uh, I think you're going to have to dial for me."
    "That's OK. Give me the number."
    She did, and he cradled his comm to her head. He was close enough to her that he could hear the tinny, distinctive ringing of a namerican circuit at the other end. He heard her shallow breathing, heard her jaw creak. He smelled her shampoo, a free-polymer new-car smell, smelled a hint of her sweat. A cord stood out on her neck, merging in an elegant vee with her collarbone, an arrow pointing at the swell of her breast under her paper gown.
    "Toby, it's Linda."
    A munchkin voice chittered down the line.
    "Shut up, OK. Shut up. Shut. I'm in the hospital." More chipmunk. "Got hit by a car. I'll be OK. No. Shut up. I'll be fine. I'll send you the FAQs. I just wanted to say. . ." She heaved a sigh, closed her eyes. "You know what I wanted to say. Sorry, all right? Sorry it came to this. You'll be OK. I'll be OK. I just didn't want to leave you hanging." She sounded groggy, but there was a sob there, too. "I can't talk long. I'm on a shitload of dope. Yes, it's good dope. I'll call you later. I don't know when I'm coming back, but we'll sort it out there, all right? OK. Shut up. OK. You too."
    She looked up at Art. "My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Not sure who's leaving who at this point. Thanks." She closed her eyes. Her eyelids were mauve, a tracery of pink veins. She snored softly.
    Art set an alarm that would wake him up in time to meet his lawyer, folded up his comm and crawled back into bed. His circadians swelled and crashed against the sides of his skull, and before he knew it, he was out.
    6.
    Hospitals operate around the clock, but they still have their own circadians. The noontime staff were still overworked and harried but chipper and efficient, too, without the raccoon-eyed jitters of the night before. Art and Linda were efficiently fed, watered and evacuated, then left to their own devices, blinking in the weak English sunlight that streamed through the windows.
    "The lawyers've worked it out, I think," Art said.
    "Good. Good news." She was dopamine-heavy, her words lizard-slow. Art figured her temper was drugged senseless, and it gave him the courage to ask her the question that'd been on his mind since they'd met.
    "Can I ask you something? It may be offensive."
    "G'head. I may be offended."
    "Do you do. . .this. . .a lot? I mean, the insurance thing?"
    She snorted, then moaned. "It's the Los Angeles Lottery, dude. I haven't done it before, but I was starting to feel a little left out, to tell the truth."
    "I thought screenplays were the LA Lotto."
    "Naw. A good lotto is one you can win."
    She favored him with half a smile and he saw that she had a lopsided, left-hand dimple.
    "You're from LA, then?"
    "Got it in one. Orange County. I'm a third-generation failed actor. Grandpa once had a line in a Hitchcock film. Mom was the ditzy neighbor on a three-episode Fox sitcom in the 90s. I'm still waiting for my moment in the sun. You live here?"
    "For now. Since September. I'm from Toronto."
    "Canadia! Goddamn snowbacks. What are you doing in London?"
    His comm rang, giving him a moment to gather his cover story. "Hello?"
    "Art! It's Fede!" Federico was another provocateur in GMT. He wasn't exactly Art's superior -- the tribes didn't work like that -- but he had seniority.
    "Fede -- can I call you back?"
    "Look, I heard about your accident, and I wouldn't have called, but it's urgent."
    Art groaned and rolled his eyes in Linda's direction to let her know that he, too, was exasperated by the call, then retreated to the other side of his bed and hunched over.
    "What is it?"
    "We've been sniffed. I'm four-fifths positive."
    Art groaned again. Fede lived in perennial terror of being found out and exposed as an ESTribesman, fired, deported, humiliated. He was always at least three-fifths positive, and the extra fifth was hardly an anomaly. "What's up now?"
    "It's the VP of HR at Virgin/Deutsche Telekom. He's called me in for a