![]() “Not going to have another one?” Peters asked, surprised. Justin finished the Bud, threw a twenty on the bar, and got up to leave. It was such a dirty look, it got through to Sean Peters. “No.” Justin stared down at the reflections of the ceiling lights on the polished bar. “You go around picking up high-school girls?” His hands shaped an hourglass in the air. Shaking his head, the bartender slid Justin a beer. That left him with a lot fewer lines and wrinkles than his buddies, who were both a couple of years younger than he. He also stayed out of the sun as much as he could, because he burned to a crisp when he didn’t. If he had any silver mixed with the gold, it didn’t show. And he’d been very blond since the day he was born. “Oh, shut up,” Justin muttered, and then, louder, to the bartender, “Yeah, I really turned forty this past spring.” He was slightly pudgy, but he’d been slightly pudgy since he was a toddler. “You were born in 1978? No way.” “His real name’s Dorian Gray,” Garth said helpfully. “Here.” The bartender looked at him, looked at his picture on the license, and looked at his birthdate. Sure as hell, the bartender said, “I’ll be right with you two gents”-he nodded to Justin’s coworkers-“but for you, sir, I’ll need some ID.” With another sigh, Justin produced his driver’s license. Peters ordered a gin and tonic, O’Connell a scotch on the rocks. “They’ve got a new fellow behind the bar.” He and Garth chuckled. The music took Justin back to the days when he’d been getting together with Megan, though he’d liked Blur better. An Oasis song was playing when the three software engineers walked into the Iron Curtain, and into air conditioning chillier than the office’s. smog wasn’t so bad as it had been when he was young, but it hadn’t disappeared. “It’s close, and you can hear yourself think-most of the time, anyhow.” They went out into the parking lot together, bitching when they stepped from air conditioning to San Fernando Valley August heat. ![]() “How’s the Iron Curtain sound?” Peters asked. He was from the same mold, except getting thin on top instead of going gray. He looked like a high-school linebacker who’d let most of his muscle go to flab since. He hadn’t come close to finding anybody else since. The marriage had lasted four years-four and a half, actually. Not much to see: the grayish-tan fuzzy walls of the cubicle and an astringently neat desktop that held the computer, a wedding photo of Megan and him, and a phone/fax. Justin got up, stretched, and looked around. Making that software idiotproof had put Superstrings on the map a few years after the turn of the century. Having grown up in the days when voice-recognition software was imperfectly reliable, he waited to make sure the machine followed orders. “Let me save what I’m working on first.” He told his computer to save his work as it stood, generate a backup, and shut itself off. Want a drink or two with me and Garth?” “Hang on,” Justin Kloster answered. “It’s twenty after six-quitting time and then some. “Hey, Justin!” Sean Peters’ voice floated over the top of the Superstrings, Ltd., cubicle wall. But if you choose not to listen to me, who’s going to know? I don’t recommend that you read them back to back-I think they should have a little time between them. If you read them both, I hope they prove more than the sum of their parts. If you read the other, you’ll see something else. Forty, Counting Down This story is a mirror-image twin of “Twenty-one, Counting Up,” the last piece in this book.
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