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buildings. He does work-arounds. Triangulates off cellular towers, other systems. Very clever.”
    “You want me to meet him?”
    “If you can’t arrange it through Corrales, phone me. We’ll work something from this end.”
    He wasn’t asking. She raised her eyebrows in the dark, nodded silently: Yes, boss. “Will do.”
    There was a pause. “Hollis?”
    She sat up in the dark, assuming a loosely defensive lotus position. “Yes?”
    “When you’re with him, be specially alert to anything that might reference shipping.”
    “Shipping?”
    “Patterns of global shipping. Particularly in light of the sort of geospatial tagging Odile and Corrales are about.” Another pause. “Or iPods.”
    “iPods?”
    “As a means of data transfer.”
    “How some people use them as drives?”
    “Exactly.”
    There was something about this, suddenly, that she really didn’t like, and in some entirely new way. She imagined the bed a desert of white sand. Something circling, hidden, beneath its surface. Perhaps the Mongolian Death Worm that had been one of Inchmale’s imaginary pets.
    There are times when saying the least you can is the best thing to do, she decided. “I’ll ask Alberto.”
    “Good.”
    “Have you taken care of the billing here, yet?”
    “Of course.”
    “Hold on,” she told him, “I’m phoning the desk on the other line.”
    “Give it ten minutes. I’ll just double-check.”
    “Thanks.”
    “We’ve been talking about you, Hollis.” That vaguest of managerial “we’s.”
    “Yes?”
    “We’re very happy with you. How would you feel about a salaried position?”
    She sensed the Mongolian Death Worm draw closer, amid the cotton dunes. “That’s a big one, Philip. I’ll need to think about it.”
    “Do.”
    She closed her phone.
    Exactly ten minutes later, she used the room phone to call the desk, receiving confirmation that her bill, all incidentals included, was now on an Amex card in the name of Philip M. Rausch. She had herself switched to the hotel’s salon, found there was an opening within the hour, and booked an appointment for a cut.
    It was just after two, which made it just after five in New York, with Buenos Aires two hours later. She pulled up Inchmale’s number on the screen of her cell, but dialed on the room phone. He answered immediately. “Reg? Hollis. I’m in Los Angeles. Are you in the middle of dinner?”
    “Angelina’s feeding Willy. How are you?” Their one-year-old. Angelina was Reg Inchmale’s Argentinian wife, whose maiden name had been Ryan, and whose grandfather had been a ship’s pilot on the Río Paraná. She’d met Inchmale while employed by either Dazed & Confused or another magazine. Hollis had never been able to keep them straight. Angelina knew as much about magazine publishing in London as anyone Hollis could think of.
    “Complicated,” she admitted. “How are you?”
    “Steadily less so. On good days, anyway. I think fatherhood agrees with me. And it’s so, I don’t know, deeply old-school here. They haven’t sandblasted anything yet. It looks the way London used to look. Black with grime. Or New York, come to think.”
    “Can you ask Angelina something for me?”
    “Would you like to speak to her yourself?”
    “No, she’s feeding Willy. Just ask her what, if anything, she knows about a magazine start-up called Node.”
    “Node?”
    “It wants to be like Wired, but they aren’t supposed to say that. I think the money’s Belgian.”
    “They want to interview you?”
    “They’ve offered me a job. I’m on assignment for them, freelancing. I wondered if Angelina would have heard anything.”
    “Hold on,” he said. “Have to put this down. Wired into the wall on a curly-cord…” She heard him rest the handset on a surface. She lowered her own phone and listened to afternoon traffic on Sunset. She had no idea where Odile’s robot had gotten to, but it was quiet.
    She heard Inchmale pick up the phone in Buenos