She spoke very fast. "What's happened? I caught the tail end of
something about Wallaby on the CNN, something about a
reorganization, and called your office, Peter, and they said they
had not seen you. Peggy put me on hold and called the boardroom
and they told her you had bolted and that something happened but
she wouldn't tell me what. What the hell is going on?"
"It's over," he slurred.
"What's over?"
"Me. Wallaby. Everything."
"Petey, talk to me. Are you there? Petey?"
"I've been fired. From my own company."
"I can hardly hear you. I don't understand. What do you mean
fired?"
"Fired," he shouted, and immediately regretted it. The sting in
his head and heart diverged, spread. As if on cue, the secret
thing in his heart asserted itself again. With its arrival, an
abstraction formed in his drunken mind. He thought of the word
"mate." It represented the start of his life. Because of the
Mate, he had met Kate. She was his soul mate, and with her he had
experienced his coming of age. And wasn't she, in some ways, the
inspiration behind the Joey? Wasn't their nomadic relationship
what had inspired him to design a computer you could take with
you when you went away? Now it had been taken from him. How long,
he wondered, before Kate was gone too? The more aware he was of
this feeling, of losing the things close to his heart, the more
aware he became of his newest mate, the disagreeable feeling that
had burrowed inside him.
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