He walked back into the lab, noticing that Bobby Inman was still working on the vector generation. The guy was simply amazing. He would find a problem in the chip, map out a couple of hundred thousand test vectors, and then by the next day have proven that the P-50 had a new major problem. At tomorrow's staff meeting he would probably tell the PE guy, "Bullshit. I found it, and here's the fix. It isn't a bus problem, it's in the chip and we are gonna have to fix it."
It was hard on the guys in Production Engineering, but what the hell. Bobby had fixed problems in Intel processors for ten years now, and truthfully did not have the time to screw around with the naive personalities of the new college hires in PE. And despite Bobby's gruff exterior, he would probably be friends with the new guy in a couple weeks. He'd probably have the guy down to "Falafal Drive-In" over on San Carlos, introducing him to an authentic Falafal. Or maybe it would be Pasan's Masala Curry and super hot fried onions.
God that made him hungry, the thought of the puffy bread Poorahs, the "sop" for curry dishes in a good Indian restaurant. Bobby had introduced him to the delights of the worlds cooking here in the valley when he had been a college hire.
Course now that he was a manager, he and Bobby didn't eat lunch together as much. He spent most of his time rushing down one of the retched cafeteria's specials here in Santa Clara Five, as Intel identified their buildings.
Waving at Bobby but not getting his attention, he decided it was not a good day for the caf' and made up his mind to make it a Torito's macho-nacho, at Ha Songs and Larry's Cantina, the Santa Clara version of El Torito's restaurant. The thought made him swallow and he patted his belly absent-mindedly, already seeing the electronic scale at home flashing the 230 lbs at him in accusation.
"Ah what the hell" he said to himself, knowing that this was his once a month "outside" dinner day, due to the fact he had somehow squandered ten bucks out of his always vanishing paycheck. Once again it struck him funny as he thought of the automatic deposit going into Wells Fargo Bank, only to wind its way automatically to the house payment, the life insurance payment, the day-care center, and the savings account. The thought of the savings account made him grimace. He and Shirley had been saving bits and pieces of their two paychecks in order to replace his aging Toyota, and soon their nestegg would be a goose-egg. "Oh well hell, he said to himself for the thousandth time."
Walking out the door at the back parking lot, he sighed as the heat, even in the shade of the emmense "earthquake proof" building, was stifling. He dreaded the car. After sitting for 5 hours in the heat, the dark car would be a super example of black body radiation, not reflecting once erg of energy. The temperature would be around a 110 despite his delapidated cardboard "sunglasses" in the windshield. Even with the windows cracked open to release some of the heat, he had to always remember to leave his cassete case at home, or the little plastic boxes would melt, playing hell with his classic Hendrix or the Dead.
Opening the door to the artifact from the 70's, he waited a full minute to allow the hot air to escape, wiping his brow in the heat. That was the only thing bad about working in a nice air conditioned building, you had to come out someday.
Sliding into the cracking seat, he pulled the towel off the steering wheel, and then folded the windshield "sunglasses" into a nice accordion stack and shoved it down between the right hand bucket and the hump.
With a shudder the tired engine coughed to life, and vowing to fix the exhaust leak, he jammed it into reverse and backed out of his spot. Well, actually it wasn't really his spot. He was kind of a homesteader. Since he got in at about 7:30, the row he chose to park in was never full, so he had chosen a spot fairly close to the door, and in the last five years, he had never parked anywhere else. Except for weekends or late at night of course.
Not that he had many night or weekend trips to work anymore. Sometimes he would come in to lend a little morale support to the engineers pushing themselves through the crush of the A-stepping. This was the time when the first new piece of silicon with the brand new circuitry, the new logic incarnate, would find its way back to the hallowed hallways of the engineering benches.
Grinning at his temporary lapse into amateur literacy, he jumped out into the crazy lunch time traffic on Walsh Avenue, heading around the long S turn which ended frustratingly at the Bowers and Walsh light. Turning right, he patiently waited through the two lights 50 feet apart, and then willed himself to relax as he missed the light at Scott and Bowers, only one block from his left turn. Finally he turned into the parking lot at Toritos, and glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Nice timing that, he would get to sit down for lunch.
He watched an incredibly beautiful brunette toss her hair back as all the fellows watched the different pieces of their favorite anotomy flex, jiggle, and otherwise show themselves. A hot summer had some benefits. Especially among the "eat out for lunch" gang. And of course, it was just a little more so at Toritos. He almost avoided the place, his Toyota shaming him next to the Porsches, Ferraris, and the ultimate tanning machines with their sexy interiors. "Oh well, hell" he said once again, as he requested a table for three.
This was basically a self defense move. If you numbered 2 or less, you wound up with a table facing a wall, or worse yet, ten feet from some other poor lonely slob. But a party of three was the ticket to a table where he could fix his six foot two frame and long legs under.
He ordered his nachos, and cervasa, the cold draft beer arriving in quick order, the bartenders gearing up already for the major crowd expected.
Chick toasted to a shapely blonde a few tables over who appeared to be looking for company, insuring that she saw his ring. He wondered how hungry she was. Would she consider a married man? A part of him wondered how he'd react, another part said all would be well until the real decision came, then he knew he would cave in to the picture of his family. What a shame.
But he shrugged the thought off, not coincidentally with the sudden loss of attention from the stool warmer. He resisted repeating the "Oh well, hell" in mind again, this time opting for "Big > deal."
Munching on his chips smothered in guacomole, cheese, sour cream and refried beans, he didn't notice the crazy guys walking in wearing bush jackets and carrying their racquetball gear.
Benji grinned wickedly at the young woman waiting at the rostrum affair. He thought of her briefly, then proceeded to look for the place where he would stand. Somewhere handy, somewhere that he would have a wall to his back, and a quick exit.
Finding his spot, he moved off in that direction, the young woman momentarily distracted by Yoshi's feining of mis-understanding. Stopping just inside the doorway, he scanned the tables in front of him, noticing that the place was only half full.
Yoshi noticed Benji's position and suddenly stopped talking to the young woman and he walked over to the table Benji was standing next to, and plopped down. As the young woman controlled her anger, he smiled and said thick with accent,
"This will do nicely. Bring the waiter immediately" his royal bearing almost tipping the woman over the brink. But with a surprisingly gallant effort, the hostess replied, "Of course, she will be right with you."
Walking off, Benji knew the woman would be sure to find the only woman waitress in the place if necessary, to please the crazy foreigners. It was amazing how adaptive the American Pigs were when it came to serving their betters. Even the rudely arrogant women here were able to swallow their pride and give a man the service he deserved. Benji grinned at his vision of service, thinking back at the parking lot of the OSH store in Sunnyvale.
As he and Yoshi relaxed, he nudged his bag with his foot, just to reassure himself that it was still there. It wouldn't do to have it walk away. Too many questions would be asked by the wrong people.
Yoshi grinned at him, nodding in the direction of a woman who came in with two other woman. The blonde in question had tight shorts on, the vee of her crouch serving to accentuate the nearly endless bare legs. Both men waited expectantly for the reverse view and were rewarded as expected. Yoshi muttered something that Benji didn't have to hear to understand, and they laughed together.
When the waitress finally arrived, they ordered tequila, knowing that they could sip them for a long time while waiting for the crowd to pick up.
As they sipped and watched the yuppies come in and be seated, they enjoyed the tintillation of the American women. Benji wondered how the liberated American women could display themselves so openly in public, yet insist that they were equals to men. Were they not showing all would cared to look, that they were indeed woman. In fact, the sexual content of the display was so patently feminine, he wondered at how the American men could deal with the liberate mind and the completely un-liberate dress. It was a point of confusion for him, and in the last few months he had gone crazy trying to understand. But experience here had taught him that the American female was quite adept at saying no. From the polite to the wicked jabs of accusations of sexual inadequacy, they could easily turn away even the most ardent of hunters.
Benji chewed his lip over the dilemna once again, wondering how such a country ever made babies. He supposed, realizing suddenly, that American sex was completely on the woman's terms. The vision of ravenous American woman, demanding their quota of sex fit better with the image he had been forming. "How immasculate the American man must be" he thought. They probably have to beg for it.
As these thoughts dribbled to an end, he noticed that the restauranth was finally beginning to fill up. Nodding to Yoshi, he reached down and casually unzipped the long zipper on his carry-all, the zipper meant to allow a racquettballer to carry the racquet inside the soft sided canvas bag. As he straightened up, Yoshi performed the same ritual.
With his pulse beginning to race, Benji waited for a tall man and his two lunch companions to clear the area in front of their table. Then as he could see a clear path to the front door, he reached down into the bag.
Chick suppressed a belch, and drank a long draught of the water on the table, the salsa from the chips leaving a hot spot on his tongue. Feeling the temporary cooling of the water, he sniffed, trying to recover from the effects of the hot sauce. Realizing he had probably overdone it didn't dampen his enjoyment of the meal nor did it result in even the slightest regret. Having honorably succeeded in spending his ten bucks on his once a month splurge, he would remember the meal until next time. The thought of the caf' food came to his mind unbidden, but he dashed the thoughts immediately by finishing his beer, tossing his head back to get the last drop. Looking up into the glass for a moment, he could see the misshapen forms of people at the tables in front of him. He posed in this position a little longer, marvelling at the strange sight in the glass. Two men were standing there, in his glass, their legs in wide stances reminding him of some gangster movie. Then as he brought the glass down, his stomach threatened to release the entire plate of nachos onto the table.
There WERE two men standing in the aisle ahead of them. They weren't looking at him in particular, but they really didn't need to. He was frightened to death without out their attention. In their hands were the unmistakeable shapes of UZI sub-machine guns. Everyone who had ever seen an action movie in the U.S. knew what the wicked weapon looked like. Just because Rambo didn't carry one didn't mean that Chick was any less afraid of this weapon. In a flash he remembered the headlines during Christmas, the "Terror in the Valley" or the "Silicon Valley > Murders" as the papers had called it. In the back of his mind, he realized he was seconds away from becoming a paragraph in some newspaper article chronicling the deaths of the innocents at Toritos. This inspired him to wonder if he could reach the two men before they could fire. But even as he thought it, they guns began to raise. His instinct to attack was then overcome by a desire to flee.
Without realizing it, he then picked up one of the free chairs as he glided into a standing position. The chair came up off the floor and he twisted it the long distance from behind him, over his head and straight toward the nearest man with a gun. Knowing it was his death sentence, he never hesitated. He heard the incredibly loud "burrr" of > the UZI as the gunman turned to fire at the target coming at him. Unknowingly the man fired up and away from his intended victims before sweeping down.
With firehose motions, Benji sprayed the two cliploads of bullets into blonde, brunette and red hair, the blood and gray matter flying against the walls, dulling the bright paintings of mexican peasantry, their baskets of laundry on their heads. Benji, loaded his third clip, and turning to the wide eyed hostess, he stepped over to her, pushed the end of the machine gun into her mouth and asked quietly,
"Perhaps now you will give me everything I desire?"
The woman's pale white face blanched even further and her eyes opened so wide in panic that it gave Benji pause. He had never seen someone so frightened before. Looking at her arms, he saw that she was rigid, as if made of cold stone. Having seen her death, she was in a sense already dead. For some unknown reason, he pulled the gun out of her mouth. Then he realized that dead was dead. Why waste a bullet on a dead body. He turned back to Yoshi motioning to him with the desert sign language to exit out the front. Benji covered the bodies on the floor as Yoshi slipped by him through the door into the restaurant, and then he lowered his gun and turned to leave himself. But suddenly he stopped.
A searing pain began in his groin. He saw the hostesses face glaring at him, very close, her breath smelling a little sour. Then looking down to see the pain, he unconciously stood up on his toes. The woman had taken the knife from a waitresses platter, probably used to cut the limes for dacquiris. The woman leaned closer and he heard her whisper as the pain crescendoed over him,
"Goodbye you chauvinist bastard!"
Hearing the gut wrenching scream warble from somewhere ahead of him, Chick looked up cautiously from his position on the floor. Wiping the blood and gore from his face, he saw the man he had thrown the chair at slowly sliding downward. Then he noticed the hate filled grimace of the hostess as she suddenly heaved upward. The man's entrails slid noisely ahead of him onto the floor, as the young woman stumbling with shock turned toward the front door. There a shadow could be seen coming through the entryway, but the girl dumbly stood there, the slick red covering her right hand and staining her dress providing an odd contrast to the pastels of the individual tile design of the floor.
Snapping out of his own stupor, Chick started to stand up to run over and pick up the weapon dropped by the girl's victim, but crashed nose first back into the floor, the multiple wounds in his upper right shoulder finally taking their toll.