19

The booths were numbered, and Al Alberts had gotten 4077. It hadn't been easy. Al usually found that when people heard his name, they expected him to look like Danny DeVito, and he did, a short and rotund man who was always being chased by yesterday's cigarette smoke. He smoked a cigar and put up his psychological dukes.

Convention season is the perfect time for a cold war, he thought. And oh yes, here come the pollinating bees who will make it happen.

"Hi!" Alberts looked past his own big feet at a sniveling human being who was unlucky enough to be saddled with orthodontia.

"How ya doin', kid?" Alberts said. He guessed it was a boy, but it was honestly hard to know under the bowl haircut, floppy asexual Mickey sweatshirt and sneakers. Did it answer to Pat? He saw the child was too shy to speak first, but was eyeing the row of free tchotchkes - pins, stickers and the like, some with the logo for Alberts' holding company, OWL PICTURES, and some with characters from the various creations to which Alberts held the rights, including a disproportionate amount of table space for characters from Wizard Star. Alberts easily paid his rent solely through Wizard Star stuff.

"HOW YA DOIN!" he said loudly, startling the kid. "The pins are free, so take a couple!" The urchin took a step backwards.

"Do - do you have any news about Wizard Star?" This orange-topped beast bore out the nightmare of each teen stereotype, from acne to braces to quavering voice to pathetic fandom to an air of general confusion.

"Why," said Al, "What have you heard?" So the kid is going to work me for information? Two can play at that game.

"I heard Rain gets killed!" The kid had read a leak, probably on the Internet. Where had the leak come from? Who had done it? Al glazed over until he realized the kid was waiting patiently for an answer.

"Kid," Al said, "I ain't going to talk about that one way or the other. But I got an idea - how would you like to make ten bucks?"

The kid nodded slowly. "Next time you hear a rumor like that, you come and tell me. I'll give ya - " He rejigged his promises in his head. "I'll give you two-fifty for every one. So if you bring me four rumors, that's ten bucks!"

"O-Okay," said the kid, the lumpy shoulders of his/her gray sweatshirt slowly creeping up his/her neck.

"I am Al," he said clearly and slowly, emphasizing just how divorced the hapless lad/lass was from the social convention of shaking hands.

"I'm JAMIE," said the poor beast.