Now that the thought of staying overnight had occurred to him, Gus started to like it more and more. He might as well just commit now. He’d call United and change his reservation, then look around for a hotel.

Gus pulled out his cell phone and powered it up-he had, of course, switched it off for the meeting. It went through its usual delaying tactics, showing logo screen after logo screen. Then it told him it was searching for service. Finally a series of four bars appeared at the top of the display. Gus started to dial when the phone rang. It was Shawn.

“Hey, Shawn,” Gus said as casually as he could. “Good timing. We’ve got a short break in the sales conference.”

“Good, because I need some advice,” Shawn said.

Gus regarded the phone suspiciously. In all the years they’d been first friends, then colleagues, Shawn had never actually asked Gus for advice. Even on those occasions when he knew he needed it, Shawn always found a way to phrase the request so that it sounded like he was doing Gus a great favor.

“About what?” Gus said.

“Remember that guy you killed?” Shawn said. “The one with the Cayenne?”

“You mean the character I killed in the computer game we were playing,” Gus said. He didn’t know for sure that the government had computers that sifted all cell calls for certain phrases, but if they did “remember that guy you killed” was probably one that sent up a lot of flags.

“That’s him,” Shawn said. “He was a hit man who was working for Morton, right?”

“He was a fictional hit man whose role in the game was as a soldier for the fictional mobster known as Morton, right,” Gus said.

“Let’s say I’ve been following this guy,” Shawn said.

Gus felt a flare of irritation. He was on the cusp of making a life-changing decision, and Shawn wanted advice on a move in a computer game. “Why?” Gus said. “He’s dead, at least in the fictional scenario we’ve been discussing in this entire conversation. Because as you pointed out, when I was playing the game, I killed him. In the game.”