The song ended.

Shirts clinging to their warm bodies, the dancers stepped off the floor, Reid giving a couple of hard smacks of his black-and-white spectator shoes before plopping down onto a plastic chair.

“Whew!  Whatta number, huh?”

His wife nodded, taking a large sip of water.  “You bet.  I’m going outside to cool off.”

“You do that.”  He twirled his matted, moussed blond hair into a double ducktail curl, then pulled his goatee down to a point.

He turned to Lee, sitting a couple of chairs over.  “So, Lee, you been to the site yet?”

“Huh?”

“interpunk.com.  You know…  I can see you don’t remember.  So you can find some patches to sew on your denim jacket!”

“Yeah.  I mean, no.”

“But dude…”

“The site’s ‘hot.'”

“No way.”

“Way.  After you mentioned the site, I called a few friends who set up an IP trace.  I can’t go near it, there’re so many eyes on it, it’s like it’s on a big stage with lots of spotlights.  I’d be caught in a few nanoseconds.”

“Tough, dude, tough.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna modify your jacket anyway?”

“And ruin my good looks?”

“Your ‘good looks’?  Right…”

Lee ran his right hand through his carrot-red hair, shaking out beads of sweat.  He looked around and no one seemed to be in earshot.  “Did the message get through?”

Reid gave him a comical ‘Are you kidding?’ look — scrunched-up face, raised eyebrows, pursed lips and slight smile.

“Good.  When’s the drop?”

Reid’s wife, May, walked back in.  “It’s cold out there!  Must be close to freezing.”

Reid nodded.  “Uh-huh.  And?”

May threw a glove in his face.  “And… you can sleep outside in the car tonight!”

They laughed and May turned to grab a friend, Joe, to dance a Lindy Hop while Reid and Lee continued talking.

Reid wiggled his eyebrows.  “Well, there are some complications.”

“I don’t care.  Are you or are you not going to make the drop?”

“When was the last time you delivered something via dark matter conversion?”

“Never.  But that’s not my problem.”

“Maybe not but I thought your people were going to help me.  I detailed the whole thing in a product description for you on the website.  Can’t you spoof an IP address or something?  Isn’t that your specialty?”

“Normally, yes.  But they’ve put an electromagnetic spectrum sensor array around me so that any way I try to get a signal through, they know it.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah.  Why do you think I’m using voice right now?”

“I don’t know.  I thought you wanted to revert to old-fashioned ways, kinda in line with the ragtime dance show theme tonight.”

“I’d much rather we use our wireless head implants.  You know that.  Much more secure and less easy to detect visually.  But the sensor array is sensitive enough to pick up those wavelengths.”

“Funny, isn’t it, that they can detect all these fancy ways you’ve created to communicate with us but they can’t follow a simple conversation?”

“They don’t believe I’d risk the effort.”

“Crazy.  Hey, I think your wife is nodding at you to hit the dance floor.”

“Yeah.  Look, just make the drop.  For appearances, if nothing else.”

“No problem.”

“And make sure the new kid goes along.  The attrition’s getting so bad that we gotta keep fresh blood on the fast track training cycle.”

“Man, chill.  It’s taken care of.”

Lee nodded, stood up and walked over to where his wife was chatting with some girlfriends of hers.

“You ready?”

She held out her hand.

Lee spun Karen into his arms and out to a walking Charleston move until they found an open spot on the dance floor, where he absentmindedly thought about a painting titled “Hearing Damage” by a friend of his.