“We’ll wait here, thanks,” Lester said. “Don’t want her to think we’re bailing on her.” He turned and waved at her.

“She’s mean, you know—be careful.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Lester said.

Suzanne marveled at Lester’s equanimity. Nothing got his goat. The doggie bag arrived. “I put some extra napkins and a couple of wet-naps in there,” Tony said, handing it to him.

“Great!” Lester said. “You guys sit down, I’ll be back in a second.”

Perry motioned for Suzanne to follow him to a booth. He laughed. “Lester’s a good guy,” he said. “The best guy I know, you know?”

“How do you know him?” she asked, taking out her notepad.

“He was the sysadmin at a company that was making three-d printers, and I was a tech at a company that was buying them, and the products didn’t work, and I spent a lot of time on the phone with him troubleshooting them. We’d get together in our off-hours and hack around with neat little workbench projects, stuff we’d come up with at work. When both companies went under, we got a bunch of their equipment at bankruptcy auctions. Lester’s uncle owned the junkyard and he offered us space to set up our workshops and the rest is history.”