“Raud, what’s a racist?” Fleegle asks.

“Someone who sees a person’s color before everything else.”

“I usually smell someone long before I see them.”

“So then I don’t need to worry about you being a racist.”

“I know what people have been eating by their sweat.” He sniffs my leg to make his point. “You’ve been sneaking donuts without me again.”

“I couldn’t help myself.”

“You remember that the next time I use that excuse,” he says. “Is there such a thing as a ‘sweatist’?”

“You mean not liking people because they stink?”

“No, not at all. I love people who stink, especially if they stink of food, like when you eat at the diner and smell of bacon all day. It’s the one’s who smell like petroleum products and aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrate that worry me. Do you think they’re wearing some sort of protectant for electronics because they’re robots? Are they a fifth column, a prelude to an alien invasion?”

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