Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (15 page)

LongDrink led off, his eyes filled with that terrible gleam that presages a true stinker. They call him LongDrink because he is one long drink of water: when he sits he looks like he’s standing, and when he stands he looks like three other guys. He doesn’t mass much more than a pickup truck, and he is the only man I know who can talk and drink whiskey at the same time. He does a lot of both.

“Gentlemen,” he drawled, demonstrating the trick, “the story I am about to relate takes place in the distant future. Interstellar travel is commonplace; contacts with alien races are familiar experiences. One day, however, a planet is discovered out Antares way whose sole inhabitant is an enormous humanoid, three miles high and made of granite. At first it is mistaken for an immense statue left by some vanished race of giants, for it squats motionless on a yellow plain, exhibiting no outward sign of life. It has legs, but it never rises to walk on them. It has a mouth, but never eats or speaks. It has what appears to be a perfectly functional brain, the size of a four-story condominium, but the organ lies dormant, electrochemical activity at a standstill. Yet it lives.

“This puzzles the hell out of the scientists, who try everything they can think of to get some sign of life from the behemoth-in vain. It just squats, motionless and seemingly thoughtless, until one day a xenobiologist, frustrated beyond endurance, screams, `How could evolution give legs, mouth and brain to a creature that doesn’t use them?’

“It happens that he’s the first one to ask a direct question in the thing’s presence. It rises with a thunderous rumble to its full height, scattering the clouds, thinks for a second, booms, `IT COULDN’T,’ and squats down again.

” ‘Migod,’ exclaims the xenobiologist, `Of course! It only stands to reason.’

“

There was an extended pause, in which the sound of LongDrink blinking was plainly audible. Then a hailstorm of glasses, full and empty, burst in the fireplace, loud enough to drown out the great collective groan-Doc Webster’s eyes rolled briefly, like loaded dice, and came up snake eyes. Callahan began passing our fresh drinks with a slightly stunned expression.

The Doc contemplated a while, looking a lot like some of the merrier representations of the Buddha. “Bug-eyed punster sort of stuff, eh? Say, did you boys ever hear of the planet where the inhabitants were mobile flowers? Remarkably similar to Earthly blossoms, but they had feet and humanlike intelligence. The whole planet, from the biggest bouquet to the smallest corsage, was ruled over by a king named Richard the Artichoke Heart … anyhow, one day a pale-eyed perennial caught Richard’s eye at a court orgy, and

…”

I tuned the Doc out for a second. Fast Eddie, sensing some truly legendary horror in the offing, had stealthily left his piano stool and began edging casually toward the fire extinguisher in the corner, an expression of rapt attention on his monkey face. There’s enough of the Doc to make two or three good targets, but I sidled out of the line of fire all the same.

” … the smitten monarch engaged royal tutors of all sorts, to no avail,” the Doc was saying. “Artists, musicians, philosophers, scientists and mathematicians failed alike to engage the attention of the witless concubine, whose only apparent interest was in gathering pollen. At last the embarrassed Richard gave her up as hopeless and had some Rotenone slipped into her soup. As he exclaimed to this prime minister later that night, `I can lead a horticulture but I can’t make her think!’ ” The Doc’s poker face was perfect.

And in the terrible pause that ensued, before Eddie could trigger the extinguisher, a clear, sweet, contralto voice asked, “What sort of flower was she?” and every head in the place swung toward the door like weathervanes in a windstorm.

And there she was.

She was a big woman, but none of it was extra, and she stood framed in the doorway with an easy grace that a ballerina might have envied. Her hair was long and straight, the color of polished obsidian. Her skin was fair without being pale, and she wore a long-sleeved, highnecked dress of royal purple that brushed sawdust from the floor. She was pretty enough to make -a preacher kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

She fielded the combined stares of a couple dozen goggle-eyed males with no effort at all, a half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth, and I had the distinct feeling that we could all have turned into three-headed tree frogs without disturbing her composure in the least. Perhaps that was why our own composure was so manifestly smithereened and scattered to the four winds-but I’m more inclined to think it was the one-two sledgehammer punch of, A woman in Callahan’s? followed by the equally startling, Why the hell not? What shocked us the most was that we had no idea why we should be so shocked. Like opening a ginger ale and finding Jamesons’ inside: nothing wrong with it, but it sort of takes you by surprise.

Doc Webster tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat; his poker face was now royally flushed. “I … uh,” he stammered, “don’t know what kind of … uh … flower she was, young lady.”

A grin stuck red lips back from perfect teeth. “I just thought,” she said clearly, “that the king might be suffering from fuchsia shock.”

There was a pause, and the soft, subtle sound of eyeballs glazing: you can only absorb so much at once. But Callahan rose magnificently to the occasion.

“Sure and begonia,” he breathed.

“Oh,” she gasped, and blinked. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t realize this was an Iris bar.”

LongDrink choked, spraying Bushmill’s like a sixfoot-seven aerosol. And suddenly we were all roaring, hooting, rocking with laughter, the kind that leaves your eyes wet and your sides sore. The timbers rang with merriment, a happy release of tension.

“Lord, lord,” the Doc gasped, wiping his eyes and clutching at his ample belly, “nobody’s made a straight man out of me in twenty years. Whoooo-ee!” He shook his head ruefully, still chuckling.

“Lady,” said Callahan, a world of meaning in the words, “you’ll do.” There was respect in his whiskey baritone, and a strange, deep satisfaction. She acknowledged the former with a nod and stepped into the room.

The bar had been crowded, but by the time she reached it she had enough room to park a truck, and a wide choice of seats. She picked one and sat gracefully, making a small noise of surprise and delight. “I never thought I’d see an armchair this tall,” she said to Callahan, setting her purse on the bar.

“I don’t believe in bar stools,” Callahan explained. “A man should be comfortable when he drinks.”

“A man?” she asked pointedly.

“Oh, a woman ought to be comfortable all the time,” he agreed solemnly. “Hey, Eddie?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“You want to open a window? I think I smell bra smoke. “

She reddened.

I looked at Eddie, was surprised to see a glare instead of a grin. Migod, I thought crazily. Fast Eddie has been smit. It didn’t seem possible; ever since his wife divorced him a few years back, Eddie had been a confirmed loner.

“Touché,” she conceded at last. “I had no call to criticize your speech patterns. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Callahan assured her. “My name’s Mike.” He stuck out a big calloused hand.

She shook it gravely. “I am Rachel.”

“What’ll it be, Rachel?”

“Bourbon, please.”

Callahan nodded, turned around and began mixing I. W . Harper and ice cubes in the proper proportions. She opened her purse, removed a wallet from it and pulled out a five-dollar bill, and I found that I was talking.

“I’m afraid you can’t use that fin in here, Rachel.” It felt strange not to be paralyzed.

She turned to me, and I saw her eyes for the first time close up, and I felt my tongue being retired tighter than ever. I don’t know how to describe those eyes except to say that they looked impossibly old, older than eyes could be. There was some pain in them, sure-most people that Fate leads to Callahan’s Place have anguished eyes when they first arrive-but beyond the pain was a kind of unspeakable weariness, a terrible and ancient knowledge that had no brought satisfaction. My memory churned, and produced the only remotely similar pair of eyes I have ever seen: my grandmother, dead of cancer these twenty years.

“I beg your pardon?” she said politely, and I tried hard to climb back up out of her eyes. Tom Flannery sensed my distress and came to my aid.

“Jake’s right, Rachel,” he said. “Callahan doesn’t believe in cash registers either. He only deals in singles.”

“You mean everything in the house costs a dollar?” she asked in surprise.

“Oh, no,” Tom demurred. “Everything in the house costs fifty cents. There’s a cigar box full of quarters down there-see?-and you pick up your change on the way out … if you’ve left your glass on the bar.”

“What’s the alternative?” she asked with a puzzled frown, as Callahan set her drink down before her.

“Smash your glass in the fireplace,” Callahan said cheerfully. “Does you a world of good sometimes. It’s worth fifty cents, easy.”

Her whole face brightened. “A long time ago,” she said thoughtfully, “I bought an entire house for the single purpose of smashing crockery in it. I think I like your place, Mike.”

“That makes two of us,” he said comfortably, and poured himself a beer mug of Bushmill’s best.

“To Callahan’s Place,” she said, draining her glass in one easy motion and holding it high. Callahan didn’t bat an eye. He inhaled his own whiskey as fast as it’d pour and raised his glass too. Two arms fell as one.

Glass shattered in the fireplace, and a spontaneous cheer went up from all around. LongDrink McGonnigle began singing, “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” and was stifled without ceremony.

She turned to face us. “Lots of bars make a woman feel welcome,” she said. “This is the first one that ever made me feel at home. Thank you all.”

Ever see a whole bar blush?

Fast Eddie came in the door-no one had seen him leave-with change of a five from the all-night deli across the street and gave it to her gravely, a solemn look on his wrinkled face. But Callahan refused the single she offered. One exquisite eyebrow rose quizzically.

“Rachel,” he said, “this here is Punday Night at my Place, and the champeen punster doesn’t have to pay his . or her … bar bill. From what I’ve heard already, I’d say you’ve got a shot at the title.” Her face lit with a merry smile. Callahan explained the format and the subject we were using and built her another drink.

She paused a moment in thought. “The Middle East,” she began at last, “finally achieved a kind of uneasy stability in the late 1970’s. Israel and the Pan-Arabian nations maintaining a fragile truce. Then one day the Arabian ambassador to Israel, Opinh Bom Bay, chanced to spy a carousel in the market place and, being intrigued by this Westernish recreation, decided to try it. Being a neophyte, he became extremely dizzy, dismounted from his wooden steed with great difficulty, and reeled out of the square. A Chinese shepherd called Ewe Hu was passing through Jerusalem at that time with three fine sheep, and Bom Bey staggered into their midst. The middle sheep promptly ate him.

“Horrific visions of the war that would inevitably ensue racing through his mind, Ewe Hu flung up his hands and cried, `Middle lamb, you’ve had a dizzy Bey!

‘ “

There was a ghastly ,silence, such as must exist on the airless wastes of the Moon, and Callahan’s everpresent cigar fell from his lips, landing with an absurdly loud splash in his glass. Oblivious, he lifted the glass and drank. When he set it down again, the cigar was back in his teeth, soggy and drooping.

LongDrink made a face. “You didn’t keep to the subject,” he complained feebly, and Fast Eddie began to cloud up.

But she stood her-ground, deadpan. “The story,” she maintained, “was clearly about Zion’s friction.”

And the silence fell in a million shards, whoops of laughter, blending in with groans and the volley of breaking glass on the hearth.

Tom Flannery entered a forfeit about the same time LongDrink and the Doc conceded defeat, and that was Rachel’s first night at Callahan’s Place. She returned on the following night, and then on the following Tuesday, and soon became something of a regular. She was there when Tommy Janssen got married right in front of the fireplace, and the night the Place caught fire, and that sad night when gentle, softly smiling Tom Flannery finally failed to show up (Tom’s doctors had given him nine months to live, the day before he happened into Callahan’s Place), and she just seemed to fit. Although she was never by any stretch of the imagination One Of The Boys, she fit in a way that reminded me very faintly of Wendy in

Never-Never Land. But she was not disturbed by the hooliganry of her Lost Boys, nor dismayed by their occasional ribaldry-once when Doc Webster, slightly jealous of her superior puns, tried to embarrass her with an offcolor joke, she responded with a gag so steamy and so hilarious that the Doc blushed clear down to his ankles and laughed himself silly. And she was incredibly gentle with Fast Eddie, who came to display the classic signs of a man goofy with love. Suddenly all he knew how to play was torch songs, and while she always praised them, she pointedly missed the point, yet somehow allowed him to keep his self-respect.

Curiously, Eddie was the only one of us to fall for her. Certainly, all of us at Callahan’s were heir to the tradition of the B-movie-and the A-movie for that matter-that any female who enters your life in a dramatic manner must be your fated love. But somehow Rachel didn’t elicit that reflex of imagined desire in us. She was never cold-you retained at all times an impression of vibrant feminity-but she never projected either the air of receptivity which provokes passes, or the studied indifference which is the same thing in disguise. We never even learned much about her, where she lived and that sort of thing. All we knew was that she was fun to be with: she was a note of nearly pure cheer even in a place where good cheer was commonplace.

But only nearly pure. There were those eyes. They reminded me in many ways of Mickey Finn’s eyes when he first came around, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the right toast would unlock her heart and let out all that pain. Hell, we all knew it-but she had to do it herself. You don’t pry in Callahan’s Place.