Tomorrow Sucks Part 16

We worked like demons, the pair of us. I knew we couldn't possibly fill it all back in, get it squared off by daylight. There wasn't a chance. We did it though, somehow.

Pete drove us back. I was seeing to Kaeti. I kissed her once and she opened her big eyes. She said, "Thanks, Dad," and went to sleep again.

The roads were all deserted, no lights showing anywhere. The one car we did meet had its headlamps masked to slits. I wondered what they must have thought of us. I didn't pay that much attention though. Not till we got back in sight of Blackwell.

I did look out then. Dawn was in the sky, sort of a pale grey flush. It showed me the outlines of the ack-ack guns, the long slim barrels pointing up. I looked the other way, to the sullen glow low down that meant London had had its nightly pasting again.

I went back in the morning. Didn't know quite what I would see. It was all right though. Just the lines of graves, the bright, tidy gra.s.s. All signs of the disturbance had long since gone. Nor did the gatekeeper say anything about the padlock. But I hardly expected he'd remember a little thing like that. After all, a lot of stuff went missing in the blackout.

She woke a few times crying after that. There was always one of us on hand to soothe. She tried to tell me once what it was like. Hearing the spade, from wherever she had been. Sc.r.a.ping coming closer, then the thumping on the lid. "I never did no harm to him," she said. "None of us did..." I held her till she was quiet. "It's all right, love," I said, "it won't come again, not ever. It's over..."

Next night she wasn't there. Gone out to recharge. Only now she had her own place to come back to, a room where we always kept the curtains drawn. The localsthought it was a sudden sign of mourning. Only d.i.c.k Stanton guessed. Or maybe it was more. He hasn't been too well this last couple of weeks. Throat infection that doesn't seem to clear. I heard they had the Doc the other day.

I think Time's wearing thin for all of us. Sometimes I hear the guns now, from a war I don't remember. Sometimes there's other things. The mushroom clouds all rising, and the fireb.a.l.l.s. The walls of the pub all glow then, like bright gla.s.s. It happened a minute ago. In the old reckoning of Time. It didn't worry us though. I took Pete by the hand, and Kaeti, and we floated down, stood and watched the common light up and burn. There were others coming and then more, a great big crowd. There was one we called the Master. Not Vlad the Impaler though. He'll give the signal, when he's good and ready; and we'll all be away and gone. Headed for the dark side of another World. It won't take long. Because there isn't really s.p.a.ce, any more than there's Time.

There. It happened again. The paper I was writing on was burning, curling and blackening at the edges. But that don't matter either. All it means is that the One has grown a bit bigger. By something short of fifteen thousand human words. And a boat is setting sail, but not for Norway. And we stand on it and see the atoms dance, locked in a sort of brilliant, breathless Now.

Callahan's Bar attracts all types, from time travellers to vampires. Spider Robinson has written several books about Callahan's and its denizens, including the recent Off the Wall at Callahan's Place. Need a drink, and maybe a laugh or two? Then come back to that famous bar where everybody knows your vein....

Pyotr's Story.

SPIDER ROBINSON.

Two total drunks in a single week is much higher than average for anyone who goes to Callahan's Place-no pun intended.

Surely there is nothing odd about a man going to a bar in search of oblivion.

Understatement of the decade. But Callahan's Place is what cured me of being a lush, and it's done the same for others. h.e.l.l, it's helped keep Tommy Janssen off of heroin for years now. I've gotten high there, and once or twice I've gotten tight, but it's been a good many years since I've been flat-out, helpless drunk-or yearned to be. A true drunk is a rare sight at Callahan's. Mike Callahan doesn't just pour his liquor, he serves it; to get p.i.s.sed in his Place you must convince him you have a need to, persuade him to take responsibility for you. Most bars, people go to in order to get blind. Mike's customers go there to see better.

But that night I had a need to completely dismantle my higher faculties, and he knew that as I crossed the threshold. Because I was carrying in my arms the ruinedbody of Lady Macbeth. Her head dangled crazily, her proud neck broken clean through, and a hush fell upon Callahan's Place as the door closed behind me.

Mike recovered quickly; he always does. He nodded, a nod which meant both h.e.l.lo and something else, and glanced up and down the bar until he found an untenanted stretch. He pointed to it, I nodded back, and by the time I reached it he had the free lunch and the beer nuts moved out of the way. Not a word was said in the bar-everyone there understood my feelings as well as Callahan did. Do you begin to see how one could stop being an alcoholic there? Someone, I think it was Fast Eddie, made a subvocal sound of empathy as I laid the Lady on the bar-top.

I don't know just how old she is. I could find out by writing the Gibson people and asking when serial number 427248 was sent out into the world, but somehow I don't want to. Somewhere in the twenty-to-thirty range, I'd guess, and she can't be less than fifteen, for I met her in 1966. But she was a treasure even then, and the man I bought her from cheated himself horribly. He was getting married much too quickly and needed folding money in a hurry. All I can say is, I hope he got one h.e.l.l of a wife-because I sure got one h.e.l.l of a guitar.

She's a J-45, a red sunburst with a custom neck, and she clearly predates the Great Guitar Boom of the Sixties. She is hand-made, not machine-stamped, and she is some forgotten artisan's masterpiece. The very best, top-of-the-line Gibson made today could not touch her; there are very few guitars you can buy that would. She has been my other voice and the basic tool of my trade for a decade and a half. Now her neck, and my heart, were broken clean through.

Lone-Drink McGonnigle was at my side, looking mournfully down past me at the pitiful thing on the bar. He touched one of the sprawled strings. It rattled. Death rattle. "Aw," he murmured.

Callahan put a triple Bushmill's in my hand, closed my fingers around it. I made it a double, and then I turned and walked to the chalk line on the floor, faced the merrily crackling fireplace from a distance of twenty feet. People waited respectfully.

I drank again while I considered my toast. Then I raised my gla.s.s, and everybody followed suit.

"To the Lady," I said, and drained my gla.s.s and threw it at the back of the fireplace, and then I said, "Sorry folks," because it's very difficult to make Mike's fireplace emit shards of gla.s.s-it's designed like a parabolic reflector with a shallow focus-but I had thrown hard enough to spatter four tables just the same. I know better than to throw that hard.

n.o.body paid the least mind; as one they chorused, "To the Lady" and drank, and when the Barrage was finished, eight tables were littered with shards.

Then there was a pause, while everybody waited to see if I could talk about it yet.

The certain knowledge that they were prepared to swallow their curiosity, go back to their drinking and ignore me if that were what I needed, made it possible to speak.

"I was coming offstage. The Purple Cat, over in Easthampton. Tripped over a cable in the dark. Knew I was going down, tried to get her out from under me. Thestage there is waist-high, her head just cleared it and wedged in under the monitor speaker. Then my weight came down on her..." I was sobbing. "... and she screamed, and I..."

Long-Drink wrapped me in his great long arms and hugged tight. I buried my face in his shirt and wept. Someone else hugged us both from behind me. When I was back under control, both let go and I found a drink in my hand. I gulped it gratefully.

"I hate to ask, Jake," Callahan rumbled. "I'm afraid I already know. Is mere any chance she could be fixed?"

"Tell him, Eddie." But Eddie wasn't there; his piano stool was empty. "All right, look, Mike: There are probably ten shops right here on Long Island that'd accept the commission and my money, and maybe an equal number who'd be honest enough to turn me away. There are maybe five real guitar-makers in the whole New York area, and they'd all tell me to forget it. There might be four Master-cla.s.s artisans still alive in all of North America, and their bill would run to four figures, maybe five, a.s.suming they thought they could save her at all." Noah Gonzalez had removed his hat, with a view toward pa.s.sing it; he put it back on. "Look at her. You can't get wood like that anymore. She's got a custom neck and fingerboard, skinnier'n usual, puts the strings closer together-when I play a normal guitar it's like my fingers shrunk. So a rebuilt neck would have less strength, and the fingerboard'd have to be hand-made..."

Long-Drink burst into tears. Callahan nodded and looked sad, and pa.s.sed me another big drink. He poured one for himself, and he toasted the Lady, and when that barrage was over he set 'em up for the house.

The folks treated me right; we had a proper Irish wake for the Lady, and it got pretty drunk out. We laughed and danced and reminisced and swapped lies, created grand toasts; everyone did it up nice. The only thing it lacked was Eddie on the piano; he had disappeared and none knew where. But a wake for Lady Macbeth must include the voice of her long-time colleague-so Callahan surprised us all by sitting down and turning out some creditable barrelhouse. I hadn't known he could play a note, and I'd have sworn his fingers were too big to hit only one key at a time, but he aid okay.

Anyhow, when the smoke cleared, Pyotr ended up driving better than half of his home, in groups of three*a task I wouldn't wish on my senator.

I guess I should explain about Pyotr...

The thing about a joint like Callahan's Place is that it could not possibly function without the cooperation of all its patrons. It takes a lot of volunteer effort to make the Place work the way it does.

Some of this is obvious. Clearly, if a barkeep is going to allow his patrons to smash their empties in the fireplace, they must all be responsible enough to exercise prudence in this pursuit-and furthermore they must nave better than average aim.

But perhaps it is not obvious, and so I should mention, that there is abroom-and-scoop set on either side of the hearth, and whenever an occasional wild shard ricochets across the room, one of those broom-and-scoops just naturally finds its way into the hands of whoever happens to be nearest, without anything being said.

Similarly, if you like a parking lot in which anarchy reigns, with cars parked every which way like goats in a pen, you must all be prepared to pile outside together six or ten times a night, and back-and-fill in series until whoever is trying to leave can get his car out. This recurring scene looks rather like a grand-scale Chinese Fire Drill, or perhaps like b.u.mper Cars for Grownups; Doc Webster points out that to a Martian it would probably look like some vast robot orgy, and insists on referring to it as Auto-Eroticism.

Then there's closing ritual. Along about fifteen minutes before closing, somebody, usually Fast Eddie Costigan the piano player, comes around to all the tables with a big plastic-lined trash barrel. Each table has one of those funnel-and-tin-can ashtrays; someone at each table unscrews it and dumps the b.u.t.ts into the barrel. Then Eddie inserts two corners of the plastic tablecloth into the barrel, the customer lifts the other two corners into the air, and Eddie sluices off the cloth with a seltzer bottle.

Other cleanup jobs, mopping and straightening and the like, just seem to get done by somebody or other every night; all Mike Callahan ever had to do is polish the bartop, turn out the lights and go home. Consequently, although he is scrupulous about ceasing to sell booze at legal curfew, Mike is in no hurry to chase his friends out, and indeed I know of several occasions on which he kept the Place open round the clock, giving away nose-paint until the hour arrived at which it became legal to sell it again.

And finally, of course, there's old Pyotr. You see, no one tight drives home from Callahan's bar. When Mike decides that you've had enough-and they'll never make a Breathalyzer as accurate as his professional judgment*the only way in the world you will get another drink from him is to surrender your car keys and then let Pyotr, who drinks only distilled water, drive you home when you fold. The next morning you drive Pyotr back to his cottage, which is just up the street from Callahan's, and if this seems like too much trouble, you can always go drink somewhere else and see what that gets you.

For the first couple of years after Pyotr started coming around, some of us used to wonder what he got out of the arrangement. None of us ever managed to get him to accept so much as a free breakfast the morning after, and how do you buy a drink for a man who drinks distilled water? Oh, Mike gave him the water for free, but a gallon or so of water a night is pretty poor wages for all the hours of driving Pyotr put in, in the company of at least occasionally troublesome drunks, not to mention the inconvenience of spending many nights sleeping on a strange bed or couch or floor. (Some of the boys, and especially the ones who want to get pie-eyed once in a while, are married. Almost to a woman, their wives worship Pyotr; are happy to put him up now and then.) For that matter, none of us could ever figure out what old Pyotr did for a living.He never had to be anywhere at any particular time next morning, and he was never late arriving at Callahan's. If asked what he did he would say, "Oh, a little bit of everything, whenever I can get it," and drop the subject. Yet he never seemed to be in need of money, and in all the time I knew him I never once saw him take so much as a peanut from the Free Lunch.

(In Callahan's Place there is a free lunch-supported by donations. The value of the change in the jar is almost always greater than the value of the Free Lunch next to it, but n.o.body watches to make sure it stays that way. I mind me of a bad two weeks when that Free Lunch was the only protein I had, and n.o.body so much as frowned at me.) But while he is a bit on the pale side for a man of Middle European stock, Pyotr certainly never looks undernourished, and so there was never any need for us to pry into his personal affairs. Me, I figured him for some kind of a pensioner with a streak of pure altruism, and let it go.

He certainly looks old enough to be a pensioner. Oh, he's in very good shape for his age, and not overly afflicted with wrinkles, but his complexion has that old-leather look. And when you notice his habit of speaking into his cupped hand, and hear the slight lisp in his speech, and you realize that his smiles never seen to pry his lips apart, you get the idea that he's missing some bridgework. And there's something old about his eyes...

Anyway, Pyotr was busier than usual that night, ferrying home all the casualties of Lady Macbeth's wake. It took quite a while. He took three at a time, using the vehicle of whoever lived furthest away, and taxied back for the next load. Two out of every three drunks would have to taxi back to Callahan's the next day for their cars. I was proud of the honor being paid my dead Lady. Pyotr and Callahan decided to save me for last. Perhaps on the principle that the worst should come last-I was p.i.s.sed, and at the stage of being offensively cheerful and hearty. At last all the other wounded had been choppered out, and Pyotr tapped me on one weaving shoulder.

"So they weld-well h.e.l.l, hi, Pyotr, wait a half while I finish telling Mike this story-they weld manacles on this giant alien, and they haul him into court for trial, and the first thing he does, they go to swear him in and he swallows the bailiff whole."

Mike had told me this gag, but he is a very compa.s.sionate man. He relit his cheroot and gave me the straight line, "What'd the bailiff do?"

"His job, o'course-he swore, in the witness. Haw haw!" Pyotr joined in the polite laughter and took my arm. "Time to bottle it up, Pyotr you old lovable Litvak?

Time to scamper, is it? Why should you have to haul my old ashes, huh? Gimme my keys, Mike, I'm not nearly so drunk as you think-I mean, so thunk as you drink. s.h.i.t, I said it right, I must be drink. All right, just let me find my pants-"

It took both of them to get me to the car. I noticed that every time one of my feet came unstuck from the ground, it seemed to take enormous effort to force it backdown again. A car seat leaped up and hit me in the a.s.s, and a door slammed. "Make sure he takes two aspirins before he pa.s.ses out for good," Callahan's voice said from a mile away.

"Right," Pyotr said from only a few blocks distant, and my old Pontiac woke up grumbling. The world lurched suddenly, and we fell off a cliff, landing a million years later in white water. I felt nausea coming up, chattered merrily to stave it off.

"Splendid business, Pyotr old sock, absolutionally magnelephant. You drive well, and this car handles well on ice, but if you keep spinning like this we're going to dend up in the itch-mean, we'll rote off the ride, right? Let's go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and try to buy a drink for every sailor on the U.S.S. Missouri-as a songwriter I'm always hoping to find the Moe juiced. Left her right there on the bartop, by all the G.o.ds! Jus' left her and*turn around, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, I left my Lady back there!"

"It's all right, Jake. Mr. Callahan will leave her locked up. We will wake her for several days, correct Irish custom, yes? Even those not present tonight should have opportunity to pay their respects."

"Hey, yeah, sure. Hey! Funeral. How? Bury or cremate?"

"Cremation would seem appropriate."

"Strings? Gearboxes? Heavy metal air pollution? Fuggoff. Bury her, dissolve in acid, heave her into the ocean off Montauk Point and let the fish lay eggs in her sounding box. Know why I called her Lady Macbeth?"

"No, I never knew."

"Used to sneak up and stab me inna back when didn't expect it. Bust a string, go out of tune, start to buzz on the high frets for no reason at all. Treacherous b.i.t.c.h.

Oh, Lady!"

"You used each other well, Jake. Be glad. Not many have ever touched so fine an instrument."

"G.o.ddam right. Stop the car, please. I want to review inputs."

"Open the window."

"I'll get it all over the-"

"It's raining. Go ahead."

"Oh. Not sure I like Finn's magic. Have to pay attention to notice it's raining.

Right ho. Oh."

Eventually the car stopped complaining and rain sprinkled everything but Pyotr and me and then my house opened up and swallowed me. "Forget aspirins," I mumbled as my bed rushed at me. "Don' need 'em."

"You'll be sorry tomorrow."

"I'm sorry now."

The bed and I went inertialess together, spun end over end across themacrocosmic Universe.

I was awakened by the deafening thunder of my pulse.

I knew that I was awake lone before I had the power to raise my eyelids. I knew it because I knew I lacked the imagination to dream a taste like that in my mouth. But I was quite prepared to believe that the sleep had lasted at least a century; I felt old.

That made me wonder if I had snored right through the wake-the wake! Everything came back in a rush; I flung open my eyes, and two large icicles were rammed into the apertures as far as they would go, the points inches deep in my forebrain. I screamed. That is, I tried to scream, and it sounded like a scream-but my pulse sounded like an empty oil tank being hit with at maul, so more likely what I did was bleat or whimper.

Something heavy and bristly lay across me; it felt like horsehair, with the horse still attached. I strained at it, could not budge it. I wept.

The voice spoke in an earsplitting whisper. "Good morning, Jake."

"f.u.c.k you too," I croaked savagely, wincing as the smell of my breath went past my nose.

"I warned you," Pyotr said sadly.

"f.u.c.k you twice. Jesus, my eyelashes hurt. What is lying on me?"

"A cotton sheet."

"Gaah."

"You should have accepted the aspirins."

"You don't understand. I don't get hangovers."

Pyotr made no reply.

"d.a.m.n it, I don't! Not even when I was a lush, not the first time I ever got smashed, not ever. Trick metabolism. Worst that ever happens is I wake up not hungry*but no head, no nausea, no weakness, never."

Pyotr was silent a long time. Then, "You drank a good deal more than usual last night."

"h.e.l.l, I been drunker'n that. Too many times, man."

"Never since I have known you."

"Well, that's true, Maybe that's... no, I've fallen off the wagon before. I just don't get hangovers."

He left the room, was gone awhile. I pa.s.sed the time working on a comprehensive catalog of all the places that hurt, beginning with my thumbnails. I got quite a lot of work done before Pyotr returned; I had gotten halfway through the hairs on my forearms when he came in the door with a heavily laden tray in his hands. I opened my mouth to scream, "Get that food out of here!"-and the smell reached me. I satup and began to salivate. He set the tray down on my lap and I ignored the pain and annihilated bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese, onions, green peppers, hot peppers, bread, b.u.t.ter, English m.u.f.fins, jam, orange juice, coffee, and a.s.sorted condiments so fast I think I frightened him a little. When I sank back against the pillows the tray contained a plate licked clean, an empty cup and gla.s.s, and a fork. I was exhausted, and still hurt in all the same places-that is, in all places-but I was beginning to believe that I wanted to live. This is crazy," I said. "If I am hung over, the concept of food ought to be obscene. I never ate that much breakfast in my life, not even the morning after my wedding night"

I could see Pyotr now, and he looked embarra.s.sed, as though my appet.i.te were his fault.

"What time is it?"

"Seven p.m."

"G.o.d's teeth."

"It was four in the morning when we arrived here. You have slept for thirteen hours. I fell asleep at noon and have just awakened. Do you feel better now that you have eaten?"