Callahan's Place 09 - Callahan's Con (v5.0) by Spider Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

there was no pressing reason for us to stay sober. First Willard and Maureen and Eddie and I finished our parodic desecration of “Swingin’ on a Star” together—
     
    Or would you like to swing with your wife?
    Eat your beans and peas with a knife?
    And be smarter dead than in life?
    Or would you rather be a dork?
     
    But if you’ve got some manners and class
    And you ain’t a pain in the ass
    And you’ve an itch to pitch you a glass
    In an amazing state of grace
    You could be swinging at The Place!
     
    —and after that, Eddie and I did one of our usual sets of whatever piano/guitar tunes entered our heads, and by the time we were ready for a break, Willard had finished barbequeing, and about then the evening crowd started to arrive, and what with one thing and another, the Place managed—in spite of the brief shocking infestation of the Bureaucrat From Hell—to return to what we like to consider normal, at least for the rest of that night.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Zoey came plodding home in the small hours.   She looked like an unusually lovely zombie and moved like Lawrence three-quarters of the way to Aqabba.   Bass players work hard .   Especially on Duval Street.
    Some of the plodding, of course, was due to the fact that she was towing her ax behind her.   Minga is a big brute of a standup bass, which produces a sound so powerful Zoey’s never bothered to electrify her, but even in the wheeled case I built for her she just barely qualifies as portable.   Erin keeps offering to just teleport the thing home for her mother after gigs, and I suspect one of these days Zoey’s going to take her up on it.   Art ain’t easy.
    By then everyone but me had gone home, and the compound residents—Eddie, Doc and Mei-Ling, Tom Hauptmann, Long-Drink and Tommy Janssen, Pixel, Alf, Lex and even, thank God, Harry—had all gone to bed in their various cottages.   I still had a few closing-up chores to do behind the bar, but nothing that wouldn’t keep until tomorrow.   I stopped whatever I was doing, came around the bar, and joined my beloved in the last fifty yards of her March To The Sack.
    “Hi,” I said.
    Pause, several slow strides long.   “Mmrm,” she agreed finally.  
    “Glad it went well, Spice.”   Her face was slack with fatigue, but I could tell it had been a very good gig: the corners of her mouth turned up perceptibly.  
    She nodded once.   Long pause.   “Gate.”
    “Yeah, Omar’s fixing it.   It got split down the middle.   I told him to leave a scar.”
    Pause.   Then one eyebrow twitched.   “Big Beef.”
    “Right.”
    She grunted approval.   We were already in our cottage by then.   She let go of Minga’s case-handle in the middle of the livingroom and, freed of her weight, seemed to almost float into the bedroom.   Where she waited, patient as a horse being unsaddled, while I undressed her.   It is, I find, a vastly interesting experience to undress the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world, and to know with equal certainty both that she feels exactly the same about you, and that if you attempt the slightest sexual liberty now she will kill you with a single blow.   There ought to be a word for frustration that doesn’t make it sound like a bad thing.   I stopped chatting to devote my full attention to the task.  
    As soon as I was done, Zoey toppled over into bed like a felled tree—a fascinating thing to watch, from start to a couple of moments after the finish, when the ripples died down.   I heard her eyelids slam shut, and she made a small purring sound deep in her throat.   But my wife is a polite person; before surrendering to unconsciousness, she turned her face toward me and murmured, “’thing ’kay, spice?”
    Tough choice to make.   I knew she was physically and mentally exhausted, knew she had earned her rest, knew there was nothing useful she could possibly do about anything until she woke up anyway.  
    I also knew, to a fair degree of