Callahan's Secret Read Free Page A

beginning to get an erection.
     
    So I used the second I bad left to study her face. A socially difficult moment was imminent, and I wanted it to go well, so I needed to know as much about her as possible, immediately.
    Big lush women and small slight men in our society go through life wrapped around a softball-sized chunk of pain; it breaks some of them and makes others magnificent. She was magnificent. Clearly visible on her face, written plain for any fool to see, were the character, will power, selfdiscipline, self-respeCt and warm sexiness which common wisdom said she could not possibly have without automatically becoming skinny. She had lots of laugher’s wrinkles and a ‘couple of thinker’s wrinkles and no other kinds. She wore her hair in a big bush of curls that made no futile attempt to downplay her size; rain-sparkle made it a halo. The split-second glance I got of her eyes, glistening in the light from the allnight deli across the road, focused on the far distance, made them seem serene, self-confident.
    I went on computer time. And a very good computer it must have been, too, because I was able to run several very complex subprograms in the second or so allotted to me, One routine sorted through the several hundred thousand Opening Lines in storage for something suitable to Unexpected Encounter With Nude Stranger, but since it expected to come up empty, a more ambitious program attempted to create something new, something witty and engaging and reassuring, out of the materials of the situation. In hopes that one or the other would succeed, a simple and well-used program began selecting the tone and pitch of voice and the manner of delivery-soft enough not to startle, but not so soft as to seem wimpy; humorous but not clownish; urbane but not smug; admiring but not lecherous-prepared, in short, to begin lying through its/my teeth. Meanwhile, an almost unconscious algorithm had me keep my hands firmly at my sides and stand up a little straighter. And all of this together took up, at most, 20 pereent of the available bytes-the rest was fully occupied in an urgent priority task.
    Memorizing her…
    Plenty of time! Computational capacity to spare! I knew that she was beginning to become aware of me several hundred nanoseconds before she did, integrated all the subprograms, picked a neutral Opening Line and pinned my hopes on delivery, ran a hundred full dress rehearsals to derive best-and worst-case results, made the go decision, and bad time to admire her lower left-eyelash and myself before I heard my very own voice say, with all the warmth and tone and clarity I could reasonably have hoped for, “It certainly is a very nice tits.”
    My central processing unit melted down into slag.
    It took her ten years to turn and look at me, and no thought of any kind took place inside my skull; horror fused every circuit. She looked me square in the eye, absolutely expressionlessly, for endless decades, while I marinated in failure and shame. Then her gaze left my eyes, panned slowly downward. It rested on my mouth for many years, moved on down again, did not pause until it reached my feet, then came back up again and paused where it was bound to eventually-but I was centuries dead by then, only a cinder of consciousness remained in my brain to be snuffed by the realization that my erection was now up to at least half mast, and so by the time her gaze got back up to my eyes, I don’t see how she could possibly have seen glowing therefrom the slightest light of intelligence.
    The animal who sleeps Under my computer woke up and tried its best. It tried for a smile, doubtless produced a horrible grimace. It essayed a merry laugh, managed to generate a hideous gargling sound. It gestured vaguely, attempting a Gallic shrug and failing to bring it off. To all of this she displayed no visible reaction whatever. The old animal gave up.
    The first plan I formed was to jump off the roof, but the problem with that was that it could