Callahan's Secret Read Free Page B

only be done once and might not hurt enough long enough, so I stepped closer to the dumbwaiter housing and began battering my head against it to soften my skull up for the grand finale, and I liked the way it felt and began to get a rhythm going, and then and only then did she burst out into a magnificent bellow of laughter, a great trombone hoot of shocked merriment, and big as she was she was up out of tailor’s seat and holding me away from the dumbwaiter before I could deliver it another blow, and then there was a great complicated rocking struggling hugging stumbling confusion of laughter and tears and rain that somehow left us sitting on our asses on that wet roof with our feet touching, both of us shuddering with mirth. We nearly got our breath back a few minutes later, but when she tried to speak all she got out was “smooth” before dissolving into hysterics again, and a little after that I managed to get out, “My Freudian slip is-” before I lost it, and when the earthquake had well and truly passed I was lying flat on my back with rain running up my nostrils and the soles of my feet pre~sed firmly against human warmth. My hands hurt a little from beating them on the roof.
    I sat up.
    So did she. ‘I must have looked forlorn. My erection was gone. “It’s okay,” she said, pressing her toes gently against mine. “I’ve heard worse.”
    “You don’t understand,” I moaned.
    “Admittedly-but I think I got the message.”
    “But-“
    “It was, unquestionably, the most memorable meeting of my life, and nothing will ever top it.” Oh, if only she’d been right.
    I was beginning slowly to realize that this situation was salvageable-that the disáster was of such epic proportion as to be a kind of triumph. I had certainly made an impression on her. Was this not Callahan’s Place-albeit empty~- beneath my butt? Callahan’s Place, focus of strange and wonderful events, magical tavern in which nothing was impossible and few things even unlikely? Could there be any better, more fitting place for a miracle to happen than here on Callahan’s roof?
    But exactly where to go from here was hidden from me. “I’m Jake.”
    “I’m glad. I thought you might have really hurt yourself there.”
    “I meant that my name is Jake.”
    “Glad to hear it. What is your name?”
    Better and better. I like them quick. “Damned if I know. What’s yours? And please don’t say, ‘Thanks, I’ll have a beer.”
    “I’m Mary, Jake.”
    With what feeble wits I had left, I attempted a cunning investigation. “You must know the guys who put in that splendid staircase, right?”
    She went two degrees cooler. “I put in the staircase.”
    “Excuse me,” I said faintly, and got to my feet. The dumbwaiter housing felt just as good as it had before; there was just enough give to it to cause an energetic rebound, but not so much as to soften the impact.
    Unexpectedly my ears hurt, and the rhythm of my head was halted. “Stop that,” she said, twisting me by both ears to face her. “Damn it, I had nO business getting chilly at you that way. I must be the first lady blacksmith you’ve ever run into, how the hell could you know? You did good:
    you didn’t look disbelieving, just surprised.”
    I shook my head. It stayed on. “You’re the second woman smith I’ve met. That’s why I’m mad at myself-I should have guessed.”
    She stepped back a pace and put her hands on her hips. “Jake,” she said softly, “you’re trying too hard.”
    “I know. Is it flattering at least?”
    Her laugh was a good hearty bray. “Yes, by damn. And not entirely ineffective: I can’t wait to fmd out what you’re like when you’re normal.”
    I felt my breathing begin to slow and my shoulders begin to relax. “I’ve always wondered myself. But at my worst I should have known that you put in that staircase.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you look like the person who did it. Everything it takes to do a job that good, you’ve got, I