Time Travelers Strictly Cash Read Free

do I get from her,” he went on, dropping into his fake brogue. “People grinnin’ or growlin’ all round the room just like here, Petey’s eyes poppin’, but this lady gives no sign that she’s aware of me presence atall, atall. I kinda wiggle it a bit, and not a glance does she give me. Finally 1 can’t stand it. ‘Hey,’ I sez, tappin’ her other shoulder and pointing, ‘what do you think this is?’ And she’ takes a leisurely look. Then she looks me in the eye and says, ‘It’s something like a man’s penis, only smaller.’
    An explosion of laughter and applause filled the room.
    “… wherefore,” continued Long-Drink, “I propose a toast to me youth, and may God save me from a relapse.” And the cheers overcame the laughter as he gulped his drink and flung the glass into the fireplace. I nearly grinned myself.
    “My turn,” Tommy Janssen called out, and the Drink made way for him at the chalk line. Tommy’s probably the youngest of the regulars; I’d put him at just about twenty-one. His hair is even longer than mine, but he keeps his face mowed.
    “This happened to me just last week. I went into the city for a party, and I left it too late, and it was the wrong neighborhood of New York for a civilian to be in at that time of night, right? A dreadful error! Never been so scared in my life. I’m walking on tippy-toe, looking in every doorway I pass and trying to look insolvent, and the burning question in my mind is, ‘Are the crosstown buses still running?’ Because if they are, I can catch one a block away that’ll take me to bright lights and safety-but I’ve forgotten bow late the crosstown bus keeps running in this part of town. It’s my onJy hope. I keep on walking, scared as hell. And when I get to the bus stop, there, leaning up against a mailbox, is the biggest, meanest-looking, ugliest, blackest man I have ever seen in my life. Head shaved, three days’ worth of beard, big scar on his face, hands in his pockets.”
    Not a sound in the joint.
    “So the essential thing is not to let them know you’re scared. I put a big grin on my face, and I walk right up to him and I stammer, ‘Uh… crosstown bus run all night long?’ And the fella goes … ” Tommy’ mimed a ferocious looking giant with his hands in his pockets. Then suddenly he yanked them out, clapped them rhythmically, and sang, “Doo-dah, doo-dah!”
    The whole bar dissolved in laughter.
    “… fella whipped out a joint, and we both got high while we waited for the bus,” he went on, and the laughter redoubled. Tommy finished his beer and cocked the empty. “So my toast is to prejudice,” he finished, and pegged the glass square into the hearth, and the laughter became a standing ovation. Isham Latimer, who is the exact color of recording tape, came over and gave Tommy a beer, a grin, and some skin.
    Suddenly I thought I understood something, and it filled me with-shame.
    Perhaps in my self-involvement I was wrong. I had not seen the Doc communicate in any way with Long-Drink or Tommy, nor had the toasters seemed to notice me at all. But all at once it seemed suspicious that both men, both proud men, had picked tonight to stand up and uncharacteristically tell egg-on-my-face anecdotes. Damn Doc Webster! I had been trying so hard to keep my pain off my face, so determined to get my toast made and get home without bringing my friends down.
    Or was I, with the egotism of the wounded, reading too much into a couple of good anecdotes well told? I wanted to bear the next toast. I turned around to set my beer down so I could prop my face up on both fists, and was stunned out of my self-involvement, and was further ashamed.
     
    It was inconceivable that I could have sat next to her for a full fifteen minutes without noticing her-anywhere in the world, let alone at Callahan’s Place.
    I worked the night shift in a hospital once, pushing a broom. The only new faces you see are the ones they wheel into Emergency. There