Lady Slings the Booze Read online

  —over there among the crowd at the piano, watching the Old Perfesser’s hands—

  Arethusa!

  I hadn’t even stepped off the last tread of the spiral staircase yet. I had left her behind me no more than twenty seconds ago, and she had not passed me. Even that stairway was not so wide that I would have missed a naked blonde going past.

  And she was no longer naked. She wore…well, I don’t know how to describe women’s dresses, and it was complicated. It looked like the two people with the cigars blew it and then spray-painted it purple. If they didn’t, it must have taken her more than twenty seconds to put it on. I wished I’d seen that. I wondered how long it took to take it off. Also she was now wearing earrings, and what looked like real pearls, and high heels and stockings. And her hair was styled a little differently, back off her forehead.

  She looked up and caught me staring at her, smiled warmly, and left the group by the piano to come meet me. I stepped down off that last step. By the time she reached me I had my face under control, and was annoyed with myself for being so startled. Obviously this was Arethusa’s twin sister. That gave rise to the speculations you would expect it to. I was just about to introduce myself, with an opening line guaranteed to charm the drawers off a lady judge in open court, when she came into my arms and said, “See! I told you I’d see you later, Ken.” She settled herself against me. “Still thinking of me, I see—how flattering! You’re gonna like working here, I can tell.”

  Fortunately she kissed me then, so I didn’t have to worry about my face.

  It was as involving a kiss as the last one had been. The dress didn’t get in the way at all. The longer it went on, the more time I had to think.

  The kiss itself was one of the things I thought about. She remembered what I had liked the last time, and started with that. I was forced to abandon the trial hypothesis that the invisible Mary had somehow passed a message about me down to Arethusa’s twin in the Parlor. Even if you assumed Mary had some way to speak privately to someone at arm’s length from a honky-tonk piano and half a dozen lustily singing people, there simply hadn’t been time to convey information of this level of complexity.

  Ergo, this was Arethusa in my arms.

  Just like with the Favila case, I refused to reject my conclusion merely because it was preposterous. Arethusa had the ability to teleport through solid floors, materializing clothes around her as she went that would have taken a normal woman an hour to put on. Okay. Fine. Interesting, sure…but in all honesty, not really as interesting as her ability at kissing…

  An indeterminate time later she let go of my lips and tilted her head back. “I do like a man who gives number one hugs,” she said contentedly.

  “As opposed to, like, a number two?” I asked, wondering vaguely if I was being insulted; and if so, if I minded.

  “No, the other kind of hug is a letter A,” she explained, “where you’re touching right up at the top, but the further down you go, the farther apart you get, like an A. It’s like shaking fingertips. Well, what do you think of the Parlor?”

  I was going to say something about not having had a chance to really take it all in yet, but just then the Universe cleared its throat, gently reminding me that it existed. “Excuse me, Tim,” I said. “Uh—why don’t you grab a beer or something and I’ll come get you when I’m ready to move on, okay?”

  “As soon as I get my kiss,” he said, not at all submissively, and I stepped back. As before, their kiss was short but dense, compressed. She pinched his butt as she let him go, and he tousled her hair. “Take your time, Ken,” he told me.

  “What time does the place close?” I asked.

  “Sometime later this year, I understand,” he said, and headed off to the west bar. I thought he was kidding.

  “You look like you could use a quick one yourself,” Arethusa said.

  I tried for a gag myself. “Maybe after I’ve had a drink.”

  “If you like,” she said agreeably, and I realized she hadn’t meant what I’d thought she meant.

  How much did I want that drink?

  As I hesitated, torn between my duty to explore Lady Sally’s House and my desire to explore Lady Sally’s House, I felt a tug at my pants, just below my right knee. Assuming it was the lady midget in leather, I turned and bent to tell her that I didn’t dance, but it wasn’t her. It was a fairly large German shepherd. He blinked up at me and released my pant leg.

  “Egsguze me, ffella,” he said politely. “bud you’re blocking ze sstairvay.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said, and stepped out of the way.

  Well, I had just accepted a teleporting blonde, hadn’t I? In a House like this, a talking dog was more or less to be expected. Odd I hadn’t run into him sooner. I do remember thinking, well, I’ll be a son of a—but I had the sense not to say it.

  “No broblem,” he said. “Hi, Are’dusa.”

  “Hi, Ralph,” she said, and bent to scratch behind his ears. He accepted it with enormous gravity. Well, I would have too. “This is Ken. He might be working here.”

  “Bleazed to meet you,” he said, and gave me his paw. “You’ll lige it here, Ken. Zere issn’t a real bitch on ze whole sstaff. I perzonally guarantee it. If zere vass, I might haff been ze first sson in hisstory to giff my paw to my Maw.” He…well, barked with laughter.

  I shook his paw but made no reply. I couldn’t think of one.

  “Dit I dell you, Are’dusa,” he went on, “zat I’ve come up viss a way to get rich?”

  “Another one?” she asked.

  “Jawohl. I’m goink to zell a line uff dogvood made ffrom ssmall birdss.”

  “And you’ll call it—”

  “‘Wren Din-Din,’” he said; and scampered up the staircase before she could kick him.

  I stood right where I was, and when I could speak, I said, “I’m not so sure I want to work here any more.”

  Ice began to form at the corners of Arethusa’s eyes. “Oh, yeah?” she said with a dangerous purr in her voice. “You don’t think dogs can be people? Not even talking ones?”

  “You don’t get me,” I said, trying, for my pride as a tough guy, not to blurt. I didn’t want her mad at me. “Where I come from, anyone who says ‘Excuse me’ is a human being. What I mean is, people who make puns like that shouldn’t be tolerated in a respectable whorehouse. ‘Many Hands,’ okay, that was clever—but that one was just disgusting.”

  She relaxed. “Well, I can’t argue there. Sorry if I took you wrong, Ken. Ralph’s a kind of a bigot-detector, and once in a while he turns one up even here. No offense.”

  “None taken. Uh…Lady Sally told me to be ‘tolerant of anything you find strange.’ I’m working on it.”

  “Gee,” she said thoughtfully. “I can’t remember the last time I thought something was strange—around here, I mean. That’s strange…”

  I found that I had reached a decision about which to have first, a drink or Arethusa. Definitely the drink first. Possibly a flock of them. “As I was drinking—” I said, and steered us to the east bar.

  As we were being served Irish coffees—which they called “God’s Blessings” there for some reason—by one of the only really good-looking transvestites I ever saw, Priscilla came out of the door marked “Bower.” She did it so discreetly somehow that not many people noticed, even though she had a fat soaking-wet cop over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and his uniform cap clutched in one hand.

  But it did rearrange things slightly where Arethusa and I were. The bartender calmly grabbed a mop and went to take care of the trail of water Pris was leaving behind her…and the two uniforms I’d seen kibitz the arm-wrestling earlier both said “Oh shit” in the sane weary tone at the same instant, and moved off to follow Pris.

  I put my hand on the sap and started to go after them, but Arethusa restrained me. “It’s all right,” she assured me.

  Sure enough, when the two cops caught up with Pris near the exit, I saw them apologize to her. (I can rea
d lips, did I mention? Gun went off next to my ear once, and for a month I thought I’d have to.) I even saw Pris turn her head and say to the woman cop, “Not your fault.” And the cop hurried to get the door for her. The other cop ran ahead through the reception room and got the outer door too. The woman cop let go of her door as soon as she could to keep the draft out of the joint, but I had time to see Pris somehow sling the fat cop down off her shoulder and loft him underhand toward the sidewalk outside. She was a good six feet from the door at the time; it was uncertain whether the cop was going to clear the steps outside or not when my view was cut off by the closing inner door.

  I glanced around. Except for the bartender and the two buttons, nobody seemed to have paid the slightest attention. These people were enjoying themselves too much to lose their concentration for a little thing like a uniformed buzzer getting eighty-sixed by an Amazon. The smoke artists were delighting their Japanese fans with a battle between Godzilla and Rodan; flashbulbs went off like popcorn.

  “None of those cops were wearing gunbelts or sticks,” I said to Arethusa.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference if they had,” she said. “But no, the only kind of heat that anybody ever carries in here is nonmetallic and non-deadly.” She grinned, beautifully. “Usually.”

  “And it’s of very high caliber,” I said, and she pinched me.

  “We will stop right there,” she said firmly. “There are enough sexual puns on weapons to waste a week—and if we get started, people might decide we ‘shouldn’t be tolerated in a respectable whorehouse.’”

  Pris came back in, talking soothingly to the two disgraced cops, and all three stepped around the transvestite bartender with his mop. I turned back to the bar and took a big gulp of my cooling Irish coffee. Irish coffee sort of forces you to drink fast. It’s not much good cold. Well, not as good. Arethusa took a big sip of her own, and licked whipped cream off her upper lip. It looked like something to do. So I did.

  Sure enough, it was good.

  When you got that close to her eyes, you could see they weren’t really blue. Closer to purple. And little lavender flecks at about four o’clock in the left pupil. Her right, I mean. She blinked slower than anybody I ever saw.

  For probably the first time since the ninth grade, it came to me that my breath might not be kissing sweet, and I pulled back away from her upper lip. With some difficulty.

  When she spoke, I was terribly afraid she was going to ask me if I knew how much I looked like the guy on the TV news. But she didn’t. “So tell me, Ken,” she said, so softly I could hardly hear her amid the party noise, “have you worked before?”

  “Well, not strictly speaking, not exactly, not what you’d call ‘worked,’ no. Certainly not in any place like this.” I looked around at it. The woman with the cigar was just blowing a killer whale; as I watched, it waved its tail lazily and spouted smoke from its blowhole. Her companion blew a flock of dolphins to swim playfully around it. Whoever that guy at the piano was, he knew a real good arrangement for “Stardust.” “And if you want to hear a manly confession, I’m really starting to sweat whether I’m going to make the cut or not.”

  She started to smile, and switched it to something more sympathetic. “Oh, Ken, don’t worry! I remember when I first saw this place. By the time I’d finished the tour, I thought they were going to make me build a ship in a bottle with my tongue for an audition. Really, to work here there’s only one thing you have to learn.”

  “Just one?” I said dubiously.

  “Well, yeah. But I admit it’s a little tough to really learn how.”

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Pay attention,” she said.

  I waited to be sure that was it, and said, “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Pay attention. You’re being paid money; pay back attention. Real, close attention. Everything else happens naturally.”

  “Paying attention I’m good at,” I said.

  “I believe you are.”

  I finished my Irish coffee and reached a decision. “Arethusa? Look, I’ve seen the Discreet section, the whole second floor, and this place, and I’ll pass on the stag and doe Lounges for now. How much have I got left to see?”

  She closed one eye and poked the tip of her tongue out of one corner of her mouth, an expression which sounds silly and was utterly charming on her. “Let’s see. There’s the cafeteria downstairs; it’s mostly just for staff, and exceptionally nice customers on good behavior—”

  “I’ve seen a cafeteria,” I said.

  “And there’s the Bower, of course. That’s pretty striking.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Well, there are four rules in the Bower. Take no for an answer; if there’s a beef, you both leave at once; no information acquired in the Bower ever leaves; and don’t pee in the pool. Other than that, pretty much anything goes. You’ll like it: it’s really pretty in there. Everything’s soft. And warm.”

  “Well…”

  “Are you shy, Ken? In groups, I mean? Don’t worry if you are—a lot of people who work here feel like that. The Bower’s not mandatory or anything. The Lady says the only thing mandatory around here is, ‘Be kind.’ And the Bower’s not like a writer’s workshop: it’s okay to just watch.”

  “Later, I think. I’ve seen a lot already tonight.”

  “Well, all that’s left are the apartments on the third floor—”

  “Would you show me yours?”

  She smiled, and finished her Irish coffee. For some crazy reason the smile reminded me of the drawing of a crossbow. “If you’ll show me yours.”

  She led the way up the spiral staircase.

  Have you ever watched a good-looking woman, dressed in cobwebs by Buckminster Fuller, walk up a spiral staircase ahead of you? Do I have to tell you she had my full attention? Stairs seemed to slide by under my feet as if I were standing on one of those wheelchair elevator platforms. Surreptitiously, I used a breath spray. We levitated to the second floor—no, I levitated, she was climbing—and she led me through a door into a regular stairwell. By the time we drifted up to the top of that, I seemed to have her in my arms like a bride to be carried across a threshold. As we stepped out into another hallway I kissed her, and somehow she steered me with the kiss in the direction of her room. It seemed like a short walk before she kissed: this one, and let go of me with one hand to open the door for us. I pushed it closed behind us with my back, and I swear it was the instant it clicked shut, louder than I expected, that the five extraordinary things happened.

  To me four of them seemed to occur simultaneously, but I’ll take them in reverse order of urgency:

  First, then, a sudden powerful draft made my hair flutter.

  At the same time, the door squirmed under my back.

  As that happened, I felt a ghostly tug at my pants pocket, as if a really good pickpocket had touched my blackjack and wallet, shifted them just enough to identify them, and decided not to take either, all in a split-second.

  And before I could really register any of this, somebody whacked me across the head with a two-by-four.

  From behind…

  I’m a PI: I grasped at once that I had been hit over the back of the head. I knew just what to do. I dropped Arethusa—telling myself she almost had to land on a soft part; she’d roll out of the way before I toppled over onto her—and waited for the flood tide of blackness to rise up and crash over me, to drag me down deeper and ever deeper into the bottomless whirlpool that sucks all the woes of the world down its whirling vortex into a place of endless peace and dark…

  NO such luck. That was the fifth extraordinary thing.

  I know, in the books and movies the PI always loses consciousness when somebody whacks his skull. There are places on the skull where even a gentle rap will reliably drop a man—but the back of the skullbone is not one of them. Try it yourself. Borrow a blackjack from your mother and sap a random sample of ten guys, as hard as you like. I’ll bet you fifty bucks n
ot more than four of them go down.

  Of course, I’ll also bet that at least one of them will be dead within twenty-four hours, from subdural something or other. It means you start bleeding inside your head. Your skull doesn’t get any bigger just because there’s more stuff in it now, and pretty soon there’s no room for brains.

  If it had been up to me, I’d have lost consciousness. My goddam head hurt. But like I said, no such luck.

  So that meant I had to catch the son of a bitch and express my irritation. Tabling for the present the matter of how he had sapped me through a solid wooden door, I spun on my heels and yanked it open—managing to miss Arethusa with it—and sprang into the corridor, slamming the door behind me for her protection.

  Nothing to my right but closed doors, all the way down to a stairwell that was not hissing slowly closed. So I turned left and sprinted flat out. It hurt like crazy to run, my brain pulsed like a big grey heart, but I was willing to accept that inconvenience in exchange for the pleasure of getting my hands on the guy that had caused it. I thundered along, cornered to the right, and kept running.

  The door we’d come up through was not hissing closed either, so he hadn’t used it. I ran on past, making real good time now, and cornered again. Another long hallway of closed doors. I began to lose momentum, and before long I slowed to a halt, frustrated and baffled. Somehow I was certain he had not ducked into any of the apartments—Mary would hear him if he did, maybe that’s how I figured—so that meant he was gone. How, I wasn’t sure, any more than I knew how he had hit me through a closed door.

  But my first-order hypothesis was that he was a teleport, just like Arethusa. So maybe she could help me figure it out. I turned to retrace my steps back to her apartment in the other wing—

  —and as I rounded the first corner into the connecting corridor again, the stairwell she and I had used opened, and Arethusa came out, naked as an egg and looking annoyed as hell. “What is your major malfunction?” she snapped at me. “Get back in there and pick me up.”