HER OWN PRIVATE SITCOM by Allen Steele
The Reality TV craze has helped to generate the idea that anybody and everybody can be a television star, but as the sly story that follows indicates, it’s not always as easy as it looks…
Allen Steele made his first sale to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1988, soon following it up with a long string of other sales to Asimov’s, as well as to markets such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Science Fiction Age. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus Poll as Best First Novel of the year, and soon Steele was being compared to Golden Age Heinlein by no less an authority than Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Clarke County Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night. The Weight, The Tranquillity Alternative, A King of Infinite Space, Oceanspace, Chronospace, Coyote, and Coyote Rising. His short work has been gathered in two collections, Rude Astronauts and Sex and Violence in Zero G. His most recent book is a new novel in the Coyote sequence, Coyote Frontier. He won a Hugo Award in 1996 for his novella “The Death of Captain Future,” and another Hugo in 1998 for his novella “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, covering science and business assignments, and is now a full-time writer living in Whately, Massachusetts with his wife, Linda.
RAY’S Good Food Diner was located on the outskirts of town near the interstate, across a gravel parking lot from a Union 76 truckstop. The town only had 1,300 residents, so it supported only two restaurants, the other of which was a pizzeria which served up what was universally acknowledged to be the world’s most indigestible pizza. This left Ray’s Good Food Diner as the only place within fifteen miles where you could get a decent breakfast twenty-four hours a day.
Every Friday morning at about nine o’clock, Bill drove out to Ray’s for the weekly meeting of the Old Farts Club. No one remembered who first started calling it that, but it pretty well described the membership: a half-dozen or so men, each and every one of whom qualified for the senior citizen discount, who liked to get together and chew the fat, both literally and figuratively. There weren’t any rules, written or unspoken, against women or children attending the meetings, but since no one had ever brought along any family members-their wives didn’t care and their kids were all adults now and, for the most part, living away from home-the issue had never really been raised. Which was just as well; in a world where seemingly everything had been made accessible to all ages and both genders, Ray’s Good Food Diner was one of the few places left where a handful of white male chauvinists could safely convene without fear of being picketed.
A grumbling row of sixteen-wheelers idled on the other side of the lot when Bill pulled into Ray’s. He parked his ten-year-old Ford pick-up in front of the diner and climbed out. The late autumn air was cool and crisp, redolent with the scent of fallen leaves and diesel fumes; he thrust his hands into the pockets of his Elks Club windbreaker as he sauntered past the line of cars. Even without glancing through the windows, he knew which of his friends were here just by recognizing their vehicles: Chet’s charcoal-black Cadillac with the NRA sticker in the rear window; Tom’s Dodge truck with corn husks in the bed; Garrett’s decrepit Volkswagen hatchback with the mismatched driver’s side door and the dented rear bumper. John’s Volvo wasn’t there-Bill remembered that he was in Daytona Beach, visiting his son’s family. Ned hadn’t arrived yet, either because he had overslept or-more likely, Bill thought sourly-he was too hungover from his latest whiskey binge. Poor Ned.
The small diner was filled with its usual clientele: long-haul truckers chowing down after sleeping over in their vehicles, local farmers taking a mid-morning break from their chores, a couple of longhair students from the nearby state university. He smelled bacon and fried potatoes, heard music from the little two-songs-for-a-quarter juke boxes above the window booths: Jimmy Buffett from the one occupied by a husband-and-wife trucker family, something godawful from the one taken over by the college kids. He unzipped his windbreaker, looked around…
“Hey, Bill!”
And there they were, sitting around two Formica-top tables pushed together at the far end of the room: the Old Farts Club in all their glory. Chet, Tom, Garrett… the regular gang, waving for him to come over and join them. A chair had been left open for him; if there was a better definition of friendship, Bill had never heard of it.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here today…” he began.
“Aw, shut up and sit down.” This from Chet, seated at the end of the table.
“We begin bombing in five minutes,” added Garrett.
The same opening lines, reiterated again and again over the last-seven? ten? fifteen?-years. Friendship is also the condition when your buddies tolerate your lame jokes long after they’ve ceased to be funny. Or perhaps it was only a requisite of growing old.
Bill took his seat, looked around. Everyone had a mug of coffee before him, but there were no plates on the table. Another unspoken rule of the Old Farts Club was that you ate when you were hungry; no one had to wait for the others to arrive. “Thought I was running late,” he observed, “but it looks like we all got here at the same time for once.”
“Nope. I’ve been here for a hour.” Chet nodded to Tom. “He’s been here almost as long as I have.”
“Almost an hour,” agreed Tom, studying the menu.
“I got here…” Garrett checked his watch. “Exactly forty-two minutes ago.” Garrett was like that. “We’re still waiting to order.”
“You mean, we’re waiting for someone to ask if we want to order,” Chet said.
“Yes, this is true.”
Puzzled, Bill glanced over his shoulder, scanned the room. The diner was no more or less busy than it ever was on a Friday morning; at least a third of the booths were vacant, and only a handful of people sat at the lunch counter. “So where’s our waitress?” he asked. “Who’s working today?”
Three men who had been nursing lukewarm coffee for the last half-hour or more looked at each other. “Joanne,” Chet murmured darkly. “But don’t bother to call for her. She’s in her own private sitcom.”
AS if taking a cue from an unseen director, Joanne suddenly appeared, walking backward through the swinging kitchen door, balancing a serving tray above her left shoulder. “Okay, all right!” she yelled as she turned around, loud enough to be heard over the dueling jukeboxes. “Just everyone hold their horses! I’m coming as fast as I can!”
In all the uncounted years he had been coming to Ray’s, all the many times Bill had observed Joanne at work, he had never before seen her shout at her customers. Joanne was born and raised in this town, and started working at Ray’s when she graduated from the county high school. The years had been rough on her-a low-paying job, a drunk husband who abandoned her after two years, a teenage son who dropped out of high school and was now seldom home-and long ago she had lost the looks and charm that had made her a one-time prom queen, but she was still, for guys like himself and the rest of the Old Farts, the little girl they had all watched grow up. If there were good ol’ boys, then she was a good ol’ gal.
Her uncustomary brashness drew his attention; the object hovering above her held it. A miniature helicopter purred about a foot above her head, its spinning rotors forming a translucent halo; as she walked past the lunch counter, it followed her into the dining room. Suspended beneath the rotors was a softball-size spheroid; a tiny, multijointed prong containing a binaural microphone protruded above three camera lenses that swiftly gimbaled back and forth.