"Sheepscry. And Miss West. Good evening." McCain tipped his hat. The man lifted his. He was an elf, ivory-skinned, silver hair- not gray but metallic silver-slicked back, small round glasses with black lenses.
Miss West, who was human, said, "I would imagine this is Doc Hallownight." Her hair was black and white in jagged stripes, and there were a dozen silver studs in her left car.
"Yes, miss," Danny said, and lifted his hat crookedly. "\1 a\ I ask how you knew?"
Sheepscry said, "The inimitable Birdsong wrote about \mi."
Pavel opened the door. "Good evening, everybody! It's cold outside, not in!"
The ceiling stars shone specks of light around the room. Alvah Fountain, in a brocade jacket, was playing "Hey Bartender" at the piano.
"Draw one, draw two…" Danny muttered.
"Don't mind if I do, Doc," said Lucius Birdsong, sitting at the end of the bar.
McCain said, "Later, Doc," and moved off.
Danny said, "I heard you wrote about me?"
"Shaker," Birdsong said.
"What's your pleasure, Mr. Birdsong?" the bartender said. He had pointed elf ears, and pale, not pure-white, skin, black hair with patches of steel-blue at the temples. Danny had heard that elves and humans could interbreed.
Birdsong said, "Another one for me, and-is the doctor on duty?"
"Beer, please."
"And a Chi-Cent, Shaker. Unless you've used them all as bar towels."
"Wouldn't think of it, Mr. Birdsong." Shaker reached under the bar and produced a paper.
The paper had the feel of industrial toweling. Danny's thumb smudged the ink, which had a distinct chemical smell. The CHICAGO CENTURION- For This Price, You Don't Expect a Tribune banner, with pictures of eagles and trumpets, was a coarse linoleum or wood cut.
"As your fellow doctor Sam Johnson put it," Birdsong said, grinning, "it's not that the puppy tap-dances like Honi Coles, but that it has any rhythm in the first place. That's how / heard it, anyway."
THE CONTRARIAN FLOW
by Lucius Birdsong
I'm sure every devotee of this pillow-stuffing remembers what Mark Twain said about newspaper obit uaries and exaggeration, so I shall merely note for the record that when that well-known gentleman Patrise entered the La Mirada nitery in the small hours of this morning, he was accompanied neither by the sound of clanking chains nor by cherubim strumming six-string Rickenbacker harps.
Witnesses report that an innocent bystander (or rather bysitter-whatever has happened to the standards of marksmanship in Our Fair Levee?) was seriously injured in the incident that inspired all those campfire stories, but was ministered to by an able young man known as Doc Hallownight, of whom Our Fair may expect to hear more anon.
Personal to the Lousy Shots: Mind how you treat Doc. He did you a big favor.
"Sing ho, for the Fourth Estate," Birdsong said, and tapped his glass against Danny's.
The beer he'd been given was a medium brown color, with thick foam. Danny tasted it carefully; it was slightly heavy, a little sweet. He thought he could actually get to like beer like this.
Birdsong finished his drink. "Good night to you, friend."
"Where are you headed?"
"They're showing His Girl Friday at the Biograph. Miss it and they revoke your press card." He paused, looked Danny in the eye. "Circulate, Doc, circulate! Everybody here wants to meet you, and those that don't aren't worth meeting anyway." He tapped the newspaper. "Thank me later."
Danny looked around for McCain, Cloudhunter, someone he'd met last night. The piano was playing something jazzy but slow. He turned to Shaker, saw that the bartender was
wearing a lapel button that read HALF THE BLOOD, ALL THE CIVIL RIGHTS.
"Does Mr. Fountain take requests?"
"Sure does, sir."
"No sirs. I'm… Doc."
"You got it, Doc. Just tell Alvah what von want."
Danny went down the steps to the glossy, cmpt\ dance floor. "Evening, man," Fountain said without missing a note.
"Could you play something… that, you know, rocks out a little?"
"Nothin' easier, man. You got yourself a girl to dance with?"
"No."
"Well, maybe by the second chorus."
"Yeah, maybe. Thanks."
"Cool runnings, Doc."
Danny walked back to the bar, hands in his pockets. Halfway there, he could see Shaker setting up another beer for him. As the glass touched the bar, hammer chords came down like thunder, and everything stopped. Fountain had kicked into "Great Balls of Fire" like the world was gonna end in three minutes five.
Couples were pulling each other away from their tables. A woman with a tenor sax came out of nowhere and swung in. High heels banged and elflocks shook. Even the waiters were twirling.
"Good Golly Miss Molly" followed hot, and "Roll Over, Beethoven." Some of the dancers were spending more time airborne than on the floor. Danny just stood there watching, the beer going warm in his hand.
"— gotta hear it again today," Shaker said in his ear. "Oh, come on, Doc! It ain't a movie."
There was a black-haired girl in a deep blue dress, one of those flapper dresses that ended in long points, showing and hiding leg at once. "Do you dance?" Danny said, half hoping she'd knock him on his butt for asking.
'Til try," she said, and he saw that it was Ginevra Benci, the bartender from last night. She held out her bare white arm and he took it.
There was one extraordinary pair of dancers on the floor, a man with dark, dark skin in a pure-white suit, large but totally graceful, and an elf woman in a black sequined flapper dress like Ginevra's, who moved as if she was boneless. Danny tried to follow their style, ridiculous as he felt. After a moment, he realized that the man was looking at him; Danny felt his collar tighten, but the big man winked and nodded, and the couple started doing steps Danny could follow with relative ease.
By the second chorus, Danny and Ginevra were actually moving as a unit, off each other's toes. Danny hadn't done this since well, he'd done this, but he had never enjoyed it before.
The piano crashed, the sax cried, and the music stopped. Everybody applauded, even the waiters. Ginevra tugged Danny's arm; he turned and saw Patrise in the doorway, clapping furiously.
"Delighted you could both make it," he said. "And that you kept each other busy. Come up here, let's get to dinner."
Danny looked at Ginevra; she looked slightly away from him. Had Patrise told her to be his date for tonight? There were four couples plus one at the table: the two of them; McCain and an older woman, certainly over thirty, in black and pearls, introduced as Chloe Vadis; Cloudhunter and Carmen Mirage; and the two expert dancers, whose names were-that is, who were called Matt Black and Gloss White. Patrise sat alone at the head of the table.
Other people took the cue, drifting up to the tables and the bar. Fountain had gone back to a slow swing tune. Two couples were still dancing, half melted into each other.
Danny ordered a rare steak. McCain had his well done, with a lobster tail on the side. Ginevra had chicken salad, Gloss a dinner-sized Caesar, Matt a rack of barbecued ribs. Chloe Vadis was brought some kind of multicolored pasta dish. Carmen just had a little fruit cup, and Cloudhunter didn't eat at all. Patrise had a half duck glazed orange he caned like a surgeon.
There were occasional bursts of conversation as they ate; people came by to say hello, to admire Matt and Gloss's dancing, to mutter into Chloe's ear. Patrise had a compliment for every compliment, a quick answer for every question. He gave things a center. Danny still felt one part in three dreaming. He looked at Ginevra. Ginny. He wondered how she felt.
Carmen stood up. So did Cloudhunter. "Well," she said, "here goes nothing."