Callahan's Con (Callahan's Place series Book 9) by Spider Robinson

Author:Spider Robinson [Robinson, Spider]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Spectrum Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

I usually keep bartender’s hours.. That day, I was awake at the crack of dawn.

Even so, leaving my bed took everything I had; leaving my house seemed out of the question. I knew there was a perfect sunny day outside, because there nearly always was, and I wanted no part of it. An insoluble dilemma lay out there. The moment I stepped out onto my porch I would start seeing and being seen by my friends, some of them anyway. I knew I could not look even one of my friends in the eye even momentarily without telling them that Doc was dying, and yet for the life of me I could not imagine myself doing so, could not think of the right words to use. So I dithered around in the house as long as possible, and then some more. I made what even for me was a special omelette, so large and complicated that it really should have been considered a full-scale omel, and wolfed the whole thing down. Zoey and Pixel stared at me. I frequently cook omelettes–for supper; it may have been the first time either of them had ever seen me eat a bite less than five hours after awakening. I did all the dirty dishes, by hand, and dried them all with a towel. Zoey and Pixel stared even harder. I made the bed—well, I always do that, being almost always the last one out of it, but this day I decided it was not only time to change the sheets, but also to rotate and flip the mattress. Then I collected the trash that would not be put out for another three days, and began coaxing the old newspapers into a more orderly stack. Erin and Pixel were staring at each other, now.

When I started alphabetizing the spice rack Zoey came over and put a firm hand on my shoulder. “The bad times too,” she said enigmatically, and slipped her arm through mine. “Come on, Slim. Let’s go open the store.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Three times in a row, each longer and deeper than the last. And finally nodded.

By the time we got as far as the porch my nose and ears had already given me a pretty accurate head count and roster. Roughly three dozen folks, nearly all hardcore long-timers. Unusually large crowd, for so early in the day. Had the news about Doc leaked already? No, I realized; the faithful had begun to gather in anticipation and support of the imminent scamming of Tony Donuts Junior. I’d forgotten I also had that to look forward to. I’d have balked there in the doorway if it were possible to balk while arm in arm with a moving Zoey.

After ten years in Key West I had become enough of a connoisseur to discern the differences between a garden-variety perfect day and a Platonic ideal; that day was one of the latter. The blue of the sky looked like about six coats, hand rubbed.

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