"Callahan 06 - The Callahan Touch 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"Are you all right, son?" the Doc asked finally.
"Dad," he replied sarcastically, "I was only all right up to about age six. After that I was more or less consistently fantastic up until about twenty-five, and since that time I have been world-class. How are you?"
'On my best day,'" the Doc quoted, " 'I'm borderline.' You know what I'm asking, and I'll thank you to answer. No cuts? No sprains, bruises, contusions?"
The stranger only shrugged.
The Doc sighed. "Mister, I've seen a few things. I can manage to make myself believe, just barely, that you survived that experience-but without so much as a scratch? How could you?"
The stranger shrugged with his mouth. "Just lucky, I guess." There was another short silence, and then the Doc tapped me on the shoulder. (I could tell by the girth of the finger.) I turned and looked at him.
"Jake," he said softly, "weren't you saying something just a few minutes ago about a 'sustained run of incredibly good luck'?"
I took a deep breath. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, "I believe we are ready to open. Please come in."


Amazing stranger or no, I watched my friends' faces closely as they filed in. Upstaged or not, this was my premiere...
Noah was the first one who glanced around as the gang galloped inside, and he couldn't help it: Noah can't enter a strange room without looking around to try and guess where the bomb is. The rest either stared at the pantsless stranger or talked to each other or called out greetings to Tom. But as the stampede crested at the bar, folks remembered where they were: everybody picked a spot and began spinning in slow circles on it with expectant faces.
I held my breath. That's how I know that the silence couldn't have lasted as long as it seemed to: I was still alive when it ended.
It was Fast Eddie who broke it.
"Jeez, Jake, dis place is okay."
In the time it took me to exhale, Doc and Long-Drink had nodded agreement, the Drink judiciously and the Doc vigorously. Maybe others did too, but they were the two I was watching closest, the experts whose opinion I most feared. About half of a great weight left my shoulders when I saw those two nods. A buzzing sound in my ears, of which I had not previously been aware, diminished in volume.
"'Okay'?" Susan Maser said. "Eddie, I bet if you ever saw the Grand Canyon up close, you'd say, 'Nice ditch.' Jake, this place is great! You really did a job on it."
That was nice to hear too. Susan was the only one present besides Tom who'd ever seen the place before, back when I'd first bought it. She's an interior decorator, so I'd sought her advice before signing the papers-then thanked her and thrown her out, doing all the work myself. If she liked it, I knew the others all would.
And they did. "This is just the way I hoped it would look," Merry Moore said, and Les, her husband and fellow Cheerful Charlie, said, "Me too!"
"Nice size," Long-Drink said judiciously. "Huge, but it feels comfy. Good lighting. Nice tables, too-and I really like those couches-"
"Nice fireplace," Doc Webster said.
There was a chorus of agreement that warmed my heart. I'd worked hard on that fireplace. Do you have any idea how hard
it is to chisel a bull's-eye into firebrick?
"It ain't exactly like the old hearth," Ndah said, "but it looks to me like it'll work just as well. That won't throw glass."
"It's pretty," Maureen said, as though Noah had missed the point.
The stranger looked at Noah. "The fireplace won't throw glass?"
"We like to deep-six our glasses in the fireplace sometimes," Noah explained.
"A lot," Long-Drink said, and a general murmur ratified the amendment.
"Really." For the first time the stranger looked mildly impressed. "But you're just opening tonight?"
"Re-opening," I said.
"De old place got nuked," Eddie explained.
"Nuked?" The stranger looked at us, decided we weren't kidding, lowered the raised eyebrow and nodded. "Nuked. You people obviously don't believe in omens. Wait a minute. . . I think I heard about that. Pony nuke, back in '86? Some Irish joint on 25A? Terrorists?"
Now I was impressed. "Not a lot of people know about it. Know that it was nuclear, I mean. There was a kind of major news blackout on that part."
The stranger nodded. "I'll bet. Come to sunny Long Island, where terrorists take out recreational facilities with nuclear weapons. That would have looked swell in Newsday."
"Well, the Place was pretty isolated," I said, "and it wasn't much of a nuke, as nukes go, and the fallout pattern was out onto the Sound and east to no place in particular, so they decided what with one thing and another they'd pass on starting God's own stampede off the Island. I kind of think they made the right decision."
"'-and the truth shall make you flee,' "the stranger said. "I'd like to have seen it. Millions of terrified suburbanites,
everything they treasure strapped to the roofs of their station wagons, pour into New York City-and find themselves in the Traffic Jam From Hell, surrounded by street kids and derelicts with great big smiles. Talk about a massive transfer of resources. Like cattle stampeding into the slaughterhouse." He chuckled wickedly.
"How'd you happen to hear about it being nuclear?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I have sources."
"I said," Doc Webster said with a long-suffering air," 'Nice fireplace.'
I nodded. "Thanks, Doc. The way I-"
"What I mean," he interrupted, "is when are we going to give it a field test?"
"Oh!" My friends had been in my bar for several minutes, and still had empty hands. I blushed deeply and ran around behind the bar, nearly trampling Tom Hauptman.
"I'm buying," the Doc said, and a cheer went up.
I shook my head. "Sorry, Doc. You can buy the first round bought-but this one's on the house. My privilege."
He nodded acknowledgment, smiling at me like a proud uncle, and another cheer went up.
Rickard's turned out to be okay with everybody; Tom and I became briefly busy drawing and passing out glasses. No one drank until everyone had been served. I noticed that Shorty was missing; he'd stepped out to see if his car was movable. I hoped he could, for once, find reverse on the first try. Finally every hand was full. "Your privilege, Jake," the Doc said, gesturing toward the hearth.
I nodded, stepped out from behind the bar and walked up to the chalk line on the floor, facing the fireplace. I lifted my glass. Something was wrong with my vision, and my cheeks felt cool.
"To Mary Callahan-Finn, brothers and sisters," I said solemnly.
There was a nice warm power to the chorus. "To Mary Callahan-Finn!"