Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “—at four cents a word. I write confession stories.”
If he felt nasty, he would wait for somebody to make something of it. He had a lethal style of infighting, like a female cop—one reason I wanted him. Not the only one.
He had a load on and his face showed that he despised people more than usual. Silently I poured a double shot of Old Underwear and left the bottle. He drank it, poured another.
I wiped the bar top. “How’s the ‘Unmarried Mother’ racket?”
His fingers tightened on the glass and he seemed about to throw it at me; I felt for the sap under the bar. In temporal manipulation you try to figure everything, but there are so many factors that you never take needless risks.
I saw him relax that tiny amount they teach you to watch for in the Bureau’s training school. “Sorry,” I said. “Just asking, ‘How’s business?’ Make it ‘How’s the weather?’ ”
He looked sour. “Business is okay. I write ’em, they print ’em, I eat.”
I poured myself one, leaned toward him. “Matter of fact,” I said, “you write a nice stick—I’ve sampled a few. You have an amazingly sure touch with the woman’s angle.”
It was a slip I had to risk; he never admitted what pen-names he used. But he was boiled enough to pick up only the last: “ ‘Woman’s angle!’ ” he repeated with a snort. “Yeah, I know the woman’s angle. I should.”
“So?” I said doubtfully. “Sisters?”
“No. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Now, now,” I answered mildly, “bartenders and psychiatrists learn that nothing is stranger than truth. Why, son, if you heard the stories I do—well, you’d make yourself rich. Incredible.”
“You don’t know what ‘incredible’ means!”
“So? Nothing astonishes me. I’ve always heard worse.”
He snorted again. “Want to bet the rest of the bottle?”
“I’ll bet a full bottle.” I placed one on the bar.
“Well—” I signaled my other bartender to handle the trade. We were at the far end, a single-stool space that I kept private by loading the bar top by it with jars of pickled eggs and other clutter. A few were at the other end watching the fights and somebody was playing the juke box—private as a bed where we were.
“Okay,” he began, “to start with, I’m a bastard.”
“No distinction around here,” I said.
“I mean it,” he snapped. “My parents weren’t married.”
“Still no distinction,” I insisted. “Neither were mine.”
“When—” He stopped, gave me the first warm look I ever saw on him. “You mean that?”
“I do. A one-hundred-percent bastard. In fact,” I added, “no one in my family ever marries. All bastards.
“Oh, that.” I showed it to him. “It just looks like a wedding ring; I wear it to keep women off.” It is an antique I bought in 1985 from a fellow operative—he had fetched it from pre-Christian Crete. “The Worm Ouroboros . . . the World Snake that eats its own tail, forever without end. A symbol of the Great Paradox.”
He barely glanced at it. “If you’re really a bastard, you know how it feels. When I was a little girl—”
“Wups!” I said. “Did I hear you correctly?”
“Who’s telling this story? When I was a little girl—Look, ever hear of Christine Jorgenson? Or Roberta Cowell?”
“Uh, sex-change cases? You’re trying to tell me—”
“Don’t interrupt or swelp me, I won’t talk. I was a foundling, left at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945 when I was a month old. When I was a little girl, I envied kids with parents. Then, when I learned about sex—and, believe me, Pop, you learn fast in an orphanage—”
“I know.”
“—I made a solemn vow that any kid of mine would have both a pop and a mom. It kept me ‘pure,’ quite a feat in that vicinity—I had to learn to fight to manage it. Then I got older and realized I stood darn little chance of getting married—for the same reason I hadn’t been adopted.” He scowled. “I was horse-faced and bucktoothed, flat-chested and straight-haired.”
“You don’t look any worse than I do.”
“Who cares how a barkeep looks? Or a writer? But people wanting to adopt pick little blue-eyed golden-haired morons. Later on, the boys want bulging breasts, a cute face, and an Oh-you-wonderful-male manner.” He shugged. “I couldn’t compete. So I decided to join the W.E.N.C.H.E.S.”
“Eh?”
“Women’s Emergency National Corps, Hospitality & Entertainment Section, what they now call ‘Space Angels’—Auxiliary Nursing Group, Extraterrestrial Legions.”
I knew both terms, once I had them chronized. We use still a third name, it’s that elite military service corps: Women’s Hospitality Order Refortifying & Encouraging Spacemen. Vocabulary shift is the worst hurdle in time-jumps—did you know that “service station” once meant a dispensary for petroleum fractions? Once on an assignment in the Churchill Era, a woman said to me, “Meet me at the service station next door”—which is not what it sounds; a “service station” (then) wouldn’t have a bed in it.
He went on: “It was when they first admitted you can’t send men into space for months and years and not relieve the tension. You remember how the wowsers screamed?—that improved my chance, since volunteers were scarce. A gal had to be respectable, preferably virgin (they liked to train them from scratch), above average mentally, and stable emotionally. But most volunteers were old hookers, or neurotics who would crack up ten days off Earth. So I didn’t need looks; if they accepted me, they would fix my buck teeth, put a wave in my hair, teach me to walk and dance and how to listen to a man pleasingly, and everything else—plus training for the prime duties. They would even use plastic surgery if it would help—nothing too good for Our Boys.
“Best yet, they made sure you didn’t get pregnant during your enlistment—and you were almost certain to marry at the end of your hitch. Same way today, A.N.G.E.L.S. marry spacers—they talk the language.
“When I was eighteen I was placed as a ‘mother’s helper.’ This family simply wanted a cheap servant but I didn’t mind as I couldn’t enlist till I was twenty-one. I did housework and went to night school—pretending to continue my high school typing and shorthand but going to a charm class instead, to better my chances for enlistment.
“Then I met this city slicker with his hundred-dollar bills.” He scowled. “The no-good actually did have a wad of hundred-dollar bills. He showed me one night, told me to help myself.
“But I didn’t. I liked him. He was the first man I ever met who was nice to me without trying games with me. I quit night school to see him oftener. It was the happiest time of my life.
“Then one night in the park the games began.”
He stopped. I said, “And then?”
“And then nothing! I never saw him again. He walked me home and told me he loved me—and kissed me good-night and never came back.” He looked grim. “If I could find him, I’d kill him!”
“Well,” I sympathized, “I know how you feel. But killing him—just for doing what comes naturally—hmm . . . Did you struggle?”
“Huh? What’s that got to do with it?”
“Quite a bit. Maybe he deserves a couple of broken arms for running out on you, but—”
“He deserves worse than that! Wait till you hear. Somehow I kept anyone from suspecting and decided it was all for the best. I hadn’t really loved him and probably would never love anybody—and I was more eager to join the W.E.N.C.H.E.S. than ever. I wasn’t disqualified, they didn’t insist on virgins. I cheered up.