He was one of those special people who so obviously love life, so much, that you feel like a jerk for not enjoying it as much as they are. And so you cheer up to about half their level, which is twice as cheerful as you were. And for the next little while, you notice that everyone you talk to seems to be smiling at you.
But how had he known Kirra was from Australia?
“Funny,” I said, “he didn’t look red. But that was exactly what I would have ordered, if he’d given me a chance. If I’d known he had a vintage that good in stock.”
“Me too,” she agreed. “Armstead didn’t lie about that bloke. He reads minds, all right. Without Symbiosis.”
“Natural talent, I guess.”
The airflow in this space was breezier than usual, with the temperature upped just a notch to compensate. I understood why when someone a few tables away lit up a pipe of marijuana. The smell was familiar, pleasant. I hadn’t smoked in years myself, but it reminded me of good times past. Childhood on Gambier Island. The dorms at SFU, and the party on Legalization Day. Motel rooms after performances on the road. Perhaps it was time I took it up again. No, not until after I had mastered zero gee well enough to dance. If then.
Fat Humphrey returned with our drinks in free-fall drinking bulbs, docked on the next table while passing them to us. Kirra’s was three times the size of mine. I’m not much of a drinker; it seemed she was. “How do you do that, Mr. Pappadopolous?” I asked. “Know what we want and how much?”
“Call me Fat. How do you know how much to breathe?”
I gave up. “This is my friend Kirra. I’m Morgan McLeod.”
“Hello, Kirra.” He held out his hand, and when she tried to shake it he took hers and kissed it. She dimpled. The same thing happened to me. “You wouldn’t be the Morgan McLeod that danced Indices of Refraction with Morris, would you?”
I admitted it.
“Goddamn. It’s a pleasure to have you in my joint. You ever see her dance, Kirra?”
“No,” she said.
“Then you one lucky person; you got a treat in store. Get Teena to dig some of her tapes and holos out of the Net for you.”
“I will,” she agreed.
I had never achieved the level of fame of a Baryshnikov or a Drummond, did not often get recognized by someone who was not in the dance world. It was dawning on me that Top Step was a nest of dance lovers.
“You wouldn’t be Kirra from Queensland, wouldja?” he went on. “The singer?” Kirra dimpled and admitted it.
A nest of arts lovers.
“Both of you please be sure you sign my visitors’ book on the way out. Look, I gotta tell this to ev’body comes here the first time: be careful with these.” He produced from somewhere on his person a pair of small mesh bags, and tossed them to us. Peanuts and oyster crackers. A wedge of sharp cheese followed after them. “It ain’t so bad if a little piece o’ cheese gets away from you…but them peanuts and crackers got salt on ’em. Somebody gets one o’ them in the eye, and maybe the bouncer has to go to work. And if you didn’t guess from lookin’ at me, I’m the bouncer.” He shook with mirth at his own joke. We both promised we’d be careful. “Oh, Kirra, one more t’ing. You drinkin’ that beer, an’ you feel like you wanna burp, s’cuse me, but don’t.”
“Why not, Fat?”
“You back on Earth, your stomach got food on the bottom an’ air on top, so you burp, no problem. But up here, the air an’ the food is all mixed together, you see what I mean?”
She frowned. “Thanks, mate. Hey, how about the other direction?”
“No problem there. Lotsa people spend all their time up here fartin’ around.” He shuddered with mirth again. “I’ll come back later and talk, okay? Meanwhile you both have a good time.” He drifted majestically away.
We looked at each other and giggled together. Then we looked down at our drinks and snacks. Twice as many peanuts as oyster crackers. Kirra generally ate twice as much as I did at cafeteria meals. Fat Humphrey magic again.
“Something else, i’nt he?” Kirra said.
“He sure is. All right, out with it: tell me everything about Ben.”
Her face glowed. “Oh, Morgan, i’nt he smashing? I don’t usually fall for a bloke this quick—but oh my, he lights me up. He’s so excited about everything, you know? The least little thing is special to him, and so it makes everything special for you to be around him. You know comin’ here to space wasn’t exactly my idea, I told you that: it just sort of landed on me plate and I took a bite—but Benjamin! He wants it so much, looks forward to it so much, I’m startin’ to get kind of excited about it meself. He explains to me all about how marvelous it’s gonna be, and I can understand it better. I was just thinkin’ of all this as an extra long Walkabout—but he makes it sound like more fun than Christmas.” She took a long swig of ale.
“He is fun to be around,” I agreed. “He’s sort of the backwards of my ex-husband. He had a way of making a good time dull.”
She lowered her voice. “And he’s a champion lover! He does a bit o’ what Fat just did, knows what you want about a second before you know it yourself.”
“Definitely the backwards of my ex.”
“If I hadn’t had to clear out so Robert could get some sleep, I might be there still. Hey, how are you and Robert gettin’ along, then?”
“What the hell is that stuff floating in your beer?”
“What, this? It’s yeast. Thomas Cooper leaves it in, for flavor. Kinda interestin’ the way it swirls about like that: the zero gee saves you havin’ to shake up the bottle to get it off the bottom. Seriously, though, what about you and Robert? I had this lovely idea how handy it’d be if you two hit it off like Ben and me. We could swap roomies and—”
“Whoa!” I said. “Take your time.” Change the subject again? No, deal with it. “I don’t know how I feel about Robert…but I do know I’m not in any hurry. The most important thing on my mind right now is learning how to dance all over again, and that’s all I want to think about until I get it done or it kills me. Robert will have to wait.” Now change the subject. “I wonder how Fat Humphrey manages to decant wine properly in free fall? This is delicious.”
Kirra started to answer, then took a sip of beer instead. “Look, Morgan, answer me this. Are we roommates, or are we friends?”
“Friends,” I answered without hesitation. “I hope.”
“Then listen’a me. There some blokes you can hold at arm’s length and after a while they go away. But I know you, and I’ve seen you with Robert. He’s got a hook in you…just a little one, maybe, but a hook. And you got one in him. You try keepin’ him at arm’s length forever, your arms’re gonna start gettin’ shorter. He ain’t gonna go away. You want to get on with your dancin’, it might be less distraction to just go ahead an’ get it over with, see where it goes an’ get it integrated. Might help to have somethin’ to dance about, eh?”
I don’t remember exactly what mumbled evasion I made. Just then a welcome distraction presented itself: the floorshow began.
Well, not exactly a floorshow. A single performer, a busker, doing an act I would have thought impossible in zero gee: juggling.
Free fall juggling is done barefoot. You do not make the balls or clubs or whatever go in a circle, because they won’t. Instead you make them go in a rectangle. Hand to hand to foot to foot to hand. This particular juggler used orange balls of some resilient material, the size of real oranges. It seemed he was known and liked here; people broke off conversations to watch him and clap along. He had twinkling eyes and a goatee. Except for a G-string, he was barefoot to the eyebrows. He began in a slow motion that would simply not have been possible on Earth, then got faster and faster until the balls began to blur into an orange rectangle in the air before him. He started with four, but keep adding more from a pouch at his waist. I thought I counted as high as sixteen. Then suddenly he changed the pattern, so that they crossed over and back in front of him in an X-pattern, and then went back to a rectangle again. There was applause. He brought his feet up and hands down until the rectangle was a square, then a horizontal rectangle, and returned to the basic position. More applause. Suddenly he had one hand high over his head and the rectangle was a triangle. With the suddenly free left hand he took a joint from his pocket and struck it alight, took a deep puff. Loud applause. He seemed to pay no attention at all to the balls. He took another puff, tossed the joint to the nearest patron, and resumed work with all four limbs. The balls began to ever so gradually slow down, until they were individually distinguishable, and continued to slow. Within a minute he was back in the slow motion he’d started with—yes, there were sixteen balls—and still they kept decelerating. Without warning he flipped over, upside down to his original orientation, without disturbing the stately progress of the balls. Thunderous applause. Suddenly all the balls exploded outward from him, in a spherical distribution. I half-ducked, not one came near me, or anyone else. All sixteen bounced off something harmless and returned to him in almost-unison; he caught them all in his pouch and folded at the waist in a free fall bow. The house came down.