I smiled at Lynn Ingold and gave her a hug and a kiss as I reached the table. She'd braided her copper hair, and the braid dangled down the front of her white blouse to the tip of her left breast. Her pert nose and quick smile combined with bright green eyes and a scattering a freckles to make her seem full of elven mischief from back in the days when that didn't mean gunfire and magic. The top of her head came up to my nose, and my arm fit around her shoulders as if we'd been designed as a set.
"Jimmy Mackelroy, this is Lynn Ingold and that is probably your greatest fan in all of Seattle. Valerie Valkyrie, meet Jimmy Mackelroy."
Val is normally quick-witted and I expected a verbal jab for my introduction of her, but she was awestruck enough to just ignore me. Like Jimmy, she was of African-American descent, but her blue eyes and cafe-au-lait complexion suggested a liberal dose of other things in her bloodline as well. She wore her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Taller than Lynn, but with the same slender, long-legged figure, she was sufficiently gorgeous to make the Pope reconsider his vow of celibacy.
In fact, if not for the barely noticeable jack behind her left ear, she'd have been the picture of the sort of fashion model Jimmy dated, according to the tabloid trid.
Jimmy took her right hand in his. "I am very pleased to meet you, finally."
That shook Val out of her trance. "Finally?"
Jimmy smiled. "Section seven, row five, seat twelve. You've got the whole box, paid for and all. Everyone on the team has been curious, but the team's deckers can't find out who you are." Val blushed and sat down. "Oh, that, well…"
"Jimmy," I said, nodding toward Valerie. "She's the reason we're members here. Could your father's deckers do that?"
"No, I don't think they could." His smile broadened as he glanced from Val to me. "I guess now I'm going to owe you a favor."
"Excuse me?"
Jimmy smiled sheepishly. "Remember when we met you said you'd owe me a favor? Well, introducing me to Ms. Valkyrie here fulfills that and then some. Oh, and dinner and drinks are on me-the team had a pool collected for the first man to learn her name."
All of us laughed, easing a bit of the nervousness Valerie clearly felt. It struck me as funny because I knew she was bold enough to deck her way into even the most secure of corporate databases without even a hint of anxiety. With other deckers, the problem would have been just trying to interface with something that wasn't silicon-based, but Val's never been a social disaster. She was really taken with Jimmy and almost paralyzed because of it.
Lynn clearly sensed the same thing in Valerie and took the conversation initiative before any silence could become awkward. "Jimmy, I've never been able to get Wolf to tell me how you actually met. I know he's helping you now, but I gathered you've known each other since before that."
Jimmy nodded easily and leaned forward onto the table. "You remember the night when the gangs all went nuts and blew up that apartment complex?"
Lynn nodded. She knew of it in die same way that almost everyone else in Seattle did-by what she heard on the trid and read in the newsfax. This meant she had no idea about my involvement in the events of that evening. As she's a pacifist who never seemed too interested in trying to find out exactly what I do in working with Doctor Raven, I never felt inclined to give her a blow-by-blow description of what had happened that night. Not that I repeated stories of that night all that often-describing almost dying leaves something to be desired.
"About a week later, at the Dome, I saw this guy leaning against my car. I wasn't getting a clean read off him, but he didn't seem overtly dangerous. He introduced himself as Wolf and asked if I'd be willing to make a personal appearance at a pizza place downtown." Jimmy shrugged. "I almost referred him to my agent to blow him off, which is what I normally do."
Before Jimmy could continue his story, a man who had managed to create a fashion atrocity within the strictures of the club's dress code sauntered over to our table and lightly slapped Jimmy on shoulder. "Jimmy Mackelroy, isn't it?"
Jimmy nodded and shook the man's proffered hand. "And you are?"
"Phil Knobson. I own the Mitsu dealership over in Bellvue. Ace Mitsubishi. Heard of it?"
Jimmy thought for a second, then shook his head. "Sorry, but I put most things out of my mind during the season, you know?"
"Yeah," the man replied automatically as he waved a woman over. Her outfit matched Phil's and I started looking for a phone to call the haute couture police. "This is my wife, Maggie. Maggie, this is Jimmy Mackelroy. I've told you about him, right?"
Maggie nodded, her blond perm as stiff as an acrylic spider web. "Phil, he never misses your games."
"So, look, Jimmy, I'm thinking we can do some business. You come down to the shop, we cut an ad or two, and I make you a sweet deal on a new car, you know?"
Jimmy stood slowly, continuing to smile as he towered over the salesman. "I think that's worth talking about, Phil, but right now I'm here with my friends, you know."
"Sure, sure, I gotcha. Look, why don't we all go to dinner? My treat." Phil glanced at the rest of us, then looked back up at Jimmy. I let the Old One's dislike of Phil and his plastic wife bleed into my voice. "Actually, we were going to be dining outside the club, Phil. A private party."
Phil didn't get my message, but his wife did and gently tugged on her husband's shirt. "Honey, let's let these nice folks get back to their party, okay?"
Phil looked at Maggie as if her suggestion was a wild pitch, but when he glanced at Jimmy he saw that Jimmy had blasted it out of the park. "Yeah, okay, well, look, can I call you?"
"Just call the team office and they'll direct you to my agent. She arranges all those things." Jimmy shook Phil's hand again. "I'm sure we can work something out."
"Right. Have a good night, folks."
As they departed, Valerie shivered. "When I get home, his credit rating will die."
Jimmy smiled. "If you can do that, I can guarantee you a lot of business from the other players on the team."
Lynn raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't happen very often, does it?"
"More often than I'd like to admit, I'm afraid." Jimmy shrugged and jerked his head in my direction. "When anyone approaches me I have to be thinking 'What does he want me to buy? What's in it for him?' That's really tough, especially when it's a kid wanting an autograph, because dealers are known to use kids to get players to sign holopics they later sell for big nuyen. Most of the time folks are just nervous and genuine, but there are clunkers in the bunch."
Lynn covered my left hand with her right and gave it a squeeze. "So what did you think Wolf wanted when you first met him?"
"He was different. None of this fake camaraderie or an apologetic 'You don't know me, but…' He just introduced himself and asked, explaining he'd already told someone else I'd do the signing. Most folks would have then tried to play on my sympathies, begging me to get them off the hook. Wolf just said, 'If you're willing, great, if not I'll have to think of something else.' "
I grinned sheepishly. "You remember it better than I do, I think. I seem to recall some stammering on my part."
"No, man, you were cool." Jimmy chuckled lightly. "Instead of wanting something from me, Wolf was giving me a chance to do something nice for someone. I asked him what was in it for me, and he just smiled like he is now. He said he didn't have much, but he'd owe me. I got the feeling that being in his debt wasn't a bad thing at all."
Lynn gave me a peck on the cheek. "It's not been for me."
Jimmy smiled, then nodded to me. "At least he treated me like a human being. Too many players get tightly identified with the players whose statsoft they use. I guess it's like trid actors being identified by their roles instead of their true names. For the guys who like that, it's great-Babe being a fine example of that. For the rest of us, it's a pain."