happened next? Mortimer Tate had not considered what his life would be at the bottom of the mountain.
Emile paused to talk to a skinny, dark-eyed man leaning in the doorway. Mortimer thought him familiar. Emile nodded at the newcomer, pointed toward Mortimer’s table. Had Buffalo Bill’s rude behavior caused trouble? Where the hell was that bottle? Mortimer still thought the skinny man looked somewhat familiar.
“Your wife might not even be alive,” Bill said.
Mortimer flinched at the statement. “What?”
“I remember getting lost in the food riots back then. It was rough. I found my way home, found my dad in the living room, blood all over the place. Somebody had smashed his head in with a pipe or something. The house had been ransacked. I waited and waited by his body for my mom to come home, you know? I never did find out what happened. Never.” Bill’s eyes were focused someplace far away, years into the past. “I thought later, you know, what if she’d come home and found Dad dead? What if she’d just left and saved herself and didn’t wait for me? I always thought-” Bill’s voice caught; he shook his head, cleared his throat. “Where’s that fucking bottle?”
Emile came back just in time, filled their glasses from the new bottle. Bill drank quickly, eyes down, face clouded with dark memories.
Mortimer could see Bill didn’t want to talk about it, but Mortimer couldn’t help himself. He peppered the cowboy with questions. How many had died? Was anything being done? What was this world they now lived in? Did people still vote? Was there still an America? The answers were all the same. Everything had changed.
Emile bent to speak softly into Mortimer’s ear. “Professor Coffey wonders if he could join you for a drink.”
Mortimer lifted an eyebrow. “Who?”
“The owner, sir.”
“Uh…okay.”
The name, the face. So damn familiar.
The lanky man came over and sat in between Bill and Mortimer. “Hello, Mort. I thought it was you.”
Recognition snapped into focus. “Pete Coffey!”
Bill raised an eyebrow.
“This is Pete Coffey,” Mortimer said. “We were on the baseball team in high school together.”
Bill nodded. “How do.”
“Last I heard you were an English professor at Georgetown.”
Coffey shrugged. “I taught classics. Georgetown is radioactive rubble now. I was home for my mother’s funeral, or I’d have bought it with the rest of my department.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Mortimer said. “Your mother, I mean.”
“It’s okay.”
“You’re the owner of this place?”
A smile flickered across the professor’s face. “Half owner. Joey Armageddon owns half of all the places. Some local guy-in this case, me-owns the other half.”
“Where’s the government?” Mortimer blurted.
“Once in a while we get something on the short-wave,” Coffey said. “Some air force general in Colorado Springs claims to represent the government. Then other times we hear about some low-level cabinet secretary holed up in Omaha saying she’s constitutionally in charge.” A shrug. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Mortimer poured vodka, shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“You’re drinking that?” Coffey asked.
“It’s-hic-good,” Bill said.
“No, it’s not,” Coffey said. “It’s a shortcut to the Hershey squirts. Like washing out your bowels with battery acid.” He waved at Emile, and the maitre d’ was at Coffey’s elbow in an instant. “Bring the Bombay from the safe in my office. And the lime juice. Silas knows the combination.”
Bill gaped. “You got limes? Where’d you get limes?”
“Nobody has limes,” Coffey said. “We got six little cans of lime juice in trade last month, and I’ve hoarded them for myself. The Bombay too.”
“I miss oranges.” Bill sounded wistful. “Any citrus.”
“Nothing comes up from Florida,” Coffey said. “Not for a year now.”
Emile arrived with a half-full bottle of Bombay Sapphire, a can of lime juice and a bucket of ice cubes. Coffey mixed the drinks, poured the gin like he was handling nitroglycerin, careful not to spill a drop. He made sure not to pour Bill or Mortimer any more than he poured for himself. At last, they drank.
Contented sighs. All three men closed their eyes, let the booze ease down.
“Damn, that’s a hell of a lot better than the vodka, all right,” Bill said. “I don’t feel like I’m going to die at all.”
They sat quietly. The gin demanded respect, so they sipped, didn’t talk. Mortimer glanced around; more patrons had crowded into Joey Armageddon’s. The song playing now was “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” by Warren Zevon. Above the stage, men lowered what looked like shark cages on steel cables. The Christmas tree lights began to blink. Mortimer noticed something else. Something important.
Women.
