“Chicken,” I said. “Or beef.”
They looked at me strangely.
“Chicken is a local specialty according to Pip. We’re getting some for the stores trading. Cookie’s going to be in his element between the chicken and lamb.”
“Lead on, McDuff,” Brill told me. So I started down the corridor with Bev on one side and Brill on the other. As we walked along, I noticed people staring. I had gotten used to it whenever I went out with either Brill or Bev. Brill because she was so tall, and Bev because she was so tough looking. With both of them decked out as they were, it did not surprise me that we were getting a lot of second glances. I myself liked catching glimpses of them in any reflective surface we passed. What did surprise me was that a lot of the stares were directed at me.
About fifty meters around the station, we came to a nice looking place with chickens spinning in a rotisserie oven in the window. We had smelled the roasting chicken from halfway down the corridor and Brill said, “That’s gotta play hell with the scrubbers. Do you know how hard it is to get that out of the air?”
We all chuckled and went in.
It was early for dinner, barely 17:30, so we got a table right away. We ordered a large chicken paella which they served family style in a huge crock pot in the middle of the table along with some superb crusty yeast rolls. I did not think we could possibly eat it all when I saw the size of the serving dish, but we left only a few loose grains of rice in the bottom when we were done. It was delicious and I confess I enjoyed having two of the three most strikingly beautiful and charming women in this end of the galaxy as dinner companions.
We did not spend that much time over dinner, perhaps a couple of stans. After we finished our paella and a dessert, the server brought our check and hovered. There was quite a line built up at the front door, and needing the table, they were not shy about letting us know it was time to go. Brill picked up the check over Beverly’s objections. Realistically, I knew I could have covered my part of the tab. I was not broke by a long shot, and compared to the two kilocreds I had just dropped on clothes, the twenty creds or so dinner would have cost me was not much. But I also knew that buying dinner for a friend or two was something that gave Brill pleasure. I was oddly pleased by her caring gesture and found myself looking forward to an opportunity to reciprocate.
After dinner, we sauntered down through the station’s levels, bypassing the office levels, and lingering on the shopping and entertainment decks. As we strolled, we garnered rather a lot of admiring attention. I could tell the women were as aware of it as I was and I tried to emulate their easy nonchalance over being admired.
As we got closer to the ship, I was also aware of a new feeling of which I did not quite have a name for. It manifested in odd little ways—small comments and little smiles, a hand on an arm, a few steps taken hip to hip, and the warmth of shared laughter. It was an easy intimacy I could not remember ever feeling before. As I grew aware of it in myself, I noticed that it was also something that Bev and Brill shared with each other as much as with me. It was not a sexual thing, although there was certainly an overtone of sensuality.
We hit the docks about 21:00 and Bev and I fell into step on either side of Brill. It was cold, so we crossed quickly to the
Bev punched the lock code and the three of us strode onto the ship. Rhon Scham had the gangway watch and when she saw the three of us coming, I saw the reaction on her face. Her eyes danced from Bev, then to Brill, and came to rest on me. I smiled at her and unbuttoned my jacket, slipped just fingers of my right hand into the pocket of my jeans, and stood with one hip cocked while Bev and Brill checked in. I pretended not to notice the way Rhon kept swallowing hard or the blossom of color around her ears and down to the collar of her shipsuit.
It took a bit longer for me to check in because of the adjustments to mass. While I left with only the clothes on my back, I came back with considerably more. The difference in mass was not all that much, an extra couple of kilos perhaps. Most of what I brought back did not weigh much.
As I followed Bev and Brill down the passage into the ship, I slipped off my jacket and slung it over my shoulder so Rhon would get the full effect of my jeans walking away. I did not look back but I was pretty sure she was watching. Brill caught the gesture and gave a low chuckle.
“Bev, I think we’ve created a monster,” she said softly.
Bev looked over my shoulder to where Rhon would be standing and grinned. “No,” she said, “he’s always been a monster.” She went on to add softly, “I think Rhon likes the new outfit, Ish.” We split up at the head of the passage to go to our separate bunks.
As I walked into engineering berthing, Rebecca Saltzman was standing at her locker and I savored the double take she had when she saw me coming. “Wow, you did good, Ish,” she said in open admiration.
“Thanks, Rebecca. It’s been a pretty interesting day.”
“I can see that,” she said with an easy grin. “Did you have help picking that out? Or did you do it on your own?”
“Well, I had to take a woman with me to go clothes shopping, didn’t I? I wouldn’t want to violate any Confederation regulations.”
She looked confused. “Regulations?”
I nodded. “Yeah, the one about men not being allowed to go shopping for clothes without at least one woman?”
“Who told you that?”
“Brill.” I shrugged.
At that moment I knew from the look on her face that I had been had.
“She got me, didn’t she?”
Rebecca nodded and filled the berthing area with that liquid laugh she had. “Big time.”
“Ah, well. It worked out really well. Maybe they should make it a reg.”
Rebecca appraised me up and down in a rather frank and appraising manner that I might have found disturbing earlier in the day. “Maybe they should,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Well whoever helped, it worked for you.” She grabbed a towel out of her locker and headed for the san. “If you’ll excuse me. I’m in sudden need of a cold shower.”
We shared a laugh and I started to unpack my purchases and stow them in my locker. In addition to the extra shirts, I found that M. Roubaille had included a couple extra pair of socks and a half-dozen pairs of the skimpy briefs. I grabbed a ship-tee and boxers from my locker and went into the san to change for bed.
Tabitha Rondita was the morning watch stander and she woke me just as my tablet bipped. I blinked some of the gunk out of my eyes and rolled out of the sack. I grabbed a quick shower, zipped into a fresh shipsuit, and headed to the mess deck for coffee. Pip and Sarah were setting up the omelet station and they both waved when they saw me come in.
“Hey!” I said, “How’d it go at the booth yesterday?”
Sarah beamed. “I sold all my shawls and made over three hundred creds!”
“I hear she’s a natural, Ish. Biddy said she dominated the table yesterday.” He looked at me oddly and asked, “Did you get a haircut or something? You look different.”
“I went clothes shopping with Bev, Brill, and Diane yesterday.”
He nodded sympathetically. “I can see where that would change a man. You going on watch?”
“Yeah, I’ve got day watch today. I just came to grab some coffee for now. I need to go relieve Diane and then I’ll be back for an omelet once I get things settled down there.”
“We’ll be here,” Sarah said.
I filled a mug with coffee and waved as I left.
When I stepped through the hatch, Diane sat at the console reading her tablet. She looked up as I entered and grinned. “Look at you! You’re walking tall this morning. What happened after I left last night?”
“Nothing serious. We went out to dinner at a nice little place on level six that had rotisserie chickens cooking
