any but the most esoteric sense, and Vanderzee was generations removed from his native tongue) could attain to any degree of popularity whatsoever in any kind of an establishment whatsoever. But taverns are not ordinary establishments, and frequently events come to pass in them that could never have come to pass elsewhere. Isolde became popular. She became so popular, in fact, that Lanesce's business doubled. Tripled.

There was nothing unprecedented about her popularity. Idiot waitresses have always enjoyed an exalted place in taverns. They make ideal patsies for jokes, for one thing, and are generally responsive to gooses, for another. While Isolde was neither an idiot nor responsive to gooses, the sounds she uttered whenever anyone said something to her, obscene or otherwise, were suggestive enough of idiot rantings to the ear of the average patron, for her to be classified as an idiot; and while she may not have been responsive to gooses, neither was she on her guard against them, taking them in her stride like everything else. None of which bears directly on the nature of Vanderzee's mistake. What does bear directly upon it is the fact that the variety of men who frequent bars, is infinite. Sooner or later someone had to come along who would recognize Isolde, either from her recitative or from her arias, or from her appearance, for what she was—or what she once had been. And presently someone did.

Enter, Elwood Parkhurst. You've seen him, too. In bars, mostly. But before he took exclusively to bars, you may have seen him in avantgarde ghettos where the philosophy of Rieder and Diems and Ghent lay thick in smoke-fogged atmospheres, or in off-beat book stores where the outre tomes of Cresniner and Hulp and Bredder pre-empted the shelves. And you may have seen him, too, if you happened along at the right time, standing impatiently in front of the Metropolitanette, smoking concatenations of cigarettes 'till the doors opened and egress to Verdi or Wagner could be obtained. And were you worldly enough, you may have seen him waiting outside the stage door behind the old Libido with a host of the macromammary Miranda's other pursuers, and you may even have read about the short-lived marriage he and she embarked on to the delight of the Sex Sheets and the Peeping Walters. After that, though, if you saw him at all, you saw him in bars—or staggering between them.

Parkhurst walked into Lanesce's, took one look at Isolde and knew her instantly.

He was sobering up at the time, having hit Sirius 21 a week ago, and the Spaceport Bar five minutes after arrival. 

 Prev. P 5/14 next