When I shoved through the doorway of Morley’s Joy House
you’d have thought I was the old dude in black who lugs the
sickle. The place went dead quiet. I stopped moving. I
couldn’t push uphill against the weight of all those stares.
“Somebody sneak lemons into your salads?”
Quick check of the talent. It looked like somebody with an ugly
stick had gone berserk. That or those guys spent a lot of time
diving into walls and shaving themselves with hatchets. I saw
enough scars and bent noses to open me a sideshow.
The Joy House boasts that kind of clientele.
“Aw, damn! It’s Garrett.” That was my pal
Puddle, safe behind the bar. “Here we go again,
troops.” Puddle goes two-eighty, maybe more. His skin is the
hue of somebody who’s been dead awhile. You ask me, rigor
mortis set in above the neck twenty years back.
Several dwarves, an ogre, miscellaneous elves, and a couple of
guys of indeterminate ancestry chugged their sauerkraut cocktails
and headed for the door. Guys I didn’t even know. Guys who
knew me did their damnedest to pretend they didn’t. A murmur
spread as the ones who didn’t know me got clued in.
What a charge for the ego. Call me Typhoid Garrett.
“Hi, everybody,” I chirped, going for cheerful.
“Ain’t it a grand night out?” It wasn’t. It
was raining cats and dogs and the critters were quarreling all the
way to the ground. I had dents in my head from random volleys of
hailstones, not being bright enough to wear a hat. On the plus
side, flash floods might clear the garbage festering in the
streets. Some of that was ready to get up and walk.
