Brett held the door for the young beauties, and for their two soft escorts who might have been men if they had been born to a less sissy age, mistaken—or so he was taken—for a cook or dishwasher returning from a smoke. Standing behind the four soft creatures, his stomach sank as the hostess scanned their open right palms with her wrist phone, the new kind of phone from which readings were conducted with a blue cone of pixelated light. Her ear ring lit blue, meaning she had just been directed by the seating app to inform her guests, “Table twelve, down the right side and around the corner.”
Panic rose in Brett’s chest, the fear of adjustment. He looked down at his obsolete watch that told the time true once by day and once by night, and wondered, ‘Did Drake summons me here to be adjusted? Is this it—just a gear in the machine from here on out?’
The young doll smiled, a smile that might have bespoken innocence in an earlier world, but here and now, came creased with a sluttish awareness, a twinkle of a glassy gray eye and the flash of newly creased cheeks. Her head bobbed and her blond curls bounced about her shapely shoulders as she clicked off her ear bud and sashayed three sultry steps towards him to whisper-hissper, “Mister Brett! Drake is waiting for you at table thirteen, down to the right and around the corner!”
“How are you, today?,” she soothed, seeming to genuinely care as she cupped his old hand, his right hand, a child younger than his granddaughter, he bet, and led him herself down the long row of tables to the right where well-adjusted folks dined and chattered, around to the left, and walked him up to Adjuster Brule, who rose, with a wry grin, “Mister Brett, really, you let her take your right hand? Meet Brittany, she is giving up hostess for tonight and waiting our table. Thank you Miss Brittany,” said he, as he slipped her a C-Card [1] and winked of other arrangements made.
The hostess graciously took their leave as the soft four looked on dazedly up at his wilted form, Drake seized his hand and pulled him close, “Mister Brett, fit as ever, wire strong—and” (a whisper in his ear) unadjusted… and” (with a wink) “unbusted! Sit, My Friend, sit. Brittany has coffee on the way—what a cutie.”
Brett sat down across from the adjuster, whose back was to a brick pillar, his gray fedora barely covering his pompadour, his narrow eyes asquint through the windows to the street, and over Brett’s shoulders tiwards the door, with a grin, telling of calculations to use Brett for his meatshield should someone ‘from the old job,’ stop in for a disagreement. Adjuster Brule was a head taller than him, dressed in an ancient crime comic detective suit to conceal his must-be-concealed firearms according to the latest Supreme Port [2] Ordinance.
“Hey Drake. Nice to see you. I don’t have any C fer—”
“Nonsense, Mister Brett; your C is no good here. You are spending the evening—the full course. We are closing the place, and, I think, Brittany likes you. She heard all about you…”
“Sir, I can’t—”
“Mister Brett, do not disappoint the poor girl. She craves a taste of the old school. Look, look around at these faɡɡots—the two bo-hunks behind you. No girl wants DNA that’s that gay!.”
Brett cringed as the banal conversation behind them quieted and his dinner partner, lowered his hiss, “Mister Brett, look, nobody gets pregnant without the Vax. But, the DNA genie is out of the bottle. These young girls are savvy—they know that intimate contact with us, with men, works subtle shifts in their chemistry, their mental health—Mister Brett, us old geezers are back in business. No woman wants to soak up epigenetic anxiety… they want peace of mind. Brittany is already yours—she wouldn’t have it any other way. When she found about about you surviving that knife tournament on Mindanao…”
“I’ll take the better looking of the two behind you—we’re clear…”
Chairs scraped behind them as two soft “men” rose to a standing objection. Drake did not miss a beat, as usual, playing the room like a fiddler managed a fiddle,
“Oh, excuse me, Gentle, Men… are we good?”
So Switched the Adjuster to address the two men that rose up behind Brett as one of the young women muttered something and the smaller man mentioned something about a “teraforming.” Drake was grinning across from him, like a carved pumpkin from a bygone era, the chairs scraping in offense. At that awkward instant Brittany returned with two cups of coffee, stunned, looking up at the two men departing. Brett was embarrassed for everyone but Drake, who was enjoying this too much.
The Adjuster, smoothing his thin gray suit and smiling narrowly under his waxed black mustache, soothed “Miss Brittany, there has been a misunderstanding, and these two ladies are suddenly on my tab—Ladies, order up, five courses, drinks as well.”
“Oh, oh my, Lisa,” said the sweeter one, “and it was our turn to buy for the guys—this is so Old School!”
Lisa, who sounded a bit more worldly, opined, “Old School is right, like a pre-game movie based on a novel. Thank you, Sir.”
“Call me Drake, ladies, just Drake, no sir about it.”
“Thank you, Drake!” the little songbirds chirped to the narrow-eyed hawk.
“Ladies, Mister Brett and I have some business here. Take your time. We will hit the Top Hat Lounge in a few hours—I’m driving.”
“No auto-car?!” gasped the worldly one as Brett cringed at their lack of reserve, wondering if his granddaughter was so-and-such part of this world.
“I drive a manual, ladies—grandfathered in—gas pedal and all; no plug-in, no hum… a good ole “glug-glug,” a 2011 Charger.
They squealed in delight as Brittany mixed cream into his coffee and touched his shoulder and winked, whispering, “Mister Brett, I’m old enough to serve drinks—don’t worry.” She then placed her hand on his dead watch and smiled, “Drake planned this all out—you have business, I know. I would just like to have breakfast some morning and hear about how the world was before this.” That said, Brittany unplugged her earring and her pink-lit, blue-eyed watch went dark.
“Sure,” he nodded, wondering if he could even be heard, looking at Drake’s black-lit, gray-eyed watch and his own dead rotary watch. She smiled with a rare maturity in the light of the age, studiously forgetting to ask his host for his order, saying, “Drake doesn’t look hungry, Mister Brett. I’ll put you in for an order of jerked chicken.”
“Really, Brittany—I get you off the door and—”
She cut him quick, “Tell it to your new friends,” and flipped him the finger as she sauntered off to the girls giggling over the drink menu behind him.
“Not dead yet, Mister Brett—thank the Good Lord,” and he leaned closer whispering with cold eyes, “I have a problem, a problem that needs your touch.”
Brett nodded as he noted the blunt, dark streak above the vacant drug store across the street. Drake, not missing the shift of his eyes, spoke beneath the giggles rising behind, “You already know. For now, here’s to coffee and cuties—what do you think of this early sunset anyhow?”
Brett Gascon looked over his host’s fedora-framed eyes, dark as twin indictments, through the window next to the pillar the gunman rested his back against, and saw something darker in the sky. An inky medium framed the night in the northern sky, before the sun had rightfully set in the west.
“You know, Sir, the ancients didn’t name Hades, less he be raised. They called him the Wester One. Perhaps we are all west of blessings… come crooked to the fell door.”
Adjuster Brule beamed eyes over a wry smile, framed with that waxed mustache, and relaxed, raising his glass coffee cup, “That is why you are here, Mister Brett.”
Notes
1.) A C-card are retinal-scanned coin/credit/currency chips housed in various branded discs. Even a dead or redacted card holds value in the public consciousness and have replaced cash, as one may always be replenished by an adjuster or at a vault portal.
2.) The final victory of democracy has been facilitated via Supreme Port Ordinances and rulings, with televised MLB and NFL challenges having paved the way for AI Truth Curation in Brett’s middle years. Now, past age 60, and ineligible for Social Security, Brett still enjoys baseball more than he did in his youth, when umpires did more than sweep bases and exchange dirty balls.
