Glory Lane

by Alan Dean Foster

  The mutterings from the men, as he moved closer to their end of the building, were less amused and more dangerous. Even though there were dozens of them and only one of him he represented a threat—to order, stabil­ity, righteousness, God, and The American Way. The only ones who viewed him with anything close to tolerance were the dozen or so Navajos who formed two teams of their own. Most of them had the guts to wear their hair braided, in the traditional fashion. They were in no posi­tion to criticize another’s coiffure.

  Despite the growls and grumbles, no one started toward him. He took a seat at the snack bar counter. A second waitress had emerged from the bathroom subsequent to his arrival. Now they were debating which of them would be unlucky enough to have to serve him. He was glad when the younger one reluctantly approached. She spoke with obvious reluctance. “Can I help you, sir?”

  Sir. Riot, he thought. “Well now, that’s a leading question, isn’t it? I mean, it presupposes that I need help and that you could be of some assistance to me without even knowing what my problem is. Fascinating concept. You aren’t by any chance telepathic, are you?”

  Like a cow pausing with its cud, she halted her gum in mid-chew and gaped at him. “Huh?”

  He sighed. “Got any Cherry Coke?”

  “Cherry Coke?” She relaxed a little and managed a smile. “Oh, yeah.” Her gums started working again as center control pushed GO. “What size?”

  “Half a liter, but you’re probably out of that.” He smiled back at her. “Just make it medium.”

  “Medium, sure.” She started to turn back toward the fountain, then hesitated, unsure whether to ask the question and, if so, how. Finally she just pushed ahead. “Uh, you got any money?”

  “Money, money.” Seeth’s brow furrowed and he took on the appearance of a philosopher sunk deep in contem­plation. “Let me see now: money.” He dug into a pocket and began emptying the contents on the counter.

  The pile included a handful of prophylactics, a very small but offensively engraved pocket knife that made her eyes widen, some pennies, a couple of quarters, a Mexican fifty-centavo piece, and some purplish-gray lint. He shoved the pennies and the quarters across the counter.

  “That’s not enough.” She said it tentatively. At any moment he expected her to grab one of the butter knives and back up against the drink dispenser to defend herself. He was enjoying himself hugely.

  “Not enough? Hey, hang on.” He made a show of fumbling with his back pockets. “I know I’ve got my American Express platinum card back here somewhere. Wanna help me search?” That one went right by her.

  “Here.” He extracted a card and passed it to her. She took it carefully, as though it might contain some contagious disease, and read.

  The bearer of this card is neither a Convicted Felon nor a Libyan Terrorist, nor does he suffer from aids or any other exotic disease. He is not mute nor is this a solicitation for money. In point of fact this card has no purpose whatsoever except to occupy and otherwise waste thirty seconds of another overly curious person’s time.

  Successful, Isn’t it?

  She was slow, but she wasn’t dense. And she did have a sense of humor, even if so far she’d taken pains to hide the fact. Now she grinned and handed the card back to him. As she did so she saw that he was holding a dollar out to her.

  “Buy you one?”

  “Sorry.” She took the bill. “Not allowed to drink or eat in front of the customers.”

  “Sound policy. I mean, all those Cokes, you never know when you or that other waitress might go on a caffeine binge and tear the place apart, right?”

  This time her smile wasn’t forced. She moved a little nearer. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Wouldn’t you be surprised if it was ‘anyway’?”

  She drew the Coke, twice pouring off foam to make sure that he got his money’s worth, added a straw without being asked. He pushed the straw aside and took a long, cold swallow, spoke while crunching ice.

  “I’m Seeth.”

  “That’s a funny name.”

  “I’m a real funny guy.” He leaned over the counter, trying to get close. “Want to see how funny?”

  She ignored that, her gaze rising. “I like your hair.”

  “Thanks. Why not get one yourself?”

  “Me?” She patted her carefully permed tresses. “Oh no, I couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “Well for one thing, my parents would just die.”

  “Sorry. I’ve yet to see a documented case of hair causing a single parental fatality. Whose head is it growing out of? Your father’s? Your mother’s? Or yours?”

  “Well, I...”

  “C’mon, I know there’s a brain under there.” Her smile vanished, “Hey, lighten up. If I was trying to insult you I’d be more obvious about it. I’m just trying to make a point. If you like the way my hair looks and you want to do the same thing to your own, then who’s to tell you you can’t? It’s not illegal—leastwise, not yet.”

  “You know, I think maybe I like...” She shut up and backed off.

  “Beat it, scum.”

  Seeth turned to see a taller, slightly older and considera­bly beefier man glaring down at him. He took his time inspecting the other.

  “Beat it? Let’s consider all the ramifications of that verb, shall we?” He swiveled on the stool and slugged down some cola. “There are several possibilities involved. First I’d like to know: if I don’t beat it, are you going to make me beat it?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  Seeth turned to wink at the girl. She’d caught the joke instantly and was trying hard to stifle a laugh. The older man frowned at her, then back at Seeth.

  “You trying to be funny?”

  “What’s with everybody tonight?” He spoke without looking at either of them. “The whole world thinks I’m trying to be funny. Here I’m wracking my brain striving to point out some of the inherent contradictions of our socio-cultural matrix and everybody thinks I’m auditioning for late-night comedy. Somebody’s missing a connection. As opposed to a link, which is standing here before me.” He turned sharply back to the girl.

  “Did you ever have the feeling that the world was an AC coffee pot and you were DC?”

  A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “I said, beat it. We don’t want your kind in here.”

  “My kind?” Seeth tensed as he glanced diffidently at the big hand, but didn’t otherwise react to the touch. “What kind might that be?”

  “Bums. Jerks. Punks.”

  “Ah. Now there you have me, sir. I will admit to the third. As for the preceding pair I’m afraid you’re way off base, but then I can see that you didn’t quite complete your graduate degree in sociology so I suppose we need to make some allowances.”

  A couple of irritated shouts came from alley nineteen. The tall man yelled back in response. “I’ll just be a minute!” He glared nastily at Seeth. “Come on now, beat it before I really get mad. You’re holding up the game.”

  “Holding up? Hey, I wouldn’t think of robbing you of your evening’s intellectual stimulation.” A sideways glance showed two of the man’s partners starting up the stairs toward the snack bar. Seeth determined that, having made his point while gaining at least a semantic victory as well as impressing the girl, it might be time to move on.

  He chug-a-luged the rest of his Coke, slipped off the counter stool and out from under the man’s hand, point­edly hitching up his pants as he did so.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” the man growled.

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Seeth talked over his shoulder as he strode away. “I can see that you’re a true connoisseur of rubbish. Why, I’ve no doubt you’d be able to tell good rubbish from bad rubbish the instant you set eyes on it, which in your case is doubtless not an infrequent occurrence.”

  “Commie punk!” The man sneered at him, utilizing the strongest riposte at his command.

  Seeth considered embellishing his verbal r
etreat with a few choice comments concerning the man’s anatomy, but decided he wasn’t close enough to the exit yet. While he id have masochistic friends, getting beaten up wasn’t one of the finer pleasures of life as far as he was concerned.

  He was halfway to the far exit, having crossed most of the building, when someone seated in the spectator seats caught his eye. The guy was a year older than himself, much taller, and neatly dressed in slacks and cotton shirt. His sandy blonde hair had been combed straight back, no-nonsense, except in front where it fell down and across. A light-blue jacket lay draped over the back of an empty seat nearby. A clipboard full of paper rested on one knee and its owner was scribbling furiously on the top page with a cheap ballpoint pen. Occasionally he would look up to observe the alleys, then return to his writing.

  Seeth recognized him, wondered what he was doing here this time of night. Anytime of night, in fact. He was sure he wasn’t keeping score for any of the groups below.

  A glance over his shoulder showed that the snack bar mastodon had rejoined his companions, having done his bit tonight to make the world safe for democracy. As he headed down the stairs one of the other bowlers looked up, cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled.

  “Hey kid, why don’t you go back to the woods with the other animals?”

  “No can do!” Seeth shouted back. “You and your buddies have shot ‘em all!” This provoked laughter in­stead of anger from the first man and his friends.

  What a bunch of cretins. They think mass extinction is funny. You could picture any one of ‘em in uniform, laughing as they pushed the buttons that would launch nuclear missiles.

  The brief, loud confrontation did serve to distract the scribbler from his work. He looked up long enough to spot Seeth, then rapidly turned away and hunched low over his clipboard, trying to render himself invisible.

  Seeth shook his head as he approached. “No good, man. I’ve already seen you. You has been identified.”

  “All right, so you’ve seen me.” The man slowly straight­ened. “Now go away.”

  “Hey.” Seeth raised his voice so that the nearest group of bowlers could hear. “I ask you, is that friendly?” A couple of them turned to frown in his direction.

  “All right, all right,” Kerwin said anxiously. “Sit down if you must, but shut up.”

  “Shut up? Me?” Seeth flopped down on the fiberglass seat opposite and put both feet over the seat in front of him, his legs blocking out the small sign that said PLEASE DO NOT REST YOUR FEET ON THE BACK OF THE CHAIR IN FRONT OF YOU.

  “Who you hiding from out here? Mummy and daddy?” When the other man didn’t respond, he picked his legs off the supporting seat back and leaned close, trying for a glimpse at the clipboard. “Lemme guess. You’re doing a study on the physics of bowling, right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You know,” Seeth added casually as someone below made a strike to applause from his friends and groans from his opponents, “if you had glasses to go with that outfit you’d look so preppy ordinary that unwarned human beings would vomit at the sight of you.”

  “Yeah. And you just stepped off the cover of GQ, too.”

  “Actually I was supposed to be this month’s centerfold in Playgirl, man, but I only filled up one page. They used me for a vodka ad instead. You know—silver Rolls, lady in a black satin dress, couple of wolfhounds sitting at my feet looking like they’re an hour overdue for a pee break but didn’t dare move or they’d lose their residuals.”

  “What are you on tonight, Seeth?” Kerwin said tiredly.

  “Well,” he replied with dubious gravity, “I did just down all of a medium Cherry Coke. What makes you think I am spending this particular evening indulging in designer Pharmaceuticals?”

  “Because you’re in here. You wouldn’t be in a place like this unless you were high.”

  “Is that a fact? It just so happens I thought flashing the yokels would be a neat way to pass an hour. They got the Fish Hook shut down. Health violation.”

  “Ought to condemn the dump.”

  “Ah, that’s good old Kerwin. Always generous and understanding to a fault. At least I’m not stuck here scribbling garbage. What’s your excuse?”

  Kerwin fought an unsuccessful battle to conceal his clipboard. “Nothing. Just killing time.”

  “Oh sure. In here.” Seeth raised both hands. “I believe you totally. I mean, just because I watched you writing like mad doesn’t mean you’re actually writing about any­thing, does it? Or could it be that we’re both here to serve opposite sides of the same thing? I to be observed, you to do observing?”

  “What makes you think I’m doing anything like that?” Kerwin sounded nervous.

  “Because I’m not blind. Hey, come on,” he said coaxingly, “what do you think I’m gonna do? Climb up on one of these rails and scream your secret to all these jokers? Promise I won’t.”

  “You, promise? That’s a laugh.”

  “Yeah? This must be my night for inducing humor in others. Look, really, man, I won’t tell. If you bore me more I might even leave.”

  “If that’s another promise, you’re on.” Seeth nodded and Kerwin slowly revealed his clipboard. “You had the right idea but the wrong subject. I’m here on assignment for my soph sociology class, not physics.” He nodded toward the alleys.

  The ninth frames were beginning to play themselves out. Quiet side bets were being paid off by good Baptists and Methodists. Final beers were being quaffed, chased by mints to kill the odor of alcohol. Husbands and wives said good-byes to friends and neighbors, cleaning up the residue of cheap cheeseburgers and greasy fries.

  “I see. Stalking the wild lite beer drinkers? Baiting them in their natural habitat?”

  “From what I saw when you came in, you seemed to be doing more of that than I ever could.”

  Seeth glanced briefly back toward the snack bar. “Hell, you know me. I’m not like you.” He used a finger to set the lightning bolt earring dancing.

  “You’re not like any living human being except those freaks you run around with.”

  “Freaks? Check that out.” He nodded toward a man with no hair and two hundred pounds of belly, liquid calories transformed as if by magic into useless flesh. “That’s normal and my friends and I are freaks? Gimme a break.”

  Kerwin just looked away. A hard man to provoke. Anyway, Seeth mused impatiently, it really was time to move on. He’d done about all he could in here. If he left before the last of them he could let the air out of a tire or two and stand off at a distance watching the owner get purple in the face.

  At least Kerwin had half a brain. He’d actually talk to you instead of simply frothing at the mouth. As he was doing now.

  “Did you know that bowling is the most popular sport in the United States? In some ways it’s a perfect microcosm of a competitive society. There’s a lot to be learned by observing the participants.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Acres and acres of sub-intellect at work. I mean, the awesomeness of trying to calculate the relationship between beer consumed and concomitant trips to the John interpreted in the light of lost man-hours would tie up a departmental computer for several minutes at least.”

  Kerwin sounded slightly defensive. “It was something different, and anyway, this wasn’t my choice. I wanted to do city hall, but by the time the subject list got down to me it was either this or go out to the reservation with a busload of other students.”

  “You just don’t use your imagination. You could have studied your fellow students studying the natives. But I understand why you came here. I mean, if I was Navajo or Hopi and one more well-meaning white boy showed up to see how I put on my underwear, I’d probably unlatch the family shotgun and fill the jerk full of buckshot. Not that that would discourage the others. They’d probably just add it to their notes, right?”

  Kerwin turned to shake his pen at the younger man. “That’s your problem and you don’t even see it. It’s the attitude of your underculture. It�
�s not the outrageous attire, the air of defiance; it’s this reliance on violence both verbal and physical as a substitute for real self-expression.”

  “Like them, right?” He nodded toward the last of the bowlers. Most of the league games had concluded, but some were unable to tear themselves away from the alleys without rolling a few final practice frames. “You call it violence, I call it living. The Avoidance of Boredom Syndrome, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. The difference between my friends and myself and those potato-heads down there is that we’re tolerant. ‘I don’t like your lifestyle, I don’t like your hair, I despise everything you stand for.’ Man, I’ve been hearing that since I was old enough to understand words, but I’m still tolerant. It doesn’t raise my blood pressure to see somebody dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and a flannel shirt decorated with remembrances of last week’s meals.

  “On the other hand, your ‘normal’ people get one look at me and they’re ready to reach for their guns, except it takes ‘em ten minutes to unlock the gun racks in the back windows of their pickups.”

  “You’re stereotyping.” Kerwin said it with a smile. “You’re stereotyping them the way they stereotype you.”

  “They’re the real stereotypes. No, monotypes. Not an individual in the bunch.”

  “No? See that couple getting ready to leave, alley twelve? His ball is red, hers is light green. A minor example, but it’s still individualism.”

  “Ah yes, a vibrant aesthetic difference. How could I have overlooked it? ‘His ball is red and hers is light green.’ Why, they’re as different as Turner and Goya.”

  “Actually, I don’t find Turner and Goya all that differ­ent. One was interested in the expressions on human faces and the other in expressions of the sea. Both used light to reflect an inner feeling.”

  “Speaking of inner feelings,” Seeth said, feeling pretty good with himself, “how about another Coke?”

  Kerwin looked dubious. “Sure you haven’t got some­thing better to do?”

  “Well, they say death is a real high, but I’m not into suicide tonight.”