ACE

by G R Matthews

  The second rule of finding your spot was that of dead man’s shoes. I’d got my seat in the dark corner because I’d heard one of the regulars, I don’t know his name, come to think of it, I’m not sure of many names in here, say the previous occupant had died. I’d waited the night out on the table by the door and he hadn’t shown. So, the next night, I got my drink and moved in. Nobody batted an eyelid.

  It’s the way things are. Once you understand the rules, you’re in and accepted by the rest. I’ve watched a few newcomers find their own spot over the years, but I’ve watched many more struggle to get to grips with the place and never come back. Like whiskey, it’s an acquired taste. You have to drink a full bottle to understand the appeal. Here, you just had to survive your first full month.

  “Can I sit here?”

  I put down my half-finished drink and looked up into her face. I didn’t know who she was. Her eyes and smile seemed familiar. I’d seen her somewhere before, but for the life of me I couldn’t think where.

  “You’ve never been here before have you?” I asked.

  “No, my first time.” She sat gracefully, as if trained to.

  Her long legs, emerging from the hem of an expensive business skirt, were hard to take my eyes off. She placed a drink, a small glass on the table. I gave it a quick look, but I’d no idea what it was. Over her shoulder, I saw Tom give a shrug of confusion. This lady wasn’t playing by the rules and Tom seemed powerless. I could feel the eyes of the other patrons turn to look my table and didn’t like the scrutiny. Taking a quick pull of my beer, I cracked the glass down harder than normal, making my point. The pressure of the gazes eased.

  “Why here?” I asked, a little surprised at myself.

  “Why not?” She removed her suit jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. “I knew this place existed and it seemed right to come here. Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem. Just curious. As you can see, we don’t get many people like you in here?”

  “Women?” She glanced around the bar, piercing the veils of isolation the regulars had spent years building up.

  “Rich people.” The bar was quiet. Not the usual quiet of drinking, but the deep silence of listening.

  “I’m not rich. I just work for a rich man.”

  “Lady, you are richer than any of us.” I gestured with my nearly empty beer glass. “This is our local. You’re a long way from home.”

  “Do you want me to go?” Her eyes locked onto mine and I couldn’t look away. There was a challenge in them, and recognition, but of what I couldn’t say.

  “No, that’s fine. You’re entitled to sit here. Just like the rest of us.” Another one of those rules of the bar, you didn’t kick anyone out. Plus, I didn’t want her to go. There was some memory that I couldn’t dredge up from the benthic of my mind. I knew it was there but it was too deep to find.

  We didn’t talk for a while. I finished my beer and picked up the imitation whiskey. It was always the smell of whiskey that I liked best, the earthiness of it. I’d been in arboretums and hydroponic bays, even worked in the algae vats that scrubbed the carbon dioxide from the air. They’d had a smell of mud, dirt and life. Whiskey had the same, just with a hefty kick of alcohol as an added bonus.

  With both glasses empty, I needed another drink. I gave a quick glance to her glass, also empty. Now, I’d been raised to be polite, to be a gentleman around the ladies, but that upbringing was battling hard with the rules – you don’t buy others a drink, unless you won the bet in a game.

  Upbringing won. I stood slowly and tipped my beer glass towards her empty glass.

  “Want another?” My voice was quiet, I hardly heard it myself, but she did.

  “Sure and thanks.” She smiled up at me, pristine white teeth without a kink or twist. She didn’t belong here.

  Tom watched me approach the bar, glasses in hand. He caught my eyes with his own and raised a questioning eyebrow. I had no response. Instead, I placed the glasses on the bar and indicated for the same again. I’d swear in front of a judge that Tom never took his eyes off me whilst he poured the refills.

  “You want a snack with those drinks?” Tom asked as he placed the two full glasses on the bar. It was like he had thrown a bucket of deep-water in my face. Another rule of the bar – you don’t come here to eat, so don’t ask.

  “Funny, Tom,” I mustered in response. “I hear there’s a Polyneesey sub due in tomorrow.”

  The last trade sub from that part of the ocean had contained a below-par load of brewing ingredients which made beer tasting of rotten seaweed. We’d all suffered that month, and the sailors had made an absolute mess of the bar. To be fair to them, they’d paid for the damages but the damage to the beer had been almost too much to forgive. I could hear him muttering as I returned to the lady at my table.

  “So,” I began and then struggled to finish, “you go out looking for new bars much?”

  I could have drowned myself in my drink right there and then. Listening back to the sentence in my own head, I was sure I’d just accused her of being an alcoholic, or worse, a bar-fly.

  “Not really,” her voice didn’t contain any recognition of the insult. “I don’t get out that much. When I do, I like to explore and see the sights of the city.”

  “The sights?”

  “You know, the arboretum, the museum of the pre-flood times, the theatre, the library, the ruins of the first city. There is enough out there, if you know where to look. I’ve been to a lot of them for social functions, but to have time to actually look and take in the atmosphere of those places is wonderful.”

  “Sure.” It was all I had and it was weak.

  “Seriously.” I could see she was warming to her subject and better that she did the talking than me. I hadn’t got much to say. “The city is always changing. You have to stop occasionally to take it all in. The museum, for instance, all the stuff in there from the pre-flood has been salvaged from the sea floor. Some of the best bits are the photographs of the old world. Have you seen them?”

  I shook my head.

  “The colours, the trees, the buildings, and the sky. The sky is almost frightening. I remember my parents taking me out to one of the trenches not far from here. The Fe-products one, I think. That scared me, the ocean floor just dropping away into a darkness so absolute that it seemed to be swallowing me up. Above the water, in those photographs, there was the sky, blue skies, skies with clouds, sunlight seen through leaves, or between the buildings of their great cities. It seemed to carry on forever, a blue infinite world. I stared at them for a long time and couldn’t stop thinking about the clouds and the sky. Why don’t they fall on people? What’s holding them up there?”

  I was trying hard not to stare. There was passion in her voice, and longing. I hadn’t heard either in years. She looked up from her drink and locked her gaze with mine, seeking something. I’m not sure she found it.

  “You think I’m mad,” she said and I think I probably did, “but I’m not. We’ve lived in this city, or the others, for centuries. Can you imagine something above your head so high that you’ll never reach it or touch it? No ceiling to contain your world, no danger of drowning in the open spaces, no limit to your vision.”

  Now there she had a point. I couldn’t imagine it. There have been stories, there are always stories, of sailors who’d gone to the surface. Either their sub had developed a fault and they’d needed to take on air, even the poisoned air of the world above, or they’d followed the old myths about riches on the islands that peeked through the waves. In the stories, they all went mad or died some horrible death. Probably just stories to frighten and keep us safe, but there were enough that some might have roots in the truth. If you dug down hard and far enough it would be there somewhere. It usually was.

  I’d heard of a group, called themselves Skimmers, who would take their subs up near the surface and scuba just below the surface. The trick was, apparently, to get hold of some surface debris from the before, se
ll it on the antiques market and do it all without getting caught.

  “The surface is dangerous.” It was a statement of fact.

  “Don’t you want to live on the surface again?” she asked with a tilt of her head that I was beginning to find quite attractive.

  “I never lived on the surface.” I took a drink of my beer. “In fact, you’d probably have to go back to my great, great, grandparents to even remember someone who’d lived up there.”

  “I know that, but I like to dream. I’d like to believe that one day we can get away from this manufactured air, the constant hum of the machinery that keeps us alive and contained in this city.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right bar to dream. We’re all here trying to find our own way to cope with the pressures of life. Dreaming is as good a way as any of doing that, I suppose.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a little of her longing for more freedom. Life isn’t like that. Only the rich could afford to dream, the rest of us had to work hard and forget.

  “So, do you have a dream?”

  “Every day I dream of a cold beer and whiskey to follow.” It was a quick response and she probably thought me incredibly shallow. She was skirting a bit too close to me, the “me” I drank to hide from. That’s why I came here. I watched a small smile flitter across her face at my response. Perhaps she thought it charming and witty or maybe she was just being polite. Whatever it was, it put a hold on the conversation for a while. We sat in silence sipping our drinks. The bar felt like it was returning to normal. All the regulars were relaxing back into their contemplative solitude with an inaudible but communal sigh.

  “What did you say your name was?” Her question was polite and friendly, a way to get our conversation back on track, but chalk up another rule gone.

  “Corin, Corin Hayes.”