Authors: Ryan Schneider
The bartender glanced at her palm, saw what was hidden there, and winked at Candy. She tossed the folded hundred into a big silver coffer behind the bar. She then jumped onto the bar in one graceful vertical leap and shouted,
“Fireball!”
Everyone cheered.
Within seconds she had the pyramid rebuilt and the silver decanter twirling in the air. She poured the blue liqueur, the robot bartender tossed the flaming sugar cube, and everyone received their second flaming, sizzling sweet drink.
Danny and Candy entwined their arms together in a classic lover
’s toast, blew out each other’s red flame, and then downed the hot, delicious beverages.
Danny
’s vision wavered for a moment. He wondered if the second drink had been a good idea. But if Candy wanted to dance, he was going to need all the liquid courage he could find.
He decided to face the dilemma head-on.
“Do you . . . care to . . . want to . . . dance?”
Candy smiled, took Danny’s
face in her hands, and kissed him. “Are you drunk already?”
“
No.”
“
Who knew the great Daniel Olivaw was such a lightweight?”
“
Do you . . . want . . .” Danny finished by pointing at the dance floor.
A blue robot was dancing in the center of the dance floor. It was surrounded by three women, all of whom it seemed to be dancing with at the same time. Danny almost envied the robot its ability not to feel fear or anxiety or embarrassment. It wanted to dance, and so it danced. It had no thoughts of feeling awkward, no fear of looking stupid. It merely danced. And the ladies danced with it.
Candy smiled. “I don’t really like to dance.”
“
Oh thank God.”
“
I was afraid that you liked to dance.”
“
Is that why you suggested we come here?”
Candy nodded. “
And for the music. I never dance. Susannah does but I don’t.”
Danny laughed.
Candy laughed as well.
Danny asked,
“Would you rather sit here and talk?”
“Yes.”
“Shall we make a pact that we never have to dance?”
“
Okay.”
Danny held out his hand and Candy shook it.
The female bartender placed two bottles of beer on the bar.
“
Liquor before beer, never fear. My name’s Chloe. These are on me.” Chloe pointed her finger and thumb like a pistol, mimicking Candy’s earlier gesture, and then blew on the tip of her finger. She smiled and danced out of the way as a bottle flew through the air on its way to one of the other bartenders.
Candy and Danny toasted the necks of their beer bottles and drank.
Danny relished the cold beer in his mouth. “So you and Susannah come here all the time?”
Candy nodded and sipped her beer.
“Susannah does. I’ve only been here a few times, whenever Blackie and the guys are playing. But Susannah is husband hunting. She says her biological clock is ticking. Do you have any friends who are single? Preferably cute. And successful. And sexy. And not crazy or prone to irrational fits of rage?”
“
Irrational fits of rage?”
“
Her last boyfriend punched his fist through the front door of my office. Cost me thirteen-hundred bucks to have a new one installed. Asshole.”
“
You have one exciting office.”
“
Exciting is certainly one word for it. Which reminds me: do you have a job? You’ve been at my place the past three days. Is there a time clock someplace that’s expecting you? Not that I’m complaining, of course.” Candy patted Danny’s thigh and gave it a meaningful squeeze.
“
I work for myself. I do okay on book sales, but the bulk of my money comes in the form of residual income from a few patents I registered.”
“
What kind of patents?”
“
Artificial hearts for premature babies.”
Candy raised her eyebrows, impressed.
“See, a regular artificial heart is too big to implant into a baby, so a smaller one was needed. But there were certain volumetric parameters to consider. So I came up with a few solutions.”
“How did you come to think of inventing such a thing?”
“I work with an organization called Angel Wings. It’s a group of volunteer pilots who donate their time and the use of their airplanes to provide transportation to people in need of medical treatment. A couple years ago I flew down to Mexico City to pick up a man named Efren and his baby girl Alexa who needed a heart transplant.
“When we got to L.A., I went with them to Cedars Sinai and the surgeon told me Alexa’s odds of survival weren’t very good because she was so young and small. I went home and worked three days straight trying to make a new heart. After Alexa’s body rejected the first heart, Doctor Raziel agreed to try mine. It worked. Efren and Alexa stayed in L.A. for about a month and then I flew them back home. Last I heard, she’s attending preschool, loves white chocolate, and is doing great.”
Danny reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a gold lighter. Angel wings adorned the face of it.
“Before I left Mexico, Efren gave me this.” He handed the lighter to Candy. She traced her fingers over the gold wings.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I carry it with me. As a reminder.”
“He even saves the lives of babies. Is there anything you don’t do?”
“
Besides dance? I’m sure I could think of something.”
“
What about finding a guy for Suze?” Candy was feeling those two flaming Fireballs. She found it difficult to pronounce Suze’s name.
“
We could introduce her to Floyd.”
“
Who’s Floyd?”
“
My roommate.”
“
Oh, that’s right, he owns Howard. Now I remember. So Floyd is single?”
“
Yes.”
“
Is he cute?”
“Difficult for me to say. He has nice abs. And
he does all right with the ladies when he wants to.”
“
What does he do?”
“
He’s a screenwriter.”
“
That’s perfect. Suze has always wanted to marry a leading man.”
“
Screenwriter and leading man are hardly the same thing. Although Floyd did write himself into the script.”
“Sounds perfect. Besides,
Suze is pushing thirty-five and doesn’t want to be sixty years old when her kids are graduating from high school. She’s afraid she’ll be an old woman by the time they’re ready to go off to college.”
Chloe popped the caps off of two fresh bottles of beer. Her movements reflected the careless familiarity developed only through years of repetition. She placed the beers on the bar.
“You two going to hit the dance floor?”
Candy drained the dregs of her first beer and started on her second.
“No, we’re going to sit here and get drunk.”
Chloe turned to Danny, pointed at Candy, and said,
“She’s a keeper.” Chloe tossed the empty beer bottle high over her shoulder. The human male bartender caught it with one hand without taking his eyes off the soda gun he was using to top off a trio of drinks, and put it into the recycler, where it was crushed, melted, frozen, and dispensed into a white plastic bucket full of similar small discs.
“
Well well, aren’t you a choice cut of robot meat.”
Candy and Danny turned to see a man in a vest prowling toward them.
He wore a denim shirt, and tight blue jeans hugged his legs, capped off with well-worn black cowboy boots. His boot heels clomped on the ground as he approached.
Candy and Danny equally were preparing to be offended when the lanky cowboy sidled up to the bar and smiled at a woman seated beside Candy.
She swiveled on her barstool with equal parts grace and Fireball martini-inspired carelessness. She drank the cowboy in, eyeing him up and down.
Her curves and wavy brown
hair and clothing were clearly female: snug denim shorts cut very short, and a white tank top barely restraining breasts which at first appeared too large for her body, yet somehow seemed to work for her. The woman’s red cyborg eyes came to rest on the sparkling blue eyes of the cowboy. Her red lips curled up into a grin, revealing two fine rows of opalescent teeth, straight and perfect.
The cowboy tipped his imaginary hat.
“Evenin’, ma’am. My name’s Spencer. Would you care to fornicate with me?” Spencer extended the crook of his pointed elbow.
The
woman hopped off her stool with a bounce of her brown hair. “I’d love to, cowboy.” Her voice was sultry, and had subtle electronic notes. She accepted Spencer’s arm and together they moseyed to a nearby corner populated by plush purple booths. The cowboy sat. The woman dropped to her knees and her head disappeared below the top of the booth. The cowboy’s eyes closed. His head relaxed onto the back of the chair.
The
cowboy and his robotic lady friend were not the sole occupants of the private corner. Nearly every chair, loveseat, sofa, and booth was occupied. Occupied by two, and sometimes more, figures in some stage of intercourse. Upon closer inspection, nearly all of the pairings involved a human/robot combination.
Candy and Danny swiveled around to face the bar.
Candy waved a beckoning hand toward Chloe.
“
What kind of club
is
this?” Candy asked.
Chloe grinned. She swiveled a bar-mounted black caddy until it faced Danny and Candy. It was
a small vending machine with a touch screen.
“
I recommend the Purple Passion,” said Chloe. “Unless you’re in love. Then I’d go with Love In Space.”
“
Have you ever tried it?” Candy asked.
“
The Love In Space?” Chloe smiled but her lips remained together. She looked sad. “I should be so lucky. But you two guys are the real thing. I can tell.” She smiled then, broadly. “Here.” Chloe produced a plastic card from her pocket and swiped it through the machine’s reader. She tapped the red-and-gold Love In Space icon twice. Two small pouches were dispensed onto the bar. Candy and Danny each picked up a pouch and examined it.
The wrapper was black, with red and gold stars patterned across it. Inside the pouch, Danny could feel something small and square.
“It’s gum,” said Chloe. “Aphrodisiac gum. For lovers. But no contraceptives. If you want that, you need one of the other two. You can try them all, but that one’s the best. Or so I hear.”
“What about this other one?” Danny asked. The icon was black with green letters. “Bullet to the Head.”
“It’s for depression,” said Chloe. “My friend Link took four of them all at once, blacked out, and woke up in jail charged with armed robbery, with no memory of how she got there. So stay away from that one. Enjoy.”
Chloe moved on down the bar, where the male bartender was juggling bottles of liquor.
Danny swiped his own card through the vending machine and tapped the other two icons.
Two ampules dispensed onto the bar. Each was a small glass vial full of liquid,
one pink, one green.
Candy read the label on the pink
ampule. “Pink Mist. It says it doubles your pleasure, doubles your fun.” She read the tiny fine print. “ ‘Apply directly into eye at least fifteen minutes before sexual activity. Caution: contains powerful birth control substances. May cause blindness, which is usually temporary.’
Usually?
That’s frightening.
What does yours say?”
Danny held the green
ampule. “It’s called Nuclear Mint. ‘Now with an extra microgram of pleasure enhancers. It’s the bomb.’ ” Danny raised his eyebrows at Candy. “It also says, ‘May cause heart palpitations, cardiac arrhythmia, temporary blindness, or priapism.’ What’s priapism?”
Candy
’s brow furrowed while she tried to recall. “I think it means a prolonged erection. But isn’t blindness of greater importance than a never-ending hard-on?”
“
I would think so.”
A few stools away, a man and a woman were each breaking open an
ampule. The brunette female held a Pink Mist, while the bald-headed male broke open a green Nuclear Mint.
They each t
ilted their head back and squirted the ampule’s contents into their eyes.
They blinked several times at one another.
The woman began caressing her own breasts, squeezing them through her black midriff blouse. She became lost in the stimulation of her own body, and took no notice of her partner.
Her clean-shaven friend stared at her with wide eyes. Every few seconds, he blinked. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head a few times.
“I can’t see. I can’t see!”