I should have stayed with the rest, I guess, and of course a public bar was the last place any smart spaceboy would have gone to. But I had some nice memories of bars, memories from the early days.
The whole room went silent, as though a tube had blown, when I shoved through the door. I got over to an empty table as quickly as I could and inspected the list of drinks on the dispenser. This one had a lot of big nickel handles sticking up over the drink names and the whole job was shaped like one of those beer kegs you used to see pictures of. What I mean is, this was an authentic bar.
Phony as hell.
From the way this sounds, you can guess the kind of mood I'd gotten in. The noise had picked up again right after I sat down and some of the drunker drunks were knocking the usual words around, in loud whispers and with lots of glances at me. One of the pro-girls (her hair was green and her blouse covered her breasts—another change while I was out) gave me a big wink and then jabbed the man next to her and squawked with laughter.
I fed a bill into the change machine at the table and then dribbled several coins (prices had gone up too) into the dispenser.
I guess I must have had several, because after a while I began to feel cheerful. The noise that was coming out of the box in the corner started to sound like music, and I got to tapping and rocking. And smiling, I guess. And that's what triggered it.
People had been coming and going, but mainly coming. And the crowd at the bar had been getting louder, and one guy there had been getting louder than the rest. All of a sudden, he slammed down his glass and headed for my table. He orbited around it for a while, staring at me, and then settled jerkily down in the chair across from me.
"Why all the hilarity, spaceboy? Feeling proud of yourself?"
He looked pretty wobbly and pretty soft and pretty old. And very angry. But I was kind of wobbly myself by that time. And anyway there are strict rules about us and violence. Very strict. So I just tried to make the smile bigger and said, "I'm just feeling good. We had a good run and we brought in some nice stuff."