He realized he hadn't eaten since yesterday and mumbled something about
a yeast sandwich and a glass of soybean milk. She looked at him, but
passed on his order without a comment, then took him in tow once more.
She had to answer a few familiar greetings, but she didn't spend much
time on them and seemed relieved when she'd plunked Phil down in the
booth nearest the front door, where the rumble of trucks was loudest
and their headlights, mixed with the sodium glow, flashed on the
scratched and dusty plastic. But there were, for a wonder, no jukeboxes
or radios of any sort in the place. He also saw that the pushbuttons
on the wall were labeled for out of date synthetic foods and had taped
over them an "Out of Order" sign that must have been twenty years old
itself.
He studied his companion across the table and realized for the first
time that she looked dead beat. His glance began to trace on her large
jaw the outlines of a recent bruise that was only partly concealed by
hastily applied makeup. She dove into her pocketbook with a shy girl's
flusteredness and started to dab at her jaw with a powder-puff, but
then gave up, put back the puff and slumped forward, her meaty elbows
on the plastic.
"Don't ever let 'em tell you the bouts are fixed," she assured him
glumly. "Zubek bust a gut trying to get me tonight."
"You won?" Phil inquired.
"Oh, sure. Two falls, a spaceship spin and a free-fall--that means when
you throw 'em up and out and they don't come back."
A tray came sliding along the bar. Juno went over and got it before
Phil realized that it was for them. From the speed with which the
order had been filled, he decided they still had radionic cooking in
the place. Juno's seared rabbit chops were as big as small steaks--it
must have been an octoploid bunny, at the least--while her whiskey
was intimidatingly huge and brown. He nibbled his yeast sandwich and
found it seemingly okay, though it always made him a bit uneasy to eat
restaurant food that didn't pop out of a wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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