Callahan's Key

by Spider Robinson

  “Old bullet wound in his thigh,” Zoey murmured to me.

  I nodded and finished my eggs. “I’d say he looks like a retired Mafioso, if there was such a thing.”

  “Sounded a little like one, too. God, just hearing Brooklyn spoken gave me a funny feeling, you know?”

  “Me too. Like I’m an expat in Singapore, and just met someone from jolly old England. Listen, Double Bill has a place he wants to show us, possible site for the new bar, says we can bike over after we eat.”

  “Jesus, it’s already starting, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think it started a while back up the trail, I’m not sure exactly when. But yeah, we’re committed, and the ball is in play.”

  Erin came bustling up, impatient enough to spit. “Come on, you guys—let’s go see the new place! Bbiillll says there’s a parrot that shits in a toilet—”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Say his name again?”

  “Bbiillll,” she repeated.

  I nodded. “Just wanted to be sure I heard it right; Carry on.”

  “Bbiillll’s got bikes for you guys, and I can go in the backpack, let’s go.”

  “I don’t know if that sounds safe, honey,” Zoey said.

  “It is if you’re a good driver,” Erin pointed out.

  Zoey and I exchanged a glance. “I’ll take her,” I said. “The traffic I saw last night at rush hour was candy. This time of day we should be fine.”

  Word spread as we got ready to leave, and of course everybody wanted to come. Fortunately, there was a finite limit to the bikes immediately available for borrowing, and I was able to hold us down to roughly platoon strength. We finally got under way a little before noon.

  It took most of us about a block or so to get our “bike legs” back—especially those of us who had been bike riders already. We were used to the fancy hi-tech bicycloid things everybody rode up north nowadays, which had thirty-seven gears and motorcycle-style brakes on the handlebars and weighed four pounds. These were bicycles, like the first one I ever rode: one-speed clunkers that you braked by reversing the pedals, with fat tires and a basket atop the front wheel to hold your baseball mitt and homework. You didn’t hunch forward over the handlebars; you sat up straight like a human being. I found it almost eerily enjoyable to ride one again. They weighed a ton, steered hard, and took forever to get up to speed—which made them perfect for pool-table-flat, slow-motion Key West. Modern magnesium-alloy bikes tempt you to use their truly amazing capabilities…and the next thing you know you’re rocketing along so fast you might as well be in a car, too busy to see what you’re passing.

  Instead we tooled along through the sleepy funky streets of Old Town like kids playing hooky, pedaling like mad and then coasting for a block or two, rubbernecking to either side, peeling off from time to time to check out something interesting, or just swooping back and forth for the hell of it. Tourists were doing the same thing, at the same lazy pace; the only way to tell us apart was that their bikes had prominent number plates identifying the rental source. I got back that childhood feeling of being on a magic flying carpet sailing through space. I remembered for the first time in decades how much fun it was to fold your arms across your chest and steer by posture alone—would have tried it, if I hadn’t had Erin on my back.

  It was her first time on a bike, and she loved it, if anything more than I did. By the time we reached our destination, she had browbeaten me into promising that I would get her a bike of her own and teach her to ride it…and not some little baby tricycle, either, but a scale model of a grown-up bike. I finally agreed I would…just as soon as she could walk, run, jump, and somersault proficiently, in the opinion of her mother. I knew even that proviso wouldn’t help me for long; Erin had pretty much quit crawling for good before we’d left Long Island, and by now was walking and running more like a child than like a baby. But I could already see that this was a town in which even a normal baby could safely ride a miniature bicycle.

  Even on Duval Street, the main stem. It was crowded and busy at noon on a weekday, but we had no trouble at all crossing it: car and truck drivers were all alert for confused strangers on bicycles or on foot. This was so far back in history that no more than half of the stores on Duval were T-shirt shops, then, broken up occasionally by an art gallery or bookstore or craft emporium.

  Once we crossed Duval, things almost instantly became quieter and less commercial; within half a block everything was residential again. And the kind of residential where chickens run free in the street Wood-frame houses with unenclosed porches, all snuggled close together, no two alike; white picket fences everywhere, the whole neighborhood overgrown with lush green foliage that tended to red flowers.

  We came to a long stretch of head-high picket fence, lined with coconut palm trees; at its center was a little gate with a sloped roof oven it. Double Bill braked his bike to a stop there, and began chaining it to a parking meter. Zoey and I followed his example, and Erin made me take her out of the backpack and put her down, and we waited there on the sidewalk until the rest of our strung-out group had arrived and secured their bikes too. There was no conversation; we were all too nervous. I kept trying to sneak peeks over the fence while I waited, but everywhere you could get a leg up somehow, there seemed to be a bush in the way. Doc Webster kept grinning at me.

  Finally we were all assembled in a rough circle around Double Bill. In the noonday sun, his Shirt of Many Colors seemed to shimmer with Cherenkov radiation, and the gold ring on his big toe shone. He smiled at us around his Popeye pipe, reached into a nonobvious fold of his sarong, and produced a key.

  “Take as long as you like, folks,” he told us. That was his entire sales pitch. He unlocked the gate, and stepped aside.

  Nobody moved. I gestured for Zoey. She gestured back, Don’t be silly: you first.

  Erin zipped through the gate.

  So I stepped through after her…stopped almost at once…and was pushed all the way in by the pressure of the crowd behind me. When we were all inside, we stood in a group and stared, taking it all in.

  Fast Eddie finally broke the silence. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “it’s poifect.”

  “Oh, Jake,” Zoey said beside me, “it really is!”

  Behind me, Doc Webster made a small rumbling sound of contentment. And possibly just a touch of relief.

  We were in a large private compound, enclosed on all sides by either picket fence or walls of riotous tropical growth. Spaced around its perimeter were five pleasant looking cottages that needed painting, but not too badly. Here and there tall palms provided large patches of shade. Off to the left was a small coral-gravel-surfaced parking area accessible from the cross street below. And in the center of the compound was a round swimming pool, beside which stood a large, thatched-roof-covered, open-air bar setup—very much like that at the Schooner Wharf, save that it was a U instead of an O, surrounded by wide swaths of lawn covered with assorted chairs and tables. The bar was stripped bare now, but the pool had clean water in it, sparkling invitingly.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but what about—” And then I saw it. On the grass at the far side of the bar area, way at the back, well away from the swimming pool and facing toward it: a huge outdoor brick fireplace. Its interior was parabolically contoured, and big enough to barbecue a porpoise. You could smash glasses in that fireplace all night, no problem. A concrete walkway with a sloped tin roof joined it to the bar enclosure, and I could already see that Eddie’s piano would fit in very nicely under that roof.

  “I think we’re home,” I said wonderingly.

  The Doc chuckled aloud.

  We moved forward and began inspecting the place, chattering excitedly to one another as we made little discoveries. Omar went to check out the power and phone boxes; Zoey made a beeline for the cottages; I homed in on the bar, went around behind it and began inspecting its facilities. There was a countertop just the right size to accommodate The Machine and its conveyor
belt, with power and water supply close at hand. Behind the bar area, concealed by the high bottle shelves that formed its back wall, I saw a small hedge maze that I could tell would provide several relatively private conversation areas back there.

  I looked in the other direction, out over the bartop at the pool and the rest of the compound, trying it on for size. I watched my friends roaming around exploring, and tried to picture us all here of an evening, drinking and laughing and making merry around the pool. It wasn’t hard at all. I realized I was facing west, toward the sunsets. That wouldn’t be hard to take, either. I could smell the sea, only a few blocks away, sea gulls wheeling in the sky.

  I wandered back outside, located Zoey and Erin just coming out of one of the cottages. “This one’s ours,” Zoey said.

  “Really?”

  She and Erin both nodded positively. That was good enough for me. “Let’s find Bill,” I said. “I gotta find out how this place comes to be available. It’s just too perfect. I mean, if it only turns out to be radioactive, no problem, but what if it has plague? We’re not immune to plague.”

  Double Bill wasn’t hard to find. He’d parked himself in a chaise lounge at poolside and fired up a joint. Everyone else seemed to wander his way about the same time I did, drawn by the same obvious question.

  “This used to be a sort of private club,” he said. “A nudist compound. There’s a few of them around Key West, either nude or clothing-optional…but this was one of the oldest and most exclusive. Then a few years back, Duval Street started to really build up, and it’s just too damn close to here. The word got around, and pretty soon every night drunken college kids would fall out of trees trying to peek over the fence, and finally the folks here all got fed up and moved the whole operation about a mile thataway.”

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  “Last year. They held out as long as they could stand it.”

  “How come the place is still on the market?” Long-Drink asked, trying his best not to sound suspicious.

  Double Bill opened his mouth to answer—

  —and was drowned out by a high feminine voice, shrieking, “Fuck me in the ass!”

  Bill smiled wryly. “That’s part of it, right there,” he admitted.

  “There he is!” Erin cried happily: “I told you, Daddy.”

  I followed her pointing finger. A brilliant blue parrot, with green and red highlights around his head, almost as big as she was, standing by the side of the pool.

  “God, it’s so big!” he screamed, this time in a high masculine voice. “Put it in slow.”

  “Before it was a nudist retreat,” Bill said, “this used to be a whorehouse. Harry there used to belong to the madam, and he stayed on when she left. Just refuses to go. He figures this is where he lives. The nudist folks got used to him, eventually anyway, but other people frequently seem to have a problem with him.”

  “Squeeze my balls,” Harry said. Feminine voice this time. Go figure.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  Bill shrugged. “Well, he’s a little loud, I guess.”

  “Where’s his potty?” Erin asked.

  “On top of the fireplace.”

  “Show me,” she demanded.

  So Bill had to pick Harry up, put him on his shoulder, and carry him over to the outdoor fireplace beside the bar, followed by Erin and half a dozen of us grown-ups. Sure enough, sitting on top of it was an object so silly I had simply refused to see it earlier; a miniature toilet bowl, of the old-fashioned water-closet type, just like the one on Omar’s bus, bolted down to the brick. Without any prompting, Harry hopped from Bill’s shoulder onto the pot, used it for its intended purpose, and then tugged on the pull-chain with his beak: rainwater that had collected in the overhead tank dropped down and flushed the goofy little thing. (I looked, and discovered it drained down the back of the fireplace into a small coral-gravel leaching area at the base.) Harry accepted our thunderous applause as his due, with feigned nonchalance, but you could tell he was pleased. Erin just about went mad with joy.

  “I don’t know who taught him to do that,” Double Bill said, “but you can see it makes him a more desirable neighbor than the average parrot.”

  “Get it wet first,” Harry shrieked. (Feminine.)

  “Makes it a little harder to run him off, too, eh?” Long-Drink suggested.

  Double Bill’s eyes twinkled. “Well, where else is he going to find a bog his size? Chase Harry off, he’d probably drown in somebody else’s loo.”

  “Bill,” Long-Drink said, “are you telling us this place is still on the market because every time a buyer comes around, old Harry freaks them out?”

  Double Bill grinned. “Well, he don’t help, that’s for sure. But mostly the thing is, this site is your basic in-betweener. It’s zoned to allow residential and commercial—but it ain’t really appropriate for either one. Nobody’s gonna get rich on five houses on a parcel this size, and for various reasons you can’t put any more in. By today’s standards it’s too small for a motel, too cheesy for a resort, too close to Duval for a trailer park, and too far from Duval for a bar. Couple of times I had a guy thought it was almost right for him…and then he’d come around and meet Harry, and that was generally that. What the place really needs is something like a cult.”

  “He was pissing and moaning about it to me,” Doc Webster said, “and suddenly it dawned on me I knew a cult that was looking for a temple. That’s when I called you, Jake.”

  “You’re sure we can get a liquor license?”

  “You already have one. Grandfathered.”

  I turned to Double Bill. “And you know our top dollar.”

  He nodded. “I can get them to take that much—on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Would you be willing to sign a codicil guaranteeing Harry lifetime residence, and access to the facilities, there? The nudists got kind of fond of him. They’d have taken him with them, if he’d have gone, and they want to make sure he doesn’t end up on the street, shitting on cars like a common parrot.”

  I approached the fireplace, held out my arm experimentally. Harry hopped up onto it at once, and fixed me with a particularly beady eye. He was lighter than I’d expected, thank God. “Harry,” I told him, “you’re welcome here.”

  “Oh God that’s good you slut,” he bellowed triumphantly.

  “We’re taking the place, then?” Zoey asked me, and the low buzz of conversation all around us chopped off short.

  The question brought me up short. I had forgotten, for a moment, the magnitude of the decision we were making here. Suddenly I felt weight on me—the weight of all the people whose lives and hopes were involved here, and more. Would this be a good site for the battle to save the universe? Was this a congenial setting for experiments in group telepathy? Would it be a good place to drink, in the meantime? Was it where Zoey and I should raise our freak child?

  In retrospect it sounds intimidating. But the weight that came on me then was not all oppressive—there was a steadying weight, too, a grounding weight: a sense of the mantle of Mike Callahan descending on my shoulders and anchoring me to something even deeper than the ground. I knew I was up to making this decision—and so it was only a matter of making it.

  I looked around me. Not at the place; I’d seen all I needed to see of it for now. At my wife, and my daughter, and my friends. One by one I met their eyes and tallied their votes. Finally I turned back to Double Bill.

  “We’re home,” I said, and shook his hand.

  A cheer went up. Quite a long and loud and enthusiastic one, and just as it was starting to make me a little teary-eyed, it slacked off just enough to allow us all to hear Harry screaming, “Oh God oh God oh God YES, Jesus YES—” and we all broke up.

  “Jake! Hey, Jake, point of order!” Long-Drink McGonnigle’s voice cut through the hubbub.

  “What is it, Drink?”

  “I want to know what the name of the new place is.”

 
Sudden Silence.

  For some reason, I had never given this a thought. We’d all met at Callahan’s Place, then we’d all built Mary’s Place together. Both were gone, now. This was neither. What was it, then?

  “Jake’s Place,” Fast Eddie said, and there was an instant rumble of agreement.

  A flood of blended pride and humility washed over me. I shook my head at once.

  “Jake and Eddie’s Place,” I said. Again there was immediate general approval.

  Eddie stared at me. “No way,” he said flatly.

  “Hell,” I said, “you came up with most of the dough.”

  “Fahgeddaboudit.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Zoey’s Place, then.”

  Again the crowd tried to ratify the nomination, but Zoey cut them off. “Not a chance. Two time travelers and then me? Uh-unh. How about Erin’s Place?”

  This too was a popular suggestion. But Erin would have none of it. “This isn’t my place, Mommy. This is your place, yours and Daddy’s. I won’t find my place until I’m grown up.”

  The group trailed off into baffled silence, wanting to approve some choice.

  “Come on, Jake,” Long-Drink said, “we gotta call it something, and you’re the logical candidate. You’re the one that brought us all down here.”

  I shook my head firmly, pointing at Harry where he sat on his throne. “No place that has a cute little comedy toilet in it should be called ‘Jake’s,’” I insisted. “Besides, I didn’t bring us all down here, Nikky did.” We all pondered that for a moment, and I could see Tesla’s Place was not going to be a popular choice. “No, wait a minute, I’m wrong. He didn’t bring us down here; Nikky doesn’t know Key West from Cuba. He just told us we all needed to be someplace. The one who brought us all down here was the Doc.”

  Another instant rumble of spirited approbation.

  And again the candidate declined his party’s nomination. “Forget it,” Doc Webster said. “I’m even less suitable than Jake. This town is all waterfront: you can’t say, ‘Hey, let’s all go down to The Doc’s,’ nobody’ll know where you mean.”