Nova Swing by M. John Harrison Page A

daze but hear nothing except the usual sounds from Straint Street outside—a rickshaw rumbling and bumping downhill into Saudade on the uneven pavement; a woman singing. Or she would have dreams of some other planet, from which she always woke thinking, “Where was that? I had a better time there.” These minute, crisp little visions of her past not connecting one with another, or to here and now, she would look round at the room with its clean bare white walls, then get up suddenly and kick last night’s clothes around the floor.
    It was easier to be downstairs. Sweep, push tables about, wash glasses, breathe the stale air, splash cold water on your face from the bar sink. You unlocked the door, daylight poured in on the slant and the shadow operators flickered about in it for a minute or two like reef fish before retreating to their corners. At about the same time Liv Hula retreated behind the bar. She always stood in the same place. Polished the zinc with her elbows, moved the cash drawer in and out. By now her feet fit a dip in the springy floorboards. She didn’t want to remember how many years she spent behind the bar in Black Cat White Cat.
    Check stock, order food, watch the chopshop traffic, watch the light swing slowly round the room, and by early afternoon she would have her first customer. She was glad to see anyone. Usually it would be Fat Antoyne, but Fat Antoyne hadn’t been in since Joe Leone died. Or if it wasn’t Antoyne it would be Vic Serotonin the travel agent, who at that hour hardly looked better than Liv herself.
    Today it wasn’t either of them.
    When Vic Serotonin did arrive, it was with that preoccupied air of his—hands in pockets, shoulders in a permanent shrug, needy eyes fixed away from everything—as if he was thinking so hard about his life he didn’t know what part of the city it was going on in. He leaned on the bar and said:
    “Rum.”
    “Hi, Vic,” Liv Hula said. “Nice to see you.”
    After a pause she said in a fair imitation of Serotonin’s voice, “‘Nice to see you, Liv.’”
    “Cut it out,” said Vic Serotonin.
    “When you pay your tab I will,” she said sweetly. “Black Heart over ice? Well, how did I know that?” She let him drink it—standing a little back from the bar with something between satisfaction and amusement in her eyes—then said, “Your client’s back, Vic.”
    Vic looked round and saw the client had been sitting there all the time on one of the window stools, staring out the misty glass into the street. Her face was tilted so the light fell evenly across it and, without disclosing anything, gave it a milky, transparent look. A cup of hot chocolate was in front of her. She didn’t seem to be drinking from it. The moment Vic saw her he was aware of other images spinning off her, too quick to really see. He had images of running, then a board fence green with lichen in the rain. An abandoned street from a wrong angle.
    Generally Vic would walk away from anything difficult. Clients came to him, he looked them over; he knew a time-waster.
    “I don’t want to see you here again,” he said.
    He walked quietly up behind her where she sat on the stool and put his mouth near her neck and said, “I don’t want to see you here again.” He was startled by his own intensity. She stared at him for a moment, as if she was trying to understand something in a foreign language. Then she got to her feet and began to fumble in her bag, out of which eventually she took a business card. She said:
    “This is where I live. I wish you would help me. If you change your mind, I still feel as if I want to go in there.”
    “That’s the problem,” Vic said.
    “I’m sorry?”
    Vic said, “I know my mind. You don’t know yours.” He stood in the doorway and watched her walk away down Straint. This time she was dressed in a black tulip skirt to midcalf. Over that was a little silver fur peplum jacket with lightly padded shoulders; the jacket came with a