Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

He hesitated. “And?” Garrett prompted.

Ray shrugged. “Well, y’know, we’ve never been able to afford so much as a billboard. All we’ve ever had was word-of-mouth. Meanwhile we’ve got competition from all the chain operations down the highway. But this show she’s doing… well, she always puts the name of the place in the credits…”

“So it’s free advertising,” Bill finished. “You’re hoping it’ll draw more customers.”

Ray nodded. “The ones that get popular… y’know, get a lot of hits… and, well, y’know, if it gets picked up by one of the major net servers, AOL or someone like that, then it could make us…”

“Famous,” Chet said. “Famous across the whole country. Soon you’ll be taking down the old sign, put up another one.” He raised his hands, spread them open as if picturing a brand-new fiberoptic sign. “I can see it now. ‘World-Famous Joanne’s Place.’ Maybe you can even sell T-shirts and bumper stickers.”

“You know I’d never do that,” Ray Junior said quietly.

Chet scowled. “Naw, I’m sure the notion’s never occurred to you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bill said quickly. “Thanks for the coffee, Ray. Sorry to keep you.”

“On the house. Same for breakfast,” he added as he moved away from the table. “I’ll get her out here to take your orders.”

“Hear that?” Tom said as Ray Junior beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. “Breakfast on the house! Not bad, huh?”

“No,” Bill said. “Not bad at all.”

THERE was an uncomfortable silence at the table. “So…” Garret said at last. “Anyone seen today’s paper?”

That was how the Old Farts usually spent their Friday meetings: discussing what they had read in the paper. Baseball season was over, so now it was time to talk football. Sometimes the subject was politics, and how those damn liberals were destroying the whole country. Or maybe it would be about what was going on in Russia, or the people who were about to go to Mars, or someone famous died last week, and pretty soon it would be close to eleven and it was time for everyone to go home and do whatever it was that country gentlemen do in their golden years. Check the mailbox, feed the dogs and cats, putter around the yard, make plans to have the kids over for Thanksgiving. Take a midafternoon nap and wait for the world to turn upside-down again, and hope that it didn’t fall on you when it did.

“S’cuse me.” Chet pushed back his chair and stood up. “Need to get something from my car.”

“What did you leave?” Tom asked.

“Just some medicine. Don’t let no one take my seat.” He pulled his denim jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it as he walked past the lunch counter and pushed aside the glass door next to the cash register.

Garrett mentioned an awful murder that had occurred a few days ago in the big city a couple of hundred miles away, the one that had made all the newspapers. Pretty soon everyone was talking about it: how it had been committed, who had been arrested, whether they really had done the deed, so forth and so on. Bill glanced over his shoulder; out the window, he saw that the trunk lid of Chet’s Cadillac had been raised. He watched Chet slam it shut; he turned and began walking back to the diner.

“Funny place to keep medicine,” he murmured.

“Huh?” Tom cupped an ear. “What’s that you say?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Chet came back into the diner, took his seat again. The rest of the guys were still discussing the murder, but he didn’t seem to have anything to add; he simply picked up a menu and opened it to the breakfast page. Bill noted that he didn’t take off his jacket.

A couple of minutes later, the kitchen door banged open again, and there was Joanne. The flycam prowled overhead, filming her every move, as she imperiously studied the dining room. Act II, Scene II: Joanne returns from break. Cue incidental music, audience applause.

“Hey, Joanne!” Garrett raised a hand. “Could we have a little service here, please?”

She heaved an expansive sigh (the audience chuckles expectantly), then pulled pen and order pad from her apron. “Can’t a girl get a break ’round here?” she said (the audience laughs a little louder) as she came over, the flycam obediently following her.

For the first time, Bill noticed how much makeup she was wearing: pancake on the cheeks, rouge around the eyes, red lipstick across the mouth. She was trying to erase her last ten years, at least for the benefit of the camera.

“Seems to me that’s all you’ve been taking lately,” Chet replied, not looking up from his menu. “We’ve been waiting over an hour now.”

Joanne dropped her mouth open in histrionic surprise ( wooo , groans the audience) as she placed her hands on her hips. “We-l-l-l-l-l! I didn’t know you were in such a goshdarn hurry! What’s the matter, Chet, you waiting for a social security check?” (More laughter.)

Chet continued to study the menu. “Joanne,” he said quietly, “I’ve been coming here to eat before you were born. I bounced your little fanny on my knee when you were a child, and told Ray Senior that he should give you a job when you got out of school…”

“And if it wasn’t for you, I could have been working for NASA by now!” (Whistles, foot-stomping applause.).

Chet ignored her. “Every time I’ve come here, I’ve put a dollar in your tip glass, even when you’ve done no more than pour me a cup of coffee. So after all these years, I think I deserve a little common courtesy, don’t you think?”

Joanne’s face turned scarlet beneath the make-up. This wasn’t part of the script. “Well, I don’t… I don’t think I have to… I don’t have to…”

“Joanne,” Bill said softly, “just take our orders, please. We’re hungry, and we want to eat.”

“And turn off that silly thing,” Chet added. “I’d like a little privacy, if it’s not too much to ask.”

Reminded that the camera was on her (the audience coughs, moves restlessly) Joanne sought to recover her poise. “We-l-l-l-l-l, if it’s privacy you… I mean, if you don’t… I mean… if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon…”

“Sorry,” Chet said, then he reached up and grabbed the flycam.

The drone resisted as his fingers wrapped around its mike boom, its lenses snapping back and forth. Its motor whined as the rotors went to a higher speed, and for a moment it almost seemed alive as it fought against Chet’s grasp, then he yanked it down to the table.

Tom’s coffee went into his lap and Garrett nearly overturned his chair as they yelled and lurched out of the way. “No! Hey!” Joanne reached for the flycam as Chet turned it over. “Stop! What are you…?”

Chet pushed her aside with one hand, then twisted the drone over on its back. The rotor blades cleaved through a plastic salt shaker and swept the pepper cellar halfway across the room before they snagged against the napkin dispenser.

Bill instinctively pulled his coffee mug out of the way. “Chet, what the hell…!”

Then Chet pulled out from beneath his jacket the tire iron he had fetched from his car trunk and brought it down on the flycam. The first blow shattered the camera lens and broke the mike boom, and the second shattered its plastic carapace and ruined a compact mass of microchips, solenoids, and actuators. The third and forth blows were unnecessary; the flycam was already an irreparable mess.

Then he dropped the tire iron on the table and sat down. There was a long silence as everyone in the diner stared at him. Then…

Long, spontaneous applause from the live studio audience.

As Joanne stared at the wreckage on the table, Chet picked up his menu and opened it again. “Okay,” he said, letting out his breath, “I’ll take two scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries, wheat toast, and tomato juice. Please.”