Robert Silverberg - The Regulars

“Spooky place,” said Ishmael with a little shudder.

“The people who are in that bar are happier than they could possibly be anywhere else.”

“But they never leave it. Except you said some of them do, and you’d be telling me about those people later.”

Mors Longa finished his bourbon, and, unbidden, Charley Sullivan gave him one more and set another rum in front of me and an Irish for the sailor. For a long while Mors Longa studied his drink. Then he said, “I can’t really tell you much about the ones who leave, because I don’t know much about them. I intuit their existence logically, is all. You see, from time to time there’s a newcomer in this bar that’s outside of space and time. Somebody comes wandering in out of the night, the way you did here tonight, and sits down and joins the regular crowd and, bit by bit, fits right in. Now, obviously, if every once in a while somebody new drops in, and nobody ever leaves, then it wouldn’t take more than a little for the whole place to get terribly crowded, like Grand Central at commuter time, and what kind of a happy scene would that make? So I conclude that sooner or later each of the regulars very quietly must disappear, must just vanish without anybody’s knowing it, maybe go into the john and never come out, something like that. And not only does no one ever notice that someone’s missing, but no one remembers that that person was ever there. Do you follow? That way the place never gets too full.”

“But where do they go, once they disappear from the bar that nobody ever leaves, the bar that’s outside of space and time?”

“I don’t know,” said Mors Longa quietly. “I don’t have the foggiest idea.” After a moment he added, “There’s a theory, though. Mind you, only a theory. It’s that the people in the bar are really doing time in a kind of halfway house, a sort of purgatory, you understand, between one world and another. And they stay there a long, long time, however long a time it is until their time is up, and then they leave, but they can only leave when their replacement arrives. And immediately they’re forgotten. The fabric of the place closes around them, and nobody among the regulars remembers that once there used to be a doctor with the d.t.’s here, say, or a politician who got caught on the take, or a little guy who sat in front of the piano for hours and never played a note. But everybody has a hunch that that’s how the system works. And so it’s a big thing when somebody new comes in. Every regular starts secretly wondering, Is it me who’s going to go? And wondering too, Where am I going to go, if I’m the one?”

Ishmael worked on his drink in a meditative way. “Are they afraid to go, or afraid that they won’t?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure. But I guess most of them would be afraid to go. The bar’s such a warm and cozy and comforting place. It’s their whole world and has been for a million years. And now maybe they’re going to go somewhere horrible—who knows?—but for certain they’re going to go somewhere different. I’d be afraid of that. Of course, maybe if I’d been stuck in the same place for a million years, no matter how cozy, I’d be ready to move along when the chance came. Which would you want?”

“I don’t have the foggiest,” said Mors Longa. “But that’s the story of the bar where nobody leaves.”

“Spooky,” said Ishmael.

He finished his drink, pushed the glass away, shook his head to Charley Sullivan, and sat in silence. We all sat in silence. The rain drummed miserably against the side of the building. I looked over at the Leading Man and the Ingenue. He was holding her hand and staring meaningfully into her eyes. The Pope, hefting a dart, was toeing the line and licking his lips to sharpen his aim. Ms. Bewley and Toulouse-Lautrec were playing chess. It was the quiet part of the evening, suddenly.

Slowly the sailor rose and took his jacket from the hook. He turned, smiled uncertainly, and said, “Getting late. I better be going.” He nodded to the three of us at the bar and said, “Thanks for the drinks. I needed those. And thanks for the story, Mr. Longa. That was one strange story, you know?”

We said nothing. The sailor opened the door, wincing as cold sheets of rain lashed at him. He pulled his jacket tight around him and, shivering a little, stepped out in the darkness. But he was gone only a moment. Hardly had the door closed behind him but it opened again and he stumbled back in, drenched.

“Jesus,” he said, “it’s raining worse than ever. What a stinking night! I’m not going out into that!”

“No,” I said. “Not fit for man nor beast.”

“You don’t mind if I stay here until it slackens off some, then?”

“Mind? Mind?” I laughed. “This is a public house, my friend. You’ve got as much right as anyone. Here. Sit down. Make yourself to home.”

“Plenty of Bushmill’s left in the bottle, lad,” said Charley Sullivan.

“I’m a little low on cash,” Ishmael muttered.

Mors Longa said, “That’s all right. Money’s not the only coin of the realm around here. We can use some stories we haven’t heard before. Let’s hear the strangest story you can tell us, for openers, and I’ll undertake to keep you in Irish while you talk. Eh?”

“Fair enough,” said Ishmael. He thought a moment. “All right. I have a good one for you. I have a really good one if you don’t mind them weird. It’s about my uncle Timothy and his tiny twin brother, that he carried around under his arm all his life. Does that interest you?”

“Most assuredly it does,” I said.

“Seconded,” said Mors Longa. He grinned with a warmth I had not seen on his face for a long time. “Set them up,” he said to Charley Sullivan. “On me. For the house.”