Robert Asprin - Dragons Wild

As their trek progressed, Griffen’s current outfit metamorphosed noticeably. Toward the end, he could not help but notice that the sales personnel were getting much more attentive and deferential toward him. Of course, that might have been affected by the growing number of shopping bags they were accumulating as they went.

Griffen himself was becoming more and more enamored of his new ensemble. A pair of comfortable walking shoes, a must in the Quarter, had replaced his old, battered running shoes. His blue jeans had given ground to a pair of lightweight wool slacks, and instead of a T-shirt, he was now wearing a raw silk shirt with a slight drape to the sleeves. It was still a casual outfit, but Griffen felt noticeably classier just wearing it. He mentioned this to his guides, and they both smiled at him.

“You’re looking really good, Big Brother,” Valerie said. “We should do this more often.”

“You’re getting there, Grifter,” Jerome confirmed. “Get used to wearing these clothes, and in a few days we’ll go see Mose. In the meantime, wear that outfit into that little Irish bar you’ve been hanging out at and see if the ladies don’t sit up and take notice.”

“You know where I’ve been hanging?” Griffen said, a little taken aback.

“I like to keep track of things,” Jerome said. “You’ll see. The Quarter’s a whispering gallery. Not hard to keep track of who’s who and what’s going on.”

Whether it was his new clothes, or simply that he had been frequenting the same local bar for over a week, Griffen noticed that it was easier to start conversations than it had been when he first arrived. More and more often, people would recognize him and wave hello when he came in, or wander over with a new tidbit of gossip, or pick up the threads of an earlier conversation they had had with him.

He was pleasantly surprised at how well-read the various people he talked to were. Oh, there was the customary sports talk that went on in any bar, and a certain amount of cross talk that went on about movies and television shows, but there were also conversations about books people were reading or passing back and forth. He had envisioned himself coming to an intellectual wasteland, and was delighted to be proved wrong.

One conversation he had was particularly memorable if for nothing else than what it lead to.

It was with a lanky young man a few years older than Griffen with shoulder-length dark hair and wire-frame glasses who went by the unlikely nickname of Bone.

It started simply enough, with someone making a comment on the movie that was being shown on one of the bar televisions. Someone came up with the inevitable comparison of the movie to the book it was based on, and the conversation was on. Other books-to-movies were recalled and compared, everyone having their own opinion as to the relative merits of each. By the time it died down, it was clear that Bone and Griffen were the two most knowledgeable on movies, though often their opinions differed widely. Still, they each respected the other’s expertise and were delighted to find a fellow aficionado to interact with.

Each bought the other a drink or two, and the conversation drifted into their own backgrounds. Griffen had mentioned that he was new in town, but Bone, waved it off.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Most people who live and work in the Quarter are from somewhere else. I came down here from San Francisco, myself. Damn few of the current locals were born and raised here.”

He paused to take a long swallow of his rum and Coke.

“What you don’t realize until you’ve been down here for a while,” Bone continued, “is what a small community the Quarter really is. We have droves of tourists that are in and out of here every week wandering through the bars and shops, but they’re just window dressing. In short order, you’ll realize that you know damn near everyone who works in the Quarter by sight, if not by name. Every flower peddler, strip bar shill, carriage driver, street entertainer, and Lucky Dog vendor…you name it, we all know each other and wave ‘hello’ when we pass on the street.”

“I’ve noticed a bit of that already,” Griffen said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Bone said. “Let me tell you, I had only been down here for about three months, and one night at about one in the morning, I was cutting up Orleans about a half block short of Bourbon. These three big, football-jock types stopped me and asked how to find Cafe Du Monde. That was no big deal, and I told them, ‘Straight ahead to the corner, then turn left, then right at the next corner and cross Jackson Square. It’s right there. You can’t miss it.’”

He paused and grinned at the memory.

“The thing is, in the time it took me to say that, two of the biggest, ugliest shills from in front of the strip joints came up out of the dark behind them, looked at me over their heads , and asked, ‘These guys botherin’ you?’ The jocks were freaking a bit, but I just said that I was giving them directions to Cafe Du Monde. The shills nodded and faded back again and everything was mellow. The point is, though, that all they saw was someone from the Quarter getting braced by three big dudes and they were right there to lend a hand. That’s the kind of place the Quarter is. We all know each other. We may not all like each other, but we know each other…and we form the circle with the horns out.”

“Well,” Griffen said. “It’s always nice to know someone has your back in a fight.”

Inside, though, he wondered how far that would extend. A part was wondering about whether the support structure of the area would be enough to protect Valerie if something, or someone, hurt him. Deeper, more buried, Griffen felt the need to unburden his troubles on someone who didn’t know enough to judge. Still, if he shared all to someone like Bone, or even part, of what had changed his life lately, it wouldn’t be long before everyone knew. Trust and privacy weren’t the same, especially in the Quarter.

“Oh, it goes way beyond that,” Bone said. “If a suit came in asking about you, it wouldn’t matter if you were hanging out here five or six nights a week or even if you were shooting pool on the back table. No one would know anything or admit to ever having heard your name. This has been a pirate community for over two hundred years and the people who are drawn to it aren’t real big on authority. Almost everyone has something in their background they would just as soon not have catch up with them, whether it’s an ex after back alimony, a parole officer, or the IRS.”

Griffen thought about it, and began to realize why Jerome had said the Quarter would be a good place for him to hide out.

“Another thing, people down here look out for each other. There’s always someone to help you carry your stuff if you have to move, or if you don’t have a place to move to, there’s always someone who will let you crash on their sofa until you raise the money for a new place.”

Griffen shook his head.

“Sounds almost too good to be true.”

Bone stared at him, then set down his drink.

“For a minute there,” he said softly, “it almost sounded like you just called me a liar.”

“Whoa there, Bone,” Griffen said, holding up a restraining hand. “If that’s how it sounded, I apologize. All I meant to say was that what you’re describing is a lot different from where I just came from.”

“And where is that, if you don’t mind my asking?” Bone said, slightly mollified.

“Up north,” Griffen said. “Michigan to be exact. Little college town named Ann Arbor. Home of the University of Michigan Wolverines…the team that can’t win a Rose Bowl.”