Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

He tasted. The taste was better than the smell. He hadn’t thought it could be. He made a wordless, full-mouth noise of bliss.

“Glad you like it,” Mary said, sounding amused. A moment later she added, “Listen, it’s about dinnertime, and like I said, we ain’t exactly packed. You mind if I bring out a plate and join you?”

“Please,” he said. “Why should I mind? This is your place and your terrific food-” He thought he was going to say more, but took another bite instead.

“Be right with you, then.” She went back to get some stew of her own. Jens twisted his head to watch the way she walked. Like a woman, he thought: what a surprise. Her long gray wool skirt didn’t show much of her legs, but she had nice ankles. He wondered if she was older or younger than he. Close, either way.

She came back with not only a plate, but two glass beer mugs filled with a deep amber fluid. “You look like you could use one of these,” she said as she sat down across the table from him. “Just homebrew, but it’s not bad. Joe Simpson who makes it, he used to work down at the Coors brewery in Golden, so he knows what he’s doin’.”

Jens gulped at the beer. It wasn’t Coors-he’d drunk that in Denver-but it was a long way from bad. “Oh, Lord,” he said ecstatically. “Will you marry me?”

She paused with a forkful of dumpling halfway to her mouth, gave him a long, appraising stare. He felt himself turning red; he’d just meant it for a joke. But maybe Mary liked what she saw. With a slightly wintry smile, she answered, “I dunno, but I’ll tell you this right now-it’s the best damn offer I had today, and that’s a fact. Hell, if you was to tempt me with a cigarette, who knows what I might up and do?”

“I wish I could,” he said, regretfully for two different reasons. “I haven’t seen one in months.”

“Yeah, me neither.” She let out a long, mournful sigh. “Don’t even know why I bothered to ask. If you had smokes, I’d’ve smelled ’em on you minute you walked in.” She took another bite, then said, “Mind if I ask you what your name is?”

He told her, and discovered in turn, that her last name was Cooley. Black Irish, he thought. That fit; her eyes were very, very blue and her skin even fairer than his, transparent white rather than pink.

She might not have been able to smell tobacco smoke on him, but he was sure she could smell sweat-getting the bike here from Denver had been work, no two ways about it. It didn’t worry him the way it would have a year before. He could smell her, too, and it was amazing how fast you got used to bodies that weren’t as clean as they might have been. If most everybody needed a bath, things evened out.

He finished the stew, scraped up gravy with his fork until the plate was damn near clean again. He didn’t want to up and leave; he felt full and happy and more nearly homey than he had since, he’d found out he didn’t really have a home any more. To give himself an excuse to stay a while longer, he pointed to the mug and said, “Could I have another one of those, please? That one hit the spot, but it didn’t quite fill it up.”

“Sure thing, pal. I’ll get me one, too.” She headed for the back room again. This time, Jens thought she might have noticed him eyeing her as she walked; but if she’ had she didn’t let on. She soon came back with the beer.

“Thanks,” he said as she sat down once more. The scritch of the chair legs on the bricks of the cafe floor was almost the only sound. Jens asked, “How do you keep this place open with no customers?”

“What do you mean, no customers? You’re here, aren’t you?” Her face was full of impudent amusement. “But yeah, it’s pretty quiet at dinnertime. Supper, now, folks come for supper. And I reckon the Army would shoot me if I closed up shop; I feed a lot of their people goin’ in and out of Denver. But then, you said you’re one of them, right?”

“Yeah.” Jens took another pull at his beer. He eyed her over the top of the mug. “Bet you have to keep a shotgun by the till to keep some of the Army guys from getting too friendly.”

Mary laughed. “Spilling something hot on ’em mostly does the trick.” She drank, too. “Course, the other thing is, there’s passes and then there’s passes.”

Was that an invitation? It sure sounded like one. Jens hesitated, not least because the memory of his ignominious failure with that chippie back in Denver still stung. If he couldn’t get it up twice running, what was he supposed to do? Ride his bike off a cliff? He’d have plenty of chances, pedaling along US 40 through the mountains. Sometimes, though, leading with your chin was also a test of manhood. He stretched out his foot under the table. As if by accident, the side of his leg brushed against hers.

If she’d pulled away, he would have risen from the table feeling foolish, paid whatever she asked for the stew and the beer, and headed west. As it was, she stretched, too, slowly and languorously. He wondered if that sinuous motion came naturally or if she’d seen it in the movies and practiced. Either way, it made his heart thump like a drum.

He got up, walked around the table, and went down on one knee beside her. It was a position in which he could have proposed, although he had propositioning more in mind. He got the idea, though, that she didn’t want a lot of talk.

When he leaned forward and kissed her, she grabbed his head and pulled him to her hard enough to mash his lips against her teeth. He broke away for a moment, partly to breathe and partly to let his mouth glide to her earlobe and then down the smooth side of her neck. She arched her back like a cat and sighed deep in her throat.

His hand slid under her skirt. Her legs parted for him. He was gently rubbing at the crotch of her cotton panties when he remembered that plate-glass window. Idaho Springs wasn’t much of a town, but anybody walking by could see in. Hell, anybody walking by could walk in. “Is there someplace we can go?” he asked hoarsely.

That seemed to remind her of the big window, too. “Come on back to the kitchen with me,” she said. He didn’t want to take his hand away, but she couldn’t stand up unless he did.

She paused only a moment, to scoop up an old Army blanket from behind the counter on which the cash register sat. The stove in the kitchen, a coal-burner burning wood these days, made the place hot, but Jens didn’t care. He was plenty hot himself.

He unbuttoned the buttons that ran down the back of Mary’s white blouse and unhooked her brassiere. Her breasts filled his hands. He squeezed, not too hard. She shivered in his arms. He fumbled at the button that held her skirt closed, undid it, and yanked down the zipper beneath. The skirt made a puddle on the floor. She stepped out of it, kicked off her shoes, and pulled down her panties. Her pubic hair was startlingly dark against her pale, pale skin.

She spread the blanket on the floor while he tried not to tear his clothes getting out of them in excess haste. Everything would be all right this time-he was sure of it.

Everything was better than all right. She moaned and gasped and called his name and squeezed him with those wonderful contractions of the inner muscles so he exploded in the same instant she did. “Lord!” he said, more an exclamation of sincere respect than a prayer.

She smiled up at him, her face-probably like his-still a little slack with pleasure. “That was good,” she said. “And you’re a gentleman, you know that?”

“How do you mean?” he asked absently, not quite listening: he was hoping he’d rise again.

But she answered: “You keep your weight on your elbows.” That made him not only laugh but also slip and stop being a gentleman, at least by her standards. She squawked and wiggled, and he slid out of her. When he sat back on his knees, she reached for her discarded clothes, so she hadn’t been interested in a second round, anyhow.