“Hey, don’t drink my drink!” commanded Fern.
“Sorry,” the small bartender apologized, no more than a kid it appears. “I was… thirsty. Not use to customers. Not use to eyes looking at what I’m doing.”
“No more, then! You haven’t got any diseases I should know about now? Seeing we’re share buddies, ha.”
“None that I know of,” spoke the boy. He continued to shake the drink and not drink. Both at once. “Soo, you here for Breakfast?” Pause. “Or Dairy?”
“Both, actually.”
“Hmm,” he said, and poured the finished martini, dry and wet as one. Perfection if he says so himself. But he prefers the unmixed version; likes to taste both flavors separately (gin and vermouth). Darn watching eyes! “Well,” he continues. “How much have you seen so far?” he asked, not wanting to go over covered ground as it were.
“Airport first obviously. Had to come in from *somewhere*.” But Fern came in on a ship, sea instead of air. Has to be both, she figured. And with the captain none other than our Philip Strevor, fresh from a cube drop. Or so he said. Interesting.
“Not much there,” said the boy with his slight Chinese accent, worn off by years of state-side existence. Or so he said. “What else?”
“Well, pretty much saw everything in the rural district close to the void.” Too close, she thinks. “The, um, downed helicopter, the swamp, the dunes, the swimming pool. Very interesting.”
“There’s a plane in the swamp too.”
“Yup, saw that as well.”
“Do you want to hear the story (about it)?”
“Oh sure. Why not. But first, the helicopter.” Philip Strevor mentioned a helicopter along with the cubes, she thinks.
“Same story, actually. Swamp attracted both. Swamp drew them in. Just like a picture it drew them in. Got a taste for aerial. Opposites attract, after all. Water and air.”
This boy’s just spouting boyish nonsense, Fern thought, looking at his mischievous expression on his small face. But whatever; don’t have any other point of information as they say. Haven’t spotted anyone else in town. Just this child. A bartending child. Doesn’t quite add up. “Go on… I’m listening.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 