VI

The crowd pouring down the corridor squeezed out of Phil his wincing

recollection of Mitzie's last crack. He slithered his way along the

wall, rubbed by shoulder and hip, trodden by heel and toe, set coughing

by gray-blue clouds of tobacco, weed, and so-called Venus weed, and

regaled by such remarks as, "Aaha, he could of thrown her any time he

wanted to," and "What I don't like are those dumb women referees!"

Phil finally wedged his way into an eddy of the crowd near a side

corridor. He unhopefully gasped, "Juno Jones." Old Rubberarm whispered

throatily, "Come right in, Mack," and narrowly arched his gray arm to

let Phil duck through at that point, meanwhile bracing his slaty length

against a general surge of the crowd and whipping back the tentacle-end

of his arm to stop a gent in brown with tennis-ball eyes who tried to

duck in after Phil.

Phil wiped his forehead and took a deep breath. He felt a little

giddy standing just by himself. A woman came out of the door ahead.

She was dressed with an aggressive dowdiness: shapeless long frock,

button shoes, wide brimmed, flower covered hat, fur neckpiece and

gloves. She looked like somebody's scrubwoman from past times out on a

half-holiday. He didn't realize who it was until the crowd behind him

began to cheer and to chant, "Juno! Juno!"

She waved to them, but her eyes were on Phil.

"Gosh, I'm glad to see you," she said, grabbing his elbow. Then she

whispered, "Don't ask questions. Come with me."

The next moment she was hurrying him down the corridor away from the

crowd.

The chanting of the crowd became disappointed and a bit sore. A shrill

voice skirled over it: "Whatcha goin' off with the little shrimp for?"

Juno turned around and stood solid. "Listen, you mugs," she bellowed,

and the crowd was silent while a telephoto spot glowed blindingly. "I

know I'm your heroine and it makes me happy, but even I gotta have a

love life! And don't you be insulting it!"

As the crowd yelped with laughter and started cheering again, Juno

pushed Phil through a door. "I hope you didn't mind my saying that,"

she told him. "They're my fans and I gotta humor 'em."

Phil shook his head a bit dazedly. He had expected her to stop as soon

as they got out of sight of the crowd, but instead she was hurrying him

along a narrow hall.

"Say, look here, Mister--" she began anxiously.

"Phil," he told her. "Phil Gish."

"Well, look, Phil, could I take you to dinner?"

"Sure," Phil said.

"Good," she said with relief. Nevertheless she kept peering about,

almost apprehensively, and didn't slacken their pace. "I know a good

steak place. Quiet and they really know how to broil rabbit." They

reached a narrow, shadowy stairway. Juno steered him toward it. He

started up, but she jerked him back. "Not that way, Phil, for gosh

sake," she warned him. "That's straight to Billig and the wasps. This

place I'm telling you about is on the bottom level." And she started

down. "We could take an elevator," she said apologetically, "but this

is better," adding gruffly, "more private."

At the bottom of the stairs a narrow door led directly into a long

dark room with a counter along one side and a row of booths along the

other. With its browned chrome finishes it had to date back to 1960.

The customers were mostly big men, seemingly evenly divided between

truck-drivers, police, and a less definable category. There was an

elevator door next to the one they'd come out of. Juno wagged her big

hand at a couple of people and shouted to someone, "Whiskey and chops,

and make sure you burn the edges. What'll you have, Phil?"

He realized he hadn't eaten since yesterday and mumbled something about

a yeast sandwich and a glass of soybean milk. She looked at him, but

passed on his order without a comment, then took him in tow once more.

She had to answer a few familiar greetings, but she didn't spend much

time on them and seemed relieved when she'd plunked Phil down in the

booth nearest the front door, where the rumble of trucks was loudest

and their headlights, mixed with the sodium glow, flashed on the

scratched and dusty plastic. But there were, for a wonder, no jukeboxes

or radios of any sort in the place. He also saw that the pushbuttons

on the wall were labeled for out of date synthetic foods and had taped

over them an "Out of Order" sign that must have been twenty years old

itself.

He studied his companion across the table and realized for the first

time that she looked dead beat. His glance began to trace on her large

jaw the outlines of a recent bruise that was only partly concealed by

hastily applied makeup. She dove into her pocketbook with a shy girl's

flusteredness and started to dab at her jaw with a powder-puff, but

then gave up, put back the puff and slumped forward, her meaty elbows

on the plastic.

"Don't ever let 'em tell you the bouts are fixed," she assured him

glumly. "Zubek bust a gut trying to get me tonight."

"You won?" Phil inquired.

"Oh, sure. Two falls, a spaceship spin and a free-fall--that means when

you throw 'em up and out and they don't come back."

A tray came sliding along the bar. Juno went over and got it before

Phil realized that it was for them. From the speed with which the

order had been filled, he decided they still had radionic cooking in

the place. Juno's seared rabbit chops were as big as small steaks--it

must have been an octoploid bunny, at the least--while her whiskey

was intimidatingly huge and brown. He nibbled his yeast sandwich and

found it seemingly okay, though it always made him a bit uneasy to eat

restaurant food that didn't pop out of a wall.

As Juno munched her chops and drank her whiskey, she told Phil snatches

of the story of her life. It turned out she was a farm girl who had

come to the city young and suffered the usual disillusionments. "How's

a girl going to get ahead these days," she asked Phil, "especially

a dumb ox like me? Not that I didn't have a swell figure, but even

then I was too big and strong. I scared the men I knew and I didn't

know then the ones who would have liked what I had. So I tried scrub

mothering for a while--you know, birthing babies for wealthy dames

who didn't want to carry them the nine months themselves--but I knew

there was no future in that. Ten years or so and I'd be sweeping up

after some sweeping robot and trying to make throwaway paper dresses

last a month. So I remembered how I could pin nine out of ten boys

back home, and I entered some amateur wrestling contests and pretty

soon they were grooming me for a pro." She shook her head dourly.

"You should have seen my figure; it really was beautiful before they

put me on hormones." She distastefully inspected her big hands, still

white gloved though now gravy stained. "Even used pituitrin on me, the

bastards." She sighed and shrugged. By now she had reduced her chops

to bones and was working on her second whiskey. "So that's the way it

was, Phil. Of course, I had to go and fall in love with a wrestler

and marry the little skunk--most of the girls in the business make

that mistake--but at least I eat rabbit, even beef, and a lot of dopes

respect me."