“There’s Ma’s Place,” Dean told them eagerly. “Boy, I can smell good food already.”
It was food, but it wasn’t that good.
“JUST SIT YOURSELVES DOWN at the big table. Plenty of room here right now. Not many folks care to eat their big meal at the mid of the day.”
Ma was a three-hundred-pound transvestite who looked as if she hadn’t shaved for a week, thick black stubble breaking through the layer of caked powder. She was wearing a short black dress with a hem and collar of yellow-brown lace that could possibly once have been white. Clouds of crimson sequins were scattered around the shoulders and bosom of the dress. Ma’s shoes looked as if she’d rescued them from The Wizard of Oz . More red sequins decorated the high heels.
“You outlanders got some good jack, or are you aiming to trade with me?”
Her mouth was a tiny cupid’s bow of scarlet, and her eyes dripped mascara down her dimpled cheeks. It was difficult to tell if Ma was wearing a wig or whether her hair had been dyed the coppery blue color.
“Trade,” Ryan said, sitting at one end of the scarred and scratched table, pushing away a brimming ashtray and a plate smeared with grease and shreds of bacon rind.
“Bullets?” Ma asked hungrily.
“Could be.”
“You guys got some 9 mill fmjs on you?”
“Could be,” Ryan replied.
Now everyone was sitting around the table, with Krysty peering doubtfully out the filthy, fly-specked window. “We sure about this?” she asked the others. “Could always go and catch or shoot something.”
“I’m hungry now,” Dean insisted.
“I’ll feed you allmuch as you like of anythingfor fifty rounds.”
Ryan pushed back his chair, the legs grating on the worn linoleum. “We’ll be going, thanks, ma’am.”
“Thirty rounds?”
“Don’t believe so.” He looked at her. “We both know what full-metal-jacket rounds from predark are worth. One’s worth more than a meal.”
“Gimme ten rounds and I’ll throw in beer.”
“Getting closer.”
“Seven. One each. That’s my bestest and lastest offer.”
Ryan nodded, sitting again. “What you offering?”
“Anything you like, stranger.” She giggled and patted her meaty hands together.
“Food.”
“Menu’s on the board over there. And there’s today’s brunch special.”
“What’s that?” J.B. asked.
“Venison.”
“How’s it cooked? What with?” Krysty asked.
“Picky bitch!”
“Watch your mouth,” the redhead warned. “I asked a fair question.”
“Oh, did you? Well, it’s cooked by being roasted, and it’s served with whatever vegetables and bread we happen to have out in the kitchen. That satisfy you, lady?”
Dean was struggling to read the ill-scrawled menu. “Writing’s hard to make out,” he said.
Ma looked at him as if he were something she’d just spotted on the bottom of her Dorothy-red shoes. “Well, kiddo, you wanna catch up on your reading and writing. I can read the board easy enough. It says meat and fish and deer.” She looked sideways at Krysty. “And all of them’s roasted.”
“What is the soup of the day?” Doc asked.
“It’s whatever flavor’s in the pot, old-timer. Last time I looked it was kind of vegetable with peas and corn and tomatoes in it. Doubt it’s changed since the day before yesterday. Not without someone telling me.”
“We’ll have the deer,” Ryan stated. “With vegetables and bread and some beers and a pitcher of water.”
“Let’s have the bullets first,” Ma said, gloating. “No pay, no eat.”
Ryan stared at the immensely fat transvestite. “After the meal,” he said. “No good, no pay.”
Grumbling to herself, Ma lumbered off into the kitchen, through a battered pair of bat-wing doors, returning in a couple of minutes with a dozen dark brown bottles of beer that she banged, foaming and frothing, on the table. In her other hand she held a wooden platter of bread with some rancid unsalted butter.
“Meat’ll be along later,” she informed them, scowling at Ryan.
“Fine,” he said.
“NEVER PLAY CARDS with a man called Doc, and never eat at a restaurant called Ma’s Place,” Mildred said, after they’d been waiting for nearly a half hour. “I knew the first bit of the old saying was true after trying a few hands of strip jack with that old goat. Now it looks like the second part of the saying’s true, as well.”