He took the pills, largely ignored the exercise, and started the bar in his own quarters as a clandestine drinking club for his cronies. Over the years he had grown into a paunchy little barrel of a man, his bald head gleaming under the ceiling fluorescents, a perpetual gap-toothed smile on his fleshy, tattooed face. He often told his patrons that he had found his true calling as a bartender: “A dispenser of cheer and honest advice,” as he put it.
The bar was several levels down from the Grand Plaza, the size of two ordinary living suites, carved out of the lunar rock. And quiet. No music, unless someone wanted to sit at the synthesizer that lay dusty and rarely touched in the farthest, most shadowy corner of the room. The only background noise in the place was the buzz of many conversations. Pelicans were everywhere. A holographic video behind the bar showed them skimming bare centimeters above the placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico against a background of condo towers and beachfront hotels that had long since gone underwater. Photos of pelicans adorned every wall. Statues of pelicans stood at each end of the bar and pelican mobiles hung from the smoothed-rock ceiling. A meter-tall stuffed toy pelican stood by the bartender’s computer, dressed in garish, outlandish
Florida tourist’s garb and peering at the drinkers through square little granny sunglasses.
Pancho liked the Pelican Bar. She much preferred it to the tidy little bistro up in the Grand Plaza where the tourists and executives did their drinking. The Pelican was a sort of home away from home; she came often enough to be considered one of the steady customers, and she usually bought as many rounds as any of the drinkers clustered around the bar.
She exchanged greetings with the other regulars while the owner, working behind the bar as usual, broke away from an intense conversation with a despondent-looking little redhead to waddle down the bar and pour Pancho her favorite, a margarita with real lime from Selene’s hydroponics fruit orchard.
Although a set of booths lined the back wall, there were no stools at the bar itself. You did your drinking standing up, and when you could no longer stand your buddies took you home. House rules.
Pancho had wedged herself into the crowd in between a total stranger and a retired engineer she knew only as a fellow Pelican patron whose parents had hung the unlikely name of Isaac Walton around his neck. The word was he had originally come to the Moon to get away from jokes about fishing.
Walton’s face always seemed slightly askew; one side of it did not quite match the other. Even his graying hair seemed thicker on one side than the other. Normally a happy drinker, he looked morose as he leaned both elbows on the bar and stared into his tall, frosted drink.
“Hi, Ike,” Pancho said brightly. “Why the long face?”
“Anniversary,” Walton mumbled.
“So where’s your wife?”
He gave Pancho a bleary look. “Not my wedding anniversary.”
“Then what?”
Walton stood up a little straighter. He was about Pancho’s height, stringy and loose-jointed. “The eighth anniversary of my being awarded the Selene Achievement Prize.”
“Achievement Prize?” she asked. “What’s that?”
The bartender broke into their conversation. “Hey, Ike, don’t you think you’ve had enough for one night?”
Walton nodded solemnly. “Yup. You’re right.”
“So why don’t you go home to your wife,” the bartender suggested.
Pancho heard something more than friendliness in his tone, an undercurrent of—jeeps, she thought, he almost sounds like a cop.
“You’re right, pal. Absolutely right. I’m going home. Whatta I owe you?”
The bartender waved a meaty hand in the air. “Forget it. Anniversary present.”
“Thank you very much.” Turning to Pancho, he said, “You wanna walk me home?”
She glanced at the bartender, who still looked unusually grim, then shrugged and said, “Sure, Ike. I’ll walk you home.”
He wasn’t as unsteady on his feet as Pancho had thought he’d be. Once outside the bar Walton seemed more depressed than drunk. Yet he nodded or said hello to everyone they passed.
“What’s the Achievement Prize?” Pancho asked as they walked down the corridor.