Chapter 4: Legion Life

Con and Eru came home with me that evening, and we had dinner with Mom and Dad. Dad was of course intrigued at the thought that he could actually eat food. This quickly descended int a rare moment of 'Doctor Dad' rearing his head. When Con began to explain that his physiology did not merely mimic human structures, but duplicated them clear down to the cellular level Mom put her foot down and insisted that there would be no discussing the physiology of artificial alien visitors at the dinner table, no matter how much we loved the visitor in question.

Shortly after dinner we were all happily listening to a tongue-in-cheek dissertation from Con on his still totally undeveloped sense of taste, and how, now that he had mastered the simple things like love and hope and joy, he hoped to develop taste buds, and perhaps a fashion sense sufficient to the task of going to the mall to shop for clothes, the obvious pinnacle of human activities.

Perhaps it was the dead pan delivery, but Eru and Dad were laughing their asses off. Dad was actually pounding his knee as he roared hysterically.

"Its a guy thing." I was saying to Mom's raised eyebrow when I felt my cell phone go off. As usual it was sitting on top of my dresser, but I'd started leaving a little thread of myself connected to it so I didn't have to carry it around when I was in the house. I popped it onto my hand, flipped it open.

"Dave McKesson."

"Davey, When will you be ready?" It was Ginny.

"Ready for what?" I asked

"We, meaning the Legion, will be enjoying beer by the pitcher, dancing, bowl after bowl of excessively salted peanuts, and dancing to live music at the Sluice Box tonight. Perhaps this slipped your attention? Oh!" She added. Did I mention there would be dancing?"

"I'm sure you did, my love. We were just sitting and letting our dinner digest. Shall I pick you up, or meet you there?"

"Pete's volunteered to be the designated driver if we want one, and I think you should invite Con."

"Just a minute." I said to Ginny. "Hey Constantine!" I yelled into the room.

"Yes Dave?" He replied.

"Can you consume alcohol?"

"Well certainly Dave, although as a fuel it is terribly inefficient. Still, in pinch I could process it." Ginny heard his answer through the phone and broke into laughter immediately. "No, program! I mean can you drink intoxicating beverages? Look in my mind if you need a reference!"

"Of course I can Dave. And don't worry, I have sufficient control of my metabolic processes to avoid the intoxicating effects."

"Okay Ginny" I said into the phone, "it looks like we've got two to go here for drinks and dancing!"

"Dancing?" I heard Mom say.

<Hang on sweetie, > I thought to Ginny <The plot thickens, And we may have another designated driver.>

"Mom?" I replied out loud.

"Sweetie?" She said to Dad. I saw him sigh and smile.

"Sign us up Son." He looked over at Eru, who shrugged, then nodded. Five to go here." he immediately added an "Uh Oh!"

"Uh oh?" I asked.

"If I'm out on the town, Cyrus is working. He might prefer I stay home so he can enjoy the evening."

"Uhhh, Dad?" I said a bit timidly.

"What?"

"I sort of hired Cyrus away from you today." I actually heard dad snort and laugh at the same time!

"Oh Lord! Well, there's a reason to celebrate, I guess! Lets go find our dancing shoes dear!"

Pete was driving the Parkin Sporting Goods Van when they stopped to pick us up. It was just Pete and Ginny. They'd dropped everyone else of before coming to get us. Somehow, in a twelve passenger van carrying seven people, Ginny felt it necessary to sit in my lap the entire way!

I do not often drink, but I do enjoy a pitcher of cold beer and the company of good friends while drinking it. The dinner-and-dancing band was still playing when we got there. The Rock-until-closing band usually didn't start until 9pm. Mike reminded me that it was winter, and with the tourist season months away, we would be getting nothing but country and country rock for the entire evening, courtesy of 'The Frog-Leg Four' a local band that had been playing in the Angel's Camp area since before I was born. To their credit, they were well-practiced, their fiddle player was top notch, and they did mix a fair amount of country rock and soft rock into their mix.

The only trouble we had was when some guy I didn't know asked Ginny to dance. She showed him her ring and said very sweetly that she had gotten engaged to be married yesterday, and all her dances were reserved for her fiance. He began to suggest that perhaps a little time spent in his company would reveal to her that she could be making wiser choices. Chet and Cyrus stood and suggested that perhaps he could be making wiser choices. He very quickly left to go make some of those wiser choices, someplace very far away.

There used to be a time, my Dad tells me, when it was very difficult to get anything on tap in a small local club like this except the usual big brewery fare. To be honest, the popular national brands did little for me. I preferred darker, more flavorful micro-brews. The Sluice Box had a rotating tap that changed on a weekly basis, and this week I was delighted to get introduced to a tasty brew called 'Arrogant Bastard Ale' from Stone Brewing in San Diego. To quote a famous Greek philosopher. 'Mmmmm Beer!"

Ginny and I danced. A lot! We danced our shoe leather into shoe paper, we danced so much.! Those long-ago dance lessons from her Mom were still paying off all these years later. The slow dances did not involve dance lesson material of course, not with the events of recent days. The slow dances required a parental advisory sticker and ice water! Phew! When my Ginny Blossom get her motor revving she lights up a room, and heats it up too! Maybe it was just the beer talking, but towards the end of the evening a guy I didn't know from Adam came up to me and shook my hand and told me he considered me the luckiest sonofabitch he'd ever met. I pulled my reply straight out of the movie 'Road House' and Sam Elliot's great line, really the movie's only good line.

"Exactly right!" I drawled.

Eru agreed with me about the Arrogant Bastard, although he couldn't understand our preference for drinking it cold. Later I saw him and Dad with a couple glasses of Guinness, and he looked very happy. I was also totally amazed to watch all the "mature" women, swarming to him like mosquitoes to a bug zapper. Maybe it was those smoky blue eyes, maybe it was just the way he carried himself, his air of cool sophistication, but Eru was a babe magnet and an amazing dancer! I took a quick mental peek at one point, and realized that he was lightly meshed with his partner's mind, making every movement flow seamlessly into his partner's. An awesomely cool trick which Ginny and I quickly adopted.

Con, in the meantime, discovered the game of darts. He was having a thoroughly enjoyable time fleecing a large crowd of local ranchers out of their hard earned money. My artificial buddy was amazingly adept at placing the dart exactly where he wanted it. I saw his lip twitch at one point when his latest victim watched him hit three triple twenties in a row to go out and exclaimed in admiration, "Man Dude, you are a machine!"

Watching him slip immediately into a dead-on Arnold-Schwarzenegger-as-the-terminator impression and get his circle of victims laughing their asses off was just amazing. And after he'd fleeced the bunch of them he turned right around and spent the entire pile of winnings on round after round of drinks for them. By the end of the night there were at least a couple of those guys I'd have sworn would have taken a bullet for their new friend Constantine.

About half way through the evening, I realized that I hadn't seen a lot of Pete. I asked Ginny if she knew where he was, and she pointed towards the kitchen door. Pete, as it turned out had spent the entire evening talking to one Sarah Granger, who spent her evening cranking out orders of bar food for the patrons out front and smiling back at Pete. They shut the ovens and grill down several hours before closing, and when I saw Pete helping Sarah clean up, I mentioned to Ginny that if we helped with the cleanup, Pete and Sarah might be able to get in a little time on the dance floor. That was all it took, and very quickly Ginny, Arden, Alicia and I were in the kitchen rendering aide. With the tricky bits out of the way and only the sweeping and mopping left, Ginny asked Sarah how far away she lived.

"I live in the apartment upstairs." Sarah blushed. "This is my parent's club, and I'm taking the job and the apartment until I decide what I want to try to do." She lowered her head a little then and Pete said

"Sarah got divorced three months ago, and despite the fact that her ex was a two-timing rat-bastard, she seems to keep trying to blame herself!"

"Sarah," Ginny said, "Get yourself upstairs and take a quick shower and throw on a dress and some dancing shoes and join us for the next couple of hours and have some fun!"

"Well... Okay, I will!" She said, with some energy, and pulled off her apron and threw it into the soiled linen hamper as she bolted out the rear door. She had been gone out the door for all of two seconds, when she came back in, rushed over to Pete, grabbed his face in both hands and administered a lip-smacking kiss! "I'll be right back!" and whoosh! She was gone out the door again.