Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Smada reappeared suddenly with an apparent willingness to forget the whole exchange. “Now, pray tell, what is all this about a phone?” he asked gruffly. But he smiled as he did it. “Just what would a phone be, lads?”

We were tired and feeling a bit odd and, I dunno, glad that the snarling was over, so we did. We told him everything. We told the exact truth about what had happened. And we described America. We told all about it. About telephones and telegrams and television. About cassette decks and pornography. About panty hose and heart transplants and internal combustion and Watergate.

We described freeways and democracy and Walt Disney World and women’s lib. We sang them some rock and roll.

They loved it. 1 mean loved it. Not that they believed us much, 1 don’t think. But they ate it up anyway. Maybe Smada believed. He asked some incredibly penetrating questions anyhow.

What happened next was absolutely ... 1 don’t know. Stunning, I guess. What was stunning about it was the logic of their next question. Everybody listening agreed that this America was one helluva neat spot, all right. So the obvious question was: Why weren’t we still there?

Lanny and I just stared at them. Then at each other. So they tried again.

Was there a horrible war or plague?

No.

Were we driven out for siding with the wrong king? Nixon, was it?

No.

Were we being pursued because of having been involved in some indiscretion (read: crime)?

No.

Then why were we here?

We wanted to be.

Why?

We think this is better.

Long pause. Exchanged looks.

No kidding, we assured them. We like it here more.

And then they really didn’t believe us. Except Smada, I think, who looked at us like we were absolutely and completely stark raving stupid. And we were. We were.

And it was going to cost us.

But in the meantime we were just sitting around still getting drunk at the inn. The topic moved on to more important (or more believable) things, like the best whorehouse in the district and the worst way to break in a new slave. 1 tried to interest the prettiest whore in a little you-know-what. She was attentive enough. And friendly. But she never left Smada’s side. None of them did, spread around him on those pillows like a doughnut. It was discouraging as hell.

Lanny and Smada talked a long time. I don’t know about what, but at least some of it was a continuation of the America description and Smada’s resulting amazement at our choice.

It was starting to get really late. Most of the other folks had retired to their rooms or headed back out on the road. Only the old general & Co., Smada and the whores, and us were still about.

And drinking. I had to give Smada credit for that much, anyway. He was the most incredible drinker I had ever seen. Drank like it was water, like there was no tomorrow, like he was to be hung the next morning, like . . . well, you get the idea: The sonuvabitch could by God drink.

I got up to piss toward the end and offered to do the same for Lanny but he said, no, he needed the exercise, so we went together. The outhouse smelled just like what it was: an awful place where people put their awful things forever.

When we came back in, everyone else was gone.

Everyone else. We had to wake up the innkeeper to find out what was what. And when we did, we were pissed. There was nothing wrong with our rooms. It’s just that we didn’t need separate ones, seeing as how Smada had taken every single whore to bed with him.

Our first knocks on the broad oak door that was the entrance to his rooms (the best in the place, of course) were tentative and shy. But then we got mad, thinking that we had also paid for the damn women and therefore had a right to at least two of them! There was a lot of giggling from inside before a cute little redhead poked her head out and assured us that two of them would be out to join us in just a little while. Then she handed us another flagon and two more mugs and directed us to a little bench there in the hall to wait. We sat down, suckers that we were, and waited. She closed the door.

The giggling this time was a lot longer and louder. But we still just sat there with our little swords and our little mugs. And waited.

But even that wasn’t as dumb as the conversation we got into. How is that Lanny and I, just by talking, could screw things up still to come? Incredible.

We talked about Smada, of course, and what we really thought of him. Which wasn’t what we really thought of him at all. It was what we really wanted to think of him.

He had been a chickenshit with that young punk, no matter what he said.

“Right?”

“Right!”

And there really wasn’t anything stupid about us wanting to come here to this world, it was just our being so adventurous and all.

“Right?”

“Right!”

And his amazement at our wanting to be here just showed even more what a weasel he was.

“Right?”

“Right!”

If he’d really been a real swordsman he’d never want to live in wimpy twentieth-century America.

“Right?”

“Right!”

But even if he was a sniveler, we weren’t. We were damned glad to be here where men were men.

“Right?”

“Right!”

And if anybody else doubted it or just wanted to make something of it, we’d kick their ass.

“Right?”

“Right!”

In fact, we were just hoping somebody’d mess with us.

“Right?”

“Goddam right!”

You see how bad we could get?

The last thought 1 had before passing out on that bench waiting for the whores was of Smada’s face earlier that night when we’d been explaining why we were glad to be there. He had held up a hand for quiet. And once he had it he fiddled pensively with his goatee a second. Then he spoke, all the time looking back and forth between Lanny and me.

“Lads, I wish to have this clear in my old head. You have traveled here from a land of plenty where most men live threescore and twenty winters, may transport themselves one hundred leagues in a day, may expect to live a long and honorable life without once having need of violent resort and where the most compelling issue of the kingdom is the debt incurred from overpaying the poor?”

“That’s it,” I replied brightly.

“M’Lord Smada,” Lanny rushed to say—which surprised me—“we wish you could understand just exactly why we undertook this journey of—’ ’

“I do, lad. 1 do.”

“Do you really, sir?” asked Lanny, seeming terribly relieved for some reason. “I do. You are, both of you, idiotic fools.”

We woke up a little before dawn with the son of the innkeeper and a servant helping us stagger down the narrow hallway to our rooms. Room, rather, since the sight of the other bed in Lanny’s room was too sweet a sight for me to move another step. I shouldered in past the innkeeper’s son and slammed down upon it.

Lanny had been mumbling something the whole time we’d been stumbling along, mumbling it over and over again under his breath. Just before 1 went under again 1 recognized it.

“Alka-Seltzer . . . Alka-Seltzer . . . Alka-Seltzer ...”

1 knew just how he felt.

This time, we were just too smart for Smada.

He came into the room in a rush, looking . . . well, gorgeous. His hair was neatly trimmed, his goatee meticulous and . . . you get the idea; those damn whores had spent all night long preening him instead of servicing us, dammit! But this didn’t do too much more than add to the anger we

already felt for him. And when he tried to con us again . . .

It seems there was a feller named Lord Grey-something. Greydon, I think. Anyway, he was coming in from the west. He was the lord who had been pursuing Smada. He was also the one now shy a couple of outriders, thanks to Lanny and me. He would arrive at the inn by early afternoon or thereabouts.

He was not in a good mood.

The east road, according to Smada, was the way out of “our little difficulty.”

Lanny and I looked at each other. “Our little difficulty?” Lanny retorted sarcastically. “Whaddya mean, ‘our’? You’re the one he’s after.”

“Yeah,” I offered indignantly. “Besides, his men died in self-defense.”

Smada raised an eyebrow quizzically. “And?”

Lanny and I looked at each other again. “They attacked us first!” I pointed out.

Smada just did it again. “And?”

“Would you stop saying that?” I snarled.

Smada half smiled. “What would you have me say, lad?” “C’mon, Smada. You know damn well he isn’t after us. He’ll understand once we tell him what really happened.” “Will he?”

“Sure he will!”

Smada stared a few seconds. “I see. Lads, if ever I had uncertain thoughts as to your tale of transport in the past, I do hereby now lay them low. I doubt not at all that you spoke truly of your native land.”

“You believe us?” Lanny asked.

“I do.”

“How come?” I wanted to know.

He smiled. But it was a grim one. “Because in no way could you have lived so long in this land.”

And then he walked out.

Lanny and I sat up on the edges of our beds and talked about this awhile. The gist of it was this: That fat old smoothie was surely trying to con us again. Into doing his fighting for him again, most likely. And the smart thing for us to do was just stay away from him. If he wanted to run away—and that seemed to us to be the only thing he ever did anyway—then let him go. We weren’t scared of this Greydon dude. Oh, maybe a little. But we were sure we could work things out with the guy.

At least that’s what we said.

We liked Smada. We really did. But he was a con artist and a chickenshit and . . . facts were facts. Best to go back to sleep. God knew we needed it.

Facts were facts. Facts are facts.

And fools are fools. We slept.

It wasn’t until some hours later, when the innkeeper burst in to demand payment, that we realized our money was gone.

“Ah hah!” smirked the innkeeper. “Just as Lord Smada suspected.”

“Smada!” Lanny and I shouted in unison. “He’s the one who took it!” Lanny added.

It was obvious, Lanny explained to him, that Smada had done the whole bit. Lanny was smooth and persuasive and reasonable. He was as good as I’ve ever heard him.

And the innkeeper bought it. It seems he had suspected Smada all along. And when it had been Smada who suggested that the two young sirs asleep upstairs had no coins . . .

But we could still catch him. He had only just left down the east road. If we hurried . . .

“We’re way ahead of you,” said Lanny as we gathered ourselves together to ride.

We were gone a full mile’s gallop when it hit us.

“Wait a minute!” yelled Lanny, pulling up his mount sharply. “Wait just one goddam minute!”

I pulled up alongside. “What’sa matter?”

“He did it to us again!”

“Who?” I asked, looking around like an idiot. “Smada?”

“Hell yes, Smada. And that bloody innkeeper. Look, here we are going down the damned east road just like he wanted. Right?”

“Uh, right.”

“And that innkeeper—who doesn’t know us from Adams, by the way—is suddenly trusting us to leave owing him money, catch up to the thief that stole from us, retrieve it, and return and pay him back? Doesn’t that sound just a little fishy to you?”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“Well, let’s go.”