Page 57 of Sky Song
Despite the crowded interior, the air was fresh, and there was lightness about this place. Not even on Earth Cricket had observed this level of carefree enjoyment, the ease with whichhumans and aliens of different stripes talked and laughed and touched. One girl was openly sitting in a big Tarai’s lap, tenderly twirling her fingers in his hair.
The band on the stage was composed of a female singer, a human male drummer, and an alien male musician playing an instrument unfamiliar to Cricket. The music was also different from the popular tunes heard around Shadush. Catchy and engaging on a level that went deeper than simply a right combination of sounds, it enthralled. The singer on the stage, arms encased in bracelets below and above her elbows, shimmied as she sang, the necklaces between her breasts shifting, the long ponytail high on her head swishing. She was dressed in the same way as her male bandmates, in a short skirt over wide pants, bare-chested. Her swinging breasts could have been sleaze-inducing, yet they weren’t. She was free like the wind, like her song, like her voice that carried around a heartfelt melody under a low, pulsing drumbeat. The melody itself was like an amalgamation of ethnic styles that Cricket struggled to identify. An African drumbeat overlaid by an Irish lullaby? Or was it a Far East-inspired lament with a bit of Rumba thrown in? Difficult to tell but impossible to tune out.
The three of them squeezed around a small round table and perched onto spindly stools that provided seating.
“Drinks?” the waiter asked.
“Bring us that new dark ale,” Paloma ordered on everyone’s behalf. “Atticus now buys from a local brewery,” she told them after the waiter left. “Their ale is really good.”
They waited for their ale in silence, Paloma pretending to look at the stage with interest, Lyle appearing indifferent. No one at the club paid any attention to Cricket, but despite his innocuous slump against the wall, Lyle's presence didn’t go unnoticed. Women covertly checked him out. And so did men.
Just as three sweaty glasses full of dark foamy drinks were delivered to their table, two males approached and flanked Lyle on both sides.
“What’s up, man,” one addressed him, a human with tattoos snaking down his sizable biceps, whose hobbies must revolve around heavy lifting and martial arts. His job, too.
“Universal, please,” Lyle asked politely.
The guy nodded to his buddy, an equally burly and tattooed Tarai with a large fuzzy ear that stuck out of one side of his head. The other ear was missing, replaced by three industrial piercings across the hole. Together, they looked like two matching characters that came straight out of central casting for dull-witted but vicious villains.
The Tarai sucked air through his teeth, his pale pupil-less eyes never leaving Lyle. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a fat Rix,” he said in a rumbling Universal.
“Can’t say you’ve seen any Rix,” Lyle replied mildly.
The Tarai smirked. “How do you figure, chubs?”
“Your other ear’s still attached.”
Leaning down, the Tarai placed a boulder-sized fist on the table next to Lyle’s glass.
“Feisty little demon, eh? Can that fat ass of yours back your smart mouth in a fair fight?”
Lyle wasn’t duly impressed by the display. “I wouldn’t know. Fair fights aren’t my thing.” As if fussy, he moved his glass away from the Tarai’s fist, careful for his crippled hand not to come in contact with the alien’s abundant knuckle hair.
Cricket felt both men’s gazes skipping from his missing fingers to his lip scar. The Tarai’s eyes slid down Lyle’s throat, but today his shirt was pulled up all the way, covering the signs at the base of his throat.
Paloma’s hand reached under the table to land on Cricket’s knee.
“Hey.” Her friend leaned toward her. “If they don’t leave us alone soon, let’s let the security know. They aren’t normally aggressive, but I’m not sure what they’re up to today.”
“You know them?” Cricket whispered back.
“I’ve seen them around. They bet on bare knuckle fights and sometimes also fight. They run with a rowdy crowd.”
“You don’t say.”
Paloma shrugged as she sat back. “Zaron caters to a diverse clientele to keep things from stagnating. It’s his business model.”
The Tarai finally removed his fist from the table but didn’t move away, looming over Lyle in a blatant attempt to intimidate. “I see you know a thing or two about missing body parts.”
“Wasn’t a Tarai’s doing. Or a human’s,” Lyle replied, disregarding the other male’s posturing.
On the other side, the human huffed. “It must’ve been a baby Xosa - everyone else’s too strong for him.”
They laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world.
“We’re wasting our time, Gus. He can’t bust a grape in a fruit fight.” The Tarai laughed at how own wit so hard he hiccuped. “How tall are you, anyway, dumpling?”
“No, ask him how much he weighs!”
