The lights within were dim, and the tables seemed mostly unoccupied. The one or two figures he saw sitting at the bar or at a table were young women, dressed in evening gowns, toying with cocktails or smoking cigarettes, looking wistful. To one side were a row of slot machines and pinball tables. In the back was a pool table where two young women dressed as airline stewardesses in mini-skirts were playing pool. A row of booths was to one side.
Gil and the hostess halted at a walk-in closet with a Dutch door. Only the bottom half of the door was shut. Here was a young lady dressed in a top hat and white bow-tie. “Check your armor, sir?”
Gil did not protest as the hostess and the hat check girl helped him out of his helm and armor. The girls carefully hung the mail habergeon on a coat rack and put the plumed helm on a high shelf. “We’ll have everything cleaned and burnished before you are ready to leave! I see you have a diamond missing on your neckpiece. We will have a jeweler replace that, lickety-split!”
Gil said, “Well, I…”
The hostess took his arm again, “Don’t worry. There is no extra charge. Tailoring, mending, and minor blacksmith repairs are part of the service.”
Gil was now dressed in a linen tunic, leather britches, wooden stockings, and black knee-high boots with silver metal shin-guards. The blue surcoat adorned with the image of the silver swan was over all and hung to his knees. His arms were free. Without the weight of the armor, with his arms bare, he felt strangely light and free, half-naked, and almost lightheaded.
Gil said, “If you can just show me to the kitchen, I was thinking I could wash dishes or something. I am very hungry…. or maybe a booth in a corner… I am not sure if I, ah…”
The hostess led him to a small table in the middle of the floor, where most of the lights were. The hostess held the chair for him and practically shoved Gil into it.
“Now!” she said brightly, leaning over the table. “What can I get you to drink? We don’t card here.”
“I am underage,” said Gil.
“No, I mean here in Canada, the drinking age is fourteen. Because we’re French.”
Gil said, “You don’t sound French.”
“Oo-la-la!”
Gil blinked. “Um, I wanted to ask the manager if, ah…”
A cocktail waitress with honey blonde hair came to the table. She had a silver tray in hand and a mixed drink on it, which she proffered with a flourish.
Gil said, “Miss, I did not order…”
This cocktail waitress said, “The young lady at the bar sends it.”
A lady in an emerald silk dress at the bar wiggled her fingers at him in playful greeting. Gil was not sure, but this girl seemed to be the same redhead he had seen outside, playing hula-hoop.
The hostess put her hand on Gil’s shoulder, and leaned closer, and whispered, “We Frenchwomen regard it as a terrible insult not to drink when a lady buys!”
Gil said, “I mean no insult. Please explain to the lady that I cannot accept her gift, as I have sworn to drink no wine nor spirits during Advent.”
The hostess said, “What is Advent?”
“Four weeks before Christmas. Please, may I see the manager?”
A brunette waitress swayed up to the table and smiled warmly at him. “Would you like to see our menu? Tonight is meat lover’s night.”
Gil took the menu.
This was a steakhouse. In addition to various cuts of steaks, and spare ribs, and barbecues, and shish-kabobs, there were hamburgers, double-decker hamburgers, triple-decker hamburgers, meatball-burgers, chili-burgers, all-meat chili, chili con carne, chili with meat, and chili with meatballs. They also served fried chicken, grilled chicken, chicken and steak, steak strips, chicken-fried steak, more steak, and another kind of steak.
The special “Chanukah menu” offered various cuts of ham, grilled ham, stuffed ham, pork-hamburgers, ham-hamburgers, chicken tenders wrapped in bacon, and ham wrapped in bacon.
Wine and beer were on the menu, but no soft drinks.
His stomach rumbled, and he asked for a steak and a soda, and the brunette waitress winked at him and skipped away, her fanny bow bouncing cheerily.
5. The Manager
A very tall and muscular man, built like a weightlifter, now came walking across the floor toward Gil’s table. The man had a cheerful way of walking. He bounced at every step, as if bursting with energy. His eyes were dancing, he was snapping his fingers, and his grin was infectious.
He was dressed in a dark blue pinstriped suit with a yellow tie decorated with small black dots. On his nose were perched horn-rimmed round glasses of yellow glass that made his pupils seem yellow. On his head was an old fashioned hat, a fedora. Gil thought he looked like Clark Kent.
The man took a chair by the back, tilted it so that it rested on one leg, and spun the chair on that leg like a top. While it was spinning, the huge man leaped into the air and landed on the chair with a great noise. Now he was seated backward on the chair, facing Gil, straddling the chair, with the chair back tucked under his armpits.
“My name is Mr. Bredbeddle!” he said.
He had an odd way of smiling with his teeth parted. He thrust out his hand. Gil shook it. The man had a firm grip and an energetic handshake. The man had calluses in the places on the fingers years of sword practice would cause.
Gil wanted to stand up to greet him, but the hostess and the honey-blonde cocktail waitress had both draped their arms casually across his shoulders and were standing too close, brushing up against him, and he was sure it would be impolite to shoo them away.
“I am the manager here!” Bredbeddle boomed. “Here at Knockers, we have but one motto: We will knock your troubles away! Our drinks will knock some sense right out of you! We will knock our prices down! Our doors are so open you need never knock! We aim to please, and our arrows are nocked! We have the same enemy, the state, as Albert J. Nock! Our girls have the biggest…”
Gil said, “Are you Man or Elf?”
Mr. Bredbeddle threw back his head and laughed as if Gil had made a joke. “We take all kinds and all comers here. Our doors are so open you need never… Wait. Did I say that one already? Our girls are knock-outs! They are nocturnal! We have but one motto: Our guests are our guests!” He laid a finger the size of a sausage aside his nose and nodded at Gil, winking. “This is a tautology, therefore true.”
“I have no cash. I could wash dishes, or…”
Mr. Bredbeddle waved a huge hand in the air as if brushing away a fly. “One of the young ladies at the bar has already paid for your meal.” He turned and pointed. The same blonde who had been twirling a hula-hoop outside the door was now dressed in a sheer silk dress and smoking a cigarette in a long holder. She now wore a sultry look and a different hairstyle. She gave Gil an enigmatic smile over the rim of her wine glass.
Gil said, “No, I cannot accept charity from a lady.”
“That is actually my younger sister. She needs a date for the prom because her last boyfriend dumped her and ran off with the parlor maid to Patagonia.”
Gil said, “What’s her name?”
“Um. Her name is… Her name is…Younger Sister is her name.”
Gil shook his head. “Oh, come on. That cannot be her name.”
“Younger Sister Bredbeddle! We call her Y.S. for short.”
“That is a little hard to believe.”
Bredbeddle said, “Mom was exhausted giving birth to hecatotuplets and kind of ran out of names. She was in labor for over four years straight from first to last. Can you believe it?”
“It is truly a remarkable tale,” said Gil dryly. “What is you mother’s name?”
“Her name…? Her name…? Mrs. Bredbeddle, of course!”
“Of course.”
“So my younger sister is really broken up about being dumped. She would be humiliated in front of the whole school if she does not get a prom date….”
“I really am not in a position to take anyone anywhere, I am afraid.”
“I
should explain that my sister made a rash vow that if she could not find a date for the prom, she would join a nunnery. So if you don’t ask her out, she will be called ‘Sister Sister’ for the rest of her life. You can see why that would be humiliating.”
Bredbeddle waved at the blonde. The girl in the silk dress sashayed over to the table. Gil was embarrassed when she knelt to him, and twined her shapely arms around his leg, and put her head on his knee, looking up at him with piteous doe-like eyes.
Gil said, “Please stand up, miss. I cannot go to any proms with anyone. I am only here this evening.”
The beautiful blonde did not answer, except to smile winsomely.
Bredbeddle said, “Well, fortunately, the school decided to hold the prom right here! We have a ballroom just beyond the gambling parlor, on the far side of the heated all-night swimming pool. There will also be a beauty contest and an all-you-can-drink wine tasting before, during, and after the dance!”
“Aren’t proms always held in the spring?”
“Not in Michigan. It is too cold in the spring!”
“This is Canada, or so you said.”
“My sister graduated early this year. They moved the prom, just for her.”
Gil said, “What is the name of the school?”
“What school?”
“The one holding a prom in your ballroom tonight. Your younger sister’s school.”
“Um. It is called… It is called…Younger Sister’s High School is what it is called.”
Gil looked skeptical. “Come on.”
“It’s true! They named it after her. When they built it. YSHS for short.”
Gil said, “No one names a school after a student who goes there.”
“Well, they wanted to name it after me because I donated the money for the construction, but I thought it would sound absurd. You see, my first name is Smokedopenget. And I thought a school named Smokedopenget High would send a bad message to the young ones.”
“Your mother named you Smokedopenget?”
“She was really, really tired after giving birth to me. She was pregnant for twenty-one years, and I was born fully armed and on my horse. So, about my younger sister. Isn’t there a rule that knights have to be courteous? And come to the aid of damsels? I mean, it is not like I am asking you to do anything difficult. Dinner, drinks, a dance, a few more drinks, a little bit of snogging…”
Gil frowned, wondering if there were any merit to that argument. A little voice in his heart seemed to whisper that it would be perfectly all right to have a bit of dinner and a dance with a beautiful girl.
He ignored that little voice because a voice even softer voice reminded him who and what he was. Gil said sharply, “Please ask your sister to stand up. It would be wrong and false of me to court her. I am going to be beheaded tomorrow.”
The several beautiful girls clustered around Gil cooed and sighed in surprise and dismay. Bredbeddle looked shocked. “What, really? That seems like bad news! Why? What did you do?”
“I gave my word,” said Gil.
Mr. Bredbeddle said, “Is that all?”
Gil said grimly, “That was enough.”
“Is your life worth so little?”
“Sir, it is not that my life is worth little. But my word is worth much.”
Mr. Bredbeddle shook his head. “Well, no one can hold you to that! In the eyes of the law, no man can consent to his own murder, can he? So that makes it suicide! Which is a sin!”
Gil frowned. He was taken aback. It did seem an awful lot like suicide to walk toward his own beheading rather than run away, didn’t it?
6. The Dish
At that moment, the steak arrived. It was sizzling hot from the kitchen and had been pan-seared in a pepper sauce. Gil’s mouth started watering, and his stomach seemed to flip over for hunger.
The honey-blonde cocktail waitress had also gone to the bar and returned to the table, smiling. “And here is your gin and soda!”
Gil said, “No, I ordered a soda, soda. A soft drink.”
The waitress looked troubled. “We cannot sell soft drinks to minors. It is one of our Canadian healthcare regulations. Can I bring you an Irish coffee? Or iced tea?”
“Iced tea, please… And…”
He took knife and fork in hand and leaned forward, but the little medal around his neck swung out and clinked against the side of the plate with a sharp, shrill chime of noise.
It was his Saint Christopher’s medal. Saint Christopher himself had given it to him. It reminded him of the promise he had made to eat no meat and drink no wine before Christmas.
There was a sinking feeling in his heart. Never had he wanted a meal so badly as this one.
But he pushed the plate away. “Please take it back. I cannot eat it.”
The two girls hovering over his shoulders both whispered in his ears. “That is really rude!” said one. And, “You cannot turn down a free meal!” said the other.
Gil ignored them and asked the brunette waitress, “Miss, is there a salad I could have?”
She smiled brightly. “We have our all-meat meatlover’s salad, which is ham, pork, and bacon served with ground chuck, spicy meatballs, chicken salad, and cubes of steak fried in wine sauce.”
“Never mind. Could you bring me a hamburger instead?”
Gil thought if he ordered a burger, he would put the meat paddy aside and eat the bun, lettuce, and tomato.
The girl smiled again and then scampered off into the kitchen. A moment later she was back. In her hand was a china plate, on top of which was a second, smaller plate made of metal. On this metal plate was a hamburger paddy, sizzling and crackling in its own juices, perfectly cooked and just the way Gil liked it.
Hamburgers were something of a treat for Gil since he and his mom almost never ate out even at fast-food joints. He really, really wanted to take a bite of the burger, just one bite. But instead he said, “Oh, miss! Isn’t there a bun or anything? Where is the rest?”
The waitress said, “Well, too much starch is not good for growing boys. Canadian health authorities have outlawed buns for children. Here, we use two slices of breaded ham as the bun. Should I bring you some? The ham has sesame seeds on the top.”
Gil winced, and wiped his mouth, and ignored the protests from his stomach, and somehow found the strength to push the plate away. “Please take it back, and just bring me a pickle and some dinner rolls. I am really very hungry.”
The brunette waitress looked shocked. “No! I cannot take it back! The cook is very temperamental! She was very offended when you sent back the steak! If you send back the hamburger, too… why… why… she might flip out! Who knows what will happen then? I beg you, kind sir. Please don’t make me!”
Gil started. “Miss, please don’t…”
This waitress also knelt and grabbed his other knee. “I am so lonely! The cook might kill me if I bring the burger back! At least take a nibble!”
So now there were four beautiful women all around Gil, two at his shoulders and two at his knees, and their perfume was making his head spin.
Mr. Bredbeddle frowned. “I must say, son, I think the restaurant here has been very generous to you, giving you a free meal! Two free meals! You are being very picky.”
All the beautiful waitresses and beautiful patrons in the restaurant cried out in loud but very sweet voices that Gil should not be so rude.
Gil stood up and disentangled himself from the lovely sister, the hostess, the cocktail waitress, and the other waitress. “I am sorry, and I wish not to offend anyone, but I cannot eat meat.”
Bredbeddle said in astonishment, “No meat… forever?”
Gil said, “No meat until Christmas.”
Bredbeddle rolled his eyes. “But you said you would be killed tomorrow! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! If you don’t have any meat now, you will never eat meat ever in your life! The condemned prisoner deserves a hearty meal, does he not? It is a tradition!”
Gil said, “Sir, it is not to be. Impo
rtune me no longer.”
Yet another waitress came by, this one a dark-eyed olive-skinned beauty, and took Gil’s arm, and put a drink into Gil’s hand. “Your iced tea, sir!”
Gil was feeling rather hot and very flustered, so he raised the cool glass to his lips, but then his nose tingled. He sniffed. “Is this alcoholic?”
She said, “Long Island iced tea! Just take a sip. One sip.”
“What is in it?”
The dark-eyed beauty said, “Vodka, gin, brandy, rum, and triple sec with one-and-a-half parts sour mix and a splash of cola.”
“But there is no actual iced tea in this iced tea?”
She said, “If you have never tried it, how do you know if you will like it or not?”
He put the drink down on the table. “Please take it back and bring me a Coke.”
The dark-eyed waitress looked frightened. “I cannot bring you a Coke!”
“How about a Pepsi?”
“Canadian health regulations don’t allow us to serve oversized sugary drinks to minors! Didn’t you hear about the health crisis?”
Gil said, “There is no way that is a real regulation!”
To his surprise and shock the dark-eyed waitress started blubbering and crying. “Please! You don’t want to get me in trouble with the law!”
Bredbeddle handed Gil a handkerchief. “Are you just going to sit there and let her cry? That is not very chivalrous of you! Go ahead. Give her a hug. Go on!”
Gil hesitated for a long time because he really, really wanted to put his arms around the dark-eyed girl, who was breathtakingly attractive. She had the same hair color as Nerea, so dark it was almost blue. He stepped forward and touched the girl (who was facing away now) on one shaking shoulder.
She turned so suddenly that her long, fragrant locks dashed against his chest. By some mischance, the girl’s hair struck the little glass bead hanging from the chain around his neck so that it flew up, and came back down again, and tapped him sharply just above the heart.