by doing my own brake job. I tested it myself and drove maybe a whole block. Five years ago tonight all three of us went to the drive-in movie. I woke up without a scratch on me. Both dead. I smiled at the man who was trying to cut my door open, and I climbed out the window past him and tried to get my wrists on his chainsaw. He coldcocked me, and I woke up under restraint. “I locked eyes with her. “I was glad to be alive, too. That’s why I wanted to die so bad.”
She blinked and spoke very softly. “How… bow did you keep alive?”
“I got talking with a doctor the size of a hippo named Sam Webster, and he got me turned loose and brought me around here.”
She waited for me to finish. “You-that’s it? What is that?”
“Dis is Callahan’s Place,” Eddie said.
“This place is magic,” t told her.
“Magic? Bullshit, magic, it’s a bar. People come here to get blind.”
“No. Not this one. People come to this bar to see. That’s why I’m ashamed at how long it took me to see you. This is a place where people care. For as long as I sat here in my pain, my friends were in pain with me and did what they could to help. They told stories of past blunders to makeit a little easier for me to make my annual toast to my family. You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It’s having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there’s less of it, and when you share joy, there’s more of it. That’s a basic fact of the universe, and I learned it here. I’ve seen it work honest-to-God miracles.”
“Name me a miracle.”
“Of all the gin joints in all the world, you come into this one. Tonight, of all the nights in the year. And you look like her, and your name is Kathy.”
She gaped. “I-your wife?- I look-?”
“Oh, not a ringer-that only happens on The Late Late Show. But close enough to scare me silly. Don’t you see, Kathy? For five years now I’ve been using that word, fivesight, not in conversation, just in my head, as a private label for precognition. I jumped when you, said it. For five years now I’ve been wishing to God I’d been born with it. I was wishing it earlier tonight;
“Now I know better.”
Her jaw worked, but she made no sound.
“We’ll help you, Kathy-,” Callahan said.
“Damn straight,” -Eddie croaked.
“We’ll help you find your own miracle,” Long-Drink assured her. “They come by here regular.”
There were murmurs of agreement, encouraging words. She stared around the place as though we had all turned into toads. “And what do you want from me?” she snapped.
“That you hold up your end,” I said. “That you not leave us holding the bag. Suicide isn’t just a cop-out; it’s a ripoff.”
She shook her head, as vIolently as-she dared. “People don’t do that people don’t act this way.”
My voice softened, saddened. “Upright apes don’t. People do.”
She finished her drink. “But-“
“Listen, we just contradicted something you said earlier. It seems like it does take some kind of genius person to share pain. And I think you did a better job than I could have done Two, three years you stayed with that poor bastard? Kathy, that strength and compassion you gave to Cass for so long, the imagination and empathy you have so much of, those are things we badly need here. We get a lot of incoming wounded. You could be of use here, while you’re waiting for your own miracle.”
She looked around at every face, looked long at Callahan and longest at me.
Then she shook her head and said, “Maybe I already got it,” and she burst finally and explosively into tears, flinging herself into my arms. They were the right kind of tears. I smiled and smiled for some considerable time, and then I saw the block and got very businesslike. Wally would be along soon, and there was much to be done. “Okay, Eddie, you get her address from her purse-and ankle over there. Make