“Victor,” the driver replied, and gave the hand a lazy shake.
“Hi!” said Robin; and then got out of the car.
The Blue Coyote had no windows, and so saw nothing of the boulevard-raking sunset, or the gorgeous combustion westward over the mountains. When he found you had to ring a bell, he almost turned away, it was only a whim to have an early-evening drink there; but the door half-opened anyway and he was appraised by a stout young man who wore shades for the task and who stood aside with an accepting “Yep.”
Any light in the room was husbanded and shielded – by the fake overhanging eaves of the bar and the hooded canopy above the pool table. Even before the door had shut behind him, Robin felt at a disadvantage. It was the gloomiest bar he’d ever been in and seemed designed to waken unease in the stumbling newcomer, eyed from the shadows by the dark-adapted regulars. A hush had fallen as he entered. He felt foolish to be so suggestible, so lightly carried here by his new sense of ease and possibility. Then “Automatically Sunshine” sang out from the juke-box and as if startled from hypnosis the drinkers set down their glasses, the talkers resumed their murmur, the pool-player blinked and stooped and potted his ball.
The barman poured the beer straight into the glass, so that the froth was at the brim in a second, and then over the brim; and stood the half-full bottle by it on the wet counter. “So what part of England are you from?” he said, with a frown that might have meant distrust of England in general, or the suspicion that he might not know the part, once named. He was a large man in his fifties, with a black pencil moustache and an air of having borne indignities.