Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes Page B

of the camel, part of the chalky blackboard, as Melrose looked around the room, eyes having adjusted to a darkness that he didn’t remember. There hadn’t been shutters before, that was it. Melrose threaded his way between tables and chairs that looked much too delicate for hordes of Riffs and opened one of the shutters to let in more light.
    Otherwise, the Blue Parrot was all as he remembered it: little tin camels on each table, with mustard-pot howdahs standing beside Branston pickle and catsup. The green-glowing palm-tree lamps were new, however. So were the slot machines. He wandered over to thethree machines and saw that the winning combinations weren’t (as was usual) cherries and bells, oranges and lemons; they were sand dunes and turbans, palm trees and (once again) camels. Where on earth had Trevor Sly managed to secure those specimens?
    Posters of exotic locales—pyramids, burning sands, shadowy courtyards, dusty doorways full of olive-eyed children looking earnest—all lined the walls. Scattered in amongst them were old film posters; there was Casablanca , naturally; there was the dark camel train plodding along from A Passage to India ; and the real train along which strode Lawrence of Arabia—or, rather, Peter O’Toole as Lawrence. Plant wondered what milieu Trevor Sly had in mind for the Blue Parrot: it could have been an outpost in Arabia, Calcutta, L.A., or Las Vegas, from the look of it.
    Customers might have got the idea that the owner himself hailed from some far-flung, romantic place, some distant sand dune, and that he would be a swarthy man with a ring in his ear and a knife in his teeth. However, he was none of this.
    Trevor Sly (from Todcaster) slipped like a shadow through another beaded curtain, which separated the long, polished bar from the back—the kitchen and his own private rooms. He was tall and thin, stretched thin, he looked, as pale as pulled taffy. He carried his thin hands before him, limp appendages that he liked to wash together when he talked, and now he was talking, had started even before the curtain tinkled together behind him.
    â€œ Gentlemen , gentlemen, gentlemen . . . ” The voice ran down like a windup toy and then picked up again. “It’s Mr. Plant, isn’t it? How lovely to see you again. And your friend?” His peaked eyebrows rose, his liquid brown eye glittered (the other was slightly off-center), and he washed his hands in anticipation.
    â€œMr. Trueblood.” Plant pegged Trevor Sly as a person who would have preferred to get on a first-name basis as quickly as possible.
    â€œA pint of my Cairo Flame? Or the Tangier?” Trevor Sly’s smile split his lantern jaw. He brewed his own beer, not because he was a great believer in CAMRA but because it was both cheaper and gave him an outlet for his ingenuity.
    â€œThe last time I drank your Cairo Flame, I woke up in Cairo. Just some of the real stuff.” Melrose added, when Sly looked puzzled, “You know, the brown stuff with a bit of foam on top. How about an Old Peculier?”
    Trevor Sly pursed his lips, shook his head in a no-accounting-for-tastes manner.
    Trueblood said, “I’ll have a pint of the Tangier.”
    â€œBottled lava,” said Melrose. “Draft lava,” he corrected himself, when he saw Trevor Sly’s fingers touch one of the beer pulls.
    â€œAnd have something yourself, Mr. Sly.”
    Trevor Sly smiled broadly, winked, and went into action. His long arms, reaching for glasses, sliding about amongst the optics and beer pulls, the bowls of nuts, packets of crisps, cigarettes, and jars of pickled eggs, appeared to be involved in many more things at once than two arms could possibly be. The same could be said of his two legs, after he’d set the Old Peculier and Trueblood’s pint before them, and had settled himself on a high stool behind the bar, twining and twining the spindly legs like ivy