When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

waited for my name to be called. I waited eleven hours; the sunnies faded after ninety minutes. The rest of the time was a delirious hell. I sat in a huge room filled with sick and wounded people, all poor, all suffering. The wail of pain and the shrieks of babies never ended. The air reeked of tobacco smoke, the stink of bodies, of blood and vomit and urine. A harried doctor saw me at last, muttered to himself as he examined me, asked me no questions at all, taped my ribs, wrote out a prescription, and ordered me away.
    It was too late to get the scrip filled at a pharmacy, but I knew I could score some expensive drugs on the Street. It was now about two in the morning; the action would be strong. I had to limp all the way back to the Budayeen, but my rage at Nikki fueled me. I had a score to settle with Tami and her friends, too.
    When I got to Chiriga’s club, it was half-empty and oddly quiet. The girls and debs sat listlessly; the customers stared into their beers. The music was blaring as loud as usual, of course, and Chiri’s own voice cut through that noise with her shrill Swahili accent. But laughter was missing, the undercurrent of double-edged conversations. There was no action. The bar smelled of stale sweat, spilled beer, whiskey, and hashish.
    “Marîd,” said Chiri when she saw me. She looked tired. It had evidently been a long, slow night with little money in it for anybody.
    “Let me buy you a drink,” I said. “You look like you could use one.”
    She managed a tired smile. “When have I ever said no to that?”
    “Never that I can recall,” I said.
    “Never will, either.” She turned and poured herself a drink out of a special bottle she kept under the bar.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Tende. An East African specialty.”
    I hesitated. “Let me have one of those.”
    Chiri’s expression became very mock-serious. “Tende no good for white bwana. Knock white bwana on his mgongo.”
    “It’s been a long, rotten day for me, too, Chiri,” I said. I handed her a ten-kiam note.
    She looked sympathetic. She poured me some tende, and raised her glass in a toast. “Kwa siha yako,” she said in Swahili.
    I picked up my drink. “Sahtayn,” I said in Arabic. I tasted the tende. My eyebrows went up. It tasted fiery and unpleasant; still I knew that if I worked at it, I could develop a taste for it. I drained the glass.
    Chiri shook her head. “This nigger girl scared for white bwana. Wait for white bwana to throw up all over her nice, clean bar.”
    “Another one, Chiri. Keep ’em coming.”
    “Your day’s been that bad? Honey, step over here by the light.”
    I went around the edge of the bar where she could see me better. My face must have looked ghastly. She reached up gently to touch the bruises on my forehead, around my eyes, my purple, swollen lips and nostrils. “I just want to get drunk fast, Chiri,” I said, “and I’m broke, too.”
    “You couped three thousand off that Russian, didn’t you tell me about that? Or did I hear that from somebody else? Yasmin, maybe. After the Russian ate that bullet, you know, both of my new girls quit, and so did Jamila.” She poured me some more tende.
    “Jamila is no great loss.” She was a deb, a pre-op transsexual who never intended to get the operation. I started on my second drink. It seemed to be on the house.
    “Easy for you to say. Let’s see you lure tourists in here without naked boobies shaking on stage. You want to tell me what happened to you?”
    I shook the glass of liquor back and forth, gently. “Another time.”
    “You looking for anybody in particular?”
    “Nikki.”
    Chiri gave a little laugh. “That explains some of it, but Nikki couldn’t bust you up that bad.”
    “The Sisters.”
    “All three?”
    I grimaced. “Individually and in concert.”
    Chiri glanced upward. “Why? What did you do to them?”
    I snorted. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”
    Chiri cocked her head and looked at me sideways for