Free Callahan's Secret by Spider Robinson

merrily crackling fireplace from a distance of twenty feet. People waited respectfully. I drank again while I considered my toast. Then I raised my glass, and everybody followed suit.
    “To the Lady,” I said, and drained my glass and threw it at the back of the fireplace, and then I said, “Sorry, folks,” because it’s very difficult to make Mike’s fireplace emit shards of glass-it’s designed like a parabolic reflector with a shallow focus-but I had thrown hard enough to spatter four tables just the same. I know better than to throw that hard.
    Nobody paid the least mind; as one they chorused, “To the Lady” and drank, and when the barrage was finished, eight tables were littered with shards.
    Then there was a pause, while everybody waited to see if I could talk about it yet. The certain knowledge that they were prepared to swallow their curiosity, go back to their drinking and ignore me if that were what I needed, made it possible to speak.
    “I was coming offstage. The Purple Cat, over in Easthampton. Tripped over a cable in the dark. Knew I was going down, tried to get her out from under me. The stage there is waist-high, her head just cleared it and wedged in under the monitor speaker. Then my weight came down on her…” I was sobbing. “… and she screamed, and I..
    Long-Drink wrapped me in his great long arms and hugged tight. I buried my face in his shirt and wept. Someone else hugged us both from behind me. When I was back under control, both let go and I found a drink in my hand. I gulped it gratefully.
    “I hate to ask, Jake,” Callahan rumbled. “I’m afraid I already know. Is there any chance she could be fixed?”
    “Tell him, Eddie.” But Eddie wasn’t there; his piano stool was empty. “All right, look, Mike: There are probably ten shops right here on Long Island that’d accept the commission and my money, and maybe an equal number who’d be honest enough to turn me away. There are maybe five real guitar-makers in the whole New York area, and they’d all tell me to forget it. There might be four Master-class artisans still alive in all of North America, and their bill would run to four figures, maybe five, assuming they thought they could save her at all.” Noah Gonzalez had removed his hat, with a view toward passing it; he put it back on. “Look at her. You can’t get wood like that anymore. She’s got a custom neck and fingerboard, skinnier’n usual, puts the strings closer together-when I play a normal guitar it’s like my fingers shrunk. So a rebuilt neck would have less strength, and the fingerboard’d have to be handmade. .
    I stopped myself. I finished my drink. “Mike, she’s dead.” Long-Drink burst into tears. Callahan nodded and looked
    sad, and passed me another big drink. He pouied one for himself, and he toasted the Lady, and when that barrage was over he set ‘em up for the house.
    The folkn treated me right; we had a proper Irish wake for the Lady, and it got pretty drunk out. We laughed and danced and reminisced and swapped lies, created grand~ toasts; everyone did it up nice. The only thing it lacked was Eddie o,n the piano; he had disappeared and none knew where. But a wake for Lady Macbeth must include the voice of her long-time colleague-so Callahan surprised us all by sitting down and turning out some creditable barreihouse. I hadn’t known he could play a note, and I’d have sworn his fingers were too big to hit only one key at a time, but he did okay.
    Anyhow, when the smoke cleared, Pyotr ended up driving better than half of us home, in groups of three-a task I wouldn’t wish on my senator.
    I guess I should explain about Pyotr….
     
    The thing about a joint like Callahan’s Place is that it could not possibly function without the cooperation of all its patrons. It takes a lot of volunteer effort to make the Place work the way it does.
    Some of this is obvious. Clearly, if a barkeep is going to allow his patrons’to smash their empties in