These Dreams of You

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At a pub off Leicester Square, Zan isn’t certain whether he’s allowed to take Parker and Sheba in, except that the establishment serves food and it’s listed in the guide book. “Are you sure?” Parker asks in the road outside, wary, looking the pub over.

“The book doesn’t say you can’t go in,” Zan answers.

“What’s an ad-lip?” says Sheba, trying to conjure such a mutation in her head.

“Lib,” says Parker. To his father, “What’s so special about it anyway?”

“It was famous in the Sixties,” says Zan. He opens the door of what used to be called the Ad Lib and Sheba marches in assertively though Parker hangs back. No one tells them to leave. They get a table. “A lot of famous musicians came here. Actually the club was upstairs. It’s closed now.”

“So now,” Parker points out, “there’s nothing special about it at all.” Zan tries not to bore his children too much about the Sixties. His son will have none of it, and while Sheba might be more interested, and though certainly it’s not impossible, Zan can’t say for a fact that in his earlier career the androgynous spaceman whose music she loves ever actually was on the premises. “Stop singing,” Parker mutters to his sister, whose transmission frequency this afternoon is particularly high.

“I’m not,” she says.