He was beaming, clearly amused. “You bet. But that offer’s only good for the next three minutes,” he said and lifted his watch. “And that three minutes starts . . . now.”

I knew I’d do it, and in response I grew nervous as hell. I couldn’t pass up a hundred bucks, not in my state. It was an opportunity to get ahead, and I knew that if I didn’t say hello, then the contentment I felt would fade away. I was ecstatic to be in a good mood, and though the pendulum would eventually swing the other way, as it always does, I wasn’t ready for the shift just yet.

“Hey Sam, grab me a quick drink, will you? I’m going to need one for this,” Gene said.

“You’re a dick,” I said.

Sam poured whiskey straight into Gene’s glass.

“Two minutes, kiddo. A hundred dollars. Boy, think of what you can do with that. You can buy that sweet girl dinner. A real nice dinner, actually.”

“Alright, alright, quit talking to me, damn it. I need to get my mind straight.”

I thought about what I could say, what we might talk about. There are few worse things than having nothing to say post-hello, both just staring at one another while the silence twists you in two. What would I do? For a minute I hated women, hated that I was so awful with them and yet desired them so badly. She looked like the shy type, and conversing with the quiet ones are like solving a Rubik’s Cube when sleep-deprived and half drunk. Maybe I could just tell her the truth, point to Gene, tell her that he had paid me to come down, that she shouldn’t worry because I wouldn’t take up too much of her time. I’d even buy her a drink for her troubles and she’d then be free to all the other, better men in the bar.

But I was still nervous, and in my mind I tried convincing myself why I shouldn’t be, why my saying hello was a great privilege and that I’d be doing her a favor. But regardless of the role I created for myself, I knew I was without the tools of artifice to assume it. And the more I thought about it, the more nervous I became until I was nearly in a panic.

“One minute,” Gene said.

“Blow me.”

I looked back down and studied her while jitters wrenched my body into knots.

“Thirty seconds. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks.”