Chubby closed his eyes and felt himself falling off the barstool. He saw the walls rushing past him and the floor zooming up into his face. When he opened his eyes a second later he was still sitting on the barstool, his cigarette between his fingers. Pearls of sweat formed at his hairline.

"They just keep cuttin' and cuttin' and cuttin'..." Sylvia droned on.

Chubby jumped as he heard the whine of Banion's wheelchair. Sylvia touched Chubby's hand. He jerked away from her touch. He looked into the mirror for Tommy. The bar was deserted. He jumped off his stool and looked around frantically. Sylvia's face managed to look sharp and cold in the soft shadowy light. "Motherfuckin' bastard!" Chubby clenched his teeth, looking for his brother.

"It's not contagious," Sylvia said in a weak yet bitter voice not even directed at Chubby.

Chubby kicked open the "Gents" door and saw Tommy doubled over with laughter by the urinal. Tommy tried to whinny but he was laughing too hard. Chubby took a swing at him. Tommy caught Chubby's fist with his own big hands but the force of the punch knocked him down anyhow.

Tommy kept laughing. "You—you shoulda seen your face." He pointed at Chubby.

Chubby pulled back his leg to kick him in the ribs. Chubby's skin was gray and his hands were trembling. Tommy saw the kick coming and rolled away. Chubby suddenly smiled. The color came back to his face and he turned, moving swiftly into a stall, and emerged two seconds later with two sopping-wet balls of toilet paper that he threw at Tommy, hitting him in the face with one and in the crotch with the other. Tommy jumped up and ran into the other stall. Chubby ran back into the first stall. In less than a minute they were laughing and yelling, having a toilet paper war, covering themselves and the walls with gray clots of wet tissue until they were both exhausted. Laughing weakly and panting, they staggered from the bathroom, through the bar, ignoring Sylvia, who stared rigidly at her hands, and out into the street.

***

"Did you really ball her, Tommy?" Tommy cruised slowly down Central Avenue, Chubby sprawled in the shotgun seat.

"Nah." Tommy popped a piece of Dentyne that was on the dashboard into his mouth. "I was talkin' to her Friday night. She tol' me like she tol' you. I almost fell through the floor." Tommy never took his eyes from the road. Chubby stared at the swaying brown-beaded rosary knotted and dangling from Tommy's mirror.

"She ain't never gonna get picked up tellin' guys that shit about herself." Chubby yawned.

"Banion's is startin' to give me the creeps, with Sylvia there startin' to hang aroun' an' Banion in his goddamn wheelchair," Tommy said.

"Maybe we should find some new place."

"How about this here?" Tommy slowed the car as they approached a low, rambling roadside discotheque—the 88 Club. More than a hundred cars were parked across the road. Tommy pulled the car over by the parking lot on the shoulder of Central Avenue. Six teen-age girls came out along with a blast of live rock and roll music. The girls trotted across Central Avenue to the parking lot.