***

Tommy let Chubby off in the parking lot and sat in the car for a half-hour smoking cigarettes.

"Then I had this dream..." Sylvia delicately scratched her nose with a long red pinkynail. "I had this dream where this man comes to my door and gives me two jugs of wine..."

In the almost brown, subdued light of the bar Chubby looked interested. He looked sincere.

"...and I went to this old Jewish lady in my building, and you know, I told her the dream because she knows about things like that and the old lady asks me if I got children and I said yeah I got two boys in Vietnam and then she said the man in the dream was God and the two jugs of wine were my boys and God was giving them back to me safe and sound from Vietnam."

Chubby smiled, motioned for another seventy-seven for the lady, rested his hand on hers and looked into her eyes. She squeezed his hand. He was in.

"An' your boys are awright, right?"

Sylvia started weeping into a pastel Kleenex. "Larry died three days later."

"Aw shit! Hey that's terrible!" Looking at the bar mirror he saw Tommy finally walk in. Chubby caressed her veiny fingers and cursed himself silently. "The other one's O.K. though, right?"

She blew her nose and sneered. "He comes back and in two weeks he marries a Puerto Rican."

"Aw Jesus!" Chubby said with real feeling.

"She'll break his heart. They don't know from faithfulness, those animals. All they know is this." She shot her middle finger through a ring of her thumb and forefinger moving it back and forth rapidly.

Tommy sat at the far end of the bar. His eyes met Chubby's in the mirror. They both stifled laughs.

"He'll come crawling back to me"—her face turned ugly—"but I won't be there."

Chubby took in her jugs again. Nice big hangers. Come in Rangoon. She was about fifty he figured. Frosted orange hair. Wrinkle cream. He wanted to change the subject.

"So now you live alone, hah?" He extended a lighter under her unlit cigarette, caught Tommy's eye again and smiled.

"Just me and Shaintze."

"Ha?"

"Shaintze my Siamese."

"Oh, haha."

"Do you like cats?"

"Oh yeah, haha, I love 'em to death."

"Nat loved cats too."

"Your husband?"

"He died two years ago. He died of cancer," she said, raising her chin and tapping her throat. "Right here."

Chubby automatically swallowed and felt a half-dozen painful lumps as the saliva went down his gullet.

"They put in a rubber tube," she said, still tapping.

"He's prob'ly happier where he is now," he offered.

"How do you know?" she asked. She cupped his hand between her palms and lowered her head to light another cigarette, forgetting the just-lit one in the ashtray. The dry warmth of her fingers gave him a hard-on. He motioned to Banion for another drink.

"Cancer's a real bitch," he said.

"My whole family had cancer," she said. "My father had lung cancer, my mother had ovary cancer, my sister had stomach cancer." She counted off on her fingers. "And me..." She stopped counting and stared at him. "I got cancer of the rectum."