The night was cold and the breeze coming off the Pacific was briny and damp. I shrugged into my jacket and walked the two blocks to Pearl's Pool Hall as if through broad daylight. Floral Beach, by night, is bathed in the flat orange glow of the sodium vapor lights that line Ocean Street. The moon wasn't up yet, and the ocean was as black as pitch. The surf tumbled onto the beach in an uneven fringe of gold, picking up illumination from the last reaches of the street lamps. A fog was rolling in and the air had the dense, tawny look of smog.

Closer to the pool hall, the quiet was broken by a raucous blast of country music. The door to Pearl's stood open and I could smell cigarette smoke from two doors away. I counted five Harley-Davidsons at the curb, all chrome and black leather seats, with convoluted tailpipes. The boys in my junior high school went through a siege of drawing machines like that: hot rods and racing cars, tanks, torture devices, guns, knives, and bloodlettings of all kinds. I should really check one day and find out how those guys turned out.

The pool hall itself was two pool tables long, with enough space between to allow folk to angle for a tricky shot. Both tables were occupied by bikers: heavyset men in their forties with Fu Manchu beards and long hair pulled back in pony tails. There were five of them, a family of road pirates on the move. The bar ran the entire length of wall to the left, the barstools filled with the bikers' girlfriends and assorted town folk. Walls and ceiling were covered with a collage of beer signs, tobacco ads, bumper stickers, cartoons, snapshots, and bar witticisms. One sign proclaimed Happy Hour from six to seven, but the hand-drawn clock under it had a 5 at every hour. A knee-slapper, that. Bowling trophies, beer mugs, and racks of potato chips lined the shelf behind the bar. There was also a display of Pearl's Pool Hall T-shirts on sale for $6.99. A leather biker's glove hung inexplicably from the ceiling, and a Miller Lite mirror on the wall was festooned with a pair of lady's underpants. The noise level was such that a hearing test might be in order later.

There was one empty stool at the bar, which I took. The bartender was a woman in her mid-sixties, perhaps the very Pearl for whom the place was named. She was short, thick through the middle, with graying, permanent-curled hair chopped straight across the nape of her neck. She was wearing plaid polyester slacks and a sleeveless top, showing arms well muscled from hefting beer cases. Maybe, at intervals, she hefted some biker out the door by the seat of his pants.