Seen this one? How about this one? Nope. No. Never. Mostly I showed Silvina’s photo to old people who said they’d never lived anywhere else. Vain hope. But it passed the time.

Alcohol was my only available health care. Mixed with a furtive duck into a clinic, if it was far enough out in the sticks.

Always, every moment, I kept wondering about Silvina, even as I hated her for what she’d let happen to me, or done to me … if Silvina would know what to do next. If Silvina would’ve been better at putting the pieces back together.

Some bars, I’ve found, people rarely leave you alone for long. Under the squint and crinkle and shadowy rubble of bad lights, a shadow approached me, like a swaying statue, as I downed another shot.

“You look like you—”

I reached out and, swiveling on the stool, pulled him close by his jacket. I punched him hard in the stomach with my other hand, closed in a fist. I felt my knuckles hard and already raw against the flab of his paunch and punched him again. Gasped at the flash of agony running up my leg from putting all my weight on it. Stupid. Forgetful.

Then I released him, as the putrid expulsion of his breath washed over me, and he was rolling there on the floor, along with the barstool he’d taken with him. Entangled with some short mop or other cleaning implement that’d been leaning against the bar. Almost like there was an undertow.

“Why’d you do that, woman?” he whined. “Why?”

Maybe because I was weary of being called “woman.” Or weary of being talked to while I drank or because my fingers needed something to distract them. Maybe because I was a mean person or because channeling Shot was, irony, self-preservation in these post-balcony times. Not getting to the gym wasn’t great for my mood, either.

I grabbed my cane from the hook, brandished it as I brought my stool to the far corner of the bar, so I could see everyone and everything, including the bathrooms and the front door.

The bartender was a bright owl staring at me motionless. He looked like he’d seen something new after a month of only the usual. I guess he expected me to leave, but the “bar” was hardly a business and at the end of a dirt road in a forest of strange, gnarled trees with a milky-looking bog beyond. I didn’t think the place had a license, and I had more than just one gun on me, actually. Along with two knives, one in an ankle sheath and one stuck in my money belt, under my dull-red lumberjack shirt. I’d left most of my weapons back at the houseboat.