The man on Brady’s right had one of the stools. He was fat and sweaty-smelling, and he dawdled half asleep over his drink. The man on Brady’s left waved his hands about in vivid gestures as he spoke. He was talking to the red-haired B-girl next to him. The girl was the youngest of the five, and the open front of her gown revealed firm, creamy young breasts that hadn’t yet acquired the B-girl sag.

He was a young man with good looks—but you had the impression that his looks were fading right before your eyes. A shock of straight blond hair fell across his forehead as he shook his besotted head. The clothes that he was wearing were in the last stages of shabbiness, but they still bore signs that indicated they had been expensive at the outset.

Brady huddled over his drink and listened to the conversation of the young man and the girl, and felt lucky. They were talking about the very thing that had drawn him there that evening. In a way, that was natural enough, not really surprising. The affair was fresh in everyone’s mind, and Brady had counted on Carrol and the girls to steer the talk around it. Brady looked the man over from the corner of his eye.

“I warned Doris,” the drunk was saying, making dreamy circles in the water on the bar. He shrugged sadly, his face taking on a bleary-eyed but philosophical expression. “Not that it makes a damn bit of difference whether you live or die, you know that? Not a single goddam bit of difference in this filthy kind of world we have to live in. They shovel you into the ground and that’s the end of you, and it don’t matter a damn who you were or what you did.” He paused to belch. “No, it don’t matter. But I warned her anyway. I warned her there’d be a rotten finish waiting for her if she didn’t pack up and go home.” He waved his hand again. “What kind of a life was that for a girl with her looks anyway? Selling her rear like a cheap floozie. Hell,” he finished, “you know what? She’s better off dead.”

“What the hell do you know about it?” the girl asked in a surly voice.

The drunk scowled and tried to draw himself up straight. “I know it’s no good. Not one goddam good thing about it. It doesn’t lead any place. Oh, it’s all right when you’ve had everything else and hit the skids. Then you’ve got nothing to live for anyway.”

“Like you, for instance,” the girl jeered.