They all went quiet for a little while until Otto raised his gnarled, grinning face again. “Okay, so a man pulls in this prostitute. It’s a dark night. He don’t see till they get back to her place that she’s eighty years old. She takes off her wig, takes out her teeth, pulls off her false eyelashes, unscrews her wooden leg. He runs out. She shouts from the window. ‘Hey, don’t you want it?’ He shouts back. ‘Throw it down here, I’ll do it myself.’”

Only Magnus reacted, his slender, hunched body convulsing with silent laughter.

Bennet called over to Goldwin, “That English bastard’s still here—six weeks now.”

Mesmerized by the fire, swaying with drunkenness, Goldwin mumbled, “I took her out near four months.”

“Okay,” Otto said. “So this man and his daughter are driving along in a truck with all their possessions in the bed and they’re stopped by robbers. The robbers take the lot, leave the two of them buck naked. The man he says, ‘We’ve lost everything.’ ‘Not everything,’ the daughter says, and pulls a diamond ring out her vagina. ‘Pity your ma wasn’t here,’ the man says. ‘We could have saved the damn truck.’”

Now Siggy couldn’t help himself and laughed, glancing guiltily at Bennet as he did so.

But Bennet was intent on Goldwin. “I heard you cut his hair the other day. Cut his fucking hair.”

“It’s my job. I cut hair. What do you want me to do?”

“Grow yourself a fresh fucking pair of balls.”

“So a fisherman has a wife.” Otto raised his voice. “And he’s with his buddy and they’re both fishing. And he says, ‘You know, my wife has gonorrhea, diarrhea, and pyorrhea.’ ‘Why’d you marry her, then?’ the other one says. And he says, ‘Only for the maggots.’”

Bennet cut short any chance for laughter, shouting at Goldwin, “Travers is tapping your woman’s tush, and you’re giving him a fucking short back and sides.”

“What can I do about it?” Goldwin shouted. Disturbed, Mina staggered to her feet and let out a whimpering bark.

“You do what a man does: Make sure it’s you and not him. You staked your claim; you damn well fight for it.”

“So a man’s in bed with this Polack woman,” Otto cut in loudly. “She says to him, ‘I wish you’d take your ring off when you do that.’ ‘That’s not my ring,’ he says, ‘that’s my wristwatch.’”

“Ay,” Sal shouted. “Why that’s got to be a Polack woman? That don’t have to be no kind of woman.”

“I was inspired.”

“You shuddup, you. Sono stanca della tua bocca di merda.”