The frat boy let Nora go so fast, she stumbled again, this time against Cyrus who threw a protective arm around her.

“She fell, man,” the frat boy said. “I was just helping her.”

“Nora?”

“He grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go even after I told him twice,” Nora said.

Cyrus reached for the frat boy who tried to duck away but was just too drunk. Cyrus had him by the arms. “Where you from, jackass?” Cyrus demanded. He gave the boy a little shake.

“Back off, fuck. She fell.”

“You fall, Nora?”

“He hit me by accident, grabbed me on purpose.”

Cyrus shook the boy again.

“Where. You. From. Jack. Ass.” Cyrus spoke in terrifyingly calm and deliberate tones. Even Nora was a little nervous at what he’d do. She wished she had popcorn. This was a good show. A small crowd had gathered to watch it. Luckily they seemed to be on her and Cyrus’s side.

“California, man. Pasadena. Back the fuck off me!”

“Pasadena in the house!” Cyrus said. “Let me ask you something, Pasadena. You ever see me in California fucking with your California girls?”

“What?” The question didn’t seem to penetrate the boy’s brain.

“Did you? Ever. See me in California? Fucking with your California girls?”

“I never seen you,” the boy said.

“Right. Cause I don’t go to other towns and fuck with their ladies. So you don’t come to my town and fuck with our ladies. You come to my town and fuck with our ladies, we fuck you up. We fuck you up New Orleans-style. We fuck you up until you can’t get un-fucked. You got it?”

“Fuck off, bro.”

Nora slapped the boy on his sweaty pink cheek.

“That’s fuck off, sir, to you,” she said. Cyrus cackled a little.

“I’ll let you go,” Cyrus said. “But I see you fuck with one more New Orleans lady, I will absolutely kill you. Kill you all the way gone. They gonna find you floating in the Mississippi, and when the cops ask me why I did it, I’ll tell ’em you got rough with one of our ladies. And then they’ll say, ‘Sorry to bother you.’ That’s how we do it down here. You got it, son? You got it?”

“I got it, I got it.”

Cyrus let the boy go.

Nora, however, did not. Before he could take one drunken step away, she brought her heel down on his toe.

And the jackass was wearing Birkenstocks. On Bourbon Street. Where public urination was nearly as common as public intoxication. Kid had it coming.

The boy screamed redrum, and there was no doubt in Nora’s mind she had broken the holy living shit out of his toe.

Cyrus looked at her, his eyes wide as two shot glasses.

“I was just trying to scare him,” Cyrus said.

“Yeah, well, I was just trying to break his fucking foot so he can never walk straight again.”

“You fucking bitch,” the boy keened in his delightful agony. His face was blood red and he was writhing in pain. “What’s wrong with you, you psycho?”