“The hell you don’t,” Corey said. He pulled the big woman toward the bar. He released her arm. She stood there and he ordered more drinks.

“Whatcha tryin’ to do?” she muttered sullenly, almost bitterly. “You wanna get me drunk?”

“Let’s both get drunk.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll be drunk. We’ll be good and drunk, and what’s better than that?”

“You asking me?”

“I’m asking anybody. What’s better than getting really plastered? Absolutely looped?”

“Well now, let’s see—”

“See what?” he cut in gruffly, almost angrily. Their shot glasses were empty and he called for refills. They drank the refills. He ordered more and said, “Ain’t nothing to see. Ain’t nothing better than when you’re soused and I mean all the way soused, don’t-give-a-good-goddam delirious, way out there where they got no clocks and there ain’t no stipulations what you gotta do because of what you done. You’re out there, you don’t see no fingers pointing.”

Nellie frowned thoughtfully, “Is that what they mean when they say blind drunk?”

“Who knows what they mean?” He lost track of the question. “Who cares what they say?” He turned and yelled to the bartender for more drinks. The refills came and then came again.

The refills kept coming.

At one of the tables there was a disturbance, two women were on their feet, going for each other’s hair. Another woman moved in to stop it and got her face clawed for her good intentions. Someone yelled for Nellie as the female combatants went at it with more fury. Then others were yelling for Nellie and she turned toward them. She looked at the two women who were now on the floor, grappling, biting, scratching and screeching. A man shrieked at Nellie, “Come on, bouncer, don’t stand there, do something.”

“Go jump a giraffe,” Nellie said.

The man turned away. He enlisted the aid of some other men and they managed to pacify the two women. Someone put a dime in the jukebox and a blues singer lamented all the empty nights and wasted years. A bearded neurotic got up on a table and attempted to recite poetry that contradicted the singer’s lyrics, and from the bar some unpoetic creature pegged a half-eaten, hot-pork sandwich that hit the poet in the mouth.

“But I’m a vegetarian,” the poet declared in a tone that was neither male nor female. To shut him up, someone handed him a fifteen-cent Tokay. He got down from the table and sat on the floor, murmuring phrases of endearment to the yellow wine in the glass.

The bartender brought another double rye for Nellie and another double gin for Corey Bradford.

From the jukebox the blues singer was bewailing the moon and the stars and all the flowers of spring for having gone away. Nellie said to the jukebox, “Don’t tell me about it. I got my own grief.”