I run inside and showered and shaved and slapped some shit on my hair. I drove uptown and wrote a twenty-dollar check at Kroger’s, picked up a hot sixer and a one twenty-nine bag of ice. I knew Mildred would be perturbed when she saw that I was out loose again. Lord love her, she had trouble keeping me home; her puss was just not that good. And so I would have to strike out occasionally, for parts and places unknown.

There was a nice place on the other side of town that didn’t look cross-eyed at country people coming in there just because they didn’t have a whole lot of class. The only thing wrong with it was that sometimes the people who came in there had so little class that often they would get to arguing and begin to shoot and cut one another. They wouldn’t do it when they were sober, it would just be after they were drinking. I figured it would be a good place to be sitting on a stool right about that time, before they all got to drinking heavy.

I parked my truck under a tree and went inside that establishment and it was dark and cool, like under a corn crib would be. I knew I had that six-pack to drive me all the way home. Mildred was sexually frustrated because of her overlarge organ and it just wore me out trying to apply enough friction to that thing for her to achieve internal orgasm. So, it was titillating for me to sit on a stool and talk to the young waitresses who served drinks and just generally fantasize about their young normal organs and wonder what they would be like, although it was guilty work and unsettling and morally not right.

I ordered a beer, spoke to everybody in general, lit a cigarette. I felt quite at home. I had on a clean shirt and my teeth had been brushed. I saw by my wristwatch that Mildred would be pulling into our driveway in about five more minutes. My beer arrived and I held it up high in the air and, saluting, said, “Here’s to Mildred.” Several people looked at me funny.

This particular bar had a lot of red velvet in it. It also had numerous mirrors that looked like they had been splattered with gold paint. It was quite classy, particularly for a place that had so many people with so little or no class come into it.