I picked up the blonde’s drink and tasted it when she wasn’t looking. Grape Kool-Aid. Well, I thought, I don’t have to put up with this shit. She got up and took her drink with her and, I don’t know, poured it out or something, then came back all friendly wanting another one.

I’d gotten surly and terse. I was feeling mean. I’d had about all their shit I wanted to take. I figured there were some big dark mean motherfuckers waiting back in the shadows to break my head and roll me when I went to the bathroom. The little beaverette up on the stage had gotten down on her hands, legs spread, pumping that thing up and down. And I just shook my head.

Blonde, she leaned over, sort of stroked my neck. “You gonna buy me another drank?” she said. “Buy your own damn drink.”

She looked offended. “Well, honey, if you don’t buy me another one I’ll have to get up and go.”

I told her not to let the door hit her in the ass. Of course she got all huffy and left. Then I turned on the other one.

“And you,” I said. “You can just get your ass up and go, too. Fucking grape Kool-Aid. You want me to tell you what you can do with your grape Kool-Aid?”

She didn’t say anything. She just looked away, and immediately I felt like an asshole. Sometimes I feel like an asshole about ten times a day. But I didn’t want to be hustled. There I was, all the way off down on the coast, didn’t know how I was going to get back, my friend had gone, and I had less than I’d started out with. Shrimp money. People depending on me, already buying their crab boil and their cocktail sauce. So there was only so much leeway I had. Maybe I could haggle the guy at the boat down, maybe I couldn’t. If I spent their money and then couldn’t haggle, I was up Shit Creek. But at that point I wouldn’t have minded legging down.

In dark places you can’t see much. But on the side of this girl’s face sitting next to me I saw something shining down her cheek. And I thought, Well, you asshole, you messed up again.

“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She looked around and tried to smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude to you,” I said.

“It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. I knew it wasn’t okay and she knew it wasn’t okay. Here she hadn’t done anything but ask for a three-dollar drink of Kool-Aid and I’d tried to run her off.

“Let me buy you a beer,” I told her.

“I can’t drink a beer.”