I ordered another beer. Some waitress brought it and I gave her some money. She popped her gum and gave me my change. I lit a smoke. Just then I noticed a guy sitting near me, almost at my elbow. He looked sort of hungry. I glanced at him, and then I didn’t pay any more attention to him. All I wanted to do was just drink until something happened. I knew if I drank long enough, it would.

I got a little philosophical sitting there, surrounded by all that sin, feeling so mired down in it. I hadn’t been raised to go into places like that. And there I was in one. I didn’t know where the sun might find me. I just hoped it wasn’t a place as dark as that one.

That guy leaned over and groped my leg. I sighed.

I’d had to deal with a thing like that once before. It had been a long time ago and I’d nearly forgotten it. A sailor had bought me a drink and then touched me in an unwelcome way in a bar. I thanked the sailor for the drink and told him to get his hand off my leg. He removed it and said he didn’t mean anything by it. Then he told me about his wife and family and friends for twenty minutes. Then he bought me another drink. Then he put his hand on me in an unwelcome way again. I remember sighing inwardly. I leaned over to the bartender and told him I hated to get thrown out of the bar, but if that guy put his hand on me again in an unwelcome way again I was going to have to knock the shit out of him. Then I told the sailor exactly the same words. It made him hot, and words were said, and I wound up choking him. It hadn’t been nice, and I knew this thing probably wasn’t going to be nice either.

I turned around and looked at this guy. He had a cap shoved back on his head, and some missing teeth, and a black eye. His hand on my leg felt like a granite claw. I looked into his eyes. They were tinged with yellow and red, and they looked a little wobbly.

He was a real big guy.

I sat there and held my beer, wondering what to do. For all I knew he could have been a henchman, one of hers. I knew to operate like she did she had to have henchmen.

I finally told him he wouldn’t believe how much I’d appreciate the shit out of it if he’d get his hand off my leg.