The bartender ambled in my direction. He was a middle-aged man, short and stocky, wearing chinos and a vintage jersey of some vague hockey-like sort. He placed a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of me. I said, “I’m looking for Pearl.”

“Too late. Her and Dandy came in yesterday, kicking up a fuss. Now they’re eighty-sixed.”

Being eighty-sixed was the drunkard’s equivalent of being barred for life, though most bar owners would eventually relent.

“You know where they went?”

“Shape they were in, it wasn’t Harbor House. Curfew’s at seven. Last I saw ’em it was two A.M.”

“They were here all that time?”

“They went out for a while and then came back in. Spreading the joy, I guess.”

“What kind of trouble did they make?”

Mockingly, he put a hand to his chin. He twiddled his fingers and looked skyward, as though trying to remember and calculate. “Well, let’s see. Second time they showed up, they started knocking back shots. Dandy’s not a maudlin drunk like she is, but he gets in everyone’s face. He’s a guy who wants to engage in long, rambling chats. Folks don’t want to deal with that. The two of ’em tried throwing darts but neither one could see straight. Pearl fell over backward and busted up a chair and then he weighed in and broke a second one for good luck. She got sick and then he fell down. I should have called the cops at that point, but I got too big a heart.”

“I heard they were on a bender.”

“I can testify to that. Here’s the deal: I like Pearl. I wish her the best and I mean that. Who knows what put me where I am and put her on the street? Call it the Fickle Finger of Fate, but she’s wanking on about how everything’s so unfair. I got no patience for that. Like I said to her, I didn’t invent the game and I didn’t make the rules. Maybe it all stinks and I’m sorry as hell, but I got a bar to run.”

“She’s a tough one,” I said, hoping to defuse his irritation and sidestep an argument.

“She says she’s down on her luck but luck’s got nothing to do with it. She makes choices the same as I do. I don’t know if she’s lazy or stupid or mentally ill, and I don’t care. Point is, I got fifteen employees dependent on me, but how the hell can I run a business when Pearl and her ilk come in here and puke all over the place?”

I shook my head, saying, “I hear you” in what I hoped was a sympathetic tone. In truth, I was more interested in their current whereabouts than a history of their bad behavior.