There was the gurgle of a tap. The bartender, whom she couldn’t see over the line of men at the bar, was pouring a beer. Maybe for a newcomer to the bar, one who had just walked in. She headed in that direction.

Her eyes were still grappling with the change from glaring sunlight to dim bar, and so she could not see what was happening when shouting started from the back of the bar.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Say it again.”

There was the thump of a person falling over. The men at the bar were turning with interest, and she noticed something odd about them, but it was lost as the fight in the back became more violent.

“I’ll say it as many times as I want.”

A few punches. A clatter of people running into chairs. More punches. The men were starting to get up and run to the back.

“If you break anything that belongs to the establishment, you will pay,” shouted the bartender. “Cash or jail time, means the same to me.”

But he too started to run to the back.

“Gentlemen, please,” he said.

He was blond.

Blond. That was what she had noticed. All the men in the bar were blond. Her eyes started to focus in on dim shapes. She followed the last of the running men to a small open area with a pool table and jukebox in the back.

There were two men on the floor, wrestling and flailing. Their faces were red. Both of them were Troy.

“Gentlemen, take this outside at once,” said the bartender.

“Ah, let them fight,” said one of the bystanders. “What else do we all have to do out here?”

She recognized both voices. The bartender was Troy. So was the bystander.

Her vision fully adjusted. She was surrounded by an enormous circle of Troys, watching the two Troys fight in the middle. Every person in the bar was Troy.

The crowd around her swayed in empathetic motion with the fighting men. She was jostled in the wave of Troys. As she tried to squeeze herself from the crowd, the group of alike men next to her lurched left and knocked her to the floor.

They were laughing and cheering and attempted but failed to step gingerly around her tender legs.

She grunted and cursed. One of the men made a barely attentive hand gesture toward her, but otherwise they ignored her, so, with great pain and exasperation, she lifted herself to her feet and edged her way behind the moving mass of men back to the exit.