“What’d you say to her about me?” he says.
“I’m sorry. The roller skates. But I told her it was a joke and nothing and my fault. It was nothing, Miss, nothing.”
“Don’t tell me — I know what it was. And if you’re not that keen on me,” she says to him, “and have to keep making these vicious cracks about me here, then I don’t care if you’re our best customer ever and also the chief muck-a-shit of New York. I’ll have to demand that you leave and never come back while I’m tending bar and you can run to my boss and cry about it to him all you please.”
“I will,” he says. “I’ll have you fired and get him to put a girl behind the bar who at the very least, if she has to manually drop ice cubes into the drinks, cleans her fingers once a week.”
“You drip. Get the hell out of here now.”
“I’ll go when I’m good and ready, sister, and not a second before.” He finishes his drink. “I’ll take a refill if you don’t mind.”
“Henry,” she yells.
“Then whatever comes out of this thing then,” and he reaches over the counter for what I think’s called a soda gun and squirts water or tonic or soda water into the sink and then into his glass.
I grab my two dollars off the bar, get my raincoat and start for the door.
“Thanks a lot, fella,” the man says, holding his glass up to me in a toast. “I’ll do the same for you with my fat ratting mouth any damn day you want and then worm out when it gets most ticklish too.”
“Any trouble up front, gorgeous?” Henry says when I open the door.
‘Half of it’s on the way out now.”
I turn around. Henry’s tall and burly but not mean looking and is holding a roll of toilet paper and package of paper towels and a broom. “Look,” I say, “let’s settle this amicably. Because I’m the cause or indirectly so of this big absurd whatever you want to call it harmless to-do and I can’t just leave knowing this man might get his head bashed in over it.”
“I think, if intellectual wisdom’s to be king, that you be better to leave now,” Henry says. “No harm shall come to no one at the bar I’ll here say.”
“But if you think you’ve a good grievance against him or she does and he doesn’t want to go, call a cop. At least that way you’re assured nobody will get hurt.”
“As you said, so I say — no man shall, long as the gentle Hen’s here.”
“We don’t want cops when it’s not necessary,” she says. “They’re hard at it with a lot worse than him and don’t like coming in on things we can easily fix ourselves. Now close the door behind you. It’s getting cold and the landlord’s a cheapo with the rent. But if you want to do the most good, take with you your creepy friend.”
“Thank you,” the man says to me, his hand cupped behind his ear. “I didn’t catch all you said, but you spoke up, that was grand, and from now on I can handle myself dandy.”
“Don’t handle anything. They don’t want you here. I’m not wanted also — that’s also clear — but not wanted not as much as you, if I got those nots right, and there’s nothing to be learned or gained or anything from talking back to bartenders and so on. So be smart and pay up and leave with me and we’ll have a drink or coffee down the street so long as it’s not a tough dumpy joint and talk about why there’s no sense talking and fighting back at bars and being big men and strong and all that hooey and stuff and pride and so on and knocking heads and losing teeth and standing on your own two feet and later blacking out after making great fatuous points, though maybe there I obviously speak for myself.”
“Fine, if I agreed. But I don’t because this is a public place licensed for such and no discrimination of any kind, so not somewhere you can be tossed out of indiscriminately. It’s also like home to me or become one I’ve been coming here so long, something pretty Marjorie’s going to learn from her boss Mr. Witcom very soon.”
“Then you might end up getting hurt,” I say and Marjorie says to him “I’ll learn, all right, will I ever learn,” and Henry says “What in the good name are you all mouthing on so much for? The Hen’s got work.”
“If I am then I am,” the man says to me, “because I don’t pretend to be a tough strong man like these two here.”
“Uh-oh,” I say looking up and Marjorie says to him “You calling me a man again?” and Henry says “Now will someone please tell the Hen what he just said to make that man say that about him? Someone. Please. The Hen’s open-minded. So tell him.”
“Oh, did I say that?” the man says to her and smiles for a few seconds and drinks from his glass.
