A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

I nearly fell over. She gave me my name; both of them in fact. Not quite accurately, but close enough to do.

Still unconvinced, but willing to be, I went over with her to take a look at him. He was in a sour mood by now over the fancied slight. He wouldn’t get up. He wouldn’t smile. He wouldn’t shake hands. He was also more than a little smashed. His head kept going around on his shoulders; the shoulders didn’t, just the head.

I didn’t know him well at all, but I did know him. But this wasn’t the night nor the particular segment of it to become enmeshed with stray one- or two-time acquaintances. All I kept thinking, with inwardly raised eyes, was: Why did I pick this particular place? There’s a line of bars all along this avenue. Why did I have to come in here and run into these two?

“I appreciate this no end,” he said sarcastically.

“You got your wires crossed,” I told him briefly. “I just came in.”

“You tell him,” he said to the girl.

“Look,” she catalogued, “we saw everything you got on. Just like you have it on you now.”

(“But not on me, on someone else,” I put in.)

“This same light-gray shortie coat—” She plucked it with her fingers.

(“There’s been a rash of them all over New York this season.”)

“And a shave-head haircut?”

(“Who hasn’t one?”)

“And even a shiny tie clip that flashed in my eyes from the light every time you turned a certain way?”

(“Everyone carries some kind of hardware across the front.”)

“But all three of them match up,” she expostulated. “You’re wearing them all.”

“So was somebody else. Half an hour ago, or maybe twenty minutes, sitting on the same stool I was, that’s all. It was a double-take.” And I omitted to add: You’re both blurry with booze, anyway.

He turned to address the girl, as a way of showing me what his feelings toward me were. “He’s copping a plea. You think you know a guy, and then you’re not good enough for him.”

“Your knowing me ended right now,” I said tersely.

He pushed his underlip out in hostility. “Then stand away from my table. Don’t crowd us like that.”

He got up in his seat and gave me a stiff-arm back, hand against chest.

I shoved him in return, also hand against chest, and he sat down again.

This time he got up and came out and around from behind the table and swung a roundhouse at me. I can’t remember whether it clipped or not. Probably not or I’d be able to.

I swung back at him and could feel it land, but he only gave a little. Maybe a step back with one foot.

His second swing, and the third of the whole capsule fight, and I went sprawling back on my shoulders across the floor. He was springier than he looked in his liquored condition.

The whole thing didn’t take a half-minute, but already everyone in the place was around us in a tight little circle, the way they always are at such a time. The bartender came running out from behind, cautioning, “All right, all right,” in an excited voice. All-right what he didn’t specify.

He helped me up, and then continued the process by arming me all the way over to the door and just beyond it, before I knew what was happening. He didn’t throw me out, simply sort of urged me out by one arm. There he let go my arm, told me, “Now go away from here. Go someplace else and do that.” And closed the door in my face.

I guess I was the one selected to be evicted because the other fellow had had a girl with him, and from where the bartender stood it looked as if I had gone over and accosted them, said something out of the way to her. The pantomime of what he had witnessed alone would have been enough to suggest that to him, without the need of an accompanying sound track.

He had turned his back to me, and was walking away from the door, when I reopened it wide enough to insert my head, one foot and one shoulder past it, and to protest indignantly: “I still have a drink coming to me. I paid you for it, and I never got it. Now where is it?”

“You’ve had enough,” he said arbitrarily and quite inaccurately. I hadn’t had anything. “You’re cut off.”

And with that he came back toward me, and this time did push me, gave me a good hearty shove out through the partial aperture I had been standing in. So tempestuous a one in fact that I went all the way back and over, and again sprawled on my shoulder blades in a sort of arrested skid across the sidewalk.

This time he locked the door from the inside (evidently a temporary measure until I should go away) and pulled down a shade across the grimy glass portion of it in final dismissal.

It was the second time I’d been toppled in about three minutes and I blew a fuse.