“I’m not accusing her of intelligence,” I said, “just her willingness to fight. Come to think of it, her and this guy, they’d make a great tag team they wanted to get together. They’d be unbeatable.”

“Good thing she wasn’t on his side tonight,” John said.

“She hadn’t been there,” I said, “that sonofabitch would have gotten away. I wonder how bad messed up he is. I’d feel better he looked worse than me.”

“Well,” Leonard said, “it ain’t like you got to worry about your native good looks.”

“What I’d like to know,” John said, “is what’s this guy’s story?”

“Whatever it is,” I said, “it isn’t a fairy tale. More like a horror story, I figure.”

“Speakin’ of horror stories,” Leonard said, “that shirt Charlie had on, where in hell did he find that? It looked like it had been used to wipe up paint.”

“It’s colorful,” I said.

“Colorful is a nice word,” John said.

In that moment I realized since Leonard had been seeing John he dressed nicer himself. Nothing fancy, but a little slicker. John always dressed that way, like he was going to a casual prayer meeting.

“Charlie just looked like hell in general,” Leonard said.

“He’s divorced and not happy about it. He gave up cigarettes because his wife wouldn’t give him any unless he did. Turned out she was seeing a guy on the side who smoked. It really got his goat. Worse yet, now he finds he can quit smoking. Thing bothers him most, besides the wife gone, is he’s gotten hooked on this shitty Kung Fu television series. He said when he got to taping it while he was at work, looking forward to it at nights, he knew he had crossed the line into dark depression.”

“I don’t know,” John said. “Nothing to do, it’s not so bad.”