Joe Leone didn't follow that, even at seven years old which everyone agreed was his most intelligent time. He liked to fight. By twelve it was his trade, nothing more or less. He signed with the Shadow Boys. From that time on he lived in one-shot cultivars. He liked the tusks, the sentient tattoos and the side-lace trousers. Joe had no body of his own. It cost him so much to run those cultivars he would never save up enough to buy himself back. Every day he was in the ring, doing that same old thing. He was getting pretty well messed up. "I lost count the times I seen my own insides. Hey, what's that? Lose your insides ain't so hard. Losing a fight, that's hard." And he would laugh and buy you another drink.

Every day they dragged the fucked-up cultivar out the ring, and the next day Joe Leone had been to the tailor on Straint and come out fresh and new and ready to do it all again. It was a tiring life but it was the life he loved. Liv Hula never charged him for a drink. She had a soft spot for him, it was widely acknowledged.

"Those fights, they're cruel and stupid," she told the fat man now.

He was too smart to contradict that. After a moment, looking for something else to quarrel over, he said, "You ever do anything before you kept bar?"

She brought out a lifeless smile for him to consider.

"One or two things," she said.

"Then how come I never heard about them?"

"Got me there, Antoyne."

She waited for him to respond, but now something new on Straint had caught his attention. He wiped the window glass again. He pressed his face up against it. "Irene's a little late today," he said.

Liv Hula busied herself suddenly behind the bar.

"Oh yes?"

"A minute or two," he said.

"What's a minute or two to Irene?"

The fights were a dumb career, that was Liv Hula's opinion.