No way. I’m gettin’ hauled up before a judge for “contributing to delinquency.” A judge might be one of the ones They are watching. They catch wind of me, and pfff! There goes both Chuckie and me.

“Hey, Chuck!”

“Yeah, what! What you want?” I bellow. Full Chuck bellow from the edge of the bar.

They stand in the doorway ten feet away, three underage lodgepoles in denim—scraggly moustaches and zits. They want to pull something I’d catch them at easy. So they’re about to appeal to Chuck’s sense of camaraderie. I gotta smile.

“Hey, Chuck, can we bring in some beers? You’re cool, man. We’ll keep it under the table…”

Turn grin to grimace.

“Hell, no. You guys get that stuff out of here! Drink it at home and then come back. Or better yet, don’t come back!”

They cuss me, laughing. I cuss back to maintain image, but my heart really isn’t in it tonight.

Five minutes later they’re back. Must have chugged the whole six-pack from the way they slosh and giggle as they come in, giving me a wink. Jesus! Can you remember chugging just to get a stomach full of beer? Doing it because a boy’s got to have some sort of rite of passage when the girls just won’t put out and we don’t send young men after eagle feathers anymore?

That’s bouncer lesson number three. Like your clientele. Establish empathy. But never identify too closely. It’ll drive you nuts.

The surface of the bar is smooth, like ivory keys, like the smooth-rubbed stick in a trusty airplane… With my eyes closed the pounding of the drums blends with the crowd noises and seems to become the growling of engines. A red haze under my eyelids turns into a fire… fire on a mountainside.

My fingers press into the bar, the tendons humming momentarily as if to something from Stravinsky …