“You don’t think I’ve got the money?” O’Connell asked.

“Need to see it,” the bartender replied. He had stepped back, and O’Connell noticed that the other men at the bar had shrunk away, their eyes lifted up to the dark ceiling. They, too, were veterans of this particular conflict.

He looked at the bartender again. The man was too old and too experienced in the world defined by the gloomy corners of the decrepit bar to be taken unawares. And, in that second, O’Connell realized that the bartender would have some ready source of man-made equality. An aluminum baseball bat, or maybe a short-handled wooden fish billy. Maybe something more substantial, like a chrome-plated nine millimeter or a twelve gauge. No, he thought, not the nine millimeter. Too hard to chamber a round. Something older, more antique, like a.38 police special, safety disengaged, loaded with wadcutters, so to maximize the damage to flesh, minimize the damage to the property. It would be located out of sight, in easy reach. He did not think he could jackknife across the bar fast enough to reach the bartender before the man grabbed the weapon.

So, he shrugged. He spun and stared at the man at the bar a few feet away.

“What’re you looking at, you old fuck?” he asked angrily.

The man refused to make eye contact.

“You want another drink?” the bartender demanded.

O’Connell could no longer see the man’s hands.

He laughed. “Not in a shit hole like this.” He rose and exited the bar, leaving the men behind in silence as he passed through the door. He made a mental note to come back sometime, and felt a surge of satisfaction. There was nothing, he thought, nearly as pleasurable in life as moving to an edge of something, and teetering back and forth.