"Fucking actor," Skip said, reaching to rumple Bobby's hair." 'Hark I hear the cannon's roar.' You know that joke?"

"I told you the joke."

" 'HarkI hear the cannon's roar.' When'd you ever hear a shot fired in anger? Last time they had a war," he said, "Bobby brought a note from his shrink. 'Dear Uncle Sam, Please excuse Bobby's absence, bullets make him crazy.' "

"My old man's idea," Bobby said.

"But you tried to talk him out of it. 'Gimmiea gun,' you said. 'Iwanna serve my country.' "

Bobby laughed. He had one arm around his girl and picked up his drink with his free hand. He said, "All I said was it sounded like dynamite to me."

Skip shook his head. "Dynamite's different. They're all different, different kinds of a bang. Dynamite's like one loud note, and a flatter sound than a cherry bomb. They all make a different sound. Grenade's completely different, it's like a chord."

"The lost chord," somebody said, and somebody else said, "Listen to this,it's poetry."

"I was going to call my joint Horseshoes amp; Hand Grenades," Skip said. "You know what they say, coming close don't count outside of horseshoes and hand grenades."

"It's a good name," Billie Keegan said.

"My partner hated it," Skip said. "FuckingKasabian, he said it didn't sound like a saloon, sounded like some kind of candy-ass boutique, some store inSoHo sells toys for private-school kids. I don't know, though. Horseshoes amp; Hand Grenades, I still like the sound of it."

"Horseshit and Hand Jobs," somebody said.

"MaybeKasabian was right, if that's what everybodywoulda wound up calling it." To Bobby he said, "You want to talk about the different sounds they make, you should hear a mortar. Someday getKasabian to tell you about the mortar. It's a hell of a story."

"I'll do that."

"Horseshoes amp; Hand Grenades," Skip said. "That's what weshoulda called the joint."

Instead he and his partner had called their place Miss Kitty's.