“I shall have a coffee,” Ignatius said grandly. “Chicory coffee with boiled milk.”

“Only instant,” the bartender said.

“I can’t possibly drink that,” Ignatius told his mother. “It’s an abomination.”

“Well, get a beer, Ignatius. It won’t kill you.”

“I may bloat.”

“I’ll take a Dixie 45,” Mrs. Reilly said to the bartender.

“And the gentleman?” the bartender asked in a rich, assumed voice. “What is his pleasure?”

“Give him a Dixie, too.”

“I may not drink it,” Ignatius said as the bartender went off to open the beers.

“We can’t sit in here for free, Ignatius.”

“I don’t see why not. We’re the only customers. They should be glad to have us.”

“They got strippers in here at night, huh?” Mrs. Reilly nudged her son.

“I would imagine so,” Ignatius said coldly. He looked quite pained. “We might have stopped somewhere else. I suspect that the police will raid this place momentarily anyway.” He snorted loudly and cleared his throat. “Thank God my moustache filters out some of the stench. My olfactories are already beginning to send out distress signals.”

After what seemed a long time during which there was much tinkling of glass and closing of coolers somewhere in the shadows, the bartender appeared again and set the beers before them, pretending to knock Ignatius’s beer into his lap. The Reillys were getting the Night of Joy’s worst service, the treatment given unwanted customers.

“You don’t by any chance have a cold Dr. Nut, do you?” Ignatius asked.

“No.”

“My son loves Dr. Nut,” Mrs. Reilly explained. “I gotta buy it by the case. Sometimes he sits himself down and drinks two, three Dr. Nuts at one time.”

“I am sure that this man is not particularly interested,” Ignatius said.