“Stop that right now. I’m afraid that you’ve had too much beer.”

“You treat me like garbage. I been good,” Mrs. Reilly sobbed. She turned to Darlene. “I spent all his poor Grammaw Reilly’s insurance money to keep him in college for eight years, and since then all he’s done is lay around the house watching television.”

“You oughta be ashamed,” Darlene said to Ignatius. “A big man like you. Look at your poor momma.”

Mrs. Reilly had collapsed, sobbing, on the bar, one hand clenched around her beer glass.

“This is ridiculous. Mother, stop that.”

“If I knew you was so crool, mister, I wouldna listened to your crazy story about that Greyhound bus.”

“Get up, Mother.”

“You look like a big crazyman anyway,” Darlene said. “I shoulda known. Just look how that poor woman’s crying.”

Darlene tried to push Ignatius from his stool but sent him crashing into his mother, who suddenly stopped crying and gasped, “My elbow!”

“What’s going on here?” a woman asked from the padded chartreuse leatherette door of the bar. She was a statuesque woman nearing middle age, her fine body covered with a black leather overcoat that glistened with mist. “I leave this place for a few hours to go shopping and look what happens. I gotta be here every minute, I guess, to watch out you people don’t ruin my investment.”

“Just two drunks,” the bartender said. “I’ve been giving them the cold shoulder since they come in, but they’ve been sticking like flies.”

“But you, Darlene,” the woman said. “You’re big friends with them, huh? Playing games on the stools with these two characters?”

“This guy’s been mistreating his momma,” Darlene explained.

“Mothers? We got mothers in here now? Business already stinks.”

“I beg your pardon,” Ignatius said.

The woman ignored him and looked at the broken and empty cake box on the bar, saying, “Somebody’s been having a picnic in here. Goddamit. I already told you people about ants and rats.”