Chapter Three

 

 

            A full house greeted him when Maxwell walked into the bar, and a small sign was scotch‑taped to the door asking for $5 admission. One of Wolfman's minions collected the money from just inside the door.

            "What's with the door charge?" Maxwell asked, a little annoyed. He had calculated this week’s extra cash and the $5 put a serious dent in his budget. Most often he milked one drink for the night, unless Wolfman pressed him.

            "All girl gala," the doorman said, works whistling through the space left by his two missing front teeth. "It's Wolfman's birthday."

            Maxwell moaned said, curing himself for not sticking to his usual routine. He had make a point to avoid weekends for this very reason. These events were common on Friday and Saturday nights.

            "I told you. It's Wolfman's birthday," the man said. "Either pay up or go away. Other people want to get in."

            Behind Maxwell, several bearded men with mach truck hats pressed through the outer door, stinking of highway and truck exhaust, their grim expression saying they were in no mood for nonsense.

            "Here," Maxwell said, pushing a wrinkled five into the minion’s moist palm, then plowed into the bar where he found a host of strangers hogging up the stools, the excess standing behind, wrists resting on the bar as if to claim their six inches of space, where their beer bottles and packs of cigarettes said.

            As Maxwell weaved his way through the maze of elbows and shoulders, he realized these were not strangers at all, but the more infrequent patrons who he saw only when their marriages or romances fell apart, the once in six‑month people who normally came to cry over their loses on the shoulders of some half‑naked dancer. But none were crying tonight. They had received word of the special occasion, and bloated the numbers who'd come to wish Wolfman a happy birthday.

            Someone ‑‑ most like Ruth ‑‑ had taken the trouble to decorate the bar for the occasion, too, pasting up red and blue balloons to various parts of the walls and ceiling. Some of these balloons had already come loose, or become deflated. Small, index‑sized party favors also hung, pictures of naked women in various sexual position, with party hats on, and printed birthday slogans written beneath.

            Wolfman had added to the affair by turning up some of the amber lights, a rare thing considering his routine complains about electric bills. Yet to Maxwell's mind, the elevated lights ruined everything, showing the cracks in the vinyl seats and the burn marks on the bar, and the thick layer of dust covering every bottle and shelf.

            "Maxwell!" Ruth called, pausing mid‑strike, three bottles gripping in the fingers of her right hand, two mixed drinks gripped in her left. "What are you doing here? This is Thursday."

            Maxwell shrugged. "I didn't want to go straight home after work," he said, glancing around for a place to sit, finding even his usual table taken. The only available space seemed to be a stool right in front of the stage. Even the irregulars knew better than to sit too close. "Is Patty dancing tonight?"

            Ruth nodded, then motioned him towards the seat. "I'll come talk in a minute," she said, and hurried off to make her deliveries.

            Maxwell stared around the bar again, searching for a more discrete location, and when none appeared, he sighed, dumping his notebook on the bar and hung his jacket on the back of the stool, and then, sat.

            The gala had not started yet, though one of the dancers stood near the juke box with two horny rednecks, wiggling her butt as she and they decided what music to play for her set. But the bone‑thin arms and legs clearly identified the dancer as someone other than Patty. To the south side, Wolfman sat amid the clamorous praise of his minions, a huge birthday cake sat on a small car table just behind him ‑‑ between the end of the bar and the pool table, its top littered with unlighted candles. His minions giggled and laughed and slapped him on the back, wishing him another 54 glorious years.

            "Don't let his shit‑eating look fool you," Ruth said as she appeared in front of Maxwell with a Coors Lite. "He's in a foul mood."

            "Why? Doesn't he like birthdays?"

            "Party crap," Ruth said, leaning against the inside rim of the bar, her auburn hair glinting in the bar light like fire week, its straight cut down over her ears, made her look something like a boy. Only her rich lips and luscious green eyes saved her, eyes that twinkled as she glanced at Maxwell. She seemed remarkably amused. "He had a fight with Patty again. She didn't want to dance at his party."

            "That shouldn't be a big surprise," Maxwell said. "Almost everybody knows she hates these things ‑‑ though I would think money is money and she wouldn't care. With six girls, she would get paid the same for less work."

            Ruth laughed, her work‑reddened hand reaching across the bar to squeeze Maxwell's.

            "You really are refreshing, Maxwell," she said, her lips parted a little now that she stared into his face. "Any other man in this place would know what Patty's problem is. But you just don't think like most men."

            "I don't understand," Maxwell said.

            "Of course, you don't," Ruth said,

            She looked as if she wanted to say more, but the front door burst open and the parade of snow-clad men marched in, each stomping his feet, each rubbing his hands before eyeing the bar for a seat. The juke box came alive with the tunes the dancer had settled on, and the slightly pudgy man near the stage straightened as the dancer passed, her hair flowing behind her like blond fire.

            Ruth sighed, smiled worriedly at Maxwell, then made her way back, just in time to greet the string of orders from the crowd of men. The music drowned out all but the sound of their boasting laughter as they settled along the north side, circling its curbed top like a latex cover, men pealing off wool coats and sailor-style knitted woolen hats. They looked like grizzly bears shedding their skins, changing back to men as they traded the Canadian-chill-winds of Paterson's street for the Miami-like interior of the bar.             Wolfman, the bar owner, kept the heat intentionally high in Winter, after he had calculated the additional cost in heating oil and how it compared to the increased volume of beer sales the additional heat produced. Even with the thermostat turned up, the dancers still complained about the bar feeling too cold.

            Maxwell pealed off his own coat, dropping it around the back of the chair. He'd experienced Wolfman's tactics often enough to wear nothing more than an army-green T-shirt under his coat, it's breast pocket cluttered with pens. From his location, he could see all but the Southeastern corner of the bar, and that shadowy region near the men's room beyond the pool table. The dancer, parading down the far side of the bar, disappeared for a moment behind the wall of whisky bottles and alcohol display ads around the cash register to appear again at the foot of the bar, near Wolfman's traditional stool.

            Wolfman, with his thick black beard and his protruding black brows, laid claim to the whole south side of the bar. He liked to keep his eye on things and guarded the single access to the inner area with all the tenacity of a pittbull, snarling his disapproval when his "girls" wore too much or played the wrong kind of music.

            "Nice and slow," he told the dancers. "I want you to grind it out for the boys."

            Wolfman could never forget Vaudeville and the more luxurious kind soft strip tease he used to sneak in to see when he was a kid. He seemed to gauge each dancer in those half remembered images of girls who danced back then, and developed most of his weekly schedule based on those memories -- although no modern dancer ever lived up to his expectation.

            "If only I had a Victoria again," he often mumbled. "Now there was a dancer."

            After a brief and obviously marginally satisfactory inspection by Wolfman, the dancer made her way back along the interior of the bar, passing bottles of no-name whisky and stacks of drying beer mugs. The dull blue, white and red from the beer advertisement signs alternately transformed the color of her thin face, emphasizing the rigidly placed make-up, the lines of her lipstick seemed as sharp as the edge of a razor blade, and her eyeliner and eye shadow looked like the cross hairs to a sharp-shooter's scope. As she walked, she looked neither right nor left, though the bar on both sides had now filled up with burly men, all clamoring for her attention.

      She mounted the stage with all the dexterity of a cowboy mounting a horse, stumbling a little as she straightened to survey the crowd. Her green gaze registered each man with cold calculation, eyeing them not as men but dollar tips. She didn’t immediately start to dance, though the music swelled over her with an appropriate grinding rhythm, and some men shuffled down the bar to the narrowest section temporarily filling in the seats near the pudgy fellow.

       No one needed to worry yet, Maxwell thought, not with this dancer anyway.

            He sipped his Coors. The cold brew tingling on the tip of his tongue with its usual first sip's pleasure.

            They had to fear the other dancer, and those wise enough to know this, would scramble back for cover when she came – though none would likely leave the bar entirely or compete with Maxwell for his more remote seat at the bar. None would want to miss the fun.

      Then, the music changed from a white soulless grind music of 1970s pop tune by Cheap Trick to a herky-jerky dance tune by Prince. The dancer shook herself, as if recovering from a day dream, and slowly started to dance. She swung her arms and moved her feet, more a shuffling kind of tap dance that reminded Maxwell of kids skipping rope, or the teen age practice sessions girls held at Summer parties. But this looked automatic, arms and legs going through a ritual of performance while the dancer’s mind slipped back into another day dream.

       The men hooted and hollered just the same. She drifted elsewhere, her hard green gaze focused towards the door, staring a blank section above the blinking Miller sign. Her movement corresponded more to the blinking sign than to the music.

       "Hey toots!" one man shouted, his broad shoulder and red hair straight out of legends of Paul Bunyan, his wide face hanging over the inside of the bar like a piece of falling cliff. He reached over the bar, muscular arm extended towards her in an effort to give her a dollar bill. "Don't you want this?"

      The dancer blinked, then frowned, and finally stared down at the extended hand, squinting to make out just what the man was holding. Finally, she smiled, as unthinkingly as she danced, sharp lines cutting deep ridges at the sides of her mouth. She looked suddenly hungry, except for the eyes. Their hard stare did not cooperate with the rest of her face, and made her seem as if she wore two faces at once, a smiling vapid face below a face of outrage. Maxwell almost missed the movement of her hand as it shot out and snatched the bill away from the man. The money vanished into some hidden recess of her skimpy costume.

            "Thank you, honey," the dancer said with all the warmth of an automatic teller machine. She resumed her dancing.

      Down at the end of the bar, Wolfman's broad face grew red beneath his beard. He slammed the flat of his hand down on the bar, rocking several nearby drinks. Even though the content of Wolfman's booming voice was buried under the wail of the jukebox music, Maxwell knew what the man said, having heard it repeated nightly to describe almost every dancer who ever took to Wolfman’s stage.

       "She calls that dancing? My Grandmother could do that much, and she's in a wheelchair," Wolfman shouted.

      The hangers-on giggled into their fists, glancing at each other in excited anticipation of what would happen next, provided Wolfman was drunk enough. That part of the ritual always depended on his level of inebriation, or if rush hour traffic had tied him up downtown where he could ponder the ruin of Paterson's one-time vaudeville theaters. More than one girl got shifted from the monthly schedule because of Wolfman's nostalgia for the Plaza, US or Garden theaters while on his way to work.

      The man's nostrils reddened, measuring his alcohol level the way a thermometer measured temperature. And tonight, his nostrils were very red, a bad sign for anyone unfamiliar with the usual sequence of events. Wolfman even glared at Maxwell, his black eyes glowing with annoyance, as if Maxwell's scribbling into notebooks at one of the side tables set a bad example for other patrons.

       "If you don't pay attention to the girls, people'll think something's wrong with them, and they won't look at them either," Wolfman once told Maxwell. "After a while, word'll get around that my girls are ugly or something, and then people'll stop coming around. The girls is what keeps men coming and drinking, and I don’t need no trouble-makers spoiling things for me. What the hell are you writing in those notebooks for anyway? You writing a book?"

            "No," Maxwell told him. "Poetry."

      "Poetry? You mean like Shakespeare or something?"

      "More like Rimbaud."

      "Never heard of him," Wolfman growled. "Why do you got to write it here? Why don't you go over to the library?"

      "Because this is where life is," Maxwell said. "This is where I can find the real people."

      "Real people, bah!" Wolfman exploded. "You're full of shit. Real people! There ain’t no real people here no more than there are in that empty head of yours. Horny people, I got. Drunk people, I got. But real people? I don’t even know what they fucking are."

      Maxwell would have described Wolfman as one, and Ruth, and many of the more earthy figures who came through the door of the club on a nightly basis, their hands blistered from digging ditches or fixing cars, cab drivers, truck drivers, people driving buses. Each and every one of them reminding Maxwell of his uncles when he was a kid, Ed, Fred, Harry, Charlie, and the aunts who make life possible for their working men, cooking meals, cleaning laundry, starting the water for a bath.

      Creeley, of course, thought all this crazy, too.

      "Real people? How would you describe the unreal? Do they have two heads and ten arms?"

      "They write poetry and music," Maxwell said.

      "WHAT?" Creeley yelped, his normally composed face, shattering into a spray of wrinkles. "But you're a poet! Are you condemning yourself, too?"

            "I'm not like the others. At least, I don't want to be. The other kind ruined this town with their parading around, acting like artists, talking like artists, doing all the things artists do, except make art."

            Even the club was a legacy to their failing ability, revived from the doldrums of an eye-opening morning side bar for waking winos by the misconceived notion of town hall that Paterson could become a new Greenwich Village or Woodstock, New York – a Paterson which by January, 1986, didn’t even have a proper exit or entrance to the interstate highway, whose main street had been stolen store by store by the developers of Willowbrook Mall. Industries shut their doors here, leaving behind empty brick hulks marking the city’s former glory. Residents here lined up daily before the unemployment office as if Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin had come back to life to give a concert with the unemployment the only source for tickets.

            All this, the city hoped, would be cured by art.

            Up went new housing, or rather, the city gutted the old silk facilities on Mill Street, remodeled them, then put up signs proclaiming them as "artist housing." In flocked every fraud and counterfeiter within Paterson's advertising radius, each claiming himself or herself a creator, each displaying bundles of wire, glass and glue, or manuscripts of badly written plays, or tapes full of monstrously performed music. Other developers, believing the city’s hype, moved in and purchased whole blocks in anticipation of the revival, turning out the paying business tenants in the belief more posh businesses would move in.

            Existing store owners turned their available storage space into lofts.  And for a while, flamboyant characters did parade the streets, jaws set, noses uplifted, in a mock imitation of the later, commercial Greenwich Village and Soho, people so taken with themselves that they could easily have lived on the East Side of Manhattan, where a sense of superiority was a virtue, and everyone else was scum. These people hardly noticed the groveling masses sitting in closed storefront doorways, hardly heard their pleas for change, and certainly didn’t know that this arrival of art had done much to help further their misery, displacing people from cheap apartments so that the expected galleries would have someplace to go.

            In the frenzy of all this, this one small bar on Market Street found itself the focus of this new crowd, people who said Wolfman’s wino bar ought to be a jazz club, like the jazz clubs that had dominated Paterson in the past. Half the artists who flocked to this club never even heard Jazz before. Of the other half, only a small percentage liked it or understood it, yet endured it and this smelly club, claiming both as the Mecca of a new artistic Paterson. As for poetry, this crowd knew even less about it than jazz, and what that crowd wrote and read wouldn't have served as bathroom graffiti for Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams or Allen Ginsberg. In fact, the city, developers and these so-called artists relied upon some miraculous arrival to set fire to this artistic movement, some figure as great as Whitman, Williams or Ginsberg to lead this movement across the sea of credibility to the promised land all the hype had sold. But Whitman and Williams were dead, and Ginsberg committed to other places and other projects, left Paterson without a prophet, and when none emerged from the flock itself, the flock fled.

            Certainly some hung on, clinging to arts grants from the state and federal government, using each to pay rent, buy dope, and live comfortably, while still manufacturing trash in the name of verse. But few of these actually represented the local population in color or ethnic makeup, no Latinos, a few blacks. Most were white people holding readings and living high until the federal government took SETA money upon which they lived, and Ronald Reagan's administration ended the Paterson Renaissance. Then, as if waves ripping over footsteps in sand, Paterson went back to what it was, and Wolfman's bar -- like all the jazz clubs which had occupied Paterson in the 1930, 1940, and 1950s, turned into a go go joint.

            Only Maxwell remained, awed by the transformation, finding  true inspiration in these hard and sun bleached faces, inspiration for real art. Two nights a week he came here with note pad and pen, and sat in the shadows trying to capture some of their reality – Wolfman only begrudgingly accepting his presence, as long as Maxwell's glass remained full.

            "This ain't no fucking art studio,"  the man grumbled once. "You want to be here, you drink -- like everybody else."

      Most times, when seated at the cafe tables, Maxwell escaped Wolfman's scrutiny. But on nights when a bad mood came upon Wolfman – and inferior dancing always brought on such a mood – the man's gaze roved the bar, seeking out someone upon whom he could vent his frustration. Maxwell had been asked to leave more than once on that account.

       Even Wolfman's giggling associates wavered a little when the man glanced from side to side, his eyes pounding the bar room like jack hammers, and then, those same sad characters sagged as the gaze moved on. One by one, Wolfman evaluated the bar patrons, until he came upon the middle of the bar – the "Tease zone" where the pudgy newcomer sat hunched over his beer, both hands frozen on the frosted bottle as if expecting someone to snatch it away. The soft, pimpled face looked up at the dancer, the eyes pleading for affection.

            Wolfman's mood changed instantly. The lines of rage evaporated from his craggy face, replaced by the upperly tilted lines produced by his smile, like crow marks chiseled into the skin beside his eyes. His pink tongue moistened his lips with grand expectations, a starving man might have for a three course  dinner. Down came his hand onto the bar, rocking the drinks as the blow had before, only this time accompanied by a roar of laughter.

      "Ladies and gentlemen, we got us a show tonight," he hollered. "Just give that fat man a beer."

      Ruth hustled down the length of the bar, carrying a bottle of Miller. The pudgy man glanced at her, then at the bottle, the lust fading into suspicion in his eyes.

       "I didn’t order that," he said, gaze flickering towards the small accumulation of singles stacked beside his bottle on the bar. He counted them with his gaze, mouth crinkling with the disappointed result.

      "It's on the house," Ruth told him in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, as much like a banker as a bartender, justifying an account overage by saying it was due to accumulated interest. By this time, she had seen this reaction so often, she no longer acted surprised.

      But the man's eyes only narrowed, and his gaze shifted uncertainly behind the half-closed lids. His lips, normally thick and pink, pressed tight into two thin lines.

            "Why?" he asked, his voice barely discernible above the pounding beat of Michael Jackson.

            Ruth sagged and cast a pleading look towards Wolfman, like a kind-hearted executioner over the whimper of a hapless victim.

            Wolfman glared – jabbing his forefinger to tell her to put down the drink, his own dark eye full of sudden dread of the man’s possibly walking out.

      "Not yet, not yet," Wolfman's eyes said. "Not until she comes out, and then you won’t want to leave."

      "It's because you're a new face around here," Ruth explained, her red lips pursed sourly with the lie, as her slumped shoulders accepted the burden of Wolfman’s command. "First time customers always get one on the house. It’s a tradition."

      The suspicion drained from the pudgy man's face. His eyes opened again, and glinted with pleasure, so round and trusting, even Maxwell had to look away.

      "Why, that's really neighborly of you people," the man said, his voice little more than a squeak. "I was pretty nervous about coming into this place, you know. I don't mean this place in particular, but Paterson in general. After all, people say Paterson's pretty rough if you get in with the wrong crowd. But you people make me feel right at home."

       Ruth looked embarrassed, yet still managed to produce a weak smile of  her own.

       "We aim to please," she said in the same flat voice, as she wiped the dots of condensation and the bottle rings from the bar in front of the man.

            Then, pivoting around with one more glare at Wolfman, Ruth marched up to the bar's northern loop, far away from Wolfman, the new comer and the go go dancer’s stage, her face dripping in disgust.

      Others noticed the exchange, besides Maxwell and Wolfman's giggling south end minions. And the stiff-jawed, thick-browed northenders didn't exactly approve, their brush-like mustaches twitching as they eyed newcomer. They disliked strangers, and changes and anything that disrupted the dull routine of drinking and dancing. They disliked the pudgy man. They disliked Wolfman’s expectations. For that matter, they disliked Wolfman, the bar, the dancers and everything else that flew, walked or crawled over the face of the earth, including themselves.

      For the most part, these men remained from those patrons who came here previously, before the go go, before the jazz, when they wandered here in the morning for their first drink and again here at night for their last. They accompanied the winos here in daylight and the workers here after dark, hearing the same woes of misunderstanding wives and children who hate them, nodding their heads over these stories, giving the same sage advice: “Have another drink.” Some of these men had accompanied their own fathers here, when people called them the old timers, and some whose grandfathers had come here, each father passing his place down to his son, each stool owned by sheer volume of years. Many of these men’s butts spent more time on these worn cushions than on their chairs at work, literally staking out their claim to them that few dared challenge. The names of their families had long been carved in the bar top, with feuds fought between one stool and another for three or four generations, without the final family members even understanding the reason for the conflict, carrying these on the way they carried on all the other traditions of their stay here, as if to violate one rule would exile them forever.

       Over all those years, each Northender had learned to hate every other Northender for some small slight issued him or a family member. While none could recall the slight itself, any and all could recount the blow by blow of every fight succeeding it, every chair shattered, every head busted, every rip-roaring drunken explosion of curses. Many could recount the number of stitches each fight brought them, bragging over them as if marks of distinction. And though they hated and distrusted each other, they hated and distrusted everyone else more, and the one thing that would unite them would be someone attacking them who hadn’t sat on one of these stools for three generations. And each knew they – or someone bearing their name – would remain seated her, keeping things as  they were, no matter who owned the bar, or what kind of people came or went, until doomsday.

      Maxwell had talked to them often, listening to their stories about the rise and fall of the Paterson Silk barons, some could even remember working in the mills themselves, and certainly could recall the tales of their fathers doing so, and they could recall with great tragedy in their voices of when the silk mills were abandoned. They talked about when Continental Can Company came in, and complained about when Continental Can Company screwed them as it went out. They talked about the younger generation, still tying 1950s greasers in with 1970s Hippies, and 1970s Punks, and 1980s black rappers, as if anyone under 60 years old could not be trusted. They could remember newcomers of each coming here, and how each had dragged his own kind of music into the jukebox, chasing out Frank Sinatra with du whop, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Sex Pistols and such, recalling the misery of each and the relief at each of these newcomers passing.

      Passing was the wrong word, of course.

      While newcomers never evolved into Northenders, some did settle into the ranks of regulars, men who settled into the less prestigious seat along the other part of the long oval bar, coming and going in shifts, showing up on Tuesdays or Thursdays, or on Weekends, and far less particular about what seat they got as long as they could see the dancer. Often, these men popped in for a quick drink and peek at flesh before going home to wives and family, or to the loneliness of the Paterson Y. They were cab drivers, book makers, factory workers, construction men, off-duty cops, even some minor politician, a squirming mass of human lust, who preferred go go bars and prostitutes than the ill luck of the pick up bars in South Paterson or Clifton. Sometimes, these men spent whole nights here, clinging to the hope one girl might accept their bribes. Some did. Most just leaned forward and let these poor fools stuff singles between their breasts.

      These regulars could evolve – if they survived their hormones and he accepted them – into one of Wolfman's minions, that crowd of giggling, horny drunks to whom Wolfman granted occasional favors, regulars who amused him enough to have him share in the spoils of the bar, the after closing gang bangs with the more accepting dancers, full of blow jobs and hand jobs and pokes up the ass, that left them a giggling mass of anticipation during those times when the bar was open. The Southenders, however, lived a much more precarious existence, constantly fearing some look or laugh or drunken remark will cause Wolfman to evict them, constantly envying the Northenders’ immunity to Wolfman. They even envied the other regulars who did not depend upon the owner's good will. The minions seemed to see themselves as something less than everybody, connected, but not connected, seeking any small sense of superiority.

      For this reason, the Southenders most appreciated what Wolfman called "the show," appreciated the humiliation newcomers felt when confronted with Wolfman’s special dancer, Patty.  And for that reason, they eyed the blue face of the bar clock, giggling and drooling, sucking up drink after drink so as to get the full flavor of what would happen when Patty stepped out onto the stage.

            "Not long now," their red eyes said. "And boy will it be fun!"       On danced the first girl, as oblivious to their clock watching stares as they had become oblivious to her, each click of the time-piece simply a moment closer to her break. Only the pudgy man studied her, his soft lips pursed and his brown eyes growing round and bright and excited. He looked ready to leap up at any moment and cry eureka, though one pink hand gripped the bar and the other his beer bottle, condensation dripping down over his warm, fat fingers.

            Then, the music stopped.

      The dancer halted, her arms dropped abruptly to her sides, as if the same quarter that had activated the music, had activated her. She bent – her thin legs folding in on themselves like a car jack – as her sharp nails scraped up her possessions: purse, shirt, extras set of shoes. Then she took up the drink one of the other new comers had bought her, his petty bribe towards making getting her to sit with him. But she paid no attention to the man, just pushed one leg off the side of the stage, then the other, and made her clattering retreat down the interior of the bar towards Wolfman and the exit, minions giggling at her as she passed. She took no notice of them either, or Wolfman's disgusted expression, passing him, and then beyond the bar, passing the pool table, the unused dance floor and the one-time poetry stage until she disappeared into the ladies room.

      Silence filled her wake – which was in turned filled with the small scrapings and muffled coughs of men moving their glasses, bottles, chairs and ashtrays or clearing their throats. One man flipped open the metal top of his army-style cigarette lighter, thumbed the flint wheel, igniting the wick, then, without lighting a cigarette, shut the lid on top of the flame. Another man moved several coins back and forth along the wet top of the bar, shifting dines to alternate with quarters. Yet another man, rubbed his forefinger along the top of his glass, creating a low musical moan – something that seemed to come from  the collection of men, not the glass or his finger, growing more and more intense the faster his finger went. Yet always, the men glanced back towards the ladies room, studying the still-empty space between the pool table and the old-fashioned frosted-glass sign that above the ladies room door, one of its two bulbs burned out so no one could actually read the lettering. Almost every one of the regulars wore the same agitated expression, theirs gazes shifting towards Wolfman to ask: "Well? Where is she?"

      Even the stern Northenders stared, their smug expressions impatient to have all this nonsense over and done with so that the mood of the place could go back to what it had been before this pudgy newcomer came. And they stared at him, as if it was the poor pudgy man's fault the place had become disrupted. How dare he come in here like this! How dare make the barroom feel as uncomfortable as it did! But if the new comer noticed any of this, his blank expression denied it. He didn't even notice how the regular customers had shifted their own stools away from his, giving themselves an extra six inches on either side so that they wouldn't – mistakenly – become targets instead. Up went the pudgy man's bottle, then down again, his motion as unthinking as the former dancer's had been, his consciousness still consumed by his now-calming hormones. Any anxiety he displayed came from the desire to have the next dancer come out and re-stiffen his wilting hard-on.

            At that moment, Patty marched out of the ladies room, gliding across the scuffed tiles with the remarkable grace of a ice skater, though she lacked the petite size and shape of such an athlete. She hardly had eyebrows at all, and those that showed sharply in the dim light, she had painted on. And her face bore a rigidity that no man could stare at long and imagine part of a love scene – if that was all she had to offer. Her mouth stretched too far across her face, thin-lipped and straight, contradicting the tiny nose that seemed lost between the other elements.  But men did stare at her, and men did imagine what they might do with her if they could tame her long enough to get her into bed.

            Part of it, Maxwell believed, was the liquidity of her motion, her arms, legs and torso part of some more finely crafted machine. Where as the other dance might have served science fiction as a robot, Patty clearly had the superior elements that went into making an android. Nothing clinked or clanked, every muscle moved with perfect control, as if she had mapped out every step of her journey to the bar while still in the ladies room, and now, with the confidence of a pilot, and she followed her flight plan flawlessly.  Not one man in the whole bar remained unaware of her, even though they pretended to be. The men at the pool table paused in mid-shot, stood up straight, stumbling back as she passed. The Southenders ceased giggling and fidgeting, frozen into their moment of anticipation, their faces painted thickly with the mixed colors of pleasure and horror, each of the upcoming events reeling across their eyes from previous viewing, though they knew even the long-resident Northenders could not predict what Patty would do or say when she actually mounted the stage. They knew only that it would be remarkable.

            Only Wolfman and the pudgy man seemed unmoved, or perhaps, lacked the mingled feelings others felt. Wolfman had seen Patty more than anyone, had compared her in his head to other women of a different age, and understood her act better than anyone, and he knew it was an act, and appreciated as an act, and loved, cherished and admired Patty for every nuance of that act. The pudgy man, however, actually seemed disappointed, squinting at Patty in the dim light, clearly preferring the clicky-clack of the woman who had previously danced. He would learn better, yet in that moment, his face showed his growing distaste, and that alone made many of the regulars forget their pity for him.

            "He deserves what he gets," their eyes now said.

            Wolfman's eyes said something else, and he grabbed her arm before she could slip passed him through the gap to get to behind the bar.

            "You're gained weight," he said.

            Patty turned, glared down at the thick fingers that gripped her flesh, her flat upper lip suddenly curling up like the edge of a whip.

            "Fuck you!" she snapped.

            "No thanks," Wolfman said, removing a cigar butt from one corner of his mouth, studying it for a moment, then replacing it. "I've seen what you do to your victims. I'm concerned with the deal we had."

            "Deal? What deal?"

            "You dance for me only if you keep off weight."

            "Come off it, Jim," Patty said, slashing at a strand of hair that dared worm its way down across her face. "You can't afford to fire me. I bring in the bacon for you."

            "I can't afford to have no blimp floating over my dance floor," Wolfman said. "This is a go go club, not the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I'm cutting you off until you lose some weight."

            "Cutting me off?" Patty roared. "You mean as in no alcohol?"

            "That s right."

            "Why, you son of a ..."

            Patty took a step forward, her fist raised as if to strike Wolfman's face, her hand closed into a fist, not to slap him, but to punch him in the nose.

            "You touch me, girl, and you'll never work for me again," Wolfman said in a voice like dry ice, the humor drained totally from his eyes.

            Patty's fist hovered in the air, then slowly fell back to her side.

            "You're still a son of a bitch," she said. "I got a day job. I get enough aggravation there without having to hear it from you at night as well. You know I can't dance dry. How about a limit? I could live with that."

            "How much of a limit?"

            "Six drinks."

            "One."

            "One? Are you fucking out of your mind? Suppose somebody wanted to buy me a drink, am I supposed to say no?"

            "You could drink soda."

            "Don't make me sick. Four drinks, that's the lowest I'll go."

            "Two, or you can go get dressed right now."

            Wolfman removed the cigar from his mouth, motioned vaguely towards the ladies room with it, then returned the butt to the corner of his mouth. Patty's gaze followed the motion, her blue eyes sharp and hard, even though the dim light dilated the pupils.

            "Three," she said. "That's a good compromise, isn't it?"

            Wolfman gnawed on the cigar as he studied her – the anger in his eyes eased again, returning to that mingled expression of humor and caution.

            "All right," he said. "Three. But you make a ruckus when the time comes to cut you off and I'll have you tossed out onto the street. I don't want no riot in here tonight."

            Patty smiled, and touched her chest with her finger tips, the red nails as sharp and bloody as a cat's after a long drawn out alley fight.

            "Me? Cause trouble?"

            "Yeah, you," Wolfman said. "Now get your quarters and set up your music before I change my mind. I don't know why I'm so kind to you. I don't let any of the other girls get away with talking the way you do."

            "None of the other girls deliver the way I do," Patty said, with a smile nearly as sharp as a sneer.

            "Get!" Wolfman said, though his eyes shone again, and the earlier expectant excitement returned to his face.

            Ruth put five quarters into Patty s palm, and then returned to fill the orders now clamoring from around the bar, every patron in a hurry to get his drinks before the action started. Few of these men met her gaze as she paraded down the eastern side of the bar towards the jukebox near the front door, each man diverted his eyes just as she approached.  She seemed to accept this as her due, her expression smug, the undisputed queen of Wolfman's world, marching down the aisle in the first moment of her bi-weekly coronation. But no queen ever walked so scantily dressed, nor with orange tassels dangling from the tip of her breasts – with firm nipples pressing out from the brazier like outfit she wore.

            She seemed disappointed at the small size of the crowd and the caliber of people. She glanced at the multiple faces of Wolfman staring back at her in the angles of the mirrors. She glanced at Maxwell, at the middle bar regulars, at the newcomers, and finally at the crowd of stone-jawed Northenders. Her expression grew grim with her calculations; absent were the curious businessmen, horny salesmen, legal clerks, office workers, postal people, court administrators and others of downtown's middle management off whom she took the deepest tips, these types hanging around the long hours after their offices and stores closed just to catch her act.  Although more people had come than was usually for a winter night, the room wasn't packed. The contempt showed on Patty's face, her mouth twisting into sneer, promising  she would take someone's head off before the night ended.

            Then, she saw the pudgy man, and a slow, mean smile began to show on her face.

            By the time she reached the jukebox, she had already made up her mind on what songs she wanted to play, and her fingers punched out the code for each with the same professional beat as an accountant over a calculator.  Her retreat, however, did not take her passed the pudgy man again. Instead, she pranced around the stern-eyed Northenders whose heads did not turn. She blew kisses at them as she passed. She patted some on the back, calling them "Sweetheart," "Honey" or "Cutie."  The newcomers and middle bar regulars  welcomed her with grins, especially those whom she had victimized in the past and knew they would not get the same treatment tonight, looking forward to watching some other poor fool squirm under her attentions instead.

            Wolfman rocked back on his stool and scowled, jerking his hand up in a sign that he wanted her to hurry, teeth now firmly grasping  the tip of his cigar as if he would soon bite completely through it.

            "Now that you're finished taking the tour, do you mind getting up to dance?" Wolfman asked when she finally reached him again and pushed through the gap to the inner bar.

            She grinned, wiggled her fingers at him, and then paraded up the interior in exactly the same fashion she had the exterior, only now easing along the east side, her gaze making a closer survey of the pudgy man.

            "What's your name?" Patty asked him when she was finally up on the stage, glancing over her shoulder at him, her face caught in the beam of a red bar light. Even now, nothing about her face bragged of beauty. If anything her too-broad face hinted of the dull Eastern European heritage that most people associated with the word "peasant," eyes too far apart, her nose, subtly flattened, and thick at the bottom, floating above the mouth. In high school, someone might have called her "a cow," but no one in the bar did. Her so subtly smug expression defied the crowd, and somehow transformed her into an attractive being, her whole manner making up for the flaws of her individual pieces.

            "B-B-Billy," the pudgy man said.

            "Billy what?"

            "Bilby."

            She stared at him twice, blue eyes flashing with the humorous disbelief one tall-tale artist reserves for another, though she blinked this look away, trading it for something more cunning.

"Billy Bilby?" she asked.

            "Mother calls me, William."

            "I'll bet she does," Patty said, drawing a chuckle from those near enough to hear the exchange. "What would mother said if she knew you were hanging out in a place like this?"

            Red splotches colored poor Billy's puffy cheeks.

            "She doesn't know I'm here, or even th-that I'm out of the h-house."

            Patty lifted her long forefinger to her lips, its sharp  red nail poking into the crack like the edge of a razor, her eyes glinting again in the bar light.

            "It's our little secret," she said, and then turned as Wolfman pounded on the bar, with some primitive jungle message ordering her to dance. And she, responding to it, began to move her limbs, arms and legs falling into a rhythm so smooth it did not seem like dancing so much as -- as a mass seduction. Bruce Hornsby music followed by Fleetwood Mach, played on the jukebox, then the songs moved through the history of pop music from 1965 to the present, sliding through Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson in-between songs to which no other dancer would not dance.

            The whole time, she surveyed the bar from her new elevated perspective, a remnant of her former thoughtful smile clinging to her lips. She surveyed the northenders, and the southenders, she surveyed those nearest to her along the narrowest part of the bar, making sure  that every face was turned up at her. She wouldn't stand for any downcast eyes. She wouldn't stand for any shy faces, all making up a fence around her, an enclosure in which she could continue her dance. And then, once contained, she did everything to break free, swiveling her hips, swaying and shaking and flowing across the dance floor, her eyes and their eyes locked into a tug of war -- her gyrating limbs and hips and shifts of chest, too subtle to be called dance. These places of her anatomy made promises. Her fingers flexed, and petted, caressed and soothed. She exposed sections of flesh no man would have found sensual on another woman, but on her, any and every inch of exposure created a ruckus of surging hormones. She did not caress her breasts or pinch her nipples the way other dancers might have. She did not stick her hand down between her legs and move up and down on it, pretending it was a man's penis. She just melted and molted, grinding out each man's passion as if against a stone, and each man cried out for more, each man peeling dollar bills from their wallets and pushing them at her, and when she ignored their offerings, they pushed more at her, dropping them like still green leaves onto the bar floor where she might recover them later.  By the third song, sweat dribbled down from her stark black hair. She stopped, bent, recovering a small pink towel from her bag and deliberately patted the pellets from her face. Then, with one painted eyebrow raised, she glared at Billy Bilby again. He sat transfixed -- his hand glued to his beer bottle, his mouth set at a queer angle, as if the mind behind the wide open eyes struggled to work out the mystery of Patty's attraction.

            The right side of her upper lip rose, revealing a single canine tooth. Her blue eyes sparkled as she changed the rhythm of her dance.

            Maxwell had seen this part of the act before -- though it lacked any sense of routine.  Her arms and legs grew even more limber, melting into each movement: hands rising from her knees, past her thighs and eventually, with just the slightest hesitation, reached to her breasts -- sharp red nails tweaking, only in an instant gesture -- the very tip of the fabric around her protruding nipples.

            Then, her hands swayed with her, thrust over her head, and her fingers wiggled, Billy Bilby wiggling with them, his arms, legs, torso twisting in an erotic torture he struggled to endure, reacting not to his own desire but to some command issued to him from Patty on the stage, as if every part of his pudgy body reacted to pulled strings. At moment, he might have leaped out of his chair, obeying whatever command she gave him.

            He sweated more than she did, and when he could break himself free of his twitching, he wiped his pudgy face on his already sweat soaked sleeve, only to have the beads of sweat reappear instantly. At this point, he started to suck on his beer, and emptied bottle after bottle without realizing it. Without word, perhaps with some signal issued from the stage, Ruth rushed up and replaced the bottle, sliding it onto the bar, before ducking out of the line of fire again.  As if planned that way, the voice of Madonna started up on the jukebox and Patty's broad face pouted from the stage. One shoulder eased down as the other rose, then in a back and forth battle, she released one strap, and then the other, and finally let the top of her outfit flopped forward, her two perfect breasts easing out of their cups.

            Billy Bilby's jaw dropped like an unhinged gate, one single breath before he threatened to cease breathing totally.

            Wolfman whooped!

            Patty's spell collapsed around her amid the giggles of Wolfman's minions, giggles that ran along the southside of the bar like spreading fire so that even the mid-bar regulars started laughing.

            Patty's deft fingers flipped up her top and reattached the straps, first over one shoulder, then the other, as Madonna's voice sang "like a virgin."

            Ruth rushed along the interior of the bar, responding to the sudden surge in orders for drinks. Southenders, regulars and newcomers, too, rattling on in a sudden gush about Patty's act. Only Billy Bilby remained silent, his mouth just then snapping shut and his breath returning.  His now-squinting eyes did a quick and angry study of the other patrons, all of whom grinned at him, chatted at him, laughing openly in his face – he clearly understanding about his becoming their evening entertainment, subject to review, analysis and comparison with others who had come before him.

            Then, his narrow eyes turned towards Patty again, as full of rage now as they had been full of desire a moment earlier, red rising into his cheek and then onto his wrinkled forehead. His hand fell limp from the beer bottle as he finally pulled himself off his stool. He pulled money out of his pocket, coins and bills falling onto the bar in a confused tumble well over the amount of his drinks. Then, with his mouth suddenly pinched tight, he staggered towards the door.

            "Say hello to Momma for us," one of  the semi-regulars said as Billy Bilby passed.

            Billy did not turn his head. Some men handled Patty's act better. Some laughed, bought a round of drinks, and then slid quietly out later to curse her, and later return to watch some other victim suffer as they had. Some men blew up, waved their fist and threatened to beat the shit out of her – such men Wolfman escorted out on the end of his shotgun.

            Billy bumped into the jukebox, on his way out, looked at it, apologized to it, then staggered out.

            Patty stared triumphantly after the man, her hands on her hips.

            "Wimp," she said, and then took a drink from Ruth someone had thought to buy her as her prize.

            Ruth brought a fresh beer to Maxwell's table.

            "Some day she's going to pick on the wrong man," Ruth said.

            "Is there a right kind?" Maxwell asked, laughing, though Ruth s green eyes only glinted angrily at him.

            "She goes through cycles," Ruth said. "Sometimes she finds real bastards, and then sometimes, she finds men who get in it in their heads to try and save her."

            "Save her from what?"

            Ruth shrugged. "From this kind of life."

            "Does she want to be saved?"

            Ruth stared down at Maxwell. "She doesn’t even know she's lost," she said, and then looked even more serious. "Be careful, will you?"

            "I don't get you."

            Ruth smiled sadly, shook her head, then hurried away.

            Patty stepped down from the stage, leaving the next dancer to cool down the room.

            Kenny sipped his beer, and began to jot down notes in his book, images of the other men seated around the bar, images of the fool who had just departed. He did not notice the time, or the reappearance of Patty as she made her way back to the stage.

            "And just what the fuck do you think you're doing?" Patty snapped, her voice made louder by a break in songs on the juke box.        Men stirred around him, but he finished writing his sentence before glancing up to find the poor sucker Patty had picked on for her play.

            Then, when Maxwell glanced up, he found she was staring at him!  More time had passed than he could account for, and she had apparently been dancing for a while without Kenny noticing.         She tapped her foot, apparently waiting for him to respond, growing more wrathful over the delay.

            "Well?" she asked.

            "I d‑don't know what you mean," Maxwell said, grateful for the next record's sudden howl from the juke box, covering over his murmur. He expected the music to force Patty to dance, and by dancing, turn her attention elsewhere. She did not dance. Her attention did not waver. In fact, she walked to his side of the stage and jabbed her finger down towards his notebook.

            "I'm talking about all this writing stuff!" she said. "I see you in here, night after night, scribbling away in that book. Are you a detective? Or are you the next great American novelist?"

            Wolfman stirred at the end of the bar.  He found a fresh cigar, lighted it, and sat back to watch what would develop from this situation. While Maxwell did not resemble any of Patty's previous victims, lacking the pudgy innocence she seemed to find attractive, Maxwell had something odd enough to elicit the same satisfying response.

            Maxwell closed the notebook in a flutter of pages which sent the moist bar napkin flying down the bar. Other dancers had asked the same question from time to time, most presuming him a student or a teacher from the community college, doing or grading homework.            He often promoted this idea, afraid people here would act unnaturally if they suspected him of documenting their lives. Some seemed to remember him as a hold over from what the bar had a jazz and poetry scene, and those presumed him to be writing poetry. Wolfman had warned him once about causing trouble with that kind of stuff.

            "If I catch you giving any love poems to my girls, you're out of here."

            "What's wrong with love poems?" Maxwell had asked, half laughing.

            "It's sick," Wolfman said, his mouth twisting into a clear expression of disgust. "It's faggot stuff and I won't have none of it in my bar."

            "I beg to disagree," Maxwell started, then stopped, only then noting the intensity of the man's objections.

            "Beg all you want," Wolfman growled, jabbing his cigar at Maxwell's face. "But if one of those sweet things come out of that book or yours, you and that book are going out into the snow. And you'll stay out for good."

            "Well?" Patty asked, her sharp voice, dragging Maxwell back into the present. "Are you going to tell me what's in that notebook, or do I have to come down there and see for myself?"

            Maxwell saw Wolfman stir, the pleasure evaporating from under the beard as the man's big hands fell flat onto the bar top, his jaw clamping tightly around his cigar.

            "It's nothing," Maxwell said, letting his own hand fall on the notebook's black cover.

            "Nothing?" Patty squawked, now facing Maxwell fully, her long legs parted before him as she stared straight down at him from the stage. Men around the bar began to look annoyed. This wasn't her usual routine and didn't fit with her usual style. She didn't seem ready to slice Maxwell up the way she had all those pudgy men.    "Nothing, my ass. Every time I see you, you're scribbling into that book of yours. It must be something important if you pay more attention to it than you do to me."

            Maxwell fumbled the pen as he attempted to shove it back into his shirt pocket, his gaze locked on hers, aware of the mocking expression of her mouth, and its cruel smile. She knew how uncomfortable she was making him, but seemed satisfied with his closing the book. But her gaze and smile warned him against attempting to open it again.

            "I'm paying attention now," Maxwell said, pushing the words through gritted teeth, hating the attention she had brought to him and his book. No one was going to act natural tonight. He would find only the curious and the nervous. She had ruined everything. He would find no reason to scribble anything.

            And she knew that, too. Her blue eyes sparkling with shards of electricity, as if her small victory had sparked some inner satisfaction inside her. She smiled again, and he, of course, presumed that would be the end of things, having ruined his night, she would move on to some other victim.

            She did not.

            "Maybe you don't think I'm sexy enough?" Patty said, her voice loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear.

            Maxwell did not look up, but stared at his own trembling fingers, at the left hand in particularly, and the finger tips thick with calluses, hard from their nightly contact with guitar strings, from the hours and hours of practice so he might become good enough to compete in Nashville. His other hand had calluses, too, or perhaps just the scars of burn marks left him from his work at the Greasy Spoon, daily duels with the grill, which he routinely lost.

            "You're very pretty," Maxwell mumbled.

            "What was that?" Patty asked, holding one hand up to her ear in the classic exaggerated gesture of someone hard of hearing. This drew a mummer of uncertain laughter from the men around the bar, men who were beginning to catch on to some new aspect of Patty's entertainment. Even Wolfman seemed to relax a little, easing back into his chair, though he remained wary, staring suspiciously at Maxwell through the clouds of cigar smoke.

            "I said you're pretty," Maxwell shouted, his timing betraying him, voice rising in volume just as the juke box again changed songs, so that his shout fill the gap. Even the irregulars laughed this time, now clearly aware of the game Patty was playing, even if they didn't quite know the new rules. They were satisfied they'd not come in vein. Blood would yet flow. Patty would get her sacrifice. They would be entertained.

            "Liar!"

            The word hung in the air like a show pieces from the Macy's Day fireworks display, trails of it floating over the oval bar in fading echoes, catching fire in the upturned faces of men only half‑heatedly amused before, their mouths opening, their gazes craving more. Only Ruth now looked annoyed, her green eyes like flashing beacons, warning Maxwell with her stare for him to be careful, mouthing the words that he should leave ‑‑ before much more damage occurred. But Maxwell did not move, as frozen to his stool as any of Patty's pudgy men, fearing that to leave now was to inspire a riot. A few less stout‑hearted irregulars, got up, finished their drinks, slapped town bar tips, and fled, they fearing they might be next.

            "Well, you are pretty," Maxwell said, regaining his voice, though resisting another shout.

            "I'm overweight," Patty snapped, glancing around at the other men, challenging any one of them to deny it, not one of them willing to meet her gaze or nod about the issue yeah or nay. A few more gulped their drinks and ran, passing Maxwell and the Northsiders in a panic.

            "So am I," Maxwell said, though he was a harsh critic when he came to his health, and on a perpetual witch hunt against unnecessary calories: the beers he consumed here like the mark of Cain, his Satan and one from which he could not free himself. His morning jogs kept him generally thin, despite his nightly visits, though his roommate Jack constantly complained about Maxwell's obsession.

            "How many Goddamn times a day are you going to weigh yourself?" Jack boomed, shoving the scale back into the corner after Maxwell's exit from the bathroom. "You're going to wear it out, you use it so much."

            "And you don't use it enough," Kenny snapped, annoyed by Jack's annoyance. Jack did not use the scale at all, and his comments may have resulted from guilt. Seeing the thing out only reminded him of his own lack of control.

            Patty stared down, studying Maxwell's think arms and face, and the bony shape his shoulder left slumped over the bar. For a moment, she looked like she would laugh, wry fire lighting up in her eyes at his reply. But her mouth recovered first, growing more firm, as her stare hardened above it.

            "Wise guy," she said. "Maybe you'd like to come up here and dance if you think you're so skinny."

            This time, Maxwell started to laugh, then stopped. Patty had spread her feet in a stance he'd not seen from her before, but other men had, and even more staggered to their feet, finished their drinks and left ‑‑ some of these weekly regulars.

            Down at the south end of the bar, Wolfman sat up again, his cigar now making agitated circles of orange light in the air, the reflection of which showed like fire in his dark eyes. Ruth marched swiftly down the western side of the bar, clearing glasses and bottles and any other breakable object ‑‑ drawing protest from those remaining patrons who had not quite finished with their drinks. Maxwell looked to either of where he sat and noticed vacant barstools. Wolfman's hard stare blamed him for the sudden shift of mood. This wasn't the fun he wanted and he shouted his complaint.

            "Dance, girl, you don't get paid to stand."

            "I'm not going to dance if I'm not appreciated," she shouted back. More men cleared out on the southside. Ruth cleared more glass from the bar.

            "You'll do what I tell you," Wolfman said, now staring at her, his hands once more flat on the bar, though this time, pushing himself up.

            Maxwell sighed, drew out his wallet and from it removed two stiff singles. He dropped them on the bar, took up his book, and then slipped off the stool, following the flight of the previously panicked patrons towards the door.

            "And the where the hell do you think you're going?" Patty shouted, this time at Maxwell, and now, again, without the cover of the juke box music. Her quarters had run out.

            Maxwell stopped in mid stride. He turned slowly, aware of the grim Northsiders eyeing him. But theirs expressions were not nearly as stern as Patty's, as she glared down at him from the stage, her hands firmly fixed to her hips, like a furious school marm waiting with a stick to punish him.

            "Home," Maxwell said in a voice so soft it should have been drowned out by the clink of glasses, but in the silence was loud enough for her to hear.

            "Coward," she said.

            Maxwell's fingers tightened around the binding of his notebook, the metal spirals cutting sharply into the palm of his hand. He swallowed, then stared angrily up at Patty.

            "What the hell do you want from me anyway?" He asked, hating the not so subtle whine in his voice, one which always appearing during a scolding, there when his uncles punished him as a kid, there when the cops stopped he and Puck for some stupid deed done down at the public works, there, now, as if he was a kid again and couldn't ever escape.

            "A drink," Patty said. "And for you to pay attention to me. Is that too much to ask?"

            The whole bar seemed to sign as Maxwell did, though only his face showed the reluctant resignation, his eyes saying all was ruined anyway and he might never write in peace again.

            "No," he mumbled. "It's not too much to ask."

            "Good," Patty said, flicking one her polished nails towards the seat Maxwell had just abandoned. "Why don't you just sit down while I get changed."

            Maxwell nodded, and returned, and sat, as Ruth rushed up with another beer and some clear‑liquid drink for Patty that might have been gin and tonic, placing both on the bar as Maxwell pealed cash out of his wallet.

            "Be careful, Max," Ruth whispered as she wiped the bar with her pale blue rag.

            "I'm trying," Maxwell said. "But I feel so..."

            "Trapped?"

            "Yes."

            "Buy her the drink then leave," Ruth advised as Patty clamored off the stage and made her way down along the interior of the east side of the bar, her chin uplifted like a general after a great military victory.

            "What if she won't let me?" Maxwell asked.

            Ruth glanced up sharply, her green eyes staring into his.

            "She doesn't control men like you, Max. You just happened to let her run over you this time. It's your foolish ego. Take the loss on this one. Run away with your tail between your legs if you have to. Otherwise, you'll find it harder to walk away later. Believe me."

            "You've seen this happen before?"

            "Over and over," Ruth said. "Each case gets worse than the last. You're just too nice to get tangled in her webs."

            "Thank you," Maxwell said, taking a shaky sip of his beer.

            "I mean it. Walk away."

            Then Ruth retreated, summoned by the demand of patrons whose thirst had increased along with the drama. Down at the end of the bar, Wolfman snagged Patty as she pushed by. She stared down coldly a his large hand as it gripped her arm, then up at his face.

            "You want something?" she asked.

            "Stay away from the poet," Wolfman said.

            "Poet?" Patty said, glancing towards Maxwell, an increased interest glimmering in her eyes.

            "I'm warning you to leave off him," Wolfman said.

            "Why? Are you afraid I'll break your little toy‑boy?"

            Wolfman slowly shook his head, though his black eyes stayed fixed on Patty's face. "I don't want him ruining one of my best dancers," he said.

            "Him? Ruin me? That's ridiculous!" Patty said. "I've devoured a hundred men better than him."

            "He's not like the others," Wolfman said, his gaze following Patty's to stare at Maxwell.

            "You mean because he's a poet and not a truck driver? Don't make me sick," Patty said. "Let me tell you something, Richard ‑‑ he's a man and all men are the same whether they write poetry or ride the highway, and all of them react the same way when it comes to me."

            "This one will hurt you, Patty," Wolfman said.

            "Men have hit me before. I just come back at them, stronger."

            "I don't mean hurt you in that way. He can hurt you down deep, down where you can't fight back."

            "Bullshit!" Patty snapped, then worked her way out of Wolfman's grip, and then moved around him, continuing her parade passed the pool table, passed the men who staggered out of her way, towards the ladies room. She paused only when she came to Wolfman's cake, ran her forefingers along its surface so as to underline his name. She licked her finger and winked at Wolfman's nervous minions, then vanished into the bathroom as the next dancer appeared.          

            Wolfman crooked his forefinger at Ruth, who hurried down the inside of the bar to see what he wanted.

            "What is it, Wolfman?" she asked.

            "Get rid of the poet."

            Ruth glanced over her shoulder, then back at Wolfman. "I can't. He bought her a drink."

            "Refund his money."

            "That still doesn't make it right," Ruth said, clicking her pink lips with a nervous tongue. "He paid a cover charge to get in here, and bought more drinks than usual. You can't just toss him out with no reason."

            "Refund it all," Wolfman growled, slapping his palm down on the bar. "And if he still won't go, tell him I'll toss him out myself. You hear?"

            "All right, Wolfman," Ruth said, holding up her small hands as if she expected an attack. "I'll get rid of him."

            Ruth turned sharply, with all the skill of a soldier in practice drills, marching quickly back the way she'd come, along the west side, stopping as sharply as she'd started, in front of Maxwell.

            "You got to leave," Ruth said, dropping a ten dollar bill on the moist bar, the liquid turning the green a shade darker as it soaked in towards Lincoln's face.

            Maxwell glanced at the bill then at Ruth, his think brows folding down over his puzzled eyes. "What?"

            "Wolfman says to get out," Ruth said, pushing the bill towards Maxwell's side of the bar with the tips of her fingers. The bill crumpled rather than moved.

            "But why?"

            "Who cares why," Ruth said, leaning forward, the smell of violets rising from her shoulders and hair. "Just hurry up before the bitch gets back and we have a real to do."

            "But I...." Maxwell said, indicating the still full glass waiting on Patty.

            "Wolfman's taken care of it," Ruth said, again indicating the bill on the bar.

            "Does this mean I’m banned?" Maxwell asked.

            Wolfman routinely excluded customers who could not keep their hands off the dancers, or instigated fights at the bar, a mental list of exiles he never let back into the bar.

            "No," Ruth said with another anxious glance towards Wolfman and the ladies room beyond him. "But if you don’t leave right now, he might ban you."

            "All right," Maxwell said, then reluctantly rose, noting the new dancer’s puzzled stared from the stage, and the grim stares of the Northenders, and the giggling from Wolfman’s minions. Wolfman himself only nodded once.

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