Do You Come Here Often?

His skull went off like a booby-trapped cantaloupe, spraying orange slush across the bar, the countertop, the nearby tables. The impact drove his body into rows of bottles laid out in soldier-like rows along the shelf beneath the countertop, and they smashed or went spinning into one another in a shrieking cacophony of breaking glass. Rodman started to jump from his chair but got only halfway out before freezing in a near crouch, his heart thudding anginically, as the bartender's body slumped to the floor and his face rolled horribly into view, revealing the anemone of spiny teeth and masses of maggot-like larvae jetting onto his chest.

Rodman felt his stomach clench and unclench and he thought he might puke, so he dropped back into the seat just as his legs seemed to go out from under him. The woman was breathing in short, rapid strokes. He saw multitudes of emotions crossing her face, like shadows of clouds racing overhead. She lifted her glass and took a slug of vodka, keeping it in her mouth a long time.

"Christ," Rodman hissed. "How did you know?"

She let the vodka slide from her mouth back into the glass. She said, simply, "I had a kid. He got bitten."

Rodman bowed his head.

"But that's OK," she said. Her voice was cracking. "It was a while back. I'm over all that . . . now." A phony smile fluttered at her lips and just as quickly disappeared. "The bastards. The sly bastards." She looked across the room and Rodman saw a phosphorescent teardrop leaving a glowing trail down the ridge of her cheekbone. She shook her head, just a trace movement of denial, and she whispered, "My kid. Whatever's left of my kid is out there somewhere . . ." and she gagged, as if she couldn't pronounce the next word, ". . . suffering."

She stood and muttered, "Excuse me," and marched toward the ladies room. Rodman started to say, "I'm so sorry," but she'd turned and was opening the door to disappear inside.

Rodman sagged into his chair. The air eased out of his lungs in a long, slow hiss, and his pulse throbbed in he ears. As he watched the door to the ladies' room swing shut, he wondered if he would ever know the difference between right and wrong, and wasn't it always astonishing how easily events could shape the mind and heart, reducing truth to nothing more than an opinion?

He muttered, "Jesus," and reached for his glass, but remembered it was empty. He needed a drink, he thought, but he heard something dripping behind the bar and he didn't want to know what it was. He peered longingly into her glass.

A maggot was squirming sluggishly at the bottom of the glass.

His heart was like a block of ice in his chest and he could hear his pulse pounding, like the ocean only louder, and then a man was walking into the room and shouting for Harry, Harry? Where the hell was Harry? It's Grady, he yelled, here to start his shift, and then Grady saw what was behind the bar and backed over to where Rodman was sitting, his face a cadaverous shade of white, and he grabbed Rodman by the shoulders and shook him, asking him if the woman had been here, and what happened to her, where was the goddamned woman?

And Rodman didn't know what to say.