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Gus put down the glass and the towel and folded his arms over his chest.
“Play what the man wants,” he said in a hard voice. “That’s what I pay you to do.”
He was right. Absolutely right.
“Thass right. Gus pays you to play what I wanna hear.”
The drunk grinned. Leered. Pointed his bottle of beer at her for emphasis.
That was when it all went bad.
Maybe somebody jostled his arm. Maybe he was a little unsteady on his feet.
The bottle tilted.
Ice-cold beer poured over Emily’s head and straight down the neckline of her dress, her silk dress, one of the few still-decent things in her closet, stuff she wore only for work.
Gasping, she shot to her feet.
“You,” she sputtered, “you—you stupid jerk—”
The drunk laughed. Gus shrugged, as if what had happened was the kind of thing she’d just have to put up with.
Later, Emily suspected it was that shrug that put things over the top.
She grabbed the bottle from the drunk’s hand. From the weight of it, it was still half-full Good, she thought, and before the idiot had time to stop her, she jammed the neck of the bottle into that big belly, tilted it so that it was pointed down under his belt and into his pants and had the joy of hearing his laughter turn into an almost girlish shriek.
The shriek drew everybody’s attention. People turned, stared, saw the stain spreading over the drunk’s trousers and laughed.
Unfortunately, Gus wasn’t laughing. His face had turned purple. He raised his hand and pointed his finger at Emily.
“OUT!”
The crowd went silent. Emily’s heart leaped into her throat.
“Listen,” she said quickly, “I didn’t mean—”
“Take that ‘I’m too good for this place’ act of yours and get your ass out the door!”
She stood a little straighter. “If you’d let me explain—”
Gus marched around the side of the bar and stood in front of her. He was big and bald; he stank of sweat and beer. Close up, the finger he pointed at her was the size of a cigar.
“You got a problem understanding English?”
“No. I mean, of course not. I’m just trying to tell you that—”
“Get the fuck outta here! Don’t make me say it again.”
Emily began to tremble. “I want what you owe me. My pay for Thursday and Friday and Saturday and for to—”
“OUT!”
Her eyes filled with angry tears. Dammit, she would not let anybody in this awful place see her cry! Max could handle the money thing. That was part of his job. Quickly, she bent to the little cubby under the bar where she kept her handbag. When she straightened up, tears were streaming down her face.
“You,” she said, “you are,—you are not a nice man!”
Seconds later, she was on the street, in the rain, in the cold, alone in what that stupid song the drunk had requested referred to as the City That Never Sleeps except it was really the City That Had No Heart.
