“I asked about the bottle.”

“Just different puddles as we went along. I don’t really see any need to mix it further.”

At this Langston fell away from the table in a violent spasm of trembling. “It’s okay,” he offered, making for his booth. “An early one, it’ll pass. But I don’t think I should be near the breakables right now.”

“Jill, better pour him off a solid double from one of these scotch bottles.” He scanned the others for any sign of dissension, knowing that it was unlikely, especially with Osmond not present. “Triage, guys,” added Rudd anyway. “We knew it would come to this.”

“I’m not the bartender,” said Jill right to Rudd, and he thought, you sleep with them and it isn’t long before they start giving you this kind of lip.

But he also thought about her breasts. They were on the largish side and Rudd liked that in a woman. He also liked her auburn hair and pert little nose, the way that she gave head and was pretty smart. “Bartender’s dead, Jill. He is in the freezer, been there for weeks, but I wouldn’t open the door now that the power’s out. I was fairly certain that you were aware of this development.”

“You can be such an asshole,” she said, picking up the scotch bottle, cracking the seal, and pouring off the dosage for Langston.

“I’m a drunk, Jill, it goes with the territory.”

Well he’s part right, she thought, as she silently crossed the room to Langston’s booth. But the territory had more to do with being male than it did with being a drunk. These men, these hopeless desperate men that she was stuck here with, she’d pour their drinks and suck their dicks because as bad as they could be at times they were still better than the men on the outside of that door, because there was a certain nobility in their consistency and pathos, because they’d done what they had to do despite the fact that every one of them was on a greased slide to hell and knew it, and because to leave would be to expose them to a reality that might just break them: she really didn’t like them touching her.

“You’ll have to hold his head and give it to him,” Rudd told her from the bar.

“I know, I know.” And she did more or less pour the scotch into Langston’s mouth, only missing a drop and that was a good score. The man was trembling but calmed at her touch and again with the liquor. “Not much, I’m afraid,” she whispered. “But there isn’t much left.” That was cold, she thought, and felt bad. This man was really sick. This was serious, like cancer or something. He could die from this.

At the bar Fenton wanted to know, “What did you mean about what was called for?”

“What?” said Rudd.

“Down in dry-storage you said something like, ‘I did the right thing but it wasn’t called for.’ What did you mean by that?”

“I may have done the right thing, but that’s hardly what was called for.”

“Yeah, right, yeah.”

This room was fairly large with a simple slate-topped bar running L on the right side and tables and booths that service the restaurant filling the left side. The bar held a clutch of blond wood stools and it was on two of these that Rudd and Fenton were seated talking, all the remaining liquor in Tony’s beheld before them. These two men were members of the Hollydale Country Club and that was how they met. Rudd had been a member longer and met Fenton on the latter’s first visit after being invited to join. This fact gave Rudd an edge of seniority that had long since touched all aspects of their acquaintance and friendship. Hollydale was no more-they could guess as much-but they would always be members. They had this over the other men.

The men had been bunking on the black leather benches of the booths and had taken to thinking of them as rooms and being every bit as possessive of them as a bunch of teenage boys. Langston lay in his booth and Jill sat across from him, watching him grope for what little peace could be found in a single swallow of scotch. Before the riots Jill had had little experience with alcohol and way too much experience with sex. By now though she had seen enough evidence in this room to know just how grave the danger was that these men faced. She suspected that they had all hoped to be shot dead before having to face the end of the supply, though Langston, the man quivering on his back before her, was the only one to ever actually confess this to her.

Two stools down from the corner of the bar where Rudd and Fenton sat, that is on the short part of the L and near the door, Miles nursed his shoulder and stared into space.