One of the girls was working her way down the bar. She was going to slide onto the empty stool at his right and give him the business, but she looked at him first and decided not to. She curled around me and asked if I'd buy her a li'l ole drink. I said no and she moved on to the next. I could kind of feel the young fellow quivering. When I looked at him, he stood up. I followed him out of the dump. The manager grinned without thinking and said, "G'night, boys," to us.
The kid stopped in the street and said to me: "You don't have to follow me around, Pappy." He sounded like one wrong word and I would get socked in the teeth.
"Take it easy. I know a place where they won't spit in your eye."
He pulled himself together and made a joke of it. "This I have to see," he said. "Near here?"
"A few blocks."
We started walking. It was a nice night.
"I don't know this city at all," he said. "I'm from Covington, Kentucky. You do your drinking at home there. We don't have places like this." He meant the whole Skid Row area.
"It's not so bad," I said. "I spend a lot of time here."
"Is that a fact? I mean, down home a man your age would likely have a wife and children."
"I do. The hell with them."