Candice called herself Candy. She was blonde and slightly plump, 30, I guessed. Candy dragged her eyes from Al and smiled my way.

“I’m not interested in Al.” She purred, leaning over, whispering in my ear. “I know all about Al. You? I know nothing about.”

I introduced myself and bought Candice a drink. I began weighing Al’s mood as no one came his way.

The bouncer known as Tiny Tim made his way to our table and looked us all over. Tim was about 6’4″ and weighed roughly 300 pounds. He exchanged pleasantries with Al and glanced at Candice and then me. I guessed that I was the unknown that he was trying to guage.

After he left, Candice asked. “Do you think he’s tough?”

I answered honestly. “Haven’t a clue. Looks tough enough. “

“I went to his place once. He lives with his parents in the house he grew up in. In the bedroom he grew up in… He still has the wallpaper from when he was a boy; cowboys and Indians. His bed is still a single bed from when he was a boy! I couldn’t fucking believe it! Both his legs from his knees down are like jelly. Some kind of weird disease I don’t know. If you touched him in the shins, he would just crumble… He’s not tough at all… do you think you might like to fuck me.”

“Sure. If you don’t think Al or Tim would mind.”

“Let’s go to my place. I’m close.”

I looked at Al. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Either here or at the house…”

                            *******

I made my way back to Al’s before midnight and went to bed. I heard strange noises. It was a little after 3. I peaked out the bedroom door, and Al was standing in his underwear in the kitchen. He had a quart bottle of rum clutched in his right hand. He was half talking, half screaming with a guttural sound that came from his throat. He was staring at his ceiling. I would later find out that on the other side of his ceiling was the floor of the area where his son Mark sat listening to his father. Al kept repeating the same drunken mantra over and over and over again:

“I brought you into this world… and I can take you out… I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth…”

Then he would pound his fist with his left fist and repeat after swigging from his bottle.

“I brought you into this world… and I can take you out… I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth…”

I tried to go back to sleep with little success. I heard that mantra until sunrise.