“Thanks.” I started to pull at my highball when the cowboy flipped me on the shoulder with the back of his fingers.
“What makes you so curious?” he said. His voice was soft and gritty, like sand running through an hour glass. I didn’t say anything and he said, “Well?” and flipped me again with his fingers.
I wasn’t even looking at the guy, minding my drink and my business, but just that fast I was mad enough to hit him with the bar. Maybe I’m touchy, maybe I’m even a little neurotic about it, but this guy had done the wrong things — a couple of them. In the first place, I don’t mind strangers blabbing at me or asking questions — if they ask them nice; he wasn’t asking nice. And in the second place I don’t like guys flipping me or grabbing me or even laying their paws on me.
I swallowed at my drink, then wheeled on my stool and looked at the foolish character just as he said, “I asked you a question, Pally.”
I took a good look at him this time. He was about an inch under six feet and broad, big-chested, and with more hair sticking up from his shirt than I’ve got on my head. His face was square, and his eyes were narrowed, lips pressed together as he looked at me.
I said, “I heard you. Don’t ask me questions, don’t call me Pally, and keep your hands off me.” I turned back to the bar and got the highball glass just to my lips when he latched onto my arm and pulled me around.
He started to say something, but I slammed my glass down on the bar and climbed off my stool as liquor squirted up and spread over the mahogany. I grabbed the guy by his scarf and said, “Listen, pardner, the next time you lay a hand on me you better take off those high heels and get your feet planted square on the floor, because I’ll knock you clear into the men’s room.”
His mouth dropped open and for a moment he sputtered in surprise, then his chin snapped up and his face got white. He wrapped a hand around my wrist and drew back his right fist so he could slug me, and I almost felt sorry for what was going to happen to the cowboy. Even if he couldn’t know I was an ex-Marine crammed full of more judo and unarmed defense than I knew what to do with, he should never have tried hauling off while I still had hold of his pretty scarf and he was wide open from all directions.
But he was stupid, and he actually launched his right fist at me. I gave just a little tug on the scarf and he staggered maybe two inches and the fist missed me four inches, and he was so far off balance I had all the time in the world to grab his left arm above the elbow, then break his weakened hold on my wrist and force his wrist and arm behind him with my right hand. While he was still bending over and turning I locked his arm behind him, got some leverage from my hand on his shoulder, and he started to make noises. I was still trying to decide if I should break the arm for him, when the bartender swung a two-foot club against the bar top and yelled, “None of that! Shove it, boys, break it up.”
He was pretty fast, because we’d been mixing it up for only a couple seconds — and I think he saved the cowboy's arm. I cooled off a little, nodded at the bartender, and pushed the cowboy ahead of me while I walked him four stools away. Then I let go of him.
“Maybe you better sit here, Cowboy. You must have thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.” I went back and got his drink and sat it in front of him. He didn’t do anything more dangerous than glare at me, so I went back to my drink.
The bartender was squinting at me. I said, “Sorry,” then finished the bourbon and ordered another. He made it silently and I noticed there hadn’t been a peep out of any of the other half-dozen or so customers. Two of them left, but the others ordered more drinks. A little conversation started up again.
I asked the bartender, “Where is the men’s room, anyway?” He pointed toward a door in the rear wall and I got up, leaving the list on the bar, and went back to the john. I went in, slammed the door, then cracked it and peeked through. The cowboy rubbed his arm, glanced at the paper on the bar then looked back toward the rest room. He was good and curious about me. Five more seconds and he got up, walked to my stool and said something to the bartender, then turned the paper over and studied it for half a minute before he slammed it back down on the bar and walked toward me and then out of my sight.
I went back to my stool. The bartender had mopped up my spilled drink and I said, “Freshen that up, will you? You got a phone booth in here?”
He nodded and pointed toward the back of the bar and around to the right. That was where my cowboy had gone. I tucked the list back into my pocket, had a swallow of my drink. In another minute the cowboy came back. He walked up beside me and smiled stiffly.
“Say,” he said. “I wanna apologize. About gettin’ hot.”
I grinned at him. “Sure. Maybe we’re both a little touchy.”
He looked damned uncomfortable, but he stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings?”
“O.K. by me.” I shook his hand.
He lowered his voice a little and said, “I didn’t mean to sound nosy, but the thing is, a good friend of mine is real innerested in Lois, see? So naturally I’m curious. You, uh, know Lois?”
I shook my head.
“You just think she’s cute, huh?”
“That’s right. I just think she’s cute.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Uh, I’d feel bad if you didn’t lemme buy you a drink. No hard feelings, you know, lemme buy you a drink.”
I hesitated and he said to the bartender, “Hey, Frank, give my friend anything he wants, see? Gimme the same.”
Right then I caught movement at the corner of my eye and turned to see Lois walking toward us from the rear of the club. Evidently there was a room back there where she’d changed because she now had on an ankle-length green gown. She walked past us and said to the bartender, “A cool one like this, Frank.” She nodded at the cowboy, then her eyes brushed briefly over mine. I grinned at her as she went by, and after a couple more steps she looked back over her shoulder, and she must have seen where I was looking, then she was at the dice table and reached up to turn on a bright light above it. I’d had a good gander at her as she walked past us and the view was even better with her under that bright light.
The green dress came clear up to her throat then swept down over her body, clinging to her skin like a thin rubber dress a size too small. I’d have given eight to five that she wasn’t wearing a thing under that dress, not a thing, not even frilly things. The dress was like green skin and I decided I could even get used to green skin if it were on Lois.
The bartender mixed up a drink, also green, and sat it on the end of the bar, then gave the cowboy and me our highballs. I picked mine up, got the green thing from the end of the bar, and walked to the dice table.
I handed her the drink. “This must be yours.”
She smiled. “Uh-huh. To match my dress. Pink Ladies for a red dress, creme de cacao for brown. This is creme de menthe.”
I pressed my luck. “I thought for a minute the dress was made out of creme de menthe.”
She didn’t mind. She smiled and said. “You like it?”
“It’s terrific. Clever idea, too. What do you wear with champagne?”
She laughed, and the laugh itself was a little bit like champagne, a soft, bubbling sound that came from far down in her white throat. “That’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it?”
“Frankly, no.” The overhead light burned soft red spots in her dark hair, hair that hung just above shoulder length. It wasn’t quite black, as I’d thought at first, but an off shade like the bar mahogany, a shadow darkness with touches of deep red in it. I had known a couple of dice girls in Hollywood and several in San Francisco where they’re more often seen. Some of them were near idiots, and some were brilliant women who could have been high-powered women executives but made so much at the tables that they stuck to the game. One thing, though, all of them had in common: they were beautiful women, the kind men would look at, women who could make men cheerfully lose a dime or a thousand bucks. Lois was no exception, and she didn’t sound or look stupid. Her face was oval, with dark brown eyes and warm-looking red lips, lips that were still smiling now with white, even teeth behind them.