Another Broken Wizard Read Online Free PDF Page B

cursory hellos. Upstairs, another hardcore band was playing, but you could only hear the roar of it when the jukebox paused between songs. We ordered drinks and Joe found an Italian girl who was spilling out of her jeans and low-cut shirt.
“Tina, you know you’re the hottest girl here, don’t you?” Joe said, his mouth agape with a wild smile.
“Joe, don’t start. You do this every time you get drunk,” Tina said, clearly enjoying her opportunity to abuse him.
“Me? Drunk? Maybe drunk on your utter hotness.”
“How’s the leg?” she asked.
“My leg is great. How’s Theresa?”
“Theresa’s fine.”
“Not as fine as you.”
“Later, Joe,” Tina said and walked off to the pool table.
“She’s Theresa’s best friend. I guess she’s not in love with me. Not yet,” Joe said, gulping his whiskey through the ice cubes.
“How is Theresa?”
“She’s alright—works over at the mall. I see her now and then. We say hi. We’re pretty friendly, considering.”
“That’s good. It’s important to get past that stabby phase in a relationship.”
    Theresa was Joe’s ex-girlfriend from a few years back. She buried a steak knife in Joe’s leg after he called her by another girl’s name at a party. According to legend, she said nothing before or after—just stabbed and left. I remember Joe dropping his pants on the sidewalk to show me the fresh scar. Even now, the incident brought on Joe’s machine-gun-like laugh.
    “Stabby,” Joe said between guffaws.
    Joe tried to order us some shots, but the laugh took over, bending him until he emerged inspired, saying, “Man, let’s get fucked up tonight—what do you say?”
    We did shots of something that made my throat open negotiations with representatives from the land of vomit. The drinks and the laughs kept coming. Before long, Joe and I were in a bathroom with a skeletal Irish kid named Tommy, doing key bumps from a baggie of powder. It cut the worst of the drunk and kept us in the game. Last call came at 1:30, and cop cars waited near the door to make sure we left without incident.
    On the way to our cars, two big guys started throwing punches in the shadows beside Ralph’s. Their friends joined in, and it became a nasty scrum. Shadow legs kicked and shadow arms reached out from the mass and reached back in with vicious speed. The cops took their time getting over there, to give the fighters time to wear out. The big guys, winded and bloody, made a show of yelling at each other as their more peaceful or law-wary friends separated them. The smaller guys acted like they wanted to keep fighting, but didn’t honestly struggle when their own more sober and less bloodthirsty friends pushed them apart.
    In the end, there was just one guy who really wanted to keep fighting—the smallest guy. He was around five foot four and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred thirty pounds. He was covered in blood. He fought off all peacemakers and went after one of the original big guys—the bigger of the two. When a bouncer went over to block him, the little guy ran around him. Passing into the light, you could see that the little guy’s blue winter coat was ripped and covered with blood from his badly abused face. But he kept on, cursing at people he could hardly see. Finally, two big, friendly looking guys smothered him.
    With no fight left to join, the little guy approached Joe and I in the milling, post-fight throng. He was distracted and distraught. His heavy breathing made little blood bubbles swell and explode out of his working nostril. His coat, jeans and sneakers were all covered in blood to some degree and he only had one open eye. Joe gave him a cigarette. The little guy spat blood into the darkness between puffs. One of the cops came over and Joe walked away. The little guy tried to do the same, but the senior of the two cops grabbed him. The cop was a burly Italian guy made burlier by his bullet-proof vest and winter coat. He shone his flashlight on the