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Reuben and the BLT. I looked over, expecting Moose. Instead, I saw my pig-faced drag-racing opponent. He looked bigger up close.
    He stopped just inside the front door and looked around, nodding to one of the guys at the bar, who nodded back warily. I was giving him a hard stare, but he didn’t see me.
    He walked up to the blonde in the T-shirt and said something quiet.
    If she had looked up with a smile or given him a kiss, I would have had to end it all right then and there. Fortunately, she made a point of ignoring him, framing her face between her thumb and her forefinger and turning her head away to concentrate on her book.
    He spoke again, louder, like he was repeating whatever he had said. She continued to ignore him, until he reached down and grabbed a potato chip from her plate. Then her head snapped around. “Back off, Cooney,” she said through gritted teeth.
    He popped the chip into his mouth, looking down at her for a moment as he crunched it. When he reached out again, she slapped his hand. It was not a playful slap, and the look on her face wasn’t playful, either.
    With surprising quickness, he grabbed her wrist, bending it back slightly while the other hand reached for another chip. I can be surprisingly quick myself, and before she could wince, I was out of my seat and over there, grabbing a fistful of his greasy hair and poking my foot into the back of his knee.
    He spun as I took him down, his eyes wide, but his mean smile returned when he saw my face. The iced tea went over, and I glanced past him and paused, mesmerized as the beverage splashed across the blonde’s T-shirt. I’m familiar with a number of martial arts and fighting styles, and none of them recommends pausing in the middle of a fight to ogle. The next thing I saw was stars, as some kind of cross between a fist and a cinder block slammed into my head.
    I stayed on my feet, suddenly back at my own table with my new friend closing fast and grinning like he wanted to play some more. I acted dazed, partly to give him a false sense of security and partly because I was dazed. When he swung another right, I ducked and caught his arm, twisting it around behind him and slamming his head down onto my table.
    My ears were still fuzzy from the punch, and it took a second for the noise I was hearing to resolve into the sound of the blonde shrieking, “Stop it, both of you! For God’s sake!”
    It occurred to me then that maybe I should have started by clearing my throat and saying something like, “Excuse me, sir, but I believe the lady would like you to stop eating her lunch.” But thoughts like that only come to me after the damage has been done.
    I had the big guy immobilized enough that I could look over as she picked up her book and threw a ten on the table. She stormed out, shaking her head and mumbling something about “animals.”
    In the moment of quiet after she left, I realized everyone in the place was staring at me. I took a step back and released the big guy, giving him enough of a shove that he’d be out of arm’s reach in case he hadn’t had enough. Judging from the way he came back at me, he hadn’t, but by then the guy from behind the bar had stepped in between us.
    “Enough, goddamn it!” he boomed, shoving us in opposite directions. “For Chrissakes, Cooney, how many times I got to tell you?”
    Then he turned and gave me a glare.
    As I headed for the door, my stomach rumbled loudly, letting me know that while it might not have decided between the Reuben or the BLT, it had definitely been counting on one of them.

 
    9
     
    When I opened the door, I almost laughed at the twin images of my face, red where it had been hit, reflected in the lenses of Chief Pruitt’s aviators. Instead, I slipped past him as he reached out to hold the door.
    Out on the sidewalk, I looked down the street as the blonde disappeared around one end of the block, then looked up the street as Moose appeared around the other end.
    Pruitt’s