One of Those Nights

"I'll not have you touchin' my little girl!" He grabbed his daughter roughly and a little too familiarly around the waist and hips. "Not when I myself have barely---"

He caught himself just as someone playing an organ offstage hit about fourteen keys simultaneously, musically (if not exactly euphoniously) underlining the shock registering on the faces of those present. Violet's eyes were darting left and right and even -- as a tiny figure scampered by her, headed into the pub -- downwards for a sec. Sister Margaret looked as though she was about to pop Jack one in the snoot. Joe's mother fell backwards through the door still swinging from the dwarf's passage.

And from the alley came a roar: Bill, unleashed by fury, of a sudden moved by hatred of his rival more than he was content to let his disappointment of a son be beaten to death, it was Bill now leaping into the fray.

"He'll be touchin' whatever he wants to touch, Jack McGilligan," Bill's voice boomed, "and whoever come to that!"

Sister Margaret, cool as usual but a little disoriented by the turn of events, turned and popped not Jack but Bill in the snoot, and the old drunk crumpled to a heap there on the sidewalk. The organist, having dropped and then reassembled the sheet music for all this month's shows, struck up "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling." It was a weird but not-bad selection.

Violet writhed out of Jack's grasp and bolted into the pub. Sister Margaret, rubbing her knuckles, seemed to forget her position for a moment. "What," she wondered aloud, "what in the hell

The Way Home, Part 5

"No, I'm sorry man -- don't have any spare change on me now, left my purse inside. Maybe on my way out, 'kay?" She did a little finger-wave at him then turned and went back into McGilligan's, Joe's humiliation hanging in the air behind her.

He slumped against the wall. Why in the hell had he thought she'd even remember him, let alone that she'd care if she did? Cripes. If she'd been here with that lout Frankie, then clearly she'd moved on.

He cupped his hands around his face and looked through the plate glass. McGilligan's looked the same -- the jukebox at the far end, the little electric train running on the track elevated all around the walls, up by the ceiling, the jars of unnameable pickled food on the bar. Violet was already at the dartboard on the back wall, pulling darts from the target and laughing like crazy.

Ah, he loved her laughter. The way she'd throw back her head, as she was doing now, and the way the full-throated guffaw would push listeners backwards just a half-step or so -- as they were doing now, on the other side of the window. She could bottle that laughter, sell it to television sitcom producers.

And God help him, he even remembered the last time he'd heard her laugh like that at something he'd said...