the crowd parted, I saw the redfaced blond boy, unhurt and on his ass. McGinnes had turned back to the bar to resume his drinking.
A big guy with something like an ax handle in his upraised fist brushed by me and moved for McGinnes’ back. I swept him with my right foot, and he went down to his knees, dropping the weapon as he fell.
I was grabbed almost immediately from behind in a bear hug. McGinnes had turned and realized what was happening, an apologetic look on his drunken face, accompained by a slightly sad grin that told me what was inevitably going to go down next. Nevertheless, even as he sensed another bouncer approaching him from behind, McGinnes futilely lunged for the steroid boy whose arms were around me.
McGinnes was dropped with a kidney-shot before he could get near me. The one I had tripped was up and walking towards me, a tight sneer on his chiseled, Aryan face.
I thought, as he took a wide stance and drew back his fist, how easy it would have been to drop him with a front kick square in the balls. But in those few protracted seconds I had decided that there was no way out of the club that night without being pummeled, that I might as well take it, and that McGinnes and me, we had it coming.
The lousy prick went for my nose, but I turned my head and went with the punch, catching it high on the cheekbone. The sound of the blow must have sickened the man holding me, and I was released. Then I was pushed from behind with the momentum of a wave, pushed as if my feet were off the floor. McGinnes was being moved similarly, covering his sides and face with his arms from the potshots that the bouncers were taking as they pushed him forward. Many in the crowd were yelling and laughing, the first sign of spontaneous joy on their faces that I had seen all night.
McGinnes was shoved out the door first. He tripped down the steps and fell to one knee on the sidewalk. I kept my balance as someone gave me a final push, walked down the steps, and helped McGinnes up. He mumbled, “I’m sorry, man,” and I could see that he really was, and that he was in some pain.
His pants were ripped at the knee, exposing a clean scrape beginning to redden with blood. I said calmly, “Let’s just walk,” and we did, crossing the street like two gentlemen to the occasional jeers of the spilled-out bar crowd behind us.
Lee was leaning against my car, fist up to her mouth and tears in her eyes as we approached her. “I can drive,” I said, and indeed the events of the last few minutes and the cool night air had made me feel somewhere near sober. We slid into the front seat with Lee in the middle. I turned the ignition key and drove slowly down the block.
I headed east. McGinnes found a beer under the seat, cracked it, muttered “Jesus Christ,” drank, and passed the can. Lee handed me the can after having some herself. We drove in silence for a few blocks. McGinnes, whose right ear appeared to be larger than his left, chuckled as he turned his head my way.
“Well,” he said, “we showed ’em.”
“That we did, Johnny.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, “you sonofabitches really showed them.”
She was laughing through her tears and we joined her, a release that had McGinnes alternately coughing, spitting out the window, and laughing some more. He cried, “Irish bar!” as if there were no other choice.
Lee kissed him on the cheek and then me on my mouth. I continued driving east.
WE PARKED ON THE corner of North Capitol and F, in front of Kildare’s, McGinnes’ favorite pub. He almost exclusively drank there now, though at one time his bar had been Matt Kane’s on Thirteenth and Mass, until Kane died and McGinnes began complaining about the place being full of “wine drinkers and ghosts.”
We entered and crossed a crowded room where a tenor was singing, passed the main bar, and arrived in the back room, where a few tables were empty. A waitress directed us to a four-top. We must have looked like accident victims, though no one here seemed to take notice.
The place was all muted greens and mahogany. A geezer with a long gray beard, his cane hung over the back of his chair, drank dark beer