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dangerous weapon.
    â€˜I said you made me look foolish in front of my employer.’
    â€˜I heard you,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t hard.’
    He advanced and I poked the jagged end of the cue at him. ‘Back off. I could take out an eye.’
    He retreated but the other man didn’t. Anticipating my move, he got close enough to try a karate kick to my leg. I just managed to swing the cue back and down. I don’t know anything about karate, but in the movies they always hit the right spot. He didn’t. The cue got him squarely on the shin. He yelped and swore and bent double. Points to me, but it gave Thomas his chance. He closed in and swung a punch into my groin. End of story. The pain shot through me upwards, downwards and sideways. I dropped the cue and went into a protective crouch. He brought his knee up, caught me on the forehead and I felt my brain swim and my vision slide away.
    â€˜Jesus, man,’ I heard one of the suits say. ‘That was sweet.’
    I was still conscious and, dimly, thought it wasn’t nearly enough if Thomas was fair dinkum. Then I realised that my blurred vision was due to blood flowing down into my eyes. Not trickling, flowing.
    â€˜I think he’s got the message, Rhys. Let’s go before you get blood all over yourself.’
    I propped myself up against the leg of the table and drew in several deep breaths. The pain in my groin was bad but I’d had worse from low blows in the ring and a rifle butt in army training. The trick is to suck in air and think of higher things. I wasn’t too worried about the blood because I knew what had happened. Thomas’s hard, bony knee had split the scar tissue I have over my right eye, a memento of my amateur boxing career. We didn’t always wear protective headgear then. I have sharp eyebrow ridges, like Jimmy Carruthers, and, as he did, I bleed there like a stuck pig. It’d look worse than it was. Cautiously, I raised my right arm and wiped at the spot.
    â€˜Christ, mate. Are you all right?’
    One of the drinkers had drifted in from the bar. I must’ve been quite a sight.
    â€˜This is like the old days,’ he said. ‘Here.’
    He closed my hand around the drink I’d abandoned. I gave my forehead and eyes another wipe and my vision cleared. Massive dry-cleaning bill but not much more damage. I drank the scotch.
    â€˜Thanks. Little misunderstanding.’
    He was half drunk, fat and good-natured. ‘Coppers come around this time of night. Better get yourself cleaned up.’
    Most of the blood had soaked into my jacket; my shirt was dark so the blood on it didn’t show. I pulled myself up, took off the jacket after finding some tissues in a pocket. I pressed them against the eyebrow cut and went through to the toilet without attracting any attention. The face in the mirror looked like mine but it had aged a bit more than it should have in the last half-hour. I ran the water, used most of the paper towels available to clean up as best I could. I’d need ice for the swelling, a warm bath for the sore balls and a caustic stick for the cut. All available at home a few hundred metres away. Over the years, I’d spent so much money in the Toxteth I didn’t feel I had to compensate them for the broken cue.
    It took me three times longer than usual to get home from the pub and I was glad none of my neighbours saw me in such a mess. The cut had opened wide again and I was bloody from my head to my feet. I stripped off, had a shower and sat for a while in a shallow bath. I used the caustic stick to stop the bleeding. The skin above the eyebrow had been cut and stitched several times. These days they use some kind of clip that doesn’t promote scar tissue, but not in my time. Eventually the blood stopped seeping, but it’d be a while before the swelling went down and the scab came away. Till then, I was going to look like someone who’d been in a fight