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Nelson worked a pint of whiskey from his topcoat.
    “Good friends,” Nelson said. “Real good friends.” He unscrewed the cap on his whiskey.
    “Watch it, Nelson,” Benny said. “Keep that out of sight. Nelson just got off the plane from Nam,” Benny said.
    Nelson raised the bottle and drank some of his whiskey. He screwed the cap back on, laid the bottle on the table, and put his hat down on top of it. “Real good friends,” he said.
    Benny looked at me and rolled his eyes. But he was drunk, too. “I got to get into shape,” he said to me. He drank RC from both of their glasses and then held the glasses under the table and poured whiskey. He put the bottle in his coat pocket. “Man, I ain’t put my lips to a reed for a month now. I got to get with it.”
    We were bunched in the booth, glasses in front of us, Nelson’s hat on the table. “You,” Nelson said to me. “You with somebody else, ain’t you? This beautiful woman, she ain’t your wife. I know that. But you real good friends with this woman. Ain’t I right?”
    I had some of my drink. I couldn’t taste the whiskey. I couldn’t taste anything. I said, “Is all that shit about Vietnam true we see on the TV?”
    Nelson had his red eyes fixed on me. He said, “What I want to say is, do you know where your wife is? I bet she out with some dude and she be seizing his nipples for him and pulling his pud for him while you setting here big as life with your good friend. I bet she have herself a good friend, too.”
    “Nelson,” Benny said.
    “Nelson nothing,” Nelson said.
    Benny said, “Nelson, let’s leave these people be. There’ssomebody in that other booth. Somebody I told you about. Nelson just this morning got off a plane,” Benny said.
    “I bet I know what you thinking,” Nelson said. “I bet you thinking, ‘Now here a big drunk nigger and what am I going to do with him? Maybe I have to whip his ass for him!’ That what you thinking?”
    I looked around the room. I saw Khaki standing near the platform, the musicians working away behind him. Some dancers were on the floor. I thought Khaki looked right at me – but if he did, he looked away again.
    “Ain’t it your turn to talk?” Nelson said. “I just teasing you. I ain’t done any teasing since I left Nam. I teased the gooks some.” He grinned again, his big lips rolling back. Then he stopped grinning and just stared.
    “Show them that ear,” Benny said. He put his glass on the table. “Nelson got himself an ear off one of them little dudes,” Benny said. “He carry it with him. Show them, Nelson.”
    Nelson sat there. Then he started feeling the pockets of his topcoat. He took things out of one pocket. He took out some keys and a box of cough drops.
    Donna said, “I don’t want to see an ear. Ugh. Double ugh. Jesus.” She looked at me.
    “We have to go,” I said.
    Nelson was still feeling in his pockets. He took a wallet from a pocket inside the suit coat and put it on the table. He patted the wallet. “Five big ones there. Listen here,” he said to Donna. “I going to give you two bills. You with me? I give you two big ones, and then you French me. Just like his woman doing some other big fellow. You hear? You know she got her mouth on somebody’s hammer right this minute while he here with his hand up your skirt. Fair’s fair. Here.” He pulled the corners of the bills from his wallet. “Hell, here another hundred for your good friend, so he won’t feelleft out. He don’t have to do nothing. You don’t have to do nothing,” Nelson said to me. “You just sit there and drink your drink and listen to the music. Good music. Me and this woman walk out together like good friends. And she walk back in by herself. Won’t be long, she be back.”
    “Nelson,” Benny said, “this is no way to talk, Nelson.”
    Nelson grinned. “I finished talking,” he said.
    He found what he’d been feeling for. It was a silver cigarette case. He opened it up. I looked