She slinked herself onto a stool at the beginning of my shift and proceeded to ignore the efforts of every guy in the place. Me she acknowledged because I was the one pouring the whiskey.

    She ordered it neat, and long past the time when most people would have been sloppy drunk she was only slightly flushed, tossing back the shots as though the alcohol couldn't help but be burned away by the heat of her sexuality.

    I tried to pay attention to business. I dispensed drinks, listened to stories, traded jokes. I polished the bar and wiped glasses for show. I leaned on a guy whose tab was deeper than his pockets. I watched the clock.

    She was never out of my mind. Even when I was facing the other way I saw her sitting there, incandescent.

    She was raw power. Alone at the end of the bar, she pulled the strings that everyone in the room danced to. Nothing was said without the hope that she would hear it. No gesture was not calculated to impress.

    I knew these guys. They worked on the docks and in the factories, that was if they worked at all. Some were spending the government's money or the loot gained from petty crime. Others had women at home who nurtured unreasonable hope.

    These men had nothing to offer the woman at the end of the bar. I knew it, she knew it, and they knew it.

    The discomfort leaked and spread until no one was untainted.

    The voices grew louder than usual, the drinks snapped up and drowned. There was a skittery edge to the crowd, a growing unease which prompted a gaiety forced and fake, a desperate but futile attempt to block out the stranger in our midst.

    I recognized the mood of the men and I pitied them.

    I saw her glass empty and I topped it off.

    The atmosphere shifted. Instead of the violence I expected, the opposite happened. The men shrank in their skins, lowered their eyes, huddled over their drinks.

    Bravado turned to fear. Red faces turned gray.

    Much earlier than usual, my regulars broke away in small clumps, disappeared into the darkness. She had defeated them, made them less then the men that they needed to be. She was a black hole, there and not there, sucking the vitality from the crowd.

    By last call we were alone.

    I lifted the bottle from the well. "You want another?"

    She caressed the bar with the bottom of her glass as she pushed it forward. "Nice night."

    "Kept me busy, that's for sure." I banged the keys on the register, printing the total of the night's receipts.

    "People always find money for booze."

    "I'd be out of a job if they didn't." I refilled her glass. "You new around here."

    "Is that a question?"

    "Depends if you have an answer."

    She breathed on her glass, steamed it up so that the whiskey turned a color I'd never seen before. "Have you ever thought what it must be like to have money?"

    I didn't know where she was heading but I was along for the ride. "If I can pay my bills I count myself lucky."

    "You got a load of cash in that metal box."

    After returning the bottle to the well, I poured myself a coffee. "It's not mine."

    "It could be. What would you do with it?"

    Tasting the coffee, I wished I could add some whiskey to steady myself. "I could buy a new suit so I'd look good when the cops arrested me."

    She laughed. "We could go somewhere nice, somewhere the cops wouldn't find us."

    So now it was we. I found it hard to believe that I was the reason she'd stayed here all evening but at the same time I found the idea irresistible. "If you're interested in sweet escape, I know a trip that won't cost us a dime."

    "You could say you were robbed."

    I didn't think things were going to be that easy, not for a guy who looked like a punching bag. I reached under the overhang of the bar, pulled out my gun, placed it front of her. "Try again."

    "There was more than one of them." She yanked at the top of her blouse, sent a button flying. I heard it land on the other side of the room. "They threatened to kill me."

    "So then what happened?" I'd once skidded out of control, the car spinning across a rain-swept road, three-sixties until I hit a pole and snapped it in half. Compared to this, I'd known what I was doing.

    "You didn't have any choice. You opened the register, emptied the drawer, dumped the money on the bar."

    I punched the button that popped out the drawer. I grabbed a fistful of twenties and placed them on the bar, followed them with the tens, fives, and ones. She'd been drinking all night but I was the one who was intoxicated. "Did they leave once they got the money?"

    She shook her head. "First the short one slapped me."

    "Did it hurt?"

    "It excited me. Then they left."

    "What happened next?" We'd never touched or introduced ourselves but we were lovers, partners, soul-mates. I'd never met anyone like her and I knew I never would again.

    Her voice deepened, became husky. "You came around the bar to check on me."

    I went to the end of the bar, lifted the gate, and walked towards her. She slid off the stool and met me halfway.

    "And were you all right?" With that body she would always be all right.

    "I was now."

    She grabbed the front of my shirt, planted those whiskey-flavored lips on mine. She shifted and I felt metal pressed against me. Looking down the bar I saw that my gun was gone.

    "It's not loaded."

    She kissed me again and then pressed the knife home.

    I dropped to the floor, my hands wet with blood. The lights dimmed and I didn't even see her leave.

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