It was just one o’clock in the afternoon when he pushed through the back door into the near-empty barroom; the room itself was hardly more than a passageway, dominated by the old Brunswick with its three good lion’s feet and a fourth blocky stump of blackened oak, its stained and burn-holed felt.

Behind the bar was Louis, the old man with the tremendous hands. Louis didn’t care for a song during the day and if someone got one going he’d limp over and unplug the machine and after that the billiards cracked more smartly, voices sailed, a girl’s laugh turned the heads of the daytime drunks.

Billy took a seat at the bar, leaving an empty stool between himself and two men who’d been talking quietly when he came in and who now stopped to watch him in the backbar mirror as he settled himself, as if he were a strange new development that might or might not be suffered.

Louis came and Billy asked for a seven-and-seven and the old man set to mixing it. In the mirror, beyond the image of himself, was the bright reflected square of the bar’s only window, and within that bright square were the shapes of a man and a woman. The man leaning close to tell her things no one else could hear in the hushed and daylit bar.

Louis centered the seven-and-seven on a bar coaster and Billy palmed the hundred-dollar bill down and the old man held the bill to the light, made change, and placed the smaller bills exactly where the hundred had been. Billy pushed two singles back and folded the remaining cash into his shirt pocket and raised his drink to Louis, who nodded, and he drank.

“Can a man still smoke in here, boss?” he said, and Louis said, “He can if these boys don’t mind,” and the two men turned to look at Billy—the far one older than the near one, who might’ve been a little older than Billy.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” said the older man, and Billy looked to the younger, nearer man, this man staring at him for a moment from under the bill of his cap, then shrugging and facing forward again.

Billy said Much obliged and got one going. Louis placed the ashtray on the bar.

He drank. He smoked. The two men resumed their conversation, the older man monologuing low and steady, speaking about his wife, or his ex-wife, telling the younger man in the cap all the things he and the ex-wife had done in their marriage, good and bad. Billy ordered another drink and the man spoke about the things he would like to do to his ex-wife now, now that he was no longer blinded by love, and he said many graphic things he’d be sorry he said, Billy thought, if the woman ever turned up dead. If she wasn’t dead already. He stirred his drink and drew the little double-barreled swizzle between his lips and sipped at the fizzing glass brim.

“It’s like a man just goes along for years,” the man said, “and he thinks he’s living his life, he thinks he’s a normal Joe living his life with a normal woman, but he ain’t, he ain’t, and one day he sits up in bed and he sees his life for what it really is. Sees his wife for what she really is. You know what I’m talking about, Steve?”

The younger man nodded.

“Right, Steve?”

“Right,” said the younger man, Steve.

The man lifted his beer, swallowed, set it down again. “Same thing as when I was in the service, Steve, which, as I said, I ain’t at liberty to talk about. Five years of high-level shit and then, one day, boom, there I am, staring at myself in a mirror, covered in blood and no idea how or why. Same motherfucking day different motherfucking story.”

Billy caught his own eye in the backbar mirror. He ain’t never gonna stop, this old boy.

Well, I don’t see the chain keeping you here.

But the seven-and-seven was smooth and he had the twenties in his pocket and he sat watching Louis wash out glasses and dry them and set them in their places, big pint glasses that in the old man’s hands became abruptly, unbelievably smaller. When he came over to see if Billy wanted another, Billy ordered a beer just to watch the effect. He drank half the cold pint and then he stood up and walked to the men’s room, and when he returned, the talker was gone.

The other man named Steve sat staring into the mirror, one hand on what remained of his pint. Billy nodded at him in the mirror; Steve nodded back and both drank from their beers.

Louis wiped down the bar and stocked the cooler. Behind them, in the window, the man held the woman’s throat in his hand, she the wrist of that hand in hers.

“Quiet in here,” Billy said, and the man named Steve said, “Nice and quiet.” He sipped his beer and caught Billy’s eye in the mirror. “It must be a terrible burden,” he said, “having to keep so quiet.”

“How’s that?” said Billy.

Steve nodded to his right. “Military man,” he said. “Keeping it all locked in like that. Terrible burden.”

“Terrible,” said Billy. “He sure had some stories he couldn’t tell.”

Steve picked up a pair of sunglasses from the bar and frowned at the lenses. “I like a good story, don’t get me wrong. But a man should never be the hero of his own stories. Nobody likes those stories.” He jiggled the sunglasses, as though he were thinking about putting them on and going.

“Do you shoot?” Billy said.

The sunglasses stopped jiggling.

“Sorry?”

“I said do you shoot.”

Steve sidled his eyes at him. “Do I shoot what, bud?”

“Guns. Firearms.”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“A simple one. I saw your shades. Usually see those on boys at the range. Or po-lice. Or po-lice at the range.”

Steve regarded him. “You ever see me at the range, bud?”

“No. I don’t go there much myself.” He gave the man an easy smile. “Too many po-lice.”

“You think I’m a po-lice?”

“No, I’d wager you’re not.”

“Why would you wager that?”

“What’s a cop doing in a place like this?”

“Looking for bad men.”

“He’d be in the right place. But he wouldn’t have mud on his boots. A lawman can’t abide mud on his boots. Everybody knows that.”

Steve did not glance down at his boots. “You have some particular interest in my boots, bud?”

Billy smiled. Steve did not smile but neither did he appear hostile under the bill of the cap. Did not appear anything. The cap, entirely featureless and of a nameless color between green and brown, matched the canvas jacket he kept zipped to his throat, a bland and homespun uniform of unguessable protocols. Seated he somehow gave the impression of a man who, on his feet, would not be very big but whom you would not take lightly in a fight. It was early for a fight but men who drank in the daytime would fight in the daytime and Billy was one of them.

He didn’t want to fight. He was enjoying his drinking and he had the twenties in his pocket and he didn’t want to get thrown out by old Louis with his great hands.

“None whatsoever, Steve. Why don’t you let me buy you one?”

“Did you just call me Steve?”

“I did. I heard the military man say it before. What’s your pleasure?”

“My name isn’t Steve.”

“My mistake,” said Billy. “I must of misheard.” He teased one of the twenties from his pocket. “Mine ain’t bud, either. It’s Billy.” He floated the twenty to the bar and watched Louis come over. “Seven-and-seven for me, and whatever this man is drinking.”

“Same?” said Louis, and after a moment the man nodded.

They sat in silence until the drinks came and were paid for and Louis had been tipped.

“I thank you for the drink and I apologize for my rudeness,” the man said. “I guess I got all talked out by Mr. Covert-Ops.”

“My feelings ain’t hurt,” Billy said. “Cheers.”

“My name’s Joe,” the man said, offering his hand, and Billy laughed, shaking his hand.

“What’s funny?” said Joe.

“I got a brother named Joe.”

“That so?”

“Guess what he is.”

“What?”

“Po-lice.”