Wheat-sheaf blond hair, blue eyes, a round sweet face, and skin as fair and smooth as satin; if that kid was a day over seventeen, I would eat my hat. Without salt. But Charlie's was a gay bar, and his blazing, innocent beauty bought him a few minutes' grace. It was enough time for his eyes to meet mine, and even in the dim of the bar I saw them brighten. I dropped my gaze to the glass of Coke-and-nothing I was nursing between my palms. Whatever brought that boy to this place, it was no business of mine. Really, I had no business even looking at him. I had passed my fiftieth birthday years ago. Hell, sixty was breathing down my neck. His clean lines might be a breath of fresh air in this dark bar, and I wasn't dead, or blind, but that was all the slack I would cut myself. I focused hard on the glass, turning it in my hands. A touch on my arm startled me, and I spilled a few brown drops onto the polished bar. When I turned, his face was close to mine.
