Fucking bartender, Bill, would kick his ass out in a heartbeat if he saw him all bloody. Make his way quick to the bathroom then, look at himself in the mirror. A black eye tomorrow, probably, a cut on the upper lip—it didn’t show up so much with the stubble, though—that made Vince Thompson wince at the feel of the cold water he ran from the tap, the hot water not fucking working, of course, nothing happening when he turned the knob, so he had to use this freezing shit to get the blood off, and then the lip didn’t want to stop bleeding and the goddamn bloody nose to deal with too, so he had to grab paper towels and stuff them in his pocket, the one with the drugs, not the Beretta, and he ran a hand through his thinning hair and tried to get the swollen eye to open all the way but it wouldn’t, no big deal considering he couldn’t see out of the son of a bitch anyway, and then, looking more like shit than he usually did even, definitely not the sort of person anyone would want to talk to, would they, it was his own fault in some ways, his goddamn solitude, he pressed a paper towel to his mouth and went back out into the bar, looking every direction for trouble.
