I didn't bother with makeup or the contacts. Just a pair of wraparound shades. For one night, let the looky-loos gawk their beating hearts out.
I found B in the back, where I always found B. He sipped on a Cape Cod, probably his fourth or fifth of the evening, and told me to have a seat. I didn't.
I said, "I figure you've got the lowdown by now. The highlights, at least."
"I am not one to be kept in the dark, kitten."
"Which is ironic," I said. "Can think of no place better suited for you."
He grinned and tapped his right index finger against his right temple.
"You've not lost your sense of humor," he said. "Well, such as it is. Good, that."
"Yeah, I'm a barrel of laughs."
I was starving. The place smelled like an all-you-can-eat buffet. My stomach rumbled eagerly.
"Also, you'll be pleased to know Drusneth's decided to let bygones be bygones, so you needn't worry your pretty little head over that."
"It never even crossed my mind," I said, and then I turned my back to him and stared towards the door and snowy Wickenden Street beyond.
"Anyway, love," he said. "We can talk of your misadventures another time. Happens your return, your timing, it's most fortuitious. Have an especially delicate job out in Tiverton I wouldn't trust to anyone else."
"That so?" I asked him, and glanced over my shoulder, then back to the door. It opened, and a guy came in. The door jingled shut behind him.
"That is very, very so. Before he died, that wanker Rizzo up and tangled with these other wankers who found at a bleedin' yard sale-get this, kitten-a copy of the Dhol Chants and-"
"Not my problem," I said.
You could have heard a pin drop. I mean, even if you weren't a vamp.
"And how is that, Quinn?"
"I ain't your bitch anymore, that's how. Find someone else. You're a resourceful sort. Shouldn't be too hard."
"Not a bright move," he said. "Not a bright move at all. You've made a lot of people very unhappy."
"B-"
"Bergman, sweetness. Tonight it's Bergman."
I began again. "Bergman, I'm starting to think I don't need your protection half as much as you'd like me to believe I do. That I'll do just fine on my own. But if that ain't so, it ain't so."
I heard him light a Nat Sherman.
"It isn't any better anywhere else," he sighed. "What you are, what that means, it isn't a predicament you can run from. It's the sort that follows you."
"I know," I replied.
He sighed again, louder than the first time.
"And where do you think you'll go?" he asked calmly, without the slightest hint of exasperation or irritation or even disappointment in his voice.
"I haven't thought that far ahead. Maybe Brooklyn. Maybe Boston. Fuck, Miami sounds kind of nice."
A song came on the radio, loud through the bar's stereo speakers; Patti Smith singing about Johnny and horses. A song for my funeral.
"Well, if you've made up your mind."
I told him I had.
"Then walk in the light, precious," he said, and I imagine he raised his glass to me. "Until we meet again."
"Yeah, until that day," I said, and I left Babe's for the last time ever.
I stood awhile on the sidewalk, staring up past the streetlights at the waning moon, the moon staring back down at me. Some eyes pry, no matter how much you try to hide your monster's face. Some eyes, they know the truth of truths, and they watch you every goddamn place you go, and you just have to live with knowing how they always will.