She was a very beautiful girl, and all things considered it was only a matter of time before two men started a fight over her. That one of those men should be me is only surprising inasmuch as I’d never been in a fight in my life. But there I was, drunk, and I swear I don’t know what that bottle was doing in my hand. I swear it was someone else’s hand that broke the bottle against the counter and pointed it at the man standing in front of me, my challenger.

The reason I was drunk was because I was lonely, and the reason I was lonely was because I’d just seen a movie, Japanese, wherein over the course of the film every single character has intercourse, often several times over. Nothing like watching a movie wherein every single character has intercourse to make a man feel lonely, especially when he’s watching it alone. So I’d called up some friends and followed them to a bar where they said there were girls who could provide a temporary cure for what was ailing me. No surgical procedure, mind you—no general anesthesia necessary—just a band-aid, but a band-aid was all I was really looking for.

My chin still smarted from where my challenger had struck it. I looked into his eyes, dilated pupils like the moon across the sun; at his hands, tightly gripping and regripping the pool cue he intended to bash over my head like Joe Dimaggio. Everyone was watching; my friends, grinning from ear to ear in the hopes that my daring-do would earn them some undeserved attention, at the beautiful girl, counting odds and pooling bets with her friends like they were about to watch a cockfight. In the background, a fan of The Moody Blues had poured far too much money into the jukebox.

I suddenly felt wide open to whatever was going to happen. It was all wonderful. Where I stood was a result of a code I knew nothing of, forged into being by men far harder than myself, hair smelling of Brylcreem and faces tempered by battle; from the girl to the beer to it’s bottle smashed it had come to this, a series of successive moments over which I had no control, and yet I was in control now, here, on a bicycle I’d never learned to ride but knew just the same.

When I lunged, that’s just what it was like; I put one foot in front of the other like walking, like riding a bicycle, broken bottle out in front of me like a lance, and who knew the bicycle would betray me? I felt a hard tug at the back of my collar, uncompromising, and the next thing I knew I was flying out the door.

I’d never been thrown out of a place before, not literally or figuratively, and I found it had a surprisingly sobering effect. I am and have always been a relatively small man, but whoever had thrown me had done so with such ease and agility they must have been awfully big; as big as I was small, as fleet as I’d been wary. I landed softly, none the worse for wear, my pride the only thing bruised—or maybe it was already broken. The beautiful girl remained inside with my friends.

“Fascist fuck,” my challenger hissed out of the darkness and I turned around, all ready to let bygones be bygones, but the insult wasn’t for me. My challenger scowled at the door to the bar and flipped it the bird. I dug into my pocket for my cigarettes and lighter, turned my back to him and tried to light the cigarette, once, twice, enough that if I was a betting man I’d have soon been without my pinkies.

“You got an extra one of those?” he asked.

“I do if you’ve got a light,” I said. He patted himself down and finally found a matchbook. It looked as if it’d been through the wringer. He flipped it open and showed me all that was left, a single faded match.

“Oh Jesus,” I said. “Careful.” He nodded and crouched down in a corner while I felt which way the wind was blowing and put my back to it, shielding him. I handed him a cigarette; he put it to his lips.

“Salem, huh?” he said. “Funny. That’s what I smoke.”

“Careful,” I repeated. “Careful.”

“I got it,” he said. “Just keep an eye on the wind.” He struck the match in one deft motion and I watched as it flared to life. A pocket of air came in between my arm and chest and the fire wavered for a moment; I held my breath. I locked eyes with the flame and dared not even blink should the motion stir that final, fatal gust. He tilted the match on end and slowly brought it to the cigarette, and not until it was lit did I finally exhale.

“You see?” he said, handing me the cigarette. “I told you.”

I used it to light my own and then handed it back to him. “You walking?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, pointing in the direction of my apartment complex, some two miles away. “You?”

“The same,” I said.

“Hmm. I guess it’d be a little ridiculous for us to walk the same direction and not speak.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Only you’re not going to sucker-punch me again, are you?”

“That was a clean hit,” he contended, jutting out his chin. “I’m a clean fighter. Who are you to talk anyway, with your broken bottle?”

“Just trying to defend myself,” I shrugged. “Anyway, my name’s Bernard, even though everyone calls me Bernie.”

“Well Bernard, my name’s Eugene and people just call me Eugene.”

We walked along down the road in silence for a while, and just about the time my cigarette was half down Eugene said to me, “But goddamn if it isn’t a beautiful night. I hope my invocation of God doesn’t offend you, Bernard, but I only use it as a good old-fashioned expletive.”

“Fine by me,” I shrugged, and we kept on walking, and then a few minutes later he spoke up again. “Sorry to keep bothering you, Bernard, but my cigarette’s down to the vapors and either I’m going to start smoking my fingers or else I’m going to have to trouble you for another one of them cigarettes.”

“Sure,” I said. I handed him another cigarette and then lit another for myself off the cherry. We went on like that for a while, chain-smoking, and then I said, “You mind if I ask you a question, Eugene? How’d I do? Fighting, I mean. Did I look like I knew what I was doing up there or did I just make a fool of myself?”

He turned and looked at me slow and long and I noticed for the first time that his face was slightly asymmetrical, his smile a little crooked like maybe gravity weighed heavier on one side than the other, and I wondered if that wasn’t one of the reasons I’d been so eager to fight him. “You fooled me if you didn’t,” he said finally. “But then, to tell you the truth, this is only the second fight I’ve ever been in, and the first one was in the second grade, which I lost.”

“Can I ask you another question, then? Why’d you choose now to fight? Why’d you choose to fight me?”

He stopped, pulled hard on the last drag of his cigarette while I handed him another, and said, “She looked like my ex-wife.”

“Yeah? She reminded me of my high school crush,” I admitted. “Not exactly, I mean. In high school she had black hair, considerably shorter, also Chinese, but there was something.”

“Yeah,” Eugene nodded. “My ex-wife and I met in high school, too. She was different then. Thinner, long hair. She used to be a track star. They do change, don’t they?”

They do,” I said. “They certainly do. Of course, I suppose we do too.”

“You’ve got that right.” He shook his head. “Let me tell you something, if my ex-wife had seen me fighting tonight, she would have left me all over again.”

I was embarrassed as we came around a corner and saw my apartment complex up ahead. It was large, ugly and bright. It was the kind of place where lonely people live and I was embarrassed to call it home. I considered walking past, doubling back later, but then Eugene turned into the parking lot. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going home,” he said. “This is where I live.”

I stopped. “This is where you live? This is where I live.”

“You live here too?” he said. “That’s funny. I’ve never seen you around before.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been here,” I said, and there really wasn’t much else to say because it was strange, but stranger things have happened. We were more alike than we were different. For example, we had both chosen tonight to fight. For example, we both lived in a place like this. That’s the way it was as we walked to my specific building, as we climbed the stairs to my specific floor, as we walked down the hallway to my specific door; it seemed strange, of course, but stranger things have happened, even when he used his key to unlock my door.

Neither of us reached for the light as we walked inside. I’d forgotten to turn off the television, and the closing credits of the lonesome Japanese movie wherein every single character has intercourse remained paused, illuminating my living room, my easy chair, my telephone; or maybe it was his living room, easy chair, telephone. Maybe they were ours. I was thirsty from all the alcohol, the smoking and the walk, so I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Eugene had to go to the bathroom, I guess; I heard the toilet flush, then the water running in the sink and the sound of him brushing his teeth. I wondered if he was using his toothbrush or mine. When he came back out he was wearing my pajamas.

In the bedroom, Eugene and I worked together to make the bed that I had last left a rumpled mess of sheets and blankets earlier that morning, he on the left side, myself on the right. He got into bed while I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and put on my own pajamas. I felt the bristles on my toothbrush resting on the side of the sink; they were wet.

When I came back out Eugene was sitting up in bed reading Gulliver’s Travels, which I’d never seen before in the apartment so I guess it must have been his. “Do you mind?” he asked. “I only want to read a little bit more. Gulliver just arrived in Brobdingnag.”

“That’s fine,” I said, getting in on the other side of the bed. “Just turn out the light when you’re done.”

I turned my back to him and closed my eyes so all I could hear was the occasional flipping of the page and the sound of his sighing. After about ten minutes I heard him set down the book, turn off the light and settle himself under the covers, careful not to let our bodies touch.

“Well, good night,” he said.

“Good night,” I replied, and then I fell asleep.