I turned. There stood the Shrew, just as lovely as the girl on the wall but in a different way. Her hair, a brown curly mop combed mostly with her fingers, stuck straight out around a smiling face with no make-up. A man's T-shirt hung like a sack over her athletic but feminine body.       "Nothing," I answered. "Drinking too much beer as usual."

      We were both college students and met in class and became friends. I longed for a different kind of relationship but, twice her age, kept those thoughts to my dreams. But more than years separated me from the Shrew and her peers. A grenade back in 'Nam had rearranged my face, and although I seldom looked into a mirror, I knew I was not a pretty sight.

      "You want to be a writer," a VA psychiatrist had told me in an effort to end depression possessing me like a suicidal demon. "Go to college. You can do it. Take writing courses."

      So, I did, and there I was, surrounded by youthful beauty like a eunuch in a sultan's harem. The grenade and twenty years of alcohol and other pain-killing drugs from both over and under the counter had denied me any hope of quenching the desires that beauty caused. I had kicked the pills but not the booze and depression.

      "Come sit with me and Galliano Gayle," the Shrew told me.

      I sat down at their wooden table, and she perched beside me, her legs propped on braces beneath the bench and the cut-off edges of her red sweat pants curling upward like the lips of the girl in the poster. Across from us, Galliano Gayle emptied a pitcher of draught beer into a mug. Her name came from her home here in Louisiana, but her hair was yellow and sleek like the liqueur. Long strands seemed to fondle their way across the softness outlined in the pink tank-top she wore.

      The two girls were alone, and the Shrew's volatile brother seemingly never left her side. "Where's Flea?" I asked.

      "On his way, Old Man," she said, and we all looked up as in the door he came, followed by a kid they strangely called by his real name: Freddy.

      The kid idolized Flea but wore leather shoes, neat jeans, and a shirt that could have belonged to his father. His hair was short like his father, I figured, but he had the scraggly beginnings of a beard I knew tried to mask his age.

      Freddy following him, Flea tramped past the pool tables toward us. The fingers of his right hand continually flicked ashes from a cigarette, and his left hand raised and lowered a baseball cap sticking above his narrow face.

      He wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off and emblazoned across the front with the words Z Z Top in silver letters. He had on ragged cut-off jeans with spirals of threads hanging to his boney knees. Both skinny legs poked into dirty tennis shoes with no socks.

      They sat down, Flea beside his sister, and Freddy, his back to the bartender, beside Galliano Gayle. "Fuck, man," Flea said, broke as usual, the cap rising as he eyed the empty pitcher, "somebody buy another one."

      I dug four dollars out of my wallet and handed it to him.

      "Bring me a mug," I hollered at his back as he headed for the bar.

      Freddy, an old hand at under-aged drinking, stared straight ahead as if he concentrated on some kind of ancient, adult knowledge. Flea soon returned, full pitcher in one hand, mugs in the other one. He filled the glasses, spilled beer everywhere, and sat beside his sister. "Goddamn, man," she told him, "you're a nervous fuckin' wreck!"

      He flipped ashes in the general direction of the ashtray, and the fire came off the cigarette and sizzled out in the spilled beer on top of the table. "Need a downer," he said from beneath the never-still cap.

      "Fuck you!" the Shrew un-sisterly exclaimed. "You take too much of that shit!"

      The corners of his mouth twitched up and down while the cap raised and lowered. He took a long drag from the dead cigarette, exhaled air, and like his words were lofty wisdom, declared: "The Shrew." I realized then where she got her name.

      We had almost finished the pitcher when the Shrew's face turned toward the door. She groaned, "Oh, goddamn. Here comes the fuckin' Hunk."

      A collective grimace went around the table; none of us could stand the Hunk although he was a fellow student. He looked about twenty-four, was an ex-Marine, and considered himself a trained killer and the fulfillment of every woman's erotic fantasy. He was short and muscular, had oily combed-back brown hair, and even though it was night, wore dark sunshades to conceal the bruises of both black eyes. Nervous as Flea, he continually tilted his head back and forth like he had bugs in his ears.

      He sat beside Galliano Gayle, his intentions obvious to us all. "Sayyy mannn," he said to me because I was the oldest, I guess, and he figured I had bought the pitcher. "Can I have a beerrr?"

      I nodded, yes, and he strutted to the bar, got a mug, and returned. He filled the glass, pointed with his head to my pack of cigarettes lying in a dry spot on the table, and said, "Sayyy mannn, can I bum a smoke?"

      When we finished the pitcher; I bought another one. We talked, trying to ignore the Hunk's crude comments about his sexual prowess to Galliano Gayle, then to the Shrew, and then to them both together. Flea's mouth quit twitching and formed a permanent frown.

      Then Flea, no diplomat, asked, "Hunk, did you catch that son-of-a-bitch that blacked your eyes and whipped your ass?"

      "Nahhh, mannn," the Hunk answered with a lie, we all knew, "and it wasn't one, it was four sons-of-bitches, and if I find 'em, they're dead." He cocked his head for emphasis. "You hear me? Dead!"

      Galliano Gayle noticed Flea's name crudely tattooed across his left forearm. "Hey," she asked, "where did you get that?"

      "In prison," he answered. "Did it with a ball-point pen."

      She raised a sandaled foot and placed it on the table-top. "Look at mine," she then said and pulled up her pants leg, exposing a slim white calf and a tiny red rosebud etched in the skin above her ankle.

      "I've got one," the Shrew said, pointing to an area above and slightly to the side of her crotch. "Right here. It's a cat."

      "Well, let us see it," we all agreed, especially me, and she did.

      She stood up, pulled down one side of the red sweat pants, and showed us the whiskered face of a cat engraved beside a thin curly line of pubic hair. Up went the pants, and down she sat.

      The Hunk's head was still. "Shrew," he stated, "you sure have a pretty pussy."

      Up jumped Flea, fists clenched, cap steady. Over went the pitcher, and around the bar came the bartender. "Outside!" he yelled.

      They stormed through the front door, followed by most of the crowd in the bar. I didn't go out and watch because I didn't like blood and I knew what was going to happen: cops. In a gravel and asphalt arena, they furnished some real entertainment for a slow Tuesday night.

      "Dollar on the skinny one!"

      "Covered!"

      "Yuck! Look at the blood!"

      A girl peeking out the door told her boyfriend, "It really fucking sucks if this is all y'all do around here for excitement."

      Soon, they all got hauled downtown. After they posted bond and filled out statements, we went to my apartment. Flea was a mess. Gravel had cut his knees, and blood streamed wet red lines down his legs and into his shoes. And the Hunk was a biter. Both of Flea's forearms sported new tattoos: perfect bloody circles. "You could take those to a dentist," I told him, "and have the Hunk some dentures made."

      He saw no humor in the comment. "Goddamn, Shrew," he said, cap rising, cigarette flipping. "Find me a joint."

      Adrenaline was flowing, and everybody but me agreed with Flea; they needed a joint. But frantic searches through purses turned up dry, and so did several phone calls. "Goddamn, man," the Shrew said to us all. "Let's go to Baton Rouge; we can score some there."

      That's where she lived on weekends with Larry, her boy-friend.

      "Damn, Shrew," I told her, the logic of age surfacing in me, "eighty miles? It's past midnight!"

      Everyone else was on their way out of the door. "Get in the car, Old Man," the Shrew ordered. "You're going, too."

      So, I did, and we left in Galliano Gayle's Buick with her driving and Flea, the tape-player operator, beside her on the other side of the front seat. I took every beer in my refrigerator, probably out of fear I'd never return, and sat in the back behind Galliano Gayle, Freddy behind Flea, the Shrew between us, her leg next to mine.

      We tooled up the interstate, drinking beer from sacks at our feet and singing along with the Rolling Stones and Credence Clearwater Revival. They played it for me, I was sure. Freddy started accompanying "Born on the Bayou" with an imaginary piano attached to the rear of Flea's seat. "You a music major?" I asked him.

      "Damned right," he informed me. "Nobody gets more pussy than musicians."

      Pussy and music, I thought. How could that be the most important thing in a kid's life? And why, I wondered, would anyone in their right mind make an eighty-mile midnight trip to buy dope, and what in hell was I doing along for the ride?

      Then I remembered the '63 'Vette I once owned, the pony-tailed girl that rode beside me, Little Richard yelling from the eight-track tape player, and trips to the bar across the parish line to get one last drink before it closed. I started picking an imaginary guitar.

      About twenty miles out of Baton Rouge, Galliano Gayle muttered, "Uh oh, y'all, we're almost out of gas."

      Flea turned down the dial, and the music stopped, both real and imagined. I leaned forward, looked past yellow hair and saw the gauge; she was right. Ahead of us an empty highway disappeared beyond the reach of the headlights. Around us the waning moon glimmered from the surface of a swamp on both sides of the road.

      But God takes care of fools, and we made it on fumes and beer and coasted into a station. Flea turned up the music. We gassed up, and the Shrew, more than a little inebriated, took over the wheel. We started out again, headed now for the dealer. I got sober and quit singing.

      Above the speed limit, we lurched through darkened streets like a drunken boat on a concrete stream. We passed what looked like an alley, and Flea yelled, "There it is!" and the Shrew missed the turn.

      "Fuck!" she yelled and turned anyway.

      "You blew it, Shrew," her brother nonchalantly said as the car hit the curb, bounced onto the sidewalk, and charged over neatly-trimmed bushes and whizzed through the gap between the side of a building and a telephone pole.

      We sped down the sidewalk, crossed somebody's manicured lawn, and finally reached a street. Tires screaming, we skidded over the curb, barely missed a parked car, and zoomed away into the darkness.

      "Minor detour," the Shrew informed us.

      I, strangely calm, watched through the rear window for flashing lights and listened over the music for the sound of sirens. Galliano Gayle sat beside me in the back seat like she'd done all this before. Freddy never stopped playing his piano.

      The Shrew slowed the car and turned into a narrow lane behind a row of apartments. We eased past parked vehicles and buildings rising and disappearing into the blackness above us. The barely moving car almost scraped a retaining wall topped with tall grass dripping over the edge and scratching gently on the roof of the car. When we stopped, Flea bounded out and disappeared toward the buildings.

      The car began moving again, left the lane, and turned into the street. "He's got to smoke a joint with the dealer," the Shrew explained. "You know, dope smoker's etiquette."

      Very slowly now, we circled the block twice, entered the lane again, and stopped near our original location beside the wall and the dripping grass. The Shrew turned off the ignition and the music, and we waited in what can only be described as the definition of silence. I thought I could hear the seconds clicking behind the green light of the digital clock built into the tape player in the dash. After a minute that seemed like an hour, I had to urinate.

      I got out, went behind the car, and pressed against the wall, my head and shoulders inside the hanging grass. I listened to the soft sounds of the night, but my eyes watched toward the parked vehicles, expecting FBI agents to jump out, guns drawn and voices yelling, "Freeze!"

      But, I reasoned with myself, I could tell them I was along for the ride and could pass the pee-in-the-jar test. Besides, I also convinced myself, I'm a writer, and this is great material.

      But the long arm of the law did not reach for me, and I got back in the car. We waited. Flea finally loomed in the darkness, Z Z Top shining, a rolled joint white in his fingers, a bag of dope tucked into the waistband of his shorts, and blood still streaming down his legs.

      We started off again, headed now for the Shrew's apartment, racing through the streets, music blaring, the joint passing around, and me wondering what Baton Rouge cops do at night. The Shrew said, "Ain't Larry gonna be surprised. He doesn't expect me until Friday."

      He was.

      We arrived at her apartment complex, bounced over speed-bumps in the parking lot and skidded to a halt. A few seconds later, the Shrew banged on her door, yelled, "Open up you bastard!" and unlocked it with her key.

      It swung open.

      There sat Larry on the couch, his eyes wide and a sheepish grin on his face while he frantically buttoned his pants. Nearby, on a love-seat, sat the Shrew's best friend, a sweet-thing I can only say was awesome.

      She wore red short-shorts above long tanned legs, and a white, low-cut top below a quivering expanse of you-know-what. Her right arm, tanned and sleek, extended down to the purse at her side where her red-painted finger-nails touched the brown butt of a blued steel revolver.

      The Shrew, glaring, stood over the seated girl. "So, bitch, I stay at college during the week, and you come over here and fuck Larry!"

      The girl held the remote control for the TV in her left hand, and the Shrew grabbed for it, keeping one eye on the red-nailed hand clutching the pistol. They struggled momentarily for the electronic devise like it was a minature phallic symbol. I stood nearby, poised to deflect the pistol if it sprang from the purse.

      But the Shrew, luckily, recognized the threat and saved me the sight of more blood, possibly my own. She let go of the symbol and turned to the reality: Larry. "You bastard!" she yelled and hit him in the head.

      They fought for a while--we all just watched, sweet-thing included--and more pressing needs arose: Flea was bleeding on the carpet, and it was time to roll a joint.

      "Fuck you, Larry," the Shrew said. "Flea, roll a doobie. Freddy, clean up that blood."

      Freddy wiped up blood with toilet tissue, and the joint started rolling. The Shrew pointed to the sweet-thing and said, "Give that whore the first drag; she's the guest."

      The mood improved as the joint went round. I could barely keep my eyes from legs flowing out of red shorts and flesh pouring out of a white top. Larry pointed to a stack of photographs on the coffee table between us. "Look at those," he told me. "They're from our vacation."

      Flea grabbed the pictures, extracted one, and then handed it to me. Quietly, out of the side of his mouth, he said, "Old Man, put it in your pocket and take it home."

      I stared at it. It was the image of a very attractive young woman clothed in only the bottom of a bikini. She wore sun-shades and had her arms raised, fingers locked behind her head. Her chest pushed out, accentuating the fullness of white breasts outlined against brown skin.

      My mouth dropped open in recognition. The Shrew spoke up, her chest thrust out again, lungs holding in narcotic smoke, and her voice squeaky: "It's me. I've got perfect breasts."

      I admired the perfection and the picture but replaced it in the stack. When we left, I insisted on driving. Somehow, I found my way out of the city to the interstate. The music played, but I heard nothing. A long lonely ribbon of highway stretched before me in the darkness, and the burning ember of another joint passed beside me. Outside my window, stars shone like pinpricks in the black blanket of eternity.

      Someone in the back seat asked, "Old Man, why are you so quiet?"

      I made no reply, watched the stars above me, the highway before me, the glowing ember passing beside me, and the dim green lights on the dash playing a song I could not hear.