She tops off his glass; she’s leaning with her back to the bar, watching her now silent domain. “To curfew,” she says; she’s the most dangerous woman he knows, but with her funny accent and plump figure and tired curls, she hides it well.

He’s hunched over the bar. “Why’d you let me in? You hate me,” he says, a matter of fact.

“I was feeling generous,” she shrugs. “Besides; I was bored today. You are not a boring man. Change the game, and something new might happen.”

“What is it you want?” he growls, a shout that was was strangled on the way out. He manages just enough nerve to look her in the eye.

She gently smirks; a knowing quirk of her mouth she’s never been good at hiding. “Lock up as you go,” she says as she leaves a key by his elbow. “Drop the key off in the morning.”

She leaves him there in the near dark, in the bar that still feels smoky though the patrons left hours ago. Outside cops prowl the streets; he nurses his drink, and thinks. And waits.