By the light of the moon

the image of her.'
    'Tom,' Dylan said to Lynette's husband, 'I see there's but an
inch of wine left in that bottle. We're going to need something
more to celebrate, and I'd be pleased if you'd let me buy this
one.'
    Bewildered by what had happened, Tom nodded, smiled uncertainly.
'Uh, sure. That's nice of you.'
    'I'll be right back,' Dylan said, with no intention of keeping
that promise.
    He went to the cashier's station by the front door, where the
hostess had just paid out change to a departing customer, a
florid-faced man with the listing walk of one who had drunk more of
his dinner than he had chewed.
    'I know you're not serving dinner any longer,' Dylan said to the
hostess. 'But can I still send a bottle of wine to Tom and Lynette
over there?'
    'Certainly. The kitchen's closed, but the bar's open for another
two hours.'
    She knew what they had ordered, a moderately priced Merlot.
Dylan mentally added a tip for the waitress, put cash on the
counter.
    He glanced back at the corner table, where Tom, Lynette, and Ben
were intensely engaged in conversation. Good. None of them would
see him leave.
    Shouldering through the door, stepping outside, he discovered
that Jilly had moved the Expedition from the parking lot, as he had
requested. The SUV stood in the street, at the curb, half a block
north.
    Angling in that direction, he encountered the florid-faced man
who had left the restaurant ahead of him. The guy apparently had
some difficulty remembering where he'd parked his car or perhaps
even what car he'd been driving. Then he focused on a silver
Corvette and made for it with the hunched shoulders and the
head-down determination of a bull spotting a matador with unfurled
cape. He didn't charge as fast as a bull, however, nor as directly,
but tacked left and right, left and right, like a sailor changing
the course of his vessel by a series of maneuvers, singing a
slurred and semicoherent version of the Beatles' 'Yesterday.'
    Fumbling in the pockets of his sport coat, the drunk found his
car keys but dropped a wad of currency. Oblivious of the money on
the blacktop behind him, he blundered on.
    'Mister, you lost something,' Dylan said. 'Hey, fella, you're
gonna want this.'
    In the melancholy mood of 'Yesterday,' singing mushily of his
many troubles, the drunk did not respond to Dylan, but weaved
toward the Corvette with the newfound key held at arm's length
ahead of him, as though it were a dowsing rod without which he
would be unable to find his way across the last ten feet of
pavement to his vehicle.
    Picking up the wad of cash – Dylan felt a cold slippery
twisting serpent in his hand, smelled something goatish and rank,
heard an internal buzzing as of angry wasps. At once he knew that
the drunken fool lurching toward the Corvette – Lucas
something, Lucas Croaker or Crocker – was more despicable
than a drunk, more sinister than a mere fool.

21
    Even drunk and stumbling, this Lucas Crocker should
be feared. After casting aside the wad of cash saturated in
repulsive spoor, Dylan rushed him from behind, with no further
warning.
    Crocker looked flabby in his loose-fitting slacks and jacket,
but he was as solid as a whiskey keg, which in fact he smelled
like. Body-checked forcefully, he slammed against the Corvette hard
enough to rock it, and slobbered a final word of Beatles' lyrics
against the glass even as he broke the driver's-side window with
his face.
    Most men would have gone down, stayed down, but Crocker roared
in rage and reared back with such Brahman power that he appeared to
have been invigorated by the rib-cracking impact with the sports
car. He pistoned his arms, jabbed with his elbows, thrashed,
bucked, and rolled his meaty shoulders like a rodeo beast casting
off a flyweight rider.
    Far from flyweight, Dylan was nonetheless cast off. He staggered
backward, almost fell, but stayed on his feet, and wished that he
had kept the baseball bat.
    Nose broken, face cracked in a crimson grin, Crocker rounded on
his adversary with diabolic delight, as though stimulated by the
prospect of having his teeth knocked out, excited by the certainty
of greater pain, as if this were just the kind of
entertainment that he preferred. He charged.
    The advantage of size would not have been enough to spare Dylan
ruinous injury, and perhaps the advantage of sobriety wouldn't have
been enough, either; but size and sobriety and raw anger
gave him a precious edge. When Crocker charged with drunken
enthusiasm, Dylan lured the