The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

here? What were you thinking?"
    A loud and low-pitched whimper came out of the dark. The crowd at the entrance murmured among themselves. Suddenly a man stepped forward and pushed Betsy aside. He was in his forties and wore an African dashiki over khakis and Birkenstocks, his long hair held out of his face with a beaded headband.
    "Look, man, you can't stop us. There's something very special and very spiritual happening here, and we're not going to let some crazy woman keep us from being part of it.So just back off."
    Molly smiled. "You want to be a part of this, do you?"
    "Yeah, that's right," the man said. The others nodded behind him.
    "Fine, I want you all to empty your pockets before you come in here. Leave your keys, wallets, money, everything outside."
    "We don't have to do that," Betsy said.
    Molly stepped up and thrust her sword into the ground between the girl's feet. "Okay then, naked."
    Molly said.
    "What?"
    "No one comes in here unless they are naked. Now get to it."
    Protests arose until a short Asian man with a shaved head shrugged off his saffron robes, stepped forward, and bowed to Molly, thus mooning the rest of the group.
    Molly shook her head dolefully at the monk. "I thought you guys had more sense." Then she turned to the back of the cave and shouted, "Hey, Steve, cheer up, I brought home Chinese for lunch." twenty-six Val and Gabe entered the bar, then stepped out of the doorway and stood by the blinking pinball machine while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Val wrinkled her nose at the hangover smell of stale beer and cigarettes; Gabe squinted at the sticky floor, looking for signs of interesting wild life.
    Morning was the darkest part of a day at the Head of the Slug Saloon. It was so dark that the dingy confines of the bar seemed to suck light in from the street every time someone opened the door, causing the daytime regulars to cringe and hiss as if a touch of sunshine might vaporize them on their stools. Mavis moved behind the bar with a grim, if wobbly, determination, drinking coffee from a gargoyle-green mug while a Tarryton extra long dangled from her lips, dropping long ashes down the front of her sweater like the smoking turds of tiny ghost poodles. She went about setting up shots of cheap bourbon at the empty curve of the bar, lining them up like soldiers before a firing squad. Every two or three minutes an old man
    would enter the bar, bent over and wearing baggy pants – leaning on a four-point cane or the last hope of a painless death – and climb onto one of the empty stools to wrap an arthritic claw around a shot glass and raise it to his lips. The shots were nursed, not tossed back, and by the time Mavis had finished her first cup of coffee, the curve of the bar looked like the queue to hell: crooked, wheezing geezers all in a row.
    Refreshments while you wait? The Reaper will see you now.
    Occasionally, one of the shots would sit untouched, the stool empty, and Mavis would let an hour pass before sliding the shot down to the next daytime regular and calling Theo to track down her truant.
    Most often, the ambulance would slide in and out of town as quiet as a vulture riding a thermal, and Mavis would get the news when Theo cracked the door, shook his head, and moved on.
    "Hey, cheer up," Mavis would say. "You got a free drink out of it, didn't you? That stool won't be empty for long."
    There had always been daytime regulars, there always would be. Her new crop started coming in around 9 A.M., younger men who bathed and shaved every third day and spent their days around her snooker table, drinking cheap drafts and keeping a laser focus on the green felt lest they get a glimpse of their lives. Where oncewere wives and jobs, now were dreams of glorious shots and clever strategies.
    When their dreams and eyesight faded, they filled the stools at the end of the bar with the daytime regulars.
    Ironically, the aura of despair that hung over the daytime regulars gave Mavis the closest thing to a thrill she'd felt since she last whacked a cop with her Louisville Slugger. As she pulled the bottle of Old Tennis Shoes from the well and poured it down the bar to refill their shot glasses, a bolt of electric loathing would shoot up her spine and she would scamper back to the other end of the bar and stand there breathless until her stereo pacemakers brought her heartbeat back down from redline. It was like tweaking death's nose, sticking a kick-me sign on the head of a cobra and