I HAD NOT SEEN HIM IN A LONG TIME, A VERY LONG TIME. NOW, two or three days after Christmas, I stood near the bench smoking a cigarette with one gloved hand and holding a paper cup of hot coffee with the other.

Him again. That pain-in-the-ass fucking stumblebum. He paused and looked my way, stood there, drunk and weaving, looking like shit.

He took a slug from the pint he was carrying. His bleary eyes roamed round him, then returned to me.

“You know what I mean,” he rasped in a low and broken voice. “We were there. We know.”

He wove closer with that pint in his hand, grinned that big, drunken grin of his, baring those dirty gums and few dirty teeth of that mouth that was even worse than mine.

I placed my cup of coffee carefully down upon the bench. My right hand was now free, and I hauled off and punched him square in the face.

He fell backwards, hit his head on the pavement. His pint lay broken in a small pool of whiskey. There was blood running from his nose. He raised his head slightly, laid a dirty hand to the back of it, then stared at the blood that covered his hand.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked, looking up, not at me but toward me.

“Because I felt like it,” I said.

I stood for a moment in the early quiet, looking down at that pain-in-the-ass fucking bum lying there with his shattered bottle and his silenced bullshit. He seemed unable to get up. I enjoyed watching him try. My hand ached as I retrieved my coffee from the bench. I took the coffee back into the bar.

“That was a good one,” grinned the bartender, who had as yet only one customer, some guy down the far end, lost in his beer.

“Fuckin’ pain in the ass,” I said.

“Ought to roll him out of the way from out front of the place.”

“Ah, he’ll manage to get rid of himself. Look at him. He’s already up on his fuckin’ knees.”

Then, sure enough, with the help of the bench, he was on his feet and somewhat upright again. He rubbed the back of his head, at the hair that was matted with blood, gazed at the broken pint bottle, and staggered off.

The bartender called out for the little Hispanic lackey, had him sweep up the broken glass and throw a bucket of hot water on the spilt whiskey and blood.

Yeah, he was gone, all right. And so were those fucking dead monkeys.

“Goddamn dead fuckin’ monkeys!” I heard myself yell out. The lone drunk at the far end of the bar stirred, nodded besottedly as if in sullen agreement. The bartender laughed. This whole fucking world was nuts.

My breath eased as I finished my coffee and wondered whether that was the last punch I would ever throw.

I decided to get another coffee from the corner store across the street. I asked the bartender if he wanted a cup of tea, and this idea brightened his morning all the more.