THE LONG MEMORY OF THE CHURCH by Peter Nolan Smith

After the Roman Emperor Constantine I accepted Jesus, the once-persecuted Christians sought their revenge against the Greco-Roman pantheists. The burnt became the burners and the killed were the killers, as the diverse cults of the Empire shriveled under the iron fist of the Messiah's ruthlessness. Mithra and Isis were forsaken en masse for the one True Nailed God, even though the cult of the new divinity was divided into an incestuous menage-a-trois.

God, Jesus, his son, and the Holy Ghost.

The Church waged several centuries of crusades to exterminate any trace of the Old Religions from the European continent, but the bishops of persecution desired live souls more than dead pagans and persuaded many non-believers to abandon their idols through the adoption of traditional rites of the Northern Nations.

The Winter Solstice celebration was transformed into Christmas. The Irish Cross became the Cross of Jesus and Thor's Oak evolved into a pine tree adorned with lights and color for Christmas. Many pagan gods and goddesses changed faith and today marked the feast day of St. Bridgit of Kildare, the patron saint of Ireland, which coincided with Holiday of Imbolc honoring Brigit, the one-eyed Celtic goddess of healing and poetry.

A statue of St. Bridgit graced the first apse on the left in St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue and several years ago I decided to visit the church on my lunch hour. My boss asked where I was going.

"To lunch."

Most companies gave their employee an hour to eat. The 82 year-old diamond dealer considered lunch a waste of time and he repeated his question, "When are you coming back?"

"None of your business to be truthful."

Manny had stiffed my raise two consecutive years.

"You show me no respect."

"That's true." Respect was accorded not to his age, but how he treated his two employees. "Since you're so interested, I'll tell I'm going to St. Patrick's to light a candle in honor of Breo-saighit or the Fiery Arrow."

"Brio-sate?" Manny was mean, but he wasn't stupid despite having never finished high school.

"It translates into Bridgit, the Celtic goddess of health and poetry."

"Bridgit like Brigitte Bardot."

"Close."

"I saw her movie AND GOD CREATED WOMEN with my first wife. She was gorgeous." Manny had a good memory for women and like so many men of the 1950s, Brigitte Bardot stole away the breath in that movie. Manny handed me a dollar and said, "Light a candle for me. Can't do nothing, but good."

"You got it." Manny and I were friends going through a tough stretch. No one was buying diamonds and Manny was still paying my salary. He acted like a piece of shit, but he was my piece of shit.

It was winter. It was cold and I strolled up 5th Avenue through the tourists meandering the broad sidewalks like lost cows. The steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral were crowded with sightseers posing for photos. None of the shooters had read the camera's instructions about perspective or distance.

I entered the cathedral without wetting my fingers in the fount or genuflecting to the Crucified Man from Bethlehem. I headed straight over to the first apse on the left aisle holding $3 for three candles; one for Manny, another for world peace, and the third for my family.

The offering box was in its normal place, however the array of candles had been stripped from the apse and a black sheet covered the statue of St. Bridgit.

This was sacrilege and I looked around for an explanation.

Several rows closer to the altar a guard was evicting a groggy tramp. I approached him with a lifted hand.

"I only do what the priest tell me. No one can sleeping in the church." His accent was Jamaican. Maybe Trenchtown and his dreadlocks were short. Jah would forgive the cutting. These days every man needed to keep his job.

"Not even during the sermon?" Nothing put the snooze on me faster than a priest preaching salvation.

"There are some exceptions." The guard gave up on waking up the bum and asked, "What can I do for you?"

"I'm just wondering why St. Bridgit doesn't have any candles and why the statue is covered with a sheet."

"The priests told us to tell anyone asking that question that the candle holders were removed for repairs."

"Repairs? The candle holders were steel. Their only enemy is rust.

"That’s what I was told."

"But there's another reason?"

"Jah, mon." The guard’s shrug answered my question. "Last year Pagans came to honor the Saint. The Church don't like that."

"Really?"

"Jah, mon."

"Thanks for the info."

The Holy Motherfucker Church had not forgotten its crusades, for her memory stretched back 2000 years and the Vatican was not surrendering its position as # 1 to a dead religion, but I was here to honor Brigit and Imbloc.

I purloined three candles from St. Bernard's apse without dropping a dollar in the offering box. I lit them in front of Brigit. The black robes could clean off the wax after Mass. I mumbled a quick prayer to health before the goddess's statue and then hurried out of the cathedral into the cold winds of 5th Avenue.

I gave the $3 meant for the candles to Lenny the Bum on 47th Street. He's no saint, but the Hassidic beggar was funny after a few chugs of cheap cognac.

"Damien, you're a good goy." Lenny lived with his spinster sister in Washington Heights. "Jesus loves you."

"Lenny, I'm an atheist. There is no God. Only you and me and the rest of the Cosmos." My boss was watching my conversation with Lenny. Manny hated loafers and considered Lenny a disgrace to the Jewish race. The octogenarian from Brownsville tapped his watch.

"So neither of us are going to heaven or hell?"

"Not a chance.Besides Jews don't believe in Heaven or Hell, but Olam Habah, the world to come, where you'll study the Torah for eternity."

"I'd rather go to Gehinom."

"No such luck. You beg to care for your crazy sister. At worst, you'll go to Sheoh." It was the Jewish Purgatory.

"Thanks, Damien."

Manny greeted me at the counter.

"Why do you waste your time with that bum?"

"Because he's a human same as you and me." I stopped taking off my coat and walked toward the door.

"Where are you going now?"

"I forgot my food. I'll be right back and eat at my desk."

"First a candle to Brigitte Bardot and now lunch." Manny rolled his eyes in disgust, then dipped his hand into his pocket. "What are you getting?"

"Pizza."

"Sounds good." Manny handed me a ten. "Get us both a slice of pizza. I did like that Frenchie broad."

“Brigitte Bardot?"

"There was only one."

"And that's the truth." I had worshiped Brigitte Bardot's movie poster as a young man. It was no sacrilege to St. Bridgit. My adulation was pure from afar and a goddess would have it no other way.

ps St. Brigit is also the patron Saint of bastard children.

Danger Old Man

In 2008 I left my family in Thailand and moved to Fort Greene. The neighborhood abutted the closed Brooklyn Navy Yard, which had employed 80,000 during the War Years. Bars, brothels, opium dens, and gambling rooms dotted the slope up to Fulton Street, serving as the inspiration for Hubert Selby Jr.s LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. After the Yard's closure in 1966 combined with the completion of the BQE or US 278 destroyed the neighborhood. Sin was replaced by danger and drinking by drugs. Only the toughest joints remained protected by loyal customers, but after Sellers shut its doors the only local bar left was Frank's Lounge.

I've drunk at hundreds of bars around the world. Only a few have been home; Concannon and Sennett's in Brighton Mass., tHe Gaslight Pub in Park Slope, CGGBs, le Pere Tranquille in Les Halles, the Soho House in London, and the Buffalo Bar in Pattaya.

Coming bck from the city I got off the C train and spotted a bar across Fulton Street. It looked old school. The second I entered the bar into Frank's Lounge, I know knew where I was. The ceiling was stucco whit4e. The TV was an old Trinatron. There were three people in the bar. Buddy Guy was on te stereo.

Hey white boy," a big man drawled with a lifelong Delta accent.

"Firstly while I ain't as old as you, I ain't no boy."

"I turned to young Chinese-Mexican bartender.

"If you serve gin and tonics really strong, then I'm a happy man." I signaled the Chinese bartender." "You got the right place and Homer, stop harassing the customers, I'm trying to make money." "Please make mine a double .Put in a big glass. Twice the gin half the ice."

"And get 'Homer' a Heineken." "I don't need a beer, Cracker." He stuck all his drawl in every word.

I had been a race traitor in Boston and said with a hard no-H South Shore, "I ain't no cracker."

"What you know about crackers?"

"The crack of the whip."

"Homer, shut your hole," said a nattily dressed man in his 70s. He stuck out his hand and said, "Old Bill. don't mind Homer, he's harmless."

"Excepting when I'm not." Homer said and shook my hand. "Sorry White Boy, but you all look the same to me." ,

America Same As It Ever Was

Today is an important day in the American holiday calendar marking the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., who fought the forces of racism, saying, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Sadly the forces of hatred ended the peacemaker's life in Memphis. I would like to uphold his path of pacifism, however race hatred in America burns brighter than a KKK cross.

Years ago at the Diamond Exchange I was speaking with Richie Boy and said, "I should have the day off."

"What? National Nigger Day?"

"What did you just say? You're Jewish and I don't consider none of you white."

I was half-Mayflower descendant and 50% Black Irish.

"Sorry."

"You better be." Racism has been a hatred taught to us whites at an early age and later that afternoon a rich white woman saying, "I hate the city. It's so dirty."

She wasn't speaking about the litter, but the filth of the races.

I said nothing, because I was trying to sell her a diamond and the best revenge was to hit her pocketbook.

Money is all the rich have and I try not to hate them or white people, because there's nothing wrong with taking cash off the rich.

Long live the man of peace and even a dead Martin Luther King Jr. is better company than the filthy rich.

He gave his all for the world.

For everyone.

OH LUCKY MAN

OH LUCKY MAN

Seven come eleven
Praying bones shaking in your hands
Seven come eleven
Come out and party in the garden
Roll on the green of luck
Seven come eleven
Never boxcars
Twelve apostles is as bad
As snake-eyes
Always whisper its name
Bad luck loves a loser
Loaded dice too
I only throw winners
Seven come eleven
Bare bones knuckles

Le Royal Lieu

The bomb blast at the Bank Leumi had transformed Rue Des Italians to an old daguerreotype of Paris from the 1870s. A tent had been erected under a balcony of the carless street. A young clochard cut vegetables into a pot. The thin bum was better clothed than most derelicts sleeping under the Seine bridges, yet a tremor sizzled in my spine, as he lit his stove. It didn't explode and I flagged a taxi, elated to have survived my fears.

At the atelier Candia was alone. A cigarette lay in the ashtray. The tip was bare of lipstick, but then she didn't smoke. Candia threw it in the trash and packed her bag for Italy. Her good-bye kiss was a peck.

Albert, Serge, and I worked twenty-hour days. Sleep was our only respite. Five minutes before the doors of le Royal Lieu were to open, hastily electricity blew the fuses. Bernard found the breakers and switched on the lights. We were ready for business.

Fun-loving Parisians flooded into Le Royale Lieu. Bernard's DJing drove the teenagers onto the dance floor and they drank with an apocalyptical abandon. Candia showed up unexpectedly with her father. Johnny ran a small boite de nuit in St. Germain. He was considered a gangster. I bought a bottle of champagne. Candia's kiss was warm, but before I could hold her in my arms, Jacques tapped my shoulder.

"Someone to speak with you."

I accompanied him to the door and Jacques pulled apart the curtains.

The young clouchard struggled with a lighter.

"He say why?"

"No," Jacques and I had been working together for two years. He knew my mind. "You want I make him go away?"

"No." Twenty francs bought the bum a bottle of wine and good luck our club. "I'll see what he wants."

Jacques unlatched the ropes for the quartet of well-heeled youths from the 16th Arrondisement and I pulled out a few spare coins.

"Hey, you don't recognize me?" The bum raised a smiling face.

Squinting I scrapped away the filth and hugged Danny Gordon for a short-lived embrace.

"When was the last time you bathed? You smell like a corpse."

"I didn't think the French cared about personal hygiene."

"I'm an American." Parisian men's adherence to one bar of soap per annum didn't excuse his smelling like week-old garbage and I opened the ropes to the amazement of several customers dressed a la mode. "We have a shower in the basement. I'll cuff you a couple of drinks afterwards."

"That's an offer I can't refuse," Danny broke out of his slouch. "I ran into your cousin in New York last year. She said you were here. Didn't you leave right after Viktor Malenski got killed at the Continental?"

"About then." My three-year exile hadn't lessened the danger of telling the truth.

"You were lucky. Another Russian was killed and twenty cops were arrested for an assortment of crimes."

"What about Arthur?"

"He was wearing a wire for the FBI."

"And he was shot?"

"Not at all. He's still the Prince of the Night."

"As you are here."

"My friend started this club. I get paid to act rude to the French. Can it get better than that?"

"You're my new hero." He nodded to the cashier, who held her nose, as I led Danny to the basement changing room.

"So how about a shower?" I opened the taps of the washing room.

"I'll be a new man after that." Danny stripped off his clothes and climbed into the steam-filled shower stall.

"You didn't see Lisa when you in New York?"

"Ha, I was wondering when you were going to ask that." Danny soaped his body. "Aren't you over her yet?"

"Yeah, long ago."

"Right." He didn't believe me and said, "I saw her once. She was with Vadim."

"She ask about me?"

"Didn't get a chance to speak with her." He soaped his hair. "Someone said she and Vadim were living in Russia."

"I haven't heard a thing." I left the washroom with his tattered clothes and dumped them in the trash bin. They had outlived their usefulness several people ago and I rummaged through a backstage closet. I hung a musty suit from the 1950s on the door and went upstairs with two cases of champagne. None of it vintage. Serge waited at the bar.

"You throw Brigitte Bardot out of the club, then you let in a clouchard." Ordering drinks Bernard asked, "So who is your guest?"

"He's a friend from New York." I ordered a whiskey.

"So now the Americans are exporting bums to France." Serge scoffed with the immense pleasure of hearing that an Amerlot had plunged to the bottom. His happiness was short-lived, for a twenty-minute shower and a suit transformed Danny into a modern-day Casanova for Le Royal Lieu's haughty female clientele.

"A new man." I led him to the bar.

"Same old me, just cleaner."

We toasted the East Village. Candia danced with him twice. Her father knew Danny's dad from the Korean War I had another drink. It wasn't my last.

Candia announced her departure and I gave her a sloppy goodnight kiss.

"You are not so handsome as a drunk."

"Everyone else is pretty when I'm drunk, but not me."

"Fool."

"A fool in love with you."

"You say those words so easy."

"I mean every syllable." I escorted her to a taxi.

"Then what is love?" She shut the taxi door before my reply and I stood on the sidewalk trying to come up with answer.

I drank the rest of the night with her father, trying to gather insight into his daughter. Instead he recounted his falling out of plane during the Korean War, "I didn't die either."

He had a lot of stories like that. So did Danny and me too. As the night drew to a close, I asked Danny. "You have anything in your 'room' you want to keep here?"

"No, ain't nothing worth stealing."

"What about your trumpet?"

"I hocked it in Spain."

"Pawn it? You lived for your music."

"Like you used to live for your poetry." Danny chugged his whiskey.

"I couldn't even write in meter." The illiterati might have overlooked this fault, however grammar school nuns had beaten a respect for classical cadence and proper grammar into my knuckles and editors came from the same school.

"Your stopping partially inspired my dumping the horn."

"Please don't follow my failures." My blame plate was full. "You could have been another Chet Baker."

"I'd rather be Freddie Hubbard, but who was I kidding? Our band sucked and no one cared if we sucked. We were young and pretty. I don't regret quitting music and DJing and I bet you don't regret stopping writing either. All that 'art' shit was a monkey on our backs. Now we can live as real men are supposed to live."

Danny spoke with the coolness of a man who had abandoned a woman he didn't love after seeing her with another man.

"Better than pretending to be Hemingway." Ghosts of stories lurked in my skull as half-built ships in dry docks.

"Or Chet Baker." He pushed back his wavy hair.

"But why are you living on the street. Do you belong to a cult giving away their possessions?"

"I'm waiting for my ship to come in. Good crew. Great captain.The ex-trumpeter nearly swooned off the stool. "The whiskey kinda went to my head. I'll be fine once I'm out at sea."

"Your parents bought you a boat?" A 50-foot catamaran was not beyond their means.

"I'm not taking their money anymore."

"Yeah, fuck money," I said, while wishing that his parents had adopted me.

"I'm talking about fishing and not the rod-and-reel shit either. Nets and trawlers and thousands of hooks capable of tearing the flesh off your bones. And tons of fish on the wild sea." His voice climbed an octave with an imagined voyage to the North Atlantic. "Fishing a la Captain Courageous for cod on the deep. Hacking fish from a line, as the ship plows into the sea and resurfaces streaming foam. Fishing in the black of night, the wind___"

"Stop already, I'm already seasick."

"Mal de mer has two cures. Land or drowning." Danny possessed a convert's devotion for his new profession.

"If you love fishing so much, what are you doing in Paris? I mean hanging a line off a bridge into the Seine isn't that exciting."

"No, the sea gives the fears and the fears are many, but next week a long-line boat from Gloucester is supposed to dock in Brest and I'll fish the Georges Bank." Danny picked at a front tooth.

"The deep blue sea." I had lived in Gloucester. Fishing was a tough both on and off shore.

"It has more colors than blue."

"I wish I could offer you a place to stay." A week was a long time on the street. Even longer at my place.

"Thanks, I'm fine in my humble hovel." Danny lifted a hand to forestall any more of my apologies. "You remember what your cousin said about men wanting a virgin or a whore. Well, I have my girl coming from Madrid. Crazy girl. Young like your girlfriend. Her mother was a flamenco dancer. Likes having sex. Her body is insatiable____" Limb by limb Danny reincarnated an ancient sex cult's goddess, finally accusing her of nymphomania. "It's no Roman orgy. It's hard work. You'll see. Believe me, you'll see."

His prediction was almost a curse and that night as I was having sex with Candia, a super 8mm porno movie flickered in the shadows. The teenager noticed my distraction and asked, "What are you thinking?"

"About how much I want you." I thrust harder into her vagina.

"Ouais?" She rolled out of bed to vainly examine my clothes for the telltale signs of infidelity without success, since the only traces of another woman were in my mind.

"I'm tired of living with another woman's ghost." She lay on the bed, fiercely clutching her Mickey doll. "If it's not the skinny blonde from America, then it is someone else."

"There's no one, but you." I reached over to Candia. She wasn't having any of me and I fell asleep on my side of the bed, as dreams of Lisa were replaced by those of Danny's girlfriend.

She sounded too good to be true, but whenever models, dancers from the Paris Ballet, French actresses, artistes, and svelte students from the Sorbonne tried to seduce Danny, he told them, "I'm saving myself for Elana."

One night Danny didn't show at his usual hour and I checked his shack. His canvas sea bag was gone. After the club closed I began to worry, since Paris was as tough a town as New York. When I reported his disappearance to the police on the third night, the gendarme joked that people disappear in Paris all the time.

I didn't laugh, but should have.

SHORTEST FIGHT IN THE WORLD by Peter Nolan Smith

The World on East 2nd Street hosted a screening of the Tyson-Spinks fight on June 27, 1988. The nightclubs's door was handled by the tough guy mooks hired by the Bensonhurst fat boys hosting the event. The fee for televising the fight was $20,000. The Brooklyn boys wanted $25 a head. The NYFD occupancy limit for the old Polish meeting hall was 800. The gate had clicked 1200 entries. Another couple of hundred had been cuffed for free by the owner, Arthur Weinstein. He was my friend.

"Arthur, that's freebies 351 and 352." A fat boy whined as Scottie Taylor and I entered the club. His muscles looked ready for murder.

"Good thing you don't have to count on your toes." Arthur had faced down tougher mugs than these. The Russian Zeks from Brighton Beach never whined like the fat boys. They were stone-cold killers and we walked past the pseudo-wise boys into the downstairs lounge with a smirk on our faces.

"Three Vodka-OJs." Arthur ordered from the cute bartender, who resembled Little Red Riding Hood freed from two years of hard time at Bedford Hills. She only shared smiles with Arthur and bull dykes. The native New Yorker had a way with girls who played for the other team.

"Nothing for me." Scottie was not a drinker.

"I'll drink his." It was a hot night. My first sip downed half the drink. I threw away the plastic cup by the time that we stood before the big-screen TV. "Big fight."

Three years earlier Michael Spinks had won the heavyweight title from Larry Holmes in a 15-round decision. He had lost the crown after fighting Gerry Cooney rather than fight Tony Tucker.

"Spinks is nothing." Scottie loved boxing.

"He beat Cooney." A drug dealer barked over the roar of the crowd. The fighters were entering the ring. Blood fled through all our hearts.

"Cooney was a bum." Arthur said out of the corner of his mouth. He didn't like strangers hearing him. Sometimes I thought he should have been a ventriloquist.

"You got that right."

Scottie and I had seen 'the great white hope' huff cocaine a month before that bout. We had bet every dollar on the fight. 7-5. The outcome was never in doubt and in the 5th round Spinks countered Cooney's lumbering left hook with a overhead right to his opponent's glass jaw. The rest of the fight teetered heavily in favor of Spinks, who pummeled Cooney with a blinding succession of combinations. The referee called it with 9 seconds left in the round.

"Spinks ain't no bum." He had been ringside at the fight in Atlantic City. "But like everyone else he thinks Tyson is a orthodox Rightie. Iron Mike is a natural Southpaw. His left jab has knock-out power. Watch."

"This is going to be Spinks night." A Columbian dealer pulled out a C-note. "Tyson is a punk from Bed-Stuy. He speaks like a girl."

"Bed-Stuy, do or die, but he grew up in Brownsville." It was famed for its hard guys. "Their motto is never ran, never will."

"Tyson runs like rabbit tonight."

I bet the yea-ho dealer straight up on the result. The big screen filled with the two fighters. Tyson versus Spinks. It was time to rumble. The robes came off and the two heavyweights stood in the middle of the ring. Instructions by the referee lasted about a minute. The bell rang for the first round.

Tyson landed a hard left hook quick. Spinks backed up into the ropes. He would have been better off jumping into the front row. The crowd on the dance floor sensed the kill. I grabbed the dealer's arm, as Tyson smashed the champion with a left uppercut and a right hand to the body. Spinks' knee touched the mat. Back on his feet he suffered a vicious left-right set-up and Spinks flopped on his back.

Down for the count after 91 seconds.

Tyson the victor.

The dealer paid the c-note on the spot.

I tried to buy a round of drinks, except Arthur said, "Fugedaboutit. Your money is no good here."

A few customers complained about the brevity of the fight.

"I wasn't in the ring, but tonight was long fight."

"Long?" I couldn't think of a shorter fight, although most of my brawls lasted less than 10 seconds. Tow or three punches and someone was saying 'enough'. I was good at knowing when to quit.

"Shortest fight was 10.5 seconds. Al Couture KO'd Ralph Walton. 1946." Arthur was too young to have seen that match.

"Welter-weight." Scottie added to the fray.

"That's short." Arthur snapped his finger. "But tonight was short, so drinks on me."

The Prince of the Night was generous to a fault. His friends loved him, as did his family and fiends, because Arthur was enough of an artist to see beauty in someone's faults.

"No one's perfect."

Later that winter Arthur and I are walking up 8th Avenue from the West Village. We're headed to the Tunnel on West 27th Street. A Saturday night fete hosted by Curfew. Crazy people. Free drinks.

"I gotta get warm." Arthur pulled me into a local bar at West 13th and 8th Avenue. "I don't like to hear my teeth chattering."

"Are you sure?" I asked inside the bar, for our entrance is greeted by glares from the clientele. Short people. Midgets. Only the bartender is big people.

"Fuggetaboutit." Arthur knew the bartender and dropped a $20 on the bar. "Drinks for all my friends."

We loved Mickey Rourke's line from the movie BARFLY.

"Drinks here are $5." A midget with buck teeth snarled from his stool.

"That's why I'm only buying this big man a drink. Two Vodka-OJs." Arthur headed to the bathroom. The odds of short versus tall went from 20 to 2 to 20 to 1. The bartender was out of the equation. I heard the crackling of knuckles over the music on the jukebox. I REMEMBER YOU by Skid Row.

"What you think of munchkins?" The snarled-toothed shortie asked with a smile, but before I could answer the front door opened and a dwarf entered the bar.

His head was as large as a small Easter Island statue and his hands twice the size of mine. He swaggered into the bar like he possessed an over-sized penis.

The midgets said in unison.

"No dwarves in here."

"No, well, go fuck yourself." The taller midget expanded his chest. All I could think was Munchkins brawl.

That comment sparked a little person riot. The dwarf fought off each midget with the skill of a wrestler. They flew against the wall. His big-handed punches knocked out three of them in rapid succession. The tide of battle turned with a swift right to the mouthy midget's nose.

The fight ended with a TKO.

12 seconds.

The midgets were thrown into the street and the dwarf at the bar asked, "You got a problem?"

"Not with you."

Arthur exited from the bathroom and drank his vodka and OJ.

"Let's go." He nodded to the dwarf, who said, "Good seeing you, Arthur."

"How was the fight?" Arthur pulled up the collar of his jacket.

"Shorter than Spinks-Tyson."

"Funny."

"No, just the truth." It was over in 5 seconds.

"Dwarves are tough on midgets. Go figure." He handed a handkerchief to the midget with the bloody nose.

"Thanks, Arthur."

"My pleasure. Next time keep up the right."

The Prince of the Night knew everyone.

The tall, the small, and the in-between.

The Dry Masaii Savannah