Dog Eat Dog by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online

started, about how badly Bobo was going to mutilate the Doberman. But they were quiet murmurs. Followed by low, vicious chuckles. Terry and Augie stared lasers across the bar at the Jamaicans, who didn’t bother to look back.
    “Can I get a Coke, finally?” I said to the bartender after he’d served everyone in the place at least once while ignoring me. Terry’s boys exploded in a long, moronic, fear-charged laugh at me and my drink order. They were thrilled to have someone or something defenseless to turn their hate on. The racket was so shocking, in the middle of their shrinking, that it drew stares even from the Jamaicans.
    I smiled back at them all. “My drink order’s pretty funny, huh?” I asked as my Coke arrived with no ice. “Tell ya what, then. So youse don’t think a me as totally limp, I’m gonna buy.”
    “Whooo,” they said as a group, pretending to back away from all my power.
    I turned, still smiling, to the bartender. “Shots, Stoli, all up and down,” I said. This torqued it up. They barked, cheered, laughed wildly as the bartender set them all up. They went out of their minds when I added, “Screw it, sell me the bottle, man.”
    He dead fished me, bubble eyed and more stupid than he had to be. “Pay me for the goddamn round.”
    Both Terry and Augie spoke up at once. In their perverse way, they were impressive and overwhelming. “Sell him the fucking bottle,” they growled, even if that bartender was their father, protector, god, long into almost every night. Like dogs lying in the midday sun, it didn’t matter to them who got in between them and what refreshment they needed. They’d shred him.
    “Twenty-five bucks, you little underage shit,” the bartender sneered.
    I pulled out the money. “And give me a bag a them chips. No, not them, the salt-and-vinegar ones. The big bag.”
    More noise, more wild woofing. The bartender refilled their glasses and gave me the bottle. I laughed with them as they tossed the drinks back and slammed the glasses on the bar. I tore open the bag of chips, and dropped it to the floor under the bar where Bobo devoured it.
    Terry and Augie laughed harder as the Jamaicans calmly stood and filed out the back into the bullring. The others—Danny, the Cormacs—drank their last shots more slowly. Double gulping, not really shooting. They held their lips tight against the backflow. They wouldn’t be asking for more. I looked down. Bobo had wolfed all the salt-and-vinegars, and was licking the ripped bag. Bunky got too close and took a giant paw thump on the head for it. The water bowl was three-quarters empty.
    “What’re you gonna do, sit there and jerk that bottle neck all night?” Terry said.
    I filled his glass and Augie’s. They laughed, clinked glasses, and turned away. No more use for me. The bartender stood there. “Get me another Coke,” I said.
    As soon as the bartender turned, I did it. I took the bottle down and dumped it, more than half the bottle of crystal clear, smooth as ice Stolichnaya Russian vodka, into Bobo’s bowl. Seasoned brass-balled drinker that he was, champion stud mauler, Bobo didn’t even blink as he lapped it dry. When he was finished, he looked up longingly at me. Pathetically, desperately, he kept on licking, that fat brown tongue sweeping over his glistening teeth, over his bristly whiskers, over his blunt stupid snout again and again as if he had peanut butter smeared all over him. He smelled mostly of vinegar.
    I thought it was funny. Then I looked into his innocent, ignorant black eyes, and I was pricked with pity for him.
    “Hey, Augie,” I said, “your dog’s really thirsty, give him a drink quick.”
    “Ya, well, so am I. You give me one.”
    “Can’t,” I said, holding up the bottle. “You boys killed it.”
    Terry and Augie shrieked and head-butted each other, as if they’d just reached the top of Everest. Bobo kept licking, whimpering now.
    I gave Bobo my Coke, told the bartender to fill the water