Pam held herself against the cold. The driving rain stung her face, and the wind knifed mercilessly through her cheap windbreaker. The sign to her left read “Tony’s Place.” This dump – any dump – would do. She pushed open the door.

Inside, all six tables were full, four to a table. There was only one empty space at the bar. She paused to take in the lettering on the second “Tony’s Place” sign. This one looked like a three-year-old’s first attempt at scrawling the alphabet. Over the bar was an odd inscription: Something for nothing is never worth what you pay for it.

Pam snorted. What was that supposed to mean? She no longer cared whether the light at the end of the tunnel was sunshine or a train.

At least the bar was clean. A stocky man under the something-for-nothing sign stood lazily toweling highball glasses. Tony the owner, she presumed. Ran a nice place. If only he would shell out for a proper sign. . . .

She needed the restroom that was at the back of the bar. In her hurry to cross the floor, she bumped into a drunk who was weaving toward the front door.

The drunk lurched and grabbed for her, but caught only air. She laughed at his ineptness, watched him reach for her again, grab, lunge – and eventually stumble forward onto a table occupied by four ladies who would have been outside working the streets if not for the rain. The largest of the four ladies looked toward Tony, and Tony looked back and nodded, so the woman picked the drunk off the floor and tugged him outside.

Pam stopped short of entering the restroom, watched the hooker and the drunk through the bar’s long, low front window. The hooker shoved him faced-down between two illegally parked cars at the curb, the rain bouncing off his back. P
“Way to go, Sally!” one of the girls said at the window, and Pam assumed Sally had placed him there so at least one of the cars would run over him.

Sally stepped back inside to a chorus of congratulations. Back at her table, she gulped a free beer that Tony had sent over, then wrapped an arm around the woman next to her – a woman sporting a garish orange hairdo – and gave her a long, searching kiss.

The excitement waned, but still Pam stopped short of entering the restroom. She spotted a good-looking guy sitting alone at the bar. With her luck, either the guy’s girlfriend was in the can or he was a fag.

Who could blame him if he was a fag? she thought, scanning the faces of the women present. Finally, she pushed open the restroom door.

Like the bar, the restroom was uncharacteristically clean for this part of town. “No graffiti,” she mumbled to herself, sitting down. “No paper towels on the floor, not even any stains on the seat. Cleaner than home."

Re-entering the bar, she saw that the man from the bar was now sitting at a table. The three chairs around him were the only empty ones in the whole place.

Won’t get a better prospect than this, Pam told herself. Might as well see if he’s looking for a date…

We hope you'll want to read the conclusion of Waterloo and other stroies about Zabar. An Angel Named Zabar is a collection of short stories about a guardian angel. He's understanding and helpful, but it's not healthy to come between Zabar and his work. My Friend Zabar is the first story in the series when Bob Miller meets Angel Zabar at the ripe old age of eleven.