Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HATED By PAUL FLEHR _After space, there was always one more river to cross ... the far side of hatred and murder!_ Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS The bar didn't have a name. No name of any kind. Not even an indication that it had ever had one. All it said on the outside was: Cafe EAT _Cocktails_ which doesn't make a lot of sense. But it was a bar. It had a big TV set going ya-ta-ta ya-ta-ta in three glorious colors, and a jukebox that tried to drown out the TV with that lousy music they play. Anyway, it wasn't a kid hangout. I kind of like it. But I wasn't supposed to be there at all; it's in the contract. I was supposed to stay in New York and the New England states. Cafe-EAT-_Cocktails_ was right across the river. I think the name of the place was Hoboken, but I'm not sure. It all had a kind of dreamy feeling to it. I was-- Well, I couldn't even remember going there. I remembered one minute I was downtown New York, looking across the river. I did that a lot. And then I was there. I don't remember crossing the river at all. I was drunk, you know. * * * * * You know how it is? Double bourbons and keep them coming. And after a while the bartender stops bringing me the ginger ale because gradually I forget to mix them. I got pretty loaded long before I left New York. I realize that. I guess I had to get pretty loaded to risk the pension and all. Used to be I didn't drink much, but now, I don't know, when I have one drink, I get to thinking about Sam and Wally and Chowderhead and Gilvey and the captain. If I don't drink, I think about them, too, and then I take a drink. And that leads to another drink, and it all comes out to the same thing. Well, I guess I said it already, I drink a pretty good amount, but you can't blame me. There was a girl. I always get a girl someplace. Usually they aren't much and this one wasn't either. I mean she was probably somebody's mother. She was around thirty-five and not so bad, though she had a long scar under her ear down along her throat to the little round spot where her larynx was. It wasn't ugly. She smelled nice--while I could still smell, you know--and she didn't talk much. I liked that. Only-- Well, did you ever meet somebody with a nervous cough? Like when you say something funny--a little funny, not a big yock--they don't laugh and they don't stop with just smiling, but they sort of cough? She did that. I began to itch. I couldn't help it. I asked her to stop it. She spilled her drink and looked at me almost as though she was scared--and I had tried to say it quietly, too. "Sorry," she said, a little angry, a little scared. "_Sorry._ But you don't have to--" "Forget it." "Sure. But you asked me to sit down here with you, remember? If you're going to--"