He was large and he was stinky and he was in Barker’s face. The garbage breather trained an eye on Barker. The other continued to watch the rest of the room.
“You think you’re a tough guy, don’t you?”
“It’s not a thought process with me,” Barker watched the dickhead’s brain. Barker looked into his eyes and it was like he was at a drive-in movie.
And just as Barker was saying “I’m only as tough as I have to be,” he drove his left knee into the other man’s groin. Slam dunk.
Life is just a game basically of random chance. You never make a mistake, you just make better, or worse, choices. The dude didn’t drop. Barker caught him. Looked again into those vacant eyes. And thought, just for a flickering moment, he saw some sign of intelligence. Just a faintest recognition, a reflection really, too late, of a mistake made.
Barker broke the goon’s nose with the heel of his hand. He remembered to move aside an instant before the blood spurted onto the couple having a bad date at a nearby table.
El Garlic didn’t know what to grab. His balls or his suddenly flexible nose.
The best part was…he didn’t make a sound. No moan. Not a sound. No outcry. Just kind of grunted on impact.
Other than that, Barker thought, he might as well have hit a tree. A hard wood.
An appreciation for the Shoot-First-Ask-Questions-Later School Of Thought was reaffirmed. Barker was impressed. This might be the toughest sonuvabitch he’d ever kicked the shit out of. Almost told the big guy that, when he started to rise to his feet. Decided not to.
“You can just stay there,” Barker suggested. “I feel better when you’re crumpled on the floor like fresh roadkill on a county highway.” Barker handed the man a cloth napkin.
Muffled. “You had no call to do that.”
“Then, I hope you will accept my sincerest apologies. But, somehow you didn’t look like you were delivering an edible arrangement.”
There was no response.
Certainly no denial.