"Thanks for describing that, Steve," she said.

"Why'd you want to come here? It's full of losers," he said, surveying the other tables.

"Stop staring at people," she said.

"I wish I hadn't left you alone that night. I wish I'd had my father's.357. My father says the welfare system is producing armies of subhumans that are moving into the Northwest."

His presumption that he was responsible for her fate, that his presence could have prevented it, infuriated her and somehow diminished the level of injury that had been visited upon her. Steve twisted around and hooked one arm on the back of his chair and stared at the bikers as though he were visiting a zoo.

"Steve, until somebody puts his penis in your ass and comes in your mouth, don't tell me about subhumans," she said.

"That's sick," he said.

"I think if you say another word I'm going to slap your face," she said.

"Excuse me for telling you this, your attitude not only sucks, you look deeply weird in those clothes and that Frankenstein makeup," he said, and got up from the table and went through the front door onto the street.

The noise from the bandstand seemed to envelope her. She was alone now and suddenly regretted the rashness of her words. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her. But the people at the other tables, the crowd at the bar, the couples on the dance floor, were all involved with themselves and their drinks and their own conversations. It was dumb to think anyone cared what Maisey Voss was doing.

Through the open front door she saw Steve's car drive away, the neon glow from the nightclub rippling across his profile.

She would have to call her father for a ride home. She couldn't bear to think about it. She opened her purse and took out the money for another vodka collins.

The vodka was both cold and warm inside her at the same time. She chewed the cherries and orange slices on her molars and drank the sugar and melted ice in the bottom of the glass and went to the bar and ordered another drink and watched the bartender while he made it. A biker's arm brushed hers, but before she could react the biker turned and apologized, then resumed his conversation with his girlfriend, as though Maisey were not there.

The bartender wrapped a napkin around her drink and set it in front of her. She began counting out the money from her purse to pay for it but the bartender said, "Man down at the end's already got it."

"Which man?" she said, looking past the bikers into the haze of cigarette smoke.

But the bartender only shrugged and walked away.

She drank her vodka collins at the table and tried not to think about the phone booth in the corner, the one she would eventually walk to, almost like entering a Catholic confessional, where she would shut herself inside and drop the coins into the slot and admit to her father she couldn't get home by herself.

But the three college boys she had passed at the entrance were using it. Their upper torsos looked huge in their short-sleeve workout jerseys, and she decided the boys were part of the group she had seen running plays in pads and sweat shorts on the university practice field by the river.

Somehow their presence made her feel more at ease. In spite of their size there was nothing aggressive or mean-spirited about them. In fact, their buzzed haircuts, the youthfulness in their faces, the shine of cologne on their freshly shaved jaws, made her think of country boys back home who could twist a steer into the ground by its horns but who wouldn't get on a dance floor at gunpoint.

One of them nodded at her, then turned his attention back to his friends.

"You want another drink, hon?" the waitress asked.

"Yeah. Let me pay you now, though," Maisey said.

"That's a new one," the waitress said.

After Maisey finished her drink, she went to the rest room. When she came back, the waitress was picking up her empty glass and setting down another vodka collins on a napkin.

"Who paid for this?" Maisey said.

"Some guy at the bar," the waitress replied.

"Which guy?"

"Honey, this is a dump. One of these bozos buys you a drink, marry him," the waitress said, and walked away, her short skirt swishing across the tops of her fishnet stockings.

Maisey slid another cigarette from her pack, then realized she didn't have matches to light it. Her face was hot, her ears humming with the noise in the room. The electronic feedback in the band's speaker system was beginning to affect her like fingernails on a blackboard. She took a long swallow out of her glass and felt the coldness of the vodka flow through her like wind blowing across snow.

One more drink and she would call her father. By that time his silence and the depression he would wear like a mantle on the long ride home, the acknowledged failure of their relationship that would almost form a third presence in the car, the echoes of all the insults they had hurled at each other earlier, would be lost in fatigue and the ennui that always followed their arguments and the residual numbness of the vodka that now nestled in her system like an old friend.

A boy in his early twenties, in beltless khakis and a pressed, long-sleeved denim shirt with a pair of glasses in the pocket, was standing by her chair now. He held a green and gold can of ginger ale in his hand, and the wetness of the can dripped through his fingers. His eyes crinkled at the corners.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

"I heard you talking and I knew you were from the South. I'm from North Ca'lina. So it was me bought you the drinks. Did you mind I did that?" he said.

She tried to sort through what he had just said. Behind him, on a revolving bar stool, sat a man in a white, wide-brim Stetson and a cowboy shirt that rippled with an electric blue sheen. He was watching her and the boy with the naked curiosity of an animal. "Say again?" Maisey said.

"I didn't want to offend you by buying those drinks without asking, but you're really a pretty lady," the boy said.

"Who's that man watching us?" she said, then realized her anxiety had made her seek reassurance from a stranger whose features disturbed her for reasons she didn't understand, like someone who belonged inside a drunk dream.

"That's Wyatt. He wants me to rodeo with him, but I think I'm gonna study aeronautical engineering at the university."

"Aeronautical engineering at the University of Montana?"

"I haven't made up my mind. I might study religion or forestry instead. You want to dance?"

"I have to go home."

"Another vodka collins is coming. You got to stay for the drink. It's bad manners if you don't stay for the drink."

"Your friend is using his hand for a codpiece. Who are you?" she said, her head spinning.

"I'm the guy bought the drinks," he replied, and wrinkled his nose.

She gathered up her purse and rose from the table and walked toward the front door, realizing, as the blood rushed to her feet, that she was drunk.

Outside, the air was cold, the wetness of the street glazed with yellow light. She walked toward the main thoroughfare, although she had no idea what she intended to do. The door of a parked car opened in front of her, and one of the football players stepped out on the sidewalk and grinned at her.

Then he was joined by his two friends. They towered over her, like trees. No matter which direction she turned, she could see nothing but the size of their chests and arms, the necks that were as thick as fire hydrants, the tautness of their grins.

"I want to catch a cab. Can I get one on Higgins?" she said.

"We'll take you home," one of the boys said.

"No, that's all right. I have money for a cab," she said.

"Come on, get in back. You shouldn't be out on the street by yourself," the same boy said.