“So would you care to take a look at our girls?” The madam makes a grand show of waving an open palm in the girls’ general direction. The hitchhiker and driver instinctively turn to each other. It’s become clear for whose benefit this side trip has been made, and the driver resigns himself to the bar.

“A few beers, an then I’m off.”

He doesn’t have to look –the squeals are indication enough- to know that hitchhiker has launched himself into the idle harem, and is now disappearing down the back hallway with whichever ones he has struck his fancy. Meanwhile the driver launches himself, though nowhere near as enthusiastically, into his first bottle of beer.

Even there at the bar, two girls are intent on working their way into the wallets of the few men perched on the stools. One man in particular, a husky bear in a shirt and tie, breaks away from a stream of girlish sniggers and sits down next to the driver. From the eager way he glances over, it is inevitable that he will try to engage the driver in conversation.

The driver will not, can not, engage back. He doesn’t understand why someone would care to socialize in a place such as this. It would seem that the company of fellow men is the last thing one would seek out here.

“Mibbe he’s bored v’all th’pluggin’. R’else, it’s no good anyways,” the driver explains to himself. Regardless, he has no desire to console a whore-chaser who’s had his fill of filling, and now wants to simply talk. The driver doesn’t know what he’s yammering on about anyway; something about “best girls west of Denver.” There’s a way the man’s words drift in and out, as if fragments of thought tangle in his vocal chords and he has to clear them out with a gruff “huhu, wadda ride she is” every now and again. As the words tumble out, one atop another before being swallowed back up whole, the man darts his head: from the driver, to the emaciated bartender hiding –or vanishing- in a corner, to the men and girls at the end of the bar, and back to the driver. It’s possible that he might just be talking to himself, or no one at all. The driver has no problem ignoring him, as long as the beers keep coming.

One bottle quickly becomes three and then six, with the odd shot of whiskey in between. The driver has been putting down money as he finishes each beer, but it never gets cleared from the bar. First ten cents, then a quarter, and now there sits a whole dollar and eighty cents –mostly in tips- but it remains untouched. Finally, he has to ask. His ribald neighbor is still on the same disjointed story that he started twenty, forty, sixty minutes ago.