It had been such a wonderful Christmas Eve. So far, nobody had tried to get me to loan them a fiver. Nobody wanted to punch me out. Not yet, anyway. The Christmas lights were giving the whole crummy dive bar a feeling of the days of Damon Runyon. Even the tape on the vintage naugahide stools and booths looked festive.

Then he showed up, looking like a guy from the Zoot Suit riots. Well, in this bar, he wasn't that many years out of style.

“Hi there, HiTone,” my new friend said brightly.

The big guy looked around the Rudy's bar, then looked at me.

"Dominick Antonio Aguilar. Paddy."

He gave Molly a scowl. "Have you got a brain tumor from all your fancy thinking?"

She then spoke very sweetly, “Back off, HiTone.”

He didn't seem to want to back off. "I haven't even backed on you, yet."

"And you never will — in any possible permutation of any improbable dimension of string theory. So don't even have a damp dream about it."

Wow, I thought as I looked down from her pretty face at her pretty leg which she had lifted up onto the taped up booth seat. It made her little dress show about as much thigh as possible. And a very nice thigh it was. And her panties were all pink and Christmassy.

What I didn’t notice right away, busy admiring other things, was that in her pretty hand was wrapped around a small strange-looking gun that looked that had suddenly appeared out of her high black boots. She put her hand on my shoulder. “This is The Place and this is The Guy.”

So there I was in Rudy’s Bar without a Grill, sitting next to this hot young blonde who seems ready to pull a sc-fi gun on this tall number in a zoot suit and long striped scarf. I could see why she picked her email name as GunMolly. It didn't seem as cute, now.

"Aren't you pushing this a little far, a little fast?"

"I don't have time to mess around or we'll miss our window," she answered.

The big dude pulled open his zoot suit jacket to flash a short shotgun of some kind. Maybe it was one of those Sicilian lupos, like in Godfather II. He also had an aluminum baseball bat, and jeeze, was I seeing what I think I saw? What I thought I saw was an Acme Weedwacker?

"Is that a softball bat or are you..."

"I play hardball, Walsh."

"When it comes to this, I play harder."

"You really want to play Shoot 'Em Up? Right here? Right now?”

“Would you really like to find out how it feels to have your hydrogen molecules separated from you oxygen molecules in 1.2 nanoseconds?”

I didn’t know where to look. This guy looked mean. Even his little mustache looked mean.

Molly’s eyes were hard. Her Spaceballs gun was hard. Her thighs looked soft above her black boots and red-stripped stockings. And by raising her leg onto the seat to pull her gun out of her boots, I noticed her pink cotton panties seemed to read 'Merry Christmas' in very small letters because they were very small panties, indeed. As their staring contest continued in silence, being of a literary bent, I tried to see if there is any more writing on the panties. But a gentleman doesn't stare. I must have shown my gentlemanly side by looking away at least six or seven times.

I think Molly noticed me noticing, but she turned her head back to stare down the big guy, without changing her position.

This text will be replaced by the flash music player.

The jukebox coincidentally started playing Lou Monte's "Dominick The Italian Christmas Donkey" which is almost as legendary in certain New York and New Jersey communities as

Frank Sinatra, John Gotti, or Christopher Columbus, the visionary Italian hero who discovered the Dominican Republic because Google Maps weren't invented yet.

Molly smiled and said, "They're playing your song. A nice tune to discorporate by."

"You played that on purpose, Walsh."

"Not me. Maybe the old gods are providing background music for tonight's festivities."

He laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

She laughed back at him, “HiTone, do you really think I'd zap you with an electron gun in front of so many witnesses.” She hid the sci-fi pistol back in her boot

“From a mad scientist like you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“And this is The Guy?” he asked.

She nodded, giving me another little hip bump.

What guy? I thought. What kind of gun was it?

"Gabby Hayes is the freaking Guy?"

"I feel it."

HiTone laughed. "You? Feel it?"

"In my heart." She smiled at me, and I melted like Frosty the Snowman.

"Walsh, we all know you have a bloody computer where you’re heart should be."

"Then it calculates that Paddy here is 'The Guy'."

"He's too old."

Age Discrimination, I thought, but didn't say.

"He's too uncool."

He had me. Two for two.

"And I'll bet he doesn't even play an instrument."

"I play the beer bottles."

They both gave me odd looks — the kind of looks that I've gotten used to because so many people have looked at me that way so many times over my long a varied career as a guy nobody understands.

"Xylophonically."

They still didn't get it. I explained, "You drink down the beer in like 8 bottles until they are all at different heights, and have different tones. You play them with a couple of spoons like a xylophone. And before they get warm, you drink them all, and make a new instrument."

"He's our number 7," said Molly.

"I was number 7 in Little League. Same as Mickey Mantle."

"Was number 7 supposed to be brain-damaged?"

"I think maybe I'd better go." I said closing my computer. "I think I forgot to lay out the milk and cookies for Santa."

"I don't think so," said HiTone, seating himself solidly on the other side of me in the booth.

WTF had I got myself into?

Next: Bad Is Good