‘She’ nodded. With that, the men and women who so gallantly came to ‘her’ rescue reluctantly released their grip on the little man intent on raping and pillaging her. He relaxed for a moment, stretched, and resumed the slow stalk of my companion. I jumped in front of her.

“Will you git out my way?” 'she' screeched.

“You don’t really expect me to let this guy take a swing at you.” I nodded towards the pool table where the bartender had just revived Mike with smelling salts.

No sooner had I faced her to argue the point when the attacker picked me up, and threw me to the ground. “Now, bitch,” he growled, “you are fuckin’ gonna get it.”

Looking down on him, she coolly said, “First of all, my name’s not ‘Bitch.’ Secondly--”

SMACK!

‘She’ made the next point with her fist, landing a massive right squarely on his temple. He collapsed like a house of cards. The mob burst into spontaneous cheers.

“Now, git!” ‘she’ seethed. Rising, he whimpered away like all wounded bullies, out of the door and into the night. As soon as he vanished, she burst out in a loud guffaw. “Have you ever seen anything so funny?” she went on, catching her breath. “He fell like a sack of potatoes. Just one shot, and boom!”

“I don’t understand your sense of humor, sometimes,” I said.

“Well,” ‘she’ said, taking me by her bloody hand, and guiding me back to our booth, “I guess you don’t git, whatcha don’t git. That was fuuuu-neee.”

She crowed about her right cross for about a minute or two, then went back to the harangue on the strange blonde whom neither of us could spot at the moment. A beer later, I’d had enough of it, and suggested that we leave. She carped all the way back to Astor Place about the “filthy German gal,” and probably would have continued the rant on the train had it not been for the excitement next to the Cube, an interactive piece of sculpture across the street from the station entrance.

“Let’s go see what all the fuss is about,” ‘she’ said.

We crossed the street just as an ambulance pulled up. Paramedics pushed through the crowd to treat a little, hairy man lying face first on the sidewalk. They didn’t have to turn him over. I’d already recognized him as the mighty runt that ‘she’ had decked about forty-five minutes earlier. Paramedics checked for a pulse, but couldn’t find one. CPR and defib had no effect whatsoever.

As one of the rescue workers fetched a body bag, I looked around to see if any of his colleagues looked familiar. After all, in my line of work you meet a lot of medical types. I then spotted somebody I knew, Lt. Seamus Tyco, a tall, middle-aged veteran whose narrow face showed every wrinkle of worry that his job gave him, and whose ever-inflating beer gut served as a testament to his stress. Later, Seamus and I would become very good friends. He eventually introduced me to his cousin, Jenny Tyco, an insurance broker who threw me cases from time to time.

“Lt. Tyco,” I said, approaching him.

“It’s Seamus, to you. How’re they hanging, boss?”

“Kinda low,” came my reply. Looking down on the fresh corpse, I casually asked, “What happened to him?”

“Looks like somebody clocked him with a good right.”

I nervously looked over to ‘her,’ but for some reason she grinned. She put her hand over her face as if she wanted to hide a case of the chuckles.

“His fingers are broken too,” he continued. “It must’ve been one helluva fight. But I’m pretty sure he died from a heart attack. We’ll have to wait for the police to get their lazy butts out of the doughnut shop before we can move him. Excuse me while I suit up. I’ll catch you later.”

“Okay, later,” I said as he trailed off to his charges.

Let’s end it here. I’ll leave this one up a while longer so that you can check the comments and make a final correction or addendum on what is true, what’s exaggerated and what is completely fictional.