She kicked backward, driving one of her sharp heels into my ankle. I slid my left arm around behind her and pinned her elbow to her side just as she freed the knife from the table.
“What th’ hell’s all ’is?”
I looked up.
Across the table a man stood glaring at me—legs apart, fists on hips. He was a big man, and ugly. A tall, rawboned man with wide shoulders, out of which a long, skinny yellow neck rose to support a little round head. His eyes were black shoe-buttons stuck close together at the top of a little mashed nose. His mouth looked as if it had been torn in his face, and it was stretched in a snarl now, baring a double row of crooked brown teeth.
“Where d’ yuh get ’at stuff?” this lovely person roared at me.
He was too tough to reason with.
“If you’re a waiter,” I told him, “bring me a bottle of beer and something for the kid. If you’re not a waiter—sneak.”
He leaned over the table and I gathered my feet in. It looked like I was going to need them to move around on.
“I’ll bring yuh a—”
The girl wriggled out of my hands and shut him up.
“Mine’s liquor,” she said sharply.
He snarled, looked from one of us to the other, showed me his dirty teeth again, and wandered away.
“Who’s your friend?”