Charlie did not look happy. “Where is she?” he asked. “Bored with her already?”

Brian wondered if that really was a whiff of whiskey he caught on Charlie’s breath. “Calm down, mate,” Brian told him. “We had a little accident and she needs to go home. I just came by to tell everyone she is going to be taking a day or two off.”

Charlie gave Brian a look of the ‘if looks could kill’ variety. “What. Happened.” he said. “An accident?”

Brian took a step back, and Charlie took a step forward. “What. Did. You. Do.” Charlie said, rolling up his sleeves. Brian wasn’t wondering about the whiskey any longer. He knew it was there now.

“She is fine, Charlie,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone of voice. He was wrong. Charlie fairly growled at Brian. “What. Did. You. Do,” he repeated. “Last chance to answer.”

Brian gulped, wondering if people really did fight people in a Starbucks café. “We had a run in with an old friend of hers. Well, more of an acquaintance, and you know how one thing kind of leads to another, but we saw a doctor and she’s going to be fine….”

Charlie grabbed Brian by his collar. “You take me to her right now, you son of a bitch, and you show me that she is okay or I will wipe the floor with your face right here and now.”

Brian nodded. “Okay, okay. She is in the car. She did not want to see anybody, for the record. But that’s okay. Let us go and see her. I am sure she will appreciate the care.”

Charlie nodded, releasing his grip on Brian’s collar slightly. He weaved, nearly imperceptibly, but maintained his scowl throughout.

Brian straightened his jacket out as well as he could with Charlie still holding on to it. “Well, come on then,” he said. “Can you let go, though? It is a little bit hard to walk with you holding on to my coat.”

Charlie merely shifted his grip to the back of Brian’s coat. Brian decided that was the best he was going to get, so he led the way out to the parking lot to his Audi.

Trish was asleep in the passenger seat, no doubt due to the painkillers the doctor had loaded her up with before Brian had arrived. Charlie noted the blood soaking the front of her shirt, her neck, and so forth, and the fact that she was not conscious.

Brian felt something along the lines of a change in the wind. He could not have described what happened to make him aware of the fact, but suddenly he knew that he was in for it, and in a bad way. When Charlie punched him it wasn’t so much of a surprise that Charlie had done it, but more that it had taken so long for Charlie to get around to it.

The fist came out of nowhere and connected with Brian’s jaw in a graceful, slow swoop. It felt like a hunk of granite impacting with his face. Compared to Charlie’s fist, in fact, the frame of the Audi hitting the back of his head was almost like a gentle caress. Then there was the pavement meeting his cheek. That was back to being more along the lines of the initial punch.

After that Brian did not think about much for a while. He lay on the ground, eyes closed, wondering if his head would ever feel normal again. He concluded that it probably would not, and was strangely comfortable with that fact.