"Roy! What the hell are you doing here?"

He looked at me and cocked his head. Suspicious. Offended, maybe. "What the hell do you mean?"

" Um, nothing. Welcome. Can I get you a beer?"

"Sure." He squeezed in next to me. There were no seats available, but a spot leaning on the bar was a prize. Bill the Bartender brought Roy a beer.

"So, um, Roy. How was your day?"

He was still looking at me suspiciously, but now he softened and sighed. "Curious. Interesting. Unexpected...bizarre. In all ways worthy of a biographer¡¯s pen." He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close to me. "Larry, these are strange days, my friend."

I nodded. "You don¡¯t have to tell me."

He cleared his throat and took a sip of the beer. "I gather from your demeanour that you¡¯ve already heard about this afternoon¡¯s events."

"Yeah. From the source."

He glanced around the room. "She isn't here now is she?"

"No. She...has been here."

Roy shifted uncomfortably. "Do you think she'll be back?"

"It's possible," I said. "Were you hoping to avoid her?"

"I don¡¯t know. I figured there was a chance she might be here, but I had to get out of that room, man...I would've freaked out if I had to stay in there any longer."

"Yeah, I can understand that. So you guys really got into it, huh?"

"Yeah, you could say that. Why? What did she say about it?"

I paused, carefully choosing my words. "She said you guys, um, exchanged some harsh words."

"Yeah. Yeah, you could say that. It got pretty nasty. You know, I'm ashamed of some of the things I said, but I'm almost proud of what I came up with in the heat of the moment. That's fucked, isn't it?"

"Yeah, a bit. You're proud of creating what makes you ashamed? Yeah, that's fucked."

"Well, I wasn¡¯t the only one saying stuff there. She¡¯s as guilty as I am."

I turned and looked him in the eye. "Is she Roy? Why don't you tell me what started the fight."

Roy dropped his head. He took a sip of beer, looked up at me and asked, "Do you have a cigarette?"

"Yeah." I got out my pack and lit us both up. "So? Any answer?"

"Shit, Larry. This is a story you already know. I told you long ago, I had to try to get her out of my life. I'm sick of being an emotional yo-yo. Yeah, I tried that 'just friends' bullshit to see if it would work. I¡¯m just trying to figure out how to exist where every thought isn¡¯t about Tania. When she showed up at my place today, well...I guess I got pretty defensive, and when she started giving me shit, I just snapped. Fuck man, it¡¯s probably for the best. I mean, it's over now, right?"

"A Final Battle."

"Maybe. I hope so."

"I guess we'll find out soon enough." Roy leaned on the bar, not looking at me anymore. We were both silent for several minutes.

It was Carlos who broke the silence. He pushed in between us, slapping us both on the back. "Hey! Whassup, motherfuckers? Fucking motherfuckers!" He was drunk.

"Hey Carlos," I said. Roy was quiet. Carlos began shouting at one of Bill's helpers, trying to order pitchers of beer.

"So how the fuck you boys doing? You doing all right?" he shouted.

"Yeah, we're okay Carlos, thanks," I said.

"It's a good night for stirring up trouble. You boys feel like stirring up trouble?"

"No thanks, Carlos. We're having a quiet beer."

"Aww, you guys are no fun." Carlos got his beer and lurched away.

"Asshole," said Roy. We went quiet again until I worked up the gumption to ask Roy what I had to ask.

"How did it get this far, man? Why couldn't it have ended in a quiet way without screaming and insults and hurt feelings?"

Roy sipped his beer and didn¡¯t speak. I prodded him again. "You shattered her man, and she has no idea why. You broke her heart. You know she loves you."

His eyes flashed with anger and he got close up in my face. "Yeah, I fucking know that. You think I don't fucking know that? I know she loves me, and I love her. Yes, I love her. But it doesn't work, man. We can't stay together, we never can. And every time we're apart, I wake up from dreams of her feeling sick to my stomach because I miss her so much. And I can't just keep seeing her, a little bit here, a little bit there, because I'm just drawing out my misery. Why should I keep doing this to myself? Or to her? Don't you think a clean break would be the best thing for her too?"

It began to get very noisy at the back of the bar, but we paid no attention to the commotion. Roy knocked back the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth before continuing. "What, do you think I wanted things to turn out this way? I'm not a psycho. I didn't want to punish her just for knowing me. But I couldn't get away. Man, I'm twenty-four years old, I'm travelling the world, and I'm absolutely hung up on this girl from the past. And what's worse, every time the wounds just start to heal they get split right open again. I can't move on."

He looked me fiercely in the eye. "Don¡¯t tell me you don't understand that. I know how you feel about Tania, and I'm sure it didn't break your heart leaving here with her last night. Even if you didn't take her home, I know that you wanted to. Don't look away. She's special, you know it and I know it. I haven't moved on man, and the only way I can do that is by getting some closure, and if I had to break her heart to get closure, well I'm sorry, but that's what I had to do."

"So you shot her to pieces because you can't handle your own emotions. She didn't do anything wrong, man. And you hurt her bad."

He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. "I have to move on. I have to get out of it. I had to burn that bridge, and to do it, I had to break her heart."

"You did."

Roy and I both turned to look. Tania was standing there with tears in her eyes. When Roy saw her, he grit his teeth and turned his face away. I said nothing. Whatever happened next would be between them.

The noise from the back of the bar was getting worse, more rowdy, more heated, but we continued to ignore it.

Tania stood staring at Roy and at last, he spoke to her. "Look Tania," he said, "I'm sorry about the things I said this afternoon and I'm sorry about the way things have gone between us. I never planned for things to work out this way. But I have to make a clean break. This has to be it."

She just stared back at him. "You're just a boy, aren't you Roy?"

At that moment there was the sound of breaking glass and shouting from the back of the bar. A girl screamed. We couldn't ignore it any longer, and with the rest of the crowd, we looked to see what was happening. Everyone in the bar began moving in to see, and help if possible. Roy, Tania and I all got closer.

Some people had been arguing and pushing and shoving, but now everyone was backed up, making a circle around just one person. We got close enough to see who it was, and there in the middle of the circle was Carlos, drunker than any man I've ever seen who was still able to stand. In his hand was a small, shiny black revolver.

None of us ever found out where he got the piece. The noise suddenly disappeared and people started talking to him slowly and gently, trying to get him to hand to gun over. He wasn't pointing it directly at anyone, but was waving it to keep the crowd back. His friends were trying to settle him down, but they soon realized that Carlos was so drunk there was no point at all in trying to reason with him. He warned them back and shouted to them all, "Don't you know the rule? Don't you know the rule? Remember!"

One of his friends asked him, "What rule is that Carlos?"

The son of a bitch responded by quoting some goddamn English professor: "Once a gun has appeared on stage it must be fired before the completion of the final act!" With that, Carlos raised his hand high in the air and fired a shot through the dusty plaster ceiling of The Gone Cafe.

As soon as the shot was fired, several people leapt on Carlos and tried to wrestle the gun from his hand. In the resulting melee, two more shots were fired. With the first, the mirror behind me shattered. With the second, Roy crumpled to the floor.

It would take a hundred pages for me to sort out my mind, to explain in any detail what went on during the two minutes that followed. There were a million things happening, but really only two. It¡¯s so hard to explain. Being there was like being part of a hallucination. I felt like I was watching a movie that was going in fast forward and slow motion at the same time.

Here is the basic map of what went on. First, the pistol was removed from Carlos's hand before he could do any more harm. Next, Carlos received probably the most savage beating of his life, and definitely the most savage beating that I have ever been witness to. Tania especially took an active role here, and rather in defiance of the traditional female stereotype, she did not rush to the side of Roy, her stricken ex-lover. Instead, she let out a terrifying shriek and leapt at Carlos like a bird of prey, ready to tear him apart. It was quickly proven that, while Carlos's potential for causing harm may have been gone, his potential for receiving it was undiminished.

So it fell to me, getting older, getting greyer, to rush to Roy's side. And it was I who tripped over a chair and knocked out my two front teeth on the way. When I reached him and looked into his face, I did not see him rolling his eyes and hear elegies, "Oh, I die, Horatio," but instead I saw a tremendous wince of pain and heard the wheezing and gargling of blood through clenched teeth.

The bullet had punched a hole through his chest and his lung was filling with blood. He died in only a minute or two, gasping and wheezing and gargling, and I was there at his side, his faithful attendant, unable to help him and unable to say any beautiful lines of poetry wishing him safe journey as I was too busy choking and gasping on my own tears and blood.

And that's it. That's the story. I never heard what became of Carlos. Tania and I parted ways, each returning to our respective home cities. We have spoken, but we never talk about Roy or about our night together. We are both looking for fresh starts. All these fresh starts are getting old, but what's the alternative? Can't stay here. In the old city, The Gone Cafe is closed. There is nothing left to be said except that all is forgiven.

Nolan Whyte.