Ladies' Night by Jack Ketchum

regulars left him — Sam and Bob and Tony — without so much as a word to him, all doubts disappeared. Something was seriously wrong here, something fundamental.
    Because other couples had left in a different way altogether.
    Women leading their men like dogs on a leash — boyfriends, husbands, pickups — leading them as though into some impossible ravenous night, to something infinitely more private than anything they were expecting.
    How did he know this?
    He just did. They wore it on their faces.
    He wiped the bar, served the drinks.
    The place was charged with gunpowder. He was not about to go lighting any matches.
    He poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the burner. There was not a soul in the bar whose exact location he wasn't aware of. He'd never watched so hard in his goddamn life.
    That writer — Patty something — kept looking at him. He'd always liked Patty but not now. He dropped his eyes away from her and went back to work. A Ross Macdonald line scuttled through his mind unbidden, he remembered it because it had always reminded him of his former girlfriend. The small chill presence that lived like a stunted child in her fine body .
    That was Patty now. Again he marked her position. Seated, number two table, nursing a tequila sunrise.
    There were half a dozen women left at the tables, three at the bar. Five men at the tables.
    And only Tom, with Cindy, at the bar.
    You had the two cooks, Dom and Franco, in the kitchen, and the three waitresses.
    That was another thing. The waitresses never hung out in the kitchen. Too hot back there. Usually they liked to drink Cokes out here with him and joke with the regulars. But not tonight. For the past half hour he'd hardly seen them.
    He'd never felt so alone in a bar in his life.
    The only regular that was left was Tom and he was, shall we say, busy. Cindy was keeping him busy . Like some of the others he seemed practically transfixed. Spellbound. The same glassy look half the other guys had tonight.
    Nobody else seemed to worry about it. Just Bailey.
    But the place was raw with sex.
    Every guy in the place must have thought he was scoring.
    In the farthest table to the right a couple was openly necking. It didn't seem to bother the guy at all that half an hour ago his date had dumped her drink all over his shirt. A little more and he'd have good cause to eighty-six the both of them. If he dared.
    Which he didn't.
    And right here at table four next to Patty, a woman in jeans and halter top had her arm around the guy beside her and was fondling his nipple inside his Hawaiian shirt.
    Jesus! Didn't they know this shit was impossible? Didn't these guys feel it?
    Something was going down and sex was just part of it — and maybe only a small part of it. There was something else happening that was cold, androgynous, sexless. End-stop. Like death.
    What he really wanted to do was to clear the goddamn bar.
    He'd considered it a dozen times but it was nowhere near closing time and there was nothing to pin it to, no incident, and he was seriously afraid of starting one. But if nobody else sensed violence in the air, he did.
    Take it easy , he thought, and let things take their course. With a little luck and some patience you'll get out of here fine .
    The woman in the halter top got up and reached for her date's hand. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt stood up beside her stuporous and smiling. She put her arm around him and they drifted out the door.
    That left eleven .
    And eight men.
    He couldn't stop tallying, figuring the odds.
    He glanced at the two women at the bar two seats down from Tom and Cindy. He got the same feeling from these two that you got from a bad drunk — only they weren't drunk. They weren't doing much of anything, not even talking. Just sitting there. But he could hardly look at them.
    And one was downright beautiful. A tall, willowy brunette.
    The other was shorter, blonde, kind of dumpy. But what they had in common was the eyes.