After they were gone, I apologized to Alice for the scene she had just witnessed.
"Baby," she said, "I was on your side the whole time."

[read part 1 here.]
As Brett and I put the finishing touch on a close game, Geoff, who had left about an hour before after losing a Beirut game to calm his nerves with some more green leaf, walked back into the bar. The only reason this grabbed our attention was because the kid was covered in blood. Accosting him with three other men, I asked him if he was OK.

"I think I've been shot," he croaked. Not sure if the hoarseness in his voice was from the pot smoke or from the fact that he was about to die, I told him to sit down, intending to find and remove the bullet. James asked if anyone in the bar knew CPR. However, a thorough inspection found no bullet hole anywhere on his person. I also noticed that the pattern of the blood suggested that the source was somewhere on his face. I stepped back to get a fuller view of the situation, and suddenly realized what was going on.

"Dude, you have a nosebleed."

As it turned out, on his way back to the bar, a car on Second Avenue had its engine backfire. At or about the same time, Geoff, who had been (over)using a nasal inhaler for the past week to quell a cold, was struck with a random bloody nose. I suppose when you hear a bang and then see blood on yourself after you've filled your brain with alcohol and cannabis, you can assume anything but hey, the moral of the story kiddies:

Lay off the reefers or, at least, use some goddamn moderation.

My heart pounding, I stepped out of George Clooney mode and went back into Beirut-champion mode (which, by the way was true. Aside from a loss to Matt and Sean, who had built a pretty good game in Rochester, Brett and I were an unstoppable team). We were up six cups to three on James and Geoff, who had let their skills deteriorate at their respective Ivy League institutions. Brett was taking aim at their left back cup, when all of a sudden; an unknown voice broke his concentration.

"Hey jerkoff, my fuckin' grandmother throws better than you!"

The intruder's plan worked, as Brett's throw sailed wide. Brett turned to the source of the distraction, and faced a particularly ugly barfly and his lumberjack-shaped "friend." Always one to let a first offense slide, Brett returned his focus to the game. Unfortunately, this menace was not about to disappear. The heckling continued, and Brett and I got more and more agitated.

At one point, Brett turned to the guy, and, with index finger extended, brought his hand across his neck in the classic "you're dead" gesture. This only brought about more fervent attempts to mess up our Beirut game. At that point, Brett was flexing his bread-loaf sized biceps at the guys to let them know what they had coming if they continued with their bullshit. After the game was over, Brett went over to the intruders to straighten the matter out.

The ugly guy doing the yelling was too much of a pussy to actually back his words up, so his much larger counterpart stood up to face Brett. Before long, Brett was shouting something about how he was division one wrestling in college and would arm wrestle the guys to show that he could "out strong them, out fuck them and out smart them." How he planned to do all this at once, we had no clue. Before we could further ponder this, Brett, with speech more fiery than seen at the Million Youth March in Harlem, then threatened to "fuck the guy's head," and he used his hands to approximate the size of his dick.

Soon, shoves were being exchanged. After taking a particularly hard push, Brett turned and took two large steps away from the guy, toward the back of the bar, as if he were leaving. We were all a bit shocked. There was no way Brett would back down in a situation like this. As it turned out, leaving was the last thing on his mind. His hands suddenly went to the snap on the front of his pants, and we all knew what was coming next. In a flash (no pun intended), the two hecklers (and the rest of the bar as well) were vis-à-vis with Brett's huge, hairy ass. This only infuriated the lumberjack further, and I realized I had to intercede. Much as I would have liked to beat these guys down, I couldn't allow blood to be spilled on the Sly Fox floor, which was already tainted with mud like that of the floors at your favorite fraternity.

Stepping between the two pugilists, I shouted at them in my best Samuel L. Jackson voice: "Listen! It would be wise to get the fuck out of here cause we own this motherfuckin' bar! We're 20 heads deep in here tonight, so if you fuck with my man Brett, you fuck with me and all these guys behind me!"

I swept my arm over the general area that our crew inhabited to give the assholes an idea of what they were dealing with. James and Phil (a complete wild man, currently at the College of Charleston) took their attention off their pool game and fell in behind us, cues in hand. The rest of the crew left their alcohol momentarily and followed suit, either holding empty glasses or beer bottles, or tapping their fists into their open palms and cracking their knuckles, reminiscent of a scene from the movie Warriors.

They got the message. Swearing revenge they cursed us and promised to call the police. Like everything else they had said that night however, it was all empty bullshit. They left the bar quietly and got into a cab that disappeared down Second Avenue. After they were gone, I apologized to Alice for the scene she had just witnessed.

"Baby," she said, "I was on your side the whole time."

[read the other parts of this story: 1 2.]