One of the first things Midge ever told me, sitting there that snowy night at Bob’s Bowery Bar, was that she had killed a guy one time.
“This big ex-pug named Mike Grabowski. We were shacked, and I got fed up with his drinking and hitting me, so I told him I was cutting out. He told me over his dead body. So I let him get really drunk on Tokay wine, then said let’s go down to the bar. We lived in a fourth-floor walk-up, and as soon as we got outside our trap and at the head of the stairs I gave him a good push. He broke his neck. So he got his wish. I cut out. Over his dead body.”
She gave me a long hard look.
“You still want to buy me a drink?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Not scared?”
“I didn’t say I’m not scared,” I said.
She looked at me hard again.
“I’m drinking bock beer,” she said.
I got the bartender’s attention and ordered two bocks.
– A Gal Called Midge, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Bantam paperback original, 1950; out of print.
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