wine and cheap perfume

Last night a tiny, frail Chinese woman came into the bar, ordered a Heineken, and burst into tears. Her husband of ten years had just beat the shit out of her in front of her kids, and she left him. As in, she had left him about twenty minutes prior. After a bit of coaxing, I engaged her in a conversation about what she was supposed to do with herself, though none of the options discussed seemed viable. I volunteered my apartment for a while (although with two toddlers in tow, I doubt that she'd want to live with a tattooed butch dyke and myself in a studio apartment for long) and she said that she had too much pride, and too little money, to be able to go anywhere. It broke my heart. At the other end of the bar, two huge losers from New Hampshire ranted and raved about how they were going to move to New York and form a "jam band" that would "make it big" in no time. They used to "rock out" in college. Everytime they laughed, or said some loud, obnoxious thing, she'd cry harder, and it was supremely devastating.