I hope you had a good night. I saw you were still sleeping so I didn’t disturb you. The coffee is made. Just warm it up. And there are eggs in the ice-box. Holy Love comes in at 10.30 so if you wake up after that, she can get your breakfast. I’ll telephone around noon. I hope you have a quiet day and more rest if you want it. Don’t let Holy Love get in your hair. Just chase her away if it bothers you having her around. The house can go till tomorrow. Love.—H.
Eggs. He couldn’t imagine anything more sickening at the moment than eggs. He looked around for Helen’s clock. But she must have taken it to the living room where she slept. He heard someone moving about in the kitchen and after a moment realized it was Holy Love. That meant it was past ten-thirty, maybe around eleven, or even noon. That meant Wick would be coming back very shortly. That meant the long weekend was over. Wick had said they’d come back Tuesday morning (they!) and it always took a good three hours to drive from the farm.
He had slept soundly since—when? He had no idea when it was he went to sleep, but certainly he had been sleeping twelve hours and maybe more. He should feel very rested. But he didn’t and he wasn’t. The moment he stirred in bed, tried to get up, made a move with his legs, he felt how weak he was. His heart didn’t thump like yesterday but it was irregular and it hurt. He was dizzy in the head. His responses and co-ordination weren’t what they should be. When he made a move he moved too far or not quite far enough. His breathing still came in panting gasps, even after the long sleep.
He settled back among the pillows and lay still for a moment, and the swaying room came to rest with him. Flecks of sunlight rippled on the ceiling or maybe it wasn’t sunlight at all maybe it was something in his own head or vision or something that lingered on from sleep. If he opened his eyes wide or sat up again—
He sat up and the whole room seemed just slightly ajar. That wasn’t what he meant. Slightly off center. That wasn’t it either. Whatever you called it in a two- or three-color job when the frames hadn’t quite jibed and the color stood just above or a little to one side of what it was supposed to color. He couldn’t think straight this morning or apparently see right. The outlines of things inside and out were a touch blurred. So was his vision unless he looked straight at something and held it for a moment. When he moved, the object moved too, for a second, and then settled back. The effect of the paraldative maybe. Sodium amytive. Sedative. Whatever the hell it was. Anyway something like an intoxication, a little whoozy, not at all unpleasant. You could lie back and kind of float just off the bed and enjoy it. Except that he had things to do.
Intoxication. Pifflocation. He remembered going to a movie with his mother so many years ago that he was too young to have been there at that kind of movie at all, but his mother didn’t know what the movie was about until they got into it; and then, during an awful scene in which a man reeled and staggered across the floor of an awful Western saloon and fell down and came to rest with his head on a spitoon, his mother laughed self-consciously and said aloud to a neighbor “He’s pifflocated,” making a lighthearted joke of it so he wouldn’t take the awful scene too seriously or think too much about it. Every time he had heard the word intoxication since, he thought of the other. Both words connoted something very unpleasant. Not nice. Something one didn’t mention. He had never identified himself with either of them. Ever thought of himself, in any stage, as being one or the other. He honestly didn’t believe he’d ever used or spoken either word. Why say intoxicated anyhow when drunk was what you meant and said it better.
For that matter why think of such a thing now when you were so far from drunk that you could bridle at the term as you bridled at the other. But not far from drinking. How far depended on how fast he worked.
So Helen was going to ’phone at noon. He couldn’t not answer the call. She’d know that he heard it no matter how soundly he still slept, or that Holy Love would answer it if he didn’t and go in and wake him. The thing to do was not be here. But then he’d had that clear in his mind from the moment he opened his eyes. It was the only thing this morning that was clear.
He waited till he heard Holy Love go down the hall to the living room. Then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. It wasn’t too good. He felt strong enough but uncertain. His whole body felt cool inside as if his blood didn’t run warm anymore. He swayed slightly, and when he took a step he wobbled. Perhaps this would pass when he got some coffee in him. He opened the door to Helen’s closet, got out a wrap of hers, and put it over his shoulders. He went to the kitchen.
Sitting at the little enamel table drinking the hot coffee, he suddenly had the odd idea that somebody was standing behind him, towering above and in back of his head. He knew better, but involuntarily he looked around. He felt a pressure weighing on his spirit, an almost physical weight pressing down on him. He kept wanting to dodge the heavy hand that was about to be placed on his shoulder, or wheel around suddenly and stop the voice that was about to speak out and thunder his name. He bent down to the coffee again, getting right down to it so that he could sip it from the cup without picking it up.
These were not hallucinations. He wondered if they might not be something worse. He remembered waking up in his room at the farm one morning and finding on his desk a volume of the medical dictionary open at the page describing what alcohol did to a guy. Shy Mrs. Hansen (shy hell!) who never would have spoken a word to him on the subject or admitted to his face that she even knew he drank, had looked it up, marked the passage, and left it there for him to see for himself. Amused, he read it through.
ALCOHOLISM: Edema of brain with serous meningitis in both acute and chronic cases. Thickened dura and pia mater, some tissue degeneration. It acts, at least in part, by inhibiting the ego-ideals and revealing the anti-social. Consequently a great variety of clinical pictures present themselves, especially in the acute intoxications—i.e., coma, amnesia, furor, automatism. The persistent drinker develops delirium tremens, chronic hallucinations and dementia.
ACUTE: Symptoms: Flushing of face, quickening of pulse, mental exhilaration, followed by incoherent speech, deep respiration, loss of co-ordination, dilated pupils, vomiting, delirium, slow pulse, subnormal temperature, impaired judgment, emotional instability, muscular incoordination and finally stupor and coma.
CHRONIC: Symptoms: Fine or violent tremor, mental impairment, disturbed sleep, injection of conjuctivae, redness of nose, etc. If long continued, atheroma of arteries, cirrhosis of liver and chronic interstitial nephritis are apt to develop.—This brings mental deterioration in its wake and change in the central nervous system resulting in impaired memory, failure of judgment, inability to carry on business and lower moral ideals and habits. Natural affection disappears.
Furor. Delirium. Disturbed sleep. Mental deterioration. As for that natural affection disappearing, it was so damned true that he was offended. He was far from amused when he finished the passage. For once in his life he got a scare. The only thing he ever feared was losing his mind or destroying the responses or functions of his brain, and it looked as if he might be doing just that. If anything could ever deter him from drinking, it would be this fear. Is that what was happening now? Or, if it was happening, would he realize it? Or would it sneak up on him without his knowing, make a babbling idiot of him all of a sudden, sometime, somewhere, without a moment’s warning? Was this weight, back of him, above him, on top of him, a premature sign? Could it be, thus, a blessing in disguise, a signal that there was still time if he would only yet use those waning wits to pull himself together before it was too late? Okay, Mrs. Hansen, but it’s been too late for years—and I’m still whole. For instance:
The pressure that weighed upon him, the feeling that someone stood behind him, spurred him also to gather his thoughts and map out his plan. What he did he’d have to do quickly. Speed was what counted today. He got up from the table and went down the hall to see how the land lay.
He stuck his head in the living room and said “Good morning.” Holy Love was probably thinking the worst (he and Helen had spent the night together) because she replied Good-morning without calling him by name or without looking up from her dusting. He went to the bathroom and, in passing, tried the door to the closet in the hall. It was locked.
He went into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub. Helen had seen to it, of course, that the hall-closet was safely locked before she went to work. She never had any great supply on hand but one bottle would have been enough. There was a key to that lock somewhere about the place but where? Maybe Holy Love had it or knew where it was. He didn’t feel like facing her again but he could call. He stood up, looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, and called out “Holy? Would you open the hall-closet for me, please?” His heart sank at the sight of his eye.
“Sorry, Mist’ Birnam,” she said from the other room, “I don’t have no key.”
He pretended not to have heard. “I left something in there last night, and I need it.”
“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”
She was a liar, of course, but what could he do about it? He felt himself begin to sway and he hung onto the washbowl. Well, now he could only go back to the bedroom, try to dress, and wait his chance. If Holy Love should produce a key from her apron-pocket and open that closet door behind his back, God help her. God help him!
He pulled on his socks and his shirt and pants and then lay back on the bed. He had begun to breathe hard again and he felt a rising excitement grow in him, an excitement he couldn’t control or understand. Probably physical. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the heavy breathing. He had to be calm in order to get out of here and on to what he was about. He thought deliberately of his objective and named it to himself: He must get back into that bed of his, his own bed at home, before Wick returned.
When he got back into the house it was going to be for good, this time, there was no getting around that. It meant bed for several days, bed and frightful hangover and shattered nerves. And it was something he wasn’t going to go through without liquor to help him, liquor to taper off with gradually, a few bottles cached here and there in secret places about the flat, aid that he could turn to when the mornings got too bad. He’d get half a dozen, somehow, somewhere. Nobody would believe, of course, that it was liquor to be used medicinally only. Nobody would believe that he would drink just enough of it and no more, just enough to keep his sanity. They’d be certain that it meant he was off again and that the long weekend was to stretch to another long week or longer. But he knew better. Knew when he was licked (temporarily). Knew when it was time to stop and recoup and get back on his feet and stay that way for a while. Knew that another such day as yesterday (he couldn’t remember what it had been like but it must have been frightful—he knew that from past experience) would, at this stage of the game, knock him out entirely, pull his brain apart piecemeal, and leave him a lunatic staring in his chair not knowing himself or anybody else. Only way to stave that off was to have a supply on hand for the dreadful three or four days to follow, and then, with the aid of the drink as medicine, gradually work back to normal, taking fewer ones and smaller ones daily, till you didn’t want it or need it anymore. Would anybody believe that? But did they ever believe you, ever, about anything? So pay no attention. They always made such a fuss, anyway, whatever you did.
He sprang up. He had heard Holy Love in the hall. She was just closing a door. He ran to the hall and saw her dragging the vacuum cleaner into the living room.
She certainly hadn’t got it out of the bathroom. She couldn’t say it had been in the medicine cabinet. He went down the hall.
“How about it, Holy?”
She looked up at him. “How about what, Mist’ Birnam?”
“Are you going to open that closet for me?”
“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”
“Where’d you get that vacuum cleaner!”
“From the kitchen.”
He went in and sat down on the sofa. He looked worse than undignified in his stocking feet but what difference did it make, she was treating him like a child anyway. “What’s the idea, Holy? Were you told not to let me in that hall-closet?”
She avoided looking at him from now on. “I wasn’t told nothing.”
“Then give me the key. I’ve got to get into that closet and get something out!”
“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”
“How did you get in, then?”
“Get in where?”
“You’ve got the key right there in your apron-pocket. Now give it to me! Do you hear?”
“Mist’ Birnam, if I had a key I’d give it to you. But I don’t have no key.”
Could you take it from her by force? He got up and hurried back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed again. If he had stayed there another minute he would have choked her.
He lay listening to the wail and hum of the vacuum cleaner. She wouldn’t be cleaning all day. She’d get through sometime and have to put it away again. From what he’d heard of Holy’s sloppy work she’d be through in five minutes. She was.
He heard the noise of the vacuum cleaner die out like a rundown record. He sprang up again and stood listening, every sense and nerve on edge.
Then began an idiotic duel over the hall-closet. Every time he heard her step in the hall, he passed through into the kitchen. Stayed there until he heard her again. Then back again to the bedroom. He moved noiselessly in his stocking feet but at no time did he catch her about to unlock the door. Once or twice she seemed to change her mind and went back into the living room as he returned again to the kitchen.
He was hot with rage. Angry with himself mostly for going through such an idiotic performance, for submitting to such an indignity, for ever being in such a position at all. He could have killed her without a thought.
He heard a step in the hall. He looked out of the kitchen. She was gone. The vacuum cleaner was lying on the floor in front of the locked closet door, and he knew it would go on lying there till Kingdom Come so long as he stayed in the house. He hurried into the bedroom and put on his shoes. He put on his tie, his coat and his vest. He found his hat and put it on his head. He was certainly going to go in and have a showdown now, have it out with her for good and all.
She was on her knees in front of the fireplace, her head in the hearth, when he came into the living room. With a brush she was sweeping up the ashes of the night before. He stood looking down at her and wondered how best to begin this time. There was no sense in antagonizing her any further. She couldn’t be browbeaten. But it went against him to plead with her, begging for the key. He had demeaned and humiliated himself enough.
His eye fell on the bronze Romulus and Remus on the mantel.
It was a small statue about eight inches long and four inches high, a replica of the famous symbol of Rome, the mother-wolf suckling the two children crouched beneath her. The base was a solid oblong of bronze, with sharp corners. He had picked it up in Italy and brought it home for Helen.
His hand went out for it. He loved the little statue, had always loved it, had loved it when it was an illustration in his Latin grammar, had hunted for it in Rome on his very first day there, but he had never thought of it like this. All shaking was suddenly gone from his hand and arm and whole body. He was deathly calm and aware. He looked down at Holy Love on her hands and knees in the fireplace and saw her neatly-parted hair. His stomach went cold and he turned and fled back to the bedroom.
Melodrama! In all his life he had never been in any situation so corny, so ham. He felt like an idiot. His taste was offended, his sense of the fitness of things, his deepest intelligence. For once, the foolish psychiatrist had been right. The drunk will go to any lengths to get his desperately-needed drink. Any. But not that far.
He looked wildly about the room. He had to get out of here quick. Helen’s typewriter was gone from the desk. Had she taken it with her on purpose? God they thought of everything.
Not everything. Fitted over the back of the chair beside the desk was Helen’s short leopard jacket which apparently had just come back from summer storage. The furrier’s tag still hung on the front button. He snatched up the jacket and hurried into the hall.
Just as he slammed the front door and ran down the stairs, he heard the telephone ring behind him. Ring ring let her ring now forever, or let Holy Love try to explain that one!
He turned to the left and ran up Bleecker Street toward Abingdon Square. He’d find a Mr. Rabinowitz along 8th Avenue somewhere and the place would be open too. They could never fool him again. It wasn’t Yom Kippur today.
He had no thought for anyone along the way, scarcely even for himself. He didn’t care who looked at him or who wondered at his speed or at the leopard jacket under his arm or at the black eye or who thought what. He was hurrying against time as he had never hurried before. He felt dizzy still but it was probably now only from the headlong rush.
He suddenly had the queer feeling that he had done all this before, traversed this very same route, in just this way and at just this speed, for the same reason. But no, that was another place, certainly another time—and now he remembered.
The night he left the Kappa U house for good, he had hurried downtown without even knowing where he was going or why. His only thought was to go somewhere else and quick. He walked along the dark side-streets of the business section until he was tired and had to stop. He came to a brightly-lighted shopwindow. It was a bookstore, and the floor of the window was piled high with some new book just out, in a gay jacket. He leaned against the glass to rest a moment and absently looked in. His eye fell on the title, Tales of the Jazz Age, and on the crazy collegiate figures by John Held Jr. that adorned the white wrapper. He was amazed. This was news to him. He hadn’t heard that Fitzgerald had brought out a new book. Down in front, close to the glass, was a propped-up copy held open with rubberbands at a story called “May Day.” He bent down to the glass and began to read. He read down the entire left page, and then down the other. That was as far as he could go with the story but it was great stuff. He stood up with a sigh and promised himself to come down here, first thing tomorrow morning, the moment the store was opened, and buy himself a copy. He turned then to go on—and stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly he had never felt so good and so foolish in his life. You God damned fool, he said to himself; if you’ve got enough curiosity and interest to know what’s in that book, then what the hell are you running away from? …
But that was all different. This time he was running to, not from. Wasn’t he? Just above 15th he found the place and turned in.
Fat Mr. Rabinowitz (or Weintraub or Winthrop or whoever he was) in a shirt grey-wet with sweat turned the leopard jacket over and over and felt of it and looked at the lining and examined the label. He thought he would collapse standing there waiting for the decision. A vivid brunette in the cashier’s cage looked at him and drew in her breath audibly. Sure, the eye. Well? What about it? He raised his head and stared back at her coldly.
Mr. Rabinowitz flopped the jacket over again and rubbed it with his finger. “Is it hot?”
He didn’t follow. “Hot?”
“Did you steal it?”
He went dumb with surprise. He had never expected anything like this. He was so amazed he didn’t even react. His anger only began to grow when he heard his own voice saying meekly: “No, it belongs to my wife. I’ll pick it up next week if you’ll only give me—”
“Okay, I guess it’s worth five dollars.”
“Five dollars—why, it’s—”
“I’ll give you five.” He handed him a ticket and five of the filthiest one-dollar bills he had ever had in his hand and the most priceless.
He hurried out of the shop with the bills wadded inside his palm.
In the street, he ruffled through them again to see if there were really five. Everything was in order, everything was wonderful. He rolled them up and stuck them into his outside breast-pocket as if to get them out of sight as quickly as possible.
Thrusting the money inside the pocket, his fingers ran into opposition. Something blocked the opening. He reached in with his hand and pulled out a fistful of bills.
He was thunder-struck. Instantly he jammed the bills back out of sight and glanced around in panic. Something preposterous and fantastic was happening to his brain. Was he going to go to pieces right there on the sidewalk? His eye fell on the blue light of a subway-entrance at the corner. He ran for the entrance and dashed down the stairs.
He had to get where he could look at that windfall of bills in private, count them without anyone seeing. He changed one of his dirty dollar bills at the window, put a nickel in the slot, and bumped through the stile. There was a Men’s Room down the platform to the left. He slammed against the door and rushed in.
Two men who had been standing inside stepped back suddenly from the urinals. He looked up at them in alarm. Both averted their faces in casual fashion and assumed the most unconcerned expressions in exactly the same way. He ducked at once for one of the toilets and let the doors fall to behind him. Then he sat down to wait, crouching and holding his breath, listening intently to hear if the two men should leave.
There was not a sound. He peered through the crack between the doors and saw the two standing against the wall, several feet apart, ostentatiously disclaiming any connection with each other. What the hell was this. They were spying on him. They were detectives or something. They knew what he was up to in there. Knew he had all that cash he had no right to have. Why didn’t they go. How was he ever going to get out of here now if they didn’t go. Or were they going to open the doors in a moment and drag him out and lead him away. Were they waiting for him to take the money out of his pocket before they suddenly sprang forward, pulled back the doors, and surprised him with the cash in his hand. One of the men cleared his throat slightly and he heard the other give a little answering cough.
He peered through the crack again. Both men wore overcoats. Both had their hands thrust down deep into their coat pockets and held slightly to the front. Did they have guns. They were waiting for somebody. Was it him. Nobody stood around in a Men’s Room. You didn’t wait for trains there. They weren’t looking at a paper or anything. They didn’t talk or even look at each other. They were pretending they had never seen each other before, knew nothing about each other, were unaware of each other at all—for his benefit. That was obvious. How long would they wait before they acted—or left. How long could he wait. Involuntarily he reached to his breast-pocket and fingered through the roll of bills. He had no idea where or how he could have got so much cash. Was he imagining it? One of the men began to hum. The other shifted his feet and leaned back more comfortably against the wall. Both tilted their heads now and again and looked at the ceiling.
How long was this to go on. Every few minutes a train rumbled into the station and the whole place jarred and shook. He heard the old nerve-shattering bell that announced the train was pulling out but they still stayed. So did he. Nothing in this world could have dragged him out of there. He wasn’t fool enough to walk out and step right into their waiting arms, or have one of them tip his coat-pocket up toward him and say “How about it, Buddy. Fork it over.” He’d stay in here all day if necessary while his nerves got worse and worse but he’d stay.
They were getting impatient. He saw one of the men glance upward around the room in a wide arc ending in a little nod and the other nodded too. He bent down and gazed at the floor so they wouldn’t see him looking. Another train came in. When it pulled out again, the silence was unbearable. He waited in intolerable suspense for minutes, then raised his head ever so slightly to look through the crack as inconspicuously as possible. They were gone.
Nobody stood there. There was no one at all. Had there been anybody? He had neither seen them go nor heard them. They may have left during the thunder of the last train, but he was beginning to doubt his senses entirely. If they had stood there all this time waiting for him, why had they suddenly gone? Maybe even the money was an illusion. He pulled it out of his breast-pocket.
It was real, all right. There was twenty-seven dollars in bills. Not counting the money he had just got from the pawnbroker. Deep down in the pocket (he could barely reach it with his finger-tips, he’d have to turn the coat upside down to get at it) was a pile of silver that must have amounted to another few dollars. He waited for the rumble of the next train, then ran out through the doors, across the platform, and stepped onto an E train.
He got off at 3rd and 53rd and hurried to a liquor store, not the one at the corner of his street but another one he seldom went to on 56th. He paid for and grabbed up six pints of rye and tried to walk out of the shop as calmly as possible.
The old Lincoln was not in front of the house; but when he got upstairs and opened the door, Mac barked from his basket. He ducked at once into his bedroom, dropped the package into the laundry hamper in his closet, and stood listening.
There was no sound from the other rooms. He swallowed to steady his voice, and then said: “Wick, are you there?” He heard the tap-tap of the Scottie’s claws on the bare floor of the foyer and Mac came in to see him.
In his relief he began to shake. He was faint with exhaustion and soaked through in sweat. He needed a drink at once. He had worked fast but not fast enough apparently. Still, he had had the breaks. Wick was home, yes, but he was out again. He’d have to work fast some more. The drink would have to wait a little. For once something else was more important.
He stripped to his shorts and fired the wet clothes into the corner of the closet. He got the package out of the laundry-hamper and tore it open, thrusting the wrapping back into the hamper again. He took two of the pints and went to the bathroom. He lifted the heavy enameled lid of the water-tank and put it on the toilet-seat. He took one of the bottles by the neck and carefully set it down inside, in the water, fingering around till he was sure it was out of the way of the plunger. He slowly lowered the second bottle in on the other side, and with his hand he pushed the ball up and down till it rode free. Then he picked up the heavy cover again and set it back where it belonged. He flushed the toilet to see how it would work. If it didn’t stop, if it kept on running, the bottles were interfering with the mechanism. Without waiting for the flushing to stop, he ran into the kitchen.
He got some string out of the table-drawer and cut off two pieces about a foot-and-a-half in length. While he was putting away the string, he heard the flushing of the toilet come to a sighing stop. He grabbed up an empty glass and hurried back to the bedroom.
He laid two of the pints on the bed and tied a piece of string around the neck of each. He opened the window a few inches and lowered one of the bottles till it hung just under the outside sill. He fastened the end of the string to a tiny cleat that was used for the awning in summer. He did the same with the other bottle, on the opposite side of the window. Then he closed the window and adjusted the curtains, allowing them to fall naturally over the radiator in veiling folds.
He had two pints for himself for now, one to be taken away if necessary, the other to start on at once. He opened one of them and poured a full glass of whisky. He tucked the other bottle into the bookcase where Wick was certain to look for it when he found him drunk and asleep.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to drink. In a very few minutes he was tired. He filled the glass again, set it on the floor by the bed, and crawled in.
He thought of the money. It was a laugh, all right. Shoving it away, all those days, into his outside breast-pocket. For safekeeping. So damned safe that he had never found it himself. Who would ever have thought to look in his breast-pocket. Who ever kept anything in his breast-pocket but a handkerchief and a handkerchief that was never used at that. All those bills stuffed in there so tight that the change in the bottom didn’t even clink or jingle when he ran frantically about in search of money. An inspiration came to him.
He sprang out of bed, fished through his pockets for all the money he had left, every last cent, and ran with it into the living room. He spread the bills on the table, fan-shaped, each one of them showing. In the very middle he stacked up the pile of change in a neat little tower. He admired his steady hand, his untrembling hand, as he arranged the half-dollars on the bottom, then quarters next, then nickels, then pennies, with the dimes on top. That would satisfy Wick. Satisfy anybody.
He hurried back to his room. He poured another drink, drank it, and crawled in, feeling like a million dollars.
He lay listening now for Wick. Let him come any time now. The thing was over. He himself was back home in bed again and safe. God knows why or how but he had come through one more. No telling what might happen the next time but why worry about that? This one was over and nothing had happened at all. Why did they make such a fuss?