Lover

Chapter Ten

The drinking did it.

It will do it every time. Drink enough, often enough and the world is going to fall in on you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It happens every time.

It happened to Johnny. To Johnny Wells, the golden boy who could do no wrong.

It happened to him like a ton of bricks.

Too many nights passed in a fog of alcohol. Too many days passed the same way, and too much money went out while no money came in. When the money goes that way you can bet that the end is not far away. It might have taken a long time, because there was quite a bit of money, but it didn’t. The money didn’t last that long because he was too drunk to hang onto it.

He managed to get rid of almost all the money at once. It happened in a rather interesting way, and it was funny, if one finds such things amusing.

He woke up one day at eleven in the morning with a tremendous thirst. His hands were shaking and he felt like a mangy dog. He knew the cure, however, because he had been there before. This was nothing new to him. It was just a repetition of the way he woke up every morning, the way he felt every morning. His hangover was the only friend he had and he would have been lost if one morning he had awakened without it.

He knew the cure. He reached out for the brandy bottle which was always by the side of the bed. There was enough in it to take the edge off, which is what he wanted to do. He brought the bottle to his lips and drained it in a single swallow. Not all of the brandy wound up in his mouth. Some of it slopped over his face and wet his beard. He hadn’t shaved in several days and his beard was long already, a thick covering of stubble that kept him looking like hell.

The brandy helped.

It did part of the trick, anyway. The headache did not entirely disappear, but then it never did. The headache was always with him in one degree or another, a constant reminder that he needed a drink. Because he always needed a drink, from the moment he woke up in the morning until the moment he passed out at night.

There was nothing to do about it but drink. One time he had remembered Ricky, and in a moment of pure desperation had presented himself at the nearest army recruiting office. He figured they could take custody of his mind and body for three years. Maybe they could straighten him out. It was a cinch he couldn’t do the job himself.

But they took one look at him, laughed aloud, and booted him out on his tail.

So now he didn’t try to fight it any more. His bottle of brandy was empty. He dressed in a hurry and checked his wallet. It, too, was empty. He had to go to the bank again. It seemed as if he was going to the bank every goddamn day of the week. He hoped the bank was open. He was broke, and he couldn’t even take a goddamned bus to the goddamned bank, and he had to walk it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view, the bank was open.

By this time he was heartily sick of the bank, and heartily sick of making trips to the bank, and sicker still of having an empty wallet and a monumental thirst for brandy.

So he waited patiently in the line, looking out of place among dozens of clean-shaven happy-looking people, and when he was first in line the clerk looked at him as if he was wondering what Johnny could possibly be doing there.

“How much is my bank balance?”

The clerk asked him if he had an account.

He got mad, and he snapped at the clerk, and finally he managed to get across who he was and yes, he did have a cruddy account in the cruddy bank, and how much was in it, you dumb stupid son of a bitch?

The clerk finally supplied the good news that Mr. Wells had on deposit slightly in excess of twenty-seven hundred dollars. Another clerk confirmed that this intoxicated pig was indeed John Wells, and Johnny, sick of the whole thing, drew out his entire account.

It was quite a bit of money.

He tried to go through it like a drunken sailor. He went over to Ninth Avenue, where the bars were all in a row and one worse than the next, and he went into the first bar he came to and ordered a double brandy. He downed it in a single swallow, slapped a ten dollar bill on the top of the bar and told the soiled barkeep to keep the change.

Then he went to the next bar and repeated the process.

Now, when you have twenty-seven hundred dollars in your kick, it takes you a long time to spend it on liquor. Even at ten bucks a drink, you would have to hit two hundred seventy bars before you were broke.

It didn’t take him that long.

Because a man who spends ten bucks on a drink attracts a certain amount of attention. Johnny attracted one hell of a lot of attention, and two fine young citizens followed him and waited for the right moment and then gave him a length of lead pipe in back of one ear.

He went down cold, and when he woke up several hours later with the worst headache and hangover of all his wallet was gone forever. He wasn’t particularly disturbed about the money, but the wallet was that alligator billfold he had stolen from Mrs. Nugent, and in a sense that was where the whole thing had started. He was sort of sorry to see the wallet go. He kind of liked that wallet, for sentimental reasons.

It took them four days to kick him out of the hotel. They liked him, and they were sorry to see him go, but you don’t let a penniless drunk stay in your hotel indefinitely unless your name is Harry Hope. He went out with his suitcases in hand, and he pawned the suitcases and their contents and got himself a few more drinks.

And that was that.

He traced a regular route, from the Hotel Ruskin to a run-down flophouse on West 47th Street, from that place to a hotel on Bleecker Street, from Bleecker Street to another worse dump in Hell’s Kitchen. His taste for brandy died when the money was gone. Brandy was too expensive. Wine was cheaper, even if it did have a more deleterious effect on your system. It got you just as drunk and the price was lower.

It was only a matter of time before he wound up where he had started. Only a matter of time. It made sense to get back to the old neighborhood — the way he was going he was destined to wind up on the Bowery and he didn’t want that. Something kept him from hitting the Bowery. It sent him to the upper west side again, where it had all begun, where the whole mess started not that long ago.

How long? A couple years? He didn’t know anything about time any more.

Time doesn’t matter when you’re drunk enough.

The upper west side made sense. There were still a few friends in the area and once in a while he could make a touch. Ricky slipped him ten bucks, which helped tremendously. Beans blew in from Chi another time, back to try his luck in New York again, and gave him twenty. Long Sam was good for a dollar now and then when he wasn’t in the can.

And finally he got a job.

It wasn’t a real job. It put a roof over his head and a few bucks a week in his hands. He worked as an assistant janitor in a brickfront dump, carrying out the ashes and picking up the garbage. It was the type of job only a drunk would take, and it was perfect for him. He put in a few hours a week, stayed drunk whether he was working or not, and nobody bothered him. He didn’t have to worry about rent money because the room was his in exchange for the job. He hardly ate at all so food was no expense. A couple of bucks a day for wine was all he needed, and he could usually manage to scrounge that up.

There were always ways. If he couldn’t make a touch, he could steal something and hope he didn’t get caught. Or he could go back to his old job, but with a difference.

Men this time.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it when the man offered him five bucks to come up to his room for an hour. But he needed a drink, and beggars could not be choosers, so he went.

This happened once or twice a month. It was always a quick five and sometimes ten, and he was low enough by this time so that he didn’t get sick thinking about it. There were too many other things to get sick thinking about, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of squeamishness.

Sometimes the memories came.

He would remember the days when he had all that money, and he would tell himself that they had not been good days, and then he would think that they must have been better than the ones he was living his way through now.

He would remember a girl named Linda, and he would picture all the things that might have been, and he would get sick once more.

The wine bottle was always there.

It was always a cure.

He always took it.