Tales From Gavagan's Bar (23 page)

             
Hands were shaken. Titus said: "Sorry if my hand feels moist. I've been through an experience. Better give me another, Mr. Cohan. But make it a Brandy Smash this time."

             
"What kind of an experience?" asked Jeffers. "More beer, while you're about it, Mr. Cohan."

             
"I don't know. I wish I did. That's why I want to find Morrie Rath in a hurry and check with him. Do you know him? Real-estate man."

             
"I've heard of him," said Jeffers. "Isn't he the one who promoted that big Belleview development?"

             
"That's the one. With every house furnished complete, down to and including a TV set and a lot of chromium-pipe furniture in the living room. I think they're horrors myself, and they're certainly no good for my business. I'm a junk dealer—antiques, you know."

             
He dug his nose into the Brandy Smash. "He wanted to show me how convenient these modern houses really are when they're lived in, so he took me out to a cocktail party at Joe Cox's. Do you know Joe? Well, anyway, that's where we went; Morrie picked me up right here at Gavagan's. You remember, maybe, Mr. Cohan?"

             
"That would be the last I seen of him," said the bartender.

             
"Indeed? Well, since you don't know Joe, I'll tell you that he's a good man with a cocktail shaker. He kept plying everybody with his concoctions, and since there was a big enough mob present to keep the ball rolling and a big table loaded with snacks, nobody worried much about doing any more formal eating, least of all Morrie and myself. I don't mean we drank our dinner, but we came pretty close to it, and the first thing we knew, we were the last guests present and Ethel Cox was saying something about trotting off to bed and leaving us to continue the conversation."

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So we phoned for a taxi [Titus continued] and, as it was a fine night, went outside to wait for it at the street. Joe Cox's place stands at the top of that big Belleview hill. We could look down through the trees and see the lights of the city in the
distance, long strings in irregular patterns. I seem to
remember that they put me in a slightly sentimental mood. I said: "I'd give anything I owned to see that view as it was a hundred years ago, and go down into the city and find it as it was then. They lived a more comfortable life."

             
This was more or less a continuation of an argument we'd had inside. Morrie said: "That's just because you don't know what it is to live without conveniences. I'd give anything I owned, including my soul, to see the place as it will be a hundred years from now."

             
It was a silly argument, but we were still at it when the cab drove up. It was an independent, not one of those yellows. I always like to look at the driver's name, and I noticed that the little card that has it was missing. But it sometimes is. The driver turned around till he was almost facing us—he had the most flexible neck I ever saw on a man, but the cap covered all his face except a long nose—and said: "Where to, please?"

             
I was full of my argument for the good old days, and still fuller of Joe Cox's booze. So I said: "The Barclay Hotel, please!"

             
"You mean Bedbug Palace?" said Morrie. "That old joint was crummy when they tore it down, six years ago."

             
"Crummy, my left foot," I said. "It was a monument. Abraham Lincoln stopped there on the way to—"

             
"Okay," said Morrie. "Have your joke, and I'll have mine." He tapped on the glass. "Make that the first stop, driver, and then take me on to the Lonergan Building. That's as far in one direction as yours is in the other. They won't get it finished for five years. Let's see, you paid on the way out, didn't you? I'll take care of this end of the trip."

             
I said no, he had paid for the trip out, and I thought so, too; so we argued about that for a while, and then got onto something else, neither one of us noticing that the driver had started out, just as though he knew exactly where he was taking us. In fact, I didn't notice anything until the cab pulled up, the driver turned his head around on that prehensile neck and said: "Here you are, sir."

             
I got out without thinking and found that although the air
up at Belleview was clear, there was a good deal of fog down here in the valley. I heard Morrie call "Good-night, Gil!" Then the cab door slammed, and there I was, alone on the sidewalk. Then I noticed that the street was cobbled and the sidewalk was flagstones.

             
You see, as I said, I'd had quite a few drinks, and it wasn't until that minute that it occurred to me to wonder where the hell the driver had dumped me out. I turned around, and there right in front of me was the big familiar-looking porte-cochere, all ornamented with iron curlycues, with the letters reading "Hotel Barclay." Through the glass of the doors, I could see a little light inside, enough to show that somebody was about, though there didn't seem to be as much activity as you'd expect at a big hotel.

             
I hesitated about going in. I knew as well as anybody that there wasn't any Hotel Barclay any more, and there must be something fishy about this deal. But I looked up and down the street, and couldn't make out anything but a couple of street lights, dim in the fog, and there wasn't a sound anywhere. Besides, with the liquor, I was so groggy that all I wanted was to get into bed somewhere and solve any questions later.

             
So I put on my fighting face, as they say, walked up to the door of the non-existent Barclay, and pulled it open. Inside, by what little light there was, I could make out that I was in an ordinary hotel lobby, with chairs and tables standing around. The furniture was Early Victorian—mahogany, with heavy lines—thick legs and lots of curves, but without the carved foliage that came in during the Late Victorian.

             
Across the lobby was the usual hotel desk, with a space for the room clerk and a wicket. On the desk stood an oil lamp, but turned down way low, so that it only lit up the place very faintly. It stank, and I recognized the type of lamp; it was one of the kind they used to use for burning whale oil. The only sound was a faint gurgle-gurgle, as though someone had had his throat freshly cut.

             
It gave me a chill until I realized that it was only the night clerk snoring, curled up in the farthest corner behind the
desk, back of the cashier's wicket. I couldn't reach the clerk to shake him, but there was a little bell beside the lamp, and I jangled it.

             
The clerk shook his head a couple of times, stood up and said: "You wish something, sir?" He was a young chap, with his hair full of grease and little sideburns growing clear down the sides of his face. He was wearing an old fashioned hard-boiled shirt, and a vest over it, but no coat, collar or tie.

             
I said: "I want a room for the night."

             
He looked me from top to bottom sort of wonderingly—it wasn't until later that I realized my clothes must have affected him the same way his did me—but he shoved the register at me, with an inkwell which had a wooden penholder attached to it. He said: "I can let you have Number 207 for seventy-five cents, or Number 311 for a dollar. That has a sitting room."

             
It was too late to pull out now, and I was feeling so sleepy I didn't care what kind of a flea bag this was, so I said: "I'll take 311."

             
The clerk looked over the desk to see if I had any baggage. "In advance, if you please," he said.

             
That was to be expected. I pulled a bill out of my wallet and handed it to him. He had already started to open the till for change, when he stopped, turned up the lamp and took another look at the bill.

             
"What under the canopy is this, eh?" he said.

             
"A five-dollar bill. What did you think it was?" I said.

             
"Never saw the like," he said, and squinted hard at the picture of Lincoln. "Who's this?" He scowled over the fine lettering. "Uh—Lincoln. Oh, that Whig Congressman. Series of 1934. Say, this wouldn't fool—Oh, I twig! A campaign dodger, ha, ha, ha, pretty cute!"

             
I didn't want to start an argument, so I said: "They're going to run him for President," and fished in my pocket. Fortunately, I've been in the habit for years of carrying around an old silver dollar as a luck piece. It was my grandfather's estate, the only thing he left. The clerk bounced it on the counter to see if it rang right, looked at it a

             
"Follow me," he said and led me down the corridor, where we climbed up two stories to No. 311. He showed me in, handed me the key, lit a match that went off with a great flare and sputter, and applied it to a gas jet. It gave off a little yellow unshielded flame.

             
"You know about that rule, don't you, sir?" he said, jerking his thumb toward a sign tacked to the inside of the door. In big letters it warned: DON'T BLOW OUT THE GAS!

             
"Sure," I told him.

             
He explained anyway. "A lot of rubes come in here that have never seen gaslights before and don't know that you turn it out like this." He demonstrated.

             
"I know about it," I said, yawning, and handed him a quarter for a tip.

             
He looked at it and said: "Haven't you made a mistake, sir?"

             
"I don't think so," I told him. "Why?"

             
"But this is a quarter of a dollar."

             
"I know," I said. "It's for you."

             
"Oh, thank
you,
sir," he said, and went out.

             
I got rid of my clothes and climbed into bed; and the next thing I knew I was being wakened by a loose shutter somewhere banging in the breeze. The room was still dark, because the shutters at the window had been left closed. I had the usual hangover thirst, and the only water I could locate had stood all night in a pitcher on the washstand. But I took a swig of that and went over and pushed open the shutters. It was broad daylight—somewhere near noon, I would judge. As I looked over the city, I could see that something was undoubtedly fishy; no tall buildings, no autos, no nothing. Just like a damned set for a Dickens movie; and the actors in it were wandering around with the women in big long skirts and the men in long coats and straw stovepipe hats.

             
This was somewhere else; or rather, some time else. While I was dressing, I tried to do a little figuring. I know all about
those stories where a man gets thrown backward in time and settles down to make his fortune by inventing the multiplication table or something like that. But they're fiction, and written by people it never happened to. That demon taxi-driver had taken me at my word and delivered me to the Barclay in its heyday; and here I was, in outlandish clothes, with a pocketful of money dated far in the future, and no prospects. I wouldn't know how to put an electric light together if I had the pieces, and a telephone is a mysterious act of God; the only thing I understand is antiques. Besides, I have a family and I like them. I wanted home.

             
In the meantime, I thought it would be worth while finding out what date I was in; I was hungry and didn't think a shot would do me any harm. Going out didn't appeal, but a rope came through the wall with a tassel on the end of it and the legend PULL beneath. I pulled; and then sat down to count my resources. None of the bills was any good, of course, and the Lincoln pennies and Roosevelt dimes were just as bad. That left me with one more half-dollar, three quarters, a couple of Liberty dimes, and six of the Jefferson nickels.