The Lost Weekend (33 page)

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
doll
ars—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?