Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (41 page)

On the Wagon

IT HAD BEEN
six weeks, but Mike couldn’t get used to it. ‘A month and a half,’ he said, ‘and I’ve just got started. Sooner or later I’ll get used to it. I got to get used to it.’

Half past five was quitting time in the office, and that was the hardest part of the day. He would walk it off. He would leave as if in a hurry to get home, and then walk eighteen blocks to his furnished room. He would wash up and go over to a diner on Third Avenue. While he ate, he would try to look preoccupied. Mike was embarrassed by his loneliness; he didn’t want anybody, not even a counterman in a diner, to guess that he was lonesome. Like many lonesome people, he felt there was something shameful about it. Some nights after dinner he couldn’t force himself to go back to his furnished room, and he would go for a ride on the Third Avenue ‘L.’ It would please him to see the four enormous, beautifully polished copper kettles in the windows of Ruppert’s brewery, and it would please him to smell the wet hops, a lovely smell that blew into the car as it rattled past. He would get off the ‘L’ at the Hanover Square station, light a cigarette, and walk back and forth on the cement plaza in front of the Cotton Exchange. He found it comforting to walk there in the dark and listen to the whistles of the tugs in the East River. The best job he ever had had been in a coffee warehouse a block from Hanover Square. That had been four years ago, and since then he had lost three other jobs, all because of drinking. After a while he would leave the plaza and get back on the ‘L.’ And all the way uptown he would stare down into the street, watching for the cheerful, flickering neons over the entrances of barrooms. ‘Six weeks on the wagon,’ he would say. ‘Six weeks and not even a beer!’ Whenever the ‘L’ got on his nerves, he would get out and walk until he was so tired he could sleep. Sometimes, walking at night, he saw things that made him feel better because they
took
his mind off himself – a street fight, an automobile wreck, a boat unloading dripping bushels of mackerel at a Fulton Market pier. He seldom stopped to look at such things, however; his purpose in walking was to tire himself out.

The hardest part of the day for Mike, certainly, was the moment he put on his coat and hat and left the wholesale drug company where, for three weeks, he had been assistant bookkeeper. But lunchtime was almost as bad. The others in the office, even Miss O’Brien, the fussy file clerk, ate across the street in the bar and grill, but he always went up the street to the coffeepot. After work, Mr Schmidt, the bookkeeper, and Clancy, the head shipping clerk, would go across the street for beers. Once Mr Schmidt, getting into his coat, turned to Mike and said, ‘I never see you across the street, Thompson. Why don’t you drop in and have a beer with me and Clancy?’ Mike said, ‘My liver isn’t all it should be,’ and Mr Schmidt had said, ‘That’s tough. Take care of yourself.’ There was nothing wrong with Mike’s liver. Mike loathed the coffeepot, but he was afraid to go across the street. He would make up his mind to have lunch in the bar and grill with the others and then he would get to thinking, and he would say to himself, ‘I better go up to the coffeepot. Like Betty said, unless I stay on the wagon I’ll never be able to hold down a job. I’m thirty-nine and I’m not getting any younger. I had an awful time getting this job and I got to hold on to it.’

He dreaded Sunday. The Sunday which marked the beginning of his seventh week on the wagon was cold and clear. He spent the afternoon in his furnished room, reading a newspaper. Late in the day he pulled his chair to the window and sat there. Acres of tenement roofs stretched out beneath his window; on one roof a pigeon-keeper was waving a bamboo pole and frightening his birds aloft. Each time they were driven off their coop the birds flew into the air, wheeled around, and settled immediately a couple of roofs away on chimneys decorated with the yellow-paint signs of the New York Frame & Picture Co. They perched on the chimneys a few tentative moments and then flew back to their coop and were driven aloft again. Mike was amused by the game. After a while the pigeon-keeper locked the birds in their coop, took a
paper
bag out of his pocket, and tossed some corn into each pen. Then he left the roof, and Mike felt deserted. While he sat at the window, leaning forward, with his elbows on the sill, it became dark and he began to feel bad. He had slept little the night before. A hot bath had done no good and aspirin had made him even more shaky. He had been too jittery and too lonesome to sleep. Staring out over the dark roofs, he tried to get control of himself, but it was no use. He began to cry. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His eyes were strained by sleeplessness and the tears made them smart. Mike had got so he talked to himself. ‘I cry as easy as an old maid in the dark at a movie,’ he said. ‘I got to hold on to myself somehow.’ He walked up and down in the shabby room. When he could bear it no longer he stretched out on the bed, face downward. After a while he sat up. He reached into a pocket of his coat, which hung on the back of a chair, and got his cigarettes. He sat on the edge of the bed, smoking in the dark. When he had finished the cigarette he put on his coat, got his hat, and felt in the dark for the doorknob. He didn’t want to turn on the light and see, on the bureau, the photograph of Betty. As he walked downstairs, Mike thought, ‘I can’t blame her much for leaving me. I can’t blame anybody but myself.’ On the street he felt that people looked away when they saw his strained face.

He walked down the street, hunting for a new place to eat. For six weeks he had eaten in places that did not sell liquor – diners, coffeepots, cafeterias, and chow-mein joints. He was hungry. After he had sent the weekly money order to Betty Saturday afternoon and paid the rent on the furnished room, he had fourteen dollars left. In the old days he had spent twice that on a Saturday night, making a round of barrooms, and had thought nothing of it. ‘I’m sick of the junky grub in those cafeterias,’ he said. ‘I’m going someplace and get a decent meal.’ He stared into the neon-lit window of a bar and grill. There was a row of booths parallel with the bar. The place was not crowded. He could eat in peace. Mike went in. He ordered a steak. An old man and a young man were standing at the bar, hunched over beers. The old man was quiet, but the young man hummed a song. He would hum a few moments, absent-mindedly, and then he would break out into a verse.

‘“Oh,”’ he sang, ‘“the wheel flew off the hearse, and the coffin rolled out in the road. The widow got out of her carriage and she said—”’

The bartender came out of the kitchen and gave the young man a stern look; he quit singing in the middle of the verse.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ the young man said, frowning at the bartender. ‘I know I’m a nuisance. I know I’m a no-good burn. No good to myself, no good to nobody. Day I was born, I wish they’d dropped me in a tub, like I was a cat. Let me have a beer. “Oh, the wheel flew off the hearse, and the coffin rolled out in the road.” What’s the matter with you? Did you have a stroke? Let’s have that beer.’

‘Keep your pants on,’ said the bartender.

‘None of your lip,’ said the young man. ‘Let’s have that beer.’

‘I think he wants a beer,’ said the old man, not looking up.

The bartender took the empty glass and went reluctantly to the spigot.

‘I never saw a man could drink so much beer,’ he said angrily. ‘It ain’t human.’

‘I drink so much beer,’ said the young man, winking at his companion, ‘because I’m afraid if I was to drink whiskey, it would make me drunk. They say whiskey makes you drunk. I sure wouldn’t want that to happen to me.’

The old man snickered.

Eating his steak and potatoes, Mike felt at ease. The atmosphere of the barroom, the bickering of the men at the bar, the beer smell comforted him. It was a small barroom, a neighborhood joint. Over the bar was a poster advertising a Monster Bingo Party at the Catholic church around the corner. When he had finished his coffee, Mike got up and walked over to the bar and stood there. The bartender was out in the kitchen. Mike stood at the bar, one foot on the rail, with his right hand in a pocket of his trousers. He rubbed coins together in his pocket and his palm was sweating. Suddenly he realized he hadn’t left a tip for the waitress. He went back to the table and put fifteen cents beside his coffee cup. Then the bartender came out and Mike handed him his check and a dollar bill. ‘Eighty-fi’ cents,’ said the bartender, ringing up Mike’s
bill
. He gave Mike his change and Mike put on his overcoat and started for the door. He glanced at the clock on the wall; it was eight-thirty. He remembered the furnished room with the unshaded electric light hanging from the middle of the splotched ceiling and his heart sank, and he thought, ‘I just can’t stand it any longer.’ At the door he paused. He turned and walked over to the cigarette machine. ‘Six weeks,’ Mike thought, ‘and not even a beer.’ Opening the package of cigarettes, he walked back to the bar. The bartender came and stood in front of him.

‘What’ll it be?’ he asked.

Mike stared nervously at the bottles behind the bar and noticed a blue Bromo-Seltzer bottle, upended in its rack.

‘Fix me a Bromo,’ Mike said.

The bartender mixed the Bromo in two beer glasses. Mike drank the violently bubbly mixture.

‘Good for what ails you,’ the bartender said, smiling.

The young man looked at Mike.

‘You got a hangover, too?’ he asked.

‘Well, not exactly,’ Mike said.

‘I got a hangover would kill a horse, damn near,’ said the young man.

‘Hell,’ said the old man, ‘you don’t know what a hangover is.’

The young man grunted.

‘Once I had a job in a liquor store,’ said the old man. ‘Some mornings I’d come in with a hangover and I’d have to stand there all day with thousands of bottles of the stuff staring me in the face. I’d have to say, “Yes, sir, that’s an A-1 grade of Scotch. Best we have in stock,” when just to look at it made me rock back on my heels. It was worse than a bartender with a hangover, because he can sneak a drink to brace himself, but I worked in that store six months and I never saw a cork pulled out of a bottle.’

‘Geez,’ said the young man.

‘Talk about a hangover,’ said the old man, hunched over his beer. ‘You don’t know what a hangover is.’

Mike laughed. He thought, ‘A beer or two won’t hurt me. A couple of beers, and I’ll go home. I’ll have a couple of beers and maybe I can get some sleep. I got to get some sleep. A man can’t
live
without sleep.’ The bartender saw Mike looking at the rack of bottles behind the bar.

‘You want something?’ he asked.

Mike heard himself say, ‘A beer.’

The bartender spanked the foam off the beer with his black paddle. Then he held the glass under the spigot an instant longer. He set the glass in front of Mike and Mike put a dime on the wet bar.

‘First in six weeks,’ said Mike. ‘I been on the wagon six weeks now.’

The bartender did not seem impressed.

‘It don’t hurt nobody to leave the stuff alone for a while,’ he said. ‘Once I was on the wagon eight months.’

‘Yeah?’ said Mike.

‘Yeah,’ said the bartender. ‘I was in a hospital.’

They both laughed.

‘St Vincent’s,’ said the bartender. ‘Auto accident.’

Mike took a deep drink of the beer. In a little while the old man and the young man finished their beers and walked toward the door. ‘Pleasant dreams,’ the bartender called out, and took their glasses away. Left alone, Mike suddenly felt desolate. He finished his beer and lit a cigarette. He had made up his mind to leave when two women came in and sat down on bar stools at the end of the bar, next to the cigarette machine. They knew the bartender. ‘How’s it, Tommy?’ said one. ‘Never better,’ said the bartender. ‘What’ll it be, two Manhattans?’ ‘How’d you guess?’ asked the woman, smiling. Mike felt cheerful again. When he had finished with the women, the bartender looked at Mike’s empty glass.

‘Fill her up?’ he asked.

‘Fill her up,’ said Mike.

A man came in with a
Daily News
. He stood at the bar and looked through a comic strip in the back of the paper. He did not order, but the bartender automatically placed a bottle of rye, a whiskey glass, and a glass of water on the bar in front of him. When he finished the comic strip, the man laughed.

‘Hey, Tommy,’ he called to the bartender, ‘don’t miss Moon Mullins. Kayo certainly pulled a fast one on Lord Plushbottom.’

Mike smiled. On his way home he would pick up the
News
and see what had happened to Lord Plushbottom. He would get a
News
and a
Mirror
and read himself to sleep. His glass was empty again.

‘I tell you,’ he said to the bartender, ‘let’s have a rye this time. Beer chaser.’

‘O.K.,’ said the bartender. ‘Rye and a small beer.’

He placed the bottle of rye in front of Mike.

‘It looks the same,’ said Mike, filling his glass.

(1939)