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.