He said, “It’s what they call ‘Identification’ in psychology. She identifies herself with the dog, you see. You interested in psychology, Jack?”
“I used to be,” I told him. “I used to be interested in lots of things. Right now I’m only interested in another drink.”
He waved his dirty hand and got the beakers refilled again. “Psychology,” he said. “If the booze or life or something hadn’t got me a long time ago, I’d do a paper about the old woman and the dog for the medical society magazine. When Pasteur feels good and gets the idea he’s a pup again and frisks a little, the old woman feels good, too. When he’s sick and moping and whining, she’s that way. High blood-pressure affects a person’s eyesight. She isn’t blind yet, but she can’t see too well. Her eyes started going about the time the dog developed cataracts.”
“It’s too bad he’s blind like that, poor old dog,” I said.
“He doesn’t mind too much,” the doc replied. “Dogs don’t go much by their eyes anyway. It’s the nose with them. The nose and ears. Pasteur can still do tricks, even. Watch him.” He snapped his fingers. “Sit!” he said. “Sit up, Pasteur!”
The old dog scrambled to his feet and tried to balance himself on his rump and you could tell it hurt him like hell. It was like an old man with rheumatism trying to do a handspring. The doc kept barking, “Sit! Sit up!” and he seemed to be enjoying himself because this old dog was the only thing on earth would take orders from him. The dog finally managed to sit up on his rump, kind of swaying. “Good boy,” said the doc. “Pasteur knows lots of tricks. The old woman claps her hands when she sees him do them. He’s just learned a brand new trick. We’re going to show the old woman when we get back, aren’t we, Pasteur?”
“Please don’t make him do any more tricks for me,” I said. “He’s too old for tricks. It hurts him, sitting up like that.”
“You don’t understand the psychology of the old,” the doc answered. “Pasteur loves doing tricks. It makes him feel important. When the old cease to feel important, they know they’re useless, and that’s when they start to die.”
I didn’t want him to make the old dog do any more tricks, so I tried to change the subject. I said, “If this old lady hasn’t got any money, how you going to inherit any money when she dies?”
“Insurance,” said the doc. “When I got her things from the place they’d put her out of before she moved in with me, I found an old insurance policy. It was made out to her daughter, the only policy she had that hadn’t lapsed. The daughter walked out when Marge got to be a lush and Marge has never heard from her. Doesn’t even know if she’s alive. But one way or another, she’d kept the payments up right to the year before. It was an annual premium and it was due again. I got her to sign some papers from the insurance company making me the beneficiary and I’ve been paying the premium ever since.”
“Is it for a lot of money?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Not much, or I couldn’t pay the premium on it. But it’s a lot for guys like you and me. Two grand.”
“What makes you think she’s going to die today?” I asked.
He was pretty drunk. He winked at me. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I know. I know the signs.” Then he kind of bit his lips with his wine-stained teeth and said, “There’s a friend of mine with the city relief agency. He always tips me off when investigators are coming around. They’d cut me off the relief rolls if they knew I had Marge up there with me. You’re not allowed to keep another person in the place they rent for you. Up to now I’ve always got her out in time when the investigator was paying me a call. Parked her in a gin mill and hid what rags she’s got and got rid of all the empties. But now she’s going blind and almost paralyzed, I can’t get her down the steps. And I’ve been tipped off the investigator is coming around tomorrow. I can’t lose that relief.” He drew himself up straight, said, “I’m too much of a gentleman to brace men on the street for my flop and booze money.”
The blockbusters he’d bought had really busted inside me now and made me kind of cocky. Besides, it made me sore, him throwing off like that on guys who brace marks on the street. After all, he was just another wino himself. I should have strung him along, of course, since he was buying and I was needing. But I said, “Look here, Doc, you trying to tell me you’re going to bump this old doll today so you can collect her insurance money and this investigator won’t find her in your pad?”
“That’s fantastic,” he replied. “I couldn’t harm a hair of her poor old head. Why, I’m the one who’s kept her alive as long as this. But I’m a doctor and I know she’s dying, and since she’s dying I might as well see the undertaker gets her out before the relief investigator arrives.”
He looked me full in the face. “That’s only common sense,” he said. “And I’ll give her a nice funeral on the insurance money, too.”
I was still talking against my own best interests, my best interests being for him to keep hanging around and buying me blockbusters. But I was getting tight and I said, “If you think she’s dying why aren’t you up there with her?”
He said, very serious, “You’ve got a point. A telling point. Fact is, I don’t want to be alone with her when she dies, Jack. I’m a drunk. I might get the horrors. You could do me a favor, Jack.”
Uh-uh, I thought, here it comes. I’m old enough to know guys don’t buy you three blockbusters in a row without expecting something. Usually with guys like me who are big and young and kind of rough, it’s the fags slumming on Skid Row who make the propositions. Sometimes they only want you to come up to their fancy Park Avenue apartments and beat the holy hell out of them. That’s a funny kind of kick, you ask me. But this guy wasn’t gay and he wasn’t any slummer. He was a wino who belonged right where he was — on the Bowery.
He was saying, “I’d appreciate it a lot if you’d come up with me, Jack. We can pick up some bottles of wine on the way. Enough to last all day. I’d like you to be there when she dies, just so I could have a little company. A man needs a friend at a time like that.”
It’s funny the things an alky will do to get the stuff. I knew damned well he was framing me somehow and I thought he might be planning murder, but all I was thinking about was those bottles of wine he was going to buy.
I said, “Well, maybe if I could have another blockbuster first. It’s quite a walk.”
“Sure,” said the doc. “Put two ryes in my friend’s sherry this time, bartender.”
The Bowery is used to sights, but the procession we made on our way to Hester Street was one that attracted attention. The blind old dog could hardly walk at all and he moved along in his zombie fashion putting one stiff leg out in front of the other, his nose scraping the sidewalk like a bloodhound on the scent. The hangover and four blockbusters, including a double, had made my own legs wobbly. And the doc was glaze-eyed drunk and stared straight ahead like he was hypnotized. We stopped at a liquor store and bought half a gallon jug of wine plus an extra fifth, just in case the old lady didn’t die right away and we might need it. There were several flights of steps to climb in doc’s tenement, but we didn’t mind ‘em too much because we stopped on each landing and had ourselves a snort. I carried the jugs and the doc carried the blind and crippled old dog upstairs.