361 - Donald E. Westlake [68]
It was all bland and arid till Sixth Avenue. My stomach was empty, but from time to time I had to lean against light standards and wait through an attack of dry heaves. On Sixth Avenue I found a White Rose, where the drinks were ample and cheap.
I couldn’t stay in one place. I spent about an hour in that first place, and then moved downtown, stopping for a while in each bar I came to. At four in the morning, another guy and I were thrown out of a place somewhere downtown, and the other guy said he knew a great place to sleep out of the wind, behind a theater. We went there, and someone was sleeping there, with a half-full bottle of wine. We took it away from him and found another place, and went to sleep. But before we did, I tried to tell him all my troubles. I couldn’t enunciate very well, and he couldn’t concentrate at all, so he never found out that I was trying to tell him that I had killed my father.
In the morning, I woke up first, freezing cold and with a bitter grinding headache. I finished the wine and felt better, somewhat warmer, and the headache fuzzier.
From there, it all blended in together. I got in a couple of fights, and once I went to a place in New Jersey late at night where the bars opened at five. I threw up in the H & M tubes.
Until one morning I woke up in a great gray metal box. The sides of the box were all incredibly far away. The top of the box kept coming closer and then receding. Other human beings were in the metal box with me, making small and ghastly noises.
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor before I realized I was in a room and not a box, nor how much longer before I realized I was in a jail. In the drunk tank.
First time crept, and then it leaped up and flew a while on wide black wings. I tried to count to sixty, to get in my mind how long a minute should be, but when I started to count my brain scraped against the inside of my skull and I cried out because I thought I was going to die. A lot of people grumbled and shouted at me to be quiet. I rolled over on my stomach and pressed my forehead against the cold floor and waited.
It did finally lessen, and I could sit up. And then I could stand, and take stock of myself.
My shoes were gone. So was my wallet. So were my raincoat and my suitcoat and my tie. So were my watch and belt and high school ring. So was my glass eye.
I found an empty bit of wall to sit and lean against, and dozed and wept and by the time a jailer came and opened the clanging door and called my name, the worst was over. I was empty, in every way.
I followed him to a small narrow room with a wooden table and four wooden chairs. Johnson stood up from one of the chairs, and the jailer went away.
We looked at each other. Johnson said, “You get it all out of your system?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been looking for you. I thought you might wind up here. I’ve had a friend of mine here keeping an eye out for you.”
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
“What date?”
“The twenty-fifth. Of October.”
One day less than two weeks. “It took me a while, didn’t it?”
“I guess you had a lot to get over.”
“I guess I did.”
“You feel strong enough to go for a walk?”
“Where to?”
“My place first. Get you cleaned up.”
“They stole my eye, Johnson.”
“We’ll get you another one.”
He shepherded me like a strayed child. He lived in a ratty apartment on West 46th Street, west of 9th Avenue. I told him the hotel and the name where he could find my suitcase. While he was gone, I showered and shaved. Looking at myself in the mirror, when I started to shave, I got a shock. My face was gaunt and filthy, hair and beard shaggy, the empty eye socket a grim dull red.
When Johnson came back, I was wearing his robe. He brought me an eye patch, till I could get another eye. I dressed out of the suitcase, and then he came over with a bottle of