"The Gnome in the Snow"

 

They didn't float over the edge of an enormous black abyss but they did find themselves finally at the end of a hallway where there was a door, and a sign above the door read EXIT in red letters.

"Oh," said Addison.

"Um," said Milford. 

"It says EXIT," said Addison.

"Yeah," said Milford.

"Should we?" said Addison.

"I don't know," said Milford.

"Let's think it over," said Addison.

"All right," said Milford.

The two companions both attempted to think it over, the pros and cons, but their thoughts traveled far and wide and fruitlessly.

"Okay," said Addison, after a minute that seemed like an hour, or a lifetime, "here's the thing."

He paused, for yet another lifetime. Milford waited, alternately patiently, impatiently, and indifferently.

"Here's the thing," said Addison again, making an effort, he was constitutionally indisposed to effort of any sort, and even more so now, under the influence of that hand-rolled cigarette they had shared what must have been not five minutes ago, no matter how long ago it felt, "if we go through this door we abdicate any chance to find those lovely ladies again."

"This is possibly true," Milford managed to say.

"Only possibly?" said Addison, an unfeigned note of optimism in his voice.

"Yes," Milford said. "Maybe we'll find them again." He paused.  "Someday, or some night." And then he added, "Somehow."

There was an old and tarnished horizontal panic bar on the door, and Milford put his hand on it and pushed it in and the door moved very slightly but with resistance.

"Help me push it," he said.

"Oh, yes, of course," said Addison. 

Side by side the two companions each put two hands on the bar and lent their weight to it. The door budged an inch outward and flurries of snow came through the crack.

"Right," said Addison. "I think we're pushing against a snowbank."

"Or a dead bum, frozen in the alley?" posited Milford.

"This too is a possibility," said Addison. "Shall we give up?"

"Not yet," said Milford. "Let's give it another try."

"If you insist," said Addison, in an almost neutral tone, with perhaps the smallest tinge of churlishness.

"I don't insist," said Milford, "but I'm curious."

Addison bit his tongue before he could say curiosity killed the cat, but only because of his aversion to cliché.

"Right then," he said. "A good shove. On the count of three?"

"Let's just shove," said Milford. "Ready?"

"And able," said Addison.

Milford ignored the cliché and pushed on the bar, and so did Addison, and now the door grudgingly opened, if a door could be said to open grudgingly, and after half a minute the door was now open perhaps twelve inches, and heavy snow fell through the opening between it and the jamb and lintel.

"Free," said Addison. "Free at last."

They could see the snow piled up in a great drift outside the door. The snow was white, or off-white, and more snow fell heavily from above, sheets and truckloads of snow, as if the heavens were pouring it down in an effort to cover the entire earth and all of its inhabitants forever and for good and good riddance. It was impossible to see anything beyond the snow.

"This must be how the early arctic explorers felt, peering out from their tents," said Addison. "And thinking, 'You know what? Let us go back inside, comrades, and crawl into our sleeping bags, and just go back to sleep, that sleep which -"

"I'm going out," said Milford.

"What?" said Addison.

"I'm going out. We've gotten this far. Why stop?"

"But it's awfully snowy out," said Addison.

"Yes," said Milford. "I'm aware. But I'm tired of wandering these dim hallways. I'm going out."

"Don't leave me here."

"Then let's go."

"You go first, and I'll follow."

"All right," said Milford, and without hesitation he turned sideways and went through the opening. 

Outside the cold snow fell all around him and all over him, and the snow on the ground came up to his knees. He sensed that he was in an alley, the walls of two buildings just barely visible through the falling snow. To his right he saw a faint light, as of a street light. 

Addison emerged sideways from the doorway. 

"Where are we?"

"We must be in an alleyway next to the building we were in."

Both of them were speaking loudly through the muffling of the snowfall.

"There's light down that way," said Addison.

"Yes, I see it," said Milford.

"Shall we head toward it?"

"Yes."

And the two friends trudged through the knee-deep snow towards the light.

"Wait," said Addison. "We left the door open. Should we go back and close it?"

"Leave it," said Milford. "Someone else might need to escape."

And onward they trudged through the snow, towards the light which grew less faint with each step they took.

"Oh, um, wait a minute," said, shouted Milford.

"What is it, old man?" said Addison. "Not having second thoughts, are you?"

"No, um, but –"

"Because I don't mind going back, not at all, I've never been what you might call the outdoorsy type, let alone Northwest Mountie in the frozen Yukon type. I should be delighted to turn back and head inside, where I'm sure we'll find a delightful warm caravanserai if we keep searching."

"Look, I just have to pee, okay?"

"Oh. And do you want to go here?"

"Yes, God knows if and when we'll find a bar with a men's room, so, yes, I would like to go here."

"Then, please, fire away, old chap."

"Do you mind looking away?"

"Not at all, mon vieux, not at all. I confess I'm just a tad bit pee-shy myself. I'll just turn and enjoy the rich O. Henryesque beauty of the snow tumbling down in this alleyway. Y'know, I almost take back what I just said just now about not being much of an outdoorsman. There's something to be said for the old alleys of the city. The stained bricks and the cobblestones. And, yes, even the ashcans. And doesn't the snow somehow make everything beautiful? Why, even –"

"Hey!" shouted an unknown voice. "Stop pissing on me for Christ's sake, you asshole!"

Addison turned to see a gnomish figure rising up from the snowbank that apparently Milford had been urinating on.

"I'm so sorry, sir!" whined Milford, desperately trying to put away his so-called organ of virility.

"Wait," said Addison to the gnome, "it's Bowery Bert! Bert, you know us, it's me, Addison, and that's Milford, and I'm sure he didn't mean to micturate on you."

"You two little twats," said Bowery Bert, brushing pee-stained snow from his worn old coat. "I should have known. I should run the pair of yez straight down to the everlasting fires of hell!"

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Bert," said Milford, attempting with his cold fingers to button the fly of his dungarees.

"Bert," said Addison, "look at it this way. You were passed out in that snowbank, weren't you?"

"And what if I was?" said Bert. "Who are you to point the accusing finger of scorn?"

"I am not scornful at all, but if Milford had not awoken you from your slumbers, you very well might have frozen and died."

"Look, wise guy, I'm an angel," said Bert. "And you know one thing about angels?"

"Um," said Addison, because he didn't know one thing about angels.

"Angels don't die," said Bowery Bert.

{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}

"Over the Edge"

 

No one stopped them from leaving, no one cared if they left or if they stayed.

"It's like life," said Milford, as they approached the door. 

"What is?" said Addison, prepared to be bored.

"No one cares if we live or die, and no one cares if we leave this place or if we stay until we're as old as all these old wrecks in here."

Addison made no reply to this. His mind was still on the Falstaff beer and the shot of Cream of Kentucky he had never gotten.

They came to the door, Milford opened it, waved Addison through, and followed. 

Outside in the dim hallway they stood, smoking.

"Okay, here's the plan," said Addison.

"A plan?"

"We pick a random direction, and the first bar we reach, we go in and have a shot and a beer."

"What about getting back to that Negro bar and the ladies?" said Milford.

"Oh, I assure you, mon pote, I haven't forgotten about that place, and of course those delightful ladies, heh heh. But I just think we should stop into the first bar we see even if it's not the Negro bar and have a beer, a beer and a shot. Sort of get our bearings and then set out anew, rested and refreshed."

"Once again, Addison, you forget, or disregard the fact, that I am a recovering alcoholic."

"Then just have a beer, old chap. A beer hardly counts. A beer is nothing."

"I'll have a ginger ale."

"Splendid," said Addison. "Ginger ale, a most noble beverage."

"Although I suppose it doesn't really matter at this point," said Milford, "since I've already had whiskey, wine, and beer, and grog laced with rum, not to mention sarsaparilla infused with ambrosia – the supposedly legendary food of the ancient Greek gods – as well as having smoked marijuana and hashish and eaten the sacred mushrooms of the American Indians."

"Then a beer is okay," said Addison. "In fact it might even be recommended at this point."

"But what really put me over the edge were these hand-rolled cigarettes that this Negro fellow Jelly Roll gave me."

"Do you have any left?"

"I don't think so."

"Would you mind checking?"

"If you insist."

"I'm only curious."

Milford put his cigarette in his lips and put his hand in the side pocket of his pea coat. He came out with a fat hand-rolled cigarette.

"I had no idea I still had one of these," he said. "I wonder if Jelly Roll stuck it in there surreptitiously?"

"Perhaps he did," said Addison. "Giving you one in reserve, like a good fellow. Shall we smoke it?"

"Addison, I just told you that it was one of these that put me over the edge."

"And yet here you stand, hale and hearty."

"That's only because I've been running around being chased by a gang of bloodthirsty douchebags, and the effect has been sweated out of me."

"Can I smoke it?"

"Be my guest, I don't want it."

"Are you sure?"

"Positively. But I warn you, if you smoke it, you too might go over the edge."

"What's in it?"

"if I recall correctly, it's Bull Durham tobacco, mixed with Acapulco gold and Panama red, jimson weed, John the Conqueroo, ayahuasca, and laudanum."

"I don't know what any of that is except for the laudanum, which quite frankly I've always wanted to try."

"Here, help yourself."

Milford proffered the fat hand-rolled cigarette, and Addison took it, and looked at it.

"I feel rather like Keats's Cortez," he said, "staring with his eagle eyes at the Pacific with a wild surmise."

He tossed away his Chesterfield, which he had smoked down to a stub anyway.

Milford walked over to where the still-smoking butt lay and ground it out with the sole of his stout workman's brogan. Then he realized that he had smoked his own Husky Boy down almost to its end, and so he dropped it to the floor and ground it out also. When he looked up, Addison had just lighted up the hand-rolled cigarette with one of his paper matches. 

"Rather an interesting flavor, and aroma," said Addison, exhaling, and flicking away his match. "Musky, with notes of old leather and dried apple."

"I think you're supposed to hold the smoke in for a while," said Milford.

"Indeed? For how long?"

"For as long as you can stand."

"Thanks for the tip, old boy."

Addison took another drag and held it in, while Milford walked over and stepped on the match Addison had just tossed to the floor, even though the match was extinguished, but he couldn't help himself. And why? Was he not able to control these absurd compulsions? Was he not able to control anything in his life? He glanced over at Addison, who was holding his breath, and Milford didn't know why, but he walked over and took the cigarette from Addison's fingers and took a great drag on it himself, ignoring or not caring about the end moistened with Addison's spittle, and so the two companions stood there, eyes wide open, holding in the smoke, and after a minute Addison exhaled, followed shortly by Milford, their two clouds of smoke mingling and merging in the still indoor air.

"Ah," said Addison.

"Yes," said Milford. "Ah."

"Shall we take another drag each?"

"Why not?"

What did it matter? What did anything matter?

They stood there, passing the cigarette back and forth, luxuriating in the madness they were submitting themselves to, in the strange ecstasy of the madness, feeling if not happy then indifferent to everything but this moment which seemed to stretch on forever, and not only forever but into the past and into a present which existed both in the future and the past, in some realm beyond time.

And, in time, if there was such a thing as time, five minutes later, or five years later, they had smoked the cigarette down to a nubbin, a red glowing nubbin in which was contained all the universe. 

Addison stubbed out the nubbin on a button of his coat sleeve, and then dropped it into a side pocket of his top coat. It seemed somehow disrespectful just to toss the butt to the floor, and, besides, he thought, perhaps he could chew on it later, slowly, and then swallow it, and then this feeling he now felt would blossom forth from within himself to outside himself and he would become one with all the universe.

Without a word the two friends then floated randomly in one direction down the hallway, and on they floated, saying nothing, there was nothing to say, there was everything to say, and they turned a corner and came to a dark passage which they entered into without fear, and they floated through the darkness until the darkness grew less dark and then was replaced by dimness and still onward they floated.

Would they come to some sort of edge, or ledge, beyond which was a black and bottomless abyss, and if they did come to such an edge, or ledge, would they float over it, and then what would happen? 

They didn't know. 

And on they floated.

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}