"Ode to Joy"

Out of the thickly falling midnight snow and into Ma's Diner came Gerry "the Brain" Goldsmith, the gentleman philosopher. 

The usual assortment of stumblebums and bindlestiffs sat at the booths and the counter, and down there in the middle perched on a stool was Smiling Jack.

Gerry brushed some snow off his old camel's hair chesterfield, took off his twenty-eight-year-old fedora and flapped it against his side, loosened his frayed and worn Andover rowing-team muffler, and then went over to where Smiling Jack sat.

"Hello, Jack, anyone sitting here?"

"Why, no," said Jack, smiling, "take a seat, my friend!"

Gerry took the seat. Yes, Smiling Jack was alive, hale and hearty as ever. The remains of what looked like corned beef hash and eggs were on a plate before him, and Jack had just lighted up a cigarette with a match torn from a book on which were printed the words 

MA'S DINER

Where the Food Could Not Be Finer

The matchbook reminded Gerry of the Zippo lighter in his pocket, the lighter he had taken from one of Smiling Jack's pockets, along with a pack of Luckies and nine dollars and seventy cents, when, less than an hour ago, he had found Jack's frozen body leaning up against a streetlight pole, Smiling Jack lifeless but still smiling, the blank eyes slightly open, the eyelashes crusted with ice. 

Gerry reached into his coat pocket and brought out the Zippo.

"I say, Jack, look what I found just inside the doorway."

"A lighter?"

"Yes. A Zippo."

"So it is –"

"Don't you own a Zippo?"

"I do, yes, but somehow I lost it tonight."

"Maybe this is your lighter, Jack."

"I suppose it might be."

"Here, take it."

"Oh, but it could be anyone's lighter."

"Most likely it's yours."

"But you found it, Gerry. You should keep it."

"I want you to have it, Jack. Something tells me it's yours."

"What do you mean by something?" said Smiling Jack, who believed as a matter of principle in a higher power.

"It's just a feeling," said Gerry.

"Ah, but one thing we learn in the program, Gerry, is that feelings are not facts."

"In this case I think my feeling is a fact, Jack."

"But how can you be sure?"

Ma was standing there behind the counter listening to all this.

"Oh, hello, Ma," said Gerry. "I wonder if I could have a cup of your most excellent chicory coffee, and as well I think I'll go for –" he glanced at the bill of fare posted on the blackboard up on the facing tiled wall, "oh, I suppose I'll go for the All Day Deluxe Breakfast, with eggs sunny side, scrapple and home fries, please."

"You got it, Mr. Goldsmith," said Ma, and she went away.

Gerry turned back to Smiling Jack, and held out the Zippo.

"Please take the lighter, Jack."

Jack took the lighter and examined it.

"Y'know, it does somehow look like my lighter."

Ma came back with a cup and saucer in one hand and a coffee pot in the other. She filled the cup for Gerry, and topped off Smiling Jack's cup.

"Finished with your breakfast, Mr. Jack?" 

"Yes, Ma," said Smiling Jack, "thank you very much, it was excellent.

Ma took away the plate, and Jack flicked back the cap of the lighter and thumbed the wheel, and a vibrant blue and yellow flame emerged.

"Strange," he said, shutting the cap, "but it even feels like my lighter." 

"I want you to have it," said Gerry.

"Well, only if you insist," said Jack. "It's funny, but not only did I somehow lose my lighter tonight, but I thought I had some money in my wallet, and some change in my pocket, but when I came in here it was all gone. I also had somehow lost a pack of Luckies I was sure I had. Fortunately for me, Ma let me have a meal on credit, and she even lent me a quarter for a pack of Luckies."

"Ma is a very good person," said Gerry.

"She is indeed," said Smiling Jack. "A living saint."

"Yes," said Gerry. 

Ma would never go through the pockets of a man she found frozen to death leaning up against a light pole in a raging blizzard. And then head directly to the nearest bar.

Gerry added sugar to his coffee from the dispenser, and milk from the little metal pitcher, then stirred it all up, and sipped.

He still owed Smiling Jack nine dollars and seventy cents, as well as a pack of Lucky Strikes, but all in good time, if the universe granted him the time. But here's what he would do, what he should do. As usual he had blown through his monthly remittance before the end of the month, but what he would do, tomorrow he would look for a transit authority token in the little tray where he kept pennies and nickels and sometimes even dimes on the little table by the door of his room, and he would go out into the cold and the snow and take the subway up to 52nd Street and the offices of Goldstein, Goldberg and Gold, and he would ask Mr. Goldstein for a modest advance, fifteen or twenty dollars. Then he would just have to find a subtle way to get the nine dollars and seventy cents to Smiling Jack, without admitting of course that he had lifted that amount from the frozen Jack's pockets. No, make it an even ten dollars, because he had also taken that pack of Luckies…

In the meantime all he could do was to sit here and talk with Smiling Jack, as insanely boring as the man was. This would be his penance, and when Jack inevitably offered him one of his anti-alcoholism pamphlets (Are You a Drunkard?) from his leather satchel, he would say yes, thank you very much, Jack. Which wasn't to say he would actually read the thing, but he would take it, because it was the least he could do, the very least. 

Jack had been talking, but what was he saying? It didn't matter, people had to talk, some more than others, and Jack seemed to love to talk more than most, perhaps it was his way of proving to himself that he was still alive, or at any rate not dead and in the ground, not yet anyway. 

And then Ma was there, laying down that great warmed plate of food, the eggs glistening with butter like two suns, the smells of the spiced potatoes and the scrapple and the eggs and butter uniting in a symphony, or, if not a symphony, an ode, an ode to joy. 

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