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…}
