And so they drifted along between dull brown distempered walls, arms in arms, what was left of Addison's reefer still hanging on his lips, while the two ladies continued to pass back and forth what was left of their own reefer.
Addison had the distinct impression that he was floating, and that the ladies too were floating. His feet not only felt far away, they felt as if they belonged to someone else, or to no one.
The ladies were talking, but Addison heard only words with no meaning; so often in his life had it been thus, and did it really matter after all what anyone said? So many billions, trillions of words, trillions upon trillions since the day when man first spoke, and what was that first word?
He experienced a burning sensation on his lips, and felt compelled to say, the words oozing like honey from his lips, "I wonder, dear ladies, if I might free one of my arms?"
"What did you say?" said Anne.
"Sounded like he said, 'Muh muh, muh muh, muh muh,'" said Hattie.
"Mm, mm," said Addison.
"Oh, he wants to remove the muggles from his lips," said Anne, and she let go of his arm.
Addison brought his freed right hand up to his lips and removed the stub of cigarette before he could be seriously burned.
"Ah, thank you," he said, feeling his feet rise six inches higher from the floor.
"Here, give me that roach," said Anne, and when Addison stared at her blankly, she elucidated, "the butt of your reefer, you square."
Addison did as he was enjoined and watched, fascinated, as the lady opened the embroidered purse hanging from her shoulder, brought out an old Bayer aspirin tin, rubbed out the end of the reefer on its lid, opened the tin, and dropped the end into it, in which he saw many other crumpled butts, or "roaches" if you will.
"Waste not want not," said the lady Anne.
"Such a thrifty puritan you are, Annie," said Hattie.
"Yeah," said Anne. "Better give me that roach too, Hattie, if you're done with it."
Hattie gave Anne the stub of the reefer the ladies had been sharing, and Anne put it into the aspirin tin as Addison continued to float in mid-air.
"How are you feeling, Pattison?" she said, clicking the tin shut with a dithering snapping sound that struck Addison to the core of his being.
"I feel," said Addison, as the aspirin tin's snapping-shut sound reverberated through his being, and then he said nothing.
"Take your time," said Anne.
"I feel like," he said, and then said nothing, if one can be said to say nothing.
"Don't rush it, Polkington," said Hattie.
"I thought his name was Pattinson," said Anne.
"What's your name, pal?" said Hattie. "It begins with a P, doesn't it?"
Once again no words escaped Addison's lips.
"He's really high," said Anne.
"Hey, man, we just want to know your name," said Hattie. "It can't be that difficult a question."
"I think he's one of these guys for whom all of life is a difficult question," said Hattie.
"May I be of some assistance, ladies?" said a tiny man who came abreast of them from behind. He was shabbily dressed, with thick round eyeglasses, a newsboy's cap, and a furled torn umbrella. He carried a smoking butt of a cigarillo in his tiny hand.
"We're okay," said Anne. "It's just that our friend here is really high and can't remember his name."
"His name is something no one knows," said the small man. "But he is known as Addison."
Addison looked down at the little man, who now stood before him. At last, someone he knew! Or sort of knew, in that vague way one drunkard knew other drunkards. How many times had he seen this fellow perched on a stool at Bob's Bowery Bar with all the other usual degenerates?
"Hello," said Addison.
"Good to see ya, Addison," said the little man, and he extended his small grubby hand, which Addison graciously took, bending forward slightly because of the twelve-inch difference in their respective heights.
"And you, too, uh, Bill? Biff? Bud?"
"Keep going, Addison, my boy, you've almost got it –"
"Bert?"
"Bingo!"
"Sorry I didn't get it on the first try."
"I don't blame you, my boy. It is my lot on this planet to be one of the amorphous nameless masses. But, Addison, would you do me the honor of introducing me to your attractive lady friends?"
"Yes, of course, Bill, I mean Bert, this is –" after only the briefest delay the names tumbled forth from the chaos of his mind, "Mistress Bradstreet, and Mrs. Stowe. Mistress Bradstreet and Mrs. Stowe, please meet my friend, uh –"
"Bert," said the little fellow.
"Bert," repeated Addison.
The little man bowed to the ladies in turn.
"It is my great pleasure, Mistress Bradstreet and Mrs. Stowe," said Bert.
"Just call me Anne," said Mistress Bradstreet.
"And you may call me Hattie," said Mrs. Stowe.
"And, please, call me Bert," said Bert. "My full appellation is 'Bowery Bert', but for brevity's sake Bert will do."
"No last name, Bert?" said Anne.
"No, just Bowery Bert, the first name being a descriptive, and the second being my Christian name."
"So your second name is your first name?" said Hattie.
"In a very real sense, yes," said Bowery Bert. "You see, I am called Bowery Bert because for many years the environs on either side of a mile-long stretch of that noble thoroughfare have been my bailiwick, my stomping grounds so to speak."
"How many years?" asked Anne.
"This coming February it will be one hundred and twenty-one years."
"My goodness! You must be quite old!"
"I am, in fact, in earthly years, three thousand years, three months, three weeks, and three days young."
"You don't look a day over a hundred," said Anne.
"Thank you for the compliment," said the little man. "I try and stay in good shape. Every morning I do a complex series of oriental abdominal exercises, and every day I walk no less than twenty-five miles up and down the Bowery."
"So you're quite the fixture over there," said Hattie.
"Indeed," said Bert. "The inhabitants of those wretched streets and alleyways may not know me by name, but they know me by sight."
"So what brings you way out to this part of town?" asked Anne.
The little man pointed to Addison with his thumb.
"This guy," he said.
"Atkinson?"
"Addison, actually," said Bert.
"Sorry, Addison," said Anne. She addressed Addison. "Sorry, Hatcherman."
"But, but," Addison managed to blurt.
"Just kidding," said Anne. "Addison."
Addison suddenly felt a desire to lie down somewhere and sleep.
"Time enough for that, my boy," said Bert. "You'll get all the sleep you want when you're dead. Which, from the way you've been going, could be any day now, perhaps even any minute."
"Reading his thoughts, eh, Bowery Bert?" said Hattie.
"Yes, ha ha," said Bert. "Of course as a novelist yourself you are well acquainted with the practice."
"Yeah, you couldn't fool me, my man," said Hattie.
"Well, look," said Anne, "not to break up this happy confabulation, but are we going to get those drinks, or what? If there's one thing I've never been able to handle too much of, it's these random conversations when you run into someone when you're on the way to somewhere and you stand around talking absolute shite for a half hour for no good reason."
"It does get tedious," said Hattie.
"I mean, I realize that the conversations you're bound to get when you get where you're going tend not to be anything to write home about either, but I'd rather be sitting comfortably with a drink in front of me than standing here in this dim narrow corridor with the spiderwebs hanging from the cracked ceilings."
"Yeah, so, nice meeting you, Bert," said Hattie. "But we're going to be moving along. You coming, Alderman?"
"I, uh," said Addison, he looked down at the little man. What could he say, he wanted to go with the women. "Yes."
"But first may I have the briefest of words with friend Addison?" said Bowery Bert.
"Okay, look," said Anne, "you two stand here and chat all you like, but Hattie and I are going to go."
"I shall only detain Addison for half a minute," said Bowery Bert.
"Great," said Anne. "Then he should easily be able to catch up."
"Yeah, just follow the clacking sound of our wooden heels," said Hattie.
And with that the two women joined arms and headed down the corridor, their wooden heels clacking as advertised.
"I know you want to join them, Addison, and I don't blame you," said Bert. "So I shall make this brief. Take this pill."
He held out a large off-white pill in the palm of his small hand.
"What is it?" said Addison.
"It's a special pill. Swallow it right down and for probably the first time in your adult life all the alcohol will be voided from your corporeal host."
"Gee."
"In other words you will be sober."
"Wow."
"This is your chance to start from scratch again. Continue to live in sobriety, to a ripe old age, or keep up the way you're going and wake up tomorrow frozen dead under a pile of freshly fallen snow in some alleyway. Go ahead, take it. Not every dipso gets a second chance like this, but I like you."
Addison picked up the pill out of Bert's hand, which did not look very clean.
He looked at the pill.
"So I just swallow it?"
"Yes, just swallow it down."
"I wish I had a glass of water."
"Well, you don't, so just toss it back. Pretend it's a shot of cheap whiskey."
"Well, okay."
This is me, thought Addison, I've never been able to say no, to either the good or the bad in life, and he popped the big pill into his mouth and managed to gulp it down.
{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}
