There were only two empty seats at the bar.
"Oh, splendid," said Miss Alcott. "Available real estate."
Still gripping Milford's arm in hers, she pulled him toward the empty stools.
"Listen, Miss Alcott –"
She stopped.
"No, you listen, buster. I'm not going to say a word to you, or listen to a word from your prevaricant mouth, until we are seated."
"Okay," said Milford, humbled.
Soon enough they were seated, but not before Milford almost fell off of his stool as Miss Alcott watched. He tried again, and this time successfully settled his narrow posterior on the cracked leather of the stool, which had no back, and so he knew he must be careful.
"I was just about to ask you if you're quite all right," she said, "but then it immediately occurred to me how ridiculous that question would be."
Milford had no response to this, or at least none he could summon at the moment.
Miss Alcott reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out her pack of Lucky Strikes, shook one out, and placed it between her lips, which Milford noticed were ruby red against the vellum paleness of her face. Suddenly he remembered his manners and, after patting his pockets hurriedly, he found his lighter, clicked it seven times, and lighted her cigarette.
"Thank you," she said, exhaling a plume of smoke just to the right of Milford's head.
"You're welcome," he said.
"Yours has gone out," she said.
"My what?" he said.
"That enormous reefer you're holding in your left hand."
"Oh," said Milford. He stared at the fat brown hand-rolled cigarette, not even half-smoked.
"I thought," he said, and there his thought and his words slipped into nothingness.
"You thought what?" she said.
"Okay," said the voice of Milford's interior alter ego, "get your shit together now, or you're on your own. Now take a breath and say something before she slaps you."
Milford took a breath.
"I thought you disapproved of my smoking reefers," he managed to say.
"Why do you care if I disapprove or not?" she said. "Dear God, boy, don't let me stop you."
"Okay," said his alter ego, self-named "Stoney", in his brain, "show her you're a man and light that bad boy up!"
This time after only six clicks he got his lighter alight and he put the flame to the fat cigarette and drew deeply, filling his lungs.
"There ya go," said Stoney, "hold it in good now."
Milford held it in, looking deep into Miss Alcott's eyes as he did so, those eyes which he noticed for the first time were an autumnal marbled brown, like the eyes of an inquisitive squirrel.
"Keep holding it in," said Stoney. "If you're going to smoke, smoke like a man, and don't just puff like some milquetoast poseur."
Milford held the smoke in, and all around him he heard the laughing and shouting of the dark-skinned revelers, and he could hear the man singing into his microphone over the music of the combo:
Mama got a washboard,
Pappy got a gun,
Grandpa got some whiskey,
he's the seventh son
of a seventh son
of a son of a gun…
Milford felt, almost, as if he could hold in the smoke forever.
"But you can't," said Stoney, "so you can let it out now, but nice and slow."
And after pausing for another moment, just to prove to himself that he had some personal agency, he let the smoke out, slowly, as Miss Alcott watched him.
"Feel better now?" she said, after a moment.
And Milford realized that he did feel better, as if he were coming to the surface after swimming underwater, into a sparkling world full of promise and possibility.
"I do, actually," he said.
"And is this you talking," she said, "or is it this supposed inner voice of yours, this 'Stoney' character?"
Milford did a quick survey of the contents of his skull before answering the question. In fact Stoney seemed to be gone. Gone forever? Who was to say?
"No," he said, "it's me, or as much me as I can be."
She said nothing to this gnomic reply, but turned to the bartender who was standing there, as if amused.
"Oh, hello, Clyde," she said. "How are you?"
"Pretty good, Miss Lou."
He was a large Negro man with a shaven skull, and he glanced at Milford.
"Oh, Clyde, this is Milford. Hope you don't mind that he's smoking a reefer at your bar, but in his defense Jelly Roll gave it to him."
"If Jelly Roll gave it to him he must be okay," said the man.
"Actually," said Milford, "this isn't a reefer, per se, I think. If I recall correctly, Jelly Roll told me it's a mixture of Bull Durham tobacco, Acapulco gold and Panama red, jimson weed, John the Conqueroo, ayahuasca, and laudanum. I'm not really sure of what any of those ingredients are except for the tobacco and the laudanum."
"Well," said the bartender named Clyde, "I don't think we need to be excessively pedantic, but the inclusion of the Acapulco gold and Panama red, which are strains of marijuana, and quite good ones I would add, should justify calling the smoke a reefer. What may I get you two fine white folks?"
"I wonder, Clyde, if you might have a decent sherry back there," said Miss Alcott.
"Miss Lou," said Clyde, "I got a bottle of fine aged Amontillado on hand that I have been keeping exclusively just for your own delectation and no one else's."
"How sweet of you, Clyde," said Miss Alcott. "I'll have an Amontillado then, straight, no ice, if you please."
"And for the gentleman?" said Clyde.
"Well, Clyde," said Milford, "here's the thing. I am an alcoholic, and so I shouldn't drink at all; however, through weakness of character I have had I don't know how many drinks tonight – whiskey, wine, beer, ale, and God only knows what else, not to mention this 'reefer', and others before it, as well as hashish, and the sacred mushrooms of the Native Americans, oh, and also some sarsaparilla that turned out to be spiked with ambrosia, the mystical nutriment of the ancient Greek gods, and, so, I don't really know if I should –"
"How about a nice tall glass of sweet tea then?" said Clyde.
"Thank you," said Milford. "Sorry if I was getting a bit longwinded there."
"Hey, I'm a bartender, man. I'm used to people telling me their boring life stories."
"Well, I apologize anyway," said Milford. "I think if I had your job I would go insane."
"I think sometimes I am insane," said the man. "Let me get those libations for you and Miss Lou."
He went away.
"I like that guy," said Milford.
"Yeah, Clyde's a Joe," said Miss Alcott.
Milford took another, smaller drag on the brown cigarette, and Miss Alcott took a drag on her Lucky Strike.
"All right," said Milford. "You can let me have it now."
Miss Alcott paused before speaking.
"You know, I fully intended to let you have it, Milford. To – in the parlance of the younger generation – rip you a new one, for telling me earlier that you were tired and simply had to go home and go to bed, and then, lo and behold, a half hour later I find you instead in here, carousing with Whitman and Jelly Roll and that Blackbourne woman. But you know what? Now I just don't feel like it."
"I can explain. I can explain everything."
"Please do."
And so, as men have been doing since they lived in caves, Milford explained. In the meantime, Clyde brought Miss Alcott's Amontillado and Milford's tall glass of sweet tea, with ice and a sprig of fresh mint, a slice of lemon on the brim and with a flexible straw. The recitation took only just over five minutes, because Milford didn't want to bore Miss Alcott, and so he kept to the highlights.
"And there you have it," he said, at last, stirring his tea, which he had barely sipped. "That's how I wound up here. Instead of going home."
"And so," she said, "you are like a leaf, blown this way and that, hither and yon."
"Yes," he said.
"I wonder," she said, "and please feel free to tell me it's none of my business, but have you ever in your obviously tortured if pampered life been kissed by a member of the female gender?"
Now it was Milford's turn to pause.
"Do you mean by a member of the female gender to whom I am not related, by blood?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "Your mother or grandmother or aunts or great aunts don't count."
"In that case," said Milford, "the answer is no."
Miss Alcott paused again, and then she put the cigarette she was smoking into the ashtray that was there on the bar, then put her hand on the back of Milford's head and drew it towards her face and those inquisitive dun brown eyes and slightly parted ruby red lips.
{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq…}
