Thursday, December 5, 2024

"One Last Job"


Henry James was blathering on, about what exactly Addison had little or no idea. Not for the first time in his life he thought, yes, this was life, people blathering, because blather they must, even if they were famous novelists.

"Don't you agree, Mr. Paddison?"


"Oh, yes, entirely, sir," said Addison, because he knew that everyone wanted to be agreed with. Even he would probably want to be agreed with if he actually had any opinions.


Mr. James was staring at him out of bloodshot eyes in a red bloated face. What was he thinking? Did he expect Addison to elaborate on his stated agreement, or was he just experiencing one of those drunken fugues when even the most voluble windbags fall silent as their batteries of bloviation recharge?


Suddenly Addison realized he needed to piss, that tedious occupational necessity of every drunkard.


"Oh, by the way, Mr. James, I hate to interrupt you –"


"No, please do, sir. I love to be interrupted by intelligent younger men."


"Well, I was just wondering if you could direct me to, uh –"


"Yes? You seek direction? My dear boy, someday you will learn that no one can give you direction, that we all must find our own way through the winding byways and cobbled back alleyways of this dream we call life. Will we choose the wrong turnings? Yes. Will we sometimes – sometimes! – choose the right turning? Perhaps. But – and this is quite possibly the only real direction I can give you – sometimes we might find that what at first seemed the wrong turning was, in hindsight, the correct one. And, yes, the opposite might also be true, videlicet that the choice which seemed at the time to be right, true, and correct proves in the end to be wrong, horribly wrong, perhaps even fatally so."


"You make some very good points, Mr. James, but –"


"But in the end you must make your own mistakes. No one can make them for you."


"Yes, I can see that, but, actually, I just wanted to know where the men's room was."


"Oh. Well, that's different, isn't it?"


"Yes, I guess."


"Because there can only be one set of directions to the men's room. Provided of course that there is a men's room."


"Is there one?"


"No, you have to go out back and micturate against the wall."


"Oh, okay, so how do I get to the back door then?"


"I was just jesting," said Mr. James. "Of course we have a men's room. Just go to the end of the bar, make a left, go past the cigarette machine and the jukebox, and you'll soon enter a dim narrow hallway; keep going down the hall, and it's the first door on your left. It says Pointers."


"Pointers."


"Yes. Like the dog. And even if you're illiterate there's a picture of a dog on it. A pointing dog."


"Okay. Pointers."


"Yes, a bit farther along is another door that has a picture of a squatting dog and it says Sitters. Don't go in that one."


"I guess that's the ladies' room."


"Most perspicacious of you. I knew you were a smart lad from the moment I laid eyes on you. I should love to read your novel."


"Well, I only have the first few chapters written, or sort of written."


"I should love to read them."


"They're pretty rough. First draft stuff, and I wrote them without any sort of outline or much of a plot in mind at all."


"All the better. I always tried to outline all my novels but I never followed the outlines anyway."


"That's good to know."


"When I started The Golden Bowl I intended it to be about a female assassin who agrees to take one last job, and look how that novel turned out."


"Um, yes –"


"Just let it rip is my advice to you, my boy, and the less you think about it the better. That's what your what I believe Dr. Freud calls your unconscious is for."


"Thanks, it's good to hear that, because frankly I never know what I'm going to write next."


"And isn't life like that? Who knows what's going to happen next? Only in bad novels does life follow any sort of strict and ironclad plot."


"So, anyway," said Addison, "it's go to the end of the bar, then left and down the hall and the first door on the right?"


"First door on the left."


"Left, right."


"Left, not right."


"Right, left."


"Pointers. Just look for the sign."


"The pointing dog."


"That is correct. Would you like me to accompany you?"


"No, that's all right, sir. I'm sure I can find it."


"I don't mind."


"No, please, I wouldn't want to put you out."


"It's not putting me out."


"Down the bar, go left, down the hall, first door on the right –"


"Left. First door on the left."


"First door on the left, right."


"Pointers."


"Yes," said Addison. "Pointers."


He climbed off his stool, almost knocking the stool over, but Mr. James was quick and he grabbed the stool before it could fall.


"Are you quite all right?" said Mr. James.


"Yes, fine," said Addison. "Thank you."


His grog tankard was sitting there on the bar, and he picked it up, drank the half-ounce of sludge that was left in it.


"Shall I order you another grog?" said Mr. James.


"Yes, thank you," said Addison.


"It's pretty good, isn't it?"


"Delicious, yes."


"Of course the good rum is the essential ingredient, good strong Royal Navy rum, Jamaica rum, aged in old oaken casks, but you know what really makes the drink for me, besides the cinnamon, the cloves, the blackstrap molasses, the star anise?"


"No."


"It's the fenugreek."


"Okay."


"You've got to have the fenugreek."


"Okay, well, look, uh –"


"Go. Go, my lad, and godspeed. And when you return you will find a fresh tankard of hot steaming grog awaiting you."


"Thanks. I mean, thanks in advance."


"My treat."


"You are too generous, sir."


"Not really. You don't know what it means to me to pick the brains of a rising young talent like yourself. Now go, go, before you wet your trousers."


"Okay, I'll be right back," said Addison.


"And I'll be right here, bating my breath."


At last Addison escaped the fat old bore, and headed headlong down the bar, past all these shouting and laughing people, amidst the clangor of the jukebox and the thick clouds of smoke.


Down to the end of the bar, then make a left, and into a hallway. Go down the hallway until you see a sign that says Pointers. First door on the left, or was it the right? No matter, just look for the door that said Pointers.


He could do this.


The music blared, the people laughed and shouted, the thick smoke swirled, it was like a great sea of drunkenness and Addison swam through it.


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

Thursday, November 28, 2024

"King Snake Moan"

 

 

Milford drew deeply once again on the fat brown hand-rolled cigarette, breathing in its mysteries, its promises, and its secrets.


The combo continued to play, and a man's thick voice carried over the music and with the music, singing strange words that meant nothing and everything.

Here come the big king snake,

don't you hear him moanin'?

Here come my little gal,

Don't you hear her groanin'?


Come gather round this old camp fire,

come gather round and hear the tale.

Don't deny my name nor my desire,

don't you hear that night wind wail?

"Miss Alcott?" said Milford.


"Yes, dear boy?"


"I have decided that my entire life has been without meaning or purpose."


"Yes, and?"


"Well," said Milford. "That's all, I guess. I wonder, would it be best for me to make my way to the Brooklyn Bridge, way out to the middle of it, and then throw myself off?"


"How would I know?" said Miss Alcott. 


"But you are wise."


"I'm not that wise. Drink your sweet tea."


Milford looked down at the tall glass sitting on the bar, russet in color and beaded from the sparkling ice inside it.


"I'm afraid," he said.


"Of what? Of having an original thought?"


"I'm afraid if I drink the tea I will have to go to the men's room again."


"If you drink it I'm sure you will have to go to the men's room. In fact," she said, "even if you don't drink it you will in due course have to go to the men's room. Or perhaps to an alleyway. I'm told that men are particularly fond of making water in alleyways."


"There is something to be said for it," said Milford. "In fact there's much to be said for it."


"Expand upon your thesis, please."


"In an alleyway there is a much lesser chance that someone will try to talk to you."


"And is it so horrifying to be talked to in a men's room? I speak from a position of total ignorance you understand, never having been in one myself."


"I met Mr. Whitman in a men's room," said Milford, not exactly answering her question.


"Oh, dear," said Miss Alcott, "that must have been, if not horrifying, then, shall I say, disturbing?"


"It was," said Milford. "But it seems I can't go into any men's room without being spoken to by strangers."


"And is it always so 'disturbing'?"


Milford cast his memory back, through a thousand bars and even further back to the dreaded rest rooms at Princeton, at Andover, and even in grade school at Friends Seminary.


"Yes," he said, "it is always and invariably disturbing."


Miss Alcott took a drag of her Lucky Strike, slowly allowed the smoke to escape from her parted red lips, and then she said, "I'll tell you what's disturbing. What's disturbing is a young man who is afraid to drink his sweet tea because he doesn't want to use a public rest room. Are you going to live your entire life in fear?"


"She's got a point, Milford," said that voice in Milford's head. "Are you going to be a man, at long last? Or are you going to be a coward all your life?"


Before he could stop himself, Milford lifted the glass up, removed the straw, placed the straw on the bar top, then lifted the glass to his lips, gulping the tea. He paused halfway, then drank again. Then he shook the ice in the glass and took one more rattling drink, and laid the glass down.


"Bravo, Milford!" said Miss Alcott, smiling. "Let no one henceforth say that you are too afraid to drink a glass of sweet tea!"


"I owe it all to you, Miss Alcott," said Milford, "And to me," added the voice in his head, called Stoney.


"How do you feel now?" said Miss Alcott.


"I feel – and it might be because of this 'cigarette' I've been smoking," said Milford, "and also the delicious sweet tea – but I feel like a new man."


"How is – please pardon the personal question," said Miss Alcott, "but how is your erection?"


Milford gazed down toward his inguinal area.


"Oh," he said. "It seems to have subsided."


"Splendid," she said. "That means we can dance."


"Dance?"


"You heard me."


"But I don't dance."


"Perhaps not yet you don't. Look at those happy people."


She gestured towards the small area in front of the combo, which was filled with dark-skinned people cavorting.


"I don't know how to dance like that," said Milford.


"Then you will learn."


She stubbed out her Lucky Strike. 


"Um," said Milford.


She slipped off her bar stool, then picked up what was left of her glass of sherry and downed it.


"Come on," she said. "You're only young once."


Milford shifted his narrow hindquarters off of his seat.

"There's my boy," said Stoney, in the dark undiscovered caverns of his skull. "You can do this."


For a fraction of a second Milford wondered if he should leave his cigarette in the ashtray where Miss Alcott had stubbed out her Lucky Strike, but he decided to take it with him.


Miss Alcott took his arm and looked into his eyes with her marbled brown eyes.


"Let us," she said, "trip the light fantastic."


"Yes," said Milford. "Let's."


And arm in arm they made their way toward the small dance floor filled with dancing dark-skinned people, the women in brightly colored dresses, many of the men wearing zoot suits and long golden watch chains.


The man at the microphone sang.

Shake it up and shake it on down,

kick that can all the way uptown,

come on, pretty baby now, come on

we gonna boogie till the break of dawn…

{Please go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious Rhoda Penmarq. And we wish a happy Thanksgiving to all our beloved readers…}