Флетчер Флора - Park Avenue Tramp

“I should have guessed,” he said.

They went to the bar and sat on stools and waited for the attention of the superior bartender, who was busy at the moment at the far end of the bar with a woman with very bright red hair and a man with hardly any hair at all.

“If we’re going to have a drink together,” she said, “perhaps I’d better introduce myself. My name is Charity Farnese. I’m a very dry Martini.”

“How do you do.”

“If I hadn’t told you, would you have known from looking that I’m a Martini?”

“Sure. Anyone could tell.”

“Honestly? When I first came in here some time ago, I’d forgotten what I’d been drinking, and the bartender told me I looked like a Martini, which is what I actually am, and I thought then that it was something exceptional, his being able to tell just by looking, but perhaps it wasn’t so clever as I thought.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t remember what you’d been drinking?”

“Well, it was Martinis, of course, because that’s what it always is, but I couldn’t remember right at the moment. When I have one of these times of blacking out, it’s difficult to remember afterward what happened before. I need to think calmly about it for a while before I can remember.”

“Is blacking out a habit of yours?”

“Not a habit. It only happens sometimes.”

“I see. Nothing to worry about, of course. Did you black out tonight?”

“Yes. That’s what I did. I’d been to all these places with some people, and then I met a man I know named Milton Crawford, and we went to another place that was crowded and noisy. I remember that about it, although I don’t remember its name or where it was exactly. Milton wanted me to go to his apartment and spend the rest of the night with him, but I wasn’t very interested because I really don’t like him very much. I went to the ladies’ room and then outside, and it must have been right then that I blacked out, because I was walking down this street alone when I next knew what I was doing, and I came in here.”

He looked down at his hands, which were lying on the bar. He clenched the fingers and spread them and clenched them again.

“Jesus,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Why did you say that?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Tell me, baby. Doesn’t having these blackouts ever bother you a little?”

“Well, they’re curious and sometimes inconvenient, I admit, but I don’t see any use in worrying about them in particular.”

“I suppose not. No use whatsoever. Do you ever remember afterward what happened during one of them?”

“No. Not during. Just the last thing before and the first thing after. Of course I’m able to get a pretty good idea sometimes from whatever situation I happen to be in when I become aware of things again.”

“Sure, sure. I should imagine.”

“It’s rather depressing when I seem to have been doing something that I wouldn’t ordinarily have done.”

“It must be. It must be real depressing.”

Joe looked down at his hands again, clenching and unclenching the fingers, apparently trying to think of something appropriate to say, and what he was actually thinking was that this one was a real nut, a psycho, and the only thing he ought to say was a quick good-by, and he couldn’t understand why he didn’t. Well, anyhow, he would have the drink that he’d been invited to have, and that would be all of it. After having the drink, he would say the good-by that he ought to say now, and no harm would be done, nothing lost, and he would go home and to bed, and maybe listen before sleeping to Gieseking playing the “Emperor Concerto” the way Joe Doyle would give his soul to play it if you could trade your soul for genius. It was good to lie in the darkness and listen to Beethoven out of Gieseking or Chopin out of Brailowsky. It kept you from wanting what you didn’t have, or missing abortively what you couldn’t.

The superior bartender, who had finished his business with the woman with red hair and the man with practically none, came down along the bar and stopped opposite them, Without asking, he poured rye and water and mixed a Martini, which he also poured. He moved along to two empty masculine beers a couple of stools beyond. Besides Joe and Charity and the redhead and the baldhead, the two beers, who seemed rather despondent, were the only customers now left at the bar. The tables in the room behind were becoming more and more vacant. Joe swallowed his rye quickly and washed it with some of the water.

“Look, baby,” he said, “won’t this friend of yours be wondering what’s happened to you?”

“Milton? He’s not a friend exactly. He’s just a man I happen to know.”

“Won’t he be wondering?”

“I don’t think so. Not seriously, anyhow. Milton’s not very reliable, to be honest, and besides, he knows that I’m apt to go away from anyplace if I take the notion. That’s the way I happened to be with Milton, as a matter of fact. I was somewhere with some other people, and I took the notion to go away with Milton, and I did.”

“Do you have a car?”

“Not here. I have one, of course, but I left it somewhere.”

“How do you expect to get home?”

“Home? I don’t know. I hadn’t thought much about it. I suppose it’s something that has to be considered eventually, but I don’t see the need for being in any hurry about it.”

“It’s late, baby. It’s very late, and there’s another night coming to get ready for. I ought to go home, and so had you, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You try real hard to remember this last place you were, and I’ll take you there. Maybe Milton’s still waiting.”

“I’m not sure that I want to find Milton, even if I could remember where it was I left him. He wanted me to stay with him, as I said, and he’s sure to be unpleasant if I refuse.”

“I’m sure you can handle him.”

“You’re right about that. Milton’s rather a weak character. He’s not at all hard to handle.”

“Try to remember the place.”

“It’s no use; I can tell you that without trying. I can remember something about it, but not its name or where it was.”

“All right. Finish your Martini. It can’t be very far if you walked here. We’ll look for it.”

“I’d much rather not. I’m not at all interested in finding Milton or going home. I’d much rather stay with you.”

“Never mind. Finish your Martini and come along.”

He stood up beside her, and when she saw that he was determined, she finished her Martini and stood up also, and they walked back among the tables, which had become almost entirely unoccupied, and down a short hall in the rear to the alley. His car was parked there in a small space that had room for only one more. It wasn’t a Mark II by a long way, but it started and ran, and they went to several places in it in the hour that followed and would have gone to several others if they had not been closed. The ones that were open might have been crowded and noisy earlier, but they were becoming empty and quiet and somehow depressing now, and it seemed helpful in each one to have another drink. Finally he was forced to concede what she had predicted in the beginning, that it was no use. Milton was gone from wherever he’d been, and as far as she could remember it might have been any one or none of the places they went.

“All right,” he said. “To hell with Milton. Tell me where you live, baby, and I’ll take you there myself, which is what I should have done an hour ago.”

She had drunk an incredible number of Martinis before and after the blackout, but she had achieved by the very enormity of excess an illogical reaction with which she was familiar and in which she was able to think with errant clarity and a vast and dangerous indifference to consequences. She remembered perfectly where she lived, the exact address, and she understood that not going there now would result in something unpleasant, or worse, but this did not seem at all important as compared with the experience to which she was committed. She had never had an experience with a beautiful ugly piano player with a rheumatic heart before, and it would surely be a great shame if it were simply to end before coming to anything significant.