Fletcher Flora - Desperate Asylum

People in Corinth wondered when Avery would get married. Ambitious mothers with eligible daughters were especially concerned, and most of the daughters themselves would have been happy to sign a contract to share his four-poster. He had, they felt, a moral obligation to procreate that was beyond the ordinary. Alone now, the only surviving Lawes, he held the family name in toto on the dark brink of extinction. And he wasn’t getting any younger. He was Emerson’s age, thirty; not that Avery seemed to be worried about it, or even conscious of it in any way of special significance. He was seldom in the company of women, or any company at all, and though he had acquired, since the death of his father in late summer, the habit of coming in Emerson’s place two or three times a week for dinner and at odd times for drinks at the bar, he was invariably alone.

Watching him hang his coat and hat on the rack by the door and move toward the bar, Emerson had a faint, fleeting impression of something read or heard, something almost remembered but not quite. A word, a phrase, a voice in his brain like a whisper. He stood quietly by the window and tried to bring it back, and slowly it came, or they came, the time and the place and the voice and its words. The old diner in the old days, and Roscoe reading Robinson behind the counter. Reading aloud the brief and beautiful fragment in rhyme that told how a man had gone home one night and shot himself. A man named Richard Cory. A man imperially slim. That was the phrase. Imperially slim. Those were the words heard from then to now because of Avery Lawes. Seeing Avery move and take a stool and speak to Roscoe, he thought that they fitted well.

Roscoe put ice in a glass and poured Scotch over the ice. Avery lifted the glass and drank. Emerson left the window and walked over to Avery and sat down on the stool beside him.

“Good evening, Mr. Lawes.”

Avery turned his head and smiled. “Hello, Em. What’s with the mister?”

“Just standard propriety.”

“Nuts. Have a drink?”

“Thanks. They’re on the house, though. Bourbon, Roscoe.”

Roscoe supplied the bourbon and went away. The good whiskey, undiluted, was mellow on the tongue, the warmth of it creeping centrifugally from the stomach. The first drink is always the best, Emerson thought, and with the thought was the awareness that it was not, with Avery, the first. Nor, probably, the second or third. His voice and movement had the carefully contained quality that is evidence of deliberate control, and there was a laxness in his mouth, a thin fog in his eyes. Lifting his glass again, he drained it and sat looking down at the uncovered cubes.

“You’ve got a nice place, Em,” he said. “You’re a lucky guy.”

“Me? Well, I guess so. I guess I’ve had my share of luck. Compared to a lot who have had less, that is. Not compared to you, though. I shouldn’t think you’d be impressed.”

“Why not? You’ve done something, at least. I’ve never done anything. Maybe it’s because I’ve never felt the necessity of doing anything.”

“Is that bad?”

“Oh, I know.” Avery laughed and beckoned Roscoe. “I sound like a God-damn soap opera or something. Poor little rich boy and all that crap. Well, it’s not the money. Money’s a pretty damn handy thing to have, and It’ll admit it. Another drink? On me this time.”

“I haven’t finished this one yet.”

“Well, finish it and have another. Two of the same, Roscoe.”

Roscoe glanced at Emerson and received a nod. He filled the order and went away again. All but two of the stools at the bar were now occupied, and a girl had come in from the dining room to handle the tables and booths. The couple who had been drinking Manhattans were still drinking them. The woman had lined up cherry stems in a little row on the table to keep account of the number, and now she counted the stems and laughed, touching each stem with a fingertip and looking up and across at her escort slyly through her lashes. Watching her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, Emerson could see that she was quite drunk and would be more so but would probably not be offensive about it. The man, he thought, was probably in for an interesting evening.

He finished his first bourbon and worked a little on his second. The rocks, he noticed, were already out of the Scotch. Avery was looking at them as if he were wondering what had caused them to emerge so quickly. Emerson considered suggesting that Avery take it easy and decided that it was not his business. You could never tell how someone, even a gentleman like Avery, would react to something like that. Men were often sensitive about their capacity. But perhaps it would be possible to make the suggestion indirectly, in a way that would not be obvious.

“Snowing pretty hard,” he said. “Supposed to get about four inches, I understand. That much in the streets will make driving pretty tough.”

“Maybe. Forecasters are wrong half the time. You can’t rely on them.”

“That’s true, all right. At least it seems like it. I guess you just remember the times they were wrong, though, and forget about all the times they were right.”

“Wrong half the time. Absolutely can’t rely on them.”

“Well, it looks now as if this might be one of the times they’ll hit it. I was looking out the window when you came in, and it was coming down pretty good then.”

“Yes. I hate snow. Hate the cold. Hate the cold, dark winter. I’m just like a God-damn something or other. Don’t know just what I mean. Something that becomes like whatever’s around it. The environment. The weather and everything. Too damn sensitive. Day’s cold and dark, so am I. Inside, I mean. Come to think of it, however, I’m pretty damn cold and dark inside even if the day isn’t.”

“Oh, come off it. You’re just feeling lousy about something.”

“Indigestion, maybe? Something I ate? Well, you’re wrong. It couldn’t be that because I haven’t eaten anything. Just been drinking. Off and on, sort of. I got up this morning, and the thought came into my head. This would be a good day to drink, I thought. So I have been. Scotch. Never mix it. Just Scotch.”

“You don’t look like you’d been drinking all day.”

“Not like a tramp? That’s the Lawes in me. A Lawes always keeps up appearances. Part of the creed. Drilled into us from the cradle. You remember when I was a kid? When we were in school together? Tell me. What did you think of me then? Straight. Really what you thought.”

“Well, I thought you were a pretty good kid. Not snotty like a rich kid might be. Well, just a pretty good kid, I mean, just like the rest of us.”

“Wrong again. I wasn’t a pretty good kid at all. Not like the rest of you. Not like any good kid that ever lived. Truth is, I was a nasty little bastard. All screwed up. Deceptive as hell. Appearances. The God-damn Lawes in me. You believe that?”

“All I can say is, you certainly didn’t seem that way to me.

“Of course not. I told you. Never seem like you really are. It’s the creed. I was a nasty kid, I tell you. A perfectly foul kid. Still am, of course. Not a kid, but perfectly foul. All screwed up. You don’t grow out of a thing like that. It just grows with you. Gets bigger to fit. You like another bourbon?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll just work on this one awhile.”

“Think I’ll have another. Scotch. Soon as Roscoe gets time. Busy tonight. Cold, dark night. Snowing. Everyone drinking to keep out the cold. Roscoe won’t look, damn it. Too busy.”

“Never mind. I’ll get it for you.”

Emerson went around behind the bar and put ice cubes in a clean glass and poured Scotch over them and pushed the glass across the bar. He wished Avery would quit talking the way he was. Ordinarily Avery was a very reticent guy, but the Scotch had let his inhibitions down, and if he remembered later the things he’d said, he’d be embarrassed as hell and would feel uneasy the next time he and Emerson met, and maybe he’d just quit coming into the restaurant and bar at all. Emerson wouldn’t like that Not just because of the loss of patronage, the profit. He liked Avery, really, and he wanted him to keep on coming in and enjoying himself. That was the biggest satisfaction in running a place like this. It sounded phony, but it was true.