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It was amazing how fast you could spend money even in a joint like Bob's Bowery Bar, which had the reputation of being the cheapest saloon not only on the Bowery but in the entire country, this "land of liberty" as Gerry called it, "a land where all men are free to take liberties, within reason".
Exactly forty-eight minutes ago, Gerry "The Brain" Goldsmith, gentleman philosopher, man of leisure, and cheerful tippler extraordinaire, had come back into Bob's with the mighty windfall of nine dollars and seventy cents, which he had relieved from the wallet and pockets of the anti-alcoholism crusader known as Smiling Jack,
whose snow-covered corpse Gerry had found leaning against the lamp post down the corner at Bleecker and the Bowery. Apparently Jack had frozen to death in the thick falling snow, willingly or not, no one would ever know, except for God, if there was a God, the existence of whom, or Whom, was one of the many questions Gerry attempted to "delve into", tentatively, in his magnum opus in progress, currently titled Pensées for a Rainy Day, which he had been "working on" for, lo, these past two decades and more.
Had Gerry hesitated to take the money from the deceased crusader of sobriety? Perhaps he had, but only for a fraction of a moment, because he had heard (or imagined he had heard) Smiling Jack's genial voice saying, "Hey, help yourself, pal," after all the money wouldn't do Jack any good now, nor would the tarnished old Zippo lighter and the almost full pack of Lucky Strikes Gerry also helped himself to. Jack's leather satchel with its collection of his cheaply-printed self-penned pamphlets (Are You a Drunkard?), Gerry left hanging on its strap across the poor man's chest. Perhaps these small volumes would be buried with Jack in the potter's field on Hart Island.
But now all but one dollar and seventy cents of Gerry's windfall was gone, thanks to rounds of pitchers of bock bought for the poets at the big round "poets' table", namely Hector Phillips Stone (the doomed romantic poet), Seamas McSeamas (the Irish poet), Howard Paul Studebaker (the "western" poet), Lucius Pierrepont St. Clair III (the Negro poet), Frank X Fagen, (the nature poet), and, last but no more least than the rest of them, Scaramanga (the leftist poet). (It should be noted that Gerry was not, nor did he claim to be, a poet, but he loved to "hang out" with poets.)
The prices at Bob's were so cheap (only fifty cents for a large pitcher of Bob's basement-brewed bock), that one would think that eight dollars would last longer than forty-eight minutes, but word of free bock gets around quickly in a place like Bob's, and the poets' table had been invaded by Father Frank (the defrocked "whiskey priest"), Angie (the retired prostitute who now sold flowers from a street cart), Gilbey (the deranged mystic who claimed to have seen God,
whom he called "the Big Fella"), and the fat old man everybody called "the Professor".
Gerry could put up with a lot (after all, he was a philosopher), but the Professor was just too much even for him. The Professor would think nothing of correcting your grammar or your choice of words in mid-sentence, never ceased to bore you with his familiarity with all the great books, and there was nothing he seemed not to know all about and to have an opinion on. The one thing he didn't know was how annoying he was. He was also a shameless moocher, and for the past half hour he had been sitting squeezed in tight right next to Gerry, and driving him up a wall with tedium.
"You know you're wrong about Joyce, Gerry," said the Professor. "Not as wrong as you are about Kant, but nearly so."
"That may be true, Professor," said Gerry, "but I just can't with Kant, although I do rejoice in Joyce."
"Buy us another couple of pitchers and I will explain why you're wrong," said the Professor, completely oblivious to Gerry's bons mots.
Fuck you, thought Gerry, as loudly as he could think, but in so-called real life he merely said, "Some other time, Professor. My humble cot is calling me."
"Oh, but don't go, Gerry," said the Professor, who had never bought a round in his life and wasn't about to start now.
"Sorry," said Gerry, "but 'sleep, gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse' calls me."
The Professor said nothing, but looked discomfited, not just because the source of free bock was leaving, but because he couldn't identify Gerry's Shakespearean quote.
And to hell with you, Professor, thought Gerry, rising from his chair.
He was about to put the last dollar bill on the table as a tip for Janet the waitress, but he didn't trust the Professor not to snatch it, and so he handed it to Hector Philips Stone and asked him to give it to Janet (with whom Hector was rumored to have had concupiscent relations with).
A smattering of goodnights and even a few thanks, and thus Gerry staggered over to the door and outside into the freezing cold snow falling as hard as ever.
Well, at least he still had seventy cents in his pocket, which was seventy more cents than he'd had the last time he walked out of Bob's.
It occurred to Gerry that he had not eaten since fourteen or fifteen hours earlier, when he had had a cinnamon bun with his morning bottomless cup of coffee down the street at Ma's Diner. Seventy cents! If Bob's was the cheapest bar in the country, Ma's might well be the cheapest diner, and seventy cents would be enough for the All-Day Deluxe Breakfast, and he would still have twenty cents left over for a tip!
Gerry knew just what options he would go for: two eggs "sunny side up", hash browns instead of grits or home fries, scrapple instead of bacon or "country ham", and baked beans rather than the succotash.
Or should he rather go for the Johnnycakes Deluxe Special, a tall stack, slathered with fresh butter and drowned in maple syrup, and criss-crossed with a half-dozen rashers of "country bacon"?
Or what about a great bowl of Ma's Hobo Stew, with a few thick slices of fresh-baked black bread?
Or – but, wait, what was this?
Gerry had reached the corner, and its streetlamp, its light pale and yellow through the thick falling snow, but where was the deceased Smiling Jack, his snowman's body propped against it? It was gone, he was gone.
Had a policeman in a passing patrol car seen the unfortunate corpse, prized it free with a tire iron from the pole, and taken it to the morgue? Yes, that's what must have happened. Just another dead drunk on the Bowery, probably nothing unusual for the men in blue at the Ninth Precinct. They probably picked up a half dozen dead men every night of the week.
Well, thought, Gerry, this was good, that Smiling Jack hadn't been left out in the blizzard all night long, not that Jack would care, being beyond all care for all eternity.
"So long, old friend," he said, silently, "I'm glad you're out of the freezing cold and the snow, even if it is only to be taken to a slab in the morgue. Thanks again for the nine dollars and seventy cents, for the Lucky Strikes, and for the lighter, and every time I use that Zippo, I shall think of you, and your bright smile."
With no further ado, Gerry hated long goodbyes, he trudged through the snow to the curb, and, after waiting patiently for the green light, even though there was no traffic this time of night, he tramped across Bleecker towards the blood-red neon sign that said MA'S DINER and the smaller sign that read "Where the food could not be finer".
Imagine Gerry's surprise, when, on the opposite snow-piled sidewalk, he looked through the frosted plate-glass window, and saw, sitting alone at the counter and smoking a cigarette, none other than Smiling Jack himself!
So, thought Gerry, this it. A genuine miracle, and a frozen solid dead man brought back to life.
Now he must revise the whole section of his work-in-progress that concerned the supernatural, and the existence of God, or, if you will, a Higher Power.
But, first things first, which was what God himself must have said on that first First Day, and Gerry slogged through the snow to the entrance door, having changed his mind again and decided on corned beef hash, topped with two fried eggs, with a hot cross bun on the side.
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