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At once Addison felt the great change within.
Whereas a moment ago every cell in his body had been pickled in alcohol, every corpuscle and every ragged nerve, now all these elements comprising his physical being were in their millions and in their totality as pure as a newborn baby's.
"Wow," he said.
"Pretty nice, hey, my lad?" said the little man called Bowery Bert.
"Well, it's certainly unusual," said Addison.
"Normally to reach this state you'd have to spend a good solid month or two in one of them fancy upstate alcy farms that the rich souses go to."
"I feel – how shall I put this – full of beans."
"It ain't beans you're full of. It's all that alcohol you ain't full of."
"I still feel slightly odd though."
"Odd like how."
"Like I'm floating,
and as if my perception of both the inner and outer worlds is both magnified and yet somehow vague."
"Was you smoking reefer?"
"Why, yes, in fact I was! You see, that lady Anne gave me one, and –"
"That explains it. That pill I give you is only good for the lush. Which means you ain't drunk anymore, but you're still stoned on the maryjane."
"Oh, okay."
"But I'll let you in on a little secret. The maryjane is quite harmless as long as you don't operate heavy machinery."
"Well, with the exception of my trusty old Hermes Baby typewriter, I don't operate any sort of machinery, neither light or heavy."
"This is good. But just be careful when you're crossing a street you don't have your head in cloud cuckoo land and walk in front of a bus."
"I shall try not to."
"Okay, well, you're on your own now, pal. This is the first second of the rest of your life, so what you do now is entirely up to you."
"Um, okay."
"I'll catch you later, my man. And if I don't see you round, I'll see you square."
"Heh heh."
"Fare thee well, bold traveler!"
The little man touched his cap, turned, and walked briskly away back down the narrow dim corridor.
How very odd. Had what happened actually happened? Or, had Addison imagined the entire episode?
What was he doing here, anyway, in this dim narrow corridor?
And then he remembered. He had been on his way to have a drink with those two ladies, Anne and Hattie.
They had gone off in the opposite direction from the one Bowery Bert had taken. Addison turned, pricking up his ears. He couldn't see the ladies, but very faintly he heard the sound of their clacking heels, and the flute-like music of their voices. The call of womanhood. Oh, sure, he could follow in Bowery Bert's footsteps, find a way out of this strange place (but weren't all places strange?), make his way back to his room at Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern's tenement house at Bleecker and the Bowery, get undressed and go to bed, have his first sober sleep since he was seventeen years old, and wake up presumably fresh as a daisy, rested and refreshed, ready to dive into his epic novel of the old west, sure, he could do that, that could very easily be done…
But when had he ever taken the easy route?
Since that first moment when he had been pulled,
kicking and screaming from his mother's womb, when had he ever taken the easy way?
No, the easy way was not for such as he.
Let his way be the way he had always taken, the hard way, even if it led to a lonely death frozen in some alleyway, covered with piss-stained sooty snow; it might be the wrong way, but, hang it all, it was his way.
And, besides, when it came right down to brass tacks, he really could go for a drink right now, even if it were only a glass of Rheingold.
And then there was the question of the women – not just one, but two women, and attractive ones to boot! Oh, sure, maybe they weren't on the level of the Betty Grables and Ann Sheridans of the world, but, let's face it, Addison himself was no John Payne or Dane Clark himself, so who was he to be choosy? Who knew when an opportunity like this should present itself again? Never? True, there was always Bubbles, dear Bubbles, who some hallowed day might possibly allow him to join with her in full sexual congress, for a modest fee of course, but Bubbles was presumably sleeping now, and any possible makings of the beast with two backs with her remained solidly in the future, whereas this moment was now.
Suddenly he realized that he could no longer hear the clacking of the ladies' heels, nor the faint trilling of their voices.
Enough dithering!
Determined, he set forth down the dim narrow corridor in the direction the ladies had gone. If he hurried perhaps he could catch up to them. And if he did catch up to them, what then? No one knew the answer to that question, perhaps not even that great popular novelist in the sky.
On he hurried, his feet barely touching the boards of the floor, and the corridor turned and went on in dimness, and on Addison went down it. He couldn't see where it led, and beyond was only increasing darkness, a darkness that greyed into dimness as he approached it, with yet more dimness and darkness beyond. He came after five minutes to a bare wall, with two corridors going to the right and to the left.
Which one had the ladies taken? He stopped and sniffed, to the right, to the left, and it seemed to him that the corridor on the right bore the faintest scent of femininity. He went that way. Maybe it was the wrong way. There was only one way to find out.
Addison floated down the dim narrow corridor, his feet now not even touching the floorboards, on he floated, being careful not to bump into the walls.
After a minute or two he heard the faint sounds of music, and still he floated onward, the music growing less faint, and after another minute he heard beneath the music the faint babble of human voices.
He found himself standing before a door on which hung a sign with the faded hand-painted legend
"THE HIDEAWAY"
Leave your cares behind
and your bullshit too.
Ring the bell and wait.
Well! He had no idea if this was where Hattie and Anne had gone, but he knew one thing, and that was that this looked like his kind of place.
After less than half a minute he found a door button, and he pressed it.
He then realized that he couldn't even remember when he had last smoked a cigarette (a non-reefer cigarette anyway), and a quick patting of his pockets discovered a pack of Chesterfields and a book of Bob's Bowery Bar matches. He lighted up, fully enjoying that ecstasy one unfailingly experienced when lighting up a smoke after neglecting to do so for half an hour.
He waited, enjoying his Chesterfield. Should he press the button again? No, no need to be importunate. Nevertheless, when the cigarette was halfway smoked he was mulling pressing the button again when the door opened and a huge Negro man stood there, dressed in faded denim overalls and a floppy cap. Behind him roared and swelled music and shouting and laughter.
"What the fuck do you want, cracker?"
"Good evening, sir," said Addison. "They call me Addison, and I am in search of two ladies, named Anne and Hattie."
The huge man looked at Addison.
"You ain't much, are you?"
"No, sir," said Addison. "But what I am is indubitably me, with all my faults, and they are many. Nonetheless, I am doomed for a lifetime to this flawed personality and unprepossessing corporeal host, and I try to make the best of it, which is not saying much, but which is all I can and will say."
The big man paused for a moment, as behind him the music and the babbling roared enticingly.
"All right," he said, at last, "Miss Hattie and Miss Annie said some sad-ass looking son-of-bitch who talks like an idiot might come looking for them, and I thought they said his name was Harrington, but I guess it's you."
"Yes, c'est moi," said Addison, "and what after all is a name? But may I know your name, good sir?"
"They call me John Henry."
"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Henry," said Addison, and he extended his hand.
The large black man named John Henry looked at Addison's thin bony hand, and, after another pause, and sighing, he took it in his own enormous hand, taking care not to reduce the white man's hand to a bloody shapeless pulp.
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