It was a tavern, another one, or a club of some sort, dim and thick with smoke, and in the shadows were stuffed chairs with what looked like nothing but old men sitting in them, and tables and booths with old men sitting at them, and over to the right a long and crowded bar, and straight ahead on the other side of the room sat an old man in blue light at a grand piano singing a song from the turn of the century. The place smelled strongly of varieties of smoke, not only that of cigarettes, cigars and pipes, but also marijuana, hashish, and opium,
but beneath these smells lay the odors of damp woolens, of galoshes in stuffy closets, of decaying lace in the dresser drawers of the houses of great-grandparents, of basements and attics filled with broken furniture and stacks of old newspapers and National Geographics.
Milford and Addison panted and sweated, standing there, as the old man smiled and looked up at them. His head was as hairless as a skeleton's, and he was dressed in an old three-piece grey suit, in the height of the fashions of the Gilded Age.
"Welcome to the League, gentlemen."
"The League?" said Addison.
"Yes, the League," said the little old man.
"And what League is this?" asked Addison.
"Guess," said the man.
"The Justice League of America?"
"Ha ha, no," chuckled the old fellow, taking out a pipe, and now looking at Milford, or presumably looking at him, as he wore glasses which seemed to be at least a half-inch thick, magnifying his eyes to the size of an elephant's and with the same inscrutable gaze. "How about you, young fellow?"
"Pardon me?" said Milford, absorbed in the dull horror of the old man's massively wrinkled face and goggled eyes.
"Guess what sort of League this is?"
"The League of the Damned?"
"Ha ha, quite risible, my youthful friend! Would you like to guess again?"
"No, thank you," said Milford.
The old man now swiveled his skull again towards Addison.
"What about you, my good man? One more guess?"
"Um, uh," said Addison.
"Guess correctly and you get to drink free the rest of the night," said the old guy, packing his pipe with ragged leaves from a cracked leather pouch.
"My friend too?"
"But of course!"
"Okay," said Addison. He looked from the old man to around the room, and then back again to the old fellow. "The League of Veterans of the Army of the Potomac?"
"By George!" said the old guy, "Close! Very close!"
"May I ignite your pipe, sir?" said Addison, drawing out his book of Bob's Bowery Bar matches.
"How gentlemanly of you!" cried the old man, and he allowed Addison to light his pipe, drawing in the smoke with wet rattling slurping noises.
Addison waved the match out.
"Is there an ashtray nearby?" he asked.
"Oh, just toss it to the floor, my good chap, we don't stand on ceremony here at the League."
Addison did as he had been urged, and noticed that the floor was already liberally littered with spent matches and butts of cigarettes and cigars.
"Nice place you've got here," he said, with a perfectly straight face. "Don't you think so, Milford?"
"Yeah, sure," said Milford.
"We really want to thank you for letting us in, mister," said Addison, taking out his pack of Chesterfields. "Don't we, Milford?"
"Yes," said Milford. "We appreciate it, sir."
"Think nothing of it," said the old man, puffing away on his pipe. "Who was it that was chasing you, anyway?"
"You should pardon the expression," said Addison, lighting up his Chesterfield, "but they were douchebags."
"Douchebags you say! From that douchebag bar round the way?"
"Yes, I suppose it was them," said Addison, flicking his match away.
"Nasty brutes. I suppose they tried to recruit you into their unholy ranks."
"Yes, they did," said Addison, exhaling his Chesterfield smoke with a resigned-seeming expression on his face.
"Damn their impudence! The most cursory glance could tell the discerning eye that you fellows are not douchebags."
"Well, thank you for saying that," said Addison.
"Not douchebags, nor cunts neither."
"Again, thank you," said Addison.
"But if you be not douchebags, or cunts, may I ask what you are?"
"That is a good question," said Addison.
The old guy turned his face of wrinkles toward Milford.
"What are you, young man?"
"Idiots," said Milford.
At this the old man took his pipe from his mouth and sputtered and hacked, his little body convulsing like a marionette whose puppeteer had gone mad.
"Are you all right, sir?" said Addison.
The old guy sputtered and spluttered and hacked some more, but then said, "Oh. Oh my. Oh dear."
"Would you like to sit down?" asked Milford.
"Sit down? Why?"
"In case you're having an attack of some sort."
"I wasn't having an attack," said the old guy. "I was merely laughing at your bon mot."
"Oh."
"'Idiots,' he says! Idiots! Oh my word. You are quite the scamp, my lad," he said to Milford.
"I was only speaking the truth," said Milford.
"Idiots!"
"Yes, unfortunately."
"I'll give you one more guess."
"Pardon me?" said Milford.
"One more guess as to what we are the League of."
"The League of People Banned From Other Leagues?"
Once again the old fellow fell victim to a fit of spluttering and coughing, to such an extent that a set of dentures flew from his mouth and fell clattering on the floor. Milford took his handkerchief from his jeans pocket, bent down and picked up the dentures with it, and offered them to the man, who was breathing heavily and snorting.
"Oh, thank you, my good chap," he mumbled toothlessly, and shoved the dentures back into his mouth without bothering to wipe them off. "I swear your witticisms will be the death of me, my boy."
"I will try to keep them to a minimum," said Milford.
"Oh dear, perhaps you better had. Very well. I will tell you lads where you have found yourselves. Welcome, I say to you young gentlemen, to the League of Little Old Men! Would you care for a libation?"
"Yes, thank you," said Addison.
"What about you, pal?" the man asked Milford.
"I don't drink."
"You don't? Why in heaven's name not?"
"I am an alcoholic."
"But you're a mere stripling!"
"Yes, but I started young," said Milford.
"What about a sody pop then?"
"Sure, that would be nice, thank you."
"Splendid," said the old guy. "Please accompany me, if you will."
The old guy turned and walked, slowly, one step at a time, past three or four tables at which elderly men sat, some of them playing cards, others just sitting drinking and smoking, past a smaller table at which two old geezers played chess, or at any rate stared at a chess board, then finally to an arrangement of three cushioned arm chairs ranged around a low round table. He climbed up on one chair, and looked at Addison and Milford, waving a tiny hand.
"Please, gentlemen, be seated."
Our friends sat, Milford to the right of the old man, Addison to the left.
Milford took out his pack of Husky Boys. If ever there was a time to smoke, and a necessity to smoke, this was it.
"My name, by the way," said the old guy, "is William Henry Harrison Happington. But, please, call me Happy."
"Pleased to meet you, uh, Happy," said Addison. There were three ashtrays on the table, all of them with ashes and the stubs of cigars and cigarettes in them, and he drew one closer and tapped his Chesterfield ash into it. "This is my good friend Milford," he said, nodding to Milford, "and my name is –"
"Mildred you say?" said the old guy.
"No, Happy," said Addison. "Not Mildred, but Milford."
"I did not think he was a member of the female persuasion," said Happy, "but one can never be quite sure, can one?"
"No, I suppose not," said Addison.
"At least not until you get him or her into the bedroom, ha ha!"
"Uh, yes, I suppose that's true," said Addison.
"Not that I've gotten anyone into a bedroom for many years myself."
"Well, uh," said Addison.
"And what is your name, if I may be so bold as to ask?"
"Well, all my friends call me Addison, but –"
"Happington, you say? I wonder if we are related. Are you by any chance the great grandson of my nephew James Buchanan Happington?"
"Um, no, you see I said Addison, not Happington, sir."
"Please, call me Happy."
"Sure, 'Happy'."
"So you say your name is Farrington? Any relation to the Farringtons of Grosse Pointe?"
"Uh, no, I don't think so –"
"Thank God. A most unfortunately decadent clan, if I do say so. Ah! Our noble manservant."
Another tiny old man was standing there, in a tuxedo, holding a tray, and with a dirty towel over one arm.
"Drinks, gentlemen?"
"Yes, Lucullus," said Happy. "Bring us three glasses of Falstaff lager, please, and a round of Creams of Kentucky."
"Coming right up, Happy," said the old man apparently called Lucullus, and he turned and hobbled slowly away.
Happy smiled at Addison and Milford, or at any rate stretched out the ends of his thin pale lips.
"With any luck," he said, "we will have our libations within the hour. But in the meantime, let us smoke, and get to know one another, and talk."
Milford lighted up a Husky Boy with his Ronson. Somehow the old man had forgotten, or neglected, or chosen not to order him a soft drink. It had been very hard to be an alcoholic, and it was proving just as hard, if not infinitely more so, to be a recovering one.
