The Lost Weekend

by Charles Jackson

  Anyhow the liquor store would be open. Clerks couldn’t be that late. This wasn’t going to be one of those terrifying torturing Sundays. What day was it? He guessed it was Saturday. Guessed? He wasn’t that far gone, hadn’t lost track to that extent, it was Saturday. He was probably dirty as a pig and needed a shave but it didn’t matter now, not the half-block he’d have to go and the couple minutes he’d be there. But could he make it? His heart pounded, he was all out of breath for some reason. Sighing like a furnace. And with each sigh his heart hit just a little harder. He broke out in a sweat at the very thought of the stairs.

  God damned fool what the hell was the matter with his brain if any. What was the good of these telephones that rang you out of the only peace you ever knew if you couldn’t get back at them by ringing up somebody else, the liquor store for instance. We Deliver. He could never get over the fact that liquor stores were listed in the Classified for what they were—just like that. Christ they’d be listing dope-peddlers next. DOPE—See NARCOTICS.

  He picked up his jacket and vest to find the money first. He wanted to get it counted out and ready before the guy came in. He couldn’t have him standing there in the open door watching him while he fumbled through his pockets with shaking hands, shaking still more because somebody was looking at him. He dragged the coat and vest over to the chair, sat down, and went through the pockets.

  Then he put the coat down because the money must be in his pants. Nothing in the coat and vest at all. He turned on one hip and felt in his right pocket, then on the other and felt in his left. Then he began to feel panic.

  He stood up. He thrust both hands deep into his side pockets. He reached back and searched the two hip pockets. He fingered in the little watch-pocket. He grabbed up the vest and went through all four pockets. He took the coat and felt in the side pockets and the little change-pocket inside the right pocket. He turned the coat back and ran his hand into the deep inside pocket where he found a few old letters but no money at all. Not five cents.

  He carried the coat and vest over to the couch, sat down, and went through the whole routine again. He wasn’t that much of an idiot, he knew he had money somewhere, there had been more than twenty-five dollars yesterday. Could it really be possible that he had spent it? What the hell had he done last night? Where was that bloody money? Who had it now?

  To his certain knowledge he hadn’t had anybody up to the apartment so nobody had stolen it. But what good did that do him? How certain was that certain knowledge? How far did it go, what did it cover and include? A few events during the early part of yesterday, and from then on—blank. About all he remembered was some prison movie with wailing sirens and machine-guns. The drinks, sure; he remembered them; here and there; chiefly Sam’s. But he had certainly never spent twenty-five dollars at Sam’s. You couldn’t spend twenty-five dollars at Sam’s no matter how hard you tried. And God knows he ought to know. He’d tried if anybody ever had.

  He couldn’t just go ahead and call up the liquor store now. Say send up this-and-that and then tell the guy when he came that you’d pay later. That’s something he had never done yet and he didn’t know that he ever would. He didn’t know; he might some day; how was he to know? He might even do that and then out of impulse or inspiration or panic grab the package from the guy at the door, give him a shove, and slam the door in his face. He’d a lot rather do that than pull some song-and-dance about how he was suddenly unaccountably fresh out of cash but was expecting some any minute by Western Union. He couldn’t crawl to that extent yet. But why think of that now? In the meantime he hadn’t quite lost his wits, had he? He’d find some other way. The day he couldn’t find a new way he might as well be dead.

  Well this was hardly a new way but what of it, it always worked. He went into the bedroom and began packing up his Remington portable: got the dusty case out from under the desk, set the machine inside, hit the spacer a few times till it was centered and would fit, and closed the cover.

  The times this poor old typewriter had been in the pawnshop. And why not? Was it any better than his suits, some of his good English suits, or his good top-coats? They’d been in and out of hock a dozen times and it hadn’t hurt them any. It hurt him more than it hurt them. Three-fifty for a suit from Hogg & Sons in Hanover Square or five for a top-coat by Gabarsky in Zurich was certainly a neat irony, but an irony you could only appreciate and laugh at and not give a damn about after you had the drinks under your Brooks belt that wouldn’t bring a nickel.

  The telephone rang and he nearly jumped a mile. He picked up the typewriter, left the room at once, and closed the door behind him. He set the typewriter on the floor of the little foyer and went into the bathroom to see how he looked.

  He’d have to shave. He couldn’t go out like this. To the liquor store on the corner was all right but not as far as the pawnshop he always went to between 58th and 59th. He took off his tie, tucked the collar of his shirt under, and began to shave.

  His hands shook but he managed. Staring at his face in the glass, seeing how the sweat stood out on his forehead, he knew he was in for a day of it if he didn’t get that bottle. One of those days. One of those nightmare days he was headed for anyhow but God not today, he couldn’t take it today. But what was he weeping and sniveling about? The typewriter wasn’t that old, it was always good for five bucks.

  Who had that been on the telephone. Oh sure. Helen probably. She was calling him up to see what he was going to do over the weekend, why didn’t he come down to dinner tonight, or tomorrow, or both? Sorry. He had his weekend all planned, thank you. Right here. Or would have as soon as he got that money.

  What had become of the money. Maybe he better go look again. No, he wasn’t going to drive himself crazy doing that. He’d looked. Could he have given it away, thrown it away, lost it? No fear, not when money meant as much to you as it did when you were in this condition. At such times nobody in the world could hang onto it better than he could. There was a thought. Had he hidden it—been so cautious and cagey that he thought he ought to hide it? It could have happened, he had done such things before, in his fear that the money was going to be taken from him; but he hadn’t been that drunk last night, and besides: nobody had been around to hide it from. Wick was in the country.

  Helen of course was trying to check up on him. That matinée business hadn’t fooled her a bit, the not feeling up to it. He knew these innocent invitations to dinner. She didn’t want to feed him, hell! She wanted to give him the once-over. She only wanted to see if he was able to show up, see what he looked like, see if his hands were shaking. He knew those little Saturday- and Sunday-night suppers in Bleecker Street, so charming and cosy and intime—so God damned intime that you weren’t even left alone long enough to sneak a drink out of the hall-closet where she kept the liquor (and kept it is right). You almost didn’t dare go to the bathroom. If you did she found some pretext for coming into the hall to see if it was the bathroom door you had opened and not the door to the closet next to it. And then the several hours more of sitting there in the so charming little living room while she sewed and you died, died for a drink, soaking wet with sweat, keeping up a conversation you didn’t even know the gist of, waiting for a chance to glance at your watch without being noticed, trying to decide if ten o’clock was all right or would it put ideas in her head, then beating it for the nearest bar—not the one across the street, because Helen would be at the window, but the one around the corner where she couldn’t see.

  He put the razor and brush away and slammed the cabinet door. The noise made him jump. Christ he must be in lousy shape. He was. Suddenly he felt he couldn’t move another step or even stand. He drank a glass of water and managed to get back to the big chair in the living room.

  He sat there panting. Maybe if he sat awhile his heart would go down. Something had to happen pretty soon, he had to feel better, he couldn’t stand this. But Rabinowitz or whoever he was certainly wasn’t going to call up and say “Have you got a typewriter
you want to pawn today? I’ll send a boy over.” Could he have made the bedroom to answer the ’phone?

  It was exhaustion. Physically he had reached bottom. Bottom, hell! There was no bottom as long as you still had the desire the urge the intention the need. Your heart and lungs still functioned—after a fashion; your eyes were wide open, you could hear and think; what more did you want. These were faculties. To be used. He got up. But it was no use. He stood there weaving, faint and sick. He sat down again. Could you possibly make 58th Street? If your life depended on it? Carrying a typewriter besides? Not only make it but get back again? And on top of all that: the traffic that would scare you out of your wits, the noise and the uproar of the too-lively city, the sound and fury that frightened the living daylights out of you. Frightened you almost as much as the thought of the afternoon ahead, here, alone, without anything.

  The very thought of it was sickening. He closed his eyes, sank back to relax a moment, to shake it, if he could; and unaccountably, an irrelevant episode slid into place in his memory. A married friend of theirs called him and Wick up one day, asked them if they would please save their theater-stubs from then on. Did they have any old stubs in their suit pockets now, by any chance? Oh it was silly to explain, but—you see, his three-year-old daughter had found a hat-check somewhere and for some reason or other—you know how those things are—was crazy about it. She called it her “ticket.” She carried it around in the pocket of her bathrobe at supper-time, always looked for it after her bath, and went around showing it to people who came in to dinner. But the other day the maid washed the bathrobe and threw Mary’s “ticket” away. It seemed to mean a lot to her—you know how those things are (Did you know? Would you ever?)—and he just wondered if Don or Wick happened to have an old stub or two till he and his wife got around to going to a theater again.… The father’s attitude on the telephone, his pretense of making light of the whole thing in order to hide his genuine concern—it was all too sweet for words, oh just too cute, what an ass fathers made of themselves (his anger rose), what an ass children made of their fathers.…

  If there was a fire he’d get out of here all right. Or would he. He’d be able to get up and get out of here and down those stairs and into the street if there was a fire. Wouldn’t he? He listened as if for an alarm, but all he could think of was the stinging frenzied bell shattering the darkness of the movie as the surly expressionless girl walked through the metal-detector beam, the bell that later took over the whole screen and theater during the prison-break. If such a bell really rang he’d be up and out of here in no time, wouldn’t he, collapse or no collapse. Or if there was a bottle of whisky to be had after your little exchange with Mr. Rabinowitz. He got up.

  He found his hat and his coat and vest and got to the bathroom mirror to see how he looked. Would anybody think anything if they looked at him? Did he show it much? He tried to believe that as far as they could see he looked all right; but he knew how he looked, how he felt inside, how it showed in his face (showed in his walk, the very motion of his legs), how he wouldn’t be able to look anyone in the eye, how he’d have to avoid all eyes looking at him, how he couldn’t trust himself to say two words to anybody till after he got the liquor or he’d go to pieces. If he hung onto himself hard, shut out everything else—his exhaustion, his fear, the city itself—it could be done. Could? It had. Often and often before. He picked up the typewriter in the foyer and went down the stairs.

  Thank God it was cool. Cold even. It would help keep him going as far as 58th and back. He hadn’t worn a top-coat on purpose, because he knew that by the time he reached the corner, only half a block away, he would be sweating like a man in a fever-cabinet. So he sweated now. He made the corner and turned north into the swarming clanging shouting hell that was 2nd Avenue on a Saturday morning.

  He passed the liquor store without a glance (it could wait, he’d be back); the A & P where Mr. Wallace stood in the window and tried to wave to him, without a glance; the bar-and-grill of his friend Sam, without a glance; the delicatessen where he once owed and maybe still owed Mr. Schultz ten dollars, without a glance; passed all these places without noticing on purpose, because if he took his eyes off the objective before him he would sink to the sidewalk. The three dimly gold balls hung out over the street far ahead, three and a half blocks away, on his side of the street; but as long as he fixed them with his eye and doggedly put one foot in front of the other (taking deep breaths to still, if he could, the pounding heart), he knew they were drawing nearer. Overhead the L roared like tons of coal rushing down iron chutes.

  At 56th he paused at the crosswalk. His nerves were so jumpy he didn’t dare trust his senses. He looked again and again at the traffic-light to make sure before leaving the safety of the curb, and even then wasn’t sure. He stepped down into the street, then quickly back up on the curb again. He was far from blind, he couldn’t ask anybody to take him across. He couldn’t have spoken to anybody to ask. He started again, and horns shrilled anger at him, brakes slammed on with a screech of rubber.

  How many times on mornings such as this, mornings in other cities as well as New York, had he taken such walks. Mornings when he truly didn’t know if he was going to give way in a faint after the next step, much less before he reached his destination—liquor store, pawnshop, bar, bed. Mornings of preposterous inexplicable panic because somebody was going to intercept his glance in an unguarded moment and look him squarely in the eye. Walking along the Esplanade in Boston, he saw a man emerge from a comfort-station and begin coming his way. The man was still some distance off but the two were going to meet and pass each other, there was no way out, how was he going to be able to go through with it, get by and past? If the man caught his eye, looked at him, spoke to him, he would fall down. He fixed his gaze on the Charles River bridge far off and walked on in a blind and dumb daze, his teeth tight shut, his hands clenched stiffly at his sides.… Starting out along Commercial Street in Provincetown to find one of the Portuguese fishermen and buy a pint of the grappa-like drink they called prune, what a haven the little alleys that ran off to the right, away from the sea, alleys in which he could idle or rest a moment till the approaching stranger or strangers, on their way into P-town, had gone by.… Here there was no escape from the crowd of looking strangers; you stared straight ahead and went on; and if you did not see them looking, perhaps they were not.

  He smelled the oily pickly fishy smells of delicatessens. He passed the little antique shops of charming, chipped, expensive junk; in each, a faultlessly dressed immaculate young man idled in the window, watching the street. The chain-stores were so much like the chain-stores back home, with exactly the same red or yellow fronts of his home town, that he did not dare think of them. A man stood in his way and he turned to look at a window display of refined wedding-invitations, the Commercial & Society Print. Every few feet there was a bar—cottagey, some; others saloony like the old days. The sidewalks were thick with women with Scotties and dachshunds and women with kids.

  He turned into the entrance of Rabinowitz’s and bumped into an iron gate. He stood back and looked up. An iron sliding-gate had been drawn and locked across the entrance to the shop.

  He gazed at the windows stacked high with luggage and fishing-rods, baseball gloves, watches and jewelry, guitars. He looked at the locked gate. Was somebody dead? He turned north again.

  A cruel and fiendish trick but somewhere along the way there would be another. The Avenue was lousy with pawnshops. He squinted far ahead into the distance; and sure enough, several blocks off, three golden balls hung over the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He started out, and at once ran into the inferno that was 59th.

  Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge, the vast resounding grinding structure of the Queensboro bridge. The traffic was incoherent bedlam. Trolleys danged and clanged up the slope. Overhead the L exploded periodically with the supernatural rush and roar of a rocket-train out of the comics. His
eyes fixed on his goal, he passed through it all like a sleepwalker in a nightmare, shaken by every insane noise but with one increasing purpose in his reeling mind: to reach the end of the dream and wake up.

  He staggered up the slight rise of ground to 60th Street and into a sidewalk world again of vegetable and fruit markets like pushcarts; bakeries, florists, funeral parlors, stores for rent, tinsmiths and paint shops and thrift shops. The smells. The sights. The dyed-hair and wigs; the poor; the nigger-pink-and-green playsuits; the hatless bald men carrying groceries home; the blind musicians; the broad broad women, the million bandanaed women, the million pregnant women. The noise. And in the intervals between trains passing overhead, the sound of the L on 3rd Avenue a block away, like the faraway thunder of surf.

  What fiend ever gave the name portable to a portable. It was a dead weight that dragged you down, held you back, it pulled your arm out of the shoulder-socket, it fixed you fast to one spot in the sidewalk. It was a solid block of lead, but lead that would become pure gold if only you could drag it far enough. The sweat was running down his back in little trickles, he felt it drop from his armpits inside his shirt, his feet burned as if the sidewalks were hot lava.

  The three golden balls were above his head. The entrance to the shop (not so good a one as Mr. Rabinowitz’s but a pawnshop all the same, with a cash-register in the rear) was shuttered with a grey iron gate, fixed with a padlock. He gave the place no more than a sidelong glance, fearful that somebody would see him looking, see that he had been thwarted, think “Sure, some drunk caught short, out to hock something so he can start over again.” He affected indifference; smiled to himself as if he were amused; he had only paused anyhow to see what these funny places looked like. Almost casually he shifted the handle of the typewriter to his left hand and went on.