way. Joe and Phil give the pair of us a pretty straight deal.”
I nodded. I wanted to find out what he was getting at. “Jeff,” he said. “You’ve been with Beverley how long?”
“Four, five years. Something like that.”
“You figuring on going somewhere else soon?”
I just stared at him for a minute. It took me that long to make sure that he wasn’t kidding.
“No,” I said. “No, but—”
“I don’t like to be the one to say this,” he cut in, “but if you don’t straighten out soon you’re going to be out on your ear. If—”
“Hey, hang on a minute!”
He held up the hand again. “Jeff,” he said pleadingly, “it’s not my idea. Believe me, to me you’re a nice guy. I want you working in the same office with me forever. I mean it—it’s not that we know each other so closely because we don’t, but I like working with you and by me you’re all right. But the way you’ve been going at it lately —”
“Like how?”
“Like that,” he said, pointing to the rye. There were two more ounces in it now—I’d managed to catch the waiter’s eye while Les was talking. “You’ve been drinking like you heard rumors of another Prohibition.”
I swallowed the rye.
He looked hurt. “Jeff,” he said, “believe me, by me you could drink oceans and it wouldn’t bother me. But —”
“Phil and Joe?”
He nodded.
“Look,” I said. “Phil and Joe are hardly saints. You don’t find saints in the finance business. You rarely find saints in the respectable banking business, for that matter. And Beverley Finance is as far removed from the respectable banking business as—”
I had a good image cooked up but he cut me off. “Jeff,” he said, “let me say two things. First of all, no matter how crooked Phil and Joe may seem to you, their operations are strictly within the letter of the law. Our clients are not pulled off the streets and nobody makes them borrow. They come to us—remember that. They come to us because we fulfill a legitimate need.”
I shrugged. There was room for argument on that score. You might say we created the “legitimate need” with our coy little advertisements. But I let him finish what he was trying to say.
“Second,” he went on, “neither Phil nor Joe expects anybody working at the place to be a plaster saint. If a man beats his wife they don’t care. If a man takes dope they don’t care. But if it gets in the way of the business they
I held up the empty glass and nodded at it. “Does this get in the way of the business?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looked unhappy. “You keep a bottle in your desk—twice yesterday you took a drink while there were clients in the office. You smelled of liquor and the clients can tell this. You slur your words from time to time— maybe you haven’t realized this but I’ve noticed it. You—”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly. You put through one application that it was lucky Miss Glaser caught because he was in the book as a deadbeat. All you had to do was look in the book and you would have known it, but you got careless.”
“Which one was that?”
“Harwell, Farwell, I forget.”
“Carwell,” I said. “Herbert Carwell. Hell, he seemed perfectly okay. I didn’t bother—”
“They always
“I—”
“Jeff,” he said, “I’m not trying to get on your back. I’m just trying to say that you’d better straighten out before you get fired, and I’m trying to say this as a friend. Is there something bothering you that maybe I can help you with? Is it money or anything like that?”
“No.”
It was a hundred thousand dollars that I didn’t have, two women whom I didn’t have, a whole life that I didn’t have. But I didn’t tell him this.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
I shook my head.
“Will you try to lay off the liquor? Look, it’s not just the job. My wife’s brother, he started drinking once five years ago and he hasn’t stopped yet. It can sneak up on you and all of a sudden you can’t stop or you don’t want to stop or I don’t know what. My wife’s brother, he’s a mess now. An alcoholic. A bum. Once a month he’s over to the house begging for a handout so he can buy a drink. What can I do? He’s my wife’s flesh and blood, I can’t turn him down. But before he started drinking he was a doctor with a practice that brought him in about thirty gees a year. A rich man, Jeff. Not rich like Rockefeller, but richer than either of us’ll ever be. Now he’s a bum. You see what I mean?”
I nodded.
“Try,” he said. “Just do me that favor. Favor—it’s a favor to yourself more than a favor to me. Just try to take it easy and cut down on the drinking.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”
I don’t know whether I meant it or not. I was just sick of listening to him, sick of hearing about his goddamned wife’s brother, sick of the whole sermon and the whole do-gooder bit he was playing. There was no question about his sincerity, no question but that he was one hell of a good guy trying to help me out.
This didn’t make me one whit less sick of listening to him.
We let it lay there and we started to eat the slop on our plates. He was plainly embarrassed—the two of us never talked much and now he had given me a straight-from-the-shoulder bit and he was worried about it. I could understand that.
We finished up, lit cigarettes and sipped coffee. The waiter glared at us, wishing we would get out already so he could fill the table with two other slobs.
We got back to the office, worked through the afternoon. Les and I didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the day, which was easy because it was one hell of a busy afternoon. I had a good twenty people in the first two hours and things were hectic.
I kept wanting to reach for the bottle, kept wanting one little shot to make the afternoon go a little faster. But I left the bottle where it was.
Evidently what Les had said had made some sort of impression on me. Hell, I didn’t want to be out of a job. I joked a lot about Beverley Finance and I had a fairly cynical attitude for the whole mess, but it was a pleasant place to work and it paid a lot better than most occupations I was suited for.
That was only part of it. The other was that damned sermon about his wife’s brother, the doctor with the big thirst. I didn’t want to wind up in some gutter. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic, and I didn’t need Les to tell me that I was well on the way to that happy state.
But—
One time I had the drawer open and sat there looking down at that beautiful bottle.
But I left it there. It wasn’t easy, but I left it there and closed the drawer again.
I got through the afternoon. Somehow, due to the grace of some unknown and mysterious god, I got through the afternoon. It was tough but I made it.
And then it was five o’clock and I walked out into New York, gobbled a plate of chili at the Alamo on 47th Street and washed it down with cream soda. Beer is perfect with chili but I stuck to cream soda.
I left the restaurant and went for a stroll.
And then the world flushed itself down my toilet.
