“Does Doctor Hill think I shouldn’t take up room better used or at least needed by someone else?” Mr. Acarius said.
“No, no,” Doctor Hill said. “There’s always room for one more in dipsomania.”
“Like in adultery,” Mr. Acarius’s doctor said.
“We don’t cure that here,” Doctor Hill said.
“Do they anywhere?” Mr. Acarius’s doctor said.
“Can’t say,” Doctor Hill said. “When do you want to start?”
“What about now?” said Mr. Acarius.
“You just get sober here, not drunk too,” Doctor Hill said. “You’ll have to do that much of it outside, otherwise the antitrust or the free-trade laws might get us.”
“Give us four days,” Mr. Acarius’s doctor said. “We can certainly come in under the wire in that time.”
So four days were set; Mr. Acarius let himself go into alcohol completely again for the first time since his college days. That is, he tried to, because at first it seemed to him that he was making no progress at all and in the end would let down not only his own doctor but Doctor Hill too.
But by the end of the third day, reason told him he had better not try to leave his penthouse; and by the afternoon of the fourth one, when his doctor called for him, his legs themselves assured him that he could not without assistance, so that his doctor looked at him with a sort of admiration almost. “By gravy, you’re even up to an ambulance. What do you say? Go in toes-up like you had come in a patrol wagon right out from under Brooklyn Bridge?”
“No,” Mr. Acarius said. “Just hurry.”
“What?” the doctor said. “It can’t be that your mind is changing.”
“No,” Mr. Acarius said. “This is what I wanted.”
“The brotherhood of suffering,” the doctor said. “All of you together there, to support and comfort one another in the knowledge of the world’s anguish, and that you must be a man and not run from it? How did it go? Peace and quiet for the lacerated and screaming nerves, sympathy, understanding—”
“All right,” Mr. Acarius said. “Just hurry. I’m going to be sick.”
So they did: between his own houseman and an elevator man who remembered him well and tenderly from many Christmases, down the elevator and across the foyer and into the doctor’s car; then into the other small foyer again, where Mr. Acarius knew that at any moment now he was going to be sick, looking out of a sort of tilting chasm of foul bile-tasting misery at what was holding them up: some commotion or excitement at the elevator which a flashy, slightly brassy woman in an expensive fur coat, like a fading show girl, was being forcibly restrained from entering. If somebody doesn’t do something pretty quick, Mr. Acarius thought, it won’t matter anymore. Which apparently someone did, his own doctor perhaps, though Mr. Acarius was too miserable to tell, only that he was in the elevator at last, the door sliding to across the heavily rouged shape of the woman’s scream. “Peace and quiet,” his doctor said.
“All right,” Mr. Acarius said again. “Just hurry.”
But they made it: in the privacy of his room at last and the nurse (he did not remark when or where she came from either) even got the basin in position in time. Then he lay exhausted on his bed while the deft hands which he had anticipated divested him of his clothing and slipped his pajamas over his legs and arms, not his doctor’s hands, nor — opening his eyes — even the nurse’s.
It was a man, with a worn almost handsome actor’s face, in pajamas and dressing gown, whom Mr. Acarius knew at once, with a sort of peaceful vindication, to be another patient. He had been right, it was not even as he had merely hoped but as he had expected, lying there, empty and exhausted and even at peace at last while he watched the stranger take up his coat and trousers and move rapidly into the bathroom with them and reappear empty-handed, stooping now over Mr. Acarius’s suitcase when the nurse entered with a small glass of something and a tumbler of water on a tray.
“What is it?” Mr. Acarius said.
“For your nerves,” the nurse said.
“I don’t want it now,” Mr. Acarius said. “I want to suffer a little more yet.”
“You want to what?” the nurse said.
“The man’s suffering,” the stranger said. “Go on, Goldie. Bring him a drink. You’ve got to have something to put down on his chart.”
“Says you,” the nurse said.
“You’ve got to watch Goldie,” the stranger said to Mr. Acarius. “She’s from Alabama.”
“What time everybody’s not watching you,” the nurse said to the stranger. She glanced rapidly, apparently at Mr. Acarius’s discarded clothing, because she said sharply, “Where’s his suit?”
“I’ve already put it in,” the stranger said, tossing Mr. Acarius’s shoes and underwear and shirt into the suitcase and closing it rapidly. Then he crossed to a narrow locker in the corner and stowed the suitcase in it and closed the door, which now revealed itself to be armed with a small padlock. “You want to lock it yourself, or will you trust me?” the stranger said to the nurse.
“Hold it,” the nurse said grimly. She set the tray on the table and entered the bathroom and then reappeared. “All right,” she said. “Lock it.” The stranger did so. The nurse approached and tested the lock and then took up the tray again. “When you want this, ring,” she told Mr. Acarius. At the door she paused again, speaking this time to the stranger. “Get out of here now,” she said. “Let him rest.”
“Right,” the stranger said. The nurse went out. The stranger watched the door for perhaps half a minute. Then he came back to the bed. “It’s behind the tub,” he said.
“What?” Mr. Acarius said.
“That’s right,” the stranger said. “You’ve got to watch even the good ones like Goldie. Just wait till you see the one that’s coming at midnight. Boy. But we’ll be all right now.” He looked down at Mr. Acarius, speaking rapidly now. “My name’s Miller. You’re a patient of Doctor Cochrane’s, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Mr. Acarius said.
“That’ll do it; Cochrane’s got such a good reputation around here that any patient of his gets the benefit of the doubt. Judy’s down stairs — Watkins’s girl friend. She’s already tried once to get up here. But Watkins himself hasn’t a chance; Goldie’s got him sewed up in his room and is watching him like a hawk. But you can do it.”
“Do what?” Mr. Acarius said.
“Call down and say Judy is your guest, and to send her up,” Miller said, handing Mr. Acarius the telephone. “Her name’s Lester.”
“What?” Mr. Acarius said. “What?”
“OK. I’ll do it for you. What’s your name? I didn’t catch it.”
“Acarius,” Mr. Acarius said.
“Acarius,” Miller said. He said into the telephone: “Hello. This is Mr. Acarius in twenty-seven. Send Miss Lester up, will you? Thanks.” He put the receiver back and picked up Mr. Acarius’s dressing gown. “Now put this on and be ready to meet her. We’ll take care of the rest of it. We’ll have to work fast because Goldie’s going to catch on as soon as she hears the elevator.”
It did go fast. Mr. Acarius in his dressing gown was barely on his feet and Miller was scarcely out of the room, when he heard the elevator stop, followed by a hard rapid clatter of female heels in the corridor. Then the next moment his room seemed to be full of people: the brassy, slightly buxom slightly faded girl whom he had left screaming in the foyer, running in and flinging herself upon him shrieking, “Darling! Darling!” with Miller and another man in pajamas and robe on her heels — an older man of at least sixty, with no actor’s face this time because Shriner’s conventions and nightclubs and the first-night lobbies of musical comedies were full of it — and last of all, the nurse and the elevator attendant, Mr. Acarius watching in horror the brassy girl now hissing viciously: “Hurry, you bastards, hurry!” holding the fur coat open while Miller and the other man tore savagely at the front of her dress until it fell open and revealed a half-pint bottle tucked into each lobe of her brassiere.
Then the room was empty again, as suddenly and violently as it had filled, though not for long; indeed, to Mr. Acarius it seemed almost simultaneous, superposed: The uproar still fading up the corridor, the older patient’s voice still raised in adjuration at the nurse or whoever it was who had finally got the two bottles, when the heels clattered again, the brassy girl entering this time at a dead run, snatching the front of her dress and slip into a wad at her middle and revealing a third bottle, a full pint this time, taped high between her running legs, running to Mr. Acarius and crying down at him: “Grab it! Grab it!” then, while Mr. Acarius, incapable of moving, merely stared, ripping the bottle free herself and thrusting it into the chair behind him and turning already smoothing her skirt over her hips as the nurse entered, saying to the nurse haughtily, in a voice of a princess or a queen: “Have the goodness not to touch me again.”
And he still crouched there, weak and trembling, while the uproar really did die away; he was still there perhaps ten minutes later when
