The Last Dream
Page 24
“Well then,” said the slim man, returning the sheaf of papers to his briefcase, with a wash-my-hands air and standing up. “That concludes the matter.” He looked at Tommy. “Shall we go?”
“Go?” said Tommy, looking up startled; and then back again at the crowd for a second, before returning his gaze to the slim man. “But I thought—”
“The other place, the other place,” said the slim man with some asperity, frowning. “It has to be one or the other.”
“The other place!” said Tommy, astonished and set up in his chair. “Now who’d have thought—” He started to get up, then sank back into his seat.
“Well? Well?” said the slim man, checking himself in midstep away from the table.
“This other place,” said Tommy slowly; “just what’s it like?”
“Why, it’s like whatever you wish,” said the slim man. “That’s why it’s a place of reward.”
“Oh,” said Tommy. “Well—”
“Well what?” said the thin man. “Surely you don’t object to that?”
“Well, you see—” said Tommy, slowly still, “about this business of rewards. You might put it that I’ve been being rewarded all my life long, right here where I’ve been. And I enjoyed—” Tommy’s voice got firmer— “every damn minute of it. I don’t mean to have you think I didn’t. I wouldn’t take back a glassful or a moment of it. But—” his voice slowed again—“all the same…”
“All the same—what?” said the slim man.
“Well, it’s been one hell of a fine life.” Tommy looked up at him. “But you know, I’m ninety-four; and sometimes I think nowdays, even if I could drink another bottle just like the ones I used to, and feel the way I used to—perhaps I’d just as soon sit back instead and remember the bottle I did drink, than put another one on top of it. There’s some kind of quote about that—” He wrinkled his brow. “The pitcher going to the well once too often, or some such—no, that isn’t right. The point is, the first times are really the best times for everything. After a while it gets to be just comfortable, instead of being all skyrockets and New Year’s Eve.”
He stopped and looked up at the slim man again.
“You remember when you came into my hospital room,” he said. “I told you I was looking forward to the end of the book, here. And I meant it. It’s all been so fine all these years and I wouldn’t want to spoil it now by taking the pitcher to the well too many times… What I mean is—” he looked at the slim man almost appealingly— “other place, or no other place, if my reward there is simply going to be more of the same, I think I’d just as soon pass. It just isn’t worth it—” he looked out once more over the waiting multitude—“it just isn’t worth it to spoil what I had.”
“Don’t worry,” said the slim man, and for a second his voice sounded quite unbusinesslike, “we hadn’t an eternity of parties scheduled for you. It was something rather different. We’ve got a comfortable chair reserved for you in the library of a rather exclusive club. A club full of old characters like yourself who like to sit around and talk.”
“A club? A club? What characters? Who?”
“Who?” said the slim man, almost smiling. “Why, there’s one named Bacchus, and another called Don Juan, and a rather fat one named Diamond Jim Brady.”
“Oh,” said Tommy.
“So you see,” said the slim man, looking at him. Tommy was nodding his head slowly and emphatically.
“I see,” he said. “I should’ve known it. Sorry I was so suspicious. Give me a hand up, will you?”
The slim man gave him a hand up.
“Lean on me,” said the slim man.
“That champagne,” said Tommy apologetically, as his knees rubbered a little. “Drank it a little too fast. But it was a great bottle to end up on.”
“Pleasure to be of assistance,” said the thin man; and together they went up through the crowd, and out of the door, and into a sunlit world beyond, where the skies were as bright as Memory.
END