Enough of Sorrow

by Lawrence Block

  “It can. It’s supposed to be a sign that alcohol hits you harder than you think. But just losing a half hour isn’t that remarkable, especially when you’re half-unconscious during that half-hour to begin with.”

  “It’s not as if I have to drink…”

  “My dear,” March said archly, “everyone has to drink. The alternative is utter sobriety and that would be unthinkable.”

  “I could stop if I wanted to. But why stop something that I enjoy?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m certainly not an alcoholic.”

  “What’s an alcoholic?”

  “How do I define it? “ She thought a moment. “Someone who can’t handle liquor at all. That’s the way I understand it. Someone who takes one drink and keeps on drinking until he passes out, with no control. He can go for months without touching a drop, but one shot puts him off on a binge right away. Is that the way it goes or have I been watching too many movies?”

  March smiled “I suppose that’s a valid definition,” he said. “But I’m not like that at all, you know. I can drink without going on binges.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not an alcoholic, Adrian.”

  “Oh, but I certainly am.”

  She stared at him.

  “I drink,” he said, “slowly but steadily from morning until night, spacing a precarious line of shot glasses from cradle to grave. Do you know the line from Prufrock? ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.’ A marvelous phrase. I have measured out my life with shot glasses, and cocktail glasses, and wine glasses…”

  “I’ve never seen you drunk, Adrian.”

  “You’ve never seen me sober, either. Didn’t you realize as much?” He shook his head in wonder. “I haven’t had a sizable blackout in ten or fifteen years, which is why I don’t place too much credence in that definition of alcoholism. I have hangovers, but I’ve learned to get ready for them—aspirin the night before, thiamine during the day, aspirin and fruit juice on awakening, a little milk of magnesia after breakfast. You ought to be writing this down.”

  “Why?”

  “You may find the information useful, Karen. Don’t look so horrified. Do you have any idea how many people drink too much? And can’t get along without it? And function in spite of it?” He set down his cigarette, then picked it up and drew on it again. “I have not had a wholly sober breath since my wife died fourteen years ago. Fifteen years, come to think of it. That’s not what set me off, I was drinking regularly enough before then, but when she died it only seemed reasonable and proper to sober up for the funeral. So I stayed dry for a few days, which was not so hard as I thought it might be but not much fun either, and then I started again.” He spread his hands. “There you have it. My public would be horrified but—” he smiled knowingly “Judge Philip Randall is a lush.”

  “I never would have guessed,” she said.

  “Perhaps I hide it well. An actor has that power Burns wrote of, seeing himself as others see him. In the theater the impression is of paramount importance, the reality a bad second. Any producer on Broadway would rather employ an actor who drinks but doesn’t show it than one who makes do with two rum cokes a month but muffs his lines whenever he smells the cork.”

  “Could you stop?”

  “Perhaps. May I beg the question? If I wanted to badly enough, I could stop. People can do anything if they want to badly enough. I obviously don’t want to, not with any basic desire. And on top of that—oh, look at the time.”

  “Oh, I’m late.”

  “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll take care of the tab.”

  That afternoon she sat at her desk and thought that no one person should have to support more than a single vice. It wasn’t decent, and you couldn’t carry it off in style. It was enough to be a lesbian. She couldn’t hack piling alcoholism on top of homosexuality. You had to take your choice, had to decide whether you wanted to be a lesbian or a lush; you couldn’t be both at once.

  It was ridiculous, she told herself. She was no alcoholic.

  She was simply a person who liked a drink at certain times of the day, or on certain occasions.

  Still…

  She had never done much drinking before. What was responsible? Not her state of mind, certainly, because she was happier and more gratified than she had ever been before. Not her body chemistry, either, since it was fairly obvious that she was not the one-drink-and-away-we-go type of lush. No matter how she looked at it, it seemed a clearcut thing—she drank when she wanted to because she liked the taste of it and the effect it had upon her. She drank more now than in the past because in the past she had not known what a pleasant difference a drink could make, nor would her former self have had the courage to indulge herself whenever and however she wanted to.

  But it was not as though she needed it.

  Why not prove it to herself? She would simply not have a drink for the next three days. Nothing—no wine, no beer, no cocktails, no scotch, nothing at all. She would not make any announcements of the fact, no grand vows. She would just quit for a few days to prove she could do it with no stress and no strain at all; then once it had been proved to her satisfaction, she could live her life the way she chose.

  The first night wasn’t too hard. They ate at home, just sandwiches that Rae had thrown together. Rae was working on a batch of preliminary sketches and was too wrapped up in what she was doing to care about doing to care about going out for dinner or to prepare anything elaborate. She managed to avoid the standard before-dinner drink as well; she took the drink but poured it untouched down the bathroom sink, feeling very noble as she did so. She found herself a little short-tempered later in the evening, a little edgy, but that was simply because she had gotten into the habit of relaxing with a drink and she missed it. But it was no real need on her part, for goodness sake.

  The next day at noon she started to go to the corner hamburger heaven. If she wasn’t going to have a drink, there was no point in going to a good restaurant. Wait, she thought—why be so silly? She could certainly enjoy a good meal at a good restaurant without a drink. A drink might improve the meal, but it was hardly necessary. In any case, she was hungry, and she could use a good lunch.

  That afternoon she messed up two phone calls, something she rarely did. Her typing was terrible—Gordon gave her only one letter to do, and she had to do it four times before she came up with presentable copy. By the time she left the office her head was splitting and the roof of her mouth was bone-dry.

  I don’t need it, she told herself. It’s not that I need a drink. Just that I feel rotten, and I would feel a good deal better with a drink, and there was surely no point in this silly little test anyway. It was nonsense, pure nonsense. It didn’t mean a thing.

  What was it all about, anyway? Mortifying the flesh like a repentant sinner? Undergoing some foolishly symbolic martyrdom like a psychotic bucking for sainthood?

  Silly.

  She went straight from the office to a small bar on 45th Street near Madison. She sat at the bar—something she had never done before—and she knocked off three straight scotches. Miraculously, the headache went away, the tension disappeared, the nerves calmed down.

  It didn’t mean a thing she told herself.

  But she didn’t believe it at all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The three drinks had hit her hard. She took a cab home and felt slightly rocky in the back seat. She sat up straight, gripped the seat in front of her with both hands as if this would make her stomach calm down.

  “Something wrong, Miss?”

  “No,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  But she made the cab driver stop the car on the corner of Third Avenue, and she paid and dismissed him and stood on the corner for a few moments gulping air. It didn’t mean a thing, she told herself, but she knew better than to believe that convenient lie. She thought of going home, to Rae, and she hesitated. Of course Rae didn’t know about her little test, and would not know that she had fa
iled, but, still, she couldn’t bring herself to go to the apartment and face the blonde girl. She had been drinking—not because she wanted to but because she had to. This bothered her, and it kept her from going to the apartment.

  Instead, she went to a bar. A bar on the corner of Third Avenue, a neighborhood pub with half a dozen men in it and no women at all. She sat at the bar and the men stared at her. She half-hoped one of them would approach her so that she could tell him what he could do to himself. No one did. The bartender came, and that was what she really wanted, of course.

  “Double scotch,” she said…

  She had never been this drunk before. She could still get around perfectly well, could walk straight, could manage to navigate. And her mind seemed to be working with perfect clarity. Nevertheless, she was rotten drunk and she knew it.

  When she opened the apartment door Rae got up out of the chair and started toward her. “Oh, my god,” she was saying. “Baby, I was worried sick about you. Do you know what time it is? Why didn’t you call? What happened to you? Where were you, for godssake?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry! Oh, you’re drunk, Karen, what on earth is wrong with you? I don’t understand it, baby. What on earth—”

  “You don’t own me, Rae.”

  The blonde girl stepped back as if she had been slapped brutally across the face. Her hand came up in defensive reflex. Her mouth fell open.

  “Karen…”

  “I’m a big girl now,” she heard herself say, “I can do what I damn well want.”

  “But—”

  “You want to know something? You’re turning into a nag.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Don’t I? Let go of me.”

  “You’d better go to sleep now, Karen.”

  “Damn it, you’re not my mother.”

  She couldn’t believe what was happening, could not understand what she herself was doing. It was crazy—she was fighting with Rae, making nothing at all into a horrible fight, and she was conscious of what she was doing but couldn’t do a thing to stop it. It was almost schizophrenic, as if there were two Karens and she was sitting across the room, helpless to interfere, while one of her was making a mess out of everything.

  And she shouted at Rae, accused her of jealousy, railed at her, cut her with words sharper than knives.

  “I’ll do what I want, do you understand me? If I want to have a drink I’ll have one, do you hear me? I can go where I want and do what I please, I didn’t start sleeping with you because I wanted some yellow-haired tramp to mother me, do you hear me?”

  Rae heard her. The whole neighborhood could have heard her; she was shouting at the top of her lungs.

  “Karen, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “Karen, baby, what did I do? What’s the matter?”

  “Everything’s the matter.”

  “Karen! Karen, where are you going? Oh, don’t leave now. Don’t leave me. Karen, don’t! Not the way you feel now. You’ll hurt yourself, you’ll hurt us both. Stay, baby. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “Then coffee. Anything, Karen, calm down, don’t leave now, not in the shape you’re in. Baby, you’ll hurt yourself, you’ll get in awful trouble.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Karen!”

  “Get out of my way!”

  She stormed out the door, shoved her way past Rae. The blonde girl was crying now, helpless.

  “When will you be back? Karen, honey—”

  “Shut up!”

  She never remembered how she got downtown. She probably took a cab, but she remembered nothing between the time when she stormed out of the apartment and the time she was standing in a dirty basement bar on a quiet street in the lower section of the Village. She wasn’t sure of the name of the street and never knew how e had found the place. It seemed inconceivable that she could have located the bar by mere accident, since it was off the beaten track and she had never before been aware of its existence. Perhaps she had simply asked the cab-driver (if she took a cab) to take her to a lesbian hang-out. That seemed unlikely enough, but there was no other logical explanation for her having turned up there.

  It was not a pleasant place. A juke box gave out with harsh gutbucket blues. A long bar ran the length of the narrow room, and a handful of tables were scattered along the opposite wall. The tables were mostly empty. The bar itself was jammed. She had to wedge her way up to it, and had to wait for awhile before a broad-shouldered short-haired girl came over to take her order. She ordered a double shot of scotch with a water chaser and drank it off as soon as it came.

  The bar was a lesbian place. There was not a man in it, although some of the female customers were mannish enough to fool you unless you looked rather closely at them. She stood at the bar with the scotch burning its way into her system and she sipped the water chaser and felt suddenly very much alone, lost in the middle of a crowd. She told herself that she should not feel alone, not here of all places. After all, she was with her own kind.

  A wave of remorse washed over her. She thought of what she had said and done to Rae and she wanted to cry, to scream. It was wrong, all wrong, it had been her fault entirely, and she could not understand what made her act as she had acted. She should be home right now, she told herself. She should be home with Rae, and instead she was at this stupid ugly foul bar and no one was even paying any attention to her and she should be ashamed of herself, horribly and dreadfully ashamed of herself…

  There was a spell of blankness. The next thing that impressed itself upon her memory was when she found herself dancing with a tall, heavyset butch with short black hair and a chin pitted with acne scars. The music was slow and suggestive and the butch smelled incredibly of a combination of sweat and man’s aftershave lotion. The heavy girl was holding her tightly in her arms. Karen felt the girl’s body brush against her own breasts, felt the insinuating probe of the butch’s loins against her own. She was at once repelled and excited. It was all very sickening, and at the same time a quiver of naked lust shot through her, jabbing her almost painfully in breasts and groin, stirring her in an astonishing way.

  The girl was whispering in her ear: “Baby, let’s get out of here, you and me, huh? You got a place we can go to? I got a pad but my chick is there, you know, and I got no eyes to see her tonight. Baby, we’ll go some place, you and me, I’ll do things you never did, I’ll show you scenes you never dreamed about, baby…”

  Consciousness drifted in and out, dipped and faded. She kept on drinking. Memories rushed back and forth in shred and patches of light among the darkness.

  Memories: Dancing in a corner, a dark corner with some other girl, a slender doll-faced slip of a girl. The girl was moaning softly. Karen had her hand up beneath the girl’s skirt. The girl writhed in her grasp as she probed with urgent fingers, found, touched, caressed.

  Memories: Sitting at a table, crying, crying desperately. One girl wanting to know what was wrong, another girl saying Leave her alone, let her be, the kid’s got things to cry about, give her air and leave her alone.

  Memories: Another bar, quieter, more refined. She sat at a table with a butch who had a hand on her leg and a girl passed and looked at her, and she looked up at the girl and recognized her. A tall overblown blonde, an exotic dancer, one of Leon Gordon’s clients. The girl had been in and out of the agent’s office two and three times a week, and Karen had never expected to see her in a place like this. The girl—she couldn’t remember her name— was saying, “Well, I’ll be damned! Hi, honey—I never knew you were one of the girls. I would have said hello nicer if I knew. One of these days, honey lover girl…”

  Memories: Walking through black streets arm in any with a mannish girl, smoking cigarettes, weaving drunkenly from side to side. The butch’s arm around her waist, a hand drifting up to cup her breasts, a voice in her ear…

  The
n, for a while, no more memories.

  She woke brutally, her head splitting, her stomach churning, a furious pain in her tender loins. She did not know where she was. She looked around and saw a room she had never seen before, and all at once it was like waking up in that hospital after her attempt at suicide; once again she did not know where she was or how she had gotten there. Now she was not alone. There was someone beside her, the butch she had walked the streets with. The girl was older than she, Karen saw. She was sleeping on her side, facing Karen, her mouth slack, breathing heavily. She was a heavyish woman in her late thirties, with pancake breasts and muscular thighs and a cruel mouth, even when it was relaxed in sleep.

  She tore her eves from the butch, and she stumbled to her feet and dashed for the door. It led not to the bathroom, as she had hoped, but to a closet, and she collapsed against the door frame and vomited into a slovenly pile of coats and dresses.

  The butch slept on. Karen looked at her again, looked unwillingly at the girl with whom she had made love. She must have been unconscious, she told herself. She must have passed out, and then the rotten dyke must have raped her while she was too drunk to know what was happening.

  Or else…

  Or else she had been aware of what was going on. Or else she had participated, had actually enjoyed it all and responded to it all, taking some ungodly pleasure from the horror of the embrace. It was too horrid to think of it that way, and once again her stomach turned at the image of what had been done to her and what she must have done, how she must have acted, what she might have said and done and all, all of it too much to bear.

  She couldn’t stay there, not for another moment. She could not bear the thought of spending another minute in that room. And she did not know what would happen if the butch awakened. What could she do? What would she say?

  In a panic, she got into her clothes and tore out of the room and down flight after flight of stairs to the street below. She hurried through the cold yellow light of dawn, not knowing where she was or where she was going, only anxious to get as far away from the scene of last night’s disgrace as she could.