The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

of himself as a spectator making a kind of field-trip in sociology, and he believed the others, perhaps, might be wondering who he was. Tonight he would be aloof, detached, enjoying his anonymity.
    There were couples at some of the tables, a few fellows and girls. He studied them, and studied the football heroes at the bar. Their shoulders were wide and straight, so much like boards (another wonderful notion!) that it looked as if their necks were sticking out of pillories. He watched in turn the bartender, the waiters, the pianist.
    A fattish baby-faced young man—Dannie or Billy or Jimmie or Hughie somebody—sat at the tiny piano, talking dirty songs. The men and girls strained to anticipate the double-meanings; and when the off-color line was delivered, they stared at eachother as if aghast and laughed hard, harder than the joke warranted, vying with each other in appreciation. There were songs called “The 23rd Street Ferry” and “Peter and the Dyke”;
camping, queen, faggot, meat
were words frequently played upon; the men and girls looked at each other and roared; the two athletes shifted uncertainly at the bar, not getting it; the baby-faced young man half-smiled, half-scowled about the room, his fat fingers rippling over the keys in a monotonous simple accompaniment like a striptease; he himself felt nothing but amused contempt for the cheap sophistication of the place—provincial, nothing short of it; and he ordered another gin-and-Italian.
    He was enjoying himself now. He speculated on how he appeared to the others. If anybody was wondering about him or looking at him, they must have decided that here was that rarity, an American who knew how to drink. He drank quietly and alone—an
apéritif
at that. He took his time, and did not bother with others. Obviously he was used to drink, had probably had it all his life, at home—wines at table, liqueurs after dinner, that sort of thing. Drink was no novelty to him—nothing to order straight, or in a highball, gulp down at once so you could order another, get in as many as possible between now and midnight.… This was the impression he believed he gave and was consciously giving. With money in his pocket, with several days to go before Wick came home, he had plenty of chance to play the solitary observant gentleman-drinker having a quiet time amusing himself watching other folk carouse, the while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry.
    A couple came in and sat down at the next table, on the bench beside him, another young man and a girl. He took them in, subtly, not staring, watching his chance to observe them unobserved, as if it were some kind of delightful game of skill. The girl took off her fur and put it on the bench with her handbag, between herself and him, not more than a foot-and-a-half from where he sat. He tried to place the kind of girl she was, mused on whereshe came from, what she did. It was a good enough fur—marten. He looked at the handbag. Brown alligator, with a large copper clasp, and a metal monogram in one corner:
M. Mc
. The young man wore a grey tweed suit, an expensive one, so rough and coarse that it looked as if small twigs were woven into it, chunks of rope and hemp, pieces of coal—he smiled with pleasure at such an idea. Isn’t that exactly the kind of suit he’d be wearing? he said to himself—and then smiled again, for of course he wouldn’t have said it if the young man hadn’t been wearing that kind of suit. He was delighted with this observation—it told him that his mind was working keenly and at the top of its bent, with that hyper-consciousness that lay just this side of intoxication. Well, he’d keep it this side, because he was having a good time, enjoying his own aloofness to the scene around him.
    He eyed the handbag again. What was in it?
Lady-trifles
, probably;
immoment toys;
God what marvelous expressions, what felicity, who else could have thought of