When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (Matthew Scudder, #6)

by Lawrence Block

The windows at Morrissey’s were painted black. The blast was loud enough and close enough to rattle them. It chopped off conversation in midsyllable, froze a waiter in midstride, making of him a statue with a tray of drinks on his shoulder and one foot in the air. The great round noise died out like dust settling, and for a long moment afterward the room remained hushed, as if with respect.

They were saloon friends. I rarely saw them—or anyone else, in those days—other than in a room where strangers gathered to drink liquor. I was still drinking then, of course, and I was at a point where the booze did (or seemed to do) more for me than it did to me.

“BOURBON is low-down,” she said. “You know what I mean?” “Here I thought it was a gentleman’s drink.” “It’s for a gentleman likes to get down in the dirt. Scotch is vests and ties and prep school. Bourbon is an old boy ready to let the animal out, ready to let the nasty show. Bourbon is sitting up on a hot night and not minding if you sweat.”

Then we talked and had a little more of the bourbon, and before long she dropped off to sleep. I covered her with the top sheet and a cotton blanket. I could have slept myself, but instead I put on my clothes and sent myself home. Because who in her right mind’d want Matt Scudder around by the dawn’s early light?

Tommy had slept in this room, had lived with the woman who smelled of lilies-of-the-valley. I knew him from the bars, I knew him with a girl on his arm and a drink in his hand and his laugh echoing off paneled walls. I didn’t know him in a room like this, in a house like this.

“Yeah. I don’t mean it’s connected, losing the weight and drinking club soda and killing himself. The life you lead and the things you see, I’ll tell you, a cop goes and eats his gun, I never figure it requires an explanation. You know what I mean?”

Ah, Jesus, Matt, these are the best hours of the day. You can keep your Morrissey’s. This is like having your own private after-hours, you know? The joint empty and dark, the music off, the chairs up, one or two people around for company, the rest of the world locked the hell out.

“Oh, bullshit. You’re a guy, a human being. Just another poor son of a bitch who doesn’t want to be alone when the sacred ginmill closes.”

And so we’ll drink the final toast That never can be spoken: Here’s to the heart that is wise enough To know when it’s better off broken

I’d stopped at Armstrong’s first, briefly, and Miss Kitty’s had the same Sunday-night feel to it. A handful of regulars and neighborhood people rode a mood that was the flip side of Thank God It’s Friday. On the jukebox, a girl sang about having a brand-new pair of roller skates. Her voice seemed to slip in between the notes and find sounds that weren’t on the scale.

“All we got tonight is the booze talking, your booze and my booze, two bottles of whiskey talkin’ to each other. That’s all. Morning comes, we can forget everything was said here tonight. I didn’t kill anybody, you didn’t say I did, everything’s cool, we’re still buddies. Right? Right?”

but ten years ago I was always drinking and now I don’t drink at all. I don’t regret a single one of the drinks I took, and I hope to God I never take another. Because that, you see, is the less-traveled road on which I find myself these days, and it has made all the difference. Oh, yes. All the difference.