“Just what you did,” I told him. “If they want money, they ask you for it first. Where you staying?”
“Y.M.C.A.,” he said, almost asleep. “Back in Covington, Kentucky, I was a member of the Y and I kept up my membership. They have to let me in because I’m a member. Spacers have all kinds of trouble, Doc. Woman trouble. Hotel trouble. Fam’ly trouble. Religious trouble. I was raised a Southern Baptist, but wheah’s Heaven, anyway? I ask’ Doctor Chitwood las’ time home before the redlines got so thick—Doc, you aren’t a minister of the Gospel, are you? I hope I di’n’ say anything to offend you.”
“No offense, son,” I said. “No offense.”
I walked him to the avenue and waited for a fleet cab. It was almost five minutes. The independent cabs roll drunks and dent the fenders of fleet cabs if they show up in Skid Row and then the fleet drivers have to make reports on their own time to the company. It keeps them away. But I got one and dumped the kid in.
“The Y Hotel,” I told the driver. “Here’s five. Help him in when you get there.”
When I walked through Screwball Square again, some college kids were yelling “wheah’s your redlines” at old Charlie, the last of the Wobblies.
Old Charlie kept roaring: “The hell with your breadlines! I’m talking about atomic bombs. Right—up—there!” And he pointed at the Moon.
It was a nice night, but the liquor was dying in me.
There was a joint around the corner, so I went in and had a drink to carry me to the club; I had a bottle there. I got into the first cab that came.
“Athletic Club,” I said.
“Inna dawghouse, harh?” the driver said, and he gave me a big personality smile.
I didn’t say anything and he started the car.
He was right, of course. I was in everybody’s doghouse. Some day I’d scare hell out of Tom and Lise by going home and showing them what their daddy looked like.
Down at the Institute, I was in the doghouse.
“Oh, dear,” everybody at the Institute said to everybody, “I’m sure I don’t know what ails the man. A lovely wife and two lovely grown children and she had to tell him ‘either you go or I go.’ And drinking! And this is rather subtle, but it’s a well-known fact that neurotics seek out low company to compensate for their guilt feelings. The places he frequents. Doctor Francis Bowman, the man who made space flight a reality. The man who put the Bomb Base on the Moon! Really, I’m sure I don’t know what ails him.”
The hell with them all.