Read Moise and the World of Reason for Free Online

met.”
    â€œI mean tonight.”
    â€œNo, I haven’t been to Moise’s since that Oriental with you said that he would print me on the plaster with a smile.”
    â€œHe was not Oriental. I think I have to go on now.”
    (Actually I did feel that I had to go on since this was an encounter that seemed to have no purpose and my head felt like it was suspended yards above me at the end of a string that was about to release it. But the little animal-like man said, “Please walk me to the corner, I can’t make it alone.”)
    We stood on the corner, and now I could see that he wasn’t drunk or stoned but very ill.
    This observation didn’t concern me much but being from the South I felt that I shouldn’t ignore it.
    â€œYou don’t seem to be well.”
    â€œYes, and there aren’t any taxis.”
    â€œTaxes on what?” I said with a touch of malice.
    â€œEverything in existence. Let’s go in that bar on the corner for some wine and if they won’t call us a taxi I’ll order a limousine from Weber and Green.”
    â€œSounds like a vaudeville team.”
    â€œYes, most things are, and they look like funeral cars.”

    I took him into the bar on the diagonally opposite corner and the moment he entered he was seized by a crazed sort of exuberance.
    â€œI cry for madder music and more wine!”
    The bartender looked at him with disparaging recognition and paid no attention to the outcry, but the little man fell into a chair at a table and began to stomp his feet under it.
    A kitchen employee came out with catsup stains all over his apron. His attitude toward my accidental companion was friendlier than the bartender’s: at least he said, “Glass or bottle?”
    â€œBottle and two glasses!”
    Then he went over to the box, deposited a quarter and punched one number three times.
    Now this is somewhat amazing but it turned out to be the Lady in Satin singing that old favorite of mine “Violets for Your Furs.”
    He came back to the table and simultaneously two things happened of the automatic nature. He kissed me on the mouth and I started to cry.
    The whole evening and night seemed to have been served in a concentrated form, like a bouillon cube dropped into a cup of hot water, on that Bowery table.
    The bottle and the two glasses were on the table now and he was touching my face with a paper napkin.
    â€œBaby, I didn’t mean to do that, it was just automatic.”
    (He thought I was crying over his Listerine kiss which I’d barely noticed.)
    He slumped there drinking the dago red wine as if to extinguish a fire in his belly, the rate at which he poured it down him slowing only when the bottle was half-empty. Then his one good eye focused on me again but the luster was gone from it and its look was inward.
    â€œYou have encountered a wino.”
    â€œAppropriately in the Bowery.”
    â€œAfter the first glass I can’t tell a vintage château wine from this bilge served here or even
rouge
from
blanc
. Did you know that the man who wrote
The Shanghai Gesture
wound up in the Bowery, too? I mean he created the part of Mother Goddam for old Florence Reed and it made the producers a fortune but he died in a Bowery gutter a lot younger than me. And do you know his name?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, such is fame, I can’t remember it either, just the first name, John. It wasn’t a good melodrama but it contained a wonderful speech or two and as a farewell gesture I would like to revive the Florence Reed part in drag.
    â€œIn my youth,” he continued, “I was so shy it was difficult for me to talk but now I’ve become a garrulous old man who is full of anecdotes that pour out as the wine pours in.”
    I replenished my glass while I had a chance to and his one good eye, similar in color to the two eyes of Moise, turned more deeply inward.
    â€œI’m afraid I’ve lost your