It came back, though, and with it came his classroom voice.
"I don't know who you are," it taunted. "If you never show up I can't find you, can't do anything about it." Its tones were laughing, knowing, goading. I drank. The face faded, the voice became inaudible.
Three days later, and God knows how many quarts, I took that drink every alcoholic dreads—the one you can't keep down.
I awoke a long time later and opened my eyes. Something vaguely like the desk clerk was hovering over me. A loud voice was pounding unmercifully against my tortured ears.
"Come on, get up and get out of here, you filthy bum," it was shouting. "We've got no rooms for the likes of you in this hotel."
I shook my head to clear away the fog over my eyes. The indignant face of a maid was staring at me.
"You ought to be ashamed," she said shrilly, "vomiting on the rug! Where do you think you are, in the park?"
"Get a wet towel and bring him to," the desk clerk ordered....
I reached the precarious footing of the sidewalk with a feeling that I had been rushed too much, and with the afternoon sun ejecting fiery red shafts of searing pain into my brain through my punctured eye-balls.
People were staring at me as they passed. In an attempt to appear casual I stuck my hands in my pockets. The fingers of my right hand encountered something stiff, with sharp corners.