Me Bandy, You Cissie by Donald Jack

Author:Donald Jack [Jack, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780981024448
Publisher: Sybertooth INc
Published: 2009-01-05T13:00:00+00:00

BLOTTO AND COMPANY

THAT INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING seemed to cast a cloud over the weather. Because of all the meteorological filth that fall, I was able to make only four more flights in the Vimy by the end of November. Only one of these trips was with passengers: Dasha and four friends. They started out in the open cockpits marvelling at the view and ended up complaining about the drafts. After that introduction to the wonders of flight, Dasha never went near Molekamp again.

Meanwhile, drink, revelry, and a spurious social success rapidly undid me. Though a plain but comfortable apartment would have cost only half what I was paying at the Belmont, I made no effort to move out. It impressed people that I could afford such luxurious accommodation.

I started drinking heavily. Ghastly concoctions like pink ladies, gin bucks, and orange blossoms, out of bottles libellously labelled gin, scotch, bourbon, and rye. I spent fewer hours at Molekamp and more and more time in salon and speakeasy, carousing around town with Dasha in a kind of anesthetized fervour, deliciously seasoned with Puritan guilt. I convinced myself that it was a binge well earned after two years of cold and hunger and being executed several times. So whenever guilt attempted to surface, I inundated it by giving the valves of debauchery another twist.

Tony was the only person who seemed concerned at the way I was carrying on. “What about this company you’re supposed to be working on?” he asked.

“Already formed, old bean. ’s – ’s called Blotto and Company,” I said, snorting and chortling and expelling clouds of watered-down absolute alcohol coloured with iodine. Then, trying to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder but missing: “Don’t worry, dear old Tony, I’ll make my fortune with the Vimy sooner or later ... Maybe ... Somehow. God knows how ...” Then, angrily: “Well, damn it, I’ve earned it, haven’t I? Quit lookin’ a’me li’ tha’. Leave me alone – I’m having a swell time.”

So I continued to slide downhill on my assets, hiccupping all the way. Any wet, undercarriage-bogging day – and, increasingly, fine days as well – was likely to find me sallying forth with Dasha, both of us already stewed to the gills after an afternoon’s boozing and bickering in the hotel suite, to misbehave over dinner in some smart restaurant, then on to the Montmartre to dance, to cling like drowning clowns among the frantic flappers and enliquored college boys. Then on, perhaps, to visit the studio of a friend for homemade wine and games of Consequences, before lurching onward to thump at stout speakeasy doors, and be scrutinized by tuxedoed bouncers through peepholes, before being recognized as all too regular regulars.

The truth was that despite increasingly domestic friction and a dim perception that my nest egg was becoming somewhat cracked, I could not summon up the will to halt the slide, not least because I was becoming as notorious as Dasha. Despite the ban on war talk, it got around that

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