Chapter 9

The incident at Marlowe Manor happened six months ago. To Neal Court, who can be found these days in the taverns along Broadway between 65th to 80th streets, it might have happened yesterday. His mind still dwells on the nightmare he witnessed, of the wild, excitedly grunting beast and his wife locked nakedly together on the bed, and his own crazed reaction... or of the long, grim trek back from the Manor house, across the moors to the first town, Snowston... or of that first, unnamed pub in which he stopped to collect his thoughts and found that it was easier to keep on drinking than to think.

The patrons of Manny's or the Iron Key or Proud Mary or the other bars along the boulevard are typical New Yorkers. They've heard it all and seen everything and take with cynicism and boredom the tales that outsiders bring to the brass railing. But they shy away from Neal Court, sensing in some inexplicable way that there is a deep, black grief which is eating with a brooding, sharp agony at the man, that his uninterrupted silence hides a secret which they wouldn't want to hear even if the chance were to be given. There is a malignancy about Neal Court, they say, one which festers, and that no amount of alcohol dissipates. They always leave a stool empty on either side of the man, these jaded pragmatists of upper Broadway, and they hope that one of these days the man who sits alone and never speaks will move on.

He will. His money that he so diligently saved when he was married is about used up, and the cheapest hotel in the area is on 80th, the Union Central, and it charges fourteen dollars a week, which Neal no longer has. He plans to move to the Bowery, where the other derelicts of life ultimately wash together, where a bottle of wine is more important to sleep with than a bed, where privacy is more honored than even in this disreputable neighborhood. He thinks about that, but only when necessary, because any other than those of that last night in England are unwelcome and soon forgotten.

Neal raises the shot glass of cheap bourbon to his trembling lips and drinks it, mentally toasting for the hundred thousandth time his ex-boss, the ancestral head of Marlowe Manor, the dwarf servant, the nymphetic black-haired wife, and the ape. Especially Rajah; here's to Rajah. He puts his hand forward again and nods to the beefy bartender to fill the glass again.

Only once in the six months he's been a part of the seamy area has anybody ever seen the tired, rejected man break down and show some of the emotion he has bottled up inside him. Only once; on a rainy night at three a.m. when there was only two other regular customers and the sleepy bartender in The Captain's Table to see it. Neal Court sat alone as always, way back in a corner at one of the small, bench-like tables which give the bar its character and name. He had just arrived, and the previous occupier of the table had left a copy of The New York Times lying open on the table. Suddenly Court seemed to stiffen, or so the story goes, stiffen as though he had been shot. And just as suddenly one hand crumpled the top few sheets of the paper, and the rest of him collapsed. He let his head rest on the table and he cried. Long, uncontrolled sobs from deep within; the tears of agony unrequited. That was the only sound in the quiet bar, and it seemed to go on forever.