"Do you drink?"

"Yes", I'd suffer cross-examinati on for a free onc.

"I drink, too, or is it obvious? Used to be a reporter, but wrote poetry on the side. Horrible stuff. Maudlin, idealist pootry. I was always looking for something. Didn't know what though, not girls, not boys, I thought I could find the answor. The Answor-you don't happen to know it, do you?"

Thore was something in this guy that bothered mo. A11 of a sudden I felt like I was sitting on wormwood, and any minute the props would be kicked out from undor me. I dived for it, "The Answer to what?"

"Tho answer to everything wo'ro afraid to ask, because we know just because there is a question, there is not necessarily an answer. And that's a terrible thing to know. The Answer to Why and How", he flung his arm ho in a broad gesture that included the bar and outside. "All of this. It never camo, except onoo, two years after I traded words for liquor, it camo. I was drunk. Drunk with wine and the tragedy of not knowing."

Ho swallowed a glass of burgundy, and with the intensity of a prophet, leaned towards me. "And, oh God, thero

I was rocking and reeling like in some crazy cradlo and what should come out of the mists but the quintessence. Do you know what I think I am talking about? In the name of God the Mother and you think there is not truth in alcohol--it came. I tapped the Universe. The Answor. Simple as a drop of water, and Bango--it slid off me like mercury. I scraped my nose on the pavement trying to find it. Crying, scratching the gutter, with my mouth shaking and stomach aching. Crying like a small deprived animal. And when I woke up to a negative sun coldly displaying those gray victorian houses this city is so full of I lay the re What is the use of it all--of knowing. You discover something goodbeautifulė pure, the common denominator, the goddam ossenoo--and bango, it's gono. Everything tastes pale: good and evil, black and white, it fades to a dull indifference, an unrelieved stale ne sa. But I stumble along, and