Guestward Ho! by Patrick Dennis

don't eat," Bill said, "and that's what's happened to Junior. It's pure diet deficiency."
    "But why didn't his lawyers say what was the matter with him?" I said, grabbing up the beautiful letter of reservation from the desk.
    "Because they didn't want you to refuse him, stupid," Bill said. "And they didn't want to send him to one of those expensive drying-out places where he'd meet nothing but a lot of other alcoholics with the exact same problems and no conversation except how anxious they are to get back to the bottle. You know, unless those problem drink ers want to cure themselves and go to A.A. or the Yale Plan or a good psychiatrist, it's almost impossible to keep them away from liquor."
    "Well . . ." I muttered, not quite certain what to believe.
    "And why do you suppose they asked specifically if we hada bar and how far we were from town?"'
    "Well, I don't know," I said angrily. "All I know is that Junior and his Valet are . . ."
    "Valet!" Bill sneered. "That's a hot one! Junior's about as well-groomed as a chimney sweep. As for Murphy, he's the most typical hospital orderly I've ever seen—big, strong, tough, watchful. I'll bet he got his start in the psycho ward at Bellevue. You notice that he never lets Junior out of his sight."
    By then I was convinced Bill was right, but I wouldn't have admitted it under torture. "All I know," I said far too elegantly, "is that Mr. Nameless and his manservant are our guests at our ranch; that they're occupying rooms that cost forty dollars a day; and that they will be here all summer. Besides, I think Junior is quite charming."
    "Okay, have it your own way," Bill said. "But I don't suggest you give a cocktail party in Junior's honor."
     
    The next morning I locked up all the guests' liquor and put the key down my front. I warned Evangeline to keep an eye on the lemon extract and the vanilla and I personally poured the rest of the wine vinegar down the drain. But as the days went on I felt ashamed of myself for being so silly. Junior was behaving himself perfectly. Although I saw him only at mealtimes, he seemed a little gentleman. He didn't ride or swim or play tennis or even mingle with the other guests, but he did spend quite a lot of time sunning himself in a deck chair on his terrace and reading crime magazines. His color was a lot better, he was shaking less and eating more, and every week the law firm paid his bill with a big, beautiful, baby-blue check.
    By the end of the second week I was so used to Junior that I didn't pay any attention to him, and even Murphy seemed to be relaxing his vigilance. That was our big mistake. I should have realized the only way to keep anconstructed alcoholic from the bottle is to nail him into his coffin. They always find liquor; and even though Jun ior didn't seem very bright, he had ways and means, too. Junior's way was Curly and his means was bribery.
    With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, it now seems to me that I noticed Junior's sharp decline about the I same time I noticed that Curly was off the ranch more than he was on it. It was during Junior's third week that his appetite fell off and during the same week that Junior himself fell off the terrace, for no apparent reason except that Murphy had gone into town for Mass. He looked kind of bloodshot and glassy-eyed to me, but when I got a whiff of his breath there was nothing more telltale than a strong odor of peppermint. It was also during this week that I noticed Curly looking resplendent in not one, but three new silk cowboy shirts of the sort that cost about twenty dollars each, or a good deal more than he could afford on the salary we were paying him. I noticed, too, that Curly had got into the lamentable habit of driving around in Junior's gold Jaguar—and always at times when Murphy was sleeping or swimming or otherwise off guard. It worried me to think of a dope like Curly roaring over the countryside in a five-thousand-dollar automobile that didn't belong to him, and