never bought a bottle for himself: solitary as his life had become, the idea of solitary drinking, of stealthy alley potations from a flask, filled him with sodden horror.
Now, in the company of Starwick, he was drinking more frequently than he had ever done before. Alcohol, indeed, until his twentieth year had been only a casual and infrequent spirit—once, in his seventeenth year, when he had come home from college at the Christmas vacation, he had got very drunk on various liquors which his brother Luke had brought home to his father, and which he had mixed together in a tumbler and drunk without discretion. And there had been one or two casual sprees during his years at college, but until this time he had never known the experience of frequent intoxication.
But now, in the company of Frank Starwick, he went every week or so to a little restaurant which was situated in the Italian district of the eastern quarter of town, beyond Scollay Square and across Washington Street. The place was Starwick’s own discovery, he hoarded his knowledge of it with stern secrecy, yielding it up only to a few friends—a few rare and understanding spirits who would not coarsely abuse the old-world spirit of this priceless place, because, he said:
“It would be a pity if it ever got known about. It really would, you know…. I mean, the kind of people who would begin to go there would ruin it…. They really would…. I mean, it’s quite astonishing to find a place of that sort here in Boston.”
It was the beginning of that dark time of blood, and crime, and terror which the years of prohibition brought and which was to leave its hideous mutilation not only upon the soul and conscience of the nation, but upon the lives of millions of people—particularly the young everywhere. At this time, however, the ugly, jeering, open arrogance of the later period—the foul smell of privilege and corruption, the smirk of protection, and the gangster’s sneer, were not so evident as they became in the years that followed. At this time, it was by no means easy “to get a drink”: the speak-easy had already started on its historic career, but was still more or less what its name suggested—a place to be got at quietly and by stealth, a place of low voices, furtive and suspicious eyes, and elaborate precautions.
The place which Starwick had “discovered,” and which he hoarded with such precious secrecy, was a small Italian restaurant known as Posillippo’s, which occupied the second floor of an old brick building in an obscure street of the Italian quarter. Frank pronounced the name strongly and lovingly—“Pothillippo’s”—in
