How, you will ask, can one forget the future? Well, for one thing, it takes practice. But some of us-very, very few and it would not be right of me to say that we're gifted with a prescience and understanding and intelligence far beyond the normal ken, so I'll just say we're different some of us, I say, drink to forget the future. All of it-the livelong day." He lifted his recharged glass. The only good thing you can say about a today is that at any given moment such and such a portion of it is already irrevocably past'-he paused to admire his speech control-"Irrevocably past, as I say, and, with the passing of every moment, so much less of it to come. I don't want to, mind you, for tomorrows, We found, are always distressingly similar to todays. The day after tomorrow? Well, yes, if I must, I'll face the day after tomorrow. "And that, my dear boy, is the whole point of the exercise, I don't want to get up tomorrow. He beamed paternally at me as I passed through and as it seemed late in the day to point out to Lonnie that the better class malts stood in no need of the anaemic assistance of soda I just nodded and went below. It was after midnight but not yet closing hours in the lounge bar, for Lonnie Gilbert, with a heroically foolhardy disregard for what would surely be Otto's fearful wrath when the crime was discovered, had both glass doors swung open and latched in position, while he himself was ensconced in some state behind the bar itself, a bottle of malt whisky in one hand, a soda syphon in the other. She looked at me gravely and said nothing. I picked up the rug, did my customary two-step across the heaving deck and draped the rug over her. Nothing brings out the worst in me more quickly than sweetly smiling suffering. "As long as you don't hit anybody it's none of my business how you drive, Lonnie." He broke off as I went round the back of the bar, replaced the bottles, locked the doors, placed the keys in his dressing-gown pocket and took his arm. "I'm not trying to deprive you of the necessities of life," I explained. Why don't you get to bed? If you keep it up like this, you won't be able to get up tomorrow." "The kindly healer with his bag of tricks. "Aha!" He regarded his empty glass with an air of surprise, then reached out with an unerring hand. On our stumbling descent of the companionway he said: Clearly, he had his emergency supplies cached in his cabin. But I have a sensitive nature and I don't want to be around when you find out that your assessment of Otto is a hundred percent wrong." Lonnie came without a single murmur of protest. "Neither am I being heavy-handed and moralistic. "Lonnie," I said, I don't think you're the least little bit like Macbeth."
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