Nightwork

by Irwin Shaw

  “I am indeed,” I said.

  “Mr. Hale is delighted you could come. Go right in, please.” She held the door to the inner office open for me.

  Hale was seated at a cluttered desk, peering down at a sheaf of papers in front of him. He had put on weight since I had last seen him, and had added statesmanlike solidity to the mild polite face. On the desk in a silver frame was a family group, a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. Everything in moderation. Zero population growth. An example to the heathen. Hale looked up when I came in and stood, smiling widely. “Doug,” he said, “you don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

  As we shook hands, I was surprised at how moved I was by my friend’s greeting. For three years now, no one had been genuinely glad to see me.

  “Where’ve you been, where’ve you been, man?” Hale said. He waved to a leather sofa along one side of the spacious office and as I sat down pulled a wooden armchair close to the sofa and sat down himself. “I thought you’d disappeared from the face of the earth. I wrote three times and each time the letters came back. Haven’t you learned anything about forwarding addresses yet? And I wrote your girl friend, Pat, asking about you and she wrote back and said she didn’t know where you’d gone.” He scowled at me. He was agreeable-looking, tall, comfortably built, soft-faced, and the scowl was incongruous on him. “And you don’t look so almighty great, either. You look as though you haven’t been out in the open air for years.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, “one thing at a time, Jerry. I just decided I didn’t like flying anymore and I moved on. Here and there.”

  “I wanted to ski with you last winter. I had two weeks off and I heard the snow was great. …”

  “I haven’t been doing much skiing, to tell the truth,” I said.

  Impulsively, Hale touched my shoulder. “All right,” he said. “I won’t ask any questions.” Even as a boy in college he had always been quick and sensitive. “Well, anyway, just one question. Where’re you coming from and what’re you doing in Washington?” He laughed. “I guess that’s two questions.”

  “I’m coming from New York,” I said, “and I’m in Washington to ask you to do a little favor for me.”

  “The government is at your disposal, lad. Ask and ye shall receive.”

  “I need a passport.”

  “You mean you never had a passport?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never been out of the country?” Hale sounded amazed. Everybody he knew was out of the country most of the time.

  “I’ve been in Canada,” I said. “That’s all. And you don’t need a passport for Canada.”

  “You said you were in New York,” Hale looked puzzled. “Why didn’t you get it there? Not that I’m not delighted you finally had an excuse to visit me,” he added hastily. “But all you had to do was go to the office on Fifth Avenue …”

  “I know,” I said. “I just didn’t feel like waiting. I’m in a hurry and I thought I’d come to the fountainhead, from which all good things flow.”

  “They are swamped there,” Hale said. “Where do you intend to go?”

  “I thought Europe, first. I came into a little dough and I thought maybe it was time I ought to get a dose of Old World culture. Those postcards you used to send me from Paris and Athens gave me the itch.” Deception, I found, was coming easily.

  “I think I can run the passport through for you in a day,” Hale said. “Just give me your birth certificate. …” He stopped when he saw the frown on my face. “Don’t you have it with you?”

  “I didn’t realize I needed it.”

  “You sure do,” Hale said. “Where were you born—Scranton, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  He made a face.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Pennsylvania’s a bore,” he said. “All the birth certificates are kept in Harrisburg. The state capital. You’d have to write there. It’d take at least two weeks. If you’re lucky.”

  “Balls,” I said. I didn’t want to wait anywhere for two weeks.

  “Didn’t you get your birth certificate when you applied for your first driver’s license?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where is it now? Have you any idea? Maybe somebody in your family? Stashed away in a trunk somewhere.”

  “My brother Henry still lives in Scranton,” I said. I remembered that after my mother died he had taken all the accumulated family junk, old report cards, my high school diploma, my degree from college, old snapshot albums and stored them in his attic. “He might have it.”

  “Why don’t you call him and have him look. If he finds it tell him to send it to you special delivery, registered.”

  “Even better,” I said. “I’ll go down there myself. I haven’t seen Henry for years and it’s time I put in an appearance, anyway.” I didn’t feel I had to explain to Hale that I preferred not to have Henry know where I was staying in Washington or anywhere else.

  “Let’s see,” Hale said. “This is Thursday. There’s a weekend coming up. Even if you find it, you couldn’t get back in time to do anything until Monday.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Europe’s waited this long, I guess it can wait another couple of days.”

  “You’ll need some photographs, too.”

  “I have them with me.” I fished the envelope out of a pocket.

  He slid one out of the envelope and studied it. “You still look as though you’re just about to graduate from high school.” He shook his head. “How do you manage it?”

  “A carefree life,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear they’re still available,” Hale said. “When I look at pictures of myself these days, I seem to be old enough to be my own father. The magic of the cameraman’s art.” He put the photograph back in its envelope, as though the one glimpse of it would do him for a long, long time. “I’ll have the application ready for you to sign Monday morning. Just in case.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Why not come back and spend the weekend here?” Hale said. “Washington is at its best on the weekends. When government grinds to a halt. We have a poker game on Saturday night. You still play poker?”

  “A little.”

  “Good. One of our regulars is out of town and you can have his place. There’re a couple of eternal pigeons in the game who’ll donate their dough with pathetic generosity.” He smiled. He hadn’t been a bad poker player himself in college. “It’ll be like old times. I’ll arrange everything.”

  The phone rang and Hale went over to the desk, picked up the instrument, and listened for a moment. “I’ll be right over, sir,” he said and put the phone down. “I’m sorry, Doug, I have to go. The daily eleven A.M. crisis.”

  I stood up. “Thanks for everything,” I said, as we walked toward the door.

  “Nada,” Hale said. “What’re friends for? Listen, there’s a cocktail party at my house tonight. You busy?”

  “Nothing special,” I said.

  “Seven o’clock.” We were in the outer office now. “I’ve got to run. Miss Schwartz will give you my address.” He was out of the door, moving fast, but still preserving a statesmanlike decorum.

  Miss Schwartz wrote on a card and gave it to me, smiling radiantly, as though she were ennobling me. Her handwriting was as beautiful as she was.

  I awoke slowly as the soft hand went lightly up my thigh. We had made love twice already, but the erection was immediate. The lady in bed with me was profiting from my years of abstinence.

  “That’s better,” the lady murmured. “That’s much better. Don’t do anything for the moment. Just lie back. Don’t move.”

  I lay back. The expert hands, the soft lips, and lascivious tongue made remaining motionless exquisite torture. The lady was very serious, ritualistic almost, in her pleasures, and was not to be hurried. When we had come into her bedroom at midnight, she had made me lie down and had undressed me slowly. The last woman who had undressed me had been my mother,
when I was five, and I had the measles.

  It was not the way I had expected the evening to end. The cocktail party in the nice Colonial house in Georgetown had been polite and sober. I had arrived early and had been taken upstairs to admire the Hale children. Before the other guests came, I had chatted desultorily with Hale’s wife, Vivian, whom I had never met. She was a pretty, blondish woman with an overworked look about her. It turned out that through the years Hale had told her quite a bit about me. “After Washington,” Mrs. Hale had said, “Jerry said you were like a breath of fresh air. He said he loved skiing with you and your girl—Pat—am I right, was that her name?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said—and I hope you won’t think it’s condescending—he said that both of you were so transparently decent.”

  “That’s not condescending,” I said.

  “He was worried about you when he found out that you weren’t, well—together—anymore. And that you’d just vanished.” Mrs. Hale’s eyes searched my face, looking for a reaction, an answer to her unspoken question.

  “I knew where I was,” I said.

  “If I hadn’t met Jerry,” Mrs. Hale said, candor making her seem suddenly youthful, “I’d have nothing. Nothing.” The doorbell rang. “Oh, dear,” she said, “here comes the herd. I do hope we’ll see a lot of you while you’re here. …”

  The rest of the party had been something of a blur, although not because of drink. I never drank much. But the names had been flung at me in such quick succession, Senator So-and-So, Congressman This, Congressman That, His Excellency, the Ambassador of What Country, Mr. Blank, he works for The Washington Post, Mrs. Whoever, she’s ever so important at Justice, and the conversation had been about people who were powerful, famous, despicable, conniving, eloquent, on the way to Russia, introducing a bill that would make your hair stand on end.

  Even though I knew next to nothing about the social structure of the capital, I could tell that there was a lot of power assembled in the room. By Washington standards everybody there was more important than the host, who, while obviously on the way up, was still somewhere in the middle ranks of the Foreign Service, and who couldn’t have afforded many parties like this on his salary. But Vivian Hale was the daughter of a man who had been a senator for two terms and who owned a good part of North Carolina besides. My friend had married well. I wondered what I would have turned into if I had married a rich wife. Not that I ever had the offer.

  I had merely stood around, wincing a little as the drinks began to take effect on the rising curve of conversation, a glass tactfully in my hand at all times, smiling manfully, like a small boy at dancing school. I wondered how Hale could bear it.

  Mrs. Whoever, whose hand and lips were now caressing me, had turned out to be the lady who was ever so important at Justice. She looked thirty-five years old, but a very handsome thirty-five, full bodied, with glowing skin, large dark eyes, and soft dark blonde hair, almost the color of mine, that fell to her shoulders. We had found ourselves in a corner together and she had said, “I’ve been watching you. Poor man, you look marooned. I take it you’re not an inmate.”

  “An inmate?” I had asked, puzzled. “Of what?”

  “Washington.”

  I had grinned. “Does it show that badly?”

  “It does, man, it does. Don’t worry about it. I leap at the opportunity to talk to someone who isn’t in the government.” She had looked at her watch. “Forty-five minutes. I have done my duty. Nobody can spread the rumor that I don’t know how to behave in polite society. Time for chow. Grimes, are you busy for dinner?”

  “No.” I was surprised that she had remembered my name.

  “Shall we leave together or leave separately?”

  I laughed. “That’s up to you, Mrs. …”

  “Coates, Evelyn.” She had smiled widely. I decided she had a mouth for smiling. “Together. I’m divorced. Do you consider me forward?”

  “Yes, ma’am.

  “Excellent man.” She had touched my arm lightly. “I’ll wait for you in the front hall. Say good-bye to your hosts, like a good boy.”

  I had watched her sweep through the crowded room, imperious and confident. I had never met a woman like that before. But even then I hadn’t imagined for a moment that the evening would end up as it did. I had never in my life gone to bed with a woman the first time I had met her. What with my stutter and ridiculously youthful appearance, I had always been rather shy, not sure that I was particularly attractive, and had felt that I was clumsy with women. I was resigned to the fact that other men got the beauties. I had never gotten over wondering why Pat, who was exceptionally attractive, had had anything to do with me. Luckily for my ego, I had no taste for the ordinary kind of male conquest, and the remnants of my religious upbringing had kept me from promiscuity, even if I could have indulged in it.

  The restaurant Mrs. Coates had taken me to was French and, as far as I could tell, very good. “I hope you’re enormously wealthy,” she had said. “The prices here are ferocious. Are you enormously wealthy?”

  “Enormously.”

  She had squinted at me across the table, studying me. “You don’t look it.”

  “It’s old money,” I had said. “The family likes to pretend to be slightly shabby.”

  “What old family?”

  “Some other time.” I had turned her off.

  She had talked about herself, though, without any urging from me. She was a lawyer, she worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, she had been in Washington eleven years, her husband had been a commander in the Navy and was an absolute beast, she had no children and wanted none, she went to the Hamptons on Long Island whenever she could and swam and pottered around a garden, her boss had been trying to lay her for five years, but was otherwise a dear, she was determined to run for Congress before she died. Along with all that, all spoken in an incongruously low, melodic voice, she had entertained me through dinner by interrupting herself to point out other guests and describing them by function and character in short, malicious sketches. There was a Senator with whom a girl wasn’t safe if they were in an elevator together, a second secretary at an embassy who ran dope in the diplomatic pouches, a lobbyist who had blocs in both Houses in his pocket, a CIA operator who was responsible for murders in several South American countries. I had enjoyed myself, allowing her to pick the wine, although I would have preferred beer, and order for both of us, saying, “I’m just a simple country boy and I trust myself to your hands.” It was exhilarating to be able to talk to a handsome woman without stuttering. A whole new world seemed to be opening up before me.

  “Is your entire enormously wealthy, slightly shabby family composed of simple country boys like you?”

  “More or less,” I had said.

  She had stared at me quizzically. “Are you a spook?”

  “A what?”

  “A spook. CIA?”

  I had shaken my head, smiling. “Not even.”

  “Hale told me you were a pilot.”

  “Once. Not anymore.” I wondered when she had had time, in all the confusion of the party, to question Hale about me. For a moment, the woman’s inquisitiveness had bothered me and I half-decided to put her in a cab after dinner and let her go home herself. But then I had thought, I mustn’t get paranoid about the whole thing and settled back to enjoy the evening. “Don’t you think we need another bottle?” I had asked.

  “Definitely,” she had said.

  We had been the last ones left in the restaurant, and I was pleasantly drunk from the unaccustomed wine when we got into the taxi. We sat in the taxi without touching each other, and when the taxi stopped in front of the apartment building in which Mrs. Coates lived, I had said, “Hold it, driver, please; I’m just seeing the lady to the door.”

  “Forget it, driver,” Mrs. Coates had said. “The gentleman is coming in for a nightcap.”

  “That’s just what I need,” I had said, trying not to mumble, “a nightcap.” Bu
t I had paid the driver and gone in with her.

  I hadn’t discovered what the apartment was like, because she didn’t switch on the lights. She merely put her arms around me as I shut the door from the hall and kissed me. The kiss was delicious.

  “I am now seducing you,” she had said, “in your weakened state.”

  “Consider me seduced.”

  Chuckling, she had led me by the hand through the dark living room and into the bedroom. A thin shaft of light from the partially open door to a bathroom was enough so that I could make out the shapes of pieces of furniture, a huge desk piled with papers, a dresser, a long bookcase against one wall. She had led me to the bed, turned me around, then given me a sharp push. I had fallen backward on the bed. “The rest,” she had said, “is my job.”

  If she was as good at Justice as she was in bed, the government was getting its money’s worth.

  “Now,” she said, sliding up on me, straddling me, using her hand to guide me into her. She moved on me, first very slowly, then more and more quickly, her head thrown back, her arms rigid behind her, her hands spread out on the bed, supporting her. Her full breasts loomed above me, pale in the dim light reflected off a mirror. I put up my hands and caressed her breasts and she moaned. She began to sob, loudly, uncontrollably, and when she came she was weeping.

  I came immediately after, with a long, subdued sigh. She rolled off me, lay on her stomach beside me, the weeping slowly coming to an end. I put out my hand and touched the firm, rounded shoulder. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Silly man. Lord, no.”

  “I was afraid I …”

  “Didn’t a lady ever cry while you were fucking her?”

  “Not that I remember,” I said. And none of the ladies ever called it that either, I could have added. They obviously called a spade a spade at Justice.

  She laughed again, twisted around, sat up, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her face was calm and untroubled in the flare of the match. “Do you want a cigarette?”