by Irwin Shaw
“I don’t smoke cigarettes.”
“You’ll live forever. So much the better. How old are you anyway?”
“Thirty-three.”
“In the prime of life,” she said. “The dear prime of life. Don’t go to sleep. I want to talk. Do you want a drink?”
“What time is it?”
“Drink time.” She got out of bed and I saw her put a dressing gown on. “Whiskey okay?”
“Whiskey is fine.”
She went into the living room, her robe making a soft rustling sound. I looked at my watch. She had taken it off, the last item, when she had undressed me and put it neatly on the bedside table. She was an orderly woman. The luminous dial of the watch showed that it was past three. Everything in its time, I thought, lying back luxuriously, remembering other three o’clocks, the noise of the adding machine, the bulletproof glass, the bedraggled women asking me to unlock the front door.
She came back with the two glasses, handed me mine, sat on the edge of the bed, her profile outlined against the light from the bathroom. The silhouette was bold and sharp. She drank heartily.
She was a hearty as well as an orderly woman. “Most satisfactory,” she said. “You were, too.”
I laughed. “Do you always rate your lovers?”
“You’re not my lover, Grimes,” she said. “You’re a nice-looking, youngish man with good manners whom I happened to take a slight shine to at a party and who had the great virtue to be passing briefly through town. Briefly is the operative word in that sentence, Grimes.”
“I see,” I said, sipping at the whiskey.
“You probably don’t and I won’t bother to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I said. “Sufficient unto the night are the pleasures thereof.”
“You don’t do this sort of thing often, do you?”
“Frankly, no.” I laughed again. “Frankly, never. Why—does it show?”
“Like a neon sign. You’re not at all like what you look like, you know.”
“What do I look like?”
“You look like those young men who play the villains in Italian movies—bold and dark and unscrupulous.”
Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I had gotten used to hearing that I reminded people of somebody’s kid brother. Either I had changed drastically or Evelyn Coates was not deceived by surfaces, could see through to the wished for inner man. “Is that a good way to look?” I asked. I was a little worried by the “unscrupulous.”
“It’s a very nice way to look. In certain situations.”
“Like tonight, for example?”
“Like tonight.”
“I might be coming back to Washington in a few days,” I said. “Should I call you?”
“If you have nothing better to do.”
“Will you see me again?”
“If I have nothing better to do.”
“Are you as tough as you pretend to be?”
“Tougher, Grimes, much tougher. What would you be coming back to Washington for?”
“Maybe for you.”
“Try that once more, please.”
“Maybe for you.”
“You do have nice manners. Maybe for what else?”
“Well,” I said slowly, thinking, this is as good a place and as good a time to dig for information, “supposing I was looking for somebody …”
“Somebody in particular?”
“Yes. Somebody whose name I know, who’s dropped out of sight.”
“In Washington?”
“Not necessarily. Somewhere in the country, or maybe even out of the country. …”
“You are a mysterious man, aren’t you?”
“Someday I may tell you the whole story,” I said, sure that I never would, but pleased that luck had put me into the bed of a woman who was in on the secrets of government, and whose job, partially, at least, must involve tracing people down, people usually who did not want to be traced down. “It’s a private, delicate matter. But suppose I had to find this hypothetical friend, how would I go about it?”
“Well, there are a lot of places you could look,” she said. “The Internal Revenue Service—they’d know his address at the time he sent in his last return. The Social Security people. They’d have a record of whom he was working for. The Selective Service people, although that would probably be outdated. The FBI. You never know what you can pick up in that factory. The State Department. It would all depend upon whether or not you knew the right people.”
“Take it for granted that I would get to know the right people,” I said. For a hundred thousand dollars, I could take it for granted somebody would be able to reach the right people.
“You probably would eventually be able to pick up your friend’s trail. Say, are you a private detective or something?”
“Or something,” I said ambiguously.
“Well, everybody comes to Washington eventually,” she said. “Why not you? It’s America’s real living theater. Standing room only at every performance. Except that it’s a peculiar audience. The good seats are all filled by actors.”
“Are you an actress?”
“You bet your life. I’m playing a role that can’t be beat. The dauntless Portia striking deadly blows at the malefactors of great wealth. Women’s Lib at Justice and Injustice. I’ve gotten rave reviews in the best beds in town. Do I shock you?”
“A little.”
“While on the subject,” she said, “let me give you a t.l.”
“What’s a t.l.?”
“Where have you been, you poor innocent?” She reached over and pinched my cheek. “T.l. stands for trade last. A compliment. You gave almost the best performance of anyone I’ve slept with in this town. You were even as good as a certain Senator from a Western state whom I shall not name, who used to be at the head of the list. Until the poor dear was beaten at the last election.”
“I didn’t realize I was giving a performance.” I had no desire to hear the defeated Senator’s name.
“Of course you were. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in Washington. And every performance calls on enormous talent here. We all have to pretend we live our roles.”
“Are you like that, too?”
“You must be kidding, honey. Of course. I’m a big, grown woman. Do you think that if I went into that office every day for the next hundred years, it would make the slightest difference to you or General Motors or the United Nations or anybody’s pet dog? I just play the game, honey, and have fun like everybody else, because this town is the best place to have fun anybody’s found for people like us. Actually, what I believe is that, if everyone here, from the President down to the janitor at Indian Affairs, would only be allowed to operate two weeks a year, America would turn out to be the greatest country in the world.”
I had finished the whiskey by now and felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. I barely suppressed a yawn.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m boring you.”
“Not at all,” I said truthfully. “But aren’t you tired?”
“Not really.” She put her glass down, slipped out of her robe, and got into bed beside me. “Sex invigorates me. But I have to get up early and it doesn’t do for me to look debauched when I get to the office in the morning.” She snuggled up to me and kissed my ear. “Good night, Grimes. Of course call me when you come back.”
When I awoke, it was nearly ten o’clock and I was alone. The curtains let enough sun through for me to see that it was a nice day. There was a note on the dresser, where she had put my money clip the night before. “Dear Guest: Off to work. You were sleeping like a baby and I hadn’t the heart to wake you. I am happy to see such evidence of a clear conscience in this naughty world. There’s a razor and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet and a big glass of orange juice in the refrigerator and a pot of coffee on the stove. The good servant deserves his hire. I hope you find your friend. E.C.”
I grinned at the last sentence, then went i
nto the bathroom and shaved and showered. The cold shower woke me up completely and I felt fresh and cheerful. And, I had to admit, pleased with myself. I looked carefully at myself in the mirror. My color had improved.
As I went into the living room, I smelled bacon frying. I pushed open the door to the kitchen and saw a young woman sitting at a table in slacks and a sweater, with a scarf around her head, reading the newspaper and munching on a piece of toast.
“Hi,” the young woman said, looking up. “I wondered if you were going to sleep all day.”
“I … I’m terribly sorry …” I said, flustered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.
“You’re not disturbing me.” She got up and opened the refrigerator and took out a glass of orange juice. “Evelyn left this for you. You must be thirsty.” She didn’t say why she thought I must be thirsty. “Do you want bacon and eggs?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“No trouble. Breakfast comes with the deal.” She stripped off three slices of bacon from an open package and put it in the pan with the others. She was tall and slender in her slacks. “Sunny-side up?”
“Any way you’re having them.”
“Sunny-side up,” the woman said. She put a slab of butter in another pan and cracked four eggs into the pan, her movements swift and authoritative. “I’m Brenda Morrissey,” she said. “I share the apartment with Evelyn. Didn’t she say anything about me?”
“Not that I remember,” I said. I sipped at the chilled orange juice.
“I guess Evelyn was busy at the time,” the woman said flatly. She poured two cups of coffee, indicated the cream and sugar on the table. “Sit down. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
“Not really.” I sat down.
“Neither am I. I run an art gallery. Nobody ever buys a picture before eleven o’clock in the morning. It’s a dream job for a girl like me. Evelyn neglected to tell me your name.”
I told her my name.
“How long have you known Evelyn?” she asked, as she stood at the stove, shaking the pan with the eggs in it with one hand and feeding slices of bread into the toaster with the other hand.
“Well,” I said, embarrassed, “the truth is we just met last night.”
She gave a short, sharp chuckle. “That’s Washington. You collect votes wherever you can find them. Any kind of votes. Maybe this is the nicest kind. Dear Evelyn,” she said, but without malice. “I heard you at your revels.”
I felt myself blushing. “I had no idea there was anyone else in the house.”
“That’s all right. Actually, I keep meaning to buy earplugs and then I forget from one time to the next.” She slid the eggs onto plates and put the bacon over them. She sat across from me on the other side of the little table, clear greenish eyes staring at me steadily. She was wearing no lipstick and her lips were light pink, her cheeks just a little flushed from the heat of the stove. She had a long face, the bones all showing, and the scarf around her head made her look severe.
“Evelyn’s not one to keep her enjoyment to herself when she’s being amused,” she said, as she broke a piece of bacon and started eating it with her fingers. “I had to use all my maidenly restraint to keep from coming and joining the fun.”
I felt my face go rigid and I ducked my eyes. The woman laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it hasn’t happened yet. Whatever else we do around here, we do not go in for orgies. Still,” she said evenly, “if you’re going to be in Washington tonight and if you tell me what hotel you’re staying at, you might like to buy me a drink.”
I won’t say that I wasn’t tempted. The night had reawakened all the sensuality in me that had lain dormant for so long. And the cool impersonality of the invitation was intriguing. At least for its novelty. Things like that had happened to friends of mine, or at least so they had said, but never to me. And after what I had done in room 602 of the St. Augustine Hotel, I could hardly refuse on moral grounds to sleep with the friend of a lady I had only just met the night before. Let the accidents happen. But there was the business of the birth certificate. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m leaving town this morning.
“What a pity,” the woman said tonelessly.
“But I’ll be back at my hotel …” I hesitated, remembering Jeremy Hale’s poker game on Saturday night. First things first. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”
“What hotel are you staying at?”
I told her.
“Perhaps I’ll call on Sunday,” she said. “I have nothing against Sundays.”
Money in the bank, I thought, as I was leaving the apartment building, even money in a bank two hundred and fifty miles away must give off an irresistible sexual aroma.
I tried to examine just how I felt that morning. Springy and light-footed. Lighthearted, I decided. Wicked. It was an old-fashioned word, but it was the word that came to mind. Was it possible that for thirty-three years I had miscalculated absolutely what sort of man I was? I looked carefully at the ordinary faces of the men and women on the street. Were they all on the edge of crime?
At the hotel I rented a car and took my wallet out of the vault. I was beginning to feel deprived if I wasn’t carrying a certain number of hundred-dollar bills on me.
The roads through Pennsylvania were icy and I drove carefully. A car crash was one accident I wanted to avoid. This was no time to be laid up, immobilized and helpless, in a hospital for weeks or maybe months on end.
6
“MAY I SPEAK TO MR. Grimes, please,” I said to the girl on the phone. “Mr. Henry Grimes.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
I hesitated. I was getting more and more reluctant to give my name to anyone. “Say his brother is calling,” I said on the phone. Since there were three brothers in the family, this could leave at least a small margin of doubt.
When I heard my brother’s voice on the phone, I said, “Hello, Hank.”
“Who’s this? No, I don’t believe it! Doug! Where the hell are you?” Once again I felt the same quick gratitude that had swept over me in Jeremy Hale’s office because someone was so obviously glad to hear the sound of my voice. My brother was seven years older than I and when we had been growing up had regarded me as a pest. Since I had moved away from Scranton, we had only seen each other rarely, but there was no mistaking the warmth in the greeting.
“I’m in town. At the Hilton Inn.”
“Take your bag and come on over to the house. We’ve got a guest room. And the kids won’t wake you until six thirty in the morning.” Henry laughed at his own invitation. Behind the deep, remembered voice, there was the clatter of office machines. Henry worked in a firm of accountants and the mechanical noise of the symbols of money coming in and going out was the music of his working day. “I’ll call Madge,” Henry was saying, “and tell her to expect you for dinner.”
“Hold it a minute, Hank,” I said. “I have to ask you for a favor.”
“Sure, kid,” he said. “What is it?”
“I’m applying for a passport,” I said, “and I need my birth certificate. If I write Harrisburg it’ll take weeks and I’m in a hurry …”
“Where you going?”
“Abroad.”
“Where abroad?”
“No matter. Do you think that in the stuff you took from Mom’s house you might find my birth certificate?”
“Come on over to the house for dinner and we’ll look for it together.”
“I’d rather Madge didn’t know I was in town, Hank,” I said.
“Oh.” The worry set in immediately.
“Do you think you might see if you could find it this afternoon and then come over to the Hilton and have dinner with me. Alone?”
“But why …?”
“I’ll explain later. Can you manage it?”
“I’ll be there a quarter after six.”
“In the bar.”
“That’s no hardship.” Henry chuckled. It was a drinker’s chuckle.
“See you then,�
� I said and hung up. I sat on the edge of the single bed in the hotel room, my hand on the telephone, wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to have written Harrisburg and waited the two weeks and never have come back to Scranton, never have said anything to my brother. I shook my head. If you wanted to figure out what your future was going to be, you had to have a firm grasp on your past. And my brother Henry was a big part of my past.
Because our father had died when Henry was twenty and all the other children much younger, and Henry had taken on the responsibility of the male head of the family automatically, without fuss, I had learned to respect him and depend on him. It was easy to depend on Henry. He was an outgoing, uncomplicated, clever boy, quick in his studies (he always led his class, always was elected class president, and got a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania). He had a knack for business, too, and was generous to the other children, especially to me, with the money he made after school and in the summers. As our mother kept repeating, he was the one of her children who was born to be rich and successful. It was Henry who fought our mother and overcame her objections when I decided I wanted to learn to fly. Henry had also financed the flying school. By that time he was a certified public accountant, doing fairly well for his age, and already married.
Through the years, I had paid back the money Henry had lent me, although Henry had never once asked me for a penny. But we had not seen each other often. We lived in different parts of the world, and Henry was involved with his growing family and his wife, Madge. Because of the scandal of my younger brother, Bert, the few times that we had all been together Madge had been uncomfortably persistent in trying to find out why I was not yet married.
Because of everything, my brother Henry was one of the people in my life who somehow made me feel guilty, lacking in feeling. I knew that I had received much more than I had given and the imbalance disturbed me. I was glad now that the bureaucracy in Harrisburg had forced me to come to my home town and once more ask my brother to help me.
I was shocked when I saw him come into the bar. I had not seen him for five years, and Henry had been a powerfully built, erect, confident-seeming man then. Now he looked as though the five years had ravaged him. He seemed diminished, bent. His hair had thinned and what was left was stringy, yellowish-gray. He wore thick, gold-rimmed spectacles that bit deep into the bridge of his nose. He had always had fine eyes, deep-colored, like all the family, and keen of sight, and the glasses did not become him. Even in the half-light of the bar, Henry reminded me of a small, worried animal peering fearfully out of a hole, ready to scuttle back at the first sign of danger.