Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  Rudolph played the three trick bars of the band’s signature for the fifteen-minute break, put his horn down, and signaled to Julie to come out with him for a breath of air. All the windows were open in the shack, but it was hot and wet inside, like the bottom of the Congo.

  Julie held his hand as they walked out under the trees where the cars were parked. Her hand was dry and warm and soft and dear in his. It was hard to believe that you could have so many complicated sensations all through your body just holding a girl’s hand.

  “When you played that solo,” Julie said, “I just sat there shivering. I curled up inside—like an oyster when you squirt lemon on it.”

  He chuckled at the comparison. Julie laughed too. She had a whole list of oddball phrases to describe her various states of mind. “I feel like a PT boat,” when she raced him in the town swimming pool. “I feel like the dark side of the moon,” when she had to stay in and do the dishes at home and missed a date with him.

  They went all the way to the end of the parking lot, as far away as possible from the porch outside the shack, where the dancers were coming out for air. There was a car parked there and he opened the door for her to slide in. He got in after her and closed the door behind them. In the darkness, they locked in a kiss. They kissed interminably, clutching each other. Her mouth was a peony, a kitten, a peppermint, the skin of her throat under his hand was a butterfly’s wing. They kissed all the time, whenever they could, but never did anything more.

  Drowned, he was gliding and diving, through fountains, through smoke, through clouds. He was a trumpet, playing his own song. He was all of one piece, loving, loving … He took his mouth away from hers softly and kissed her throat as she put her head back against the seat. “I love you,” he said. He was shaken by the joy he had in saying the words for the first time. She pulled his head fiercely against her throat, her swimmer’s smooth summer arms wonderfully strong, and smelling of apricots.

  Without warning the door opened and a man’s voice said, “What the hell are you two doing in here?”

  Rudolph sat up, an arm tightening protectively around Julie’s shoulder. “We’re discussing the atom bomb,” he said coolly. “What do you think we’re doing?” He would die rather than let Julie see that he was embarrassed.

  The man was on his side of the car. It was too dark for him to see who it was. Then, unexpectedly, the man laughed. “Ask a foolish question,” he said, “and get a foolish answer.” He moved a little and a pale beam from one of the lights strung under the trees hit him. Rudolph recognized him. The yellow tightly combed hair, the thick, double bushes of blond eyebrows.

  “Excuse me, Jordache,” Boylan said. His voice was amused.

  He knows me, Rudolph thought. How does he know me?

  “This happens to be my car, but please make yourself at home,” Boylan said. “I do not want to interrupt the artist at his moments of leisure. I’ve always heard that ladies show a preference for trumpet players.” Rudolph would have preferred to hear this in other circumstances and from another source. “I didn’t want to leave anyway,” Boylan said. “I really need another drink. When you’ve finished, I’d be honored if you and the lady would join me for a nightcap at the bar.” He made a little bow and softly closed the door and strolled off through the parking lot.

  Julie was sitting at the other side of the car, straight up, ashamed. “He knows us,” she said in a small voice.

  “Me,” Rudolph said.

  “Who is he?”

  “A man called Boylan,” Rudolph said. “From the Holy Family.”

  “Oh,” Julie said.

  “That’s it,” said Rudolph. “Oh. Do you want to leave now? There’s a bus in a few minutes.” He wanted to protect her to the end, although he didn’t know exactly from what.

  “No,” Julie said. Her tone was defiant. “I’ve got nothing to hide. Have you?”

  “Never.”

  “One more kiss.” She slid toward him and put out her arms.

  But the kiss was wary. There was no more gliding through clouds.

  They got out of the car and went back into the shack. As they passed through the door, they saw Boylan at the end of the bar, his back to it, leaning on it with his elbows behind him, watching them. He gave a little salute of recognition, touching the tips of his fingers to his forehead.

  Rudolph took Julie to her table and ordered another ginger ale for her and then went back on the bandstand and began arranging the music sheets for the next set.

  When the band played “Good Night Ladies” at two o’clock and the musicians began packing their instruments as the last dancers drifted off the floor, Boylan was still at the bar. A medium-sized, confident man, in gray-flannel slacks and a crisp linen jacket. Negligently out of place among the T-shirts and enlisted men’s suntans and the young workingmen’s Saturday night blue suits, he strolled leisurely away from the bar as Rudolph and Julie left the bandstand.

  “Do you two children have transportation home?” he asked as they met.

  “Well,” Rudolph said, not liking the children, “one of the fellows has a car. We usually all pile into that.” Buddy Westerman’s father loaned him the family car when they had a club date and they lashed the bass and the drums onto the top. If any of them had girls along, they dropped the girls off first and all went to the Ace All Night Diner for hamburgers, to wind down.

  “You’ll be more comfortable with me,” Boylan said. He took Julie’s arm and guided her through the doorway. Buddy Westerman raised his eyebrows questioningly as he saw them leaving. “We’ve got a hitch into town,” Rudolph said to Buddy. “Your bus is overcrowded.” The fraction of betrayal.

  Julie sat between them on the front seat of the Buick as Boylan swung out of the parking lot and onto the road toward Port Philip. Rudolph knew that Boylan’s leg was pressing against Julie’s. That same flesh had been pressed against his sister’s naked body. He felt peculiar about the whole thing, all of them clamped together in the same front seat on which he and Julie had kissed just a couple of hours before, but he was determined to be sophisticated.

  He was relieved when Boylan asked for Julie’s address and said he’d drop her off first. He wasn’t going to have to make a scene about leaving her alone with Boylan. Julie seemed subdued, not like herself, as she sat between the two of them, watching the road rush at them in the Buick’s headlights.

  Boylan drove fast and well, passing cars in racing-driver spurts, his hands calm on the wheel. Rudolph was disturbed because he had to admire the way the man drove. There was a disloyalty there somewhere.

  “That’s a nice little combination you boys have there,” Boylan said.

  “Thanks,” Rudolph said. “We could do with some more practice and some new arrangements.”

  “You manage a smooth beat,” Boylan said. Amateur. “It made me regret that my dancing days are over.”

  Rudolph couldn’t help but approve of this. He thought people over thirty dancing were ludicrous, obscene. Again he felt guilty about approving of anything about Theodore Boylan. But he was glad that at least Boylan hadn’t danced with Gretchen and made fools in public of both of them. Older men dancing with young girls were the worst.

  “And you, Miss …?” Boylan waited for one or the other of them to supply the name.

  “Julie,” she said.

  “Julie what?”

  “Julie Hornberg,” she said defensively. She was sensitive about her name.

  “Hornberg?” Boylan said. “Do I know your father?”

  “We just moved into town,” Julie said.

  “Does he work for me?”

  “No,” Julie said.

  Moment of triumph. It would have been degrading if Mr. Hornberg was another vassal. The name was Boylan, but there were some things beyond his reach.

  “Are you musical, too, Julie?” Boylan asked.

  “No,” she said, surprisingly. She was making it as hard as she could for Boylan. He didn’t seem to notice it. “You’re a lovel
y girl, Julie,” he said. “You make me happy that my kissing days, unlike my dancing days, are not yet over.”

  Dirty old lecher, Rudolph thought. He fingered his black trumpet case nervously and thought of asking Boylan to stop the car so that he and Julie could get out. But walking back to town, he wouldn’t get Julie to her door before four o’clock. He marked a sorrowful point against his character. He was practical at moments that demanded honor.

  “Rudolph … It is Rudolph, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” His sister must have run off at the mouth like a faucet.

  “Rudolph, do you intend to make a profession of the trumpet?” Kindly old vocational counselor, now.

  “No. I’m not good enough,” Rudolph said.

  “That’s wise,” Boylan said. “It’s a dog’s life. And you have to mix with scum.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Rudolph said. He couldn’t let Boylan get away with everything. “I don’t think people like Benny Goodman and Paul Whiteman and Louis Armstrong are scum.”

  “Who knows?” Boylan said.

  “They’re artists,” Julie said tightly.

  “One thing does not preclude the other, child.” Boylan laughed gently. “Rudolph,” he said, dismissing her, “what do you plan to do?”

  “When? Tonight?” Rudolph knew that Boylan meant as a career, but he didn’t intend to let Boylan know too much about himself. He had a vague idea that all intelligence might one day be used against him.

  “Tonight I hope you’re going to go home and get a good night’s sleep, which you eminently deserve after your hard evening’s work,” Boylan said. Rudolph bridled a little at Boylan’s elaborate language. The vocabulary of deceit. Trapped English. “No, I mean, later on, as a career,” Boylan said.

  “I don’t know yet,” Rudolph said. “I have to go to college first.”

  “Oh, you’re going to college?” The surprise in Boylan’s voice was clear, a pinprick of condescension.

  “Why shouldn’t he go to college?” Julie said. “He’s a straight A student. He just made Arista.”

  “Did he?” Boylan said. “Forgive my ignorance, but just what is Arista?”

  “It’s a scholastic honor society,” Rudolph said, trying to extricate Julie. He didn’t want to be defended in the terms of adolescence. “It’s nothing much,” he said. “If you can just read and write, practically …”

  “You know it’s a lot more than that,” Julie said, her mouth bunched in disappointment at his self-deprecation. “The smartest students in the whole school. If I was in the Arista, I wouldn’t poor-mouth it.”

  Poor-mouth, Rudolph thought, she must have gone out with a Southern boy in Connecticut. The worm of doubt.

  “I’m sure it’s a great distinction, Julie,” Boylan said soothingly.

  “Well it is.” She was stubborn.

  “Rudolph’s just being modest,” Boylan said. “It’s a commonplace male pretense.”

  The atmosphere in the car was uncomfortable now, with Julie in the middle angry at both Boylan and Rudolph. Boylan reached over and turned on the radio. It warmed up and a radio announcer’s voice swam out of the rushing night, with the news. There had been an earthquake somewhere. They had tuned in too late to hear where. There were hundreds killed, thousands homeless, in the new whistling, 186,000-miles-per-second darkness which was the world of radio land.

  “You’d think with the war just over,” Julie said, “God would lay off for awhile.”

  Boylan looked at her in surprise and turned off the radio. “God never lays off,” he said.

  Old faker, Rudolph thought. Talking about God. After what he’s done.

  “What college do you intend to go to Rudolph?” Boylan talked across Julie’s plump, pointy, little chest.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “It’s a very grave decision,” Boylan said. “The people you meet there are likely to change your whole life. If you need any help, perhaps I can put in a good word at my Alma Mater. With all the heroes coming back, boys of your age are going to have difficulties.”

  “Thank you.” The last thing in the world. “I don’t have to apply for months yet. What college did you go to?”

  “Virginia,” Boylan said.

  Virginia, Rudolph thought disdainfully. Anybody can go to Virginia. Why does he talk as though it’s Harvard or Princeton, or at least Amherst?

  They drew up in front of Julie’s house. Automatically, Rudolph looked up at Miss Lenaut’s window, in the next building. It was dark.

  “Well, here we are, child,” Boylan said, as Rudolph opened the door on his side and got out. “It’s been delightful talking to you.”

  “Thank you for the ride,” Julie said. She got out and bounced past Rudolph toward her front door. Rudolph went after her. He could kiss her good night, at least, in the shadow of the porch. As she felt in her bag for her key, her head down, her pony tail swinging down over her face, he tried to pick up her chin so he could kiss her, but she pulled away fiercely. “Kowtower,” she said. She mimicked him savagely. “It’s nothing much. If you can just read and write, practically …”

  “Julie …”

  “Suck up to the rich.” He had never seen her face looking like that, pale and closed down. “Scaly old man. He bleaches his hair. And his eyebrows. Boy, some people’ll do anything for a ride in a car, won’t they?”

  “Julie, you’re being unreasonable.” If she knew the whole truth about Boylan, he might understand her anger. But just because he was ordinarily polite …

  “Take your hands off me.” She had the key out and was fumbling at the door, still smelling of apricot.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow about four …”

  “That’s what you think,” she said. “Wait until I have a Buick and then come around. That’s more your speed.” She had the door open now and was through it, a rustle of girl, a fragrant, snapping shadow, and was gone as the door slammed shut.

  Rudolph went back to the car slowly. If this was love, the hell with it. He got into the car and closed the door. “That was a quick good night,” Boylan said as he started the car. “In my day, we used to linger.”

  “Her folks like her to get in early.”

  Boylan drove through the town in the direction of Vanderhoff Street. Of course he knows where I live, Rudolph thought. He doesn’t even bother to hide it.

  “A charming girl, little Julie,” Boylan said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You do anything more than kiss her?”

  “That’s my business, sir,” Rudolph said. Even in his anger at the man, he admired the way the words came out, clipped and cold. Nobody could treat Rudolph Jordache as though Rudolph Jordache was a cad.

  “Of course it is,” Boylan said. He sighed. “The temptation must be great. When I was your age …” He left it unfinished, a suggestion of a procession of virgins, virginal no more.

  “By the way,” he said in a flat conversational tone, “do you hear from your sister?”

  “Sometimes,” Rudolph said guardedly. She wrote to him care of Buddy Westerman. She didn’t want her mother reading her letters. She was living in a Y.W.C.A. downtown in New York. She had been making the rounds of theatrical offices, looking for a job as an actress but producers weren’t falling all over themselves to hire girls who had played Rosalind in high school. She hadn’t found any work yet, but she loved New York. In her first letter she had apologized for being so mean to Rudolph the day she left, at the Port Philip House. She had been all churned up and not really responsible for what she was saying. But she still thought it was bad for him to stay on at home. The Jordache family was quicksand, she wrote. Nothing was going to change her opinion about that.

  “Is she well?” Boylan asked.

  “Okay.”

  “You know I know her,” Boylan said, without emphasis.

  “Yes.”

  “She spoke to you about me?”

  “Not that I remember,” Rudolph said.

  “
Ah-hah.” It was difficult to know what Boylan meant to convey by this. “Do you have her address? I sometimes go down to New York and I might find the time to buy the child a good dinner.”

  “No, I don’t have her address,” Rudolph said. “She’s moving.”

  “I see.” Boylan saw through him, of course, but didn’t press. “Well, if you do hear from her, let me know. I have something of hers she might like to have.”

  “Yeah.”

  Boylan turned into Vanderhoff and stopped in front of the bakery.

  “Well, here we are,” he said. “The home of honest toil.” The sneer was plain. “I bid you good night, young man. It’s been a most agreeable evening.”

  “Good night,” Rudolph said. He got out of the car. “Thanks.”

  “Your sister told me you liked to fish,” Boylan said. “We have quite a good stream on the property. It’s stocked every year. I don’t know Why. Nobody goes near it anymore. If you’d like to give it a try, just come any time.”

  “Thank you,” Rudolph said. Bribery. And he knew he would be bribed. The slippery innocence of trout. “I’ll be along.”

  “Good,” Boylan said. “I’ll have my cook do up the fish for us and we can have dinner together. You’re an interesting boy and I enjoy talking to you. Maybe when you come up, you’ll have heard from your sister, with her new address.”

  “Maybe. Thanks again.”

  Boylan waved and drove off.

  Rudolph went in and up to his room through the dark house. He could hear his father snoring. It was Saturday night and his father didn’t work on Saturday night. Rudolph walked past his parents’ door and up the steps to his room carefully. He didn’t want to wake his mother and have to talk to her.

  III

  “I’m going to sell my body, I do declare,” Mary Jane Hackett was saying. She came from Kentucky. “They don’t want talent anymore, just bare, fruity flesh. The next call anybody puts out for showgirls I’m going to say, Farewell Stanislavsky, and wiggle my little old Dixie behind for pay.”