Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  “I promise you that in five years you can live in New York or anyplace you say.”

  “You promise,” she said. “It’s easy to promise. And I’m not going to bury myself for five years either. I can’t understand you. What in God’s name do you think you’re getting out of it?”

  “I’m starting two years ahead of anybody in my class,” Rudolph said. “I know what I’m doing. Calderwood trusts me. He’s got a lot more going for him than just his store. The store’s just a beginning, a base. He doesn’t know it yet, but I do. When I come down to New York I’m not going to be just another college graduate from a school nobody ever heard of, waiting in everybody’s outer office, with his hat in his hand. When I come down, they’re going to greet me at the front door. I’ve been poor a long time, Julie,” he said, “and I am going to do what I have to do never to be poor again.”

  “Boylan’s baby,” Julie said. “He’s ruined you. Money! Does money mean that much to you? Just money?”

  “Don’t sound like Little Miss Rich Bitch,” he said.

  “Even if it does,” she said, “if you went into law …”

  “I can’t wait,” he said. “I’ve waited long enough. I’ve been in enough schoolrooms. If I need law, I’ll hire lawyers.” Echo of Duncan Calderwood, that hard-headed man. They hire schooling. “If you want to come along with me, fine. If not …” But he couldn’t say it. “If not,” he repeated lamely. “Oh, Julie, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think I know about everything else, but I don’t know about you.”

  “I lied to my father and mother …” She was sobbing now. “So I could be alone with you. But it’s not you. It’s Boylan’s doll. I’m going back to the hotel. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Weeping uncontrollably, she hailed a cab on the Avenue. It squealed to a halt and she opened the door and got in and slammed the door behind her.

  He watched the cab roar away without moving. Then he turned and started back toward the party. He had left his bag there and Gretchen was going to make up a bed for him on the living room couch. 923, he remembered, the number of the hotel room.

  Alimonied, Mary Jane did well for herself. Rudolph had never been in a wider or softer bed and in the glow of a lamp on the dressing table (Mary Jane insisted on keeping a light on) the large, warmly carpeted room, its walls pearl-gray silk, showed an expensive decorator’s touch. Deep-green velvet curtains shut out the sounds of the city. The preliminaries (they had been brief) had taken place in the high-ceilinged living room furnished with gilt Directoire pieces and large, gold-tinted mirrors, in which the embracing couple were caught in a vague and metallic luminosity. “The main event takes place inside,” Mary Jane had said, breaking away from a kiss, and without any further agreement from Rudolph had led him into the bedroom. “I’ll get ready in the bathroom,” she said, and kicked off her shoes and walked splendidly and almost steadily into the adjoining bathroom, from which had immediately come the sound of water running and the clink of bottles.

  It was a little bit like being in a doctor’s office while he prepared for a minor operation, Rudolph thought resentfully, and he had hesitated before getting undressed. When Mary Jane had asked him to take her home from the party, well after midnight, with only four or five guests still sprawled around, he had no idea that anything like this was going to happen. He felt a bit dizzy from all the drinking he had done and he was worried about what his head would feel like when he lay down. For a moment, he had considered stealing quietly out and through the front door, but Mary Jane, her intuition or her experience at work, had called out sunnily, “I’ll just be a minute more, darling. Make yourself comfortable.”

  So Rudolph had undressed, putting his shoes soberly side by side under a chair and folding his clothes neatly on the seat of the chair. The bed was already made up for the night (lace-fringed pillows, he noticed, and pale-blue sheets) and he had slipped under the covers, shivering a little. This was one way of making sure he wouldn’t be knocking on a hotel door that night. 923.

  As he lay under the blankets, curious, a little fearful, he closed his eyes. It had to happen some day, he thought. What better day than this?

  With his eyes closed, the room seemed to be dipping and wheeling around him and the bed under him seemed to move in an uneasy rhythm, like a small boat anchored in a chop. He opened his eyes just as Mary Jane came into the room, tall, naked, and superb, the long body with the small, round breasts and splendid hips and thighs unwearied by matrimony, unscarred by debauch. She stood over him, looking down at him with hooded eyes, veteran of many seasons, sweeper-up of stragglers, her red hair, dark in the glow of the lamp, swinging down toward him.

  His erection was swift and sudden and huge, a pylon, a cannon barrel. He was torn between pride and embarrassment and almost asked Mary Jane to put out the light. But before he could say anything, Mary Jane bent and swept back the covers in a single tearing gesture.

  She stood beside the bed, inspecting him, smiling softly.

  “Little brother,” she whispered, “little beautiful brother of the poor.” Then, soft-handed, she touched him. He jumped convulsively.

  “Lie still,” she ordered. Her hands moved like small, expert animals on him, fur on damask. He quivered. “Lie still, I said,” she said harshly.

  It was over soon, shamefully soon, a fierce, arching jet and he heard himself sobbing. She knelt on the bed, kissed him on the mouth, her hands intolerable now, the smell of her hair, cigarette smoke and perfume smothering him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, when she raised her head. “I just couldn’t …”

  She chuckled. “Don’t be sorry. I’m flattered. I consider it a tribute.” With a long graceful movement, she slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers over them, clamped him to her, her leg silken over his thighs, his semen oiling them both. “Don’t worry, about any little thing, little brother,” she said. She licked his ear and he was shaken once more by a quiver that started from her tongue and convulsed his body down to the tips of his toes, electrocution by lamp light. “I’m sure that in a very few minutes you’ll be as good as new, little brother.”

  He wished she’d stop calling him little brother. He didn’t want to be reminded of Gretchen. Gretchen had given him a peculiar look as he had left with Mary Jane.

  Mary Jane’s gift of prophecy in her chosen field had not deserted her. In less than a very few minutes her hands had awakened him once more and he did what Mary Jane had brought him to her bed to do. He plunged into her with all the hoarded strength of years of abstinence. “Oh, Christ, please, that’s enough,” she cried finally, and he let himself go in one great thrust, delivering them both.

  Freak, he heard Julie’s bitter voice, freak. Let her come to this room and this woman for testimony.

  “Your sister said you were still a virgin,” Mary Jane was saying.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” he said shortly.

  They were lying side by side now, on their backs, Mary Jane’s leg, just a leg now, thrown lightly across his knee. She was smoking, inhaling deeply, and smoke drifting slowly up when she let it go from her lungs.

  “I must discover me some more virgins,” she said. “Is it true?”

  “I said let’s not talk about it.”

  “It is true.”

  “Not anymore, anyway.”

  “That’s for fair,” she said. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “A beautiful young man like you,” she said. “The girls must be ravenous.”

  “They manage to restrain themselves. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “How about that cute little girl you go around with?” Room 923. “What’s her name?”

  “Julie.” He did not like saying Julie’s name in this place.

  “Isn’t she after you?”

  “We were supposed to get married.”

  “Were? And now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s missing. It must come
in the family,” Mary Jane said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Willie says your sister’s absolutely delirious in the hay.”

  “Willie ought to learn to keep his mouth shut.” Rudolph was shocked that Willie would say something like that to a woman, any woman, to anybody about his wife. He would never quite trust Willie again or completely like him again.

  Mary Jane laughed. “We’re in the big city now,” she said, “where they burn the gas. Willie’s an old friend of mine. I had an affair with him before he ever met your sister. And occasionally, when he’s feeling down or needs a change of scenery, he still comes around.”

  “Does my sister know?” Rudolph tried to keep the sudden anger out of his voice. Willie, that drifting, frivolous man.

  “I don’t think so,” Mary Jane said lightly. “Willie’s awfully good at being vague. And nobody signs any affidavits. Did you ever lay her—Gretchen?”

  “She’s my sister, for Christ’s sake.” His voice sounded shrill in his ears.

  “Big deal,” Mary Jane said. “Sister. From what Willie says, it’d be worth the trouble.”

  “You’re making fun of me.” That was it, he told himself, the older, experienced woman amusing herself teasing the simple boy up from the country.

  “Hell, no,” Mary Jane said calmly. “My brother laid me when I was fifteen. In a beached canoe. Be a doll, honey, and get me a drink. The Scotch is on the table in the kitchen. Plain water. Never mind the ice.”

  He got out of bed. He would have liked to put on some clothes, a robe, his pants, wrap himself in a towel, anything to keep from parading around before those knowing, measuring, amused eyes. But he knew if he did anything to cover himself she would laugh. Damn it, he thought desperately, how did I ever let myself in for anything like this?

  The room suddenly seemed cold to him and he felt the goose flesh prickle all over his body. He tried not to shiver as he walked toward the door and into the living room. Gold and shadowy in the metaled mirrors, he made his way soundlessly over the deep carpets toward the kitchen. He found the light and switched it on. Huge white refrigerator, humming softly, a wall oven, a mixer, a juicer, copper pans arranged on the white walls, steel double sink, a dish-washing machine, the bottle of Scotch in the middle of the red formica table, the domestic American dream in the bright white neon light. He took two glasses down from a cupboard (bone china, flowered cups, coffee pots, huge wooden pepper mills, housewifely accoutrements for the non-housewife in the bed in the other room). He ran the water until it was cold and first rinsed his mouth, spitting into the steel sink, xylophones of the night, then drank two long glasses of water. Into the other glass he poured a big slug of Scotch and half filled the glass with water. There was the ghost of a sound, a faint scratching and scurrying. At the back of the sink black insects, fat and armored, roaches, disappeared into cracks. Slob, he thought.

  Leaving the light on in the kitchen, he carried the drink back to the mistress of the household in her well-used bed. We aim to serve.

  “There’s a doll,” Mary Jane said, reaching up for the glass, long, pointed fingernails glinting crimson. She raised against the pillows, red hair wanton against the pale blue and lace, and drank thirstily. “Aren’t you having one?”

  “I’ve drunk enough.” He reached down for his shorts and started to put them on.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m going home.” He put on his shirt, relieved to be covered at last. “I’ve got to be at work at nine in the morning.” He strapped on his new watch. A quarter to four.

  “Please,” she said, in a small, childish voice. “Please. Don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sorry. The thought of being out on the street, dressed, alone, was exhilarating to him.

  “I can’t stand being alone at night.” She was begging now.

  “Call up Willie,” he said, sitting down and pulling on his socks and slipping into his shoes.

  “I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep,” she said.

  He tied his shoelaces deliberately.

  “Everybody leaves me,” she said, “every goddamn sonofabitch leaves me. I’ll do anything. Stay till six, until daylight, until five please, honey. I’ll suck you, please …” She was crying now.

  Tears all night, the world of women, he thought coldly, as he stood up, buttoned his shirt and did up his tie. The sobs echoed behind him as he stood before the mirror. He saw that his hair was mussed, plastered with sweat. He went into the bathroom. Dozens of bottles of perfume, bath-oil, Alka-seltzer, sleeping pills. He combed his hair carefully, erasing the night.

  She had stopped crying when he went back into the bedroom. She was sitting up straighter, watching him coldly, her eyes narrowed. She had finished her drink but was still holding her glass.

  “Last chance,” she said harshly.

  He put on his jacket.

  “Good night,” he said.

  She threw the glass at him. He refused to duck. The glass hit him a glancing blow on the forehead, then shattered against the mirror over the mantelpiece of the white marble fireplace.

  “Little shit,” she said.

  He went out of the room, crossed to the front hallway and opened the door. He stepped out through the doorway and closed the door silently behind him and rang for the elevator.

  The elevator man was old, good only for short trips, late at night. He looked speculatively at Rudolph as they went down the whining shaft. Does he keep count of his passengers, Rudolph thought, does he make a neat record at dawn?

  The elevator man opened the elevator door as they came to a halt. “You’re bleeding, young man,” he said. “Your head.”

  “Thank you,” Rudolph said.

  The elevator man said nothing as Rudolph crossed the hall and went out into the dark street. Once on the street and out of sight of those rheumy recording eyes, Rudolph took out his handkerchief and put it up to his forehead. The handkerchief came away bloody. There are wounds in all encounters. He walked, alone, his footsteps echoing on the pavement, toward the lights of Fifth Avenue. At the corner he looked up. The street sign read ‘63rd Street.’ He hesitated. The St. Moritz was on Fifty-ninth Street, along the Park. Room 923. A short stroll in the light morning air. Dabbing at his forehead again with his handkerchief he started toward the hotel.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got there. Ask for forgiveness, swear, “I will do anything you say,” confess, denounce, cleanse himself, cry love, reach out for a memory, forget lust, restore tenderness, sleep, forget …

  The lobby was empty. The night clerk behind the desk looked at him briefly, incuriously, used to lone men late at night, wandering in from the sleeping city.

  “Room 923,” he said into the house phone.

  He heard the operator ringing the room. After ten rings he hung up. There was a clock in the lobby. 4:35. The last bars in the city had been closed for thirty-five minutes. He walked slowly out of the lobby. He had begun and ended the day alone. Just as well.

  He hailed a cruising taxi and got in. That morning, he was going to start earning one hundred dollars a week. He could afford a taxi. He gave Gretchen’s address, but then as the taxi started south, he changed his mind. He didn’t want to see Gretchen and he certainly didn’t want to see Willie. They could send him his bag. “I’m sorry, driver,” he said, leaning forward, “I want Grand Central Station.”

  Although he hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours, he was wide-awake when he reported to work at nine o’clock in Duncan Calderwood’s office. He did not punch the time clock, although his card was in its slot. He was through punching clocks.

  Chapter 3

  1950

  Thomas twirled the combination of the padlock and threw open his locker. For many months now, every locker had been equipped with a padlock and members were requested to leave their wallets at the office, where they were put into sealed envelopes and filed in the office safe. The decision had
been pushed through by Brewster Reed, whose talismanic hundred-dollar bill had been lifted from his pocket the Saturday afternoon of the weekend Thomas had gone down to Port Philip. Dominic had been pleased to announce this development the Monday afternoon when Thomas reported back to work. “At least,” Dominic said, “now they know it isn’t you and they can’t blame me for hiring a thief, the bastards.” Dominic had also pushed through a raise for Thomas of ten dollars and he was now getting forty-five dollars a week.

  Thomas undressed and got into a clean sweatsuit and put on a pair of boxing shoes. He was taking over the five o’clock calisthenics class from Dominic and there were usually one or two members who asked him to spar a couple of rounds with them. He had learned from Dominic the trick of looking aggressive without inflicting any punishment whatever and he had learned enough of Dominic’s phrases to make the members believe he was teaching them how to fight.

  He hadn’t touched the forty-nine hundred dollars in the safety deposit box in Port Philip and he still called young Sinclair sir when they met in the locker room.

  He enjoyed the calisthenics classes. Unlike Dominic, who just called out the cadences, Thomas did all the exercises with the class, pushups, situps, bicycle riding, straddles, knee bending, touching the floor with the knees straight and the palms of the hand flat, and all the rest. It kept him feeling fit and at the same time it amused him to see all those dignified, self-important men sweating and panting. His voice, too, developed a tone of command that made him seem less boyish than before. For once, he began to wake up in the morning without the feeling that something bad, out of his control, was going to happen to him that day.

  When Thomas went into the mat room after the calisthenics, Dominic and Greening were putting on the big gloves. Dominic had a cold and he had drunk too much the night before. His eyes were red and he was moving slowly. He looked shapeless and aging in his baggy sweatsuit and since his hair was mussed, his bald spot shone in the light from the big lamps of the room. Greening, who was tall for his weight, moved around impatiently, shuffling his boxing shoes against the mats with a dry, aggressive sound. His eyes seemed bleached in the strong light and his blond hair, crew-cut, almost platinum. He had been a captain in the Marines during the war and had won a big decoration. He was very handsome in a straight-nosed, hard-jawed, pink-cheeked way and if he hadn’t come from a family that was above such things, he probably could have done well as a hero in Western movies. In all of the time since he had told Dominic that he thought Thomas had stolen ten dollars from his locker, he had never addressed a word to Thomas and now, as Thomas came into the mat room to wait for one of the members who had made a date to spar with him, Greening didn’t even look Thomas’s way.