Acceptable Losses

by Irwin Shaw

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” Damon said, but the detective had already hung up.

  He went back to the bar, drank half his whiskey, paid for it and left a large tip for the barman. Who knows, he thought sardonically, when a bartender might become your enemy?

  Still, he didn’t want to go back to the office. He knew he had been disagreeable the last few days, had been brusque with Miss Walton, had built an invisible wall of silence between his desk and Oliver Gabrielsen’s, had scolded Miss Walton for putting a call through to him from a man she should have known he detested and tried to avoid, had told her at the end of the scolding that he would only take calls from his wife and a Mr. Schulter.

  The atmosphere in the office had reflected all this. When Oliver talked to Miss Walton, it was in hushed tones. And when he came through the door into the office, even if for the moment neither of them was talking, the hush, Damon felt, became more intense.

  Standing there at the bar, staring down at the rest of the whiskey, which he would not drink, he felt ashamed of himself for loading his own troubles on the shoulders of his loyal and uncomprehending friends. An idea came to him and his spirits rose. He would go out and buy a present for both Miss Walton and Oliver and bear the presents to them as a peace offering, an acknowledgment of guilt and a promise of more comradely behavior in the future. Shopping for others, trying to find just the gift that would give pleasure to the faithful was an antidote to self-pity. Thinking of the faithful, he would also get something for Sheila.

  The streets, after he had left the bar, seemed brighter than when he had entered it, and he felt better than at any moment since he had picked up the telephone on the bedside table on that Saturday night.

  First, Miss Walton. Poor woman, she was too fat to find any frilly feminine thing that would make her more attractive, and the only piece of jewelry he had ever seen her wear was a small gold cross that she always carried on a thin chain around her throat. He imagined that Saks might have something that had a chance of pleasing her. He would have to find a sympathetic saleswoman. As he walked toward the store, he snapped his fingers. He knew what he would look for. Miss Walton was always cold in the office. Both he and Oliver liked as much fresh air as they could get, and when they worked, they kept the temperature as low as they could manage without actually freezing them out of the place. Miss Walton always wore a heavy sweater at work in mute complaint of her bosses’ tastes in the New York climate. She wore it, too, in the summer with a second sweater under it when the air-conditioning was turned on. It had been the same sweater as long back as Damon could remember, a drab, dark maroon cardigan that she had knitted herself. Since during the years she had worked for the office she had grown fatter and fatter, she must have kept knitting new sweaters to accommodate her swelling bulk, but they were always the same style, the same heavy drab maroon. He decided he would get her a cardigan sweater, since that seemed to be her taste, but in a more cheerful color.

  He quickened his step, pleased with himself. The old head was working, he thought. It was the first decision he had made in ten days that had not involved The Problem, as he now thought of it, with the capital letters.

  There was a pleasant feminine hum in the store.

  Women shopped quietly. It was agreeably different from the high treble in restaurants where women congregated for lunch, restaurants he avoided as much as possible, himself.

  He found the section where women’s sweaters were sold. When the nice young black girl who was serving him asked, “What size, Sir?” after he had described what he was looking for, he was stumped. He knew what size coats Sheila wore and Sheila was a big woman and wore a forty-two. As far as he could judge, Miss Walton was about twice as large as Sheila although not as tall. He didn’t know much about women’s clothes, but he knew he couldn’t ask for a size eighty-four.

  “Well,” he said to the salesgirl, “I’m not quite sure.” He put out his hands in front of his chest to make a semicircle that he guessed was about the amount of space Miss Walton’s bosom took up. “I would say she’s about this big in this vicinity,” he said.

  The salesgirl laughed, showing brilliant teeth and he laughed, too. Buying and selling was a humorous enterprise, a friendly bond between races. “I’m afraid, Sir,” the girl said, “that you won’t find anything nearly like that here. I suggest that you try the men’s department.”

  “Thank you,” he said and started toward the elevators, thinking, Whoever hires people for the store should be congratulated.

  He found a sweater in light blue cashmere that was too big for him when he tried it on but bought it when the salesmen assured him that if it didn’t fit the lady, she could bring it back and exchange it. He felt that the price was hideously expensive, but he was in no mood to worry about money. Anyway, he was paying with a Saks credit card and the bill would only come in at the end of the month and that postponed the pain.

  While he was in the men’s department, he thought he might as well look around for something for Oliver Gabrielsen. He knew Oliver’s size because Sheila had bought a ski sweater for him at Christmas.

  He browsed happily along the aisles and the racks of suits and jackets, enjoying the little shopping holiday, finally understanding how women could spend afternoons on end shopping and realizing at the same moment that it could become a deadly addiction.

  He bought a blue flannel blazer with brass buttons for Oliver and asked that it be gift-wrapped, too.

  “Would that be all, Sir?” the salesman asked. “Not something for you?”

  Damon hesitated for a moment. “Why not?” he asked. Everybody was coming up with great ideas this afternoon. “What do you suggest?”

  “We have a new selection of corduroy jackets,” the man said. “They’re being featured in our windows this week. And they last almost forever. They’re very useful if you spend any time in the country.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Another splendid idea. “I expect to be living in the country full time shortly.” Suddenly the concept that he might retire and live overlooking the Sound in Connecticut, which had only been an idle fancy for the vague future up to then, became a reality.

  “If you’ll follow me, Sir,” the man said, leading him to a long rack where the jackets were ranged. “What size would you say? Forty-six?”

  “You flatter me,” Damon said. The afternoon was getting better and better. “Fifty-four would be more like it.”

  The salesman looked dubious, but took a natural-colored corduroy jacket down. “We’ll just try this on for size, shall we?”

  It fit perfectly.

  “You’re much larger than one would think,” the salesman said.

  “Alas,” said Damon. “Will you send this, please.” He gave the man his address. “And the delivery will have to be in the morning, when the maid is in the house. I’ll tell her to expect you.”

  Again he took the credit card out of his wallet. The jacket cost more than any entire suit he had ever bought, but he hadn’t bought a new suit in six years. Inflation, he thought lightly. Grin and bear it. The wallet was old and cracked, he saw. He forgot how long he had had it. “Where’s the leather goods department, please?”

  “Downstairs,” the man said.

  Humming gently to himself, Damon went down to the leather goods department and bought a pigskin wallet. Inflation, he saw, had not spared the leather goods department, either. No matter.

  “Shall I have it gift-wrapped?” the salesman asked.

  “No. It’s for myself. I’ll just slip it in my pocket, if you don’t mind.” He put his old wallet on the top of the glass case where the wallets were displayed and emptied it—credit cards, driver’s license, social security card, bills, proof of his existence and evidence that he was a citizen in the country of his choice. He put them carefully into the new wallet, then put it into his inside breast pocket. As he turned to leave, the salesman said, “Excuse me, Sir, what do you want done with this one?” He held up the cracked, worn old piece of l
eather as though it were staining his fingers.

  “Throw it away,” Damon said grandly. Then he remembered Sheila. Mustn’t forget the skipper in this fiesta of self-pampering. She would be angry if she knew that he sometimes thought of her as the skipper. She firmly believed that all decisions were made by equal consent in their household. This was not true. “By the way,” he asked the salesman, “can you tell me where the furs department is?”

  The salesman told him and he took the elevator again, lightly carrying the boxes with Miss Walton’s sweater and Oliver’s blazer in them. Roger Damon, bringer of peace among the nations, dispenser of gold, goodwill and harmony, rising in the world of Saks.

  The saleswoman who greeted him in the fur department was a handsome lady with beautifully coiffed gray hair who apologized that since it was spring the stocks were depleted, but she would be happy to show the gentleman what there was.

  The season didn’t matter to Damon. Sheila would be around for many winters. He had seen an advertisement in the Sunday Times magazine section for sports furs. Sheila could stand a little sport, he thought. “Here is something in ranch mink,” the elegant lady said to him. It was a pale three-quarter length coat with a belt and a shawl collar. Damon couldn’t imagine what sport any woman could play in the coat but didn’t inquire. Nor did he inquire what sport the mink had indulged in at the ranch. Not an endangered species. His ecological principles were not being violated. The elegant lady, he guessed, was just about Sheila’s size, age and general shape. “Would you mind trying it so I can see how it looks on you?” Damon asked. “My wife is just about the same height as you and if I remember,” he tried to smile without making it a smirk, “about the same … uh … formation.” Then, to gain goodwill in the fur department at Saks forever, he said, “She’s beautiful.” He did not add that while the saleslady had silvery-gray hair, his wife’s hair was glittering black and would make a more striking contrast with the color of the coat.

  The coat looked magnificent on the gray-haired lady as she walked back and forth modeling it, throwing the shawl collar up around her ears, plunging her hands in the deep pockets, opening it wide, like a butterfly’s wings, to display the rippled silk lining.

  “I’ll take it,” Damon said.

  The woman looked at him sharply. “Don’t you want to look at any other coats? And the price?”

  “No,” Damon said, then added inanely, “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Very well, Sir.”

  This was no afternoon for haggling. He had finally joined the most civic-minded tribe of Americans, the insatiable consumers. He was soaring. Buy, buy, buy and sing all your troubles away.

  Carelessly, with a flourish, he signed the slip for his credit card, that totem of the tribe, without looking at the price and made sure the woman would have the coat delivered between nine and twelve the next morning.

  As he walked out of the ground floor exit of the store he thought momentarily of going to the office and giving their gifts to Miss Walton and Oliver. But the ecstasy of spending, which he had never experienced and never appreciated, was on him now. The afternoon was young and the treasures of the Imperial City lay all around him, waiting for his credit card.

  He hummed an air from the musical Camelot, remembering the words of the tune “The Lusty Month of May” and singing the words in his head to himself … “the time for every frivolous whim, proper or im …”

  He chuckled aloud, making a passing couple look at him questioningly. It was only April. Not too far off, he thought. Because of matters beyond his control, he was just a little ahead of the season. Now, where to go, what kind of store to visit? A grave decision. The echo of the song within his head made the decision for him. He turned off Fifth Avenue and went down the street toward Madison Avenue and the big music shop on the corner. Music, soothing the savage breast, next on the agenda. He did not know how long he lingered in the store, going over the catalogue, the salesman who waited on him becoming more and more affable as he called out the names of the records he wanted—the last quartets;

  Beethoven my father, my brother; Chopin, ardent and light-fingered Pole, hater of Russia; Mozart, that dazzling fountain; Liszt, that dark rhetorician; Brahms, a deep, tremendous sigh from the middle of Europe; Mahler, Richard Strauss, the lost world of Vienna; Poulenc, light and bell-like and not given enough credit for what he’d written; tant pis; Elgar, Ives, come into the twentieth century, boys; Gershwin, the jangled, blue sounds of the streets of New York; Copland, Appalachian dances, Western rhythms, the frenzied Mayan rhythms of Mexico; Shostakovich, Stravinsky, was that the Russian soul? Call on Lenin or Tolstoy to answer. The list grew longer and longer, the salesman more and more genial. We must have a little of the great soloists, Artur Rubinstein for openers, Casals, Stern, Schnabel, even if it’s an old recording, Horowitz, Segovia, for the flamenco, Rostropovich, to compare with Casals. Don’t go away yet, young man, there’s still the opera to consider. Verdi’s Falstaff to begin with, Cosi Fan Tutte and naturally, The Magic Flute. I’ll confer with my wife and drop in tomorrow for some others. Omit Wagner, if you don’t mind. Well, perhaps Die Meistersinger. And we must not snub the conductors … Bernstein, Karajan, Toscanini. You seem to be one of those young people who are up on the new men, I’ll trust you to give me some of their best.

  I guess that’s enough for one day, young man. But it would be blasphemy to submit all that glorious anthology of sound to the scratchy old phonograph in the living room. Let me hear one of the newer models. He listened to several radio-phonographs. Those clever Japanese, every one of the records sounding as though the orchestra was in the room, pure, sonorous, non-Oriental. He imagined himself sitting on the porch of Uncle Biancella’s little house in Connecticut, himself the country gentleman in a smart corduroy jacket that was guaranteed to last almost forever, looking out at the golden sheet of the Sound at sunset, growing older to the sound of angelic voices, a thousand glorious instruments addressing his ear only. The machine he chose was not the cheapest, nor the most expensive. He wrote a check, the figures of no importance, he told the salesman, who by now was dreaming of becoming at least a vice-president of the corporation that owned the store, to make sure everything was to be delivered in the morning, went out of the store immensely satisfied with himself.

  He was surprised when he left the store. The sun was low in the sky, it was past six o’clock. New York was a hundred Grand Canyons, eroded by the flow of mankind, the sun a dying star descending on the Meadowlands of New Jersey. All the big stores were closed for the night. But as he had been choosing the music he wished to hear over and over again in his last year, he had decided that there were books that had vanished from his library that he would want with him in Connecticut and new ones that he never had time to read during his active life. Of course, he might change, he would be aghast at what he had spent this afternoon, revert to his usual parsimony, be caught, in his declining years, with only the memory of the books that had disappeared or those he had borrowed from friends or public libraries and returned. Luckily, he remembered that the big book shops on Fifth Avenue remained open all evening. When he had first come to New York, it had been a city for book-lovers, shops on almost every side street, great dusty stores where old, spectacled clerks would say, when asked for a particular volume, “Ah, I do think I know where I could find that,” and would then leave among creaking shelves and reappear ten minutes later with some schoolboy’s copy of Burke’s On Reconciliation with the Colonies or a first edition of Kipling’s Barrack Room Ballads. All the best things are swept away by the tide of time, he thought, ravaged by nostalgia. No more, no more, quoth the raven, Nevermore.

  Do not look back. Think forward. Generations have their own demands. Space has become one of the dearest commodities on this crowded small outcropping of water-girt stone. “Out of Print” could easily be the name of every publishing house he now dealt with. Tell me not in mournful numbers that when Scott Fitzgerald died, no book he had written could still be
found except at exaggerated prices by rare-book dealers who advertised in small print in the back pages of The Nation and The New Republic. Do not linger over the fact that last year’s huge bestseller has already been shredded into waste paper.

  Still, here and there treasures could be found. He made up the list in his mind as he walked along Fifth Avenue. The list was enormous. Stopped at a traffic light, he finally reflected upon what he had been doing all afternoon, was still doing. He had been building a wall of things, permanent or semipermanent, around himself and those he loved in their different ways—Sheila, with a coat to keep her out of the wind for many winters to come, Miss Walton, a hardy perennial flower at her desk, warmed now for many seasons after his eventual departure, Oliver chic in his blazer for future festivities on Long Island, he in his own corduroy jacket, guaranteed to last almost forever, the hundreds, thousands, of concerts that would take years to listen to and know completely and assimilate. The books he had just included in his mental list, with his own overflowing library, meant decades of quiet afternoons and evenings to go through. He was thumbing his nose at death, at Zalovsky, he had put his bet down on the future in the space of a few hours of an April afternoon, and he walked toward the book shop euphorically, even smiling to himself at the thought that even if Zalovsky somehow managed to put his hand on what money he had, the sum would be immensely diminished by the day’s purchases.

  Significantly, he had not bought a television set, although the one they had at home was small and emitted a wavery image and was broken more often than it worked. Television did not stretch into the future. It was of today, immediate, it left tomorrow up for grabs. When he moved to Connecticut, he would donate the set to the Red Cross.

  In the book shop he ordered first the complete collection of the poetry of Yeats, in honor of the memory of Maurice Fitzgerald, for Oliver Gabrielsen to read when he was not at the modish parties in his blue blazer. He hesitated at what there was on the shelves that might be useful to Miss Walton. She could not wear the cashmere sweater twenty-four hours a day. He chose the poems of Emily Dickinson—dry, New England words of consolation across a century from one spinster to another, to make the lonely nights of New York endurable for the sweet and dutiful spirit locked in that mound of fat.