by Irwin Shaw
Michael Whitacre pushed his way through the crowds. He felt himself smiling mechanically and hypocritically at people as they jostled him. He was late, and he couldn’t get a taxi, and he hadn’t been able to avoid staying and having some drinks in one of the dressing rooms. The hurried gulping had left his head buzzing and his stomach burning.
The theatre had been wild. There had been a noisy, disinterested audience and an understudy had filled in the grandmother’s part because Patricia Ferry had shown up too drunk to go on, and Michael had had a trying night keeping everything going. He was the stage manager for Late Spring and it had a cast of thirty-seven, with three children who always got colds, and five sets that had to be changed in twenty seconds. At the end of a night like this all he wanted to do was go home and sleep. But there was this damned party over on 67th Street, and Laura was there. Anyway, nobody ever just went to sleep on New Year’s Eve.
He pushed through the worst of the crowd and walked briskly to Fifth Avenue and turned north. Fifth Avenue was less crowded and the air whipped down from the Park, lively and invigorating. The sky here was dark enough over the looming buildings so that he actually could see stars, pale and small, in the thin corridor of heaven visible over the street.
I must get a home in the country, he thought as he walked briskly, his shoes making a soft tapping on the cement, a little inexpensive place not far from the city, six, seven thousand, maybe, you could swing a loan, where I can get away for a few days at a time, where it’s quiet and you can see all the stars at night and where you can go to sleep at eight o’clock when you feel like it. I must do it, he thought, I musn’t just think about it.
He got a glimpse of himself in a dimly lit shop window. He looked shadowy and unreal in the reflection, but, as usual, he was annoyed with what he saw. Self-consciously, he straightened his shoulders. I must remember not to slouch, he thought, and I must lose fifteen pounds. I look like a fat grocer.
He refused a taxi that stopped next to him, as he crossed at a corner. Exercise, he thought, and no drinking for at least a month. That’s what does it. The drinking. Beer, martinis, have another. And the way your head felt in the morning. You weren’t good for anything until noon and by that time you were out to lunch and there you were with a glass in your hand again. This was the beginning of a new year, a wonderful time to go on the wagon. It would be a good test of character. Tonight, at the party. Unobtrusively. Just not drinking. And in the house in the country no liquor closet at all. He felt much better now, resolved and powerful, although his dress trousers still felt uncomfortably tight as he strode past the rich windows toward 67th Street.
When he came into the crowded room, it was just past twelve. People were singing and embracing and that girl who passed out at all the parties was doing it again in the corner. Whitacre saw his wife in the crowd kissing a little man who looked like Hollywood. Somebody put a drink in his hand and a tall girl spilled some potato salad on his shoulder and said, “Excellent salad.” She brushed vaguely at his lapel with a long, exquisite hand with crimson nails an inch and a half in length. Katherine came over with enough bosom showing to power a frigate in a mild breeze and said, “Mike, darling.” She kissed him behind the ear, and said, “What are you doing tonight?” Michael said, “My wife arrived yesterday from the Coast.” And Katherine said, “Ooops! Sorry. Happy New Year,” and wandered off, her bosom dazzling three Harvard juniors with crew haircuts and white ties, who were related to the hostess and who were in town for the holiday.
Michael lifted his glass and drank half of its contents. It seemed to be Scotch into which someone had poured lemon soda. Tomorrow, he thought, will be time enough for the wagon. After all, he had had three already, so this night was lost anyhow. Michael waited until he saw his wife finish kissing the bald little man, who wore a swooping Russian cavalryman’s moustache.
Michael made his way across the room and came up behind his wife. She was holding the little man’s hand, and saying, “Don’t tell anyone, Harry, but the script stinks.”
“You know me, Laura,” the bald man said. “Do I ever tell anyone?”
“Happy New Year, darling,” Michael kissed Laura’s cheek.
Laura turned around, still holding the bald man’s hand. She smiled. Even with the din of celebration all around her, and the drunks and commotion, there was that tenderness and melting, lovely welcome that always surprised and shook Michael, no matter how many times he saw it. She put up her free arm and drew Michael closer to her to kiss him. There was a single, hesitating moment when his cheek was next to hers, before she kissed him, when he could sense her sniffing inquisitively. He felt himself grow stolid and sullen, even as they kissed. She always does it, he thought. New Year, old year, makes no difference.
“I doused myself, before leaving the theatre,” he said, pulling away and standing straight, “with two bottles of Chanel Number 5.”
He saw Laura’s eyelids quiver a little, hurt. “Don’t be mean to me,” she said, “in 1938. Why’re you so late?”
“I stopped and had a couple.”
“With whom?” The suspicious, pinched look that always came over Laura’s face when she questioned him, corrupted its usual delicate, candid expression.
“Some of the boys,” he said.
“That’s all?” Her voice was light and playful, in the accepted tone in which you quizzed your husband in public in her circle.
“No,” said Michael. “I forgot to tell you. There were six Polynesian dancing girls with walnuts in their navels, but we left them at the Stork.”
“Isn’t he funny?” Laura said to the bald man. “Isn’t he terribly funny?”
“This is getting domestic,” the bald man said. “This is when I leave. When it gets domestic.” He waved his fingers at the Whitacres. “Love you, Laura, darling,” he said, and burrowed into the crowd.
“I have a great idea,” Laura said. “Let’s not be mean to wives tonight.”
Michael drained his drink, and put the glass down. “Who’s the moustache?” he asked.
“Oh, Harry?”
“The one you were kissing.”
“Harry. I’ve known him for years. He’s always at parties.” Laura touched her hair tenderly. “Here. On the Coast. I don’t know what he does. Maybe he’s an agent. He came over and said he thought I was enchanting in my last picture.”
“Did he really say enchanting?”
“Uhuh.”
“Is that how they talk in Hollywood these days?”
“I guess so.” She was smiling at him, but her eyes flicked back and forth, looking over the room, as they always did everywhere but in their own home. “How did you think I was in my last picture?”
“Enchanting,” Michael said. “Let’s get a drink.”
Laura stood up and took his arm and rubbed her cheek softly against his shoulder and said, “Glad I’m here?” and Michael grinned and said, “Enchanted.” They both chuckled as they went toward the bar, side by side, through the mass of people in the center of the room.
The bar was in the next room, under an abstract painting of what was probably a woman with three magenta breasts, seated on a parallelogram.
Wallace Arney was there, graying and puffy, holding a teacup in his hand. He was flanked by a squat, powerful man in a blue-serge suit who looked as though he had been out in the weather for ten winters in a row. There were two girls, with flat, pretty faces and models’ bony ungirdled hips, who were drinking whiskey straight.
“Did he make a pass at you?” Michael heard one of the girls saying as he came up.
“No,” the other girl said, shaking her sleek, blonde hair.
“Why not?” the first girl asked.
“At the moment,” the blonde girl said, “he’s a. Yogi.”
Both girls stared reflectively at their glasses, then drained them and walked off together, stately and graceful as two panthers in the jungle.
“Did you hear that?” Michael asked Laura.
�
��Yes.” Laura was laughing.
Michael asked the man behind the bar for two Scotches and smiled at Arney, who was the author of Late Spring. Arney merely continued to stare directly ahead of him, saying nothing, from time to time lifting the teacup to his lips, in an elegant, shaky gesture.
“Out,” said the man in the blue-serge suit. “Out on his feet. The referee ought to stop the bout to spare him further punishment.”
Arney looked around him, grinning and furtive, and pushed his teacup and saucer toward the man behind the bar. “Please,” he said, “more tea.”
The bartender filled his cup with rye and Arney peered around him once more before accepting it. “Hello, Whitacre,” he said. “Mrs. Whitacre. You won’t tell Felice, will you?”
“No, Wallace,” Michael said. “I won’t tell.”
“Thank God,” Arney said, “Felice has indigestion. She’s been in the john for an hour. She won’t let me have even a beer.” His voice, hoarse and whiskey-riddled, wavered in self-pity. “Not even a beer. Can you imagine that? That’s why I carry a teacup. From a distance of three feet, who can tell the difference? After all,” he said defiantly, sipping from the cup, “I’m a grown man. She wants me to write another play.” Now he was aggrieved. “Just because she’s the wife of my producer she feels she has a right to throw a glass right out of my hand. Humiliating. A man my age should not be humiliated like that.” He turned vaguely to the man in the blue-serge suit. “Mr. Parrish here drinks like a fish and nobody humiliates him. Everybody says, isn’t it touching how Felice devotes herself to that drunken Wallace Arney? It doesn’t touch me. Mr. Parrish and I know why she does it. Don’t we, Mr. Parrish?”
“Sure, Pal,” said the man in the blue suit.
“Economics. Like everything else.” Arney waved his cup suddenly, splashing whiskey on Michael’s sleeve. “Mr. Parrish is a Communist and he knows. The basis of all human action. Greed. Naked greed. If they didn’t think they could get another play out of me, they wouldn’t care if I lived in a distillery. I could bathe in tequila and absinthe and they’d say, ‘Kiss my ass, Wallace Arney.’ I beg your pardon, Mrs. Whitacre.”
“That’s all right,” Laura said.
“Your wife is very pretty,” Arney said. “Very pretty indeed. I’ve heard her spoken of here tonight in glowing terms.” He leered at Michael knowingly. “Glowing terms. She has several old friends among the assembled guests here tonight. Haven’t you, Mrs. Whitacre?”
“Yes,” said Laura.
“Everybody has several old friends among the assembled guests,” Arney said. “That’s the way parties are these days. Modern society. A nest of snakes, hibernating for the winter, everybody wrapped around everybody else. Maybe that’ll be the theme of my next play. Except I won’t write it.” He drank deeply. “Marvelous tea. Don’t tell Felice.” Michael took Laura’s arm and started to leave. “Don’t go, Whitacre,” Arney said. “I know I’m boring you, but don’t go. I want to talk to you. What do you want to talk about? Want to talk about Art?”
“Some other time,” Michael said.
“I understand you’re a very serious young man,” Arney said doggedly. “Let’s talk about Art. How did my play go tonight?”
“All right,” said Michael.
“No,” said Arney, “I won’t talk about my play. I said Art and I know what you think of my play. Everybody in New York knows what you think about my play. You shoot your mouth off too goddamn much and if it was up to me I’d fire you. I am being friendly at the moment, but I’d fire you.”
“You’re drunk, Wally,” Michael said.
“I am not profound enough for you,” Arney said, his pale-blue eyes watering, his lower lip, full and wet, quivering as he spoke. “Reach my age, Whitacre, and you try to be profound.”
“I’m sure Michael likes your play very much,” Laura said in a clear, soothing voice.
“You’re a very pretty girl, Mrs. Whitacre,” Arney said, “and you have many friends, but please keep your trap shut at the moment.”
“Why don’t you go lie down somewhere?” Michael said.
“Let’s not get off the subject.” Arney turned hazily and belligerently back to Michael. “I know what you go around saying at parties. ‘Arney is a silly old has-been. Arney writes about people who vanished in 1929 in a style that vanished in 1829.’ It isn’t even very funny. I have plenty of critics. Why do I have to pay them out of my own money? I don’t like young snots like you, Whitacre. You’re not even young enough to be so snotty.”
“Listen, Pal …” the man in the blue-serge suit began.
“You talk to him,” Amey said to Parrish. “He’s a Communist, too. That’s why I’m not profound enough for him. All you have to do to be profound these days is pay fifteen cents a week for the New Masses.” He put his arm around Parrish lovingly. “This is the kind of Communist I like, Whitacre,” he said. “Mr. Parrish. Mr. Sunburned Parrish. He got sunburned in sunny Spain. He went to Spain and he got shot at in Madrid and he’s going back to Spain and he’s going to get killed there. Aren’t you, Mr. Parrish?”
“Sure, Pal,” Parrish said.
“That’s the kind of Communist I like,” Arney said loudly. “Mr. Parrish is here to get some money and some volunteers to go back and get shot with him in sunny Spain. Instead of being so goddamn profound at these fairy parties in New York, Whitacre, why don’t you go be profound in Spain with Mr. Parrish?”
“If you don’t keep quiet,” Michael started to say, but a tall, white-haired woman with a regal, dark face swept between him and Arney and calmly and without a word knocked the teacup out of Arney’s hand. It broke on the floor in a small, china tinkle. Arney looked at her angrily for a moment, then grinned sheepishly, ducking his head, looking shiftily at the floor. “Hello, Felice,” he said.
“Get away from the bar,” Felice said.
“Just drinking a little tea,” Arney said. He turned and shuffled off, fat and aging, his gray hair lank and sweating against his large head.
“Mr. Arney does not drink,” Felice said to the bartender.
“Yes, Ma’am,” said the bartender.
“Christ,” said Felice to Michael, “I could kill him. He’s driving me crazy. And fundamentally he’s such a sweet man.”
“A darling man,” Michael said.
“Was he awful?” Felice asked anxiously.
“Darling,” Michael said.
“Nobody’ll invite him any place any more and everyone ducks him …” Felice said.
“I can’t imagine why,” said Michael.
“Even so,” said Felice sadly, “it’s awful for him. He sits in his room brooding, telling everyone who’ll listen to him that he’s a has-been. I thought this would be good for him and I could keep an eye on him.” She shrugged, looking after Arney’s rumpled, retreating figure. “Some men ought to have their hands cut off at the wrist when they reach for their first drink.” She picked up her skirts in a courtly, old-fashioned gesture, and went off after the playwright in a rustle of taffeta.
“I think,” Michael said, “I could stand a drink.”
“Me, too,” said Laufa.
“Pal,” said Mr. Parrish.
They stood silently at the bar, watching the bartender fill their glasses.
“The abuse of alcohol,” Mr. Parrish said in a solemn, preacher-like voice, as he reached for his glass, “is the one thing that puts Man above the animal.”
They all laughed and Michael raised his glass to Mr. Parrish before he drank.
“To Madrid,” Parrish said, in an offhand, everyday way, and Laura said “To Madrid” in a hushed, breathy voice. Michael hesitated, feeling the old uneasiness, before he, too, said, “To Madrid.”
They drank.
“When did you get back?” Michael asked. He felt uncomfortable, talking about it.
“Four days ago,” Parrish said. He lifted the glass to his lips again. “You have very good liquor in this country,” he said, grinning. He drank steadily, refilling
his glass every five minutes, getting a little redder as time went by, but showing no other effects.
“When did you leave Spain?” Michael asked.
“Two weeks ago.”
Two weeks ago, Michael thought, on the frozen roads, with the cold rifles and the makeshift uniforms and the planes overhead and the new graves. And now he’s standing here in a blue suit like a truckdriver at his own wedding, rattling the ice cubes in his drink, with people talking about the last picture they made and what the critics said and what the doctor thought about the baby’s habit of sleeping with his fist in his eyes, and a man with a guitar singing’ fake Southern ballads in the corner of the room in the heavy-carpeted, crowded, rich apartment eleven stories up in the unmarked, secure building, with a view of the Park through the tall windows, and the magenta girl with three breasts over the bar. And in a little while he would go down to the docks on the river that you could see from the windows and get on a boat and start back. And there were no marks on him of what he had been through, no hints in the good-natured, clumsy way in which he behaved, of what was ahead of him.
The human race, Michael thought, is insanely flexible. He was considerably older than Michael, and no doubt had led a much harder life, and yet he had been there, on the long marches and the bloody ground. He had killed and risked being killed, and was going back for more of the same … Michael jerked his head, despising himself for a moment as he realized that he was sorry Parrish was there, at this party, a red-faced, rough-handed, polite policeman to Michael’s conscience.
“… money is the important thing,” Parrish was saying to Laura, “and political pressure. We can get plenty of guys who want to fight. But the British Government’s impounded all the Loyalist gold in London, and Washington’s really helping Franco. We have to sneak our fellows in, and it takes bribing and passage money and stuff like that. So one day, we were in the line outside University City, and it was cold, sweet God, it would freeze the nipples off a whale’s belly, and they came to me and they said, ‘Parrish, me lad, you’re just wasting ammunition here anyway, and we haven’t seen you hit a Fascist yet. So we decided, you’re an eloquent lying son-of-a-bitch, go back to the States and tell some big, juicy, heartbreaking stories about the heroes of the Immortal International Brigade in the front line of the fight against the Fascists. And come back here with your pockets loaded.’ So I get up at meetings and just let my imagination ramble, green and free. Before you know it, the people are dying with emotion and generosity, and what with the dough rolling in and all the girls, I think maybe I have found my true profession in the fight for liberty.” He grinned, his brilliantly even false teeth shining happily in his face, and he pushed his empty glass toward the bartender. “Want to hear some bloody tales of the horrible war for freedom in tortured Spain?”