by Irwin Shaw
“I’m talking too much,” Hazen said. “A lawyer’s vice. Never leave well enough alone.” He laughed. “The flowers and the racquet should have been enough. I see I’ve made you uncomfortable. Forgive me. I’m not used to modest men. Oh, that reminds me.” He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a small envelope. “I have a pair of tickets for the Philharmonic tonight. They’re doing a concert version of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. Would you and your wife like to go?”
“There’s no need…” Strand protested.
“I can walk along the street looking as I do,” Hazen said, “but can you imagine the stir at the Philharmonic if I showed up like this? Please take them if you can use them.” He pushed the envelope toward Strand. “They’ll just go to waste, otherwise.”
“But you were taking somebody,” Strand said. “You have two tickets.”
“My guest for the evening decided she had other plans,” Hazen said. “You and your wife do like the Philharmonic, don’t you?”
“Very much.”
“Then take these tickets, man,” Hazen said decisively. “You’re not the sort of person who hates Berlioz, are you?”
“Not at all.”
“Some other evening, when I’m more presentable, we can all go together.”
“Thank you,” Strand said, putting the tickets in his pocket. “Leslie will be overjoyed.”
“I consider myself more than compensated,” Hazen said.
They were in front of Lincoln Center now. Hazen squinted at it. “Somehow,” he said wearily, “we have lost the knack for harmonious public building. Still, it’s a useful place.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I must be getting back to the office.”
“You work on Saturday afternoon?”
“It’s my favorite time of the week. The office is empty and quiet, the telephone doesn’t ring, there’s a neat pile of papers waiting for me on my desk, I buy a sandwich and a bottle of beer and take my coat off and loosen my collar and I feel like a boy studying for an exam he knows he’s going to pass. What do you do on Saturday afternoons?”
“Well,” Strand said, “in the springtime, like now, I’m afraid I indulge in my secret vice. I watch ball games on the little portable TV set in the bedroom, while Leslie gives her lessons in the living room.” The TV set had been a present from Eleanor, although Strand didn’t feel he had to tell Hazen that. “I love to watch the Yankees play. I was a dud at sports when I was young and I suppose that when I see Reggie Jackson striding to the plate, all power and purpose, I somehow feel that I know what it’s like to be dangerous and gifted and knowing that millions of people are cheering you or hating you.” He laughed. “Leslie rations me. Only two games a week.”
Strand felt that this man, whose idea of pleasure was to pore over a pile of legal papers in a deserted office, was looking at him curiously, as though he had come upon a species that was new and unfamiliar to him.
“Do you get up to the Stadium often?”
“Rarely.”
“I have a standing invitation to use the owner’s box there. Maybe on a nice Saturday afternoon I’ll forget my office and we could sneak up and watch a game. Would you like that?”
“I certainly would.”
“Maybe when Boston comes to town. I’ll look at the schedule. How about the winter?”
“What?”
“I mean what do you do on Saturdays in the winter?”
“Well,” Strand said, “when they’re showing an old movie I like at the Modern Museum, I try to get in.”
Hazen smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “That’s it. The Modern Museum. That’s where I’ve seen you. The Buster Keaton picture.”
“You like Buster Keaton?” Strand asked, a little incredulously.
“I mark his pictures on the schedule they send me and if it’s at all possible I sneak off and see it.” Hazen grinned, which made the various colors of his battered face take on new patterns. “Anybody who doesn’t appreciate Buster Keaton,” he said with mock gravity, “should be denied the vote. However,” he added, “I try to see all the Garbo pictures. She reminds me of how the times have deteriorated. We used to have a goddess as our ideal and now what have we got? Carhops. Doris Day, that Fawcett woman.” He looked at his watch again. “I like to keep to my schedule. I arrive every Saturday at the office at one o’clock sharp. If I’m two minutes late, the watchman downstairs who checks me in will call the police. We’ll talk about the beauties of the past some other time. I hope. And if you want to see a Yankee game, let me know.”
They shook hands.
“I’ve enjoyed our walk,” Hazen said. “Perhaps, if we’re both in town next Saturday morning, we can do it again.”
“I’ll be in town,” Strand said.
“I’ll call you. Enjoy Berlioz.”
Strand watched as Hazen got spryly into a cab, his big form filling the doorway.
Buster Keaton, for God’s sake. As the cab sped away Strand took the envelope out of his pocket and looked at the tickets. They were for fifth row orchestra. The glorious uses of money, he thought. He put the tickets back into his pocket with a tingle of pleasure and started toward home.
4
BERLIOZ. A ROARING FLOOD of dark sound. Unfairly treated by posterity.
A cool, woman’s hand on his forehead. “I need you,” someone had said. He tried to open his eyes to see whose hand it was on his forehead, but the effort was too great. Whoever…
“I don’t get it,” the boy was saying in Strand’s little office. Strand had told Romero that he would like to see him for a moment after classes were over and had been a little surprised when the boy actually appeared.
“I explained to you,” Strand said, “that I mentioned you to a…a friend of mine, a new friend, who happens to be an influential man, and he said that if you were interested in continuing your education he would try to get you a scholarship…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Romero said impatiently. “I heard all that. I mean, man, why’s he picking on me?”
“I said you were promising,” Strand said.
“I’m not making any promises,” Romero said sullenly.
“I wasn’t using the word in that sense,” said Strand. He found it difficult, after the long day, to keep his patience with the short, ragged boy, his face hard and suspicious under his tangled hair. Dressed in shapeless blue jeans, dirty sneakers, and a faded football jersey that was much too large for him and had probably been stolen from some locker room seasons ago, Romero lounged carelessly against the desk, impudently fingering an unlit cigarette. The number on the jersey was 17. The boy wore it to school every day, and sometimes in Strand’s dreams the number 17 crossed against a confused cloudy background. “What I meant was that of all the students in my classes who might not otherwise go on to college, on their own, that is, you showed the most original intelligence.”
“You’re kidding, ain’t you, Professor?” Romero said, smirking. “What’d you really say—that you got a kid in your class who proves that Puerto Ricans’re all some kind of nuts? What’s the game?”
“It isn’t any game,” Strand said shortly, regretting that he had ever said anything to Hazen about the boy. “And leave the Puerto Ricans out of it, please. My friend is interested in education, he has useful connections, he feels that out-of-the-ordinary students should be given a chance…”
“I still don’t get it, Professor,” Romero said stubbornly.
“Don’t call me Professor. I’m not a professor.”
“Okay—Mr. Strand—I mean, like what’s in it for him? Some guy I don’t even know.”
“There’s nothing in it for him,” Strand said. “Except perhaps some personal satisfaction if you do well and embark on a successful career later on.”
“What do I have to do—sign a contract or something giving him half of what I make for ten years?” Romero took a battered Zippo lighter out of his pocket, then thought better of it and put it back. Strand shook his head
sorrowfully. The boy obviously did not confine his reading to books on history and science. The gossip columns about Hollywood and show business and agents clearly had not been neglected in his choice of reading matter. “Romero,” he said, “did you ever hear of charity?”
“Charity.” The boy laughed, meanly. “I sure have heard of charity. My old lady’s on welfare.”
“This has nothing to do with welfare. I’m not going to sit here and argue with you all day. If you want to devote a year or two of your life to really studying hard—there’s a good possibility you can get a scholarship for a college. I think you can make it, if that means anything to you. I suggest you go home and talk it over with your mother and father.”
“My father.” The boy laughed again, his teeth gleaming white in the dark, smudged face. “That man’s long gone. I ain’t seen him since I was nine years old.”
“Your mother, then.”
“She won’t believe me. She’ll beat the shit out of me for making up stories.”
“Then consult with yourself, Romero,” Strand said angrily. He stood up. “If you decide you want to make something of yourself, come and tell me. If you want to be a bum all your life, forget it.” He collected some papers and stuffed them into his briefcase. “I’ve got a lot of work to do at home. I have to leave. I’m sure you have many important things to do yourself this afternoon,” he said sardonically, “and I won’t keep you any longer.”
Romero looked at him, smiling, as though making the teacher angry gave him some points in a secret competition with his classmates.
“Get out of here, get out of here,” Strand said and then was ashamed because he had spoken so loudly.
“Whatever you say, Professor,” Romero said and went to the door. He stopped there and turned. “I can take care of myself, understand?” he said harshly. “Nobody has to lose any sleep about Jesus Romero.”
Strand went over to the door and closed it, hard. Then he went to his desk and sat down and put his head in his hands.
As he loped down the steps of the school building Strand overtook Judith Quinlan, of the English department. He had overheard some of the students calling her Miss Quinine, although as far as he knew not to her face.
“Good afternoon, Judith,” Strand said, slowing down. She was a small woman and when they walked to the bus together, as they did frequently, there was no way for her to keep up with his usual pace unless she trotted along beside him. She had a delicate but nicely rounded body and a sad little indoor face, and she used no makeup. Her favorite color, at least for school, was a dun brown. Her reputation as a teacher was good and he liked her and they occasionally lunched or had a cup of coffee together. He never could make up his mind how old she was—somewhere between thirty and forty, he thought.
“Oh, Allen,” she said as they reached the sidewalk and she automatically began to walk faster, “how nice to see you.” She glanced sidewise at him. “You look as though they’ve been grinding you today.”
“I didn’t know it showed. It was only the usual.” Strand slowed down even more. “Thirty lashes.”
She laughed. She had a nice laugh, low and unforced. She wasn’t really pretty, but she had pale gray direct eyes that squinted a little as though in an effort to find out exactly what he was saying to her. “I know what you mean. I was going to stop for a coffee. Would you like to join me?”
“I feel as though I could use a bottle of Scotch,” Strand said, “but I’ll make do with coffee.”
They passed the fat man with the baseball cap at the corner.
“I’ve heard he sells heroin to the kids,” Strand said.
“I’ve heard he sells numbers tickets to them,” Judith said.
“Probably both. Or maybe he’s just a simple child molester.”
“There’re some children in my classes I’d gladly have him molest.” She glanced at Strand again. “You look as though you’re about to come to a slow boil. Has it ever occurred to you that you’re not really cut out to be a teacher?”
“I’d have to consider that,” Strand said thoughtfully.
“I shouldn’t have asked that question.”
“Why not? Recently I’ve been asking it myself.” He didn’t tell quite how recently it had been—since Saturday morning. “I’m of two minds. There’s an answer for you.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said, “if we actually did have two minds—one to go off and work, the other to sit at home and ponder.”
“Well, there are certain things we can safely say in favor of our profession,” Strand said. “It is underpaid, arduous, unappreciated, dangerous from time to time, and we have long holidays. We can also go on strike, just like the garbage collectors.”
In the coffee shop, over their steaming mugs, Judith said, “All this term, I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to come back next year.”
“What do you mean by that?” Strand poured sugar into his mug.
“Aren’t you afraid of diabetes or getting fat or anything like that?” Judith asked, shaking her head as Strand offered her the sugar dispenser.
“I glory in my health,” Strand said. “It’s the one thing I’m comparatively sure of. Now—are you serious about what you just said?”
“Yes.” Judith nodded slowly, her neatly bobbed black hair, a few streaks of white showing in it, moving gently around her face.
“What would you do if you didn’t come back?”
Judith shrugged and took the coffee mug up to her mouth with both hands, making her look momentarily childish. “Become a veterinarian, maybe,” she said. “Handling wild animals would come easy after what I’ve been going through. Or become a nun. I’m a lapsed Catholic, but for the peace of a convent maybe I could unlapse.”
“Did you ever think of marriage?”
Judith blushed and Strand was sorry he had asked the question.
“Of course,” Judith said. “But the offers haven’t been—well—brilliant.”
“You’re an attractive woman.” As he said it, Strand realized that he almost believed it.
“I’ve been waiting, as the girls say, for Mr. Right to come along. So far,” she said, sounding defiant, “Mr. Wrong has shown up. Several times. I’m a simple woman, but I’m not simple enough to believe that marriage would solve any of my problems. Has it solved any of yours?” she asked challengingly.
“Some,” Strand said. “And created others,” he added, to keep from sounding smug. “Children…” He was about to say “money” but refrained. Instead he said, “There are a lot of places in this world I’d like to see. But on a teacher’s salary you don’t do an awful lot of traveling. I encourage it in my offspring and tell them to bring back photographs. One of my daughters is thinking of going to Greece this summer.” He didn’t know why he had brought that into the conversation.
“I made a tour of the Lake District last summer,” Judith said. “The English teacher’s dream.”
“How was it?”
“Dreary.” Judith laughed sourly. “It rained all the time and I was with a group of English teachers from the Middle West. We discussed Wordsworth for one day and spent the rest of the time on how to present Hamlet to teenage children. I didn’t say much. It’s hard to explain that most of the children I have anything to do with have seen murders—real murders—on their own blocks and would gladly kill their uncles, and their mothers and fathers, too, if they had the chance.”
“I must go to Vienna some day with a group of history teachers,” Strand said, “and tell them about the difficulties I have in explaining the position of Metternich at the Congress of Vienna to my classes.”
They both laughed. “Ah,” Judith said, “we’ll both come back next year, won’t we?”
“Doomed,” Strand said. “Obsessed. Though we have our triumphs, don’t we?” He thought of Jesus Romero that afternoon. “Some of them pretty hard to bear.”
“A girl I taught some time back and told she could be a writer had a short story in Penthouse last mon
th,” Judith said. “Pretty damned sexy. I hid the magazine from my mother when she came to visit me.”
“Tomorrow will be a better day,” Strand said, finishing his coffee and standing.
“Don’t bet on it,” Judith Quinlan said, as she stood, too.
There was nobody in the apartment when Strand got there, and he took advantage of Leslie’s absence to take a nap. He felt exhausted and it was delicious to fall asleep.
He awoke with the feeling that someone else was home.
It couldn’t have been Leslie or she would have come into the bedroom. He smoothed the bedcover so that she wouldn’t see that he had been napping and put on his shoes and went into the hallway. He could hear dishes being rattled in the kitchen and went in there. Caroline was sitting at the table drinking a glass of milk and eating a piece of cake. He saw from the white cotton collar above her sweater that she had been playing tennis.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Join me?”
Strand looked at his watch. “I’ll wait for dinner.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I’d swoon with hunger.” She put a big hunk of cake in her mouth. It had soft chocolate icing and she licked the smudges off her fingers. “Yummy,” she said.
He sat opposite her, smiling, vicariously enjoying her appetite. “If people can have chocolate cake,” she said, her mouth full, “I can’t understand their going for cocaine. Oh, I met our friend again.”
“Which friend?”
“Mr. Hazen. He came around to the courts. He sure looks a mess. Like a lopsided cantaloupe. That ski hat. It must have been knitted by a blind Norwegian troll.”
“Be kindly, Caroline, please,” Strand said.
“He’s okay, though. Really. He said he came to make sure I got home safely. He said he didn’t want me to get into any more incidents. That was some incident the other night. Mother! I’d still be playing, only he kept looking at his watch and fretting. We had a nice talk on the way home.”