Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  On the wall above his bed was a large lithograph advertising a concert of Ella Fitzgerald’s and on the bedside table was his cassette machine and a row of cassettes, which Strand knew from experience he played at top volume. On the little shelf under his desk was a pile of Playboy magazines. Strand had found girlie magazines in other rooms also, but hidden on the floor under the beds. Rollins plainly didn’t believe he had anything to hide.

  On the shelf of his closet, which had been carelessly left open and in which his clothes were rather haphazardly arranged, there were a half-dozen cartons of chocolate marshmallow cookies, which made Strand smile as he thought of the moments during the night when the pangs of hunger awakened that huge body and his groping through the dark to the cache of childish sweets which would keep him going until breakfast.

  By contrast, Romero’s side of the room was bare and Spartan. The blankets were the olive drab wool ones issued to every boy and the bed was made with military crispness. There were no photographs and no magazines in evidence and the desk was bare except for a note pad and a neat row of sharply pointed pencils. It was as though Romero had resolved that nothing that he left behind him would reveal any fact to anyone who might be in a position to judge him. His clothes were arranged perfectly in his closet and on the shelf there was the famous 1909 edition, edited by J. B. Bury, in seven volumes, of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which Strand knew to be of considerable value as a collectors’ item and which had added so much weight to Romero’s bag on the day of his arrival.

  With the difference in tastes of the two young men, one had to wonder how it came about that they could live so harmoniously in one small room and seek out each other’s company with such pleasure, as they did at all times.

  Curious about how exactly Romero had come into possession of the set of Gibbon and if he knew how valuable the books were, Strand left a note asking him to visit him after football practice that afternoon. By school rules, Strand had to grade the condition of each room in the house and post the grades on the house bulletin board. The numbers ran from one to ten and he marked down ten for Rollins’s and Romero’s room, although there was something vaguely disturbing about that invisible wall between the two beds.

  Romero came into the living room of Strand’s apartment fresh from a shower and, as usual, neatly dressed and controlled in his movements. Strand made him sit down and before broaching the matter of the books he asked him a few questions about his classes and about the football team, which was to play its first game that Saturday. He said he liked the classes and thought he was doing well enough in them. He said he doubted that he would get to play in the game, but that he liked the coach, although he thought he lacked imagination. Very frankly, he told Strand that he had told the coach that if he didn’t get to play at least for a few minutes by the second week of the season, he was going to drop off the squad and concentrate on his studies.

  Strand asked him, routinely, if he had any complaints and he said none. He said that Mr. Hazen had written him that he had deposited a certain sum to his account at the school bank and that he was allotted ten dollars a week of it for spending money, as were all the other boys in his form. He said he had written a note to Mr. Hazen thanking him for his generosity. Strand told him that he could thank Mr. Hazen in person, as he was driving down with his wife and daughter to visit the school on Saturday morning. “I guess I’m in for another speech,” he said, smiling, but without malice.

  Then Strand brought up the matter of the books. “You know,” he said, “they’re quite valuable.”

  “Are they?” he said ingenuously. “That’s good news.”

  “How did you happen to come by them?” Strand asked.

  He looked at Strand, as though weighing his answer. “I stole them,” he said matter-of-factly. “It took me nine trips down to the secondhand bookstores on Fourth Avenue to pick them up one by one.” He stared coolly at Strand, as though waiting for comment. Strand kept quiet and he said, “Those clerks in those stores wouldn’t last ten minutes on the street. They’d be robbed naked and they wouldn’t know it until they caught pneumonia.”

  “Do you want to tell me at just which stores you picked them up, as you put it?” Strand asked.

  “I don’t remember their names,” Romero said and stood up. “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “Not right now,” Strand said.

  He went out. Strand sat at his desk, staring at the dusk growing deeper outside the window, faced with a moral problem that he did not want to try to solve. I must not get obsessed with that boy, he thought. I have other things to worry about.

  The big Mercedes, with Conroy at the wheel, drove up to the entrance of the Malson Residence just before lunch-time on Saturday morning. Strand was on the steps of the house to greet Leslie and Caroline and Hazen as they got out of the car. Caroline was holding a small, wriggling black Labrador puppy. Strand was shaken by emotion at seeing his wife and daughter again but did not wish to make a scene of husbandly and parental affection in front of the two boys from the house who were watching from the steps.

  For the moment, he avoided looking at Caroline. “Where’s Jimmy?” he asked. “I thought he was coming with you.”

  “At the last minute Mr. Solomon sent him out to Chicago to take in some group that’s performing out there,” Leslie said. “It means he’s rising in the firmament, he tells me. He’ll try to call you when he gets back. He sends his regards.”

  “Good of him,” Strand said dryly. Then, still without having taken a good look at Caroline, he asked almost gruffly, as he patted the dog, “Where did you pick that up?”

  “Mr. Hazen gave him to me. Two days ago. When Dr. Laird took the bandages off.” She put the dog down. Smiling, but a little nervously, she touched her nose with the tip of her finger. “How do you like the job?”

  “Fine,” he said. He thought she looked beautiful, but then he had always thought she was beautiful. “It actually looks real.”

  Caroline laughed. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “can’t you curb your enthusiasm?”

  “The important thing is,” Strand said, “what do you think?”

  “I think the ugly duckling has turned into a swan,” Caroline said gaily, as they went into the house. “I dread to think of what I’m going to do to the fellers from now on.”

  “There’s no need to exaggerate,” Leslie said, looking sternly at the two boys who were examining Caroline with evident interest. “The operation was a success, but you’re not a movie star yet. And you’ll have to get over the habit of staring at yourself in the mirror a hundred times a day.” But she spoke affectionately and Strand could see that she was almost as pleased with Caroline’s new appearance as the girl herself.

  She was not as pleased with the appearance of the apartment, although Mrs. Schiller had put flowers in vases at strategic places in the living room. “I hadn’t realized this place was quite so desolate,” she said, “although it’ll look better when we move our stuff in. But it certainly can stand at least a coat of paint.”

  “I’ll talk to Babcock about it,” Hazen said. “I’m sure the school won’t go bankrupt if you have the painters in here for a couple of days.”

  “I wouldn’t like to seem picky,” Leslie said. “Right from the beginning.”

  “I’ll tell Babcock it’s my own idea,” Hazen said. “You’ll get your paint.”

  “It’s time for lunch,” Strand said. “We’d better go over to the dining room. I told them you were coming and they’ve set up a visitors’ table with some other parents. We have the first game of the football season today and quite a few people have come down for it. By the way, Russell, our protégé Romero is on the squad.”

  “What does he play—water boy?” Hazen laughed.

  “No, seriously,” Strand said, as they started out of the house and walked along the path to the Main Hall. “He may not get in today but the coach told me he expects to use him in spot situations.”


  “How is he doing generally?”

  “I believe he’s keeping up with his classes,” Strand said cautiously. “I try not to look as though I’m meddling, but he seems conscientious enough and he doesn’t horse around in the study hours here like some of the other boys.”

  “You’ll have to give me a list of his teachers. While I’m here I should have a word with them about him. I’m sure they’re not used to boys like that and I wouldn’t want them to be hard on him out of a lack of understanding of his background.”

  Remembering Miss Collins, Strand thought it might be more rewarding if Hazen had a word with Romero and appealed to him not to be too hard on his teachers. He didn’t think it was wise to tell Hazen that, nor to mention anything about the set of Gibbon in Romero’s room. Hazen might fly into a rage and have the boy thrown out immediately and the experiment, which Strand now felt he had a stake in, would be over before it had a chance to begin.

  He dropped behind the others to take Leslie’s arm and walk beside her. She smiled at him gratefully. “I missed you so much,” she whispered.

  “I, of course, have been having the time of my young life here alone,” Strand said. “You have no idea what the orgies are like at teatime in the faculty common room.”

  Leslie squeezed his arm. “You do look well,” she said. “It seems as though this place is going to agree with you.”

  “It does. I hope it’s going to agree with you.”

  “If you’re happy here,” she said, “I’m going to be happy here.” But there was a note in her voice, the slightest of inflections, that indicated doubt, reluctance, a shadow of fear.

  When they entered the dining room, which was already filled with boys, Strand could tell by the way the boys stared at Caroline, with the puppy wobbling on a leash beside her, that the operation had indeed been a success. He noticed that Caroline even walked differently now. If he had to put a word to it, he decided, it would be haughtily.

  After lunch, at which Hazen was pleased to find himself seated next to a man he knew from Washington who had something to do with the oil lobby and with whom he conversed animatedly, Strand walked Leslie back to the house, because she wanted to take a nap, while Hazen and Caroline and Conroy went over to the football field. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Strand asked as he watched Leslie take her shoes off and lie down on one of the beds.

  “There’s plenty of time later,” Leslie said. “I’m sure they’d be offended if you didn’t watch their game. And I’ve met enough people for one day.”

  He bent down and kissed her forehead, then set out for the field. There were perhaps a thousand spectators in the open wooden stands but Hazen had kept a place for him next to Caroline. Hazen and Conroy sat on her other side. The game had already begun, but Hazen said nothing much had happened yet. “Which one is Romero?” he asked.

  Strand scanned the bench. On one end, alone, with quite a space between him and the nearest player, Romero sat, bent over, staring at his hands hanging loosely between his knees and never looking at the field, as though he had no connection with what was happening there. “Number 45,” Strand said.

  “God, he’s tiny,” Hazen said. “Next to those other kids he looks as though he should be in nursery school. Are you sure somebody’s not playing some sort of practical joke on him?”

  “The coach takes him quite seriously.”

  “The coach must be a sadist,” Hazen said glumly. “I think we ought to take an insurance policy out on him, full coverage, hospital, doctors and funeral expenses.”

  “That might be the only way you’d ever get any return on your investment in him,” Strand said, thinking of the five hundred dollar bill at Brooks Brothers and the ten dollar a week allowance.

  Hazen grinned across Caroline as Strand said this, taking it as a joke. Strand himself was not sure, after he had said it, that he really meant it as a joke.

  The game was raggedly played, with many fumbles, missed plays, dropped passes and blocked kicks. A man behind them, whose son played tight end and dropped two passes in a row, kept saying “What do you expect, it’s the first game of the season.”

  Whatever the quality of the play, it was pleasant sitting out there in the warm early autumn sunshine, watching swift young men racing across the fragrant green turf. There was none of the savage passion of professional football or of the games between the big-name universities and the only penalties were for offsides and too much time in the huddle and when one boy on the Dunberry team had the breath knocked out of him momentarily, the boy who had hit him knelt anxiously beside the injured boy until he sat up. Caroline, the puppy squirming in her lap, cheered loyally for Dunberry and smiled provocatively at some boys from the other school who turned around and booed her good-naturedly. “Just leave your name and telephone number,” one of the boys said, “and we’ll get even with you.”

  “You can get it from my father.” Caroline pointed her thumb at Strand. “He teaches here.”

  The boy laughed. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “But I’ll have a pencil and paper with me later on in the field house.”

  Tea was to be served after the game in the field house for the students of both schools and their parents. Strand didn’t doubt that the boy would show up with his pencil and paper, but Caroline would be in Arizona in three days, Strand would be happy to tell him.

  There was a lot of scoring and toward the end of the last quarter the other school was leading 26 to 20. The boys on both benches were standing now, cheering on their teammates, but Romero still kept to himself, seated, studying his hands. When the whistle had blown, indicating only two more minutes to play, the coach strode down toward Romero and spoke to him. Romero stood up slowly, almost leisurely, put on his helmet and trotted out onto the field. The other team had the ball on its own forty yard line and it was fourth down and eight yards to go and a punt was the obvious play.

  Romero took up his position at safety, on his own twenty yard line, his hands negligently on his hips. When the kick came and the ends came rushing down on him, he juggled the ball, then dropped it. There was a groan from the stands as it bounced erratically toward the sidelines, Romero chasing it, the opposing team’s red jerseys in hot pursuit. He grabbed the ball on a dead run, then suddenly stopped. Two of his opponents flew past him helplessly. Fleeing, he ran back almost to his own goal line, then veered just as it seemed he was about to be tackled and ran, twisting, toward the opposite sideline. He evaded another tackier, Rollins threw an opportune block, and suddenly he was in the clear, running close to the sideline with no one near him and the red jerseys helplessly outdistanced. He crossed the goal line, even slowing down contemptuously for the last ten yards, stopped and carelessly tossed the ball to the ground.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Hazen said, speaking loudly to be heard over the cheers of the crowd, “I thought I was sending a student to Dunberry and it turns out I sent a rabbit.”

  Romero’s teammates crowded around him, clapping him on the back and shaking his hand, but he submitted to the gestures of approval rather than acknowledging them. It was only when he started trotting back toward the bench and Rollins grabbed him and lifted him as though he were a child that he permitted himself a smile.

  As he went off the field he waved once, casually, without glancing toward the stands, where everyone was standing and applauding.

  He trotted slowly toward the bench, his face calm, and went to the place at the end where he had been sitting for almost the entire game. He took off his helmet and once more sat staring at his hands hanging loosely between his knees. As the teams lined up for the point after touchdown the coach came over and patted him on the shoulder, but he didn’t look up even then.

  The place kick was wide and there was just time for a final kickoff when the time ran out with the final score twenty-six to twenty-six. Romero hurried to the field house to shower and dress before he could be reached by the crowd of fellow students who rushed after him.

&nbs
p; Tables and chairs had been set out in the field house, and there was a long buffet with small sandwiches and cakes behind which faculty wives stood to pour tea. Strand and Hazen sat at a table while Caroline and Conroy went to get the tea. Strand smiled as he saw the boy who had asked for Caroline’s address at the game quickly intercept her and walk with her to the buffet.

  There was a quiet murmur among the groups of parents and students and a general sharing of pleasure in the way the afternoon had turned out.

  As he watched the polite movement of the hearty, convivial middle-aged men and their handsomely turned out wives, Strand suddenly had the feeling that by some unacknowledged bond they were all related to Russell Hazen. They were the bankers, the lords of trade and commerce, the chairmen of the boards, the quiet movers and shakers, the judges and interpreters of the laws, the managers of great fortunes and institutions, the architects of political victories, the men who had the ear of senators and lawmakers, their children the princelings of a class which in America would not admit it was a class but, as Romero would recognize, comprised what the old Romans honored as the equestrian order.

  As for the teachers, both men and women—the men deferential or at least reticent in manner, struggling against humility, the women willingly being of service—they were like the learned slaves imported to the capital to instruct the privileged young in virtue, valor and the arts of government.