by Irwin Shaw
“A kid,” Frances said. “That’s a kid’s feeling.”
“Guess again,” Michael said. “Guess again. I’m older now, I’m a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o’clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh Streets, they’re all out then, making believe they’re shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they’re not looking at you as you go past.”
The Japanese waiter put the two drinks down, smiling with great happiness.
“Everything is all right?” he asked.
“Everything is wonderful,” Michael said.
“If it’s just a couple of fur coats,” Frances said, “and forty-five-dollar hats …”
“It’s not the fur coats. Or the hats. That’s just the scenery for that particular kind of woman. Understand,” he said, “you don’t have to listen to this.”
“I want to listen.”
“I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time.” He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunch time, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Sardi’s, waiting for producers to look at them. I like the salesgirls in Macy’s, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and books and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”
“Go ahead,” Frances said.
“When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don’t know whether it’s something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I’m at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who’ve taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses …” He finished his drink. “That’s the story. You asked for it, remember. I can’t help but look at them. I can’t help but want them.”
“You want them,” Frances repeated without expression. “You said that.”
“Right,” Michael said, being cruel now and not caring, because she had made him expose himself. “You brought this subject up for discussion, we will discuss it fully.”
Frances finished her drink and swallowed two or three times extra. “You say you love me?”
“I love you, but I also want them. O.K.”
“I’m pretty, too,” Frances said. “As pretty as any of them.”
“You’re beautiful,” Michael said, meaning it.
“I’m good for you,” Frances said, pleading. “I’ve made a good wife, a good housekeeper, a good friend. I’d do any damn thing for you.”
“I know,” Michael said. He put his hand out and grasped hers.
“You’d like to be free to …” Frances said.
“Sssh.”
“Tell the truth.” She took her hand away from under his.
Michael flicked the edge of his glass with his finger. “O.K.,” he said gently. “Sometimes I feel I would like to be free.”
“Well,” Frances said defiantly, drumming on the table, “anytime you say …”
“Don’t be foolish.” Michael swung his chair around to her side of the table and patted her thigh.
She began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief, bent over just enough so that nobody else in the bar would notice. “Some day,” she said, crying, “you’re going to make a move …”
Michael didn’t say anything. He sat watching the bartender slowly peel a lemon.
“Aren’t you?” Frances asked harshly. “Come on, tell me. Talk. Aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Michael said. He moved his chair back again. “How the hell do I know?”
“You know,” Frances persisted. “Don’t you know?”
“Yes,” Michael said after a while, “I know.”
Frances stopped crying then. Two or three snuffles into the handkerchief and she put it away and her face didn’t tell anything to anybody. “At least do me one favor,” she said.
“Sure.”
“Stop talking about how pretty this woman is, or that one. Nice eyes, nice breasts, a pretty figure, good voice,” she mimicked his voice. “Keep it to yourself. I’m not interested.”
“Excuse me.” Michael waved to the waiter. “I’ll keep it to myself.”
Frances flicked the corner of her eyes. “Another brandy,” she told the waiter.
“Two,” Michael said.
“Yes, ma’am, yes, sir,” said the waiter, backing away.
Frances regarded him coolly across the table. “Do you want me to call the Stevensons?” she asked. “It’ll be nice in the country.”
“Sure,” Michael said. “Call them up.”
She got up from the table and walked across the room toward the telephone. Michael watched her walk, thinking, what a pretty girl, what nice legs.
Search Through the
Streets of the City
When he finally saw her, he nearly failed to recognize her. He walked behind her for a half block, vaguely noticing that the woman in front of him had long legs and was wearing a loose, college-girl polo coat and a plain brown felt hat.
Suddenly something about the way she walked made him remember—the almost affected rigidity of her back and straightness of throat and head, with all the movement of walking, flowing up to the hips and stopping there, like Negro women in the South and Mexican and Spanish women carrying baskets on their heads.
For a moment, silently, he watched her walk down Twelfth Street, on the sunny side of the street, in front of the little tired gardens behind which lay the quiet, pleasantly run-down old houses. Then he walked up to her and touched her arm.
“Low heels,” he said. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
She looked around in surprise, then smiled widely, took his arm. “Hello, Paul,” she said. “I’ve gone in for health.”
“Whenever I think of you,” he said, “I think of the highest heels in New York City.”
“The old days,” Harriet said. They walked slowly down the sunny street, arm in arm, toward Sixth Avenue. “I was a frivolous creature.”
“You still walk the same way. As though you ought to have a basket of laundry on your head.”
“I practiced walking like that for six months. You’d be surprised how much attention I get walking into a room that way.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Paul said, looking at her. She had black hair and pale, clear skin and a long, full body, and her eyes were deep gray and always brilliant, even after she’d been drinking for three days in a row.
Harriet closed her coat quickly and walked a little faster. “I’m going to Wanamaker’s,” she said. “There’re a couple of things I have to buy. Where are you going?”
“Wanamaker’s,” Paul said. “I’ve been dying to go to Wanamaker’s for three years.”
They walked slowly, in silence, Harriet’s arm in his.
“Casual,” Paul said. “I bet to the naked eye we look casual as hell. How do you feel?”
Harriet took her arm away. “Casual.”
“O.K. Then that’s how I feel, too.” Paul whistled coldly to himself. He stopped and looked critically at her and she stopped, too, and turned toward him, a slight puzzled smile on her face. “What makes you dress that way?” he asked. “You look
like Monday morning in Northampton.”
“I just threw on whatever was nearest,” Harriet said. “I’m just going to be out about an hour.”
“You used to look like a nice big box of candy in your clothes.” Paul took her arm again and they started off. “Viennese bonbons. Every indentation carefully exploited in silk and satin. Even if you were just going down to the corner for a pint of gin, you’d look like something that ought to be eaten for dessert. This is no improvement.”
“A girl has different periods in clothes. Like Picasso,” Harriet said. “And if I’d known I was going to meet you, I’d’ve dressed differently.”
Paul patted her arm. “That’s better.”
Paul eyed her obliquely as they walked: the familiar, long face, the well-known wide mouth with always a little too much lipstick on it, the little teeth that made her face, when she smiled, look suddenly like a little girl’s in Sunday school.
“You’re getting skinny, Paul,” Harriet said.
Paul nodded. “I’m as lean as a herring. I’ve been leading a fevered and ascetic life. What sort of life have you been leading?”
“I got married.” Harriet paused a moment. “Did you hear I got married?”
“I heard,” Paul said. “The last time we crossed Sixth Avenue together the L was still up. I feel a nostalgic twinge for the Sixth Avenue L.” They hurried as the light changed. “On the night of January ninth, 1940,” Paul said, holding her elbow, “you were not home.”
“Possible,” Harriet said. “I’m a big girl now; I go out at night.”
“I happened to pass your house, and I noticed that the light wasn’t on.” They turned down toward Ninth Street. “I remembered how hot you kept that apartment—like the dahlia greenhouse in the Botanical Gardens.”
“I have thin blood,” Harriet said gravely. “Long years of inbreeding in Massachusetts.”
“The nicest thing about you,” Paul said, “was you never went to sleep.”
“Every lady to her own virtue,” Harriet said. “Some women’re beautiful, some’re smart—me—I never went to sleep. The secret of my great popularity.…”
Paul grinned. “Shut up.”
Harriet smiled back at him and they chuckled together. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Any time I called you up, two, three in the morning, you’d come right over, lively and bright-eyed, all the rouge and mascara in the right places.…”
“In my youth,” said Harriet, “I had great powers of resistance.”
“In the morning we’d eat breakfast to Beethoven. The Masterwork Hour. WNYC. Beethoven, by special permission of His Honor, the Mayor, from nine to ten.” Paul closed his eyes for a moment. “The Little Flower, Mayor for Lovers.”
Paul opened his eyes and looked at the half-strange, half-familiar woman walking lightly at his side. He remembered lying close to her, dreamily watching the few lights of the towers of the night-time city, framed by the big window of his bedroom against the black sky, and one night when she moved sleepily against him and rubbed the back of his neck where the hair was sticking up in sharp little bristles because he had had his hair cut that afternoon. Harriet had rubbed them the wrong way, smiling, dreamily, without opening her eyes. “What a delicious thing a man is …” she’d murmured. And she’d sighed, then chuckled a little and fallen asleep, her hand still on the shaven back of his neck.
Paul smiled, remembering.
“You still laughing at my clothes?” Harriet asked.
“I remembered something I heard some place …” Paul said.
“‘What a delicious thing a man is …’”
Harriet looked at him coldly. “Who said that?”
Paul squinted suspiciously at her. “Oswald Spengler.”
“Uhuh,” Harriet said soberly. “It’s a famous quotation.”
“It’s a well-turned phrase,” said Paul.
“That’s what I think, too.” Harriet nodded agreeably and walked a little faster.
They passed the little run-down bar where’d they’d sat afternoons all winter drinking martinis and talking and talking, and laughing so loud the people at the other tables would turn and smile. Paul waited for Harriet to say something about the bar, but she didn’t even seem to notice it. “There’s Eddie’s Bar,” Paul said.
“Uhuh.” Harriet nodded briskly.
“He’s going to start making his martinis with sherry when all the French vermouth runs out,” Paul said.
“It sounds horrible.” Harriet made a face.
“Is that all you have to say?” Paul said loudly, remembering all the times he’d looked in to see if she was there.
“What do you want me to say?” Harriet looked honestly puzzled, but Paul had never known when she was lying to him or telling the truth, anyway, and he hadn’t improved in the two years, he discovered.
“I don’t want you to say anything. I’ll take you in and buy you a drink.”
“No, thanks. I’ve really got to get to Wanamaker’s and back home in a hurry. Give me a raincheck.”
“Yeah,” Paul said sourly.
They turned up Ninth Street toward Fifth Avenue.
“I knew I’d meet you some place, finally,” Paul said. “I was curious to see what would happen.”
Harriet didn’t say anything. She was looking absently at the buildings across the street.
“Don’t you ever talk any more?” Paul asked.
“What did happen?”
“Every once in a while,” he started, “I meet some girl I used to know …”
“I bet the country’s full of them,” Harriet said.
“The country’s full of everybody’s ex-girls.”
Harriet nodded. “I never thought of it that way, but you’re right.”
“Most of the time I think, isn’t she a nice, decent person? Isn’t it wonderful I’m no longer attached to her? The first girl I ever had,” Paul said, “is a policewoman now. She subdued a gangster single-handed in Coney Island last summer. Her mother won’t let her go out of the house in her uniform. She’s ashamed for the neighbors.”
“Naturally,” Harriet said.
“Another girl I used to know changed her name and dances in the Russian Ballet. I went to see her dance the other night. She has legs like a Fordham tackle. I used to think she was beautiful. I used to think you were beautiful, too.”
“We were a handsome couple,” Harriet said. “Except you always needed a shave. That electric razor …”
“I’ve given it up.”
They were passing his old house now and he looked at the doorway and remembered all the times he and Harriet had gone in and come out, the rainy days and the early snowy mornings with the milkman’s horse silent on the white street behind them. They stopped and looked at the old red house with the shabby shutters and the window on the fourth floor they had both looked out of time and time again to see what the weather was and Paul remembered the first time, on a winter’s night, when he and Harriet had gone through that door together.
“I was so damn polite,” Paul said softly.
Harriet smiled, knowing what he was talking about. “You kept dropping the key and saying, ‘Lord, Lord,’ under your breath while you were looking for it.”
“I was nervous. I wanted to make sure you knew exactly how matters stood—no illusions. Good friends, everybody understanding everybody else, another girl coming in from Detroit in six weeks, no claims on me, no claims on you …” Paul looked at the window on the fourth floor and smiled. “What a fool!”
“It’s a nice, quiet street,” Harriet said, looking up at the window on the fourth floor, too. She shook her head, took Paul’s arm again. “I’ve got to get to Wanamaker’s.”
They started off.
“What’re you buying at Wanamaker’s?” Paul asked.
Harriet hesitated for a moment. “Nothing much. I’m looking at some baby clothes. I’m going to have a baby.” They crowded over to one side to let a little woman with four dachshunds pass them i
n a busy tangle. “Isn’t it funny—me with a baby?” Harriet smiled. “I lie around all day and try to imagine what it’s going to be like. In between, I sleep and drink beer to nourish us. I’ve never had such a good time in all my life.”
“Well,” said Paul, “at least it’ll keep your husband out of the army.”
“Maybe. He’s a raging patriot.”
“Good. When he’s at Fort Dix I’ll meet you in Washington Square Park when you take the baby out for an airing in its perambulator. I’ll put on a policeman’s uniform to make it proper. I’m not such a raging patriot.”
“They’ll get you anyway, won’t they?”
“Sure. I’ll send you my picture in a lieutenant’s suit. From Bulgaria. I have a premonition I’m going to be called on to defend a strategic point in Bulgaria.”
“How do you feel about it?” For the first time Harriet looked squarely and searchingly at him.
Paul shrugged. “It’s going to happen. It’s all damned silly, but it isn’t as silly now as it was ten years ago.”
Suddenly Harriet laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Paul demanded.
“My asking you how you felt about something. I never used to have a chance … You’d let me know how you felt about everything. Roosevelt, James Joyce, Jesus Christ, Gypsy Rose Lee, Matisse, Yogi, liquor, sex, architecture …”
“I was full of opinions in those days.” Paul smiled a little regretfully. “Lust and conversation. The firm foundations of civilized relations between the sexes.”
He turned and looked back at the window on the fourth floor. “That was a nice apartment,” he said softly. “Lust and conversation …”
“Come on, Paul,” Harriet said. “Wanamaker’s isn’t going to stay open all night.”
Paul turned up his collar because the wind was getting stronger as they neared Fifth Avenue. “You were the only girl I ever knew I could sleep in the same bed with.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say to a girl.” Harriet laughed. “Is that your notion of a compliment?”
Paul shrugged. “It’s an irrelevant fact. Or a relevant fact. Is it polite to talk to a married lady this way?”