Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “Yeah,” said the young man.

  “My name is Fitzsimmons.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Fitzsimmons,” Pidgear said, “I would like to see you get Mr. Tarloff to call this whole thing off. It’s an embarrassing affair for all concerned; nobody stands to gain anything by pressing it.”

  Helen came back and Fitzsimmons saw by the expression on her face that she wasn’t happy. “They’re at the soup by now,” she said loudly to Fitzsimmons. “Adele said for us to take all the time we want, they’re getting along fine.”

  “Mr. Rusk is willing to make a handsome offer,” Pidgear said. “Five dollars for the car, five dollars for the nose …”

  “Go out to dinner with your husband,” Helen muttered, “and you wind up in a telephone booth in a police station. ‘Excuse me for being late, darling, but I’m calling from the 8th Precinct, this is our night for street-fighting.’”

  “Sssh, Helen, please,” Fitzsimmons said. He hadn’t eaten since nine that morning and his stomach was growling with hunger.

  “It was all a mistake,” Pidgear said smoothly. “A natural mistake. Why should the man be stubborn? He is being reimbursed for everything, isn’t he? I wish you would talk to him, Mr. Fitzsimmons; we don’t want to keep you from your social engagements. Undoubtedly,” Pidgear said, eyeing their evening clothes respectfully, “you and the madam were going to an important dinner party. It would be too bad to spoil an important dinner party for a little thing like this. Why, this whole affair is niggling,” he said, waving his hand in front of Fitzsimmons’ face. “Absolutely niggling.”

  Fitzsimmons looked over to where Tarloff and the other Russian were sitting on the floor. From Tarloff’s face and gestures, even though he was talking in deepest Russian, Fitzsimmons could tell Tarloff was still as firm as ever. Fitzsimmons looked closely at Rusk, who was standing looking at Tarloff through narrow, baleful eyes.

  “Why’re you so anxious?” Fitzsimmons asked.

  Rusk’s eyes clouded over and his throat throbbed against his collar with rage. “I don’t want to appear in court!” he yelled. “I don’t want the whole goddamn business to start all over again, investigation, lawyers, fingerprints …”

  Pidgear punched him savagely in the ribs, his fist going a short distance, but with great violence.

  “Why don’t you buy time on the National Broadcasting System?” Pidgear asked. “Make an address, coast to coast!”

  Rusk glared murderously for a moment at Pidgear, then leaned over toward Fitzsimmons, pointing a large blunt finger at him. “Do I have to put my finger in your mouth?” he whispered hoarsely.

  “What does he mean by that?” Helen asked loudly. “Put his finger in your mouth? Why should he put his finger in your mouth?”

  Rusk looked at her with complete hatred, turned, too full for words, and stalked away, with Pidgear after him. The two little men in the gray hats watched the room without moving.

  “Claude?” Helen began.

  “Obviously,” Fitzsimmons said, his voice low, “Mr. Rusk isn’t anxious for anyone to look at his fingerprints. He’s happier this way.”

  “You picked a fine night!” Helen shook her head sadly. “Why can’t we just pick up and get out of here?”

  Rusk, with Pidgear at his side, strode back. He stopped in front of the Fitzsimmonses. “I’m a family man,” he said, trying to sound like one. “I ask yuh as a favor. Talk to the Russian.”

  “I had to go to Bergdorf Goodman,” Helen said, too deep in her own troubles to bother with Rusk, “to get a gown to spend the evening in a police station. ‘Mrs. Claude Fitzsimmons was lovely last night in blue velvet and silver fox at Officer Kraus’s reception at the 8th Precinct. Other guests were the well-known Leopold Tarloff, and the Messrs. Pidgear and Rusk, in gray hats. Other guests included the Russian Ambassador and two leading Italian artillerymen, also in gray hats.’”

  Pidgear laughed politely. “Your wife is a very witty woman,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Fitzsimmons, wondering why he’d married her.

  “Will yuh for Christ’s sake ask?” Rusk demanded. “Can it hurt yuh?”

  “We’re willing to do our part,” Pidgear said. “We even brought down a Russian to talk to him and clear up any little points in his own language. No effort is too great.”

  Fitzsimmons’ stomach growled loudly. “Haven’t eaten all day,” he said, embarrassed.

  “That’s what happens,” Pidgear said. “Naturally.”

  “Yeah,” said Rusk.

  “Perhaps I should go out and get you a malted milk,” Helen suggested coldly.

  Fitzsimmons went over to where Tarloff was sitting with the other Russian. The others followed him.

  “Are you sure, Mr. Tarloff,” Fitzsimmons said, “that you still want to prosecute?”

  “Yes,” Tarloff said promptly.

  “Ten dollars,” Rusk said. “I offer yuh ten dollars. Can a man do more?”

  “Money is not the object.” With his cap Tarloff patted his nose, which was still bleeding slowly and had swelled enormously, making Tarloff look lopsided and monstrous.

  “What’s the object?” Rusk asked.

  “The object, Mr. Rusk, is principle.”

  “You talk to him,” Rusk said to Fitzsimmons.

  “All right,” Officer Kraus said, “you can go up there now.”

  They all filed in in front of the lieutenant sitting high at his desk.

  Tarloff told his story, the accident, the wanton punch in the nose.

  “It’s true,” Pidgear said, “that there was an accident, that there was a slight scuffle after by mistake. But the man isn’t hurt. A little swelling in the region of the nose. No more.” He pointed dramatically to Tarloff.

  “Physically,” Tarloff said, clutching his cap, talking with difficulty because his nose was clogged, “physically that’s true. I am not badly hurt. But in a mental sense …” He shrugged. “I have suffered an injury.”

  “Mr. Rusk is offering the amount of ten dollars,” Pidgear said. “Also, he apologizes; he’s sorry.”

  The lieutenant looked wearily down at Rusk. “Are you sorry?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rusk, raising his right hand. “On the Bible, I swear I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Tarloff,” the lieutenant said, “if you wish to press charges, there are certain steps you will have to take. A deposition will have to be taken. Have you got witnesses?”

  “Here,” Tarloff said with a shy smile at the Fitzsimmonses.

  “They will have to be present,” the lieutenant said sleepily.

  “Oh, God,” Helen said.

  “A warrant will have to be sworn out, there must be a hearing, at which the witnesses must also be present …”

  “Oh, God,” Helen said.

  “Then the trial,” said the lieutenant.

  “Oh, God!” Helen said loudly.

  “The question is, Mr. Tarloff,” said the lieutenant, yawning, “are you willing to go through all that trouble?”

  “The fact is,” Tarloff said unhappily, “he hit me in the head without provocation. He is guilty of a crime on my person. He insulted me. He did me an injustice. The law exists for such things. One individual is not to be hit by another individual in the streets of the city without legal punishment.” Tarloff was using his hands to try to get everyone, the Fitzsimmonses, the lieutenant, Pidgear, to understand. “There is a principle. The dignity of the human body. Justice. For a bad act a man suffers. It’s an important thing …”

  “I’m excitable,” Rusk shouted. “If yuh want, yuh can hit me in the head.”

  “That is not the idea,” Tarloff said.

  “The man is sorry,” the lieutenant said, wiping his eyes, “he is offering you the sum of ten dollars; it will be a long, hard job to bring this man to trial; it will cost a lot of the taxpayers’ money; you are bothering these good people here who have other things to do. What is the sense in it, Mr. Tarloff?”

  Tarloff scraped his feet sl
owly on the dirty floor, looked sadly, hopefully, at Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons looked at his wife, who was glaring at Tarloff, tapping her foot sharply again and again. Fitzsimmons looked back at Tarloff, standing there, before the high desk, small, in his ragged coat and wild gray hair, his little worn face twisted and grotesque with the swollen nose, his eyes lost and appealing. Fitzsimmons shrugged sadly. Tarloff drooped inside his old coat, shook his head wearily, shrugged, deserted once and for all before the lieutenant’s desk, on the dry rock of principle.

  “O.K.,” he said.

  “Here,” Rusk brought the ten-dollar bill out with magical speed.

  Tarloff pushed it away. “Get out of here,” he said, without looking up.

  No one talked all the way to Adele Lowrie’s house. Tarloff opened the door and sat, looking straight ahead, while they got out. Helen went to the door of the house and rang. Silently, Fitzsimmons offered Tarloff the fare. Tarloff shook his head. “You have been very good,” he said. “Forget it.”

  Fitzsimmons put the money away slowly.

  “Claude!” Helen called. “The door’s open.”

  Fitzsimmons hated his wife, suddenly, without turning to look at her. He put out his hand and Tarloff shook it wearily

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Fitzsimmons said. “I wish I …”

  Tarloff shrugged. “That’s all right,” he said. “I understand.” His face, in the shabby light of the cab, worn and old and battered by the streets of the city, was a deep well of sorrow. “There is no time. Principle.” He laughed, shrugged. “Today there is no time for anything.”

  He shifted gears and the taxi moved slowly off, its motor grinding noisily.

  “Claude!” Helen called.

  “Oh, shut up!” Fitzsimmons said as he turned and walked into Adele Lowrie’s house.

  Noises in the City

  Weatherby was surprised to see the lights of the restaurant still lit when he turned off Sixth Avenue and started up the street toward the small apartment house in the middle of the block in which he lived. The restaurant was called the Santa Margharita and was more or less Italian, with French overtones. Its main business was at lunchtime and by ten-thirty at night it was usually closed. It was convenient and on nights when they were lazy or when Weatherby had work to do at home, he and his wife sometimes had dinner there. It wasn’t expensive, and Giovanni, the bartender, was a friend, and from time to time Weatherby stopped in for a drink on his way home from the office, because the liquor was good and the atmosphere quiet and there was no television.

  He nearly passed it, then stopped and decided he could use a whiskey. His wife had told him she was going to a movie and wouldn’t be home before eleven-thirty, and he was tired and didn’t relish the thought of going into the empty apartment and drinking by himself.

  There was only one customer in the restaurant, sitting at the small bar near the entrance. The waiters had already gone home and Giovanni was changing glasses for the man at the bar and pouring him a bourbon. Weatherby sat at the end of the bar, but there were still only two stools between him and the other customer. Giovanni came over to Weatherby and said, “Good evening, Mr. Weatherby,” and put out a glass and poured him a big whiskey, without measuring, and opened a soda bottle and allowed Weatherby to fill the glass himself.

  Giovanni was a large, non-Italian-looking man, with an unsmiling, square, severe face and a gray, Prussian-cut head of hair. “How’s Mrs. Weatherby tonight?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Weatherby said. “At least she was fine when I talked to her this afternoon. I’ve just come from the office.”

  “You work too hard, Mr. Weatherby,” Giovanni said.

  “That’s right.” Weatherby took a good long swallow of the whiskey. There is nothing like Scotch, he thought gratefully, and touched the glass with the palm of his hand and rubbed it pleasurably. “You’re open late tonight,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” Giovanni said. “I’m in no hurry. Drink as much as you want.” Although he was talking to Weatherby, Weatherby somehow had the feeling that the words were addressed to the other man at the bar, who was sitting with his elbows on the mahogany, holding his glass in his two hands in front of his face and peering with a small smile into it, like a clairvoyant who sees something undefined and cloudy, but still agreeable, in the crystal ball. The man was slender and graying, with a polite, educated face. His clothes were narrow and modish, in dark gray, and he wore a gay striped bow tie and a button-down oxford white shirt. Weatherby noted a wedding ring on his left hand. He didn’t look like the sort of man who sat around alone in bars drinking late at night. The light in the bar was subdued and Weatherby had the impression that in a brighter light he would recognize the man and that he would turn out to be someone he had met briefly once or twice long ago. But New York was like that. After you lived in New York long enough, a great many of the faces seemed tantalizingly familiar to you.

  “I suppose,” Giovanni said, standing in front of Weatherby, “after it happens, we’ll be losing you.”

  “Oh,” Weatherby said, “we’ll be dropping in here to eat again and again.”

  “You know what I mean,” Giovanni said. “You plan on moving to the country?”

  “Eventually,” Weatherby said, “I imagine so. If we find a nice place, not too far out.”

  “Kids need fresh air,” Giovanni said. “It isn’t fair to them, growing up in the city.”

  “No,” Weatherby said. Dorothy, his wife, was seven-months pregnant. They had been married five years and this was their first child, and it gave him an absurd primitive pleasure to talk about the country air that his child would breathe as he grew up. “And then, of course, the schools.” What joy there was in platitudes about children, once you knew you could have them.

  “Mr. Weatherby …” It was the other man at the bar. “May I say good evening to you, sir?”

  Weatherby turned toward the man, a little reluctantly. He was in no mood for random conversation with strangers. Also, he had had a fleeting impression that Giovanni regretted the man’s advance toward him.

  “You don’t remember me,” the man said, smiling nervously. “I met you eight or ten years ago. In my … ah … in my shop.” He made a slight sibilant sound that might have been the beginning of an embarrassed laugh. “In fact, I think you came there two or three times.… There was some question of our perhaps doing some work together, if I remember correctly. Then, when I heard Giovanni call you by name. I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m … ah … Sidney Gosden.” He let his voice drop as he spoke his name, as people who are celebrated sometimes do when they don’t wish to sound immodest. Weatherby glanced across the bar at Giovanni for help, but Giovanni was polishing a glass with a towel, his eyes lowered, consciously keeping aloof from the conversation.

  “Oh … uh … yes,” Weatherby said vaguely.

  “I had—have—the shop on Third Avenue,” Gosden said. “Antiques, interior decoration.” Again the soft, hissing, self-deprecating half-laugh. “It was when I was supposed to do over that row of houses off Beekman Place and you had spoken to a friend of mine …”

  “Of course,” Weatherby said heartily. He still didn’t remember the man’s name, really, but he remembered the incident. It was when he was just starting in, when he still thought he could make a go of it by himself as an architect, and he had heard that four old buildings on the East Side were going to be thrown together and cut up into small studio apartments. Somebody in one of the big firms, which had turned the job down, had suggested it might be worth looking into and had given him Gosden’s name. His memory of his conversation with Gosden was shadowy, fifteen or twenty minutes of rather distracted talk in a dark shop with unlit brass lamps and early-American tables piled one on top of another, a sense of time being wasted, a sense of going up one more dead-end street. “Whatever happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Gosden said. “You know how those things are. In the end, they merely pulled the whole block down and put up one o
f those monstrous apartment houses nineteen-stories high. It was too bad. I was terribly impressed with your ideas. I do remember, to this day.” He sounded like a woman at a cocktail party, talking swiftly to a man in a corner to hold him there, saying anything that came to mind, to try to keep him from escaping to the bar and leaving her there stranded, with no one to talk to for the rest of the evening, for the rest of her life. “I meant to follow your career,” Gosden went on hurriedly. “I was sure you were meant for splendid achievements, but a person is so kept so frantically busy in this city—with nothing important, of course—the best intentions—” He waved his hand helplessly and let the complicated sentence lapse. “I’m sure I pass buildings you’ve put up every day, monuments to your talent, without knowing …”

  “Not really,” Weatherby said. “I went in with a big firm.” He told the man the name of the firm and Gosden nodded gravely, to show his respect for their works. “I do bits and pieces for them.”

  “Everything in due time,” Gosden said gaily. “So you’re one of those young men who are putting us poor New Yorkers into our cold, bright glass cages.”

  “I’m not so young,” Weatherby said, thinking, grimly, That’s the truth. And, at the most, Gosden could only have been ten years older than he. He drained his drink. Gosden’s manner, gushy, importunate, with its hint of effeminacy, made him uncomfortable. “Well,” he said, taking out his wallet, “I think I’d better …”

  “Oh, no, please …” Gosden said. There was a surprising note of anguish in his voice. “Giovanni will just lock up the bottles and put me out if you go. Another round, please, Giovanni. Please. And please serve yourself, too. Late at night like this …”

  “I really must …” Weatherby began. Then he saw Giovanni looking at him in a strange, imperative way, as though there were an urgent message he wanted to deliver. Giovanni quickly poured a second Scotch for Weatherby, a bourbon for Gosden and a neat slug of bourbon for himself.