Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  Then the door opened from the comparative darkness of Madison Avenue and a tall girl with straight blonde hair came into the store. She was wearing a miniskirt that showed a great length of leg, and a hip-length fun fur, more or less electric-blue in color. He had never seen her before and from the uncertain way she moved around the shop, it looked as though she had never been in a bookstore before. He moved briskly toward her. “Is there anything I can do for you, miss?” he said.

  She had big gray eyes that seemed to be imploring him. She was beautiful, in a strange, haunted way, like some of those movie actresses in Swedish pictures who have affairs with their brothers or sisters. An incoherent, unreasonable hope stirred in his breast. “Do you have any cookbooks?” she said.

  “We have a selection. This way, please.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said, in a near whisper. Her voice trembled. He wondered if she was a young wife who had a fancy dinner to prepare that evening for her husband’s boss or somebody and who had met disaster in the kitchen an hour or so before the guests were to arrive. Saturday evening at 6:15 was a queer time to buy a cookbook. He didn’t catch sight of a wedding ring, though.

  He hovered near. “Just what sort of cooking are you interested in? French, Italian, American …?”

  “Oh, any kind.”

  “There’s an amusing one that has come out fairly recently,” he said. Because it was getting so late, he resolved to be daring. “The Myra Breckinridge Cook Book, by a friend of the author, Gore Vidal. It’s quite risqué.” He chuckled, to show that she could take his risqué or leave it alone. “Here, let me get it down for you.” He reached for the shelf. It wasn’t there. He had seen it when he closed the shop the night before and he knew he hadn’t sold it since. Somebody had stolen it during the day. “I’m afraid I’ve sold the last copy,” he said lamely. “If you’ll give me your name and address, I’ll order one and—”

  “Oh, there’s no need to bother, thank you,” she said softly. Just from the tone of her voice, you knew she wasn’t the sort of girl who would say she’d come by at five o’clock and never show up, or the kind of girl who deposited a tennis bag and then irresponsibly left it with you while she consorted with New Left agitators who made love in public parks.

  The girl took down a huge illustrated book on French cooking and opened it at random to a page on which there was a color photograph of poularde de Bresse en cocotte. She stroked the page absently. “Chicken,” she said.

  “You like chicken?” It was awfully pedestrian, but he had to keep the conversation going. If she had been at the literary-criticism counter, the dialog would have been more inspiring.

  “I love it,” the girl said. “Chicken. My mother used to kill two every Sunday. Whenever I have chicken, it’s like a day I don’t have to work.”

  “What do you work at?” The conversation was getting more intimate in long leaps and heady bounds. Although the picture of the girl’s mother wringing the heads of two chickens every Sunday was a little disquieting.

  “An actress. A dancer. A little bit of both,” the girl said.

  A dancer. That explained the legs. “Where are you working now?”

  “No place for the moment.” She kept stroking the picture of poularde de Bresse en cocotte. “I’m up for a part off-off-Broadway. One of those naked plays.” She kept looking down at the cookbook and her voice was so low he wasn’t sure that he’d heard correctly.

  But whether he had heard correctly or not, it was making an effervescent impression on him. To have a beautiful girl, with pretty nearly the longest legs in the world, who had been walking around in the nude all day before dozens of people, just wander in off the street like that. And just before closing time!

  “If you like chicken,” he said, putting everything on the one throw, “I know a place on Sixty-first Street where they do it better than anyplace in New York. A French place.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a good chicken dinner,” the girl said.

  “By a lucky accident,” he said, “I’m free tonight.”

  “By a lucky accident,” she said, “so am I.”

  He looked at his watch. “I close up here in about forty minutes. There’s a nice bar around the corner on Lexington. Smiley’s. Why don’t you have a drink there and I’ll be right along and then we can go on to dinner at this great place?”

  “You’re sure you won’t forget and leave me there?” she said, sounding dubious.

  “You just don’t know me, Miss—”

  “My name is Anna. Anna Bukowski. I’m going to change it if I get the part.”

  “My name is Christopher Bagshot.”

  “It’s a good name,” the girl said, “for a man who works in a bookshop. What time did you say you’d be there?”

  She was eager, to top it all. “No later than seven-fifteen. Are you hungry?”

  “I can eat,” she said. She gave him the Swedish-actress incest smile and went out of the shop in her miniskirt and electric-blue fun fur.

  He raced catatonically around the store, getting things in order before closing up and speeding over to Smiley’s Bar. Now he knew that voice in his dream hadn’t spoken for nothing.

  Anna Bukowski walked slowly and deliberately over toward Lexington Avenue. She had to walk slowly to conserve her energy. She hadn’t eaten for two whole days now and she was dizzy from lack of food, and every step she took was like dragging through hot tar. She wasn’t on a diet or anything like that. She was just flat broke. She was just in from Cleveland and she had had no idea New York was so expensive. She had spent her last money on subway fare downtown for the tryouts that morning and she had walked all the way up from St. Mark’s Place after parading around naked all day, which was also fatiguing, even though it didn’t seem like much. But people didn’t count the nervous strain.

  The reason she had gone into the bookstore was to see if she could steal a book and sell it to a corrupt little man in a basement. Somewhere, she had heard that was a thriving industry. But then that young man had stood so close to her she wouldn’t have had a chance to steal a rubber band. And she had asked to see cookbooks because she had been thinking of food all day.

  Her landlord had thrown her out that morning, too, and kept her bag, and she was standing in all the clothes she possessed in this world, in a miniskirt that was two centuries out of style. If that man in the bookstore was as wild to get laid as he seemed and if she didn’t ruin things at dinner, she might be able to swing getting him to ask her to spend the night with him in his place. If he didn’t live with his dying mother or something. And that would mean at least breakfast, too, the next morning. As an old dancer had once told her in Cleveland, “I was in Buenos Aires and I was living off coffee and rolls. My stomach was shrinking to the size of a pistachio nut and I had to make a decision, and I made it. I sold one part of me to support another.”

  When she got to Lexington Avenue, she had forgotten which way the man had told her to turn, uptown or downtown, for Smiley’s Bar. Hunger wasn’t good for the memory. Well, there were only two ways to go. She chose uptown. She stepped down off the curb without looking which way the lights were on and a taxi made a wild swing, with a loud screeching of tires, to avoid hitting her. She jumped back, but fell down. She was safe, but the day had been so awful and she had come so near to being killed that she just sat there on the cold pavement of the city of New York and began to weep.

  A man who had been waiting for the lights to change came across the street and said, “Please, let me help you.”

  She didn’t say anything but, still sobbing, allowed the man to pull her to her feet.

  “You really have to watch the lights,” the man said gently. “All things combine in an attempt to destroy you in this town.”

  She sobbed uncontrollably. She was in no mood to hear lectures on safety precautions at the moment.

  “What you need is a drink, young lady.” She looked at him, conscious of rivulets on her cheeks. He was about forty and wore a ni
ce dark topcoat and a hat.

  She nodded. Her tears stopped. If the nice man took her to a bar, maybe it would be Smiley’s; it was in the neighborhood. And even if it wasn’t, there would probably be potato chips there and olives and salted peanuts and she could put down a little foundation so she wouldn’t disgust the man from the bookstore with her gluttony at dinner and ruin her chances for a bed for the night and Sunday breakfast.

  “It’s very good of you, sir,” she said.

  The bar he took her to wasn’t Smiley’s. It was a dark, elegant small place, with candles on the restaurant tables in the rear. There were plenty of potato chips and olives and salted peanuts and she just couldn’t help from tearing into them as she drank a bull shot, which was good for dulling the appetite, too, because of the bouillon. Bull shot, Bagshot. It was funny having a bull shot before going to dinner with a Bagshot. She giggled, the liquor getting to her swiftly in her condition. The nice man watched her with a smile on his face as she ravaged three plates of potato chips and two of salted peanuts.

  “Have you been on a diet?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “But you’re off it now?”

  “Thank God.”

  “Do you know,” he said, “I think the best thing I could do would be to march you to a table and order us dinner.”

  “I’m expected in a half hour or so,” she said, although it took a great effort to say no.

  “We’ll just have one dish,” the man said, taking her down off the bar stool. “And then you can flitter off.”

  She couldn’t refuse an offer like that, so she allowed the man to lead her to a table. She asked the bartender where Smiley’s was and he said it was just down Lexington Avenue two blocks, so there was plenty of time.

  The menu looked so tempting that with a little coaxing from the nice forty-year-old man, now without his hat and topcoat, she ordered the whole thing. Hors d’oeuvres, cream-of-tomato soup, steak with broccoli with hollandaise sauce and French fried potatoes, salad, cheese, and strawberry tart for dessert. It seemed like a lot to cram into a half hour before going out to dinner, but the waiter assured her he would hurry.

  Christopher was just about to lock the front door and go into the little lavatory next to the back office and shave. He would be cheating his father of about five minutes’ worth of service, but he felt he really had to shave. He had shaved in the morning, but although he was small he was manly and he needed to shave twice a day. But just as he was about to turn the handle of the lock, through the glass of the door he saw Beulah Stickney striding toward him, like a model advertising health food. He stepped back and she entered briskly.

  “Hi, luv,” she said, morning-fresh, vital and friendly. “Auntie folded like last year’s violets. Aren’t you the lucky boy tonight? Let’s celebrate. The night is young and you are beautiful. Where’re you taking your friend Beulah to dinner? I hear there’s a new place over on First that’s—”

  “I’m afraid tonight is out,” Christopher said, with a delicious sense of power. “I’ve made other arrangements. Perhaps if I’m free some night next week.…”

  “You mean you’re feeding another bird, luv?” Beulah asked, a slight edge of what he thought was sharpness in her tone, and what she knew as hysteria.

  “If you mean do I have an engagement for dinner with another lady,” Christopher said, liking his language round tonight, “you’re correct.”

  “Pah, luv,” Beulah said airily, “let’s make it à trois. It can be a load of laughs. May the best woman win.” She didn’t ordinarily descend to lures like that, but it was Saturday night and seven o’clock.

  “Well.…” He hadn’t thought about that possibility and it intrigued him. He hesitated, thinking hard. But then the door opened and Paulette Anderson came into the shop.

  All I need now, Christopher thought, is for Sue Marsh finally to show up for her bag and Caroline Trowbridge to come in to apologize for saying it was a wrong number and Dorothea Toye to pass by, offering to cut her price.

  “Why, Beulah,” Paulette cried, “what on earth are you doing here?”

  “This is my friendly neighborhood think tank, luv,” Beulah said. “I was just passing by on the way home to change and I saw the beckoning light of literature and I came in to see if he had the new Harper’s Bazaar or the latest Mailer to read in the tub.” Her eyes flashed a clear signal to Christopher, and with a sudden maturity and understanding of women that he had never had before, he knew that she was warning him not to let Paulette Anderson know that she had come in to get him to take her to dinner. And certainly not to let her know that she had been turned down. “What brings you to these parts at this hour yourself, luv?” Beulah asked, her voice rising infinitesimally.

  “I was going to invite Mr. Bagshot to a party,” Paulette said.

  Dental assistants, Christopher realized, did not observe the same rules of feint and parry as models. Paulette looked as though she had had a wearing day and her clothes didn’t seem to be on just right, but she had taken her glasses off and there was a winsome fluster to her hair.

  “I see you ladies know each other,” Christopher said. He hoped they didn’t know each other too well.

  “We’re cap-and-crown sisters, luv,” Beulah Stickney said. “I patronize the sainted Dr. Levinson and Paulette holds my hand to keep me from screaming while he wreaks his will on me. I have also taken her shopping in the rag bazaar on Seventh Avenue at wholesale rates so that she can be beautiful enough to invite popular young men like you to parties.”

  Bitch, Christopher thought. It gave him great pleasure to say this in his mind. “Oh,” he said, “so that’s how you know each other.”

  “Well, I must be toddling along,” Beulah said. “I’m late as it is.” She picked up a copy of the French Vogue. “Put it on my bill, luv. The next time I have a toothache, Paulette, you can tell me how the party turned out.”

  She left, smiling, the air perfumed and polar behind her.

  “I’m always a little in awe of her,” Paulette said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Not really,” Christopher said.

  “Well, I suppose men are different,” Paulette said. She breathed loudly. “I hope I’m not too late. But the afternoon was just one thing after another and I just took a chance that you might still be open and.… Well, anyway, I’m invited to a party and if you still want to.…” She ran down and stopped. The way he was looking at her, with this new light in his eyes, she was sure he knew that she had been lying naked on the day bed of Mr. Gadsden’s emergency apartment as late as 4:30 that afternoon.

  He just remained silent, silent and powerful, looking at her.

  “Of course,” she said. She was nervous, even if she did tower over him and she had thought of him as a last resort until this very minute. “Of course, if you don’t want to go to a party, I’ll understand.…”

  “I’d love to go, Paulette,” he said easily. “It’s just that I’m taken for the evening.”

  “Naturally,” Paulette said. “At this hour. Well, maybe another time. Good night.”

  “Ciao,” he said. He had never said Ciao before to anyone. “Good of you to drop by.”

  He opened the door for her. She heard it locking behind her.

  As she walked heavily down Madison Avenue, she was overcome with the awful certainty that she was going to be a virgin for the rest of her life.

  Humming, Christopher shaved. He felt marvelous. He didn’t remember feeling this marvelous since the day he got his 4-F classification in the draft. Before going in to shave, he had tripped over the blue tennis bag and put it out of the way under the table. Looking at it, he decided he’d have it delivered on Monday by messenger to Miss Marsh’s apartment, with a big bunch of forget-me-nots from that florist on Fifth Avenue. That would be ironic.

  He shaved slowly because he didn’t want to bleed. Even if he were late, that girl in the miniskirt with the great legs, what was her name, Anna, would wait. Tonight women waited
for Bagshot.

  It would have been all right if the steak hadn’t been so good. But it was more than an inch thick and so tender you hardly needed the knife to cut it and it tasted the way steaks look in advertisements. It had just disappeared from her plate while the nice forty-year-old man was barely beginning on his and he had said, “My dear girl, I haven’t seen anything like this since I played football in college.” And he had insisted, it was the only word you could use, insisted, that she have another one, and what with the wine and all, and three kinds of cheese that she had never tasted before and the strawberry tart and the Cointreau with the coffee, well, it was 10:30 before she looked at her watch again and there was no use searching up and down Lexington Avenue at that hour like a lost soul for Smiley’s Bar. And when she got out of the nice forty-year-old man’s apartment at five o’clock the next day, which was Sunday, after a pancake and bacon-and-eggs brunch, served by a butler, there would have been even less use, wouldn’t there, to look for Smiley’s Bar?

  She got the job in the off-off-Broadway naked show and two good reviews, mostly for her figure, if you wanted to be honest, and the nice forty-year-old man was as generous as nice forty-year-old men are supposed to be to tall young naked actresses, and all she had to worry about that autumn was her weight.

  Lying idly in bed right before Christmas, reading the “Society” section of the Sunday Times, she saw an announcement that Mr. Christopher Bagshot, son of Mr. Bernard Bagshot, the owner of the well-known chain of bookstores, had been married the day before at St. Thomas’s, in Mamaroneck, to a girl by the name of June Leonard.

  So it had turned out well for everybody. It gave her a nice feeling.

  Pattern of Love

  “I’ll go into a nunnery,” Katherine said, holding her books rigidly at her side, as they walked down the street toward Harold’s house. “I’ll retire from the world.”