Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

She laughed. “Silly man. Lord, no.”

“I was afraid I…”

“Didn’t a lady ever cry while you were fucking her?”

“Not that I remember,” I said. And none of the ladies ever called it that either, I could have added. They obviously called a spade a spade at Justice.

She laughed again, twisted around, sat up, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her face was calm and untroubled in the flare of the match. “Do you want a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

“You’ll live forever. So much the better. How old are you anyway?”

“Thirty-three.”

“In the prime of life,” she said. “The dear prime of life. Don’t go to sleep. I want to talk. Do you want a drink?”

“What time is it?”

“Drink time.” She got out of bed and I saw her put a dressing gown on. “Whiskey okay?”

“Whiskey is fine.”

She went into the living room, her robe making a soft rustling sound. I looked at my watch. She had taken it off, the last item, when she had undressed me and put it neatly on the bedside table. She was an orderly woman. The luminous dial of the watch showed that it was past three. Everything in its time, I thought, lying back luxuriously, remembering other three o’clocks, the noise of the adding machine, the bullet proof glass, the bedraggled women asking me to unlock the front door.

She came back with the two glasses, handed me mine, sat on the edge of the bed, her profile outlined against the light from the bathroom. The silhouette was bold and sharp. She drank heartily. She was a hearty as well as an orderly woman. “Most satisfactory.” she said. “You were, too.” I laughed. “Do you always rate your lovers?”

“You’re not my lover. Grimes,” she said. “You’re a nice-looking, youngish man with good manners whom I happened to take a slight shine to at a party and who had the great virtue to be passing briefly through town. Briefly is the operative word in that sentence. Grimes.”

“I see,” I said, sipping at the whiskey. “You probably don’t and I won’t bother to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I said. “Sufficient unto the night are the pleasures thereof.”

“You don’t do this sort of thing often, do you?”

“Frankly, no.” I laughed again. “Frankly, never. Why – does it show?”

“Like a neon sign. You’re not at all like what you look like, you know.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look like those young men who play the villains in Italian movies – bold and dark and unscrupulous.”

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I had gotten used to hearing that I reminded people of somebody’s kid brother. Either I had changed drastically or Evelyn Coates was not deceived by surfaces, could see through to the wished-for inner man. “Is that a good way to look?” I asked. I was a little worried by the “unscrupulous.”

“It’s a very nice way to look. In certain situations.”

“Like tonight, for example?”

“Like tonight.”

“I might be coming back to Washington in a few days,” I said. “Should I call you?”

“If you have nothing better to do.”

“Will you see me again?”

“If I have nothing better to do.”

“Are you as tough as you pretend to be?”

“Tougher, Grimes, much tougher. What would you be coming back to Washington for?”

“Maybe for you.”

“Try that once more, please.”

“Maybe for you.”

“You do have nice manners. Maybe for what else?”

“Well,” I said slowly, thinking, this is as good a place and as a good a time to dig for information, “supposing I was looking for somebody …”

“Somebody in particular?”

“Yes. Somebody whose name I know, who’s dropped out of sight.”

“In Washington?”

“Not necessarily. Somewhere in the country, or maybe even out of the country…”

“You are a mysterious man, aren’t you?”

“Someday I may tell you the whole story,” I said, sure that I never would, but pleased that luck had put me into the bed of a woman who was in on the secrets of government, and whose job, partially, at least, must involve tracing people down, people usually who did not want to be traced down. “It’s a private, delicate matter. But suppose I had to find this hypothetical friend, how would I go about it?”

“Well, there are a lot of places you could look,” she said. “The Internal Revenue Service – they’d know his address at the time he sent in his last return. The Social Security people. They’d have a record of whom he was working for. The Selective Service people, although that would probably be outdated. The FBI. You never know what you can pick up in that factory. The State Department. It would all depend upon whether or not you knew the right people.”

“Take it for granted that I would get to know the right people,” I said. For a hundred thousand dollars, I could take it for granted somebody would be able to reach the right people.

“You probably would eventually be able to pick up your friend’s trail. Say, are you a private detective or something! ”

“Or something,” I said ambiguously.

“Well, everybody comes to Washington eventually,” she said. “Why not you? It’s America’s real living theater. Standing room only at every performance. Except that it’s a peculiar audience. The good seats are all filled by actors.”

“Are you an actress?”

“You bet your life. I’m playing a role that can’t be beat. The dauntless Portia striking deadly blows at the malefactors of great wealth. Women’s Lib at Justice and Injustice. I’ve gotten rave reviews in the best beds in town. Do I shock you?”

“A little,”

“While on the subject,” she said, “let me give you a T.L.”

“What’s a T.L.?”

“Where have you been, you poor innocent?” She reached over and pinched my cheek. “T.L. stands for trade last. A compliment. You gave almost the best performance of anyone I’ve slept with in this town. You were even as good as a certain Senator from a Western state whom I shall not name, who used to be at the head of the list. Until the poor dear was beaten at the last election.”

“I didn’t realize I was giving a performance.” I had no desire to hear the defeated Senator’s name.

“Of course you were. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in Washington. And every performance calls on enormous talent here. We all have to pretend we love our roles.”

“Are you like that, too?”

“You must be kidding, honey. Of course. I’m a big, grown woman. Do you think that, if I went into that office every day for the next hundred years, it would make the slightest difference to you or General Motors or the United Nations or anybody’s pet dog? I just play the game, honey, and have fun like everybody else, because this town is the best place to have fun anybody’s found for people like us. Actually, what I believe is that, if everyone here, from the President down to the janitor at Indian Affairs, would only be allowed to operate two weeks a year, America would turn out to be the greatest country in the world.”

I had finished the whiskey by now and felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. I barely suppressed a yawn.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m boring you.”

“Not at all,” I said truthfully. “But aren’t you tired?”

“Not really.” She put her glass down, slipped out of her robe, and got into bed beside me. “Sex invigorates me. But I have to get up early and it doesn’t do for me to look debauched when I get to the office in the morning.” She snuggled up to me and kissed my ear. “Good night, Grimes. Of course call me when you come back.”

When I awoke, it was nearly ten o’clock and I was alone. The curtains let enough sun through for me to see that it was a nice day. There was a note on the dresser, where she had put my money clip the night before. “Dear Guest: Off to work.