Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

You were sleeping like a baby and I hadn’t the heart to wake you. I am happy to see such evidence of a clear conscience in this naughty world. There’s a razor and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet and a big glass of orange juice in the refrigerator and a pot of coffee on the stove. The good servant deserves his hire. I hope you find your friend. E.C.”

I grinned at the last sentence, then went into the bathroom and shaved and showered. The cold shower woke me up completely and I felt fresh and cheerful. And, I had to admit, pleased with myself. I looked carefully at myself in the mirror. My color had improved.

As I went into the living room, I smelled bacon frying. I pushed open the door to the kitchen and saw a young woman silting at a table in slacks and a sweater, with a scarf around her head, reading the newspaper and munching on a piece of toast.

“Hi,” the young woman said, looking up. “I wondered if you were going to sleep all day.”

“I … I’m terribly sorry…” I said, flustered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You’re not disturbing me.” She got up and opened the refrigerator and took out a glass of orange juice. “Evelyn left this for you. You must be thirsty.” She didn’t say why she thought I must be thirsty. “Do you want bacon and eggs?”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble. Breakfast comes with the deal.” She stripped off three slices of bacon from an open package and put it in the pan with the others. She was tall and slender in her slacks. “Sunny side up?”

“Any way you’re having them.”

“Sunny side up,” the woman said. She put a slab of butter in another pan and cracked four eggs into the pan, her movements swift and authoritative. “I’m Brenda Morrissey,” she said. “I share the apartment with Evelyn. Didn’t she say anything about me?”

“Not that I remember,” I said. I sipped at the chilled orange juice.

“I guess Evelyn was busy at the time,” she said flatly. She poured two cups of coffee, indicated the cream and sugar on the table. “Sit down. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“Not really.” I sat down.

“Neither am I. I run an art gallery. Nobody ever buys a picture before eleven o’clock in the morning. It’s a dream job for a girl like me. Evelyn neglected to tell me your name.”

I told her my name.

“How long have you known Evelyn?” she asked, as she stood at the stove, shaking the pan with the eggs in it with one hand and feeding slices of bread into the toaster with the other hand.

“Well,” I said, embarrassed, “the truth is we just met last night.”

She gave a short, sharp chuckle. “That’s Washington. You collect votes wherever you can find them. Any kind of votes. Maybe this is the nicest kind. Dear Evelyn,” she said, but without malice. “I heard you at your revels.”

I felt myself blushing. “I had no idea there was anyone else in the house.”

“That’s all right. Actually, I keep meaning to buy earplugs and then I forget from one time to the next.” She slid the eggs onto plates and put the bacon over them. She sat across from me on the other side of the little table, clear greenish eyes staring at me steadily. She was wearing no lipstick and her lips were light pink, her cheeks just a little flushed from the heat of the stove. She had a long face, the bones all showing, and the scarf around her head made her look severe. “Evelyn’s not one to keep her enjoyment to herself when she’s being amused,” she said, as she broke a piece of bacon and started eating it with her fingers. “I had to use all my maidenly restraint to keep from coming and joining the fun.”

I felt my face go rigid and I ducked my eyes. The woman laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it hasn’t happened yet. Whatever else we do around here, we do not go in for orgies. Still,” she said evenly, “if you’re going to be in Washington tonight and if you tell me what hotel you’re staying at, you might like to buy me a drink.”

I won’t say that I wasn’t tempted. The night had reawakened all the sensuality in me that had lain dormant for so long. And the cool impersonality of the invitation was intriguing. At least for its novelty. Things like that had happened to friends of mine, or at least so they had said, but never to me. And after what I had done in room 602 of the St Augustine Hotel, I could hardly refuse on moral grounds to sleep with the friend of a lady I had only just met the night before. Let the accidents happen. But there was the business of the birth certificate. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m leaving town this morning.”

“What a pity,” the woman said tonelessly.

“But I’ll be back at my hotel…” I hesitated, remembering Jeremy Hale’s poker game on Saturday night. First things first. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“What hotel are you staying at?”

I told her.

“Perhaps I’ll call on Sunday,” she said. “I have nothing against Sundays.”

Money in the bank, I thought, as I was leaving the apartment building, even money in a bank two hundred and fifty miles away must give off an irresistible sexual aroma.

I tried to examine just how I felt that morning. Springy and light-footed. Lighthearted, I decided. Wicked. It was an old-fashioned word, but it was the word that came to mind. Was it possible that for thirty-three years I had miscalculated absolutely what sort of man I was? I looked carefully at the ordinary faces of the men and women on the street. Were they all on the edge of crime?

At the hotel I rented a car and took my wallet out of the vault. I was beginning to feel deprived if I wasn’t carrying a certain number of hundred-dollar bills on me.

The roads through Pennsylvania were icy and I drove carefully. A car crash was one accident I wanted to avoid. This was no time to be laid up immobilized and helpless, in a hospital for weeks or maybe months on end.

“May I speak to Mr. Grimes, please,” I said to the girl on the phone. “Mr. Henry Grimes.”

“Who’s calling, please?”

I hesitated. I was getting more and more reluctant to give my name to anyone. “Say his brother is calling,” I said on the phone. Since there were three brothers in the family, this could leave at least a small margin of doubt.

When I heard my brother’s voice on the phone, I said, “Hello, Hank.”

“Who’s this? No, I don’t believe it! Doug! Where the hell are you?” Once again I felt the same quick gratitude that had swept over me in Jeremy Hale’s office because someone was go obviously glad to hear the sound of my voice. My brother was seven years older than I and when we had been growing up had regarded me as a pest. Since I had moved away from Scranton, we had only seen each other rarely, but there was no mistaking the warmth in the greeting.

“I’m in town. At the Hilton Hotel.”

“Take your bag and come on over to the house. We’ve got a guest room. And the kids won’t wake you until six thirty in the morning.” Henry laughed at his own invitation. Behind the deep, remembered voice, there was the clatter of office machines. Henry worked in a firm of accountants and the mechanical noise of the symbols of money coming in and going out was the music of his working day. “I’ll call Madge,” Henry was saying, “and tell her to expect you for dinner.”

“Hold it a minute, Hank,” I said. “I have to ask you for a favor.”

“Sure, kid,” he said. “What is it?”

“I’m applying for a passport,” I said, “and I need my birth certificate. If I write Harrisburg it’ll take three weeks and I’m in a hurry…”

“Where you going?”

“Abroad.”

“Where abroad?”