Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“Not really,” I said. “What deal?”

“I didn’t want to bother you with it until it was definite,” he said. “I hope y ou don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Now if you’ll begin at the beginning…” “I told you the business looked promising…” “Yes.” Guiltily, I remembered that I had considered the word “promising” in his mouth as a synonym for failure.

“Well, it turned out to be a lot better than that.” He was silent as the waiter put the shrimp cocktail and my salad in front of us. When the waiter had left, he said, “Better than any of us ever dreamed.” He dug heartily into the cocktail. “We had to expand almost immediately. We have more than a hundred people working for us in the plant right now. The stock’s not on any of the boards yet, but it’s gone way up in value. We’ve had feelers from a half-dozen companies who want to buy us out. The biggest offer is from Northern Industries. It’s a huge conglomerate. You must have heard of them…”

“No,” I said, “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

He looked at me disapprovingly, like a teacher at a pupil who neglected his homework in school. “Anyway, they’re huge,” he said. “Take my word for it. They’re the people who’re ready to give us the go sign today. They’re ready to offer us – our company, that is – a half million dollars.” He sat back and let this sink in. “Does the figure grab you?”

“It grabs me,” I said.

“We should have the money within a couple of months,” Henry said, resuming his meal. “What’s more, we – the two boys who came up with the idea and myself – retain running control of the business for the next five years – now, listen to this – at three times the salaries we’ve been paying ourselves, plus stock options. You’d be in on the options, of course, along with me…”

I wished Fabian was there at that lunch. It was the sort of thing he would wallow in.

The waiter brought Henry his steak and he began to wolf it down hungrily, eating a baked potato and a roll, both heavily buttered, along with it. Before long he would have to watch his diet. “Figure it out, Doug,” he said, through a mouthful of food, “you put in twenty-five thousand. Our third of the stock will bring us thirty-three percent of half a million. That’s one hundred and sixty-six thousand. Your two-thirds of that…”

“I can do the arithmetic,” I said.

“That’s without taking into account the options,” Henry said, continuing eating. Either the hot food or the chanting of enormous figures had made his face flush and he was sweating. “Even with today’s inflation and all that crap…”

I nodded. “It’s a nice bundle.”

“I promised you you’d never regret it, didn’t I?” he said harshly.

“So you did.”

“No more other people’s money,” he said. He stopped eating and put his knife and fork down. He looked at me soberly. His eyes, through the contact lenses, were deep and clear. The little red furrows on the side of his nose had disappeared. “You saved me from drowning, Doug,” he said in a low voice. “I can never thank you enough and I won’t try.”

“Don’t try,” I said.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “I mean – well – about everything?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You look good, kid, you really do.”

“And so do you,” I said.

“Well—” He shifted uneasily on the banquette. “The decision is finally up to you. Is it yes or no?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He smiled widely and picked up his knife and fork again. He finished his steak and ordered blueberry pie à la mode for dessert. “You’d better get some exercise, Hank,” I said, “if you’re going to eat like that.”

“I’m taking up tennis again.”

“Come on out here and play sometime,” I said. “There’re a thousand courts at this end of the island.”

“That’d be nice. I’d like to meet your wife, too.”

“Anytime.” Then I began to laugh.

He looked at me suspiciously. “What’re you laughing about?”

“On the way to town this morning,” I said, “after you called, I made up my mind that when I saw you today I wasn’t going to let you have one cent more than ten thousand dollars.”

For a moment he looked hurt. Then he began to laugh, too. We were both laughing, a little hysterically, when Madeleine came back to the restaurant to join us for coffee.

“What’s the joke?” Madeleine asked as she sat down.

“A family affair,” I said. “Brother stuff.”

“Henry will tell me later,” she said. “He tells me everything. Don’t you. Henry?”

“Everything,” he said. He took her hand and kissed it affectionately. He had never been an open or demonstrative man, but that, too, I saw had changed, along with the eyes, the teeth, the appetite. If stealing a hundred thousand dollars from a dead old man could put the expression that I saw now on Henry’s face, felony became a virtue and I would steal ten times over from ten dead men.

When I took them to their car, Madeleine gave me their address. “You must come and see us soon,” she said.

“I will,” I promised. None of us had any idea of how soon it was going to be.

The show, Fabian assured me, was a great success. At one time there must have been more than sixty cars parked outside the barn. The room remained crowded, as people came and went. The champagne got a good deal of serious attention, but so did the paintings. What comments I could overhear in the din of conversation were enthusiastic. “All on the plus side,” Fabian whispered to me when we both found ourselves together for a moment at the bar. I didn’t see the critic from The Times, but Fabian told me he liked the expression on the man’s face. By eight o’clock, Dora had put red tabs on four of the big oils and six of the small ones. “Phenomenal,” Fabian exulted as he passed me. “And a lot of people have told me they’re coming back. What a pity Lily couldn’t be here. She’d adorn the room. And she loves parties.” His speech was a little thick. He hadn’t eaten all day and he had a glass in his hand at all times. I had never seen him drunk before. I hadn’t thought he could get drunk.

Evelyn seemed somewhat dazed by it all. Quite a few of the guests were theater and movie people, and there were four or five well-known writers whom she recognized but had never met. In Washington, she had never been impressed by the senators or ambassadors she had known, but this was a world that was new to her and she was almost tongue-tied when she had to talk to a man whose book she admired or an actress who had moved her on the stage. I found it an endearing weakness. “Your friend, Miles,” she said to me, shaking her head. “He knows everybody.” “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. Evelyn had to go home early, because she had promised Anna the night off. “Congratulations, darling,” she said as I accompanied her outside to her car. “It’s been splendid.” She kissed me and said. “Ill be waiting up for you.”

The night air was cool after the heat of the crowded gallery and I stood outside for a few minutes, enjoying the clear, unsmoky evening air. I saw a big Lincoln Continental drive up and Priscilla Dean get out with two graceful young men. The men were in dinner jackets and Priscilla was wearing a long black dress, with a bright red cape thrown over her bare shoulders. She didn’t see me and I didn’t think I had to go over to say hello to her. I followed them warily into the gallery. There was a little hush as she entered the room, and eyes turned in her direction, but the conversation rose quickly to normal pitch. It was a polite and well-mannered group, and I guessed that most of the people there, like Dora, were not the sort who patronized the kind of theaters in which The Sleeping Prince was playing, or subscribed to the magazines in which Priscilla Dean, unclothed, was so prominently featured.