Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

The telephone rang, and Rudolph looked at his watch. Tom had said he would come by at five and it was almost that now. He picked up the phone, but it wasn’t Tom. He recognised the voice of Johnny Heath’s secretary on the phone. ‘Mr Jordache? Mr Heath calling.’

He waited, annoyed, for Johnny to get on the phone. In his organisation, he decided, when anybody made a call, whoever was making it would have to be ready to speak when the phone was answered. How many slightly angered clients and customers there must be each day in America, hung up on a secretary’s warning trill, how many deals lost, how many invitations refused, how many ladies who, in that short delay, had decided to say no.

When Johnny Heath finally said “Hello, Rudy,’ Rudolph concealed his irritation.

‘I have the information you asked me for,’ Johnny said. ‘Have you get a pencil and a piece of paper?’

‘Yes.’

Johnny gave him the name and address of a detective agency. ‘I hear they’re very dependable.’ Johnny said. He didn’t inquire why Rudolph needed a private detective, although there must have been some guessing going on in his mind.

‘Thanks, Johnny,’ Rudolph said, after he had written down the name and address. Thanks for your trouble.’

‘It was nothing,’ Johnny said. ‘You free for dinner tonight?’

‘Sorry,’ Rudolph said. He had nothing on for the evening and if Johnny’s secretary had not kept him waiting he would have said yes.

After he hung up, he felt more tired than ever and decided to postpone calling the detective agency until the next day. He was surprised that he felt tired. He didn’t remember ever feeling tired at five o’clock in the afternoon.

But he was tired now, no doubt about it. Age? He laughed. He was twenty-seven years old. He looked at his face in the mirror. No grey hairs in the even, smooth blackness. No bags

under the eyes. No signs of debauchery or hidden illness in the clear olive skin. If he had been overworking, it did not show in that youthful, contained unwrinkled face.

Still he was tired. He lay, fully clothed, on the bed, hoping for a few minutes of sleep before Tom arrived. But he could not sleep. His sister’s contemptuous words of the night before kept running through his mind, as they had been all day, even when he was struggling with lawyers and architects. ‘Do you enjoy anything?’ He hadn’t defended himself, but he could have pointed out that he enjoyed working, that he enjoyed going to concerts, that he read enormously, that he went to the theatre, prizefights, art galleries, that he enjoyed running in the morning, riding a motorcycle, he enjoyed, yes, seeing his mother sitting across from him at the table, unlovely, unlovable, but alive, and there, by his efforts, not in a grave, or a pauper’s hospital bed.

Gretchen was sick with the sickness of the age. Everything was based on sex. The pursuit of the sacred orgasm. She would say love, he supposed, but sex would do as a description as far as he was concerned. From what he had seen, what happiness lay there was bought at too high a price, tainting all other happiness. Having a sleazy woman clutch you at four in the morning, trying to claim you, hurling a glass at you with murderous hatred because you’d had enough of her in two hours, even though that had been the implicit bargain to begin with. Having a silly little girl taunt you in front of her friends, making you feel like some sort of frozen eunuch, then grabbing your cock disdainfully in broad daylight. If it was sex or even anything .like love that had brought his mother and father together originally, they had wound up like two crazed animals in a cage in the zoo, destroying each other. Then the marriages of the second generation. Beginning with Tom. What future faced him, captured by that whining, avaricious brainless, absurd doll of a woman? And Gretchen, herself superior and scathing in her helpless sensuality, hating herself for the beds she fell into, adrift from a worthless and betrayed husband. Who was immersing himself in the ignominy of detectives, keyhole-peeping, lawyers, divorce - her or she?

Screw them all, he thought. Then laughed to himself. The word was ill chosen.

The telephone rang. ‘Your brother is in the lobby, Mr Jordache,’ the clerk said.

‘Will you send him up, please?’ Rudolph swung off the bed, straightened out the covers. For some reason, he didn’t want

Tom to see that he had been lying down, with its implication of luxury and sloth. Hurriedly, he stuffed all the architects’ drawings into a closet. He wanted the room to look bare, without clues. He did not want to seem important, engrossed in large affairs, when his brother appeared.

There was a knock on the door and Rudolph opened it. At least he’s wearing a tie, Rudolph thought meanly, for the opinion of the clerks and bellboys in the lobby. He shook Thomas’s hand and said, ‘Come on in. Sit down. Want a drink? I have a bottle of Scotch, but I can ring down if you’d like something else.’

‘Scotchll do.’ Thomas sat stiffly in an armchair, his already-gnarled hands hanging down, his suit bunched up around his great shoulders.

‘Water?’ Rudolph said. ‘I can call down for soda if you…’

Water’s fine.’

I sound like a nervous hostess, Rudolph thought, as he went into the bathroom and poured water out of the tap into Thomas’s drink.

Rudolph raised his glass. ‘Skol.’

*Yeah,’ Thomas said. He drank thirstily.

There were some good write-ups this morning,’ Rudolph said.

“Yeah,’ Thomas said. ‘I read the papers. Look, there’s no sense in wasting any time, Rudy.’ He dug into his pocket and brought out a fat envelope. He stood up and went over to the bed and opened the envelope flap and turned it upside down. Bills showered over the bedspread.

*What the hell are you doing, Tom?’ Rudolph asked. He did not deal in cash - he rarely had more than fifty dollars in his pocket - and the scattering of bills on the hotel bed was vaguely disquieting to him, illicit, like the division of loot in a gangster movie.

They’re hundred dollar bills.’ Thomas crumpled the empty envelope and tossed it accurately into the wastebasket. ‘Five thousand dollars’ worth. They’re yours.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rudolph said. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

There’s your goddamn college education that I did you out of,’ Thomas said. ‘Paying off those crooks in Ohio. I tried to give it to Pa, but he happened to be dead that day. Now it’s yours.’

You work too hard for your money,’ Rudolph said, remembering the blood of the night before, ‘to throw it away like this.’

‘I didn’t work for this money,’ Thomas said. ‘I got it easy -the way Pa lost his - by blackmail. A long time ago. It’s been in a vault for years, waiting. Feel free, brother. I didn’t take any punishment for it.’

‘It’s a stupid gesture,’ Rudolph said.

‘I’m a stupid man,’ Thomas said, ‘I make stupid gestures. Take it. Now I’m rid of you.’ He turned away from the bed and finished his drink in one gulp. ‘I’ll be going now.’

‘Wait a minute. Sit down.’ Rudolph pushed at his brother’s arms, feeling, even at that hurried touch, the ferocious power in them. ‘I don’t need it. I’m doing great. I just made a deal that’s going to make me a rich man, I … ‘

‘I’m happy to hear it, but it’s beside the point.’ Stonily, Thomas remained standing. ‘I want to pay off our fucking family and this does it’

‘I won’t take it, Tom. Put it in the bank for your kid, at least.’

‘Ill take care of my kid my own way, don’t you worry about that.’ Now he sounded dangerous.

‘It’s not mine,’ Rudolph said helplessly. ‘What the hell am I going to do with it?’