Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon and I’ll talk to her,’ Rudolph said. He was aware of Jean smiling maliciously at him. Her parents lived somewhere in the Midwest and she hadn’t seen them for two years. ‘In the meanwhile, Mom, call the office. Get Brad Knight. He’s on today. Tell him I told you to ask him to send one of our engineers.’ ‘Hell think I’m an old crank.’ ‘He won’t think anything. Do as I say, please.’ ‘You have no idea how cold it is up here. The wind just howls under the windows. I don’t know why we can’t five in a decent new house like everybody else.’

This was an old song and Rudolph ignored it. When his mother had finally realised that Rudolph was making a good deal of money she had suddenly developed a gluttonous taste for luxury. Her charge account at the store made Rudolph wince every month when the bills came in.

Tell Martha to build a fire in the livingroom,’ Rudolph said, ‘and close the door and you’ll be warm in no time.’

Tell Martha to build a fire,’ his mother said. ‘If she’ll condescend. Will you be home in time for dinner tomorrow night?’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘I have to see Mr Calderwood.’ It wasn’t quite a He. He wasn’t going to dine with Calderwood, but he was going to see him. In any case, he didn’t want to have dinner with his mother.

‘Calderwood, Calderwood,’ his mother said. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll scream if I ever hear that name again.’ ‘I have to go now, Mom. Somebody’s waiting for me.’ He heard his mother begin to cry as he hung up. ‘Why can’t old ladies just He down and die?’ he said to Jean. The Eskimos do it better. They expose them. Come on, let’s get out of here before anybody else calls.’

As they went out the door he was glad to see that Jean was leaving her camera equipment in the flat. That meant she’d have to come back with him that afternoon to pick it up. She was unpredictable in that department. Sometimes she’d come in with him when they’d been out together as though it were inconceivable that she could do anything else. Other times, without any explanation, she’d insist on getting into a taxi and going downtown alone to the apartment she shared with another girl. Then, on several occasions, she had merely appeared at his door, on the off chance that he’d be home.

She went her own way, Jean, and pleased her own appetites. He had never even seen the place she lived in. She always met him at his apartment or in a bar uptown. She didn’t explain this, either. Young as she was, she seemed self-reliant, confident. Her work, as Rudolph had seen when she came up to Whitby with the proofs after the opening of the Port Philip centre, was highly professional, surprisingly bold for a girl who had seemed so young and shy when he had first met her. She wasn’t shy in bed, either, and however she behaved and for whatever reasons, she was never coy. She never complained that because of his work in Whitby there were long periods when he couldn’t see her, two weeks at a time. It was Rudolph who complained of their separations, and he found himself plotting all sorts of stratagems, unnecessary appointments in the city, merely for an evening with Jean.

She was not one of those girls who lavished a full autobiography on her lover. He learned little about her. She came from the Midwest. She was on bad terms with her family. She had an older brother who was in the family firm, something to do with drugs. She had finished college at the age of twenty. She had majored in sociology. She had been interested in photography ever since she was a child. To get anywhere, you had to start in New York, so she had come to New York. She liked the work of Carrier-Bresson, Penn, Capa, Duncan, Klein. There was room among those names for a woman’s name. Perhaps, eventually, it would be hers.

She went out with other men. Not described. In the summer she sailed. Names of craft unmentioned. She had been to Europe. A Yugoslavian island to which she would like to return. She was surprised that he had never been out of the United States.

She dressed youthfully, with a fresh eye for colours that at first glance seemed to clash, but then, after a moment, subtly complemented each other. Her clothes, Rudolph could see, were not expensive and after the first three times he had gone out with her, he was fairly certain he was familiar with her entire wardrobe.

She did the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle raster than he did. Her handwriting was without frills, like a man’s. She liked new painters whose work Rudolph couldn’t appreciate or understand. ‘Keep looking,’ she said, ‘and then one day, a door will open, you will suddenly cross the barrier.’

She never went to church. She never cried at sad movies. She never introduced him to any of her ‘friends. She was unimpressed by Johnny Heath. She didn’t mind getting her hair wet in the rain. She never complained about the weather or traffic jams. She never said, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you,’ he said. They were lying close together in bed, his hand on her breast, the covers pulled up under their chins. It was seven o’clock in the evening and the room was dark. They had strolled through twenty galleries. He had crossed no barriers. They had had lunch in a small Italian restaurant, where the proprietors had no objection to girls with red-wool stockings. He had told her at lunch that he couldn’t take her to the game tomorrow and told her why. She wasn’t disturbed. He had given her the tickets. She said she would take a man she knew who had once played tackle for Columbia. She ate heartily.

They had been cold when they came in from their wanderings around the city, because the December afternoon had turned bitter early, and he had made them both hot tea spiked with rum.

‘It would be nice if we had a fire,’ she said, curled up on the sofa, her moccasins kicked off on the floor.

“The next apartment I rent,’ he said.

When they kissed they both tasted of rum, perfumed with lemon.

They made love unhurriedly, completely.

This is what a Saturday afternoon in New York in. the winter should be like,’ she said, when they had finished and were lying together quietly. ‘Art, spaghetti, rum, and lust.’

He laughed, pressed her closer. He regretted his years of abstinence. Then he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps it was because of the abstinence that he was ready for her, free for her.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you.’

She lay still for a moment, then moved away, threw the covers back, started to dress in silence.

I have ruined everything, he thought. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s a subject I never discuss naked,’ she said gravely.

He laughed again, but was not happy. How many times had this beautiful, assured girl, with her own mysterious rules of behaviour, discussed marriage, and with how many men? He had never been jealous before. Unprofitable emotion.

He watched the slender shadow move around the room, heard the rustle of cloth over skin. She went into the livingroom. Bad sign? Good sign? Would it be better just to lie here

as he was, not go after her? He hadn’t planned on saying either ‘I love you’ or ‘I want to marry you’.

He got out of bed and dressed quickly. She was sitting in the livingroom, other people’s furniture, fiddling with the radio. Announcers’ voices, honeyed and smooth, voices you would never believe if they said, ‘I love you.’

‘I want a drink,’ she said, without turning around, still fiddling with the dials.

He poured them both some bourbon and water. She drank like a man. What previous lover had taught her that?

‘Well?’ he said. He stood before her, feeling at a disadvantage, pleading. He hadn’t put on his shoes or his jacket and tie. Barefooted and in his shirtsleeves he felt he wasn’t properly dressed for the occasion.