Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘What other loot did you get today?’ Rudolph asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Did Billy call?’ He said it too casually.

‘No.’

‘I ran into him two days ago on the campus and reminded him,’ Rudolph said.

‘He’s awfully busy,’ Gretchen said defensively.

‘Maybe he resented me telling him about it and suggesting he call you,’ Rudolph said. ‘He’s not too fond of his Uncle Rudolph.’

‘He’s not too fond of anybody,’ Gretchen said.

Billy had matriculated at Whitby because when he finished high school in California he said he wanted to go East to college. Gretchen had hoped he would -go to UCLA or the University of Southern California, so that he could still live at home, but Billy had made it clear that he didn’t want to live

at home any more. Although he was very intelligent, he didn’t work, and his marks weren’t good enough to get him into any of the prestige schools in the East. Gretchen had asked Rudolph to use his influence to have him accepted at Whitby. Billy’s letters were rare - sometimes she wouldn’t hear from him for two months at a time. And when they did come they were short and consisted mostly of lists of courses he was taking and projects for the summer holidays, always in the East. She had been working more than a month now in New York, just a few hours away from Whitby, but he hadn’t come down once. Until this weekend she had been too proud to go up to see him but she finally couldn’t bear it any longer.

‘What is it with that kid?’ Rudolph said.

‘He’s making me suffer,’ Gretchen said.

‘What for?’

‘For Evans. I tried to be as discreet as possible - Evans never stayed overnight at the house and I always came home to sleep, myself, and I never went on weekends with him, but, of course, Billy caught on right away and the freeze was on. Maybe women ought to have fits of melancholy when they have babies, not when they lose them.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ Rudolph said. ‘It’s a kid’s jealousy. That’s all.’

‘I hope so. He despises Evans. He calls him a phoney.’

‘Is he?’

Gretchen shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. He doesn’t measure up to Colin, but then, neither did I.’

‘Don’t run yourself down,’ Rudolph said gently.

‘What better occupation could a lady find on her fortieth birthday?’

‘You look thirty,’ Rudolph said. ‘A beautiful, desirable thirty.’

‘Dear brother.’

‘Is Evans going to marry you?’

‘In Hollywood,* Gretchen said, ‘successful directors of thirty-two don’t marry widows of forty, unless they’re famous or rich or both. And I’m neither.’

‘Does he love you?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Do you love him?’

‘Same answer. Who knows? I like to sleep with him, I like to work for him, I like to be attached.to him. He fulfils me. I have to be attached to a man and feel useful to him and somehow Evans turned out to be the lucky man. If he asked me to

marry him, I’d do it Ike a shot. But he won’t ask.’

‘Happy days,’ Rudolph said thoughtfully. ‘Finish your drink. We’d better be getting on. Jean’s waiting for us in the apartment.’

Gretchen looked at her watch ‘It’s now exactly eighteen minutes past seven, according to Mr Cartier.’

It was still raining outside; but a taxi drove up and a couple got out and the doorman protected Gretchen with a big umbrella as she ran for the cab. Outside Twenty-One, you’d never guess that the city needed ten thousand more taxis.

When Rudolph let them into the apartment, they heard the violent sound of metal on metal. Rudolph ran into the livingroom with Gretchen on his heels. Jean sat on the floor, in the middle of the room, with her legs spread apart, like a child playing with blocks. She had a hammer in her hand and she was methodically destroying a pile of cameras and lenses and camera equipment that lay between her knees. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a dirty sweater and her unwashed hair hung down, masking her face, as she bent over her work.

‘Jean,’ Rudolph said, ‘what the hell are you doing?’

Jean looked up, peering slyly through her hair. ‘His Honour, the Mayor, wants to know what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. I’ll tell his Honour, the Mayor, what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. She is making a junk pile.’ Her speech was thick and she was drunk. Jean smashed the hammer down on a big wide-angle lens and splintered it.

Rudolph grabbed the hammer from her. She did not struggle. ‘His Honour, the Mayor, now has taken the hammer from his beautiful, rich young wife’s hand,’ Jean said. ‘Don’t worry, little junk pile. There are other hammers. You’ll grow up and one day you’ll be one of the biggest, most beautiful junk piles in the world and his Honour, the Mayor, will claim it as a public park for the citizens of Whitby.’

Still holding the hammer, Rudolph glanced over at Gretchen. There was a shamed, frightened look in his eyes. ‘Christ, Jean,’ he said to his wife, ‘there’s at least five thousand dollars worth of stuff there.’

‘Her Honour, the Mayor’s wife, doesn’t need cameras,’ Jean said. ‘Let people take pictures of me. Let poor people take pictures. Talented people. Hoopla!’ She made a spreading, gay ballet gesture with her arms. ‘Bring on the hammers, Rudy, darling, don’t you think you ought to give your beautiful, rich young wife a drink?’

‘You’ve had enough to drink.’

‘Rudolph,’ Gretchen said, ‘I’d better be off. We’re not going to Whitby tonight’

‘Beautiful Whitby,’ Jean said. ‘Where the beautiful rich young wife of his Honour, the Mayor, smiles at Democrats and republicans alike, where she opens charity bazaars and appears faithfully at her husband’s side at banquets and political meetings, where she is to be seen at Commencements and Fourth of July celebrations and the home games of the Whitby University football team and the dedication of new science laboratories and the ground-breaking ceremonies for housing projects with real toilets for coloured folk.’

‘Cut it out, Jean!’ Rudolph said harshly.

‘Really, I think I’d better go,’ Gretchen said, ‘I’ll call you in…’ ‘

‘Sister of his Honour, the Mayor, what’s your rush to leave?’ Jean said. ‘Who knows, one day he may need your vote. Stay and we’ll have a nice cosy little family drink Maybe if you play your cards right, he may even marry you. Stay and listen. It may in … instructive.’ She stumbled on the word. ‘How to be be an appendage, in a hundred easy lessons. I’m having visiting cards printed up. Mrs Rudolph Jordache, ex-career girl, now in the appendage business. One of the ten most hopeful appendages in the United States. Parasitism and hypocrisy a speciality. Courses given in appendaging.’ She giggled. ‘Any true-blue American girl guaranteed a diploma.’

Rudolph didn’t try to stop Gretchen as she went out of the room and into the hallway, leaving him standing in his raincoat, the hammer in his hand, staring down at his drunken wife.

The elevator door opened directly into the apartment and Gretchen had to wait in the hallway and she heard Jean say, in a childish, aggrieved voice, ‘People are always taking away my hammers,’ before the elevator door opened and she could flee.

When she got back to the Algonquin she called Evans’s hotel, but there was no answer from his apartment. She left a message with the operator that Mrs Burke had not left for the weekend and could be reached all night at her hotel. Then she took, a hot bath and changed her clothes and went down to the hotel dining-room and had dinner.

Rudolph called at nine the next morning. She was alone. Evans hadn’t called. Rudolph said that Jean had gone to sleep after Gretchen had left and had been contrite and ashamed when