Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

She felt that when people looked at her they were sure she had been born in the city. She believed that she was no longer shy. She went out to dinners with some of the young actors and would-be directors whom she met at Walgreen’s and in producers’ offices and rehearsal classes and she paid for her own meals. She didn’t mind cigarette smoke any more. She had no lovers. She had decided she would wait for that until she had a job. One problem at a time.

She had almost made up her mind to write Teddy Boylan and ask him to send down the red dress he had bought for her. There was no telling when she would be invited to that kind of party.

The door to the inner office opened and Bayard Nichols came out with a short, thin man in the suntan uniform of a captain in the Air Force. ‘ … if anything conies up, Willie,’ Nichols was saying, ‘I’ll let you know.’ He had a sad, resigned voice. He remembered only his failures. His eyes made a sweep of the people who were waiting to see him, like the beam of a lighthouse, sightless, casting shadows.

‘I’ll come by next week sometime and mooch a meal off you,’ the Captain said. He had a voice in the low tenor range, unexpected in a man who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds and wasn’t more than five feet six inches tall. He held himself very erect, as though he were, still in Air Cadets’ school. But his face was unmilitary, and his hair was chestnut, unruly, long for a soldier, making you disbelieve the uniform. His forehead was high, a little bulgy, an unsettling hint of Beethoven, massive and brooding and his eyes were Wedgwood blue.

‘You’re still being paid by Uncle,’ Nichols was saying to the Captain. ‘My taxes. I’ll mooch the meal off you.’ He sounded like a man who would not cost much to feed. The theatre was

an Elizabethan tragedy being played nightly in his digestive tract. Murders stalked the duodenum. Ulcers lurked. He was always going on the wagon next Monday. A psychiatrist or a new wife might help.

‘Mr Nichols … ‘ The tall young man who had had the exchange with Mary Jane took a step away from the wall.

‘Next week, Bernie,’ Mr Nichols said. One more sweep of the beam. ‘Miss Saunders,’ he said to the secretary, ‘can you come inside for a moment, please?’ A languid, dyspeptic wave of the hand and he disappeared into his office. The secretary sprayed a last mortal burst out of the typewriter, enfilading the Dramatists’ Guild, then stood up and followed him, carrying a shorthand pad. The door closed behind her.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the Captain said to the room at large, Ve are all in the wrong business. I suggest Army surplus. The demand for used bazookas will be overwhelming. Hello, Tiny.’ This was for Mary Jane, who stood up, towering over him, and leaning over, kissed his cheek

‘I’m glad to see you got home alive from that party, Willie,’ Mary Jane said.

‘I confess, it was a little drunk out,’ the Captain said. ‘We were washing the sombre memories of combat from our souls.’

‘Drowning, I’d say,’ Mary Jane said.

‘Don’t begrudge us our poor little entertainments,’ the Captain said. “Remember, you were modelling girdles while we were walking on flak in the terrible skies over Berlin.’

‘Were you ever over Berlin, Willie?’ Mary Jane asked.

‘Of course not.’ He grinned at Gretchen, disclaiming valour. ‘I am standing here patiently, Tiny,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Gretchen Jordache, Willie Abbott.’

‘I am happy I walked down 46th Street this morning,’ Abbott said.

‘Hello.’ said Gretchen. She nearly stood up. After all, he was a captain.’

‘I suppose you’re an actress,’ he said.

‘Trying.’

‘Dreadful trade,’ Abbott said. ‘To quote Shakespeare on samphire?’

‘Don’t show off, Willie,’ Mary Jane said.

‘You will make some man a fine wife and mother, Miss Jordache,’ Abbott said. ‘Mark my words. Why haven’t I seen you before?’

‘She just came to town,’ Mary Jane said, before Gretchen could answer. It was a warning, a go slow sign. Jealousy?

‘Oh, the girls who have just come to town,’ Abbott said. ‘May I sit in your lap?’

‘Willie!’ Mary Jane said.

Gretchen laughed and Abbott laughed with her. He had very white, even, small teeth. I was not mothered sufficiently as a child.’

The door to the inner office opened and Miss Saunders came out. ‘Miss Jordache,’ she said, ‘Mr Nichols can see you now.’

Gretchen stood up, surprised that Miss Saunders remembered her name. This was only the third time she had been in the Nichols office. She hadn’t talked to Nichols at all, ever. She brushed out the wrinkles in her dress nervously, as Miss Saunders held open the little swinging gate in the partition.

‘Ask for a thousand dollars a week and ten percent of the gross,’ Abbott said.

Gretchen went through the gate and towards Nichols’s door.

‘Everybody else can go home,’ Miss Saunders said. ‘Mr Nichols has an appointment for lunch in fifteen minutes.’

‘Beast,’ said the Character woman with the stole.

‘I just work here,’ Miss Saunders said.

Confusion of feelings. Pleasure and fright at the prospect of being tested for a job. Guilt because the others had been dismissed and she chosen. Loss, because now Mary Jane would leave with Willie Abbott. Flak above Berlin.

‘See you later,’ Mary Jane said. She didn’t say where. Abbott didn’t say anything.

Nichols’s office was a little larger than the anteroom. The walls were bare and his desk was piled with playscripts in leatherette covers. There were three yellowish wooden armchairs and the windows were coated with dust. It looked like the office of a man whose business was somehow shady and who had trouble meeting the rent on the first day of the month.

Nichols stood up as she came into the office and said, ‘It was good of you to wait, Miss Jordache.’ He waved to a chair on one side of his desk and waited for her to sit down before he seated himself. He stared at her for a long time, without a word, studying her with the slightly sour expression of a man who is being offered a painting with a doubtful signature. She was so nervous that she was afraid her knees were shaking. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you want to know about my experience. I don’t have much to … ‘

‘No,’ he said. ‘For the moment we can dispense with experience. Miss Jordache, the part I’m considering you for is

frankly absurd’ He shook his head sorrowfully, pitying himself for the grotesque deeds his profession forced him to perform. Tell me, do you have any objections to playing in a bathing suit? In three bathing suits, to be exact.’

‘Well…’ She laughed uncertainly. ‘I guess it all depends.’ Idiot. Depends on what? The size of the bathing suit? The size of the part? The size of her bosom? She thought of her mother. Her mother never went to the theatre. Lucky.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t a speaking role,’ Nichols said. The girl just walks across the stage three times, once in each act, in a different suit each time. The whole play takes place at a beach club.’

‘I see,’ Gretchen said. She was annoyed with Nichols. Because of him, she had let Mary Jane walk off with Willie Abbott, out into the city. Captain, Captain … Six million people. Get into an elevator and you are lost forever. For a walk on. Practically naked.

The girl is a symbol. Or so the playwright tells me,’ Nichols said, long hours of struggle with the casuistry of artists tolling like a shipwreck’s bell under the phrase. ‘Youth. Sensual beauty. The Mystery of Woman. The heartbreaking ephemeral-ness of the flesh. I am quoting the author. Every man in the audience must feel as she walks across the stage, “My God, why am I married?” I am still quoting. Do you have a bathing suit?’