Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

She went over to the child’s bed. He had fallen asleep, grasping the giraffe. He slept, miraculously complete. What are you going to buy, what are you going to sell when you are my

age? What errors are ahead of you? How much of love will be wasted?

There was a tread on the stairs and she hurriedly bent over, pretending to be tucking in the child. Willie, provider of ice, opened the door. ‘I wondered where you were,’ he said.

‘I was restoring my sanity,’ she said.

‘Gretchen,’ he said reproachfully. He was a little flushed from drink and there were beads of perspiration on his upper lip. He had begun to bald, the forehead more Beethovenesque than ever, but somehow he still looked adolescent. ‘They’re your friends, as well as mine.’

They’re nobody’s friends,’ Gretchen said. ‘They’re drinkers, that’s all.’ She was feeling bitchy. Rereading the lines from her article had crystallised the dissatisfaction that had sent her upstairs in the first place. And suddenly, she was annoyed that the child resembled Willie so closely. I was there, too, she wanted to say.

‘What do you want me to do,’ Willie said, ‘send them home?’

‘Yes. Send them home.’

‘You know I can’t do that,’ Willie said. ‘Come on down, honey. People’ll begin to wonder what’s wrong with you.’

Tell them I had a sudden wild urge to breast-feed,’ Gretchen said. ‘In some tribes they breast-feed children until the age of seven. They know everything down there. See if they know that’

‘Honey … ‘ He came over and put his arms around her. She could smell the gin. ‘Give a little. Please. You’re getting awfully nervy.’

‘Oh. You noticed.’

‘Of course I noticed.’ He kissed her cheek. A nothing kiss, she thought. He hadn’t made love to her in two weeks. ‘I know what’s wrong,’ he said. ‘You’re doing too much. Taking care of the kid, working, going to school, studying … ‘ He was always trying to get her to drop her courses. ‘What’re you proving?’ he had asked. ‘You’re the smartest girl in New York as it is.’

‘I’m not doing half enough,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll do down and pick a likely candidate and go off and have an affair. For my nerves.’

Willie dropped his arms from around her waist and stepped back, martinis receding. ‘Funny. Hah-hah,’ he said coldly.

‘On to the cockpit,’ she said, putting out the lamp on the table. ‘Drinks are in the kitchen.’

He grabbed her wrist in the dark. ‘What’ve I done wrong?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing,’ she said. The perfect hostess and her mate will now rejoin the beauty and chivalry of West Twelfth Street.’ She pulled her arm away from his grasp and went down the stairs. A moment later Willie came down, too. He had stayed behind to plant a martini’d kiss on his son’s forehead.

She saw Rudolph had quit Johnny Heath and was in a corner of the room talking earnestly to Julie, who must have come in while she was upstairs. Rudolph’s friend, the boy from Oklahoma, Babbitt material, was laughing too hard over something that one of the executive secretaries had said. Julie had her hair up and was wearing a soft, black-velvet dress. ‘I am in a constant battle,’ Julie had confided to her, ‘to suppress the highschool cheerleader in me.’ This evening she had managed. Too well. She looked too sure of herself for a girl that young. Gretchen was certain that Julie and Rudolph had never slept with each other. After five years! Inhuman. There was something wrong with the girl, or Rudolph, or both.

She waved to Rudolph but she did not catch his eye and as she went towards him she was stopped by an advertising account executive, too beautifully dressed, and with a haircut that was too becoming. ‘Mine hostess,’ the man said, thin as an English actor. His name was Alec Lister. He had started as a page boy at CBS, but that was long behind him. ‘Let me congratulate you on an absolutely splendid do.’

‘Are you a likely candidate?’ she asked, staring at him.

‘What?’ Lister transferred his glass uneasily from one hand to another. He was not used to being asked puzzling questions.

‘Nothing,’ she said. Train of thought, I’m glad you like the animals.’

‘I like them very much.’ Lister put his imprimatur firmly on the assemblage. ‘I’ll tell you something else I like. Your pieces in the magazine.’

‘I will be known as the Samuel Taylor Coleridge of radio and television,’ she said. Lister was one of the guests who could not be insulted, but she was out after all scalps tonight.

‘What was that?’ He was puzzled for the second time in thirty seconds and he was beginning to frown. ‘Oh, yes, I get’ He didn’t seem happy to have got it. ‘If I may make a comment, Gretchen,’ he said, knowing that anywhere between Wall Street and Sixtieth Street he could make whatever comment he pleased. ‘The pieces are excellent, but just a little bit too -well - biting, I find. There’s a tone of hostility in them - it gives

them a welcome tang, I have to admit - but there’s a general underlying feeling of being against the whole industry.’

‘Oh,’ she said calmly, ‘you caught that.’

He stared at her evenly, all cordiality gone, his office face, cool and pitiless, replacing in a fraction of a second his tolerant English actor party face. ‘Yes. I caught it,’ he said. ‘And I’m not the only one. In today’s atmosphere, with everybody being investigated, and advertisers being damn careful that they’re not giving their money to people whose motives might not be’ acceptable …’

‘Are you warning me?’ Gretchen asked.

‘You might put it like that,’ the man said. ‘Out of friendship.’

‘It’s good of you, dear,’ she touched his arm lightly, smiling tenderly at him, ‘but I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m a red, raving Communist, in the pay of Moscow, plotting to destroy NBC and MGM and bring Ralston’s Cereals crashing to the ground.’

‘She’s putting on everyone tonight, Alec.’ Willie was standing next to her, his hand tightening on her elbow. ‘She thinks it’s Halloween. Come on into the kitchen, I’ll freshen your drink.’

Thanks, Willie,’ Lister said. ‘But I’m afraid I have to push on. I have two more parties I said I’d look in on tonight.’ He kissed Gretchen’s cheek, a brush of ether on her skin. ‘Good night, sweets. I do hope you remember what I told you.’

‘Chiselled in stone,’ she said.

Expressionless, flat-eyed, he made his way towards the door, putting his glass down on a bookcase, where it would leave a ring.

‘What’s the matter?’ Willie said in a low voice. ‘You hate money?’

‘I hate him,’ she said. She pulled away from Willie and wove through the guests, smiling brightly, to where Rudolph and Julie were talking in the corner. They were talking in near whispers. There was an air of tension about them which built an invisible wall around them, cutting them off from all the laughter and conversation in the room. Julie seemed on the verge of tears and Rudolph looked concentrated and stubborn.

‘I thinks if s terrible,’ Julie was saying. “That’s what I think.’

‘You look beautiful tonight, Julie,’ Gretchen interrupted. “Very femme-fatalish.’

‘Well, I don’t feel it.’ Julie’s voice quavered.

What’s the matter?’ Gretchen asked.

‘You tell her,’ Julie said to Rudolph.

‘Some other time,’ Rudolph said, lips tight. This is a party.’

‘He’s going to work permanently at Calderwood’s,’ Julie said. ‘Starting tomorrow morning.’

‘Nothing is permanent,’ Rudolph said.

‘Stuck away behind a counter for his whole life,’ Julie rushed on. ‘In a little one-horse town. What’s the sense of going to college, if that’s all you’re going to do with it?’