Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘Come on.’ Rudolph stood up and took her elbow, making her stand. He met all challenges, Rudolph, the cold, veray parfit gentil knight at Sunnyside Gardens.

‘I won’t, I won’t … ‘ Even as she was babbling this, she knew Rudolph would lead her inexorably to face Thomas, bloody, victorious, brutal, rancorous.

There were some men standing at the door of the dressing room, but nobody stopped Rudolph as he pushed the door open. Gretchen hung back. ‘I’d better wait outside,’ she said. ‘He may not be dressed.’

Rudolph paid no attention to what she had said, but held her wrist and pulled her into the room after him. Thomas was sitting on a stained rubbing table, a towel around his middle, and a doctor was sewing up the cut over his eye.

‘It’s nothing,’ the doctor was saying. ‘One more stitch and it’s done.’

Thomas had his eyes closed, to make it easier for the doctor to work. There was an orange stain of antiseptic above the eyebrow that gave him a clownish, lopsided air. He had obviously already taken his shower, as his hair was dark with water and plastered to his head, making him look like a print of an oldtime bare-knuckle pugilist. Grouped around the table were several men, who Rudolph recognised as having been in or near Thomas’s corner during the fight. A curvy young woman in a tight dress kept making little sighing sounds each time the doctor’s needle went into flesh. She had startling black hair and wore black nylon stockings over outlandishly shapely legs. Her eyebrows, plucked into a thin pencil line, high up, gave her a look of doll-like surprise. The room stank of old sweat, liniment, cigar smoke, and urine from the toilet visible through an open door leading off the dressing room. A bloodstained towel lay on the greasy floor, in a heap with the sweat-soaked purple tights and supporter and socks and shoes that Thomas had worn during the fight. It was sickeningly hot in the room.

What am I doing in a place like this, Gretchen thought How did I get here?

There we are,’ the doctor said, stepping back, his head cocked to one side, admiring his work. He put on a pad of gauze and a strip of adhesive tape over the wound. ‘You’ll be able to fight again in ten days.’

Thanks, Doc,’ Thomas said and opened his eyes. He saw Rudolph and Gretchen. ‘Good Christ,’ he said. He smiled crookedly. ‘What the hell are you two doing here?’

I have a message for you,’ Rudolph said. ‘A man called Al phoned me this afternoon and told me he’d put five hundred at seven to five for tonight.’

‘Good old Al,’ Thomas said. But he looked worriedly over

at the curvy young woman with the black hair, as though he had wanted to keep this information from her.

‘Congratulations on the fight,’ Rudolph said. He took a step forward and put out his hand. Thomas hesitated for a fraction of a second, then smiled again, and put out his swollen, reddened hand.

Gretchen couldn’t get herself to congratulate her brother. ‘I’m glad you won, Tom,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He looked at her amusedly. ‘Let me introduce everybody to everybody,’ he said. ‘My brother, Rudolph; my sister, Gretchen. My wife, Teresa, my manager, Mr Schultz, my trainer, Paddy, everybody … ‘ He waved his hand vaguely at the men he hadn’t bothered to introduce.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ Teresa said. It was the suspicious voice of the telephone that afternoon.

‘I didn’t know you had family,’ Mr Schultz said. He, too, seemed suspicious, as though having family was somehow perilous or actionable at law.

‘I wasn’t sure myself,’ Thomas said. ‘We have gone our separate ways, like they say. Hey, Schultzy, I must be getting to be one helluva draw at the gate if I even get my brother and sister to buy tickets.’

‘After tonight,’ Mr Schultz said, ‘I can get you the Garden. It was a nice win.’ He was a small man with a basketball pouch under a greenish sweater. ‘Well, you people must have a lot to talk about, catch up with the news, as it were, we’ll leave you alone. I’ll drop in tomorrow sometime, Tommy, to see how the eye’s doing.’ He put on a jacket, just barely managing to button it over his paunch. The trainer gathered up the gear from the floor and put it into a bag. ‘Nice going, Tommy,’ he said, as he left with the doctor, the manager, and the others.

‘Well, here we are,’ Thomas said. ‘A nice family reunion. I guess we ought to celebrate, huh, Teresa?’

‘You never told me anything about a brother and sister,’ Teresa said aggrievedly, in her high voice.

They slipped my mind for a few years,’ Thomas said. He jumped down off the rubbing table. ‘Now, if the ladies will retire, I’ll put on some clothes.’

Gretchen went out into the hall with her brother’s wife. The hall was empty now and she Was relieved to get away from the stink and heat of the dressing room. Teresa was putting on a shaggy red fox coat with angry little movements of her shoulders and arms, ‘If the ladies will retire,’ she said. ‘As though I never saw him naked before.’ She looked at Gretchen

with open hostility, taking in the black wool dress, the low-heeled shoes, the plain, belted polo coat, considering it, Gretchen could see, an affront to her style of living, her dyed hair, her tight dress, her over-voluptuous legs, her marriage. ‘I didn’t know Tommy came from such a high-toned family,’ she said. ‘We’re not so high-toned,’ Gretchen said. ‘Never fear.’ ‘You never bothered to see him fight before tonight,’ Teresa said aggressively, ‘did you?’

‘I didn’t know he was a fighter before today,’ said Gretchen. ‘Do you mind if I sit down? I’m feeling very tired.’ There was a chair across the hall and she moved away from the woman and sat down, hoping to put an end to conversation. Teresa ruffled her shoulders irritably under the red fox, then began to walk peckishly up and down, her high stilletto heels making a brittle, impatient sound on the concrete floor of the hallway.

Inside the dressing room Thomas was dressing slowly, turning away modestly when he put on his shorts, occasionally wiping at his face with a towel, because the shower had not completely broken the sweat. From time to time he looked across at Rudolph and smiled and shook his head and said, ‘Goddamn.’

‘How do you feel, Tommy?’ Rudolph asked.

‘Okay. But I’ll piss blood tomorrow,’ Thomas said calmly. ‘He got in a couple of good licks to the kidney, the sonofabitch. It was a pretty good fight, though, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Rudolph-said. He didn’t have the heart to say that in his eyes it had been a routine, ungraceful, second-rate brawl.

‘I knew I could take him,’ Thomas said. ‘Even though I was the underdog in the betting. Seven to five. That’s a hot one. I made seven hundred bucks on that bet.’ He sounded like a small boy boasting. Though it’s too bad you had to say anything about it in front of Teresa. Now she knows I have the dough and she’ll be after it like a hound dog.’

‘How long have you been married?’ Rudolph asked.

Two years. Legally. I knocked her up and I thought what the hell.’ Thomas shrugged. ‘She’s okay. Teresa, a little dumb, but okay. The kid’s worth it, though. A boy.’ He glanced maliciously over at Rudolph. ‘Maybe I’ll send him to his Uncle Rudy, to teach him to be a gentleman and not grow up to be a poor stupid pug, like his old man.’

‘I’d like to see him some day,’ Rudolph said stiffly.

‘Any time. Come up to the house.’ Thomas put on a black turtle-neck sweater and his voice was muffled for a moment as

he stuck his head into the wool. ‘You married yet?’

‘No.’

‘Still the smart one of the family,’ Thomas said. ‘How about Gretchen?’