Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

She shook her head, annoyed with herself because of the flush that warmed her cheeks and neck. She looked down at her plate, because looking across at Guy made her blush more intense. “No, please,” she whispered. “Not tonight.”

“Why not tonight?” Guy demanded.

“It—it’s so abrupt,” Roberta said.

“Abrupt!” Guy said loudly. “I have seen you nearly every day for three months now. What are you accustomed to?”

“I’m not accustomed to anything. You know that,” she said. “Please, let’s not talk about it. Not tonight.”

“But I have the apartment for tonight,” Guy said. “My friend may not go to Tours for another year.” His face was sorrowful and hurt and for the first time since she had known him, Roberta had the feeling that he was in need of comforting. She leaned over and patted his hand sympathetically.

“Don’t look like that,” she said. “Maybe some other time.”

“I warn you,” he said with dignity, “the next time it will have to be you who will make the advances.”

“I will make the advances,” she said, relieved and at the same time obscurely annoyed by his quick surrender. “Now pay the check. I have to get up early tomorrow.”

Later on, in her narrow, lumpy bed, under the heavy quilt, she was too excited to sleep. What a day, she thought. I am on the verge of being a painter. I am on the verge of being a woman. Then she giggled softly at the solemnity of the phrase and hugged herself. She was favorably impressed by the quality of her own skin. If Louise had been awake, she would have told her everything. But Louise slept sternly in the bed along the opposite wall, her hair in curlers, her face greased against wrinkles that would not appear for another twenty years. Regretfully Roberta closed her eyes. It was not the sort of day you liked to see end.

Two days later, when she came into the room and turned on the light, she saw a pneumatique addressed to her on her bed. It was late in the afternoon and the apartment was cold and empty. Louise was out, and for once Madame Ruffat had not been at her post playing solitaire when Roberta had walked down the hall. Roberta opened the pneumatique . “Dear Miss James,” it read. “Please get in touch with me immediately. I have some important news for you.” It was signed “Patrini.”

Roberta looked at her watch. It was five o’clock. Patrini would still be in the gallery. Feeling prickly and light headed, she went back along the hall and into the salon, where the telephone was. When Madame Ruffat went out, she locked the dial mechanism with a little padlock, but there was always a chance that for once she had forgotten to do it. But Madame Ruffat had forgotten nothing. The phone was locked. Roberta said, Insufferable old witch , three times under her breath, and went into the kitchen to look for the maid. The kitchen was dark and Roberta remembered that it was the maid’s day off.

“Oh, damn,” Roberta said to herself. “France!” She let herself out of the apartment and hurried down to the café on the corner, where there was a pay telephone. But there was a little damp man with a briefcase in the booth, making notes on a sheet of paper as he talked. From what Roberta could gather over the noise from the bar, the man with the briefcase was involved in a complicated transaction concerning the installation of plumbing fixtures. He gave no sign that he was close to finishing. Paris, Roberta thought unfairly. Everybody’s on the phone at all hours of the day and night.

She looked at her watch. It was a quarter past five. Patrini closed the gallery at six. Roberta retreated to the bar and ordered a glass of red wine to soothe her nerves. She would have to chew some gum after to remove the traces of the wine from her breath. She had a date with Guy at seven and it would mean a long lecture if he discovered she’d been drinking. The bar was full of workmen from the quarter, laughing and speaking loudly, obviously not at all concerned with what their breaths were going to smell like that evening.

Finally, the plumbing man came out and Roberta leaped into the booth and put in the jeton . The line was busy. She remembered the interminable conversation Patrini had engaged in the afternoon she was there and began to get panicky. She tried three times more and each time the line was busy. It was five twenty-five. She rushed out of the booth, paid for her wine and hurried toward the Métro. It was a long trip across the city, but there was nothing else to be done. She couldn’t bear the thought of going through the whole night without knowing what Patrini had to say to her.

Even though it was a bitterly cold afternoon, she was perspiring and out of breath from running when she reached the gallery. It was five to six. The lights were still on. The purple man was still represented in the window. Roberta hurled herself through the door. There was nobody in the gallery, but from the office in the back, she heard the secretive whisper of Patrini on the telephone. She had the unreasonable impression that he had been talking like that, in the same position and in the same voice, since the time she had left him two days before. She took a little time to regain her breath, then walked to the rear of the gallery and showed herself at the door to Patrini. He looked up after a while, waved languidly in greeting and continued his conversation. She turned back into the gallery and pretended to be studying a large painting which vaguely reminded her of robins’ eggs, magnified thirty times. She was glad for the respite now. It gave her time to compose herself. Patrini, she was sure, was a man who would be adversely affected by signs of excitement or expressions of enthusiasm or gratitude. By the time he came out of the office and approached her, she had frozen her face into lines of mildly amused boredom.

Roberta heard the click of the phone in the office as Patrini hung up. He came up to her like a large soft animal, padding along on the thick carpet. “Good evening, chère Mademoiselle ,” he said. “I called the number you left me this morning, but the lady who answered informed me there was nobody by your name living there.”

“That’s my landlady,” Roberta said. It was an old trick of Madame Ruffat to discourage what she termed the intolerable racket of the telephone bell.

“I wanted to tell you,” said Patrini, “that the Baron came by this morning to say that he still couldn’t make up his mind which of the two paintings he liked, so he’s decided to take them both.”

Roberta closed her eyes against the glory of the moment, pretending to be squinting at a painting on the opposite wall. “Really?” she said. “Both of them? He’s more intelligent than I thought.”

Patrini made a funny sound, as though he were choking, but Roberta forgave him, because at that moment she would have forgiven anybody anything.

“He also asked me to tell you that you’re invited to his house for dinner tonight,” Patrini went on. “I’m to call his secretary before seven to let him know. Are you free for dinner?”

Roberta hesitated. She had the date with Guy at seven and she knew he would appear faithfully at six forty-five and stand waiting on the cold street for her to appear, a gelid victim of Madame Ruffat’s detestation of the male sex. For a moment, she hesitated. Then she thought, Artists must be ruthless, or they are not artists. Remember Gauguin. Remember Baudelaire. “Yes,” she said offhandedly to Patrini, “I believe I can make it.”

“It’s number nineteen bis Square du Bois de Boulogne,” Patrini said. “That’s off the Avenue Foch. Eight o’clock. Under no circumstances discuss prices. I will handle that end. Is that understood?”