Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Here you are, Bertie boy,” Barber said, holding out the envelope.

Smith didn’t take it. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.

“I’m sure.”

Smith still didn’t take the maps. “I’m in no hurry,” he said softly. “Why don’t you hold on to them another day?”

“Thanks, no.”

Smith looked at him silently for a moment. The fluorescent street lamps had just gone on, hard white-blue light, and Smith’s smooth face looked powdery in the shadows under his expensive hat, and his pretty eyes were dark and flat under the curled lashes.

“Just because a jockey falls at a jump—” Smith began.

“Take them,” Barber said, “or I’ll throw them in the gutter.”

Smith shrugged. He put out his hand and took the envelope. “You’ll never have a chance like this again,” he said, running his finger caressingly over the envelope edge.

“Good night, Jimmy.” Barber leaned over the car and spoke to Richardson, who was sitting there watching them, puzzled. “Give my love to Maureen.”

“Say, Lloyd,” Richardson said, starting to get out. “I thought maybe we could have a couple of drinks. Maureen doesn’t expect me home for another hour yet and I thought maybe we could cut up some old touches and—”

“Sorry,” Barber said, because he wanted, more than anything else, to be alone. “I have a date. Some other time.”

Smith turned and looked thoughtfully at Richardson. “He always has a date, your friend,” Smith said. “He’s a very popular boy. I feel like a drink myself, Mr. Richardson. I would be honored if you’d join me.”

“Well,” Richardson said uncertainly, “I live way down near the Hôtel de Ville and—”

“It’s on my way,” Smith said, smiling warmly.

Richardson settled back in his seat, and Smith started to get into the car. He stopped and looked up at Barber. “I made a mistake about you, didn’t I, Lloyd?” he said contemptuously.

“Yes,” Barber said. “I’m getting too old. I don’t want to keep at it too long.”

Smith chuckled and got into the car. They didn’t shake hands. He slammed the door, and Barber watched him pull sharply away from the curb, making a taxi-driver behind him jam on his brakes to avoid hitting him.

Barber watched the big black car weave swiftly down the street, under the hard white-blue lights. Then he went back to the hotel and up to his room and lay down, because an afternoon at the races always exhausted him.

An hour later, he got up. He splashed cold water on his face to wake himself, but even so he felt listless and empty. He wasn’t hungry and he wasn’t thirsty and he kept thinking about the dead jockey in his soiled silks. There was no one he wanted to see. He put on his coat and went out, hating the room as he closed the door behind him.

He walked slowly toward the Etoile. It was a raw night and a fog was moving in’ from the river, and the streets were almost empty, because everybody was inside eating dinner. He didn’t look at any of the lighted windows, because he wasn’t going to buy anything for a long time. He passed several movie houses, neon in the drifting fog. In the movies, he thought, the hero would have been on his way to Africa by now. He would nearly be caught several times in Egypt, and he would fight his way out of a trap on the desert, killing several dark men just in time on the airstrip. And he would develop engine trouble over the Mediterranean and just pull out, with the water lapping at the wing tips, and he would undoubtedly crash, without doing too much damage to himself, probably just a photogenic cut on the forehead, and would drag the box out just in time. And he would turn out to be a Treasury agent or a member of British Intelligence and he would never doubt his luck and his nerve would never fail him and he would not end the picture with only a few thousand francs in his pocket. Or, if it was an artistic picture, there would be a heavy ground mist over the hills and the plane would drone on and on, desperate and lost, and then, finally, with the fuel tanks empty, the hero would crash in flames. Battered and staggering as he was, he would try to get the box out, but he wouldn’t be able to move it, and finally the flames would drive him back and he would stand against a tree, laughing crazily, his face blackened with smoke, watching the plane and the money burn, to show the vanity of human aspiration and greed.

Barber grinned bleakly, rehearsing the scenarios in front of the giant posters outside the theatres. The movies do it better, he thought. They have their adventures happen to adventurers. He turned off the Champs-Elysées, walking slowly and aimlessly, trying to decide whether to eat now or have a drink first. Almost automatically, he walked toward the Plaza-Athénée. In the two weeks that he had been wooed by Smith, they had met in the English bar of the Plaza-Athénée almost every evening.

He went into the hotel and downstairs to the English bar. As he came into the room, he saw, in the corner, Smith and Jimmy Richardson.

Barber smiled. Bertie boy, he thought, are you ever wasting your time. He stood at the bar and ordered a whiskey.

“… fifty missions,” he heard Richardson say. Richardson had a loud, empty voice that carried anywhere. “Africa, Sicily, Italy, Yugo—”

Then Smith saw him. He nodded coolly, with no hint of invitation. Richardson swivelled in his chair then, too. He smiled uncomfortably at Barber, getting red in the face, like a man who has been caught by a friend with his friend’s girl.

Barber waved to them. For a moment, he wondered if he ought to go over and sit down and try to get Richardson out of there. He watched the two men, trying to figure out what they thought of each other. Or, more accurately, what Smith thought of Richardson. You didn’t have to speculate about Jimmy. If you bought Jimmy a drink, he was your friend for life. For all that he had been through—war and marriage and being a father and living in a foreign country—it had still never occurred to Jimmy that people might not like him or might try to do him harm. When you were enjoying Jimmy, you called it trustfulness. When he was boring you, you called it stupidity.

Barber watched Smith’s face carefully. By now, he knew Smith well enough to be able to tell a great deal of what was going on behind the pretty eyes and the pale, powdered face. Right now, Barber could tell that Smith was bored and that he wanted to get away from Jimmy Richardson.

Barber turned back to his drink, smiling to himself. It took Bertie boy just about an hour, he thought, an hour of looking at that good-natured empty face, an hour of listening to that booming, vacant voice, to decide that this was no man to fly a small box of five-pound notes from Cairo to Cannes.

Barber finished his drink quickly and went out of the bar before Smith and Richardson got up from the table. He had nothing to do for the evening, but he didn’t want to get stuck with Jimmy and Maureen Richardson for dinner.

And now it was almost two months later and nobody had heard from Jimmy Richardson for thirty-two days.

In the whole afternoon of searching, Barber had not come upon any trace of Bert Smith. He had not been at the restaurants or the track or the art galleries, the barbershop, the steam bath, the bars. And no one had seen him for weeks.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Barber arrived at the English bar of the Plaza-Athenee. He was wet from walking in the day’s rain, and tired, and his shoes were soggy and he felt a cold coming on. He looked around the room, but it was almost empty. Indulging himself, thinking unhappily of all the taxi fares he had paid that day, he ordered a whiskey.

Barber sipped his whiskey in the quiet room, thinking circularly, I should have said something. But what could I have said? And Jimmy wouldn’t have listened. But I should have said something. The omens are bad, Jimmy, go on home .… I saw a plane crashing at the fourth jump, I saw a corpse being carried across dead grass by Egyptians, Jimmy, I saw silks and maps stained by blood .