Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

I had to be so damned superior, Barber thought bitterly. I had to be so damned sure that Jimmy Richardson was too stupid to be offered that much money. I had to be so damned sure that Bert Smith was too clever to hire him.

He hadn’t said any of the things he should have said, and it had all wound up with a frantic, husbandless, penniless girl pleading for help that could only be too late now. Penniless. Jimmy Richardson had been too stupid even to get any of the money in advance.

He remembered what Jimmy and Maureen had looked like, smiling and embarrassed and youthfully important, standing next to Colonel Sumners, the Group Commander, at their wedding in Shreveport. He remembered Jimmy’s plane just off his wing over Sicily; he remembered Jimmy’s face when he landed at Foggia with an engine on fire; he remembered Jimmy’s voice singing drunkenly in a bar in Naples; he remembered Jimmy the day after he arrived in Paris, saying, “Kid, this is the town for me, I got Europe in my blood.”

He finished his drink and paid and went upstairs slowly. He went into a phone booth and called his hotel to see if there were any messages for him.

“Mme. Richardson has been calling you all day,” the old man at the switchboard said. “Ever since four o’clock. She wanted you to call her back.”

“All right,” Barber said. “Thank you.” He started to hang up.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the old man said irritably. “She called an hour ago to say she was going out. She said that if you came in before nine o’clock, she would like you to join her at the bar of the Hotel Bellman.”

“Thanks, Henri,” Barber said. “If she happens to call again, tell her I’m on my way.” He went out of the hotel. The Bellman was nearby, and he walked toward it slowly, even though it was still raining. He was in no hurry to see Maureen Richardson.

When he reached the Bellman, he hesitated before going in, feeling too tired for this, wishing Maureen could be put off at least until the next day. He sighed, and pushed the door open.

The bar was a small one, but it was crowded with large, well-dressed men who were taking their time over drinks before going out to dinner. Then he saw Maureen. She was sitting in a corner, half turned away from the room, her shabby, thin coat thrown back over her chair. She was sitting alone and there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket in a stand beside her.

Barber went over to her, irritated by the sight of the champagne. Is that what she’s doing with my five thousand francs, he thought, annoyed. Women are going crazy, too, these days.

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. She jumped nervously, then smiled when she saw who it was. “Oh, Lloyd,” she said, in a funny kind of whisper. She jumped up and kissed him, holding him hard against her. There was a big smell of champagne on her breath and he wondered if she was drunk. “Lloyd, Lloyd …” she said. She pushed him away a little, holding on to both his hands. Her eyes were smeary with tears and her mouth kept trembling.

“I came as soon as I got your message,” Lloyd said, trying to sound practical, afraid Maureen was going to break down in front of all the people in the bar. She kept standing there, her mouth working, her hands gripping his avidly. He looked down, embarrassed, at her hands. They were still reddened and the nails were still uneven, but there was an enormous ring glittering, white and blue, on her finger. It hadn’t been there when she came to his hotel, and he knew he had never seen her with a ring like that before. He looked up, almost frightened, thinking, What the hell has she started? What has she got herself into?

Then he saw Jimmy. Jimmy was making his way among the tables toward him. He was smiling broadly and he had lost some weight and he was dark brown and he looked as though he had just come from a month’s vacation on a southern beach.

“Hi, kid,” Jimmy said, his voice booming across the tables, across the barroom murmur of conversation. “I was just calling you again.”

“He came home,” Maureen said. “He came home at four o’clock this afternoon, Lloyd.” She sank suddenly into her chair. Whatever else had happened that afternoon, it was plain that she had had access to a bottle. She sat in her chair, still holding on to one of Barber’s hands, looking up, with a shimmering, half-dazed expression on her face, at her husband.

Jimmy clapped Barber on the back and shook hands fiercely. “Lloyd,” he said. “Good old Lloyd. Garçon! ” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the whole room. “Another glass. Take your coat off. Sit down. Sit down.”

Lloyd took his coat off and sat down slowly.

“Welcome home,” he said quietly. He blew his nose. The cold had arrived.

“First,” Jimmy said, “I have something for you.” Ceremoniously he dug his hand into his pocket and brought out a roll of ten-thousand-franc notes. The roll was three inches thick. He took off one of the notes. “Maureen told me,” he said seriously. “You were a damn good friend, Lloyd. Have you got change of ten?”

“I don’t think so,” Barber said. “No.”

“ Garçon, ” Jimmy said to the waiter, who was putting down a third glass, “get me two fives for this, please.” When he spoke French, Jimmy had an accent that made even Americans wince.

Jimmy filled the three glasses carefully. He lifted his glass and clinked it first against Barber’s and then against Maureen’s. Maureen kept looking at him as though she had just seen him for the first time and never hoped to see anything as wonderful again in her whole life.

“To crime,” Jimmy said. He winked. He made a complicated face when he winked, like a baby who has trouble with a movement of such subtlety and has to use the whole side of its face and its forehead to effect it.

Maureen giggled.

They drank. It was very good champagne.

“You’re having dinner with us,” Jimmy said. “Just the three of us. The victory dinner. Just Beauty and me and you, because if it hadn’t been for you …” Suddenly solemn, he put his hand on Barber’s shoulder.

“Yes,” said Barber. His feet were icy and his trousers hung soddenly around his wet socks and he had to blow his nose again.

“Did Beauty show you her ring?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes,” Barber said.

“She’s only had it since six o’clock,” Jimmy said.

Maureen held her hand up and stared at her ring. She giggled again.

“I know a place,” Jimmy said, “where you can get pheasant and the best bottle of wine in Paris and …”

The waiter came back and gave Jimmy the two five-thousand-franc notes. Dimly, Barber wondered how much they weighed.

“If ever you’re in a hole,” Jimmy said, giving him one of the notes, “you know where to come, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Barber said. He put the note in his pocket.

He started to sneeze then, and ten minutes later he said he was sorry but he didn’t think he could last the evening with a cold like that. Both Jimmy and Maureen tried to get him to stay, but he could tell that they were going to be happier without him.

He finished a second glass of champagne, and said he’d keep in touch, and went out of the bar, feeling his toes squish in his wet shoes. He was hungry and he was very fond of pheasant and actually the cold wasn’t so bad, even if his nose kept running all the time. But he knew he couldn’t bear to sit between Maureen and Jimmy Richardson all night and watch the way they kept looking at each other.

He walked back to his hotel, because he was through with taxis, and went up and sat on the edge of his bed in his room, in the dark, without taking his coat off. I better get out of here, he thought, rubbing the wet off the end of his nose with the back of his hand. This continent is not for me.