Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“I’m only giving him my honest opinion,” Josephine said. “I’ve been in New York a dozen years. I see them begin and I see them wind up in the river.”

“Will you, for Christ’s sake, stop talking about the river?” Wysocki slammed his hand on the desk.

Gratefully, Enders noticed that Miss Zelinka was listening to the conversation, that her head tilted just a little, a shade went across her disdainful, beautiful eyes.

“I come from Fall River,” Josephine said. “I should’ve stayed there. At least when you’re dead in Fall River they bury you. Here they leave you walk around until your friends notice it. Why did I ever leave Fall River? I was attracted by the glamor of the Great White Way.” She waved her red and white umbrella ironically, in salute to the city.

Enders noticed that a hint, a twitch of a smile, played at the corner of Miss Zelinka’s mouth. He was glad that she’d heard Wysocki say he was educated, he was going to go a long way.

“If you’d like,” he heard his voice boom out suddenly in the direction of Miss Zelinka, “if you’d like, if you’re waiting for someone, you can wait in my room. It’s not so noisy there.”

“No, thank you,” Miss Zelinka said, speaking curiously, her lips together, not showing her teeth. Her voice, behind the closed, beautiful lips, was deep and hoarse and moving, and Enders felt it grip at his throat like a cool, firm hand. He turned to Wysocki, determined now that he was not going back to his room.

“I was curious,” he said. “Where did Bishop get that chicken he wants to sell me?”

Wysocki looked behind him carefully. “Don’t buy those chickens, Enders,” he said in a low voice. “I advise you as a good friend. Bishop picks them up on Tenth Avenue, alongside the railroad tracks.”

“What’re they doing there?” Enders asked.

“The trains bring them in from the farms, from the country,” Wysocki said. “The ones that died on the trip for one reason or another, the trainmen throw them off the cars and they’re piled up alongside the tracks and Bishop picks out the ones that look as though they died most peaceful and he tries to sell them.” Wysocki slid back to the office door, listened guiltily for a moment for Bishop, like a spy in the movies. “I advise you not to buy them. They’re not the most nourishing articles of food in the world.”

Enders smiled. “Bishop ought to be in Wall Street,” he said. “With talent like that.”

Miss Zelinka laughed. Feeling twice as tall as he had felt a moment before, Enders noticed that Miss Zelinka was laughing, quietly, and without opening her mouth, but true laughter. He laughed with her and their eyes met in friendly, understanding amusement.

“May I buy you a cup of coffee?” hurled out of his throat, at Miss Zelinka’s head, like a hand grenade.

The light of thought, consideration, appeared in the large gray eyes, while Enders waited. Then Miss Zelinka smiled. “All right,” she said. She stood up, five feet six inches tall, graceful as a duchess.

“I’ll be right back,” Enders said, quickly. “Just have to get my coat.”

He fled lightly down the hall toward his room.

“That’s what keeps me poor,” Josephine said. “Girls like that. What a night, what a dirty whore of a night!”

“I’m a dancer,” Bertha Zelinka was saying two hours later, her coat off, in Enders’ room, as she drank the whisky straight in one of the two water tumblers the room boasted. “Specialty dancing.” She put the whisky down, suddenly sank beautifully to the floor in a split. “I’m as supple as a cat.”

“I see,” Enders said, his eyes furious with admiration for Miss Zelinka, full-breasted, flat-bellied, steel-thighed, supple as a cat, spread magnificently on the dirty carpet. It was more pleasant to look at her body, now that he had seen her eating, mouth opened to reveal the poor, poverty-stricken, ruined teeth jagged and sorrowful in her mouth. “That looks very hard to do.”

“My name’s been in lights,” Miss Zelinka said, from the floor. “Please pass the whisky. From one end of the country to another. I’ve stopped show after show. I’ve got an uncanny sense of timing.” She stood up, after taking another draught of her whisky, closing her eyes with a kind of harsh rapture as the Four Roses went down past the miserable teeth, down inside the powerful, long white throat. “I’m an actress, too, you know, Mr. Enders.”

“I’m an actor,” Enders said shyly, feeling the whisky beat in his blood, keeping his eyes fiercely and wonderingly on Miss Zelinka. “That’s why I’m in New York. I’m an actor.”

“You ought to be a good actor,” Miss Zelinka said. “You got the face for it. It’s refined.” She poured herself another drink, watching the amber liquor pour into her glass with a brooding, intense expression in her face. “I had my name in lights from coast to coast. Don’t you believe it?”

“I believe it,” Enders said sincerely, noting that half the bottle was already gone.

“That’s why I’m here now,” she said. She walked beautifully around the small, flaky-walled room, her hands running sorrowfully over the warped bureau, the painted bedstead. “That’s why I’m here now.” Her voice was faraway and echoing, hoarse with whisky and regret. “I’m very much in demand, you know. I’ve stopped shows for ten minutes at a time. They wouldn’t let me get off the stage. Musicals that cost one hundred and fifty thousand to ring the curtain up. That’s why I’m here now,” she said mysteriously, and drained her glass. She threw herself on the bed next to Enders, stared moodily through almost closed eyes, at the stained and beaten ceiling. “The Shuberts’re putting on a musical. They want me for it. Rehearsals are on Fifty-second Street, so I thought I’d move close by for the time being.” She sat up, silently reached for the bottle, poured with the fixed expression, brooding and infatuate, which she reserved for the distillers’ product. Enders, too full for words, sitting on the same bed with a woman who looked like Greta Garbo, who had stopped musical shows with specialty dancing from coast to coast, who got drunk with the assured yet ferocious grace of a young society matron, watched her every move, with hope, admiration, growing passion.

“You might ask,” Miss Zelinka said, “what is a person like myself doing in a rat-hole like this.” She waited, but Enders merely gulped silently at his whisky. She chuckled and patted his hand. “You’re a nice boy. Iowa, you said? You come from Iowa?”

“Iowa.”

“Corn,” Miss Zelinka said. “That’s what they grow in Iowa.” She nodded, having placed Iowa and Enders firmly in her mind. “I passed through Iowa on my way to Hollywood.” Half the whisky in her glass disappeared.

“Have you acted in pictures?” Enders asked, impressed, sitting on the same bed with a woman who had been in Hollywood.

Miss Zelinka laughed moodily. “Hollywood!” She finished her drink. “Don’t look for my footprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese.” She reached fluently for the bottle.

“It seems to me,” Enders said seriously, breathing deeply because Miss Zelinka was leaning across him for the moment. “It seems to me you’d do very well. You’re beautiful and you’ve got a wonderful voice.”

Miss Zelinka laughed again. “Look at me,” she said.

Enders looked at her.

“Do I remind you of anybody?” Miss Zelinka asked.

Enders nodded.

Miss Zelinka drank moodily. “I look like Greta Garbo,” she said. “Nobody could deny that. I’m not being vain when I tell you when I photograph you couldn’t tell me apart from the Swede.” She sipped her whisky, ran it lovingly around in her mouth, swallowed slowly. “A woman who looks like Greta Garbo in Hollywood is like the fifth leg on a race horse. Do you understand what I mean?”