Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Lipstick,” said the man in the dark suit. “Look.” He took the old man’s arm and pulled him over in front of the headlights. Both men leaned over low so that the old man could inspect the collar. M. Banary-Cointal stood up. “There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Lipstick.”

“Aha,” said the man in the dark suit, casting a look of angry triumph at the Spanish woman.

“It is not mine,” she said coldly. “Who knows where this gentleman has been spending his time and who knows how many times a week he changes his shirt?”

“I warn you,” said the man in the dark suit, his voice thick with rage, “I regard that as insulting.”

“What difference does it make whose lipstick it is?” the woman said. “You do not please me. All I want is to be allowed to go home alone.”

“Ah,” said Moumou, her attention finally caught, “if that were only possible—to go home alone.”

Everybody, including Moumou’s father, looked puzzledly for a moment at the somber figure against the wall, as though it had been a statue that had given cryptic utterance.

“My dear man,” said M. Banary-Cointal reasonably, addressing the man in the dark suit, “certainly this lady has made herself very clear.” He made a slight bow in the direction of the Spanish woman, who nodded politely in answer. “She doesn’t demand very much. Just to go to her own home in peace. Surely, this is not too much to ask.”

“She can go wherever she damn pleases,” said the man in the dark suit, “as soon as she gives me my three hundred francs.”

A look of censure creased the old man’s face. “Monsieur,” he said, with some asperity, “I am a little surprised that a man like you, the possessor of an automobile of this quality and price”—he touched the gleaming hood of the little Italian car—“could really need three hundred francs enough to make such a …”

“It is not a question of three hundred francs,” said the man in the dark suit, his voice beginning to be edged, too, at this imputation of miserliness. “It would not even be a question if the sum were fifty thousand francs. It is a question of principle. I have been led on, I have been inflamed, as I mentioned before, I have been induced to spend my money—the amount has nothing to do with the matter, I assure you, Monsieur—all corruptly and under false pretenses. I am a generous and reasonable man but I do not like to be cynically made a fool of by a putain! ”

“Here, now,” the old man said sternly.

“What’s more, look at her hand!” The man in the dark suit seized the woman’s hand and held it in front of M. Banary-Cointal’s eyes. “Do you see that? The wedding ring? By a putain , who, on top of everything else, is married!”

Tibbell, listening, fascinated, could not discover why the girl’s marital condition added so powerfully to the rage of the man in the dark suit, and concluded that perhaps it was something in the man’s past, some painful disappointment with some other married woman that had left him tender on the subject and which now served to pour fuel on the fire of his wrath.

“There is nothing more disgraceful than a Spanish whore with a wedding band,” the man in the dark suit shouted.

“Here, that’s enough of that,” M. Banary-Cointal said with authority, as the woman unexpectedly began to sob. The old man had had enough of women’s tears for the night, and this new flood made him testy. “I will not allow you to talk in such terms in front of ladies, one of whom happens to be my daughter,” he said to the man in the dark suit. “I suggest you leave immediately.”

“I will leave when I get my three hundred francs,” the man said stubbornly, crossing his arms.

“Here!” M. Banary-Cointal dug angrily in his pocket and pulled out some coins. “Here are your three hundred francs!” He threw them at the man in the dark suit. They bounced off his chest and onto the pavement. With great agility, the man in the dark suit bent and scooped up the coins and threw them back into M. Banary-Cointal’s face. “If you’re not careful, Monsieur,” the old man said with dignity, “you are going to get a punch in the nose.”

The man in the dark suit raised his fists and stood there, in the pose of a bare-knuckle English fighter of the early part of the eighteenth century. “I await your attack, Monsieur,” he said formally.

Both women now wept more loudly.

“I warn you, Monsieur,” M. Banary-Cointal said, taking a step backwards, “that I am sixty-three years of age, with a faulty heart, and besides, I wear glasses, as you can see. The police will be inclined to ask you some very searching questions in the event of an accident.”

“The police!” said the man in the dark suit. “Good. It is the first sensible suggestion of the evening. I invite you all to get into my car and accompany me to the commissariat.”

“I am not getting into that car again,” said the Spanish woman.

“I am not budging from here,” Moumou said, “until Raoul gets back.”

There was a ringing behind Tibbell, and he suddenly became conscious that it had been going on for some time, and that it was the telephone. He stumbled across the dark room and picked up the instrument, the voices outside his window becoming a blurred buzzing on the night air. He wondered who could be calling him at this time of the night.

“Hello,” he said, into the mouthpiece.

“Is this Littré 2576?” an impatient female voice crackled through the receiver.

“Yes,” Tibbell said.

“On your call to New York,” the operator said, “we are ready now.”

“Oh, yes,” Tibbell said. He had forgotten completely that he had put the call in for Betty. He tried to compose himself and put himself back into the tender and rosy mood that had swept over him an hour before, when he had decided to call her. “I’m waiting.”

“Just a minute, please.” There were some Atlantic, electric howls on the wire and Tibbell pulled the telephone away from his ear. He tried to hear what was being said outside, but all he could distinguish was the noise of a car starting up and surging down the street.

He stood next to the German’s bookcase, the telephone held loosely along his cheek, remembering that he had wanted to tell Betty how much he loved her and missed her, and perhaps, if the conversation turned irrevocably in that direction, as indeed it might in the three allotted minutes, to tell her that he wanted to marry her. He found himself breathing heavily, and the ideas churned confusedly in his head, and when he tried to think of a proper opening phrase, all he could think of was, “There is nothing more disgraceful than a Spanish whore with a wedding band.”

“Just a moment, please,” said an American voice. “We are ringing.”

There was some more electrical scratching and Tibbell switched the phone to his other ear and tried to make out what was being said downstairs and at the same time to push from his mind the remark about the wedding band.

“Miss Thompson is not home,” the American voice said, with great crispness and authority. “She has left word she will come back in an hour. Do you wish us to put the call in then?”

“I … I …” Tibbell hesitated. He remembered the old man’s admonition to the girl who had been kissing in the doorway—-”Profit by the events you have witnessed tonight.”

“Can you hear me, sir?” the crisp New World voice was saying. “Miss Thompson will be back within an hour. Do you wish to place the call then?”

“I … no,” Tibbell said. “Cancel the call, please. I’ll make it some other time.”

“Thank you.” America clicked off.

Tibbell put the phone down slowly. After a moment, he walked across to the window, and looked down. The street was empty and silent. Thermopylae had been cleared of corpses. Agincourt lay waiting for the plow. Unfinished, unfinishable, unresolved, unresolvable, the conflict, the inextricable opponents, had moved off into the darkness, and now there were only fleeting admonitory echoes, ghosts with warning fingers raised to vanishing lips.