Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“I’m giving myself a birthday gift, luv,” Beulah had said. Her birthday was in November. “One beautiful brown, energetic young Austrian who doesn’t know what’s hit him. It’s my money, luv, and I couldn’t spend it better.”

Jirg had written that he liked the idea and as soon as he was finished with his summer job, he would be happy to accept his old pupil’s invitation. He had underlined pupil roguishly. He had some clean outdoor job on a farm in the summer. He had sent another picture, to keep his memory green. It was of himself, winning a ski teachers’ race at the end of the season. He was wearing goggles and a helmet and was going so fast that the picture was a little blurred, but Beulah was certain she would have recognized him anyway. She had pasted the picture in a big scrapbook that contained photographs of all the men she had had affairs with.

There was one thing really worrying Beulah as she sat in her robe in the living room, watching Rebecca buff her nails. She hadn’t yet decided where to put Jirg. Ideally, the best place would be the apartment. She and Rebecca had separate rooms and the bed in her room was a double one and it wasn’t as though she and Rebecca were shy about bringing men home with them. And stashing Jirg away in a hotel would cost money and he wouldn’t always be on hand when she wanted him. But Rebecca had had an unsettling effect on some of her boyfriends, with her red hair and white skin and that brazen (that was the only word for it, Beulah thought), that brazen Brooklyn camaraderie with men. And let’s face it, Beulah thought, she’s a wonderful girl and I’d trust her with my life, but when it comes to men, there isn’t a loyal bone in her body. And a poor gullible ski teacher who’d never been off the mountain in his life and used to avid girls coming and going in rapacious batches all winter long.… And sometimes Beulah had to work nights or go out of town for several days at a time on a job.…

She had been puzzling over the problem ever since she got the letter from Jirg and she still hadn’t made up her mind. Play it by ear, she decided. See what the odds are on the morning line.

“There you are,” Rebecca said, pushing her hand away. “The anointed bride.”

“Thanks, luv,” Beulah said, admiring her nails. “I’ll buy you lunch at P.J.’s” There were always a lot of extra men who ate lunch at P.J.’s on Saturday, with nothing to do for the weekend and an eye out for companionship or whatever, and maybe she could make a connection for Rebecca and get her out of the apartment at least for the afternoon and evening. With luck, for the whole night.

“Naah,” Rebecca said, standing and yawning. “I don’t feel like going out. I’m going to stay home and watch the game of the week on the tube.”

Shit , Beulah said to herself.

Then the phone rang.

“Miss Stickney’s residence,” Beulah said into the phone. She always answered that way, as though she were a maid or the answering service, so that if it was some pest, she could say, “Miss Stickney’s not at home. Can I take a message?”

“May I speak to Miss Stickney, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Mr. Bagshot.”

“Who?”

“From the Browsing—”

“Hi, luv,” Beulah said. “My book on Sicily come in yet, you know the one?”

“It’s on order,” Christopher said. He was disappointed with this commercial prelude, even though she called him luv. “What I’m phoning for, beautiful,” he said daringly, suddenly deciding to be racy and familiar, put himself right up there on her level, so to speak, “what I’m phoning for is what do you say you and me hit the town tonight?”

“Hit what?” Beulah asked, puzzled.

“Well, I thought I just happen to be free and maybe you’re hanging loose yourself and we could go to some joint for dinner and then split off downtown to the Electric—”

“Oh, shit, luv,” Beulah said, “I’m prostrate with grief. This is Drearsville Day for me. I’ve got an aunt coming into Kennedy from Denver this P.M. and God knows when I can get rid of her.” It was standard policy on her part never to admit that she even knew another man when asked for a date.

“Oh, that’s all right.…”

“Wait a minute, luv,” she said. “There’s a buzz at the door. Hold fast, like a dear.” She put her hand over the phone. “Hey, Becky,” she said to Rebecca, who was screwing the top on the nail-polish bottle, “how’d you like to hit the town with a divine—”

“Hit what? ”

“That beautiful boy from the bookstore is on the phone. He’s invited me to dinner. But—”

“That dwarf? ” Rebecca said.

“He’s not so small, actually,” Beulah said. “He’s very well proportioned.”

“I don’t go in for comedy acts,” Rebecca said. “He’d have to use his ladder even to get into scoring territory.”

“There’s no need to be vulgar about my friends,” Beulah said frigidly, realizing finally that the whole Sixth Fleet wouldn’t be able to get her roommate out of the house today. “And I do think it shows a surprisingly ugly side to your character. Prejudice is the word, luv. It’s a kind of anti-Semitism, if you want to know what I think.”

“Tell him to pick on somebody his own size,” Rebecca said, taking the nail polish into the bathroom.

Beulah lifted her hand from the phone. “It was the super with the mail, luv,” she said. “Bills and more bills.”

“Yeah,” said Christopher dispiritedly, “I know how it is.” He remembered that Beulah Stickney owed him $47 since July, but of course this was not the time to bring it up. “Well, have a nice time.…” He prepared to hang up.

“Hold on, Chris.…” That was his name, Christopher. “Maybe something can be salvaged from Be Kind to Aunts Day, after all. Maybe I can get her drunk at the airport or she’ll turn out to be suffering from some dreadful female disease and will have to plunge into bed.…” The plane was due at 3:15, but you never could tell, it might be held up for engine trouble or darling Jirg, who had never been out of the hills before, might be confused by the wild traffic of the city of Zurich and miss the connection or go to the wrong gate and wind up in Tehran. Or even, the way things were going with airlines these days, the plane could be hijacked or bombed by Arabs or just fall down into a lake in Labrador. One thing she couldn’t bear and that was having dinner alone. “I’ll tell you what, you just sit there among all those lovely books like a good boy and I’ll get on the horn this afternoon and tell you if Auntie looks like conking out or not. What time do you stay open to?”

“Seven o’clock,” Christopher said.

“You poor overworked boy,” Beulah said. “Stay near the phone, luv.”

“Yeah,” Christopher said.

“It was dear of you to call,” Beulah said and hung up. She always concluded on the telephone with “It was dear of you to call” and without saying goodbye. It was original and it spread good will.

She looked at the clock and then went into the bathroom to experiment with her hair.

***

Christopher put the phone down slowly, the palms of his hands damp. The store felt very warm and he went to the front door and opened it. He stared out at Madison Avenue. People were passing by in the sunlight. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it looked to him as though the tall people on the avenue were strolling and the short ones were, well burrowing . He closed the door and went back into the shop, reflecting on his conversation with Stickney, Beulah **. If luck had been with him, if he’d had a premonition or extrasensory perception or something, he’d have asked to speak to Rebecca Fleischer, instead of Beulah Stickney. The chances were that no aunt of Rebecca Fleischer’s was coming in from Denver that afternoon. Now, after having tried to make it with Beulah, he could not call back and ask Rebecca. There were limits. The girl would be mortally offended, being tapped to go into the game as a substitute, as it were, and he wouldn’t blame her.