Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“He isn’t a Jew, luv, he’s an Irishman.” She looked at the driver’s ticket, stuck in its frame at the back of the front seat. The man’s name was Meyer Schwartz. “Put the bottle away, luv. We’ll drink it later.”

Muttering in German, Jirg put the bottle back in the air travel bag. The driver swerved the taxi in front of a truck, missing it by seven inches.

By the time they reached the cutoff to Shea Stadium, Jirg’s hand was all the way under her skirt, sliding under her panties. She was surprised it had taken that long. Luckily, she was in the right hand corner of the back seat and the driver couldn’t see what was happening in his mirror.

Jirg panted convincingly in the region of her neck, while his hand worked expertly between her thighs, his middle finger amorously exploring. She lay back, tense but waiting. Suddenly, the middle finger stopped moving. Then it moved again, two or three sharp scientific probes. Jirg took his hand away abruptly and sat up.

“ Scheisse ,” he said, “ vas ist das? ”

“That’s fate, luv.” Beulah sat up, too.

“Fate? I do not know that word.”

“It means what will be will be.”

“Speak slowly.”

“It means I have the curse, luv.”

“Who cursed?” he said. “So, I said Scheisse .”

“It’s a word American girls use when they are temporarily out of commission. Not in working order. Not ready for visitors.”

“Four thousand miles I flew,” Jirg said piteously.

“Mother nature, luv,” Beulah said. “Take heart. It only lasts a few days. For most girls.” She was preparing him for the moment when she would tell him it sometimes went on with her for months, especially in the autumn.

“Vat vill I do for a few days?” Jirg whined.

“Sight-see,” Beulah said. “I think the boat that goes all around Manhattan Island is still running.”

“I did not come to New York to go boat riding,” Jirg said. He looked bleakly out the window at the passing architecture. “New York is a pigsty,” he said.

He sat in silence, disapproving of New York, until they had crossed the Triborough Bridge.

“We are in Fun City, lady,” the taxi driver said. “Where to?”

“That motel on Ninth Avenue,” Beulah said. “I forget the name.” She had never been inside it, but it looked clean, efficient and inexpensive from the outside. It had the added charm of being distant from her flat. She was sure there would be ice water for Jirg, probably running out of the taps, which would entertain him for a day or two.

“We are not to your apartment going?” Jirg asked.

“I was going to explain about that, luv,” Beulah said nervously. “You see, I have a roommate.”

“Does she ski?”

“That isn’t the point, luv. She … she is neurotically puritanical. Religious.”

“So?” Jirg said. “I am also religious. Nobody is more religious than Austria. I will talk religion with your roommate.”

“She believes it is immoral for unmarried girls to sleep with men.” Beulah was briefly thankful that Rebecca was not there to overhear this comment.

“I did not come to New York to be married,” Jirg said warily.

“Of course not, luv. But just to keep peace in the apartment, it would be better if you stayed in a hotel for the first few days. Until she gets used to you.”

“In Austria,” Jirg said, “I haff slept in the same room with two girls. In the same bed .”

“I’m sure you have, luv,” Beulah said soothingly. “But we have different customs here. You’ll catch on in no time.”

“I do not like New York,” Jirg said gloomily. “I do not like New York at all.”

At the motel, which was not as inexpensive as it looked, Beulah got Jirg a single room with a shower. He wanted her to go up with him, but she said she was poorly, because of her malady; he could see how pale she was, she wouldn’t even have stirred from her bed that day if he hadn’t been arriving from Zurich; and if she didn’t go home and lie down with a cold compress, she probably would faint right there in the lobby. She gave him $30 in American money, because all he had with him was Austrian shillings and Swiss francs, and told him to eat in the hotel so he wouldn’t get lost. If she was strong enough that evening, she said, she would call him.

She watched him follow the bellboy with his bags to the elevator. When the elevator doors slid shut behind him, she sprinted for the main entrance.

She walked blindly cross-town. By Eighth Avenue, she had decided she was going skiing in Sun Valley this winter. By Seventh Avenue, she had decided to take an offer for a modeling job in Brazil that meant leaving by Tuesday. By Sixth Avenue, she decided she wasn’t going home before midnight, because she wasn’t going to give Rebecca the satisfaction. By Fifth Avenue, she realized that that meant having dinner alone. By Madison Avenue, she remembered Christopher Bagshot. She went into a bar and sat alone over a white lady, trying to decide which was worse.

It was past six o’clock, 6:15, to be exact, and Sue Marsh hadn’t shown up at the bookstore for her tennis bag. Christopher was beginning to worry. He could not keep open, waiting for her. He was disappointed in her. He hadn’t thought of her as a flighty girl who made idle promises. And Miss Anderson hadn’t come into the store at five o’clock, either, as she had said she would. He knew he should be angry at the type of girl who treated a man with so little consideration, but what he really felt was desolation.

Then the door opened from the comparative darkness of Madison Avenue and a tall girl with straight blonde hair came into the store. She was wearing a miniskirt that showed a great length of leg, and a hip-length fun fur, more or less electric-blue in color. He had never seen her before and from the uncertain way she moved around the shop, it looked as though she had never been in a bookstore before. He moved briskly toward her. “Is there anything I can do for you, miss?” he said.

She had big gray eyes that seemed to be imploring him. She was beautiful, in a strange, haunted way, like some of those movie actresses in Swedish pictures who have affairs with their brothers or sisters. An incoherent, unreasonable hope stirred in his breast. “Do you have any cookbooks?” she said.

“We have a selection. This way, please.”

“Thank you very much,” she said, in a near whisper. Her voice trembled. He wondered if she was a young wife who had a fancy dinner to prepare that evening for her husband’s boss or somebody and who had met disaster in the kitchen an hour or so before the guests were to arrive. Saturday evening at 6:15 was a queer time to buy a cookbook. He didn’t catch sight of a wedding ring, though.

He hovered near. “Just what sort of cooking are you interested in? French, Italian, American …?”

“Oh, any kind.”

“There’s an amusing one that has come out fairly recently,” he said. Because it was getting so late, he resolved to be daring. “ The Myra Breckinridge Cook Book , by a friend of the author, Gore Vidal. It’s quite risqué.” He chuckled, to show that she could take his risqué or leave it alone. “Here, let me get it down for you.” He reached for the shelf. It wasn’t there. He had seen it when he closed the shop the night before and he knew he hadn’t sold it since. Somebody had stolen it during the day. “I’m afraid I’ve sold the last copy,” he said lamely. “If you’ll give me your name and address, I’ll order one and—”

“Oh, there’s no need to bother, thank you,” she said softly. Just from the tone of her voice, you knew she wasn’t the sort of girl who would say she’d come by at five o’clock and never show up, or the kind of girl who deposited a tennis bag and then irresponsibly left it with you while she consorted with New Left agitators who made love in public parks.