Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“I try not to notice it,” Frances said, as though she were talking to herself. “I try to make believe it doesn’t mean anything. Some men’re like that, I tell myself, they have to see what they’re missing.”

“Some women’re like that, too,” Michael said. “In my time I’ve seen a couple of ladies.”

“I haven’t even looked at another man,” Frances said, walking straight ahead, “since the second time I went out with you.”

“There’s no law,” Michael said.

“I feel rotten inside, in my stomach, when we pass a woman and you look at her and I see that look in your eye and that’s the way you looked at me the first time, in Alice Maxwell’s house. Standing there in the living room, next to the radio, with a green hat on and all those people.”

“I remember the hat,” Michael said.

“The same look,” Frances said. “And it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel terrible.”

“Sssh, please, darling, sssh …”

“I think I would like a drink now,” Frances said.

They walked over to a bar on Eighth Street, not saying anything, Michael automatically helping her over curbstones, and guiding her past automobiles. He walked, buttoning his coat, looking thoughtfully at his neatly shined heavy brown shoes as they made the steps toward the bar. They sat near a window in the bar and the sun streamed in, and there was a small cheerful fire in the fireplace. A little Japanese waiter came over and put down some pretzels and smiled happily at them.

“What do you order after breakfast?” Michael asked.

“Brandy, I suppose,” Frances said.

“Courvoisier,” Michael told the waiter. “Two Courvoisier.”

The waiter came with the glasses and they sat drinking the brandy, in the sunlight. Michael finished half his and drank a little water.

“I look at women,” he said. “Correct. I don’t say it’s wrong or right, I look at them. If I pass them on the street and I don’t look at them, I’m fooling you, I’m fooling myself.”

“You look at them as though you want them,” Frances said, playing with her brandy glass. “Every one of them.”

“In a way,” Michael said, speaking softly and not to his wife, “in a way that’s true. I don’t do anything about it, but it’s true.”

“I know it. That’s why I feel bad.”

“Another brandy,” Michael called. “Waiter, two more brandies.”

“Why do you hurt me?” Frances asked. “What’re you doing?”

Michael sighed and closed his eyes and rubbed them gently with his fingertips. “I love the way women look. One of the things I like best about New York is the battalions of women. When I first came to New York from Ohio that was the first thing I noticed, the million wonderful women, all over the city. I walked around with my heart in my throat.”

“A kid,” Frances said. “That’s a kid’s feeling.”

“Guess again,” Michael said. “Guess again. I’m older now, I’m a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o’clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh Streets, they’re all out then, making believe they’re shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they’re not looking at you as you go past.”

The Japanese waiter put the two drinks down, smiling with great happiness.

“Everything is all right?” he asked.

“Everything is wonderful,” Michael said.

“If it’s just a couple of fur coats,” Frances said, “and forty-five-dollar hats …”

“It’s not the fur coats. Or the hats. That’s just the scenery for that particular kind of woman. Understand,” he said, “you don’t have to listen to this.”

“I want to listen.”

“I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time.” He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunch time, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Sardi’s, waiting for producers to look at them. I like the salesgirls in Macy’s, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and books and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”

“Go ahead,” Frances said.

“When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don’t know whether it’s something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I’m at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who’ve taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses …” He finished his drink. “That’s the story. You asked for it, remember. I can’t help but look at them. I can’t help but want them.”

“You want them,” Frances repeated without expression. “You said that.”

“Right,” Michael said, being cruel now and not caring, because she had made him expose himself. “You brought this subject up for discussion, we will discuss it fully.”

Frances finished her drink and swallowed two or three times extra. “You say you love me?”

“I love you, but I also want them. O.K.”

“I’m pretty, too,” Frances said. “As pretty as any of them.”

“You’re beautiful,” Michael said, meaning it.

“I’m good for you,” Frances said, pleading. “I’ve made a good wife, a good housekeeper, a good friend. I’d do any damn thing for you.”

“I know,” Michael said. He put his hand out and grasped hers.

“You’d like to be free to …” Frances said.

“Sssh.”

“Tell the truth.” She took her hand away from under his.

Michael flicked the edge of his glass with his finger. “O.K.,” he said gently. “Sometimes I feel I would like to be free.”

“Well,” Frances said defiantly, drumming on the table, “anytime you say …”

“Don’t be foolish.” Michael swung his chair around to her side of the table and patted her thigh.

She began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief, bent over just enough so that nobody else in the bar would notice. “Some day,” she said, crying, “you’re going to make a move …”

Michael didn’t say anything. He sat watching the bartender slowly peel a lemon.

“Aren’t you?” Frances asked harshly. “Come on, tell me. Talk. Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” Michael said. He moved his chair back again. “How the hell do I know?”

“You know,” Frances persisted. “Don’t you know?”

“Yes,” Michael said after a while, “I know.”

Frances stopped crying then. Two or three snuffles into the handkerchief and she put it away and her face didn’t tell anything to anybody. “At least do me one favor,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Stop talking about how pretty this woman is, or that one. Nice eyes, nice breasts, a pretty figure, good voice,” she mimicked his voice. “Keep it to yourself. I’m not interested.”

“Excuse me.” Michael waved to the waiter. “I’ll keep it to myself.”