Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“What do you want me to say?” Harriet looked honestly puzzled, but Paul had never known when she was lying to him or telling the truth, anyway, and he hadn’t improved in the two years, he discovered.

“I don’t want you to say anything. I’ll take you in and buy you a drink.”

“No, thanks. I’ve really got to get to Wanamaker’s and back home in a hurry. Give me a raincheck.”

“Yeah,” Paul said sourly.

They turned up Ninth Street toward Fifth Avenue.

“I knew I’d meet you some place, finally,” Paul said. “I was curious to see what would happen.”

Harriet didn’t say anything. She was looking absently at the buildings across the street.

“Don’t you ever talk any more?” Paul asked.

“What did happen?”

“Every once in a while,” he started, “I meet some girl I used to know …”

“I bet the country’s full of them,” Harriet said.

“The country’s full of everybody’s ex-girls.”

Harriet nodded. “I never thought of it that way, but you’re right.”

“Most of the time I think, isn’t she a nice, decent person? Isn’t it wonderful I’m no longer attached to her? The first girl I ever had,” Paul said, “is a policewoman now. She subdued a gangster single-handed in Coney Island last summer. Her mother won’t let her go out of the house in her uniform. She’s ashamed for the neighbors.”

“Naturally,” Harriet said.

“Another girl I used to know changed her name and dances in the Russian Ballet. I went to see her dance the other night. She has legs like a Fordham tackle. I used to think she was beautiful. I used to think you were beautiful, too.”

“We were a handsome couple,” Harriet said. “Except you always needed a shave. That electric razor …”

“I’ve given it up.”

They were passing his old house now and he looked at the doorway and remembered all the times he and Harriet had gone in and come out, the rainy days and the early snowy mornings with the milkman’s horse silent on the white street behind them. They stopped and looked at the old red house with the shabby shutters and the window on the fourth floor they had both looked out of time and time again to see what the weather was and Paul remembered the first time, on a winter’s night, when he and Harriet had gone through that door together.

“I was so damn polite,” Paul said softly.

Harriet smiled, knowing what he was talking about. “You kept dropping the key and saying, ‘Lord, Lord,’ under your breath while you were looking for it.”

“I was nervous. I wanted to make sure you knew exactly how matters stood—no illusions. Good friends, everybody understanding everybody else, another girl coming in from Detroit in six weeks, no claims on me, no claims on you …” Paul looked at the window on the fourth floor and smiled. “What a fool!”

“It’s a nice, quiet street,” Harriet said, looking up at the window on the fourth floor, too. She shook her head, took Paul’s arm again. “I’ve got to get to Wanamaker’s.”

They started off.

“What’re you buying at Wanamaker’s?” Paul asked.

Harriet hesitated for a moment. “Nothing much. I’m looking at some baby clothes. I’m going to have a baby.” They crowded over to one side to let a little woman with four dachshunds pass them in a busy tangle. “Isn’t it funny—me with a baby?” Harriet smiled. “I lie around all day and try to imagine what it’s going to be like. In between, I sleep and drink beer to nourish us. I’ve never had such a good time in all my life.”

“Well,” said Paul, “at least it’ll keep your husband out of the army.”

“Maybe. He’s a raging patriot.”

“Good. When he’s at Fort Dix I’ll meet you in Washington Square Park when you take the baby out for an airing in its perambulator. I’ll put on a policeman’s uniform to make it proper. I’m not such a raging patriot.”

“They’ll get you anyway, won’t they?”

“Sure. I’ll send you my picture in a lieutenant’s suit. From Bulgaria. I have a premonition I’m going to be called on to defend a strategic point in Bulgaria.”

“How do you feel about it?” For the first time Harriet looked squarely and searchingly at him.

Paul shrugged. “It’s going to happen. It’s all damned silly, but it isn’t as silly now as it was ten years ago.”

Suddenly Harriet laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Paul demanded.

“My asking you how you felt about something. I never used to have a chance … You’d let me know how you felt about everything. Roosevelt, James Joyce, Jesus Christ, Gypsy Rose Lee, Matisse, Yogi, liquor, sex, architecture …”

“I was full of opinions in those days.” Paul smiled a little regretfully. “Lust and conversation. The firm foundations of civilized relations between the sexes.”

He turned and looked back at the window on the fourth floor. “That was a nice apartment,” he said softly. “Lust and conversation …”

“Come on, Paul,” Harriet said. “Wanamaker’s isn’t going to stay open all night.”

Paul turned up his collar because the wind was getting stronger as they neared Fifth Avenue. “You were the only girl I ever knew I could sleep in the same bed with.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say to a girl.” Harriet laughed. “Is that your notion of a compliment?”

Paul shrugged. “It’s an irrelevant fact. Or a relevant fact. Is it polite to talk to a married lady this way?”

“No.”

Paul walked along with her. “What do you think of when you look at me?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” Harriet said carefully.

“What’re you lying about?”

“Nothing much,” Harriet said flatly.

“Don’t you even think, ‘What in the name of God did I ever see in him?’”

“No.” Harriet put her hands deep in her pockets and walked quickly along the railings.

“Should I tell you what I think of when I look at you?”

“No.”

“I’ve been looking for you for two years,” Paul said.

“My name’s been in the telephone book.” Harriet hurried even more, wrapping her coat tightly around her.

“I didn’t realize I was looking for you until I saw you.”

“Please, Paul …”

“I would walk along the street and I’d pass a bar we’d been in together and I’d go in and sit there, even though I didn’t want a drink, not knowing why I was sitting there. Now I know. I was waiting for you to come in. I didn’t pass your house by accident.”

“Look, Paul,” Harriet pleaded. “It was a long time ago and it was fine and it ended.…”

“I was wrong,” Paul said. “Do you like hearing that? I was wrong. You know, I never did get married, after all.”

“I know,” Harriet said. “Please shut up.”

“I walk along Fifth Avenue and every time I pass St. Patrick’s I half look up to see if you’re passing, because I met you that day right after you’d had a tooth pulled, and it was cold; you were walking along with the tears streaming from your eyes and your eyes red and that was the only time I ever met you by accident any place.…”

Harriet smiled. “That certainly sounds like a beautiful memory.”

“Two years …” Paul said. “I’ve gone out with a lot of girls in the last two years.” He shrugged. “They’ve bored me and I’ve bored them. I keep looking at every woman who passes to see if it’s you. All the girls I go out with bawl the hell out of me for it. I’ve been walking around, following girls with dark hair to see if it’ll turn out to be you, and girls with a fur jacket like that old one you had and girls that walk in that silly, beautiful way you walk.… I’ve been searching the streets of the city for you for two years and this is the first time I’ve admitted it even to myself. That little Spanish joint we went the first time. Every time I pass it I remember everything—how many drinks we had and what the band played and what we said and the fat Cuban who kept winking at you from the bar and the very delicate way we landed up in my apartment.…”