Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

The Willards’ visitor started everyone off on their own stories of burglars, prowlers, kidnappers.

“… so there was this fellow suddenly staring down the skylight, it was summer and the skylight was open, on West 23rd Street, and my friend ran up to the roof and chased him across the roofs and cornered him and the fellow whipped out a knife and it took five transfusions before he was out of danger. Of course, the police never found him.”

“… a loaded .45. Right next to my bed, at all times. These days, with all these crazy kids. Anybody who tries anything in my house is in for a hot welcome. And don’t think I wouldn’t shoot to kill.”

“… the chain on the door and everything from every single drawer and cupboard piled in a heap on the rug. And I can’t tell you what else they did, in mixed company, but you can imagine. The police told them it was quite common. especially when they were disappointed in their haul. But of course, they were asking for it, living surrounded by all those Puerto Ricans.”

“… this was a long time ago, of course, when he had this Great Dane kennel, but the day after the Lindbergh kidnapping he sold every single dog he had in the place. At three times what he’d been asking before.”

Glass in hand, Martin listened politely, realizing with some surprise that all these solid, comfortable people, in their cosy and orderly community, shared a general fear, a widespread uneasiness, and that the face outside the Willard window had made them all remember that there were obscure and unpredictable forces always ready to descend upon them in their warm homes and that, with all their locked doors and all their police and all their loaded .45’s, they were exposed and vulnerable to attack.

“You’ve sent a delicious shiver down every spine,” Linda said, coming over to Martin.

“Not so delicious,” he said thoughtfully, looking around him at the serious home-owning faces. Linda, he saw, had made up her mind to take the whole thing lightly, after the rattled nerves of the night before and the fuss about the police. He admired her for it, but it worried him, and he didn’t like the idea of leaving her out there in that pillared, echoing house surrounded by acres of wilderness, especially since Willard worked late in the city several times a week and didn’t get home until midnight. After all, uncaught and unsuspected, there was nothing to stop the man from coming back a week from now, a month, two months.… On another rainy night, with no moon.

“We’d better be going now,” Linda said. “We’re expected for dinner at eight-thirty.” She glanced slyly around the room. “Anybody you want to take? The Charles’s said if you wanted to bring anybody, it’s only a buffet supper, really.…”

“No, thanks,” Martin said, smiling. “They’re all very nice, but …” Then he stopped. A tall, blond woman in a blue dress had just come into the room and was making her excuses to the hostess for being late. Her hair was done in a low bun on the back of her neck, making her look stately and old-fashioned. Her voice, as she made her explanations to the hostess, was murmuring and melodious, and she was by far the prettiest woman in the place. “Well,” Martin said to Linda, grinning, “maybe that one. Give me ten minutes.”

Linda shook her head. “No go, Brother,” she said. “Her name is Anne Bowman, and she’s married. And there’s her husband at the door.”

Linda gestured with her glass toward the door and Martin saw a tall man in a well-tailored dark suit, with his back to him, talking to Willard and the host.

“In that case,” Martin said, taking a last look at the beautiful Mrs. Bowman, “we might as well leave now.”

“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Linda said, as they made their way to the door. “I think Willard arranged a tennis game at their house tomorrow morning.”

They pushed unobtrusively toward the door to pick up Willard, who was still talking to their host. Bowman had moved off several steps and was talking to a group nearby.

“We’re going?” Willard said, when Linda and Martin came up to him. “Good, it’s about time.” He reached over and tapped Bowman on the shoulder. “Harry,” he said, “I want you to meet my brother-in-law. He’s coming over with me tomorrow to play tennis.”

Bowman had his back to them, finishing a story, and it was a moment before he turned around, on a burst of laughter that the story had provoked from his listeners. He had a smile on his pale, well-kept face and he put out his hand to Martin. “This is a pleasure,” he said, “I’ve heard so much about you. Your sister tells me all. Is it true, as she says, that you once nearly took a set from Herb Flam?”

“We were both twelve years old at the time,” Martin said, keeping his face straight and trying to act naturally, like anybody else leaving a cocktail party and responding in the ordinary way to an ordinary and casual introduction. It wasn’t easy, because after ten seconds of looking at the candid, healthy, successful face in front of him, he was sure that Bowman was the man he had seen outside the window the night before.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Bowman was saying to Willard. “We’ll have a hot doubles.” He leaned over and kissed Linda goodbye, familiarly, on the cheek. “You can bring your boys,” he said to her. “They can play with our kids. They won’t be in the way.” He waved and turned back to the people he had been talking to, mannerly, well-dressed, at home, surrounded by friends, the sort of man, pushing a robust forty, you might see at the reunions of a good college or behind a vice-president’s desk of one of those polite businesses where everybody has a deep rug on the floor and where money is only mentioned in quiet tones and behind closed doors.

Martin walked silently out of the house behind Willard and his sister, not responding when Willard said, “He plays a damn good game, especially doubles. He doesn’t like to run too much any more.” And he was still silent in the car going over to the dinner party, trying to piece everything together and wanting solitude and reflection for it, remembering Bowman’s open and untouched smile as he shook hands, remembering the hard feel of Bowman’s dry, tennis-player’s hand, remembering the familiar, habitual way Bowman had kissed Linda good night.

“Linda,” Willard was saying, at the wheel of the car, as they bumped along the narrow country road toward the dinner party, “you must promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” Linda asked.

“You must promise to announce, each time we set out for a cocktail party, ‘Willard, you are too old for gin.’”

At the dinner party Martin had to repeat, for the benefit of the guests who had not been at the Slocum’s for cocktails, his description of the man he had seen outside the window. This time, he made it as vague as possible. It was not easy. Bowman’s face and figure (aged nearly forty, blue eyes, sandy hair cut close, wide, smiling mouth, white, even teeth, height nearly six feet, weight probably about one seventy-five, complexion fair, shoulders broad, general impression—good citizen, father of family, responsible businessman) kept crowding in, the statistics, recognizable, damaging, on the tip of his tongue, making it difficult to recall the hazy generalities by which he had described the man until then. But there was no sense, Martin decided, in damning the man so soon and it would only lead to trouble if even a random word of his cast suspicion on Bowman before he made absolutely certain that Bowman was the man he had seen.

On the way home with Linda and Willard, and over a nightcap before going up to bed, he decided not to say anything to them yet, either. Staring at his sister, he remembered how anxious she had been not to call the police, how she had fought Willard about it and won, how she had leaned over to be kissed by Bowman at the door as they were leaving the cocktail party. She and Willard slept in separate rooms, he remembered, both giving on the balcony, and Willard stayed in town late two or three times a week.… Martin was ashamed of himself for the speculation, but he couldn’t help it. Linda was his sister and he loved her, but how well did he know her, after all these years? He remembered his own sensuality and the regrettable things he had done, himself, because of it. She was his sister, however innocent and wifely and delightful she seemed, and the same blood ran in both of them. No, he thought, wait.