Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Answer my question,” McMahon said. “How many times?”

“Three,” Mr. Grimmet said, “all right, three.”

“We are three times as big now as we were six years ago,” McMahon said in a professor’s tone, explaining proposition one, going on to proposition two. “Why do you think that is?”

“Accident!” Mr. Grimmet looked ironically up to the ceiling. “Fate! Roosevelt! The hand of God! How do I know?”

“I will tell you,” McMahon said, continuing in the professorial vein. “People who come into this bar get the best Manhattans, the best Martinis, the best Daiquiris that are made on the face of the earth. They are made out of the finest ingredients, with great care, Mr. Grimmet.”

“One cocktail tastes like another,” Mr. Grimmet said. “People make a big fuss and they don’t know anything.”

“Mr. Grimmet,” McMahon said with open contempt, “it is easy to see that you are not a drinking man.”

Mr. Grimmet’s face reflected his desperate search for a new line of defense. His eyebrows went up with pleasure as he found it. He sat down and spoke softly across the bar to McMahon. “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that people come into this place because of the food that is served here?”

“I will give you my final opinion of Greta Garbo,” the first waiter’s voice sounded out defiantly. “There is nobody like her.”

For a moment McMahon looked straight into Mr. Grimmet’s eyes. A slight, bitter smile played at one corner of his mouth. He breathed deeply, like a man who has just decided to bet on a horse that has not won in fourteen races. “Shall I tell you what I think of the food that is served in your restaurant, Mr. Grim-met?” McMahon asked flatly.

“The best chefs,” Mr. Grimmet said quickly, “the best chefs in the City of New York.”

McMahon nodded slowly. “The best chefs,” he said, “and the worst food.”

“Consider,” Mr. Grimmet called. “Consider what you’re saying.”

“Anything a cook can disguise,” McMahon said, talking now to Thesing, disregarding Mr. Grimmet, “is wonderful here. Anything with a sauce. Once I ate a sirloin steak in this restaurant …”

“Careful, McMahon,” Mr. Grimmet jumped off his stool and ran around to face McMahon.

“What can be done to disguise a sirloin steak?” McMahon asked reasonably. “Nothing. You broil it. Simply that. If it was good when it was cut off the steer, it’s good on your plate. If it was bad …”

“I pay good prices!” Mr. Grimmet yelled. “I’ll have no allusions …”

“I would not bring a dog into this restaurant to eat sirloin steak,” McMahon said. “Not a young dog with the teeth of a lion.”

“You’re fired!” Mr. Grimmet pounded on the bar. “This restaurant will now do without your services.”

McMahon bowed. “That is satisfactory to me,” he said. “Perfectly satisfactory.”

“Well, now, everybody. Boys!” Thesing said pacifically. “Over a little thing like private stock rye …”

McMahon began taking off his apron. “This bar has a reputation. It is my reputation. I am proud of it. I am not interested in remaining at a place in which my reputation will be damaged.”

McMahon threw his apron, neatly folded, over a towel rack and picked up the little wooden wedge on which was printed, in gold letters, “William McMahon, In Charge .” Mr. Grimmet watched him with trouble in his eyes as McMahon lifted the hinged piece of the bar that permitted the bartenders to get out into the restaurant proper.

“What is the sense,” Mr. Grimmet asked as the hinges creaked, “of taking a rash step, Billy?” Once more Mr. Grimmet hated himself for his dulcet tone of voice, but William McMahon was one of the five finest bartenders in the City of New York.

McMahon stood there, pushing the hinged piece of the bar a little, back and forth. “Once and for all,” he said. He let the hinged piece fall behind him.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Billy,” Mr. Grimmet went on swiftly, hating himself more and more, “I’ll make a compromise. I will give you five dollars more per week.” He sighed to himself and then looked brightly at McMahon.

McMahon knocked his shingle thoughtfully against the bar. “I will try to make you understand something, Mr. Grimmet,” he said, gently. “I am not as fundamentally interested in money as I am fundamentally interested in other things.”

“You are not so different from the test of the world,” Mr. Grimmet said with dignity.

“I have been working for twenty-five years,” McMahon said, knocking the shingle that said, “William McMahon, In Charge ,” “and I have constantly been able to make a living. I do not work only to make a living. I am more interested in making something else. For the last six years I have worked here night and day. A lot of nice people come in here and drink like ladies and gentlemen. They all like this place. They all like me.”

“Nobody is saying anything about anybody not liking you,” Mr. Grimmet said impatiently. “I am discussing a matter of business principle.”

“I like this place.” McMahon looked down at the shingle in his hand. “I think this is a very nice bar. I planned it. Right?” He looked up at Mr. Grimmet.

“You planned it. I will sign an affidavit to the effect that you planned it,” Mr. Grimmet said ironically. “What has that got to do with Thesing’s private stock?”

“If something is right here,” McMahon went on, without raising his voice, “people can say it’s William McMahon’s doing. If something is wrong here they can say it’s William McMahon’s fault. I like that, Mr. Grimmet. When I die people can say, ‘William McMahon left a monument, the bar at Grimmet’s Restaurant. He never served a bad drink in his whole life.’” McMahon took his coat out of the closet next to the bar and put it on. “A monument. I will not have a monument made out of Thesing’s private stock. Mr. Grimmet, I think you are a dumb bastard.”

McMahon bowed a little to the two men and started out. Mr. Grimmet gulped, then called, his words hard and dry in the empty restaurant. “McMahon!” The bartender turned around. “All right,” Mr. Grimmet said. “Come back.”

McMahon gestured toward Thesing.

“Any liquor you say,” Mr. Grimmet said in a choked voice. “Any goddamn whisky you want!”

McMahon smiled and went back to the closet and took his coat off and took the shingle out of his pocket. He went back of the bar and slipped on his apron, as Thesing and Grimmet watched.

“One thing,” Mr. Grimmet said, his eyes twitching from the strain, “one thing I want you to know.”

“Yes, sir,” said McMahon.

“I don’t want you to talk to me,” Mr. Grimmet said, “and I don’t want to talk to you. Ever.”

Thesing quietly picked up his hat and stole out the door.

“Yes, sir,” said McMahon.

Mr. Grimmet walked swiftly into the kitchen.

“I will tell you something about debutantes,” the first waiter was saying in the rear of the restaurant, “they are overrated.”

McMahon tied the bow in his apron strings and, neatly, in the center of the whisky shelves above the bar, placed the shingle, “William McMahon, In Charge .”

T he crowd came out of Madison Square Garden with the sorrowful, meditative air that hangs over it when the fights have been bad. Flanagan pushed Gurske and Flora quickly through the frustrated fans and into a cab. Gurske sat on the folding seat, Flanagan with Flora in the back.