Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“The question is, Mr. Tarloff,” said the lieutenant, yawning, “are you willing to go through all that trouble?”

“The fact is,” Tarloff said unhappily, “he hit me in the head without provocation. He is guilty of a crime on my person. He insulted me. He did me an injustice. The law exists for such things. One individual is not to be hit by another individual in the streets of the city without legal punishment.” Tarloff was using his hands to try to get everyone, the Fitzsimmonses, the lieutenant, Pidgear, to understand. “There is a principle. The dignity of the human body. Justice. For a bad act a man suffers. It’s an important thing …”

“I’m excitable,” Rusk shouted. “If yuh want, yuh can hit me in the head.”

“That is not the idea,” Tarloff said.

“The man is sorry,” the lieutenant said, wiping his eyes, “he is offering you the sum of ten dollars; it will be a long, hard job to bring this man to trial; it will cost a lot of the taxpayers’ money; you are bothering these good people here who have other things to do. What is the sense in it, Mr. Tarloff?”

Tarloff scraped his feet slowly on the dirty floor, looked sadly, hopefully, at Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons looked at his wife, who was glaring at Tarloff, tapping her foot sharply again and again. Fitzsimmons looked back at Tarloff, standing there, before the high desk, small, in his ragged coat and wild gray hair, his little worn face twisted and grotesque with the swollen nose, his eyes lost and appealing. Fitzsimmons shrugged sadly. Tarloff drooped inside his old coat, shook his head wearily, shrugged, deserted once and for all before the lieutenant’s desk, on the dry rock of principle.

“O.K.,” he said.

“Here,” Rusk brought the ten-dollar bill out with magical speed.

Tarloff pushed it away. “Get out of here,” he said, without looking up.

No one talked all the way to Adele Lowrie’s house. Tarloff opened the door and sat, looking straight ahead, while they got out. Helen went to the door of the house and rang. Silently, Fitzsimmons offered Tarloff the fare. Tarloff shook his head. “You have been very good,” he said. “Forget it.”

Fitzsimmons put the money away slowly.

“Claude!” Helen called. “The door’s open.”

Fitzsimmons hated his wife, suddenly, without turning to look at her. He put out his hand and Tarloff shook it wearily

“I’m awfully sorry,” Fitzsimmons said. “I wish I …”

Tarloff shrugged. “That’s all right,” he said. “I understand.” His face, in the shabby light of the cab, worn and old and battered by the streets of the city, was a deep well of sorrow. “There is no time. Principle.” He laughed, shrugged. “Today there is no time for anything.”

He shifted gears and the taxi moved slowly off, its motor grinding noisily.

“Claude!” Helen called.

“Oh, shut up!” Fitzsimmons said as he turned and walked into Adele Lowrie’s house.

W eatherby was surprised to see the lights of the restaurant still lit when he turned off Sixth Avenue and started up the street toward the small apartment house in the middle of the block in which he lived. The restaurant was called the Santa Margharita and was more or less Italian, with French overtones. Its main business was at lunchtime and by ten-thirty at night it was usually closed. It was convenient and on nights when they were lazy or when Weatherby had work to do at home, he and his wife sometimes had dinner there. It wasn’t expensive, and Giovanni, the bartender, was a friend, and from time to time Weatherby stopped in for a drink on his way home from the office, because the liquor was good and the atmosphere quiet and there was no television.

He nearly passed it, then stopped and decided he could use a whiskey. His wife had told him she was going to a movie and wouldn’t be home before eleven-thirty, and he was tired and didn’t relish the thought of going into the empty apartment and drinking by himself.

There was only one customer in the restaurant, sitting at the small bar near the entrance. The waiters had already gone home and Giovanni was changing glasses for the man at the bar and pouring him a bourbon. Weatherby sat at the end of the bar, but there were still only two stools between him and the other customer. Giovanni came over to Weatherby and said, “Good evening, Mr. Weatherby,” and put out a glass and poured him a big whiskey, without measuring, and opened a soda bottle and allowed Weatherby to fill the glass himself.

Giovanni was a large, non-Italian-looking man, with an unsmiling, square, severe face and a gray, Prussian-cut head of hair. “How’s Mrs. Weatherby tonight?” he asked.

“Fine,” Weatherby said. “At least she was fine when I talked to her this afternoon. I’ve just come from the office.”

“You work too hard, Mr. Weatherby,” Giovanni said.

“That’s right.” Weatherby took a good long swallow of the whiskey. There is nothing like Scotch, he thought gratefully, and touched the glass with the palm of his hand and rubbed it pleasurably. “You’re open late tonight,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Giovanni said. “I’m in no hurry. Drink as much as you want.” Although he was talking to Weatherby, Weatherby somehow had the feeling that the words were addressed to the other man at the bar, who was sitting with his elbows on the mahogany, holding his glass in his two hands in front of his face and peering with a small smile into it, like a clairvoyant who sees something undefined and cloudy, but still agreeable, in the crystal ball. The man was slender and graying, with a polite, educated face. His clothes were narrow and modish, in dark gray, and he wore a gay striped bow tie and a button-down oxford white shirt. Weatherby noted a wedding ring on his left hand. He didn’t look like the sort of man who sat around alone in bars drinking late at night. The light in the bar was subdued and Weatherby had the impression that in a brighter light he would recognize the man and that he would turn out to be someone he had met briefly once or twice long ago. But New York was like that. After you lived in New York long enough, a great many of the faces seemed tantalizingly familiar to you.

“I suppose,” Giovanni said, standing in front of Weatherby, “after it happens, we’ll be losing you.”

“Oh,” Weatherby said, “we’ll be dropping in here to eat again and again.”

“You know what I mean,” Giovanni said. “You plan on moving to the country?”

“Eventually,” Weatherby said, “I imagine so. If we find a nice place, not too far out.”

“Kids need fresh air,” Giovanni said. “It isn’t fair to them, growing up in the city.”

“No,” Weatherby said. Dorothy, his wife, was seven-months pregnant. They had been married five years and this was their first child, and it gave him an absurd primitive pleasure to talk about the country air that his child would breathe as he grew up. “And then, of course, the schools.” What joy there was in platitudes about children, once you knew you could have them.

“Mr. Weatherby …” It was the other man at the bar. “May I say good evening to you, sir?”

Weatherby turned toward the man, a little reluctantly. He was in no mood for random conversation with strangers. Also, he had had a fleeting impression that Giovanni regretted the man’s advance toward him.

“You don’t remember me,” the man said, smiling nervously. “I met you eight or ten years ago. In my … ah … in my shop.” He made a slight sibilant sound that might have been the beginning of an embarrassed laugh. “In fact, I think you came there two or three times.… There was some question of our perhaps doing some work together, if I remember correctly. Then, when I heard Giovanni call you by name. I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m … ah … Sidney Gosden.” He let his voice drop as he spoke his name, as people who are celebrated sometimes do when they don’t wish to sound immodest. Weatherby glanced across the bar at Giovanni for help, but Giovanni was polishing a glass with a towel, his eyes lowered, consciously keeping aloof from the conversation.