Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“I don’t see what that has to do with being a hero,” Jason said.

“Well, some guys never get to be heroes. I’m not so sure it’s important.”

“It might be,” Jason said.

“You think so? I don’t know. I keep asking myself what does Nappanee, Indiana, really need? A hero or a television repairman?” He grinned. “I think they need a television repairman.”

“Maybe they need a hero, too,” Jason said, and it suddenly seemed to me he was taking this all very personally, though I couldn’t for the life of me see why.

“Maybe,” Herbie admitted. “Listen, I think it would be very nice to be a television repairman and a hero. All I’m saying is that I’m happy to be what I am.”

“Which is what, Herbie?”

Herbie looked up from the roll of wire, surprised, turning his face toward Jason. The glasses reflected the sky overhead, giving his eyes a curiously opaque look. “Why, me” he said. “That’s all. Me.” He cocked his head and continued to look at Jason in puzzlement. “Look, I’m going to be cockeyed for the rest of my life, there’s nothing going to change that. But I look at my kids’ faces, I look into their eyes, I say to myself, Thank God, you’ve got good clear eyes and can see for twenty miles.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

“I think I’m missing your point, Herbie,” Jason said.

“I’m not trying to make any point,” Herbie said amiably. “I’m only saying that part of living is sooner or later you come to grips. You look around you and decide what’s important, that’s all. It’s important to me that my kids have good eyes. That’s more important to me than all the German machine-gun nests in the world.” He walked to the edge of the roof and looked over. “Let’s go down and hook this thing up, okay?” he said.

Jason hesitated a moment, glanced at Norman, and then smiled. “Herbie,” he said slowly and evenly, “the tenants in the building are having a party on New Year’s Eve. It’ll be fun. Would you and Shirley like to come?”

Herbie turned from the edge of the roof. The sky was still reflected in his thick glasses, and the smile that covered his face was curiously eyeless.

“We’d love to,” he said softly. “Thank you very much.”

I suppose the party began to go wrong while it was still in its planning stages, though none of us seemed to recognize it at the time. We were all living on very tight budgets, and whereas we wanted to have our party, we didn’t want to have it at the expense of going hungry for the next month. It was decided almost immediately that everyone would bring his own bottle and that the party fund would provide setups. There was no disagreement on this point because it meant that each guest could bring and consume as much liquor as he desired without putting undue financial stress on the light drinkers in the building. Joan and I had hardly progressed beyond the two-drinks-an-evening stage of our social development, so we naturally were all for such an arrangement.

But all agreement seemed to end right there, and the party committee, of which I was a member, must have met at least four times between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in an attempt to find a solution acceptable to all. The biggest areas of disagreement concerned food and decorations. There were members of the committee, and they presumably spoke for others in the building, who maintained that neither food nor decorations were necessary elements of a good party and that it would be foolish to waste money on them. The strongest proponent of this line of thought was Norman, whose wife was pregnant and who was undoubtedly trying to save every penny he could. If we’d gone along with his reasoning, the party would have cost him only the price of his own bottle, plus whatever we decided to chip in for setups. But Jason argued, with my firm support, that it wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without food and balloons and confetti and noisemakers and hats. Norman countered by saying a good party was only a good collection of people, and Jason squelched him by suggesting we didn’t even need liquor if a good party was only a good collection of people.

“We’re paying for our own liquor!” Norman said heatedly.

“Yes, which is exactly why we should all chip in for decorations and food.”

“No,” Norman said. “In the first place...”

“Ah, come on, Norman,” I put in. “If everyone drinks all night without any food, we’ll get sick.”

“We’ll get drunk,” Norman said, “not sick.”

“We’ve got to have something in our stomachs,” Jason argued.

“Then eat before you come to the party!”

“The thing’ll go on for hours. We’re bound to get hungry again.”

“Then bring your own food.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’ll be cheaper if we all chip in for it.”

“Why should we?” Norman said. “All I want to do is drink and celebrate New Year’s Eve, so why should I chip in for food?”

“I think we ought to put it to a vote,” Jason said.

We voted, and it was decided that each couple coming to the party would chip in five dollars for food, setups, and decorations. Norman was in a rage. He was Jason’s closest friend, and this must have seemed like outright villainy to him. He had voted vehemently against the motion, and now he sulked in a corner for several moments and then said, “Well, I’m not chipping in for all that stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“Just what I said. If that’s the price of admission, count me out.”

“It’s not the price of admission. We just want to make sure—”

“Then can I pay for the setups alone?”

“Well...”

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t eat any of your food or touch your noisemakers or hats.”

“You want me to lend you five dollars?” Jason asked.

“I don’t need your five dollars, thanks. It’s not the money, it’s the principle.”

“What are you going to do?” Jason asked. “Just sit there with your wife while we all stuff ourselves?”

“We won’t be hungry. We won’t touch your food,” Norman said with dignity.

With equal dignity Jason replied, “You are entirely welcome to come to the party, and to use our noisemakers and hats, and to eat our food. You are entirely welcome, Norman, whether you choose to pay the five dollars or not.”

“If I don’t pay, I won’t eat,” Norman said.

“And you won’t make any noise, either, right?”

“I don’t need noisemakers to make noise. God invented voices before he invented noisemakers.”

“God invented tightwads, too, before he invented—”

“Now look, Jason,” Norman said angrily, “don’t go calling me a—”

“I apologize,” Jason said angrily. “Are you coming to the party or not?”

“I’m coming to the party!” Norman shouted.

New Year’s Eve that year was a cold and dismal night. The windowpanes in Timmy’s room were frosted with ice, and we hung blankets over them to keep the cold away from his crib. Both Joan and I dressed in the kitchen near the radiator on the south wall. I wore my blue suit, and she put on the black dress she had worn to her college junior prom. I had mixed a plastic container full of orange juice and then poured some gin into it, and we expected that to last us the entire evening. We were about to go out of the apartment when Joan stopped me. She put her hands on my shoulders and reached up and very tenderly kissed me on the mouth and then whispered, “Happy new year, darling.”

“It’ll be a good year,” I said, and Joan smiled and took my arm and we went out into the hallway. Herbie and Shirley were just coming out of their apartment next door. He was wearing a gray pin-stripe double-breasted suit that looked as if it had belonged to his father. Shirley was wearing black, and there was an orchid pinned to the waist of her dress. She smiled a bit shyly and said, “Herbert brings me an orchid every New Year’s.” Joan and I nodded in approval, and the four of us walked together to Jason’s apartment at the end of the hall. The door was open, and the record player that Peter, the dental student, had provided was going full blast. We had worked in the apartment all that afternoon, moving furniture into the other room, leaving behind only chairs, a stand for the record player, and a long table, trying to clear the small room so that people could dance if they wanted to. Jason’s three kids had been deposited in an apartment on the third floor — it would have been Norman’s apartment had they not argued so vehemently before the party — and so were in no danger of being awakened by the revelries. We had strung crepe paper across the room and draped it with confetti streamers and balloons. Joan hadn’t seen the results of our labor until we walked into the apartment, and she smiled now and squeezed my arm and said, “It looks marvelous.”