Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  CANNOT REACH YOU ON PHONE. URGENT YOU BE IN MY OFFICE NINE O’CLOCK THIS MORNING. URGENT. O’NEILL.

  Archer let the telegram drop to the floor. He sat with his legs stretched out for five minutes or so, too tired to move. Then he heaved himself up slowly and went upstairs, avoiding looking at himself in the hall mirror. His legs felt old and uncertain on the steps and he had a thick taste in his mouth. Upstairs, he looked along the hall to Jane’s room. The door was closed now. He thought of going in to the guest room and talking to Kitty, and hesitated, his hand on the curve of the banister. Just say good morning, he thought, say I’m sorry, say it is too late for us now to be enemies, say, I am going to have breakfast, will you join me for a cup of coffee? Then he shook his head. It will have to wait, he thought. It’s too bad, but it will have to wait.

  He went to the bathroom and shaved carelessly, cutting himself, because his skin was tight and flaky. He remembered the flecks of blood on Burke’s collar the night before and Burke’s loud, accusing voice. He took a shower, his face stinging where the soap got into the cuts under his chin. His stomach felt tight and knotted, even in the shower. When this is over, he thought, I ought to go to a doctor.

  He dressed quickly, putting on the same clothes he had worn the night before because he didn’t feel like making any decisions about what shirt, what tie, what suit to wear. While he was knotting his tie before the mirror, Kitty came in. She was fully dressed. He took one look at her, then glanced away. He couldn’t bear the way she looked.

  “I have to go up to O’Neill’s office,” Archer said, conscious of his wife standing behind him. “I just got a telegram. I don’t think it’ll take very long. I’ll be back soon. Then we can settle whatever has to be settled.” He didn’t like the way that sounded. Dry, cold, antagonistic, without pity or love or hope. But he was too tired to choose the proper words.

  “We don’t have to settle anything,” Kitty said. She sounded exhausted. “Everything’s settled.”

  Archer didn’t reply. He put. on his jacket, flattening down the collar.

  “That suit’s all creased,” Kitty said. “You look awful.”

  Archer looked in his wallet. There was enough there for a taxi.

  “I’ll make you breakfast,” Kitty said.

  “I haven’t got time.”

  “You can’t go out without breakfast,” Kitty said stubbornly.

  “I said I haven’t got time.” He turned and faced her. There were big dark rings under her eyes, making them look enormous and desperate, and the bones of her face seemed to be pushing out of her skin.

  She stared at him for a moment, then walked clumsily over to the bed and sat down, her head bent, her hands hanging limply down. Archer took a step and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled stale and dry. She made no move and he left her sitting like that.

  He bought a newspaper at the corner and went into a drugstore for coffee. The coffee was hot and he could only drink it in tiny sips as he glanced through the paper. There was no story about the meeting the night before. Or he couldn’t find it. He was too impatient to go methodically through the thick paper. The casual readers of the Times were treated that morning to news of an airplane disaster in which thirty-eight people had died and to an exchange of discourtesies in the UN between the Americans and the Russians on the subject of China.

  He finished his coffee and went outside and hailed a taxi. The taxi skidded to a halt at the curb, but as he took a step toward it, a plump woman with an umbrella dashed past him and reached the door and flung it open. “Be a gentleman!” the woman said, snapping her umbrella shut and waving it in his face. Her voice was triumphant and menacing and she nimbly threw herself into the cab and slammed the door. Archer watched the cab pull away, throwing water from its tires, and he was very wet by the time he found another cab.

  The pretty girls in the outer office smiled deliciously at him when he came in and offered him melodious soprano good mornings, as though nothing had happened to them or to him, as though youth and sex, commerce and high income were permanent and irrevocable. But O’Neill’s face reflected a different climate. He was alone in his office, standing at the window, staring out, sagging in his clothes. When he turned to greet Archer he didn’t smile and his eyes were weary and clouded. He shook hands silently. For a moment they stood in the middle of the office, looking at each other uncomfortably.

  “I’m sorry, Clem,” O’Neill said. “Terribly sorry.”

  “Forget it.” Archer shrugged. “Hazards of the trade.” He took off his wet overcoat and threw it over a chair. The rain had soaked through at the shoulders and his jacket was damp and warm.

  “They’re waiting for us,” O’Neill said. “Hutt and Sandler. In Hutt’s office. Do you want to ask me any questions?”

  “No.”

  O’Neill hesitated, as though he wanted to say something. Then he shook his head slightly and went over to the door and opened it. “Let’s go, then,” he said.

  They walked through the mingled smells of perfume and typists’ toilet water in the large outer office to Miss Walsh’s desk at the far end. Miss Walsh looked up at them with sallow hostility. “Go right in,” she said. “He’s waiting.”

  There was a pile of rumpled newspapers on the floor at Sandler’s feet, where he sat in a leather chair, facing the door impatiently. Hutt was sitting at his desk, working on a script with a blue pencil. Neither of the men rose when O’Neill and Archer came in.

  “Good morning,” Hutt said, in his near-whisper. “Will you close the door, please, Emmet?”

  O’Neill closed the door. Hutt let them stand there one moment too long, then said, “Find yourselves chairs.” He put down his blue pencil and pushed the script he had been working on to one side.

  Archer sat down on a straight wooden chair, facing Sandler. O’Neill remained standing along the wall, bulky and pale.

  “Did you see these, Archer?” Sandler asked, kicking at the newspapers on the floor.

  “I only read the Times,” Archer said.

  “Well, you should’ve invested a few more nickels,” said Sandler harshly. “Your name’s all over every other paper in town.”

  “You didn’t get a very good press this morning,” Hutt said.

  “No?” Archer asked mildly.

  “No.”

  “No,” Sandler said. “And neither did I. And neither did the Company.”

  “I’m sorry,” Archer said.

  “You’re sorry.” Sandler snorted and leaned forward angrily. His face was set, his opaque blue eyes that Archer saw now were so much like Hutt’s, cold and angry. He was making an obvious effort to control his temper. “This is a hell of a time to be sorry.”

  “What do you want me to say to that?”

  “Don’t be impudent,” Sandler snapped. “I didn’t get up at five o’clock in the morning and travel ninety miles to listen to impudence.” His lips were pale and thin and the white, preserved, sharp teeth seemed to bite at every word. “What the hell did you think you were doing, Archer?”

  For a fraction of a second Archer thought of trying to explain. Then he looked at the shut, furious face of the old man and Hutt’s pale, frigid eyes, and he knew there was no use. “I don’t think,” he said wearily, not wanting to fight either, “that there’s much sense in going over all that again.”

  “Let me tell you some of the things that have been happening in the last few days,” Sandler said. “In case you’re not up on current events. My God-damn phone’s been ringing twenty-four hours a day. In my office. At my home. And lunatics have been unloading the most vicious kind of filth on me, on my wife, on my secretary, my maid, on anybody who picks up a phone. Four goons followed my son into a parking lot last night and beat him up so bad he had to have six stitches over his eye. My butler quit. Every mail I … What the hell are you smiling at?”

  Archer hadn’t realized he was smiling. “I guess,” he said mildly, “because it strikes me as a little funny that a butler give
s his notice these days because his employer is charged with being sympathetic to Communism.”

  “Well, stop smiling,” Sandler said loudly. “It isn’t so God-damn funny. My wife is almost hysterical and I’m going to have to pack her off to Arizona until this blows over. If it ever blows over. And what’s more, cancellations have started to come in for orders from all over the country. Firms we’ve been doing business with for twenty years. And God knows where it will end. And you did it, Mr. Archer, you did it.”

  “I can’t really accept that,” Archer said, not because he felt there was any possibility of convincing the old man, but to break up his crescendo of rage. “I didn’t call your home or your office. I didn’t threaten your wife. I didn’t cut your son’s eye. I haven’t canceled any orders. People’re tired and worried and afraid these days, and violent and bigoted. That’s not my fault.”

  “I say you did it, Archer,” Sandler said stubbornly, “no matter how many speeches you make on the world situation. And I don’t want any more speeches from you, either. I listened to one too many and I ought to have my tail booted for it and I’ve had enough. You did something to me that nobody’s ever done in forty years and got away with. You lied to me and you pretended to be loyal and you hid information from me and you played on my sympathies in the most cynical and insidious manner and you’re not going to get away with it.”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” Archer said, feeling himself grow angry and trying to keep the anger down. “And I didn’t hide any information.”

  Sandler laughed sourly. It was an ugly, menacing sound. “Did you or did you not guarantee to me that a man who had been your friend for fifteen years was not a Communist?”

  “I did. But …”

  Sandler leaned over and picked up a newspaper from the floor. He threw it at Archer. It fluttered loosely, pages falling out and floating to the carpet. “Read that,” Sandler said. Archer didn’t pick up the paper. “Go ahead,” Sandler said hoarsely. “Go ahead and read it. Read about your friend.”

  “I don’t have to read it,” Archer said. “I know what’s in it.”

  “Oh,” Sandler shouted, “now you say you know what’s in it. But you didn’t know when you came down to Philadelphia? You didn’t know anything about a man you’d practically lived with for fifteen years?”

  “I didn’t know he was a Communist.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that?” He waited for Archer to answer him, but Archer didn’t say anything. “And now,” Sandler went on, his voice calmer now, but cold and incisive, “and now what do you know about him?”

  “I know what I heard last night,” Archer said.

  “Uhuh,” Sandler nodded, as though he had suddenly decided to be reasonable. “And I suppose you only know what you heard last night about that Barbante, that writer. Your daughter’s friend. I suppose you had no notion that the man who was writing your scripts for four years was an out-and-out atheist.”

  Archer sighed. “What’s that got to do with it?” he asked. “We certainly never attacked religion on our program.”

  “Never attacked religion on our program.” Sandler mimicked him, in falsetto. “That was nice of you. That was very considerate. Listen, Archer. I live in a devout community. I believe in God. I believe in people going to church and fighting to preserve their religion. I’m the president of my synagogue. I’m the chairman of a half-dozen inter-religious charities. I have meetings with priests and rabbis and ministers every week of the year. What do you think they’re going to say to me at the next meeting when I get up to address them and they know that I’ve been paying a man seven hundred dollars a week who’s out to destroy them? What do you think the Jew-haters’re going to be able to say about that?”

  That, too, Archer thought exhaustedly.

  “What’re you trying to do to me?” Sandler shouted, his voice surprisingly strong and young and malevolent. “What the hell did I ever do to you to put me through this?” Sandler stood up and strode over to Archer and stood over him, almost as though he were on the verge of hitting him. He was breathing hard and his face was flushed now and Archer thought of heart failure and sudden strokes. He looked up at the old man curiously, wondering if he really would try to hit him.

  “Aah.” Sandler turned away and walked slowly toward Hutt’s desk. He seemed tired now, as though he had suddenly realized that he was an old man and that he had been up since five o’clock that morning and that he had already traveled a long distance that day “What’s the sense in talking to you?” He leaned against the desk, facing Archer, with Hutt behind him, immobile, watchful, expressionless. “You’re lost, Archer. You’re a clumsy, foolish, untrustworthy man and you’re going to pay for it now. The program’s finished. As of this minute, Hutt.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hutt said.

  “We’ll advertise in the magazines from now on,” Sandler said. “If we have anything left to advertise. How much longer does Archer’s contract have to go?”

  “Seven weeks,” Hutt said promptly.

  “Don’t pay him,” Sandler said. “Let him sue, if he wants to. We’ll drag him through every court in the country if that’s what he wants. But not a penny.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hutt said. He picked up his blue pencil and stared at it.

  “That’s all,” Sandler said heavily. “I’ve got to go. I have a date in Philadelphia.”

  He picked up his coat. Hutt stood up and helped him on with it. Sandler put on his hat carelessly, its brim up all around, giving him a rakish, Western air. He didn’t thank Hutt. He looked once more at Archer, puzzled, reflective. Then he walked out slowly, shuffling along the carpet. He didn’t close the door behind him and Archer had a glimpse of Miss Walsh outside, smiling sharply at her desk, before O’Neill, who hadn’t moved during the entire scene, went over and shut the door.

  Hutt sat down behind his desk again, playing with the blue pencil. “Well,” he said, “that’s that. You heard what he said, Archer.”

  “I heard.”

  “Are you going to sue?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Archer said. He knew he wasn’t going to sue, but, maliciously, he wanted Hutt to worry about it.

  “We’ll kill you,” Hutt said calmly, twirling the pencil in both his hands. With a gesture of his head he indicated the newspapers on the floor. “Those’ll seem like love notes in comparison by the time we get through with you.”

  “You don’t need me any more, do you, Lloyd?” O’Neill said, starting toward the door. He looked tortured and pent-up, and Archer knew that he didn’t want to have to listen any more. “I have a desk full of work and …”

  “Stay here, Emmet,” Hutt said. “I’d like you to listen to what I have to say to Mr. Archer. It might be instructive.”

  O’Neill dropped his hand from the doorknob and went back to his station along the wall.

  “I warned you,” Hutt said to Archer, and there was the flicker of triumph in his voice. “I warned you a long time ago not to fight me. You should have listened to me.”

  Archer stood up. “I think I’ll go now,” he said quietly.

  “You’re finished, Archer,” Hutt said, whispering. “I told you you would be and I’m glad to see it happened so soon. It’s going to cost me a considerable amount of money, but it’s worth it. I don’t begrudge a penny of it. Before you leave I’d like to tell you that I had a good deal to do with what happened to you last night.”

  Archer stopped at the door, puzzled at what Hutt had said. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “When you went down to see Mr. Sandler in Philadelphia,” Hutt said, “breaking one of the oldest and strictest rules of this organization, I decided it was about time I found out more about you. In self-defense. You’ve had two detectives investigating you for more than a month, at my own expense, and I must say I feel it was money well spent.”

  The telephone tap, Archer thought. That’s where it came from. Incongruously, he felt a sense of relief. At least it wasn’t the Gover
nment.

  “You miserable sonofabitch,” Archer said clearly.

  Hutt shrugged and even smiled a little, mechanically, although he flushed. “I ignore that, Archer,” he said, “because you’re of no importance to me any more. I tried to save you. I gave you a lot of time and I used all the arguments and all the eloquence I was capable of. They weren’t wasted, though.” He smiled more widely, his wedge-face splitting frostily. “I got them in good order, trying them out on you, and when I had to use them again, they worked charmingly. Frances Motherwell was not quite as deaf to the claims of patriotism and reason as you were and from all reports she put on a very good performance last night, didn’t she?”

  “I suppose,” Archer said, “you’re proud of that dirty scene you put her up to last night.”

  “I told you you can’t make me angry, Archer,” Hutt said. “This was something that had to be done publicly, without warning, and without giving anyone any chance to wriggle quietly away. For educational purposes. From now on, people who work for me will be very careful about what they say or whom they endorse or how they oppose me. And Frances Motherwell was ripe anyway. She comes of an excellent family. She’s fundamentally a decent, honest girl. She was ready to leave her old friends, anyway. She told me herself she was disgusted with them. If you’d had any sense you would have expected something like this. After all, she told you herself that she was a Communist. Did any of the others ever do that? Of course not. She’s a straightforward American girl and it was only a question of time before she’d turn away in disgust from the Oriental plotting she saw all around her.”

  “She’s a straightforward psychopath,” Archer said, “and she’ll probably wind up in a straitjacket, getting the shock treatment three times a year. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’ll find yourself keeping her company on the next table.”