Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

Chapter 5

1955

“Why do you have to come and wait, for me?” Billy was complaining, as they walked toward home. “As though I’m a baby.”

“You’ll go around by yourself soon enough,” she said, automatically taking his hand as they crossed a street.

“When?”

“Soon enough.”

“When?”

“When you’re ten.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“You know you mustn’t say things like that.”

“Daddy does.”

“You’re not Daddy.”

“So do you sometimes.”

“You’re not me. And I shouldn’t say it, either.”

“Then why do you say it?”

“Because I get angry.”

“I’m angry now. All the other kids don’t have their mothers waiting for them outside the gate like babies. They go home by themselves.”

Gretchen knew this was true and that she was being a nervous parent, not faithful to Spock, and that she or Billy or both of them would have to pay for it later, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the child wandering by himself around in the doubtful traffic of Greenwich Village. Several times she had suggested to Willie that they move to the suburbs for their son’s sake, but Willie had vetoed the idea. “I’m not the Scarsdale type,” he said.

She didn’t know what the Scarsdale type was. She knew a lot of people who lived in Scarsdale or in places very much like Scarsdale, and they seemed as various as people living anywhere else—drunks, wife-swappers, churchgoers, politicians, patriots, scholars, suicides, whatever.

“When?” Billy asked again, stubbornly, pulling away from her hand.

“When you’re ten,” she repeated.

“That’s a whole year,” he wailed.

“You’ll be surprised how fast it goes,” she said. “Now, button your coat. You’ll catch cold.” He had been playing basketball in the schoolyard and he was still sweating. The late-afternoon October air was nippy and there was a wind off the Hudson.

“A whole year,” Billy said. “That’s inhuman.”

She laughed and bent and kissed the top of his head, but he pulled away. “Don’t kiss me in public,” he said.

A big dog came trotting toward them and she had to restrain herself from telling Billy not to pat him. “Old boy,” Billy said, “old boy,” and patted the dog’s head and pulled his ears, at home in the animal kingdom. He thinks nothing living wishes him harm, Gretchen thought. Except his mother.

The dog wagged his tail, went on.

They were on their own street now, and safe. Gretchen allowed Billy to dawdle behind her, balancing on cracks in the pavement. As she came up to the front door of the brownstone in which she lived, she saw Rudolph and Johnny Heath standing in front of the building, leaning against the stoop. They each were holding a paper bag with a bottle in it. She had just put on a scarf over her head and an old coat and she hadn’t bothered to change from the slacks she was wearing around the house when she had gone to fetch Billy. She felt dowdy as she approached Rudolph and Johnny, who were dressed like sober young businessmen and were even wearing hats.

She was used to seeing Rudolph in New York often. For the past six months or so, he had come to the city two or three times a week, in his young businessman’s suits. There was some sort of deal being arranged, with Calderwood and Johnny Heath’s brokerage house, although when she asked Rudolph about it, and he tried to explain, she never could quite grasp the details. It had something to do with setting up an involved corporation called Dee Cee Enterprises, after Duncan Calderwood’s initials. Eventually, it was supposed to make Rudolph a wealthy man and get him out of the store, and for half the year, at least, out of Whitby. He had asked her to be on the lookout for a small furnished apartment for him.

Both Rudolph and Johnny looked somehow high, as though they had already done some drinking. She could see by the gilt paper sticking out of the brown paper bags that the bottles they were carrying contained champagne. “Hi, boys,” she said. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

“We didn’t know we were coming,” Rudolph said. “This is an impromptu celebration.” He kissed her cheek. He had not been drinking.

“Hi, Billy,” he said to the little boy.

“Hi,” Billy said perfunctorily. The relationship between uncle and nephew was tenuous. Billy called his uncle Rudy. From time to time Gretchen tried to get the boy to be more polite and say Uncle Rudolph, but Willie backed up his son, saying, “Old forms, old forms. Don’t bring up the kid to be a hypocrite.”

“Come on upstairs,” Gretchen said, “and we’ll open these bottles.”

The living room was a mess. She worked there now, having surrendered the upstairs room completely to Billy, and there were bits and pieces of two articles she had promised for the first of the month. Books, notes, and scraps of paper were scattered all over the desk and tables. Not even the sofa was immune. She was not a methodical worker, and her occasional attempts at order soon foundered into even greater chaos than before. She had taken to chain-smoking when she worked and ash trays full of stubs were everywhere. Willie, who was far from neat himself, complained from time to time. “This isn’t a home,” he said, “it’s the goddamn city room of a small-time newspaper.”

She noticed Rudolph’s quick glance of disapproval around the room. Was he judging her now against the fastidious girl she had been at nineteen? She had an unreasonable flash of anger against her impeccable, well-pressed brother. I’m running a family, I’m earning a living, don’t forget any of that, brother.

“Billy,” she said, as she hung up her coat and scarf, with elaborate precision, to make up for the state of the room, “go upstairs and do your homework.”

“Aah …” Billy said, more for form’s sake than out of any desire to remain below with the grownups.

“Go ahead, Billy.”

He went upstairs happily, pretending to be unhappy.

Gretchen got out three glasses. “What’s the occasion?” she asked Rudolph, who was working on opening the bottle of champagne.

“We did it,” Rudolph said. “Today we had the final signing. We can drink champagne morning, noon, and night for the rest of our lives.” He got the cork out and let the foam splash over his hand as he poured.

“That’s wonderful,” Gretchen said mechanically. It was difficult for her to understand Rudolph’s single-minded immersion in business.

They touched glasses.

“To Dee Cee Enterprises and the Chairman of the Board,” Johnny said. “The Newest Tycoon of them all.”

Both men laughed, nerves still taut. They gave Gretchen the curious impression of being survivors of an accident, almost hysterically congratulating themselves on their escape. What goes on in those offices downtown, Gretchen wondered.

Rudolph couldn’t sit still. He prowled around the room, glass in hand, opening books, glancing at the confusion of her desk, ruffling the pages of a newspaper. He looked trained down and nervy, with very bright eyes and hollows showing in his cheeks.

By contrast, Johnny looked chubby, soft, smooth, unedged, and now that he had a glass in his hand, composed, almost sleepy. He was more familiar with money and its uses than Rudolph and was prepared for sudden strokes of fortune and misfortune.

Rudolph turned on the radio and the middle of the first movement of the Emperor Concerto blared out. Rudolph grinned. “They’re playing Our Song,” he said to Johnny. “Music to million by.”

“Cut it out,” Gretchen said. “You fellows are making me feel like a pauper.”

“If Willie has any sense,” Johnny said, “he’ll beg, borrow, or steal to scrape up some dough and come in on the ground floor of Dee Cee Enterprises. I mean it. There’s no limit to how high this stuff can go.”

“Willie,” Gretchen said, “is too proud to beg, too well known to borrow, and too cowardly to steal.”

“You’re talking about my friend,” Johnny said, pretending to be shocked.

“He was once a friend of mine, too,” Gretchen said.

“Have some more champagne,” Johnny said, and poured.

Rudolph picked up a sheet of paper from her desk. “‘The Age of Midgets,’” he read. “What sort of title is that?”

“It started out to be an article about the new television programs this season,” Gretchen said, “and somehow I branched out. Last year’s plays, this year’s plays, a bunch of novels, Eisenhower’s cabinet, architecture, public morality, education … I’m aghast at how Billy’s being educated and maybe that really started me off.”

Rudolph read the first paragraph. “You’re pretty rough,” he said.

“I’m paid to be a common scold,” Gretchen said. “That’s my racket.”

“Do you really feel as black as you sound?” Rudolph asked.

“Yes,” she said. She held out her glass toward Johnny.

The telephone rang. “Probably Willie saying he can’t come home for dinner,” Gretchen said. She got up and went to the telephone on the desk. “Hello,” she said, her voice aggrieved in advance. She listened, puzzled. “One moment, please,” she said, and handed the phone to Rudolph. “It’s for you,” she said.

“Me?” Rudolph shrugged. “Nobody knows I’m here.”

“The man said Mr. Jordache.”

“Yes?” Rudolph said into the phone.

“Jordache?” The voice was husky, secretive.

“Yes.”

“This is Al. I put down five hundred for you for tonight. A good price. Seven to five.”

“Wait a minute,” Rudolph said, but the phone went dead. Rudolph stared at the instrument in his hand. “That was the queerest thing. It was a man called Al. He said he put down five hundred for me for tonight at seven to five. Gretchen, do you gamble secretly?”

“I don’t know any Al,” she said, “and I don’t have five hundred dollars and besides, he asked for Mr. Jordache, not Miss Jordache.” She wrote under her maiden name and was listed as G. Jordache in the Manhattan directory.

“That’s the damnedest thing,” Rudolph said. “Did I tell anyone I’d be at this number?” he asked Johnny.

“Not to my knowledge,” Johnny said.

“He must have gotten the numbers mixed up,” Gretchen said.

“That doesn’t sound reasonable,” Rudolph said. “How many Jordaches can there be in New York? Did you ever come across any others?”

Gretchen shook her head.

“Where’s the Manhattan book?”

Gretchen pointed and Rudolph picked it up and opened it to the J’s. “T. Jordache,” he read, “West Ninety-third Street.” He closed the book slowly and put it down. “T. Jordache,” he said to Gretchen. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“I hope not,” Gretchen said.

“What’s all this about?” Johnny asked.

“We have a brother named Thomas,” Rudolph said.

“The baby of the family,” Gretchen said. “Some baby.”

“We haven’t seen him or heard of him in ten years,” Rudolph said.

“The Jordaches are an extraordinarily close-knit family,” Gretchen said. After the work of the day, the champagne was beginning to take effect, and she lolled back on the couch. She remembered that she hadn’t eaten any lunch.

“What does he do?” Johnny said. “Your brother?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Rudolph said.

“If he’s living up to his early promise,” Gretchen said, “he is dodging the police.”

“I’m going to find out.” Rudolph opened the book again and looked up the number of T. Jordache on West Ninety-third Street. He dialled. The phone was answered by a woman, young from the sound of her voice.

“Good evening, madam,” Rudolph said, impersonal, institutional. “May I speak to Mr. Thomas Jordache, please?”

“No, you can’t,” the woman said. She had a high, thin soprano voice. “Who’s this?” Now she sounded suspicious.

“A friend of his,” Rudolph said. “Is Mr. Jordache there?”

“He’s sleeping,” the woman said angrily. “He’s got to fight tonight. He hasn’t got time to talk to anybody.”

There was the sound of the receiver slamming down.

Rudolph had been holding the receiver away from his ear and the woman had talked loudly, so both Gretchen and Johnny had heard every word of the conversation.

“Fighting tonight on the old camp grounds,” Gretchen said. “Sounds like our Tommy.”

Rudolph picked up the copy of the New York Times that was lying on a chair beside the desk and turned to the sports section. “Here it is,” he said. “Main bout. Tommy Jordache versus Virgil Walters, middleweights, ten rounds. At the Sunnyside Gardens.”

“It sounds bucolic,” Gretchen said.

“I’m going,” Rudolph said.

“Why?” Gretchen asked.

“He’s my brother, after all.”

“I’ve gotten along for ten years without him,” Gretchen said. “I’m going to try for twenty.”

“Johnny?” Rudolph turned to Heath.

“Sorry,” Johnny said. “I’m invited to a dinner. Tell me how it works out.”

The telephone rang again. Rudolph picked it up eagerly, but it was only Willie. “Hi, Rudy,” Willie said. There were barroom noises behind him. “No, I don’t have to speak to her,” Willie said. “Just tell her I’m sorry, but I’ve got a business dinner tonight and I can’t make it home until late. Tell her not to wait up.”

Gretchen smiled, lying on the couch. “Don’t tell me what he said.”

“He’s not coming home to dinner.”

“And I’m not to wait up.”

“Something along those lines.”

“Johnny,” Gretchen said, “don’t you think it’s time to open the second bottle?”

By the time they had finished the second bottle, Gretchen had called for a baby sitter and they had found out where Sunnyside Gardens was. She went in and took a shower, did her hair, and put on a dark-wool dress, wondering if it was comme il faut for prizefights. She had grown thinner and the dress was a little loose on her, but she caught the quick glances of approval of the two men at her appearance and was gratified by it. I must not let myself fall into slobhood, she thought. Ever.

When the baby sitter came, Gretchen gave her instructions and left the apartment with Rudolph and Johnny. They went to a nearby steak house. Johnny had a drink with them at the bar and was saying, “Thanks for the drink,” and was preparing to leave when Rudolph said, “I only have five dollars.” He laughed. “Johnny, be my banker for tonight, will you?”

Johnny took out his wallet and put down five ten-dollar bills. “Enough?” he said.

“Thanks.” Rudolph put the bills carelessly in his pocket. He laughed again.

“What’s so funny?” Gretchen asked.

“I never thought I’d like to see the day,” Rudolph said, “when I didn’t know exactly how much money I had in my pocket.”

“You have taken on the wholesome and mind-freeing habits of the rich,” Johnny said gravely. “Congratulations. I’ll see you tomorrow at the office, Rudy. And I hope your brother wins.”

“I hope he gets his head knocked off,” Gretchen said.

A preliminary bout was under way as an usher led them to their seats three rows from ringside. Gretchen noted that there were few women present and that none of them was wearing a black-wool dress. She had never been to a prizefight before and she tuned out the television set whenever one was being shown. The idea of men beating each other senseless for pay seemed brutish to her and the faces of the men around her were just the sort of faces that one would expect at such an entertainment. She was sure she had never seen so many ugly people collected in one place.

The men in the ring did not appear to be doing much harm to each other and she watched with passive disgust as they clinched, wrestled, and ducked away from blows. The crowd, in its fog of tobacco smoke, was apathetic and only once in awhile, when there was the thud of a heavy punch, a sort of sharp, grunting, animal noise filled the arena.

Rudolph, she knew, went to prizefights from time to time and she had heard him discussing particular boxers like Ray Robinson enthusiastically with Willie. She looked surreptitiously over at her brother. He seemed interested by the spectacle in the ring. Now that she was actually seeing a fight, with the smell of sweat in her nostrils and the red blotches on pale skin where blows had landed, Rudolph’s whole character, the subtle, deprecating air of educated superiority, the well-mannered lack of aggressiveness, seemed suddenly suspect to her. He was linked with the brutes in the ring, with the brutes in the rows around her.

In the next fight, one man was cut over the eye and the wound spurted blood all over him and his opponent. The roar of the crowd when they saw the blood sickened her and she wondered if she could sit there and wait for a brother to climb through the ropes to face similar butchery.

By the time the main bout came on, she was pale and sick and it was through a haze of tears and smoke that she saw a large man in a red bathrobe climb agilely through the ropes and recognized Thomas.

When Thomas’s handlers took off his robe and threw it over his shoulders to put the gloves on over the bandaged hands, the first thing Rudolph noticed, with a touch of jealousy, was that Thomas had almost no hair on his body. Rudolph was getting quite hairy, with thick, tight, black curls on his chest and sprouting on his shoulders. His legs, too, were covered with dark hair, and it did not fit with the image he had of himself. When he went swimming in the summer, his hairiness embarrassed him and he felt that people were snickering at him. For that reason he rarely sunbathed and put on a shirt as soon as he got out of the water.

Thomas, except for the ferocious, muscular, overtrained body, looked surprisingly the same. His face was unmarked and the expression was still boyish and ingratiating. Thomas kept smiling during the formalities before the beginning of the bout, but Rudolph could see him flicking the corner of his mouth nervously with his tongue. A muscle in his leg twitched under his shiny silk, purple trunks while the referee was giving the final instructions to the two men in the center of the ring. Except for the moment when he had been introduced (In this corner, Tommy Jordache, weight one fifty-nine and a half), and had raised his gloved hand and looked quickly up at the crowd, Thomas had kept his eyes down. If he had seen Rudolph and Gretchen, he made no sign.

His opponent was a rangy Negro, considerably taller than Tommy, and with much longer arms, shuffling dangerously in his corner in a little dance, nodding as he listened to the advice being whispered into his ear by his handler.

Gretchen watched with a rigid, painful grimace on her face, squinting through the smoke at her brother’s powerful, destructive, bare figure. She did not like the hairless male body—Willie was covered with a comfortable reddish fuzz—and the ridged professional muscles made her shudder in primitive distaste. Siblings, out of the same womb. The thought dismayed her. Behind Thomas’s boyish smile she recognized the sly malevolence, the desire to hurt, the pleasure in dealing pain, that had alienated her when they lived in the same house. The thought that it was her own flesh and blood exposed there under the bright lights in this dreadful ceremony was almost unbearable to her. Of course, she thought, I should have known; this is where he had to end. Fighting for his life.

The men were evenly matched, equally fast, the Negro less aggressive, but better able to defend himself with his long arms. Thomas kept burrowing in, taking two punches to get in one, slugging away at the Negro’s body, making the Negro give ground and occasionally punishing him terribly when he got him in a corner against the ropes.

“Kill the nigger,” a voice from the back of the arena cried out each time Thomas threw a volley of punches. Gretchen winced, ashamed to be there, ashamed for every man and woman in the place. Oh, Arnold Simms, limping, in the maroon bathrobe, saying, “You got pretty feet, Miss Jordache,” dreaming of Cornwall, oh, Arnold Simms, forgive me for tonight.

It lasted eight of the ten rounds. Thomas was bleeding from the nose and from a cut above the eye, but never retreating, always shuffling in, with a kind of hideous, heedless, mechanical energy, slowly wearing his man down. In the eighth round, the Negro could hardly lift his hands and Thomas sent him to the canvas with a long, looping right hand that caught the Negro high on the forehead. The Negro got up at the count of eight, staggering, barely able to get his guard up, and Thomas, his face a bloody smear, but smiling, leapt after him mercilessly and hit him what seemed to Gretchen at least fifty times in the space of seconds. The Negro collapsed onto his face as the crowd yelled ear-splittingly around her. The Negro tried to get up, almost reached one knee. In a neutral corner, Thomas crouched alertly, bloody, tireless. He seemed to want his man to get up, to continue the fight, and Gretchen was sure there was a swift look of disappointment that flitted across his battered face as the Negro sank helplessly to the canvas and was counted out.

She wanted to vomit, but she merely retched drily, holding her handkerchief to her face, surprised at the smell of the perfume on it, among the rank odors of the arena. She sat huddled over in her seat, looking down, unable to watch any more, afraid she was going to faint and by that act announce to all the world her fatal connection to the victorious animal in the ring.

Rudolph had sat through the whole bout without uttering a sound, his lips twisted a little in disapproval at the clumsy bloodthirstiness, without style or grace, of the fight.

The fighters left the ring, the Negro, swathed in towels and robe, was helped through the ropes by his handlers, Thomas grinning, waving triumphantly, as people clapped him on the back. He left the ring on the far side, so that there was no chance of seeing his brother and sister as he made his way to the locker room.

The crowd began to drift out, but Gretchen and Rudolph sat side by side, without saying a word to each other, fearful of communicating after what they had seen. Finally Gretchen said, thickly, her eyes still lowered, “Let’s get out of here.”

“We have to go back,” Rudolph said.

“What do you mean?” Gretchen looked up in surprise at her brother.

“We came,” Rudolph said. “We watched. We have to see him.”

“He’s got nothing to do with us.” As she said this, she knew she was lying.

“Come on.” Rudolph stood up and took her elbow, making her stand. He met all challenges, Rudolph, the cold, veray parfit gentil knight at Sunnyside Gardens.

“I won’t, I won’t …” Even as she was babbling this, she knew Rudolph would lead her inexorably to face Thomas, bloody, victorious, brutal, rancorous.

There were some men standing at the door of the dressing room, but nobody stopped Rudolph as he pushed the door open. Gretchen hung back. “I’d better wait outside,” she said. “He may not be dressed.”

Rudolph paid no attention to what she had said, but held her wrist and pulled her into the room after him. Thomas was sitting on a stained rubbing table with a towel around his middle and a doctor was sewing up the cut over his eye.

“It’s nothing,” the doctor was saying. “One more stitch and it’s done.”

Thomas had his eyes closed, to make it easier for the doctor to work. There was an orange stain of antiseptic above the eyebrow that gave him a clownish, lopsided air. He had obviously already taken his shower, as his hair was dark with water and plastered to his head, making him look like a print of an old-time bare-knuckle pugilist. Grouped around the table were several men, whom Rudolph recognized as having been in or near Thomas’s corner during the fight. A curvy young woman in a tight dress kept making little sighing sounds each time the doctor’s needle went into flesh. She had startling black hair and wore black nylon stockings over outlandishly shapely legs. Her eyebrows, plucked into a thin pencil line, high up, gave her a look of doll-like surprise. The room stank of old sweat, liniment, cigar smoke, and urine from the toilet visible through an open door leading off the dressing room. A bloodstained towel lay on the greasy floor, in a heap with the sweat-soaked purple tights and supporter and socks and shoes that Thomas had worn during the fight. It was sickeningly hot in the room.

What am I doing in a place like this, Gretchen thought. How did I get here?

“There we are,” the doctor said, stepping back, his head cocked to one side, admiring his work. He put on a pad of gauze and a strip of adhesive tape over the wound. “You’ll be able to fight again in ten days.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Thomas said and opened his eyes. He saw Rudolph and Gretchen. “Good Christ,” he said. He smiled crookedly. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

“I have a message for you,” Rudolph said. “A man called Al phoned me this afternoon and told me he’d put five hundred at seven to five for tonight.”

“Good old Al,” Thomas said. But he looked worriedly over at the curvy young woman with the black hair, as though he had wanted to keep this information from her.

“Congratulations on the fight,” Rudolph said. He took a step forward and put out his hand. Thomas hesitated for a fraction of a second, then smiled again, and put out his swollen, reddened hand.

Gretchen couldn’t get herself to congratulate her brother. “I’m glad you won, Tom,” she said.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He looked at her amusedly. “Let me introduce everybody to everybody,” he said. “My brother, Rudolph; my sister, Gretchen. My wife, Teresa, my manager, Mr. Schultz, my trainer, Paddy, everybody …” He waved his hand vaguely at the men he hadn’t bothered to introduce.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Teresa said. It was the suspicious voice of the telephone that afternoon.

“I didn’t know you had family,” Mr. Schultz said. He, too, seemed suspicious, as though having family was somehow perilous or actionable at law.

“I wasn’t sure myself,” Thomas said. “We have gone our separate ways, like they say. Hey, Schultzy, I must be getting to be one helluva draw at the gate if I even get my brother and sister to buy tickets.”

“After tonight,” Mr. Schultz said, “I can get you the Garden. It was a nice win.” He was a small man with a basketball pouch under a greenish sweater. “Well, you people must have a lot to talk about, catch up with the news, as it were, we’ll leave you alone. I’ll drop in tomorrow sometime, Tommy, see how the eye’s doing.” He put on a jacket, just barely managing to button it over his paunch. The trainer gathered up the gear from the floor and put it into a bag. “Nice going, Tommy,” he said, as he left with the doctor, the manager, and the others.

“Well, here we are,” Thomas said. “A nice family reunion. I guess we ought to celebrate, huh, Teresa?”

“You never told me anything about a brother and sister,” Teresa said aggrievedly, in her high voice.

“They slipped my mind for a few years,” Thomas said. He jumped down off the rubbing table. “Now, if the ladies will retire, I’ll put on some clothes.”

Gretchen went out into the hall with her brother’s wife. The hall was empty now and she was relieved to get away from the stink and heat of the dressing room. Teresa was putting on a shaggy red fox coat with angry little movements of her shoulders and arms. “If the ladies will retire,” she said. “As though I never saw him naked before.” She looked at Gretchen with open hostility, taking in the black-wool dress, the low-heeled shoes, the plain, belted polo coat, considering it, Gretchen could see, an affront to her style of living, her dyed hair, her tight dress, her over-voluptuous legs, her marriage. “I didn’t know Tommy came from such a high-toned family,” she said.

“We’re not so high-toned,” Gretchen said. “Never fear.”

“You never bothered to see him fight before tonight,” Teresa said aggressively, “did you?”

“I didn’t know he was a fighter before today,” said Gretchen. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m feeling very tired.” There was a chair across the hall and she moved away from the woman and sat down, hoping to put an end to conversation. Teresa ruffled her shoulders irritably under the red fox, then began to walk peckishly up and down, her high stiletto heels making a brittle, impatient sound on the concrete floor of the hallway.

Inside the dressing room Thomas was dressing slowly, turning away modestly when he put on his shorts, occasionally wiping at his face with a towel, because the shower had not completely broken the sweat. From time to time he looked across at Rudolph and smiled and shook his head and said, “Goddamn.”

“How do you feel, Tommy?” Rudolph asked.

“Okay. But I’ll piss blood tomorrow,” Thomas said calmly. “He got in a couple of good licks to the kidney, the sonofabitch. It was a pretty good fight, though, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rudolph said. He didn’t have the heart to say that in his eyes it had been a routine, ungraceful, second-rate brawl.

“I knew I could take him,” Thomas said. “Even though I was the underdog in the betting. Seven to five. That’s a hot one. I made seven hundred bucks on that bet.” He sounded like a small boy boasting. “Though it’s too bad you had to say anything about it in front of Teresa. Now she knows I have the dough and she’ll be after it like a hound dog.”

“How long have you been married?” Rudolph asked.

“Two years. Legally. I knocked her up and I thought what the hell.” Thomas shrugged. “She’s okay, Teresa, a little dumb, but okay. The kid’s worth it, though. A boy.” He glanced maliciously over at Rudolph. “Maybe I’ll send him to his Uncle Rudy, to teach him how to be a gentleman and not grow up to be a poor stupid pug, like his old man.”

“I’d like to see him some day,” Rudolph said stiffly.

“Any time. Come up to the house.” Thomas put on a black turtle-neck sweater and his voice was muffled for a moment as he stuck his head into the wool. “You married yet?”

“No.”

“Still the smart one of the family,” Thomas said. “How about Gretchen?”

“A long time. She’s got a son aged nine.”

Thomas nodded. “She was bound not to hang around long. God, what a hot-looking dame. She looks better than ever, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still as much of a shit as she used to be?”

“Don’t talk like that, Tom,” Rudolph said. “She was an awfully nice girl and she’s grown into a very good woman.”

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Rudy,” Thomas said cheerfully. He was combing his hair carefully before a cracked mirror on the wall. “I wouldn’t know, being on the outside the way I was.”

“You weren’t on the outside.”

“Who you kidding, brother?” Thomas said flatly. He put the comb in his pocket, took a last critical look at his scarred, puffed face, with the diagonal white slash of adhesive tape above his eye. “I sure am a beauty tonight,” he said. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve shaved.” He turned and put a bright-tweed jacket over the turtle-neck sweater. “You look as though you’re doing all right, Rudy,” he said. “You look like a goddamn vice-president of a bank.”