Free Acceptable Losses by Irwin Shaw Page A

smiled faintly.
    “I never knew you had a son,” Damon said.
    “It pains me to talk about him.”
    “You didn’t talk much about your wife, either. I gathered it was a painful subject.”
    “My wife died young,” Mr. Gray shrugged. “No great loss, either. I was shy and she was meek and she was the first girl who let me kiss her. She died, I think, of embarrassment, embarrassment at being alive and taking up space on the planet. There wasn’t a flicker of real life in her from the day she was born, she had the spirit of a slave. My son, I believe, turned out to be what he is because he looked at his mother and told himself that in every possible way he would be different from her. And he despised me. The last time we talked he told me—I can still hear the contempt in his voice as he said it—he told me I was content to live in a corner on crusts all my life, but he wasn’t.” Mr. Gray gave a short laugh. “Well, I’m still in my corner and he’s the youngest self-made multimillionaire in America.” He sighed, finished his brandy, looked questioningly at Damon. “Do you think I might have just one more?”
    “Of course,” Damon said and refilled his glass.
    Mr. Gray bowed his head to sniff the Cognac. Damon had the impression that he was crying and trying to hide it. “Ah,” he said finally, his head still down, “I didn’t keep you up to wail about my private life. An old man, late at night, under the influence of just a little too much brandy …” His voice trailed off. “If you don’t mind, Roger, I left my briefcase in the hall, would you kindly get it for me?”
    Damon took his time getting the briefcase, so that Mr. Gray could dry his tears. He heard him blowing his nose loudly. The briefcase was heavy and Damon wondered what Mr. Gray could have in it or why he would carry a briefcase to a party.
    “Ah, there we are,” Mr. Gray said brightly as Damon came into the room. “You found it.” He put his brandy down and placed the briefcase on his knees. The briefcase was usually filled with manuscripts that he took home to read after office hours” and on weekends. He caressed the worn leather and the battered brass lock, then opened the case and took out a small bottle of pills. He shook out a pill and placed it under his tongue. Damon noticed that the veined, liver-spotted hand was shaking. “Brandy makes the heart race,” Mr. Gray said, almost apologetically, as though as a guest it was discourteous to his host to provide his own nourishment. “The doctors warn me, but one can’t live completely without vices.” His voice suddenly became stronger and his hands stopped shaking. “What a nice party this was. And Sheila always looks so splendid in her own home. Ten years, is it? My, where do the years fly?” He had been a witness at the wedding in the judge’s chambers. “You’ve been good for each other. If I were younger, I’d be jealous of your marriage. And if I were you, I’d be most careful not to do anything to disturb it.”
    “I know what you mean,” Damon said uncomfortably.
    “Those little absences from the office in the afternoons, the telephone calls …”
    “We have an understanding, Sheila and I,” Damon said. “A tacit understanding. Sort of.”
    “I’m not rebuking you, Roger. In fact, I took a vicarious pleasure in your mid-afternoon excursions. I had fantasies of what it would be like to be handsome like you, lusty, pursued by women … It brightened many a dull day. But you’re no longer young, the fires should be banked by now, you have something precious to preserve …”
    “As you just said, one can’t live completely without vices.” Damon laughed, to put the conversation on a lighter plane. “And I very seldom drink brandy.”
    Mr. Gray laughed then, too, an old friend sharing masculine rascality in a locker room. “Well,” he said, “at least manage to get away with it.” Then his face grew serious again. Once more he opened the flap of