Free Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw

appear for another half hour.,
    ‘Hello, Miss Jordache.’ She had been named, in a man’s voice. She could feel the blush rising furiously to her cheeks as she turned her head. She knew it was silly to blush. She had every right to be on the road. No one knew of the two black soldiers waiting with their food and liquor and their eight hundred dollars. For a moment she didn’t recognise the man who had spoken, sitting alone at the wheel of a 1939 Buick convertible, with the top down. He was smiling at her, one hand, in a driving glove, hanging over the door of the car on her side. Then she saw who it was. Mr Boylan. She had only seen him once or twice in her life, around the plant which bore his family’s name. He was rarely there, a slender, blond, tanned, cleanly shaven man, with bristly blond eyebrows and highly polished shoes.
    ‘Good afternoon, Mr Boylan,’ she said, not moving. She didn’t want to get close enough for him to be able to notice her blush.
    ‘What in the world are you doing all the way up here?’ Privilege, his voice suggested. He sounded as though this unexpected discovery, the pretty girl alone in her high heels at the
    edge of the woods, amused him.
    ‘It was such a lovely day.’ She almost stammered. ‘I often go on little expeditions when I have an afternoon off.’
    ‘All alone?” He sounded incredulous.
    ‘I’m a nature lover,’ she said lamely. What a clod he must think I am, she thought. She caught him smiling as he looked down at her high-heeled shoes. ‘I just took the bus on the spur of the moment,’ she said, inventing, without hope. ‘I’m waiting for the bus back to town.’ She heard a rustle behind her and tnmed, panic-stricken, sure that it must be the two soldiers, growing impatient and come to see if she had arrived. But it was only a squirrel, racing across the gravel of the side road.
    “What’s the matter?’ Boylan asked, puzzled by her spasmodic movement.
    ‘I thought I heard a snake.’ Oh, goodbye, she thought.
    “You’re pretty jittery,’ Boylan said gravely, ‘for a nature lover.’
    ‘Only snakes,’ she said. It was the stupidest conversation she bad ever had in her life.
    Boylan looked at his watch. ‘You know, the bus won’t be along for quite some time,’ he said.
    ‘That’s all right,’ she said, smiling widely, as though waiting for buses in the middle of nowhere was her favourite Saturday afternoon occupation. ‘It’s so nice and peaceful here.’
    ‘Let me ask you a serious question,’ he said.
    Here it comes, she thought. He’s going to want to know who I’m waiting for. She fumbled for a serviceable short list. Her brother, a girl friend, a nurse from the hospital. She was so busy thinking, she didn’t hear what he said, although she knew be had said something.
    I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I missed that.’
    ‘I said, have you had lunch yet, Miss Jordache?’
    ‘I’m not really hungry, really. I…’
    ‘Come.’ He gestured to her with a closed hand. ‘I’ll buy you lunch. I despise lunching alone.’
    Obediently, feeling small and childish, under adult orders, she crossed the road behind the Buick and stepped into the car, as he leaned over from his side to open the door for her. The only other person she had ever heard use the word ‘despise’ in normal conversation was her mother. Shades of Sister Catherine, Old Teacher. ‘It’s very kind of you, Mr Boylan,’ she said.
    I’m lucky on Saturdays,’ he said as he started the car
    She had no notion of what he meant by that. If he hadn’t been
    her boss, in a manner of speaking, and old besides, forty, forty-five at least, she would have somehow managed to refuse. She regretted the secret excursion through the woods that now would never take place, the obscene, tantalising possibility that perhaps the two soldiers would have glimpsed her, pursued her… Limping braves on tribal hunting grounds. Eight hundred dollars’ worth of war paint
    ‘Do you know a place