Free The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw

said, "in your hour of grief, but we cannot see our way clear…"
    Noah heard a scuffle at the other end of the wire and the woman's voice say, "Let me talk to him, Georgie." Then the woman got on the phone. "Listen," she said loudly, her voice brassy and whisky-rich, "why don't you quit? We're busy here. You heard what Georgie said. He don't burn Kikes. Happy New Year." And she hung up.
    Noah's hands were trembling and he felt the sweat coming out on his skin. He put the receiver back on the hook with difficulty. He opened the door of the booth and walked slowly towards the door, past the jukebox, which was playing a jazz version of Loch Lomond, past the group of blonde and drunk and sailors at the bar. The blonde smiled at him and said, "What's the matter, Big Boy? Wasn't she home?"
    Noah hardly heard her. He walked slowly, feeling weak and tired, towards the unoccupied end of the bar near the door and sat on a stool.
    "Whisky," he said. When it came, he drank it straight and ordered another. The two drinks had an immediate, surging effect on him, blurring the outlines of the room, blurring the music and the other people in the bar into softer and more agreeable forms, and when the blonde, in her tight, flowered, yellow dress with red shoes and a little hat with a purple veil, came down the bar towards him, swaying her full hips exaggeratedly, he grinned at her.
    "There," the blonde said, touching his arm softly, "there, that's better."
    "Happy New Year," Noah said.
    "Honey…" The blonde sat down on the stool next him, jiggling her tightly girdled buttocks on the red leatherette seat, rubbing her knee against him. "Honey, I'm in trouble, and I looked around the bar and I decided you were the one man in the room I could depend on. Orange Blossom," she said to the bartender, who had padded up to where she was sitting. "In time of trouble," she went on, holding Noah's arm at the elbow, looking earnestly at him through her veil, her small, blue, mascara'd eyes inviting and serious, "in time of trouble I like Italian men. They have more character. They're excitable, but they're sympathetic. And, to tell you the truth, Honey, I like an excitable man. Show me a man who doesn't get excited and I'll show you a man who couldn't make a woman happy for ten minutes a year. There are two things I look for in a man. A sympathetic character and full lips."
    "What?" Noah asked, dazed.
    "Full lips," the blonde said earnestly. "My name is Georgia, Honey; what's yours?"
    "Ronald Beaverbrook," Noah said. "And I have to tell you… I'm not an Italian."
    "Oh." The woman looked disappointed and she drank half her Orange Blossom in one smooth gulp. "I could have sworn. What are you, Ronald?"
    "An Indian," Noah said. "A Sioux Indian."
    "Even so," the woman said, "I bet you can make a woman very happy."
    "Have a drink," Noah said.
    "Honey," the woman called to the bartender. "Two Orange Blossoms. Double, Honey." She turned back to Noah. "I like Indians, too," she said. "The one thing I don't like is ordinary Americans. They don't know how to use a woman properly. On and off and bang, and on their way home to their wives. Honey," she said, finishing her first drink, "Honey, why don't you go over to those two boys in blue and tell them you're taking me home? Take a beer bottle with you, in case they give you an argument."
    "Did you come with them?" Noah asked. He was feeling very light-headed now, remote and amused, and he caressed the woman's hand lightly and smiled into her eyes as he talked. Her hands were calloused and worn and she was ashamed of them.
    "It comes from working in the laundry," she said sadly.
    "Don't ever work in a laundry, Honey."
    "Okay," said Noah.
    "I came with that one." With a gesture of her head, the veil fluttering in the green and purple light of the jukebox, she indicated the drunk with his head on the bar. "Knocked out of the box in the first innings. I'll tell you something." She leaned close to Noah and whispered to