Free Nightwork by Irwin Shaw Page A

senator for two terms and who owned a good part of North Carolina besides. My friend had married well. I wondered what I would have turned into if I had married a rich wife. Not that I ever had the offer.
    I had merely stood around, wincing a little as the drinks began to take effect on the rising curve of conversation, a glass tactfully in my hand at all times, smiling manfully, like a small boy at dancing school. I wondered how Hale could bear it.
    Mrs. Whoever, whose hand and lips were now caressing me, had turned out to be the lady who was ever so important at Justice. She looked thirty-five years old, but a very handsome thirty-five, full bodied, with glowing skin, large dark eyes, and soft dark blonde hair, almost the color of mine, that fell to her shoulders. We had found ourselves in a corner together and she had said, “I’ve been watching you. Poor man, you look marooned. I take it you’re not an inmate.”
    “An inmate?” I had asked, puzzled. “Of what?”
    “Washington.”
    I had grinned. “Does it show that badly?”
    “It does, man, it does. Don’t worry about it. I leap at the opportunity to talk to someone who isn’t in the government.” She had looked at her watch. “Forty-five minutes. I have done my duty. Nobody can spread the rumor that I don’t know how to behave in polite society. Time for chow. Grimes, are you busy for dinner?”
    “No.” I was surprised that she had remembered my name.
    “Shall we leave together or leave separately?”
    I laughed. “That’s up to you, Mrs. …”
    “Coates, Evelyn.” She had smiled widely. I decided she had a mouth for smiling. “Together. I’m divorced. Do you consider me forward?”
    “Yes, ma’am.
    “Excellent man.” She had touched my arm lightly. “I’ll wait for you in the front hall. Say good-bye to your hosts, like a good boy.”
    I had watched her sweep through the crowded room, imperious and confident. I had never met a woman like that before. But even then I hadn’t imagined for a moment that the evening would end up as it did. I had never in my life gone to bed with a woman the first time I had met her. What with my stutter and ridiculously youthful appearance, I had always been rather shy, not sure that I was particularly attractive, and had felt that I was clumsy with women. I was resigned to the fact that other men got the beauties. I had never gotten over wondering why Pat, who was exceptionally attractive, had had anything to do with me. Luckily for my ego, I had no taste for the ordinary kind of male conquest, and the remnants of my religious upbringing had kept me from promiscuity, even if I could have indulged in it.
    The restaurant Mrs. Coates had taken me to was French and, as far as I could tell, very good. “I hope you’re enormously wealthy,” she had said. “The prices here are ferocious. Are you enormously wealthy?”
    “Enormously.”
    She had squinted at me across the table, studying me. “You don’t look it.”
    “It’s old money,” I had said. “The family likes to pretend to be slightly shabby.”
    “What old family?”
    “Some other time.” I had turned her off.
    She had talked about herself, though, without any urging from me. She was a lawyer, she worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, she had been in Washington eleven years, her husband had been a commander in the Navy and was an absolute beast, she had no children and wanted none, she went to the Hamptons on Long Island whenever she could and swam and pottered around a garden, her boss had been trying to lay her for five years, but was otherwise a dear, she was determined to run for Congress before she died. Along with all that, all spoken in an incongruously low, melodic voice, she had entertained me through dinner by interrupting herself to point out other guests and describing them by function and character in short, malicious sketches. There was a Senator with whom a girl wasn’t safe if they were in an elevator