Nightwork by Irwin Shaw

here? You need help, I imagine. I don’t have much, but I guess I could manage to scrape up a couple of …”
    “Nothing like that, Hank,” I said hastily. “Really. Money isn’t the problem.”
    “That’s what you think, brother.” Henry laughed bitterly. “That’s what you think.”
    “Listen carefully, Hank,” I said, leaning forward, speaking in a low voice, trying to freeze his attention, “I’m going away.”
    “Going away? Where?” Henry asked. “You’ve been going away all your life.”
    “This is different. Maybe for a long time. To Europe first.”
    “Do you have a job in Europe?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “You don’t have a job?”
    “Don’t ask any questions, please, Hank,” I said. “I’m going away. Period. I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to see you again. Maybe never. I wanted to touch some of the bases before I took off. And I want to thank you for what you’ve always done for me. I want to tell you that I realize it and that I’m grateful for it. I was a snotty little kid and I guess I used to think gratitude was effeminate or degrading or un-British or something equally idiotic.”
    “Oh, shit, Doug,” Henry said. “Forget it, will you?”
    “I won’t forget it. Another thing. Pa died when I was thirteen years old …”
    “He left a nice little piece of insurance.” Henry nodded approvingly. “Yessirree, a very nice little piece of insurance. You’d never have expected it—a man who worked as a foreman in a machine shop. A man who worked with his hands. His thought was only for his family. Where would we all be today if it wasn’t for that nice little piece of insurance …?”
    “I’m not talking about that part of it.”
    “Talk about that part of it. Listen to an accountant when it comes to death and insurance.”
    “What do you remember about him? That’s what I want to talk about. I was just a kid, it seems to me I hardly ever saw him; he was just somebody who came in for meals mostly. I still have dreams about him, but I never get the face right. But you were twenty. …”
    “His face,” Henry said. “His face was the face of an honest rough man who never had any doubt about himself. It was a face out of another century. Duty and honor were written plain on those simple features.” Henry was mocking himself, mocking our father’s memory now. “And he gave me bad advice,” Henry said, almost sober for the moment. “Also out of another century. He said, Marry early, boy. You know how he was always reading the Bible, and making us all go to church. It’s better to marry than to burn, he said. I married early. I have a bone to pick with good old dad; insurance or no insurance, burning is better.”
    “Will you for Christ’s sake stop talking about insurance?”
    “Whatever you say, boy. It’s your dinner. I take it it is your dinner?”
    “Of course.”
    “Forget Pa. He’s dead. Forget Mom. She’s dead. They worked their fingers to the bone and worried night and day and got the old royal American screwing and raised a family, one who’s a fag radio announcer in San Diego, the other who’s a drunken accountant in Scranton working his fingers to the bone to raise a family, who in turn will work their fingers to the bone to raise their families. I’ll say this for our dad, he had his religion. Clara has her yacht. Bert has his beach boys. I have my bottle.” He smiled owlishly. “What have you got, brother?”
    “I don’t know yet,” I said.
    “You don’t know yet?” Henry cocked his collapsed, pale head to one side and grimaced. “You’re what—thirty-two, thirty-three? And don’t know yet? You’re a lucky man. The future is all ahead of you. I got something beside the bottle. I got a pair of eyes that are no good for anything and steadily getting worse.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me. Did you ever hear of a blind accountant? In five years I’ll be out in the street on my naked ass.”
    “Jesus,” I said, shaken by the