Nightwork by Irwin Shaw Page A

coincidence. “That’s why I was grounded. My eyes started to go bad.”
    “Aha,” Henry said. “I thought you’d run a plane into a hill or screwed the boss’s wife.”
    “No. Just a little failure of the retina. Nothing much,” I said bitterly. “Just enough.”
    “We none of us ever did see clearly, I guess.” Henry laughed foolishly. “The fatal flaw of the Grimeses.” He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, which were watering. The marks of the frames on his nose were like small deep wounds. His eyes without the glasses looked almost blank. “But you said you were traveling, you were going to Europe. What’ve you got—a rich woman to support you?”
    “No.”
    “Take my advice. Find one.” Henry put his glasses on. They fitted automatically into the slots on each side of his nose. “Romance yourself no romance. That’s another thing I have.” He was off ranting again. “I have a wife who despises me.”
    “Oh, come on now, Hank.” In the photograph Madge hadn’t looked like a woman who despised anyone, and the few times I had met her she had seemed like a good-natured, even-tempered woman, solicitous at all times of her husband’s welfare.
    “Don’t say come on now, brother,” Henry said. “You don’t know. I know. She despises me. You know why she despises me? Because by her high American standards I am a failure. She does not get new dresses when her friends get new dresses. I can’t afford to pay for a psychiatrist for the older kid and send her off to a private school and she’s afraid the Blacks at the high school will rape her between lunch and gym class. The house hasn’t been painted for ten years. We’re behind on our payments for the television set. Our car is six years old. I am not a partner in my firm. I keep track of other people’s money. You know what the worst thing in the world is? Other people’s money. I …”
    “That’s enough, Hank, please.” I couldn’t stand the wave of self-hatred at the dinner table, even though there was nobody near enough but myself to hear any of it.
    “Permit me to continue, brother,” Henry said. “My teeth are bad and they smell, she says, because I can’t afford to go to the dentist. I can’t afford to go to the dentist because all three goddamn kids go to the dentist every week to have their braces worked on so that they’ll all look like movie stars when they grow up. And she despises me because I haven’t been able to fuck her for five years.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’m impotent,” Henry said with a crazy smile. “I have every reason to be impotent and I’m impotent. Do you remember when you came home that Saturday afternoon and you found me in bed with that girl? What was her name?”
    “Cynthia.”
    “That’s it—Cynthia. Cynthia of the big tits. She let out a shriek when she saw you that I can hear to this day. And she slapped me because I laughed. What did you think of your big brother then?”
    “I didn’t think anything. I didn’t know what you were doing.”
    “You know now, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wasn’t impotent then, was I?”
    “How the hell would I know?”
    “Take your brother’s word for it. Glad you came back to Scranton, Doug?”
    “Listen to me, Hank.” I grabbed both his hands and pressed them hard. “Are you sober enough to understand what I’m saying?”
    “Approximately, kid, approximately.” Henry chuckled, then frowned. “Give me back my hands.”
    I let go of his hands. I took out my wallet and counted out ten bills. “This is a thousand dollars, Hank,” I said. I leaned over and stuffed it into my brother’s breast pocket. “Don’t forget where I put it.”
    Henry let out his breath noisily. He fumbled at his pocket, took out the bills, smoothed them out on the table. “Other people’s money,” he said. He sounded dead sober.
    I nodded. “There’s more where that came from. Now, I’m going away tomorrow. Out of the country. I won’t tell you