Read Online Nightwork by Irwin Shaw - Free Book Online

the installation of Richard Nixon as President of the United States.
    There was a Grimes buried in the cemetery, an uncle, who had died in 1921 from the effects of a dose of chlorine gas in the Argonne Forest. Myself, I would never be buried in Arlington. I was a veteran of no wars. I had been too young for Korea and by the time Vietnam came around I was set in the job with the airline. I had not been tempted to volunteer. Walking among the graves, I experienced no regret that I finally would not be laid to rest in this company of heroes. I had never been pugnacious—even as a boy I had had only one fistfight at school, and, although I was patriotic enough and saluted the flag gladly, wars had no attraction for me. My patriotism did not run in the direction of bloodshed.
    When I went out of the hotel the next morning, I saw there was a long line of people waiting for taxis, so I started to walk, hoping to pick up a taxi along the avenue. It was a mild day, pleasant after the biting cold of New York, and the street I was on gave off an air of grave prosperity, the passersby well-dressed and orderly. For half a block I walked side by side with a dignified, portly gentleman wearing a coat with a mink collar who looked as though he could well be a Senator. I amused myself by imagining what the man’s reaction would be if I went up to him, fixed him, like the Ancient Mariner, who stoppeth one of three, and told him what I had been doing since early Tuesday morning.
    I stopped at a traffic light and hailed a cab which was slowing to a stop there. It was only after the cab had come to a halt that I saw that there was a passenger in the back, a woman. But the cabby, a black man with gray hair, leaned over and turned down the window. “Which way you going, mister?” the cabby asked.
    “State.”
    “Get in,” the cabby said. “The lady is on the way.”
    I opened the back door. “Do you mind if I get in with you, ma’am?” I asked.
    “I certainly do,” the woman said. She was quite young, no more than thirty, and rather pretty, in a blonde, sharp way, less pretty at the moment than she might ordinarily have been, because of the tight, angry set of her lips.
    “I’m sorry,” I said apologetically and closed the door. I was about to step back on the curb when the cabby opened the front door. “Get in, suh,” the cabby said.
    Serves the bitch right, I thought, and, without looking at the woman, got in beside the driver. There was a bitter rustle from the back seat, but neither the cabby nor I turned around. We drove in silence. When the cab stopped in front of a pillared government building, the woman leaned forward. “One dollar and forty-five cents?” she said.
    “Yes, ma’am,” the cabby said.
    The woman yanked open her purse, took out a dollar bill and some change, and put it down on the back seat. “Don’t expect to find a tip,” she said as she got out. She walked toward the big front doors, her back furious. She had nice legs, I noted.
    The cabby chuckled as he reached back and scooped up his fare. “Civil servant,” he said.
    “Spelled c-u-n-t,” I said.
    The cabby chuckled again. “Oh, in this town you learn to take the fat with the lean,” he said.
    As he drove, he shook his head, chuckling to himself, over and over again.
    At State, I gave the man a dollar tip. “I tell you, suh,” the cabby said, “that little blonde lady done made my day.”
    I went into the lobby of the building and up to the information desk.
    “I’d like to see Mr. Jeremy Hale, please,” I said to the girl at the desk.
    “Do you know what room he’s in?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    The girl sighed. Washington, I saw, was full of tight-assed women. While the girl thumbed through a thick alphabetical list for Jeremy Hale I remembered how I had once said to Hale, long ago, With a name like that, Jerry, you had to wind up in the State Department. I smiled at the memory.
    “Is Mr. Hale expecting you?”
    “No.” I