Acceptable Losses (21 page)

“They let out one hundred and twenty of us yesterday,” his father said. He looked around at the other guests unpleasantly, then went up to Sheila and said, “Are you still my wife or aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Sheila said, “I’m still your wife.”

“Then why are you eating all this fancy slop?” his father said, taking the plate from her hand and tipping it to pour most of the food, in a heavy sauce, onto the floor.

Perhaps the dream had gone on, but Damon didn’t remember any more of it.

Sitting, solitary and disturbed in the noisy restaurant, Damon tried to figure out what the dream meant. His father had never committed a crime, had always been fond of his surviving son to the point of doting, had died before Damon had met Sheila, had never tried to appropriate any of his son’s girl friends, had been blessed with the gentlest and most courteous of manners. Was it possible that after death, with the corruption of the body there was an ongoing corruption of the soul? Or was he, Roger Damon, subconsciously, while he slept, rearranging his image of his father from the tender and loving man he had known, to a surly and distasteful figure in order to reject the temptation to join that once-smiling and gesturing ghost?

And what did the number one hundred and twenty mean?

He had closed his eyes and had put his hands over them as he bent over the table to shut out the other patrons of the restaurant. He was so deep in memory and conjecture that he was almost startled when he heard the waitress’s voice saying, “Is there anything more, Sir?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “The check, please.”

He paid for his meal, left a tip, asked for change of a dollar because he had a telephone call to make, which he would not make in the office because he didn’t want Oliver to overhear any part of the conversation. The call was to Lieutenant Schulter. He had tried to reach the lieutenant every day since he and Sheila had listened to Zalovsky’s message that morning before breakfast, but each time he had called the man at homicide had said, “Lieutenant Schulter is not available.”

“Do you know when he’s going to be available?”

“No, Sir. Do you want to leave your name?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll call again.” He found a bar, went into it, ordered a whiskey to show his honorable intentions and left it on the bar as he went toward the rear, where there was a telephone booth.

This time he was lucky. He was put on immediately to the detective and Schulter’s rasping voice grated in the receiver. “Lieutenant Schulter here.”

“Lieutenant,” Damon said, “I called a few days ago but …”

“I was out of town on a case. Anything new with you?”

Damon told him about the message.

“Uhuh. Four days ago, was it?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing since then?”

“No. Not a word.”

“He’s probably getting tired playing the game,” Schulter said. “He’s kept you awake enough nights, now he’s probably calling five or six other people. I wouldn’t worry too much.” Damon could tell that Schulter was becoming bored with the case. “There’s nothing much to go on so far. If you want, you could go to your local precinct and lodge a John Doe complaint claiming obscene and threatening telephone calls, although I doubt they could help you any more than I can. There must be ten thousand calls like that a night in New York. You finish making your list yet?”

“I’m working on it,” Damon said, feeling like a backward pupil who hasn’t prepared his homework, caught out in class.

“If anything comes up, call me,” Schulter said. “Oh, by the way, they checked out that feller, McVane. Nothing there. His neighbors say he hasn’t gone out of the house at night for more than a year, and he didn’t have a knife in the house you could cut even a steak with.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Damon said, but the detective had already hung up.

He went back to the bar, drank half his whiskey, paid for it and left a large tip for the barman. Who knows, he thought sardonically, when a bartender might become your enemy?

Still, he didn’t want to go back to the office. He knew he had been disagreeable the last few days, had been brusque with Miss Walton, had built an invisible wall of silence between his desk and Oliver Gabrielsen’s, had scolded Miss Walton for putting a call through to him from a man she should have known he detested and tried to avoid, had told her at the end of the scolding that he would only take calls from his wife and a Mr. Schulter.

The atmosphere in the office had reflected all this. When Oliver talked to Miss Walton, it was in hushed tones. And when he came through the door into the office, even if for the moment neither of them was talking, the hush, Damon felt, became more intense.

Standing there at the bar, staring down at the rest of the whiskey, which he would not drink, he felt ashamed of himself for loading his own troubles on the shoulders of his loyal and uncomprehending friends. An idea came to him and his spirits rose. He would go out and buy a present for both Miss Walton and Oliver and bear the presents to them as a peace offering, an acknowledgment of guilt and a promise of more comradely behavior in the future. Shopping for others, trying to find just the gift that would give pleasure to the faithful was an antidote to self-pity. Thinking of the faithful, he would also get something for Sheila.

The streets, after he had left the bar, seemed brighter than when he had entered it, and he felt better than at any moment since he had picked up the telephone on the bedside table on that Saturday night.

First, Miss Walton. Poor woman, she was too fat to find any frilly feminine thing that would make her more attractive, and the only piece of jewelry he had ever seen her wear was a small gold cross that she always carried on a thin chain around her throat. He imagined that Saks might have something that had a chance of pleasing her. He would have to find a sympathetic saleswoman. As he walked toward the store, he snapped his fingers. He knew what he would look for. Miss Walton was always cold in the office. Both he and Oliver liked as much fresh air as they could get, and when they worked, they kept the temperature as low as they could manage without actually freezing them out of the place. Miss Walton always wore a heavy sweater at work in mute complaint of her bosses’ tastes in the New York climate. She wore it, too, in the summer with a second sweater under it when the air-conditioning was turned on. It had been the same sweater as long back as Damon could remember, a drab, dark maroon cardigan that she had knitted herself. Since during the years she had worked for the office she had grown fatter and fatter, she must have kept knitting new sweaters to accommodate her swelling bulk, but they were always the same style, the same heavy drab maroon. He decided he would get her a cardigan sweater, since that seemed to be her taste, but in a more cheerful color.

He quickened his step, pleased with himself. The old head was working, he thought. It was the first decision he had made in ten days that had not involved The Problem, as he now thought of it, with the capital letters.

There was a pleasant feminine hum in the store.

Women shopped quietly. It was agreeably different from the high treble in restaurants where women congregated for lunch, restaurants he avoided as much as possible, himself.

He found the section where women’s sweaters were sold. When the nice young black girl who was serving him asked, “What size, Sir?” after he had described what he was looking for, he was stumped. He knew what size coats Sheila wore and Sheila was a big woman and wore a forty-two. As far as he could judge, Miss Walton was about twice as large as Sheila although not as tall. He didn’t know much about women’s clothes, but he knew he couldn’t ask for a size eighty-four.

“Well,” he said to the salesgirl, “I’m not quite sure.” He put out his hands in front of his chest to make a semicircle that he guessed was about the amount of space Miss Walton’s bosom took up. “I would say she’s about this big in this vicinity,” he said.

The salesgirl laughed, showing brilliant teeth and he laughed, too. Buying and selling was a humorous enterprise, a friendly bond between races. “I’m afraid, Sir,” the girl said, “that you won’t find anything nearly like that here. I suggest that you try the men’s department.”

“Thank you,” he said and started toward the elevators, thinking, Whoever hires people for the store should be congratulated.

He found a sweater in light blue cashmere that was too big for him when he tried it on but bought it when the salesmen assured him that if it didn’t fit the lady, she could bring it back and exchange it. He felt that the price was hideously expensive, but he was in no mood to worry about money. Anyway, he was paying with a Saks credit card and the bill would only come in at the end of the month and that postponed the pain.

While he was in the men’s department, he thought he might as well look around for something for Oliver Gabrielsen. He knew Oliver’s size because Sheila had bought a ski sweater for him at Christmas.

He browsed happily along the aisles and the racks of suits and jackets, enjoying the little shopping holiday, finally understanding how women could spend afternoons on end shopping and realizing at the same moment that it could become a deadly addiction.

He bought a blue flannel blazer with brass buttons for Oliver and asked that it be gift-wrapped, too.

“Would that be all, Sir?” the salesman asked. “Not something for you?”

Damon hesitated for a moment. “Why not?” he asked. Everybody was coming up with great ideas this afternoon. “What do you suggest?”

“We have a new selection of corduroy jackets,” the man said. “They’re being featured in our windows this week. And they last almost forever. They’re very useful if you spend any time in the country.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Another splendid idea. “I expect to be living in the country full time shortly.” Suddenly the concept that he might retire and live overlooking the Sound in Connecticut, which had only been an idle fancy for the vague future up to then, became a reality.

“If you’ll follow me, Sir,” the man said, leading him to a long rack where the jackets were ranged. “What size would you say? Forty-six?”

“You flatter me,” Damon said. The afternoon was getting better and better. “Fifty-four would be more like it.”

The salesman looked dubious, but took a natural-colored corduroy jacket down. “We’ll just try this on for size, shall we?”

It fit perfectly.

“You’re much larger than one would think,” the salesman said.

“Alas,” said Damon. “Will you send this, please.” He gave the man his address. “And the delivery will have to be in the morning, when the maid is in the house. I’ll tell her to expect you.”

Again he took the credit card out of his wallet. The jacket cost more than any entire suit he had ever bought, but he hadn’t bought a new suit in six years. Inflation, he thought lightly. Grin and bear it. The wallet was old and cracked, he saw. He forgot how long he had had it. “Where’s the leather goods department, please?”

“Downstairs,” the man said.

Humming gently to himself, Damon went down to the leather goods department and bought a pigskin wallet. Inflation, he saw, had not spared the leather goods department, either. No matter.

“Shall I have it gift-wrapped?” the salesman asked.

“No. It’s for myself. I’ll just slip it in my pocket, if you don’t mind.” He put his old wallet on the top of the glass case where the wallets were displayed and emptied it—credit cards, driver’s license, social security card, bills, proof of his existence and evidence that he was a citizen in the country of his choice. He put them carefully into the new wallet, then put it into his inside breast pocket. As he turned to leave, the salesman said, “Excuse me, Sir, what do you want done with this one?” He held up the cracked, worn old piece of leather as though it were staining his fingers.

“Throw it away,” Damon said grandly. Then he remembered Sheila. Mustn’t forget the skipper in this fiesta of self-pampering. She would be angry if she knew that he sometimes thought of her as the skipper. She firmly believed that all decisions were made by equal consent in their household. This was not true. “By the way,” he asked the salesman, “can you tell me where the furs department is?”

The salesman told him and he took the elevator again, lightly carrying the boxes with Miss Walton’s sweater and Oliver’s blazer in them. Roger Damon, bringer of peace among the nations, dispenser of gold, goodwill and harmony, rising in the world of Saks.

The saleswoman who greeted him in the fur department was a handsome lady with beautifully coiffed gray hair who apologized that since it was spring the stocks were depleted, but she would be happy to show the gentleman what there was.

The season didn’t matter to Damon. Sheila would be around for many winters. He had seen an advertisement in the Sunday
Times
magazine section for sports furs. Sheila could stand a little sport, he thought. “Here is something in ranch mink,” the elegant lady said to him. It was a pale three-quarter length coat with a belt and a shawl collar. Damon couldn’t imagine what sport any woman could play in the coat but didn’t inquire. Nor did he inquire what sport the mink had indulged in at the ranch. Not an endangered species. His ecological principles were not being violated. The elegant lady, he guessed, was just about Sheila’s size, age and general shape. “Would you mind trying it so I can see how it looks on you?” Damon asked. “My wife is just about the same height as you and if I remember,” he tried to smile without making it a smirk, “about the same … uh … formation.” Then, to gain goodwill in the fur department at Saks forever, he said, “She’s beautiful.” He did not add that while the saleslady had silvery-gray hair, his wife’s hair was glittering black and would make a more striking contrast with the color of the coat.

The coat looked magnificent on the gray-haired lady as she walked back and forth modeling it, throwing the shawl collar up around her ears, plunging her hands in the deep pockets, opening it wide, like a butterfly’s wings, to display the rippled silk lining.

“I’ll take it,” Damon said.

The woman looked at him sharply. “Don’t you want to look at any other coats? And the price?”