Voices of a Summer Day by Irwin Shaw Read Free Book Online

as though I’ve done you a favor,” Pat said, her voice sharp. “Love is not a favor. At least mine isn’t. Remember that.” And she turned and swept into the building.
    He looked after her, stunned. Surprise Number Two, he thought. Surprise Number One had been the revelation that she loved him. He walked thoughtfully back toward school, thinking about what she had said as she pulled away from him. Love is not a favor. Of course not, he thought. What a tremendous girl. He arrived at the school smiling.
    When, just before the Christmas holiday, he accepted Dyer’s offer for the New Year’s Eve job in Pennsylvania, he knew he was going to have a difficult explanation to make to Pat. They had both been invited to a party for the holiday at the apartment of Pat’s girl friend in New York, with the usual arrangement for staying over. It was going to be a large party, the girls in evening dresses and the boys in dinner jackets, and Pat had already bought her dress and had arranged to borrow a dinner jacket for Benjamin from her older married brother, who was approximately Benjamin’s size. Pat was sentimental about holidays and anniversaries, and Benjamin knew how eagerly she was looking forward to New Year’s Eve, with its display of an elegance that until now had been so conspicuously absent from their relationship. Added to that, this one holiday was special and dear to both of them, with its celebration of the end of a year that had been the most momentous of their lives and its ceremonial promise of loving days to come.
    As they started toward her home after the last class before the Christmas vacation, he knew he was going to have to tell her now and that the next half-hour was going to be painful. It was snowing a little, giving the ordinary little town a festive air, and other students hurried past them exhilarated with their freedom, voices excited, laughter easy. Pat’s face was flushed with cold and pleasure, and she held Benjamin’s arm tightly and made them both run and slide on the snow like children.
    “I have an idea,” Pat said. “Let’s take the bus and go over to my brother’s house and get the tuxedo. I want to see how you’re going to look and…”
    “Pat,” Benjamin said soberly, stopping and holding her back. “I’m not going to need that tuxedo.”
    “What do you mean?” She looked puzzled. “It’s all arranged.”
    “I know,” Benjamin said. “But I can’t take you to that New Year’s party.”
    “But we accepted,” Pat said. “What’s happened?”
    Benjamin explained about the job at the country club and the fifteen dollars, plus tips.
    Pat’s face closed in, and Benjamin could see the effort she was making to hide how deeply she was hurt. “Fifteen dollars, plus tips,” she said finally. “Is it that important?”
    Benjamin laughed ruefully. There were holes in the soles of his shoes and he felt the snow coming up through them; his hair was grotesquely long, because he couldn’t afford a haircut; his mother walked more than a mile to do her shopping because she had exhausted all the family’s credit in every butcher and grocery shop in her neighborhood; his father had a temporary job, which would end on Christmas Eve, selling toys in a Newark department store. Pat knew all this. “Pat,” he said, “I don’t have to tell you the whole gloomy story all over again, do I?”
    “No,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. “Money!” she said fiercely. “I hate money!” She said it so loudly that two or three of the students who were passing by looked at her curiously.
    “You go to the party,” Benjamin said. “You won’t have any trouble finding somebody to take you.” This was certainly true. There were dozens of boys and young men who still persisted in calling her to ask for dates, despite the fact that she had refused them all from the day she met Benjamin. “You’ll have fun.”
    “I won’t have fun,” she said. “I’ll hate anybody I go