Acceptable Losses by Irwin Shaw Page A

had started the marriage off as an unexpected and puzzling calamity from which finally there was no recovery.
    Despite all this, the divorce had been amicable. Freed of the bonds of physical obligations, they remained friends. Her taste in literature was eclectic and dependable, and he sometimes gave her manuscripts to read to get her reaction to them, and her advice was usually helpful. It was only in the last three years, after her second husband died, that she had taken to asking him for money. Her husband had been a professional gambler, and together with him she had spent most of her time at Las Vegas and at racetracks around the country, sometimes, varying with the speed of horses or the turn of a wheel, living in high style and sometimes forced to pawn the jewelry her husband showered on her during lucky streaks.
    Damon was not a miserly man and even with his limited means before Threnody he would not have begrudged her the comparatively small sums she asked of him if he hadn’t known that the money would end up in the hands of clerks in liquor stores and of bookies and players who were more expert than she at the backgammon board. It was at those times that he returned home grim-faced and out of sorts and to endure Sheila’s disapproval.
    Still, through it all Elaine had retained her ability to amuse him. Today, though, he thought glumly, looking at his watch again, the conversation would not be amusing.
    He saw her coming into the restaurant and looking around near-sightedly for him. Her hair was now cut short and dyed a violent magenta to hide the gray streaks. Gratefully, he saw that she had on a decent dark blue dress and was wearing high-heeled shoes instead of her usual scuffed moccasins. The fumes as he kissed her cheek, however, were still the same.
    Her face was surprisingly young and unlined and her green eyes, against all odds, were clear.
    “You look very well,” he said, as they seated themselves side by side on the banquette. “Very chic, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    “I’ve had a nice run with the horses,” she said. “It improves the health. And I’ve got a new boy friend who insisted I burn all my old clothes.”
    “Good for him,” Damon said, thinking, at the age of eighty she’ll still be having new boy friends.
    She turned on the banquette so that she could look at him. “ You don’t look all that well. What is it—doesn’t good luck agree with you?”
    “I didn’t ask you to come here to talk about my health,” Damon said. “It’s something else.”
    “If it’s about the money I owe you”—she had always pretended that what he gave her were not gifts but loans—“I probably could squeeze most of it out of my boy friend. He’s a distributor.”
    “Distributor of what? Clothes to undeserving ladies?”
    Elaine smiled calmly, undisturbed by the jibe. She had never had a bad temper, except when drunk, when she insulted everyone in sight. “Slot machines. It’s a nice income, even though it means having business dinners with some very peculiar gentlemen.”
    “It’s just because of that,” Damon said, “that I asked you to have lunch with me. As long as I’ve known you, with your penchant for gambling, you’ve mingled with peculiar gentlemen, at least in my view of things. Jockeys, horse-trainers, gamblers, bookies, touts, and God knows what else.”
    “A girl has a right to choose her friends,” Elaine said with dignity. “They’re a lot more fun than those dreary writers always talking about Henry James you used to bring home. If you intend to lecture me I might as well leave right now.” She started to get up, but he waved her down.
    “Sit down, sit down.” He looked up at the waiter who was standing in front of their table. “What do you want to eat?”
    “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? Or are you still crusading to keep me sober?”
    “I forgot. What do you want?”
    “What’s that you’re drinking?” She gestured toward the