Nightwork (33 page)

“I’ve taken so much loot from him,” Fabian said, “I feel I owe him an evening. And I also owe something to my reputation as a gentleman.”

“Not to me, you don’t.”

“Have confidence in me, Gentle Heart,” Fabian said.

“What sort of poker player are you?”

“Don’t sound so worried. I can take care of myself. Especially with Bill Sloane.”

“Famous last words,” I said. “Anybody can get lucky for one night.”

“If you’re so worried, you can come and watch.”

“My nerves aren’t that good,” I said. “And I doubt that Mr. Sloane would be charmed by my presence.”

“Anyway, explain to the girls, will you?”

“I’ll explain,” I said, without grace.

“There’s a dear fellow. Really, Douglas, if you’re so skeptical, I’ll do it on my own. I’ll stake myself.”

I hesitated, tempted, then felt ashamed. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m in for half, win or lose.”

“Smashing,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. As I hung up I knew the party would have to be one of the greatest social events of the year if I was going to enjoy the evening.

T
HERE WERE FIFTY GUESTS AT
the party, with tables set for groups of six and eight in the enormous living room of the chalet, which was furnished in a cottagey and comfortable style, despite its great size. For dinner, there were fresh lobsters flown in that afternoon from Denmark. Two Renoirs and a Matisse, not particularly cottagey, hung on the walls. The lighting was low, to flatter the ladies, but not dim enough to make you feel that you were addressing a shadow when you spoke to your dinner partner. The ladies needed no flattering. They all looked as though at one time or another they had been photographed by my cameraman friend from
Women’s Wear Daily
. The acoustics of the room must have been expertly planned, since, even when everybody seemed to be talking at once, the total sound in the room never rose above a polite and pleasant hum.

The host, a tall, gray-haired, hawkish-looking man, I was told, was a retired banker from Atlanta. A soft, agreeable Southern cadence mellowed his speech, and both he and his young wife, a dazzling Swedish lady, seemed genuinely pleased that I had been able to come to their party. It turned out they were celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary. If Didi Wales had been invited, she might have revised her ideas about marriage.

There was a general air of sunburned health and offhand camaraderie among the guests, and through the course of the evening, during which I listened to a good deal of random conversation, I heard no one nibbling away at anybody else’s reputation. While I wondered secretly how so many grown men could find the time away from their jobs to achieve the mountaineer bronze that was the standard male complexion, I asked no questions and was asked no question about my profession in return.

Looking around the candlelit room at the immaculate men and the perfectly turned out women, all of them imperiously privileged and at ease with fortune, I felt with added intensity the power of Miles Fabian’s arguments in favor of wealth. If there were rifts, divisions, jealousies here, they were not evident, at least to me. Assembled for celebration, the guests were a joyous company of equal friends, secure against disaster, above petty care. As I seated myself next to Eunice, who was radiant in silk, the peer in beauty and grace of manner of any of the beauties in the room, I regarded her with new calculation. I squeezed her hand under the table and got a warm, sensual smile in return.

The talk at the table at which Eunice and I found ourselves was for the most part inconsequential—the usual anecdotes about snow and broken legs that are standard at all ski resorts, interspersed with criticisms of the theater in Paris, London, and New York and the appreciation of recent movies in various languages. The dicta expressed around the table even in the space of a half hour represented an impressive amount of multilingual traveling.

I had seen none of the plays and few of the movies and kept a public silence, whispering from time to time to Eunice, who had also seen all the plays in London and Paris and spoke with authority about them and was listened to respectfully. Lily was at another table, and in her absence Eunice spoke with much more freedom and assurance than usual. It turned out that she had at one time wanted to be an actress and had studied, for a short period, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I observed her with fresh interest. If she had neglected to tell me this rather important fact about her life, what other surprises might be in store for me?

The subject of politics came up with the dessert, a lemon sherbet floating in champagne. (I figured, at a rough guess, that the evening must have cost our host at least two thousand dollars, but was slightly ashamed of myself for even thinking in such terms.) Among the men at the table there was a plumpish, smooth-faced American of about fifty who was the head of an insurance company, a French art critic with a sharp black beard, and a burly English banker. The current governments of the three nations were gently but firmly deplored by all three gentlemen. Chauvinism was conspicuous by its absence. If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, there wasn’t a scoundrel at the table. The Frenchman complained in nearly perfect English about France, “The foreign policy of France combines the worst elements of Gaullism—egotism, evasiveness, and illusion”; the English banker matched him with, “The English workingman has lost the will to work. And I don’t blame him”; the American insurance man contributed, “The doom of the capitalist system was sealed the day the United States sold two million tons of wheat to the Soviet Union.”

They all ate their lobster with relish and kept the waiter busy pouring from a seemingly inexhaustible store of bottles of exquisite white wine. I stole a look at the label on one of the bottles—Corton-Charlemagne—and noted it for future great occasions.

I kept silent, although I nodded gravely in agreement from time to time to show that I, too, belonged at the feast. I hesitated to talk, fearing that I somehow would betray my outsiderness, that a single uneasy word might sound a warning among the other guests, unmasking me as a visitor from the lower classes, contemplating revolution perhaps, the dangerous stain of the Hotel St. Augustine, that I had up to now managed to hide, suddenly detectable.

There was dancing after dinner in a huge playroom in the basement. Eunice, who loved to dance, went from partner to partner, while I stood at the bar, drinking, looking at my watch, feeling gloomy and deprived. I had always been a hopeless dancer and had never enjoyed it and certainly wasn’t going to make a show of myself on the floor among all those swooping, graceful figures who all seemed to be trained in the latest fashionable steps. I was just on the verge of slipping out and going back to the hotel when Eunice broke away from her partner and came over to me. “Old Gentle Heart,” she said. “You’re not having a good time.”

“Not really.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want to go home?”

“I was thinking of it. You don’t have to go, you know.”

“Don’t be a martyr, Gentle Heart. I hate martyrs. I’ve had enough dancing anyway.” She took my hand in hers. “Let’s go.” She led me around the edge of the dance floor, avoiding Lily. Upstairs, we got our coats and left without saying good-bye to anyone.

We walked along the snowy path, the night cold and crackling around us, the piny air exhilarating after the warmth and noise of the party. When we had gone about two hundred yards and the chalet was only a small glow of light behind us, we stopped as though a signal had passed between us and faced each other and kissed. Once. Then, walking unhurriedly, we went to the hotel.

We picked up our keys and got into the elevator. Without a word Eunice got off at my floor with me. We made a slow, formal parade of our walk down the carpeted hallway. It was as though she, like myself, wanted to savor every moment of the evening.

I opened the door to my room and held it so that Eunice could go in before me. She brushed past me, the cold fur of her coat electric against my sleeve. I went in after her and turned on the lamp in the small hallway.

“Oh, my God!” Eunice cried.

Lying on the big bed, outlined by the light from the hall, was Didi Wales. Asleep. And naked. Her clothes were neatly draped across a chair, with her snow boots primly together beneath it. Her mother, whatever her other failings, had obviously taught her child to be neat.

“Let me out of here,” Eunice said in a whisper, as though afraid of what would happen if she wakened the sleeping girl. “This is your baby.”

“Eunice …” I said forlornly.

“Good night,” she said. “Enjoy yourself.” She pushed past me and was gone.

I stared down at Didi. Her long blonde hair half-covered her face and her even breathing stirred the ends gently. Her skin in the lamplight was childishly rosy except for her throat and face, darkened by the sun. Her breasts were small and plump, her legs sturdy, athletic, schoolgirl’s legs. There was red polish on her toenails. She could have posed for an advertisement for baby food, although somewhat more fully clothed and without the nail polish. Her belly was a little soft mound and the hair beneath it a fuzzy shadow. She slept with her arms rigidly at her sides. It gave her a curious air of lying at attention. If it had been a painting instead of a live, sixteen-year-old girl, it would have been the essence of nude innocence.

But it wasn’t a painting. It was a sixteen-year-old girl whose mother and father were, at least technically, friends of mine, and there was no possibility that her intentions in breaking into my room and lying on my bed were in any way innocent. I had the cowardly impulse to steal quietly out of the room and leave her there for the night. Instead, I took off my coat and covered her with it.

The movement awakened her. She opened her eyes slowly and stared up at me, pushing the hair away from her face. Then she smiled. The smile made her look about ten years old.

“God damn it, Didi,” I said, “what the hell kind of school do you go to here?”

“It’s the kind of school where the girls climb out of the window at night,” she said. “I thought it would be nice to surprise you.” She was much more in control of her voice than I was.

“You surprised me, all right.”

“Aren’t you pleased?”

“No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

“When you get used to the idea,” she said, “maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Please, Didi …”

“If you’re worried because you think I’m a virgin,” she said loftily, “you can disabuse yourself. I’ve already had an affair with a man a lot older than you. A lecherous old Greek.”

“I don’t want any fancy talk,” I said. “I want you to get up off that bed and get dressed and get out of here and go climb back through that window of yours.”

“I know you don’t really mean that,” she said calmly. “You’re just making proper noises because you knew me when I was thirteen years old. I’m not thirteen years old anymore.”

“I know how old you are,” I said, “and it isn’t enough.”

“Nothing bores me more than having people make-believe I’m a child.” Aside from the gesture to push back her hair, she still hadn’t moved on the bed. “What’s the magic date for you? Twenty, eighteen?”

“There is no magic date, as you call it.” I heard my voice go higher and higher with exasperation and sat down across the room from her to retain my dignity and show that I was prepared to be reasonable. “I’m just not in the habit of going to bed with girls of any age after talking to them for ten minutes.”

“And I thought you were sophisticated.” She put as much scorn into the word as she could manage. “With those fancy ladies and that Jaguar.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m not sophisticated. Now will you get up and get dressed?”

“Don’t you think I’m pretty? People have told me my body is delectable. Connoisseurs.”

“I think you’re very pretty. Delectable, if you like. That has nothing to do with it.”

“Half the boys in town are trying to get me in bed with them. And plenty of men, if you want the truth.”

“I’m sure, Didi. It still has nothing to do with it.”

“You talked to me for a lot more than ten minutes, so that’s no excuse. We had a long conversation on Suicide Six. I remember, even if you don’t.”

“This is a ridiculous scene,” I said, as firmly and maturely as I could. “I’m ashamed for both of us.”

“There’s nothing ridiculous about love.”

“Love, Didi!” I exploded.

“I was in love with you three years ago …” Her voice began to quaver and tears, real or forced, appeared in her eyes, glistening in the lamplight. “And then when I saw you again. I suppose you think you’re too old and too worn out to believe in love?”

“I’m nothing of the kind.” I decided to try cruelty. “I just happen to have a certain code. And it doesn’t include fornicating with silly little girls who throw themselves at my head.”

“That’s an ugly word for a beautiful emotion.” Now she was frankly crying. “I didn’t think you were capable of talking like that.”

“I’m capable of feeling angry,” I said loudly, “and feeling foolish. And I feel both this minute.”

“It would serve you right,” she said, through sobs, “if I started yelling at the top of my voice and got the whole hotel in here and told everybody you tried to rape me.”

“Don’t be monstrous, young lady.” I stood up now to threaten her. “Just for your information, when I came into the room I was with a friend …”

“A friend,” she said. “Hah! One of those old bags.”

“No matter. If you try anything, she’ll tell everybody what she saw when she came into the room—you sleeping naked on the bed. That would fix you and your rape. You’d have to leave town in disgrace.”

“I want to leave this miserable town anyway. And disgrace is something you feel yourself, and I wouldn’t feel it.”

I tried another tack. “Didi, Baby …”

“Don’t call me Baby. I’m not a baby.”

“Okay, I won’t call you Baby.” I smiled gently at her. “Didi, don’t you want me to be your friend?”

“No. I want you to be my lover. Everybody else gets what they want,” she wailed. “Why can’t I?”