James Chase: You Find Him, I'll Fix Him

Gina who had got the set-up from my expression said tactfully, “After all, she is the daughter of a millionaire.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “From now on she can look after herself. She practically gave me the brush-oft.” We left it at that

I heard no more of her for the next four weeks. I had a lot to do in the office as I was going on vacation in a couple of months time, and I wanted everything ship-shape for Jack Maxwell who was coming out from New York to relieve me.

I had planned to spend a week in Venice, and then go south for three weeks to Ischia. This was my first long vacation in four years, and I was looking forward to it. I planned to travel alone. I like a little solitude when I can get it, and I also like to be able to change my mind where to stay and how long I would stay, and if I had a companion, I wouldn’t have this freedom of movement. Four weeks and two days after I had spoken to Helen Chalmers on the telephone, I had a call from Giuseppe Frenzi, a good friend of mine who worked on L’ Italia del Popolo. He asked me to go with him to a party the film producer, Guido Luccino, was throwing in honour of some film star who bad made a big hit at the Venice festival.

I like Italian parties. They are gracious and amusing, and the food is always exciting. I said I would pick him up around eight o’clock.

Luccino had a big apartment near Porta Pinciana. When we got there, the carriage-way was packed with Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces and Bugattis that made my 1954 Buick flinch as I edged it into the last of the parking spaces.

It was a good parry. I knew most of the people there. Fifty per cent of them were Americans, and Luccino, who cultivated Americans, had plenty of hard liquor circulating. Around ten o’clock, and after a flock of straight whiskies, I went out on to the patio to admire the moon and to cool off.

On the patio, alone, was a girl in a white evening gown. Her naked back and shoulders looked like porcelain in the moonlight. She was resting her hands on the balustrade, her head tilted back while she stared up at the moon. The moonlight made her blonde hair look like spun glass. I wandered over to her and paused by her side. I stared up at the moon too.

“Pretty nice after the jungle inside,” I said

“Yes.”

She didn’t turn to look, at me. I sneaked a look at her.

She was beautiful. Her features were small, her lips were a glistening red; the moonlight sparkled in her eyes.

“I thought I knew everyone in Rome,” I said. “How is it I don’t know you?”

She turned her head and looked at me. Then she smiled.

“You should know me, Mr. Dawson,” she said. “Have I changed so much that you don’t recognize me?”

I stared at her, and I felt a sudden thumping of my pulse and a tight feeling across my chest.

“I don’t recognize you,” I said, thinking she was the loveliest woman I had seen in Rome, and how young and desirable she was.

She laughed.

“Are you so sure? I am Helen Chalmers.”

My first reaction when I heard who she was was to tell her how she had changed, how surprised I was to find her so beautiful, and stuff like that, but after looking into her moonlit eyes I had other ideas. I knew it would be a mistake to say the obvious.

I spent half an hour with her out on the patio. This unexpected meeting threw me off balance. I was sharply aware that she was my boss’s daughter. She was cagey, too, but she wasn’t dull. We kept the conversation on an impersonal plane. We talked about the party, who was who, and wasn’t the band good and what a lovely night it was.

I was attracted to her the way a pin is attracted to a magnet. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I couldn’t believe this lovely creature was the same girl I had met at the airport: it just didn’t seem possible.

Suddenly, from out of the stilted conversation we were making, she said, “Have you a car here?”

“Why, yes. It’s in the carriage-way.”

“Will you take me back to my apartment?”

“What - now?” I was disappointed. “The party will warm up in a little while. Wouldn’t you like to dance?”

She stared at me. Her blue eyes were disconcertingly searching.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you away. Don’t bother; I can get a taxi.”

“You’re not dragging me away. If you really want to go, I’ll be happy to drive you home. I thought you were enjoying yourself here.”

She lifted her shoulders and smiled.

“Where is your car?”

“At the end of the line — a black Buick.”

“I’ll meet you at the car then.”

She moved away, and as I made to accompany her, she lifted her hand in an unmistakable gesture. She was telling me we shouldn’t be seen together.

I let her go on ahead while I lit a cigarette. This had suddenly become a conspiracy. I noticed my hands were unsteady. I gave her a couple of minutes, then I went back into the vast lounge that was packed with people, looked for Luccino, but couldn’t see him and decided I’d let my thanks drift until to-morrow morning.

I walked out of the apartment, down the flight of stairs and down the long drive.

I found her sitting in the Buick. I got in beside her.

“It is just off Via Cavour.”

I drove away down Via Vittorio Veneto. At this hour the usual heavy traffic had thinned a little, and it only took me ten minutes to reach the street in which she lived. During the drive, neither of us said anything.

“Please stop here,” she said.

I pulled up and got out of the car. I went around and opened the off-side door for her. She got out and looked up and down the deserted street

“You’ll come up? I’m sure we have a lot to talk about,” she said.

I remembered again that she was my boss’s daughter. “I’d like to, but perhaps I’d better not,” I said. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to disturb anyone.”

“You won’t do that.”

She started off down the street, so I turned off the car’s lights and went after her.

I am explaining this in detail because I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my first relations with Helen. It may be difficult to believe, but if I had known there was no one in her apartment — no girl friend, no servant, no nobody — wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me inside. I didn’t know. I thought there would at least be a servant.

All the same I was uneasy about going into her apartment at that time of night I kept wondering what Sherwin Chalmers would think if someone told him I had been seen entering his daughter’s apartment at ten forty-five at night

My future and all that it meant to me was in Chalmers’s hands. A word from him and I would be out of the newspaper racket for good. Fooling around with his daughter could be as dangerous as fooling around with a rattlesnake.

Thinking about it later, I realized that Helen also wasn’t taking any chances. She had prevented me from accompanying her from Luccino’s apartment, and she had fixed it that I had parked my car two hundred yards from the entrance to her apartment block so if one of my bright friends happened to see the car he wouldn’t put two and two together.

We rode up in the automatic elevator, meeting no one in the lobby. We got inside her apartment without anyone seeing us. When she had shut the front door and had taken me into a large pleasant lounge, lit by shaded lamps and decorated with bowls of flowers, I suddenly got the impression that we were the only two in the apartment.

She dropped her wrap on a chair and went over to an elaborate cocktail cabinet.

“Will you have rye or gin?”

“You aren’t alone here, are you?” I asked.

She turned and stared at me. In the shaded lights, she looked stunning.