Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

My efforts at detective work had been pathetically useless. I had knocked at the Sloanes’ door several times on one pretext or another in the hope of being invited in so that I could at least take a quick, surreptitious look around their room, but whether it was the wife or the husband who responded, all conversations took place on the threshold, the door just barely ajar.

I bad opened my door every night when the hotel slept, but the brown shoes had never been in the corridor. I had begun to feel that I had been the victim of a hallucination in the train compartment – that Sloane had never worn brown shoes with gum soles and never had a red wool tie around his neck. I had brought up the subject of the confusion of luggage at airports these days, but the Sloanes had shown no interest. I would stay the week, I had decided, on the off chance that something would happen, and then I would leave. I had no idea of where I would go next. Behind the Iron Curtain, perhaps. Or Katmandu. Drusack haunted me.

“Those miserable bridge games.” Flora Sloane sighed over her Bloody Mary. “He’s losing a fortune. They play for five cents a point. Everybody knows Fabian’s practically a professional. He comes here for two months each winter and he walks away rich. I try to tell Bill that he’s just not as good a bridge player as Fabian, but he’s such a stubborn man he refuses to believe that anybody is better than him at anything. Then when he loses he gets furious at me. He’s the worst loser in the world. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he says to me. When he comes up to the room after one of those awful games, it’s nightmare time. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since I came up here. I have to drive myself to put on my ski boots in the morning. By the time I leave here, I’ll be a worn-out old hag.”

“Oh, come now. Flora.” I made the awaited objection. “You couldn’t look like a hag if you tried. You look blooming.” This was true. At all hours of the day and night, in no matter what clothes, she looked like an overblown peony.

“Appearances are deceiving,” she said darkly. “I’m not as strong as I look. I was very delicate as a child. Frankly, honey, if I didn’t know you were waiting for me downstairs every morning, I think I’d just stay in bed all day.”

“Poor girl,” I said sympathetically. The thought of Flora staying in bed was delicious, but not for the reason that Flora herself might have believed. With her off the hill I could give back my rented skis and boots and never have to go up the mountain again that winter. Even with the welcome discovery that my eyes served me adequately when skiing, after Vermont the sport had no joys for me.

“There’s a gleam of hope,” Flora said. She looked at me obliquely in that sidelong, automatically provocative way I had learned to hate. “Something has come up and Bill may have to go back to New York next week. Then we could spend all the time together.” The all had a thunderous emphasis that made me look around uneasily to see if anyone happened to be listening to us. “Wouldn’t that be just beautiful?”

“B … bu … beautiful,” I said. It was the first time I had stuttered since I had left the St Augustine. “Let’s … let’s go in for lun … lunch.”

That afternoon she presented me with a watch. It was a great thick model, guaranteed for accuracy under three hundred feet of water or when dropped from the roofs of tall buildings. It had a stopwatch attachment and all sorts of dials. It did everything but play the Swiss national anthem. “You shouldn’t have,” I said faintly.

“I want you to think of this marvelous week whenever you look at the time,” she said. “Don’t I get just a little kiss for it?”

We were in a stübli in the middle of town where we had stopped on the way to the hotel after the afternoon’s skiing. I liked it because there wasn’t a bottle of champagne in the house. The place smelled of melted cheese and wet wool from the other skiers who crowded the room, drinking beer. I pecked at her cheek.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked. “The watch, I mean”. “I love it,” I said “Hon … honestly. It’s just so extravagant.” “Not really, honey,” she said. “If you hadn’t come along and just pampered me, I’d have had to hire a ski teacher and you know what ski teachers cost in a place like this. And you have to buy them lunch besides. And the way they eat I think they just dine on potatoes all the rest of the year and stock up in the winters.” She was a flighty woman, but she had a strong feeling for economics. “Here,” she said, “let me put it on you.” She slipped it on my wrist and clipped on the heavy silver band. “Isn’t it just absolutely male?”

“I suppose you could describe it like that,” I said. When I finally rid myself of the Sloanes, man and wife, I would take it back to the jeweler’s and sell it back. It must have cost at least three hundred dollars.

“Just don’t tell Bill about it,” she said. “It’s a little secret between you and me. A little darling secret. You’ll remember, won’t you, honey?”

“I’ll remember.” That was one promise I definitely would keep.

The crisis arrived the next morning. When she came down into the hall where I was waiting for her as usual at ten o’clock, she wasn’t in ski clothes. “I’m afraid I can’t ski with you this morning, honey,” she said. “Bill has to go to Zurich today and I’m taking him to the train. The poor man. With all this beautiful snow and gorgeous weather and all.” She giggled. “And he has to stay overnight, too. Isn’t it just too bad?”

“Awful,” I said. “I hope you won’t be lonesome, skiing by yourself,” she said.

“Well, if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped,” I said manfully.

“Actually,” she said, “I don’t feel much like skiing today either. I have an idea. Why don’t you go up now and get your exercise and come down by one o’clock and we’ll have a cozy little lunch somewhere? Bill’s train leaves at twenty to one. We can have a perfectly dreamy afternoon together…”

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

“We’ll start with a scrumptious cold bottle of champagne in the bar,” she said, “and then we’ll just see how things work out. Does that sound attractive to you?”

“Scrumptious.”

She gave me one of her significant smiles and went back Upstairs to her husband. I went out into the cold morning air feeling a frown beginning to freeze on my face. I had no intention of skiing. If I never saw a pair of skis again it would be all the same to me. I regretted ever having listened to Wales about the ski club plane, which was the beginning of the chain of events that was leading Mrs Sloane inexorably into my bed. Still, I had to admit to myself, if I had crossed the ocean on a regular flight and my bag had been stolen, I’d have no notion at all of where I might look for it. And through the Sloanes I had met quite a few of the other passengers on the plane and had been able to try my lost luggage gambit on them. True. it had yielded nothing so far, but one could always hope that on the next hill or in the next Alpine bar, a face would leap out, an involuntary gasp or heedless word would put me on the track of my fortune.

I thought of leaving St Moritz on the same train with Sloane, but when we got to Zurich what could I do? I couldn’t trail him around the city spying on him.

I contemplated the perfectly dreamy afternoon ahead of me, starting with a scrumptious bottle of champagne (on my bill) and groaned. A young man, swinging ahead of me down the street on crutches, his leg in a cast, heard me and turned and stared curiously at me. Everyone to his own brand of trouble.