Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

I turned and looked into a shop window. My reflection stared back at me. A youngish-looking man in expensive ski clothes, on holiday in one of the most glamorous resorts in the world. You could have taken my picture for an advertisement for a chic travel magazine. Money no object. The vacation of your dreams.

Then I grinned at myself in the window. An idea had come to me. I started down the street, after the man on crutches. I was limping a little. By the time I passed him I was limping noticeably. He looked at me sympathetically. “You, too?” he said.

“Just a sprain,” I said.

By the time I reached the small private hospital conveniently located in the center of town, I was giving a fair imitation of a skier who had fallen down half the mountain.

Two hours later I came out of the hospital. I was equipped with crutches and my left leg was in a cast above the knee. I sat in a restaurant for the rest of the morning, drinking black coffee and eating croissants, happily reading the Herald Tribune of the day before.

The young doctor at the hospital had been skeptical when I told him I was sure I had broken my leg – “A hairline fracture,” I told him. “I’ve done it twice before.” He was even more skeptical when he looked at the X-rays, but when I insisted he shrugged and said, “Well, it’s your leg.”

Switzerland was one country where you could get any kind of medical attention you paid for, necessary or not. I had heard of a man who had a slight fungus growth on his thumb and had become obsessed with the idea that it was cancer. Doctors in the United States, England, France, Spain, and Norway had assured him it was only a slight fungus infection that would go away eventually and had prescribed salves. In Switzerland, for a price, he had finally managed to have it amputated. He now lived happily in San Francisco, thumb-less.

At one o’clock I took a taxi back to the Palace. I accepted the sympathy of the men at the desk with a wan smile, and I fixed a look of stoic suffering on my face as I clumped into the bar.

Flora Sloane was seated in a corner near the window, with the unopened bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice on the table in front of her. She was dressed in skintight green slacks and sweater that made the most of her generous, and I must admit, well-shaped bosom. Her leopard coat was on a chair beside her, and the aroma of her perfume made the bar smell like a florist’s shop full of exotic tropical plants.

She gasped when she saw me stagger in, using the crutches clumsily. “Oh, shit,” she said.

“It’s nothing,” I said bravely. “Just a hairline fracture. I’ll be out of the cast in six weeks. At least that’s what the doctor says.” I collapsed on a chair, with a sound that sensitive ears would have distinguished as a smothered groan, and put the cast up on the chair across from me.

“How in hell did you do it?” she asked crossly.

“My skis didn’t open.” That much was true. I hadn’t touched them that day. I crossed my skis and they didn’t open.

“That’s damned peculiar,” she said. “You haven’t fallen once since you’ve been here.”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” I said. “guess I was thinking about this afternoon and …”. Her expression softened. “You poor dear,” she said. “Well, anyway, we can have our champagne.” She started to signal the barman.

“I’m not allowed to drink,” I said. “The doctor was most specific. It interferes with the healing process.”

“Everybody else I know who’s broken bones went right on drinking,” she said. She was not a woman who liked to be deprived of her champagne.

“Maybe,” I said. “I have brittle bones, the doctor said.” I grimaced in pain.

She touched my hand lightly. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“A little,” I admitted. “The morphine’s beginning to wear off.”

“Still,” she said, “we can at least have lunch…”

“I hate to have to disappoint you. Flora,” I said, “but I’m a bit woozy. Actually, I feel like throwing up. The doctor said I’d better stay in bed today, with my leg up on some pillows. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Well, all I can say is you sure picked the wrong day to crash.” She brushed at her cashmere bosom. “And I got all dressed up for you.”

“Accidents happen when they’re fated to happen,” I said philosophically. “And you do look beautiful.” I heaved myself to my feet. Or rather my foot. “I think I’d better go upstairs now.”

“I’ll come with you and make you comfy.” She started to rise.

I waved her back. If you don’t mind, for the moment I’d rather be alone. That’s the way I’ve always been when something is wrong with me. Ever since I was a kid, I didn’t want to be lying helpless on a bed with Flora Sloane loose in the room. “Drink the champagne for both of us, dear. Please put this bottle on my bill,” I called to the barman.

“Can I come and see you later?” she asked.

“Well, I’m going to try to sleep. I’ll call you later if I wake up. Just don’t worry about me, dear.”

I left her there, the brightest and fullest flower in the garden, splendid and pouting in her tight green slacks and snug sweater, as I maneuvered out of the bar.

Just as the last light of the afternoon was dying in a pink glow on the farthest peaks I could see from my window, the door of my room opened softly. I was lying in bed merely staring brainlessly but comfortably at the ceiling. I had had lunch sent up and had eaten heartily. Luckily, the waiter had been in to take the tray, because it was Flora Sloane who poked her head around the door.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything.” She came into the room. I could barely see her in the dusk, but I could smell her. “How are you, honey?”

“Alive,” I said. “How did you get in here?” Being an invalid excused me from gallantry.

“The floor maid let me in. I explained.” She came over to the side of my bed and touched my forehead in a Florence Nightingale gesture. “You have no fever,” she said.

“The doctor says I can expect it at night,” I said.

“Did you have a good afternoon?” she asked, seating herself on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve had better.” This was not true – at least for the time I had been at St Moritz.

Suddenly, she swooped down and kissed me. Her tongue, as ever, was active. I twisted, so as to be able to breathe, and my bad leg (as I now considered it) dropped off the edge of the bed. I groaned realistically. Flora sat up, flushed and breathing hard. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s just … well, you know … sudden movements.”

She stood up and looked down at me. It was too dark in the room for me to see her face clearly, but I got the impression of the birth of suspicion. “You know,” she said, “a friend of mine picked up a young man on the slopes at Gstaad and they arranged to meet that night and, well …do it, and he broke his leg at three o’clock, but he didn’t let it stop him. By ten o’clock that night, they did it.”

“Maybe he was younger than I am,” I said lamely. “Or he had a different kind of break. Anyway, the first time … with you, I mean … I wouldn’t like it to be anything but perfect.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice was flat and unconvinced. “Well, I better be going. There’s a party tonight and I have to get ready.” She leaned over and kissed me chastely on the forehead. “If you want, though,” she said, “I can look in after the party.”

“I don’t think it would be a wise idea, really.” “Probably not. Well, sleep well,” and she left the room. I lay back and stared once more at the dark ceiling and thought of the heroic young man at Gstaad. One more day, I thought, and I’m getting out of here, crutches or no crutches. Still, Flora Sloane had given me an idea. Without a key to my room, she had had the door opened. The floor maid…