Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“Another Scotch and soda, please,” I said to the waiter.

“Prego?” The smile on the waiter’s face vanished as he faced me. He had not questioned me when I had ordered before.

“Ancora un whiskey con soda,” the lady said impatiently.

“Si Signera.” The smile appeared once more. “Molto grazia.”

“Thank you for helping out,” I said to the lady.

“He understood you perfectly well,” she said. “He was just being Italian. You’re American, aren’t you?”

“I guess it sticks out all over,” I said.

“Not to be ashamed,” she said. “People have a right to be American. Have you been here long?”

“Not long enough to learn the language.” I felt my pulse quickening. Things were going along infinitely better than I had dared hope. “I just arrived last night.”

She made an impatient gesture. “I mean here in the bar.”

“Oh. For about an hour.”

“An hour.” She had a clipped manner of talking but the voice was musical. “Did you by any chance see another American gentleman wander through? A man of about fifty, though he looks younger. Very fit. A little gray in the hair. Perhaps with a questing look in his eyes. As though he was looking for someone.”

“Well, let me think,” I said craftily. “What would his name be?”

“You wouldn’t know his name.” She looked hard at me. Adulteresses, even British ones, I had just discovered, weren’t anxious to broadcast the names or exact locations of their lovers.

“I wasn’t paying any particular attention,” I said innocently, “but I seem to have noticed somebody who might answer to your description at the door. Around six thirty, I would guess.” I wanted to keep the conversation going at any cost, and I wanted to keep the lady in the bar as long as possible.

“What a bore,” she said impatiently. “The mails these days!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, touching the letter in my pocket, “I didn’t quite get that. I mean, what about the mails?”

“No matter,” she said. The waiter was putting the drink on the table in front of her. I would not have been surprised if he had knelt to do so. My own drink was put before me without ceremony. The lady raised her glass. “Cheers,” she said. She plainly had no girlish prejudices against talking to strangers in bars.

“Are you here for long?” I asked.

“One never knows, does one?” She left a lipstick stain on her glass. I longed to ask her name, but something told me-not to rush matters. “Beautiful old Firenze. I’ve been in gayer towns.” As she talked, she kept turning her head toward the door. A German couple came in and she frowned again. She looked impatiently at her watch. “You’re sunburned,” she said to me. “Have you been skiing?”

“A little.”

“Where?”

“St Moritz, Davos.” It was a small lie.

“I adore St Moritz,” she said. “All those amusing cheap people.”

“Have you been there?” I asked. “This season, I mean.”

“No. Disaster intervened.” I would have liked to ask her about the health of her husband, to keep the conversation going on a friendly basis, but thought better of it. She looked around her with distaste. “This place is gloomy. They must have buried Dante in the front hall. Do you know of any brighter spot in town?”

“Well, I had a very good meal in a restaurant called Sabattini’s last night. If you’d care to join me tonight I’d be…”

At that moment a page came in, calling, “Lady Lily Abbott, Lady Lily Abbott…”

Longingly, L., I remembered, as she crooked a finger at the page. “Telephone per la signora,” the page said.

“Finalmente,” she said loudly and stood up and followed the boy into the lobby. She left her handbag on the chair, and I wondered how I could manage to look through it while she was busy on the phone without being arrested for theft. The German couple kept staring at me. Oddly, I thought. They would certainly report all suspicious activities to the proper authorities. I didn’t touch the bag.

She was gone about five minutes, and, when she came striding back into the bar, her expression could have been described as peevish if it had been on the face of another woman. On her it was noble displeasure. She slumped down in her chair, her feet sticking out straight under the table.

“I hope it wasn’t bad news,” I said.

“It wasn’t good.” She sounded grim. “Absent me from felicity awhile. Rearrangements of schedules. Someone will suffer.” She slugged down her gin and began to stuff her cigarettes and lighter into her bag.

“If that means you’re free…” I began. “What I was saying, when you were called to the phone. Lady Abbott…” It was the first time in my life that I had called anybody Lady Anything and I nearly stuttered over the words. “Well, I was about to invite you to have dinner with me at this very nice…”

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s sweet of you. But I’m not free. I’m taken for dinner. There’s a car waiting for me outside.” She stood up, gathering in her coat and bag. I stood up gallantly. She looked hard at me, squarely in the eyes. “A decision was made. The dinner will be over early,” she said. “All the poor old dears have to go beddy-bye. We can have a nightcap, if you’d like that.” “I’d like it very much.” “Shall we say eleven? Here, in the bar?” “I’ll be here.”

She swept out of the bar, leaving waves of sensuality quivering in the air behind her, like the reverberations of the last notes of an organ in a cathedral.

I spent the night in her room. It was as simple as that. “I came to Florence all primed to sin,” she said as she undressed, “and sin I shall.” I don’t believe she even asked my name until about 2.30 am.

Despite her imperious manner, she was a gentle and charming lover, undemanding, grateful, and pleasantly lacking in chauvinism. “There is a large, untapped reservoir of sexual talent in America,” she said at one point. “The New World to the aid of the diminishing Old. Isn’t that nice?”

I was happy to discover that my fears about impotence, nourished by the dreadful Mrs Sloane, were unfounded. I did not think I had to mention to Lady Abbott that my pleasure in her company was heightened by perverse overtones of vengeance.

She was the least curious of women. We talked little. She asked me no questions about what I did, why I was in Florence, or where I was going.

Just before I left her room (she insisted I get out before the help started stirring about), I asked her if she would lunch with me that day.

“If I don’t have a telephone call,” she said. “Kiss the lady good night.”

I bent over and kissed the wide, dear mouth. Her eyes were closed, and I had the impression that she was asleep before I went through the door.

As I went through the baronial halls of the hotel to my room, I felt a surge of optimism. Through Zurich, St Moritz, Davos, Milan, and Venice, nothing good had happened to me, no voice had spoken to me reassuringly. Until this night. The future was far from certain, but there were gleams of hope.

Sweet St Valentine’s Day.

Exhausted by the fitful wakefulness of my first night in Florence and my recent exertions, I fell into bed and slept soundly until almost noon.

When I awoke I lay still, staring at the ceiling, enjoying the feel of my body, smiling softly. I reached for the phone and asked for Lady Abbott. There was a long pause and then I heard the voice of the concierge. “Lady Abbott checked out at ten am. No, she left no message.”

It cost me ten thousand lire and a lie to extract the forwarding address of Lady Abbott from one of the assistants behind the concierge’s desk. Lady Abbott had left word that, while she wanted messages sent on to her, she did not want the address given out. As I slid the ten-thousand-lire note across to the man, I intimated that the lady had left a piece of jewelry of great value in my room and that it was imperative that I return it to her in person.