Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“He said he’d try to make it for a nightcap by one.” She shrugged. “I guess he’s so immersed in stripping that desperate oaf Sloane of his last penny he can’t be bothered with poor little me. Did you like the party?”

“Smashing,” I said.

“It was almost like being in Texas,” she said ambiguously. “Shall we drink, chaps?”

“I’ll order the champagne,” the tallest of the men said, lurching among the tables toward the bar like an ocean liner pulling out of a slip.

“Night, Gentle Heart,” Lily said. “Persist.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. Instant memories. I bowed a little and went out.

“Ripe for havoc,” she had said about Didi Wales. How right she was.

A minute later I was at the door of Eunice’s room. I listened, but there was no sound inside. I didn’t know what I expected to hear. Weeping? Laughter? Sounds of revelry? I knocked, waited, knocked again.

The door opened. Eunice was standing there in a lace dressing gown. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. Her tone was neither welcoming nor unwelcoming.

“May I come in?”

“If you want.”

“I want.”

She held the door wider and I went in. Her clothes were piled haphazardly all over the room. The window was open and a cold Alpine breeze was whistling in. I shivered a little, my resistance to the elements weakened by the events of the night. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

“Remember, I’m English,” she said, But she closed the window. Full-bodied, bare footed, rustling of lace.

“May I sit down?”

“If you wish.” She indicated a little upholstered chair. “Throw those clothes anywhere.”

I picked up the silk dress she had worn at the party. I imagined it was still warm from her skin. I laid it gently across a little writing desk. I sat down on the chair and she lay back against the piled pillows on the bed, her legs revealed as the dressing gown fell away. She had long legs like her sister, but fuller. Shapelier, I thought. I smelled lightly scented soap. She had scrubbed her face when she undressed, and her skin glowed in the light of the bedside lamp.

I mourned for the evening.

“Eunice,” I said, “I came to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain. Somebody got their appointments mixed, that’s all.”

“You don’t think I asked that little girl to come up to my room, do you?”

“I don’t think anything. She was just there. And she’s not that little. Well-developed, I’d call it.” Her tone was flat, weary. “One of us was de trop. I happened to think it was me.”

“Tonight,” I said, “I thought, finally…”

“That was my impression, too.” She smiled wryly.

“I wish I could have been bolder,” I said I mean even before tonight. “Only I’m not built that way.” I made a small helpless gesture with my hands. “And then there were always Miles and your sister.”

“Miles and my sister. Didn’t my sister tell you there were no preliminaries necessary with me?” – Her voice took on a sudden harshness.

“I won’t say what your sister told me.”

“She likes to give the impression that I’m the wildest girl in London. Bitch,” she said. “On the fingers of one hand.”

“What’s that?” I asked, puzzled.

“Never mind.” She lay back in the piled pillows and crossed her arms over her face. She talked, muffled, through soft flesh. “If you must know, I didn’t come to Zurich for you. Whoever you might have turned out to be. Though you turned out to be much dearer than I had ever imagined an American could be. Gentle Heart.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”

“We could forget the little accident in my room, you know.”

I could see her head shaking behind her arms. “Not me. I should really be grateful to that naked fat girl. Because I was coming up to your room for all the wrong reasons.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I wasn’t doing it for you. Or me.”

“Who, then?”

“For Miles Fabian,” she said bitterly. “I was going to have the most blatant, sexy, public affair with you anyone could imagine – to show him—”

“To show him what?”

“To show him I didn’t care a penny’s worth for him anymore. That I could be as fickle and callous as he was.” She was weeping now behind her arms. It had turned out to be my night for feminine tears.

“I think you had better explain, Eunice,” I said slowly.

“Don’t be dense, American,” she said. “I’m in love with Miles Fabian. Have been since the day I met him. I asked him to marry me years ago. So he fled. Into the arms of my bitch sister.”

“Oh.” For the moment, it was all I could say. She took her arms away from her face. The tears had made gleaming silvery streaks on her cheeks. But her expression was calm, relieved. “If you hurry,” she said, “maybe that little fat girl will still be there. So the evening won’t be a total waste.”

But Didi had already gone, leaving a note in schoolgirl handwriting on the desk. “I took your coat. So I would have a memento. Maybe one day you’ll want to get it. You know where I am. Love Didi.”

As I was finishing reading, the phone rang. I nearly didn’t answer it. It was not a night on which I could expect good news over the telephone.

I picked it up.

“Douglas?” It was Fabian.

“Yes?”

“I hope I didn’t interrupt you at anything serious,” he said with the hint of a chuckle.

“No.”

“I thought you might like to hear how it went tonight”

“I certainly would.”

There was a slight sigh on the phone. “I’m afraid I didn’t do so well, old chap. Sloane had a phenomenal streak of luck. We’ll have to do some banking in the morning.”

“How much?”

“Around thirty thousand.” Fabian said matter-of-factly.

“Francs?”

“Dollars, Gentle Heart.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said, and hung up.

The next morning the following things happened to me.

On my breakfast tray, which I called for at ten o’clock, because I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until nearly dawn, there was a note from Eunice. “Dear Gentle Heart, I am taking the nine o’clock train out of Gstaad. I’m sure you understand why I’m doing this. Love.”

I understood.

Miles Fabian called on the telephone and asked me to meet him in town in front of the Union Bank of Switzerland at eleven o’clock.

I was arrested. Or at the time, it seemed that I was arrested.

I was shaving, looking with distaste at my yellowed eyes in the mirror, when there was a knock on the door. With the lather still on my face, I went to the door. One of the assistant managers was standing there, correct in his dark suit and white shirt, with a squat man in a belted dark overcoat and a porcupine head of a gray hair, cut short.

“Mr Grimes,” the assistant manager said, “may we come in?”

“I’m shaving,” I said. “And as you see, I’m not dressed.” All I had on was the bottom of my pajamas and I was barefooted. “Can’t it wait a few minutes?”

The assistant manager spoke rapidly in German to the gray-haired man, who said only one word. “Nein.”

“Police Officer Brugelmann says it can’t wait,” the assistant manager said apologetically.

Police Officer Brugelmann walked past me into the room.

“After you, Mr Grimes.” The assistant manager bowed a little.

I went into the bathroom, got a towel, and wiped the lather off my face and put on a bathrobe. Police Officer Brugelmann stood in the middle of the room, his eyes roaming icily over the bureau, on top of which I had my wallet and money clip and watch, then onto the two suitcases set on stands under the windows.