Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“What hotel?”

“Any hotel that will let us in,” Roberta said.

Guy gripped her arm above the elbow, hard. “Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

“Of course.” She smiled at him. She was enjoying doing this wicked planning for them. Somehow, it helped wipe out the memory of all the gaucheries she had committed that night. “Didn’t I tell you I would make all the advances? I’m now making the advances.”

Guy’s lips trembled. “American,” he said, “you are magnificent.” Roberta thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t seem to trust himself to go that far yet. He turned again on the saddle and started the Vespa. Now he drove with the care of a man transporting a load of precious porcelain on a rough mountain road.

They wound through the eighth arrondissement, passing hotel after hotel, but none of them seemed to attract Guy. He would hesitate as he saw one ahead of him, then shake his head and mumble something to himself and keep the Vespa at cruising speed. Roberta had never realized there were so many hotels in Paris. She was beginning to feel terribly cold, but she said nothing. This was Guy’s town and she had had no experience in these matters. If he had some perfect image of a hotel for this occasion and would be satisfied with nothing less, she would ride half across the city behind him without complaint.

They crossed the Pont Alexandre III and swept up and around the Invalides into the Faubourg St. Germain, through dark, discreet streets, where huge mansions reared behind high walls. Even here, there were a surprising number of hotels, large ones, small ones, luxurious ones, modest ones, hotels brightly lit and hotels that seemed to be dozing in low lamplight. Still, Guy kept on.

Finally, in a section of the city that Roberta had never visited before, near the Avenue des Gobelins, on a street that seemed on the verge of becoming a slum, Guy came to a halt. A dim light illuminated a sign that read Hôtel du Cardinal, Tout Confort. There was no indication which Cardinal was being commemorated here and the paint was chipped and flaky on the lettering of Tout Confort.

“I have found it,” Guy said. “I have heard about this place from a friend. It is very welcoming, he said.”

Roberta dismounted stiffly. “It looks very nice,” she said hypocritically.

“If you will stay here and guard the machine,” Guy said. “I will go in and make the arrangements.” He seemed distracted and avoided looking Roberta in the eye. He was feeling for his wallet as he went into the hotel, like a man in a crowd at a sporting event who is worried about pickpockets.

Roberta stood with her hand possessively on the saddle of the Vespa, trying to put herself into the proper frame of mind for what lay ahead of her. She wished she had had a third martini. She wondered if there were going to be mirrors on the ceiling, and Watteau-like paintings of nymphs. She hadn’t heard about much in Paris, but she had heard about that .

I must behave with grace, gaiety and beauty, she thought. This must be a lyrical experience.

She wished Guy would come out. Standing out there alone in the dark protecting the Vespa made her nervous. It wasn’t the idea of making love that bothered her, she told herself, it was the practical details, like what expression to put on her face when she passed the clerk in the lobby. In the movies that Guy took her to see, the girls, even though they were only seventeen or eighteen years old, never seemed to be bothered by these problems. They were graceful as panthers, sensual as Cleopatra, and they slipped into bed as naturally as eating lunch. Of course, they were French, and that helped. Well, Guy was French. She was comforted by this thought. Still, for the first time in some months, she wished Louise were at her side for a moment or two, and she regretted the questions she hadn’t asked on those nights when Louise had come home late and eager to talk.

Guy came out of the hotel. “It’s all right,” he said. “The man is permitting me to station the Vespa in the lobby.” Guy took the Vespa by the handle bars and trundled it up the steps and through the door into the lobby of the hotel. Roberta followed him, wondering if she ought to help him with the machine, because he seemed to be panting with the effort of getting it up the steps.

The lobby was narrow and dark, with only one light over the clerk at the desk. The clerk was an old man with thin gray hair. He looked at her with a dead, all-knowing eye. “ Soixante-deux ,” he said. He gave Guy the key and went back to reading a newspaper that he had spread out on his desk.

There was no elevator and Roberta followed Guy up three flights of a narrow staircase. The carpet on the staircase was scuffed and smelled dusty. Guy had some trouble getting the key into the lock of the door of Number 62, and muttered under his breath as he struggled with it. Then the lock gave way and Guy opened the door and turned on the light. He squeezed Roberta’s arm as she went past him into the room.

There were no mirrors on the ceiling and no nymphs on the walls. It was a small, plain room with a narrow brass bed, a yellow wooden armchair, a table with a scruffy piece of blotting paper on it, and a tattered screen in one corner concealing a bidet, all under the blue glare of the single bare bulb hanging on a braided wire from the ceiling. And it was bitterly cold, with the cold of many unforgiving winters concentrated between the stained walls.

“Oh,” Roberta said in a small, desolate whisper.

Guy put his arms around her from behind. “Forgive me,” he said. “I forgot to take any money with me, and all I had in my pocket was seven hundred francs. Ancient francs.”

“That’s all right,” Roberta said. She turned and tried to smile at him. “I don’t mind.”

Guy took off his coat and threw it over the chair. “After all,” he said, “it is only a place . There is no sense in being sentimental about places , is there?” He avoided looking at her and kept blowing on his knuckles, which were red with cold. “Well,” he said, “I suppose you ought to undress.”

“You first,” Roberta said, almost automatically.

“My dear Roberta,” Guy said, blowing assiduously on his knuckles, “everybody knows that in a situation like this, the girl always undresses first.”

“Not this girl,” Roberta said. She sat down in the armchair, crushing Guy’s coat. It was going to be difficult, she realized, to behave with grace and gaiety.

Guy stood over her, breathing hard. His lips were blue with cold. “Very well,” he said, “I will give in to you. This once. But you must promise not to look.”

“I have no desire to look,” Roberta said with dignity.

“Go to the window and keep your back turned,” Guy said.

Roberta stood up and went to the window. The curtains were threadbare and smelled like the carpet on the staircase. Behind her, she heard the sounds of Guy’s undressing. Oh, God, she thought, I never imagined it was going to be like this. Twenty seconds later, she heard the creak of the bed. “All right,” he said, “you can look now.”

He was under the covers, his face dark and gaunt on the grayish pillow. “Now you,” he said.

“Turn your head to the wall,” Roberta said. She waited until Guy turned his head to the wall. Then she undressed swiftly, laying her clothes neatly over the disorderly pile Guy had left on the chair. Icy, she hurried under the covers. Guy was clamped along the wall on the other side of the bed and she didn’t touch him. He was trembling, making the bedclothes quiver.

With a violent movement he turned toward her. He still didn’t touch her. “ Zut ,” he said, “the light is still on.”