Evening In Byzantium Part 15

When they reached the outskirts of Cannes, the girl told Craig the name of Reynolds' hotel. It was about six blocks away from the Carlton, inland, behind the railroad tracks. When they got there, Reynolds, now awake, said thickly, "Thank you, everybody. Don't bother to go in with me. Perfectly all right. Good night."

They watched him walk stiffly and self-consciously into the darkened hotel.

"He doesn't need any more to drink," Craig said, "but I do."

"So do I," said Gail McKinnon.

"Don't you live in that hotel, too?" Craig asked.

"No."

He felt a foolish sense of relief.

All the bars they pa.s.sed were closed. He hadn't realized how late it was. Anyway, stained as they were from Reynolds' blood, they would have been a disturbing sight for any late-drinking patrons. Craig stopped the car in front of the Carlton but left the motor running. "I have a bottle," he said. "Do you want to come up?"

"Yes, please," she said.

He parked the car, and they went into the hotel. Luckily, there was n.o.body there. The concierge, from whom Craig got the key to his apartment, had been trained since boyhood not to change his expression at anything he saw in the lobby of any hotel.

In the apartment Gail McKinnon took off her coat and went into the bathroom while Craig poured the whiskies and soda. There was the pleasant domestic sound of running water from the bathroom, sign of another presence, a barrier against loneliness.

When she came back, he saw that she had combed her hair. She looked fresh and clean, as though nothing had happened to her that night. They raised their gla.s.ses to each other and drank. The hotel was quiet around them, the city sleeping.

They sat facing each other on large brocaded armchairs.

"Lesson for the day," Craig said. "Don't go out with drunks. If he hadn't had the good sense to fall down those steps, you'd have probably wound up wrapped around a tree."

"Probably." She shrugged. "The hazards of the machine age."

"You could have asked me to drive you home before the fall," Craig said, forgetting that he had been perhaps just as drunk as Reynolds.

"I had decided never to ask you anything again," she said.

"I see."

"He was raving against you when he made his swan dive. Reynolds." The girl giggled.

"Just for one little nasty crack eight years ago?" Craig shook his head, marveling at the persistence of vanity.

"That and a lot of other things."

"What other things?"

"You once took a girl away from him in Hollywood."

"Did I? Well, if I did, I didn't know about it."

"That makes it even worse for somebody like Joe Reynolds. He hit her, and out of spite she told him how all-round marvelous you were and what other women had told her about you and about how intelligent and sensitive and funny you were. What do you expect him to feel about you? And you were such a big shot out there when he was a pimply-faced boy just breaking in."

"Well, he must feel better about me now," Craig said.

"A little," the girl said. "But not enough. He's given me a lot of the information that's in the stuff I've written so far about you. And he's suggested a t.i.tle for the piece."

"What is it?" Craig asked, curious.

"The Once and Future Has Been," the girl said flatly.

Craig nodded. "It's vulgar," he said, "but catchy. You going to use it?"

"I don't know yet," she said.

"What does it depend on?"

"You. What you seem like to me finally when I get really to know you. If I ever get to know you. How much guts I think you still have. Or will. Or talent. It would help if you let me read the script you're giving to Walt Klein tomorrow."

"How do you know about that?"

"Sam Boyd is a friend of mine." Sam Boyd was one of Klein's bright young men. "He told me he was coming over here in the morning to pick up a script you owned. We're having breakfast together."

"Tell him to come for the script after breakfast," Craig said.

"I'll tell him." She held out her gla.s.s. "It's empty," she said.

He got up and carried both gla.s.ses over to the table where the bottle was. He made the two drinks and carried them back. "Thanks," she said, looking up at him soberly as she accepted the gla.s.s. He leaned over and kissed her gently. Her lips were soft, welcoming. Then she averted her head. He stepped back as she stood up.

"That's enough of that," she said. "I'm going home."

He put out his hand to touch her arm.

"Leave me alone!" she said sharply. She put down her gla.s.s, seized her coat, and ran toward the door.

"Gail ..." he said, taking a step after her.

"Miserable old man," she said as she pulled open the door. The door slammed after her.

He finished his drink slowly, then put out the lights and went to bed. Lying naked on the sheets in the warm darkness, he listened to the occasional rubber swish of a car on the Croisette and the tumble of the Mediterranean on the sh.o.r.e. He couldn't sleep. It had been a full night. The liquor he had drunk drummed at his temples. Bits and pieces of the evening formed and reformed kaleidoscopically in his brain-Klein, in his velvet jacket, introducing everybody to everybody, Corelli and his two girls, Green p.i.s.sing forlornly on the expensive green gra.s.s, Reynolds' blood ...

Add to the mixture ... The game (was it a game?) of Gail McKinnon. Her flickering young-old sensuality. Invitation and rejection. Remember and regret the lushness of Natalie Sorel, try to forget David Teichman, death under the studio wig.

Craig moved uneasily in the bed. It had been like a gigantic Christmas office party. Except that in other businesses they weren't held twice a week.

Then there was the soft, half-expected knock on the door. He got up, put on a robe, and opened the door.

Gail McKinnon was standing in the dim corridor.

"Come in," he said.

HE was aware that it was light, that he was not yet awake, that there was soft breathing somewhere beside him, that the phone was ringing.

Without sitting up or opening his eyes, postponing the day, he groped for the phone on the bedside table. A faraway voice, through a curtain of mechanical buzzing, said, "Good morning, darling."

"Who's this?" he said. His eyes were still closed.

"How many people call you darling?" the thin, distant voice said.

"I'm sorry, Constance," he said. "You sound a million miles away." He opened his eyes, turned his head. The long brown hair was on the pillow beside him. Gail stared at him, the blue-flecked eyes fixed gravely on him. He was half-out from the sheet that covered her, and he had an enormous erection. He didn't remember ever having seen his c.o.c.k that size. He had to suppress a ludicrous impulse to grab at the sheet and cover himself.

"You're still in bed," Constance was saying. Distant electronic accusation across six hundred miles of inaccurate cable. "It's past ten o'clock."

"Is it?" he said idiotically. His c.o.c.k swelled malevolently. He was conscious of the level glance from the next pillow, the shape of the body under the sheet, the neatly turned-down second bed in the room, still unslept in. He regretted having spoken Constance's name, any name. "This is a late town," he said. "How're things in Paris?"

"Deteriorating. How're things with you?"

He hesitated. "Nothing new," he said.

Gail did not smile or change her expression. The weight of her glance was almost palpable on the insanely stalwart p.e.n.i.s towering into the golden morning air like a permanent and shameless feature of the landscape. Gail reached over slowly, deliberately, and ran one experimental finger from its base to its flaming crown. A convulsion racked him as though he had been touched by a high-tension wire.

"Holy man," she whispered.

"First of all," the wavery, mechanical, almost unrecognizable voice was saying in the telephone, "I want to apologize ..."

"I can hardly hear you," he said, making an agonizing effort to speak calmly. "Maybe we'd better hang up and call the operator again and ..."

"Is this better? Can you hear me now?" Suddenly the voice was clear and strong, as if Constance were in another room of the hotel or around the corner.

"Yes," he said reluctantly. Desperately, he tried to think of something to say to Constance that would hold her off, give him time to put on some clothes and go into the living room and wait there for her to call back. But for the moment he didn't trust himself with anything more ambitious than a monosyllable.

"I said I wanted to apologize," Constance said, "for being so b.i.t.c.hy the other day. You know how I am."

"Yes," he said. Nothing had changed below.

"And thanks for the picture of the lion. It was a nice thought."

"Yes," he said.

"I have some good news," Constance said. "At least I hope you'll think it's good news."

"What's that?" Slyly, surrept.i.tiously, he had managed to cover himself almost entirely from the waist down with the sheet. The sheet still stuck up, though, like a circus tent.

"I may have to be in your part of the world tomorrow or the day after. Ma.r.s.eilles," she said.

"Ma.r.s.eilles?" he asked. For the moment he couldn't quite remember where Ma.r.s.eilles was. "Why Ma.r.s.eilles?"

"I can't say over the phone." Her suspicion of the French telephone system was as strong as ever. "But if things work out up here, I'll be there."

"That's fine," Craig said, his mind on other things.

"What's fine?" Now Constance was beginning to sound irritated.

"I mean maybe we can see each other ..."

"What do you mean maybe?" The tone was becoming ominous.

He felt the s.h.i.+ft in the bed beside him. Gail stood up, walked slowly, naked, slender-waisted, pearly-hipped, gently swelling tanned calves, into the bathroom, without a backward glance. "Well, there is a complication ..."

"This is another d.a.m.ned unsatisfactory conversation, lad," Constance said.

"My daughter Anne is arriving here today," Craig said, grateful that Gail was no longer in the room. The erection went down suddenly, and he was grateful for that, too. "I sent her a cable inviting her."

"Everybody's at the mercy of the G.o.dd.a.m.n young," Constance said. "Bring her along to Ma.r.s.eilles. Every virgin ought to see Ma.r.s.eilles."

"Let me work it out with her." He witheld comment on the "virgin." "When you know definitely what your plans are, call me. Maybe you could come to Cannes," he added insincerely.

He heard the water of the shower being turned on in the bathroom. He wondered if Constance could hear the shower in Paris.

"I hate Cannes," Constance said. "I decided to divorce my first husband there. Christ, if it's too much trouble for you to get in a car and drive a couple of hours to see a girl you're supposed to be in love with ..."

"Don't work yourself up into one of your rages, Constance," Craig said. "You don't even know if you're going to be in Ma.r.s.eilles or not yet ..."

"I want you to be eager," she said. "You haven't seen me for a week now. The least you could be is eager."

"I am eager," he said.

"Prove it."

"I will meet you anywhere you want anytime you want," he said loudly.

"I suppose that'll have to do, lad," she said. She chuckled. "Christ, it's like pulling teeth. Are you drunk?"

"Hung over."

"Have you been debauching?"

"I suppose you could say that." One stone, at least, in the arch of truth.

"I never liked a sober man," she said. "All right, I'll wire you as soon as I know anything. How old is your daughter?"

"Twenty."

"You'd think a girl twenty years old would have something better to do than hang around with her old man."

"We're a close-knit family," Craig said.

"I've noticed that. Have fun, darling. I miss you. And the little lion was a sweet idea." She hung up.

Ign.o.ble, ign.o.bly comic, he thought resentfully as he swung out of bed and began hurriedly to dress. He had on a s.h.i.+rt and a pair of pants by the time Gail came out of the bathroom, still naked, slender and superb, her brown skin glistening with the last drops of the shower that she had neglected to dry off.

She stood with her legs wide apart, her hands on her hips, in a caricature of a model's pose, and grinned at him. "My," she said, "we're a busy little fellow, aren't we." Then she came over to him and pulled his head down a little toward her and kissed his forehead. But when he put his arms around her and tried to kiss her in return, she pulled away abruptly and said, "I'm dying for breakfast. Which bell do you ring?"