Nightwork (18 page)

“Not really, honey,” she said. “If you hadn’t come along and just
pampered
me, I’d have had to hire a ski teacher and you know what ski teachers cost in a place like this. And you have to buy them lunch besides. And the way they eat! I think they just dine on potatoes all the rest of the year and stock up in the winters.” She was a flighty woman, but she had a strong feeling for economics. “Here,” she said, “let me put it on you.” She slipped it on my wrist and clipped on the heavy silver band. “Isn’t it just absolutely
male
?”

“I suppose you could describe it like that,” I said. When I finally rid myself of the Sloanes, man and wife, I would take it back to the jeweler’s and sell it back. It must have cost at least three hundred dollars.

“Just don’t tell Bill about it,” she said. “It’s a little secret between you and me. A little darling secret. You’ll remember, won’t you, honey?”

“I’ll remember.” That was one promise I definitely would keep.

The crisis arrived the next morning. When she came down into the hall where I was waiting for her as usual at ten o’clock, she wasn’t in ski clothes. “I’m afraid I can’t ski with you this morning, honey,” she said. “Bill has to go to Zurich today and I’m taking him to the train. The poor man. With all this beautiful snow and gorgeous weather and all.” She giggled. “And he has to stay overnight, too. Isn’t it just too bad?”

“Awful,” I said.

“I hope you won’t be lonesome, skiing by yourself,” she said.

“Well, if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped,” I said manfully.

“Actually,” she said, “I don’t feel much like skiing today either. I have an idea. Why don’t you go up now and get your exercise and come down by one o’clock and we’ll have a cosy little lunch somewhere? Bill’s train leaves at twenty to one. We can have a perfectly dreamy afternoon together …”

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

“We’ll start with a scrumptious cold bottle of champagne in the bar,” she said, “and then we’ll just see how things work out. Does that sound attractive to you?”

“Scrumptious.”

She gave me one of her significant smiles and went back upstairs to her husband. I went out into the cold morning air feeling a frown beginning to freeze on my face. I had no intention of skiing. If I never saw a pair of skis again it would be all the same to me. I regretted ever having listened to Wales about the ski club plane, which was the beginning of the chain of events that was leading Mrs. Sloane inexorably into my bed. Still, I had to admit to myself, if I had crossed the ocean on a regular flight and my bag had been stolen, I’d have had
no
notion at all of where I might look for it. And through the Sloanes I had met quite a few of the other passengers on the plane and had been able to try my lost luggage gambit on them. True, it had yielded nothing so far, but one could always hope that on the next hill or in the next Alpine bar, a face would leap out, an involuntary gasp or heedless word would put me on the track of my fortune.

I thought of leaving St. Moritz on the same train with Sloane, but when we got to Zurich what could I do? I couldn’t trail him around the city spying on him.

I contemplated the perfectly dreamy afternoon ahead of me, starting with a scrumptious bottle of champagne (on my bill) and groaned. A young man, swinging ahead of me down the street on crutches, his leg in a cast, heard me and turned and stared curiously at me. Everyone to his own brand of trouble.

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 fungous 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 fungous 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, thumbless.

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 a 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. “I 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 sun 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 away 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 …

That evening I dined alone, late. I had seen Flora Sloane, in a blazing evening gown, at a distance, sweeping off to her party with a group of people, some of whom I recognized, some of whom I didn’t, any one of whom might have my seventy thousand dollars in the bank. If Flora saw me, she gave no sign. I took my time over dinner, and, when I went up to my floor, I deliberately avoided asking for my key at the desk. The corridor on which my room was located was empty, but after a moment I spied the night maid coming out of a room farther down. I stepped in front of the Sloanes’ door and called to the maid. “I’m terribly sorry,” I said, moving heavily toward the woman on my crutches, “but I seem to have forgotten my key. Will you let me in, please?” I had never seen her before.

She took a key out of her apron pocket and opened the door. I said thank you and went in, closing the door behind me. The room had already been made up for the night, and the bed was turned down, two bedside lamps softly lit. The scent of Flora Sloane’s perfume was everywhere. Except for that, it could have been any room in the hotel. I was breathing heavily, moving with care. I went over to the big wardrobe and opened the door. Women’s clothes. I recognized various dresses, ski outfits. I opened the next door. A long array of suits, stacked shirts. On the floor six pairs of shoes. The brown shoes Sloane had worn on the train were the last in line. I bent down clumsily, nearly toppling, and picked up the right shoe. Then I sat on a little straight-backed chair and took off my right shoe. My left foot was encased in plaster. I tried to put my foot into the brown shoe. I could hardly get halfway in. It must have been two sizes smaller than mine—size eight. I sat there for a moment, holding the shoe in my hand, staring at it numbly. I had wasted almost a week, precious time, and a small fortune, on a false trail. I was sitting like that, in the softly lit room, stupidly holding the shoe in my hand, when I heard the rattle of a key in the door. The door opened and Bill Sloane, dressed for traveling and holding a small bag in his hand, came into the room.

He stopped when he saw me and dropped the bag. It made a small, luxurious thump on the thick carpet. “What the hell …?” he said. He didn’t sound angry. He hadn’t had time to be angry.

“Hello,” I said foolishly. “Hello, Bill. I thought you were in Zurich.”

“I’ll bet you did.” His voice was beginning to rise. “Where the hell is Flora?” He switched on the overhead light, as though his wife might be lurking in the shadows.

“She went to a party.” I didn’t know whether I ought to get up or stay where I was. Getting up presented problems, with the cast and my stockinged foot.

“Went to a party.” He nodded grimly. “And what the fuck are you doing in here?”

“I forgot my key,” I said, realizing as I said it how improbable the whole scene was. “I asked the maid to open the door to my room and I wasn’t looking …”