Two Weeks in Another Town (48 page)

“Why don’t I believe?” Jack shrugged. “Have faith, they say. It’s like saying, Be beautiful. I would like to be beautiful, too…”

They stood for a moment more, looking across the bare, stone sweep of the piazza. A wind had sprung up, cold and cutting, and some nuns who were hurrying toward the cathedral steps seemed to be floating across the pavement on their billowing habits.

“It’s going to rain,” Jack said. “I’m sorry we came. It’s the wrong morning. Let’s go back to Rome.”

In the car, returning to their hotel, they were silent most of the way. Carlotta sat in one corner, her face thoughtful and grave, not looking at Jack. After a few minutes she spoke. “Do you know why I never talked to you before about religion?” she said. “Because religion is mixed up in my mind with death. And I can’t bear to think about death. Do you think about death much?”

“During the war, I did—a great deal,” Jack said. “And recently, since I came to Rome.”

Carlotta took off her gloves. She looked down at her bare hands and slowly caressed one with the other. “This flesh,” she said softly, and Jack knew what she meant by the gesture and why she had said the words. She reached out her left hand and took his and clung to it. “Jack, will you take me out to dinner tonight, please? I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jack said, as gently as possible. He could have told her he was busy, but he wanted to let her know that he was refusing her as a deliberate choice.

She withdrew her hand abruptly. “Sorry,” she said. She put her gloves on again, smoothing the wrinkles elaborately.

How many times, Jack thought, have I watched this woman perform this plain, everyday, vain, appealing, feminine act. How many voyages, great and small, happy and unhappy, have been introduced by that dry leaflike little womanly noise.

“Jack…” she began, then stopped.

“Yes?”

“Do you know why I really came to Rome?”

“If you’re going to say that you really came to see me,” Jack said, “I’m not going to believe you.”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that. I came to see Maurice Delaney. As I told you.” She made an impatient movement with her shoulders. “If they’ll ever let me into his room. Do you know why I came to see Maurice?” She waited for a moment, but Jack didn’t say anything. “I came to see him because of all the men I ever let make love to me, he gave me the most pleasure. And I thought, now, if he was dying, he would like to hear that.”

“I’m sure he would,” Jack said drily.

“You know how important love was to me…Sex, if you prefer that word…”

“Was?”

“Was. I found out that it was the most important thing. The center of my life. So if a man gives you…”

“I don’t need any diagrams,” Jack said.

“You’re not angry that I told you that, are you?”

“No,” Jack said. It was almost true.

“Now,” she said, “I somehow have the feeling that I can say anything to you, tell you everything.”

“Our divorce,” Jack said lightly, not wishing to have her say anything more, “has not been in vain.”

“Like me, Jack,” she whispered. Her head was down into her collar and her voice was thin and plaintive. “Please like me.”

He was silent.

“We’ll see each other again, won’t we?” she said. “Before I leave Rome.”

“Of course,” he said, lying.

I
N THE SMALL, CLUTTERED
room on the fourth floor Bresach and Jack worked all afternoon, organizing, page by page, the changes, additions, and cuts that they had blocked out for Delaney’s picture the night before in the restaurant. They worked swiftly and efficiently together, understanding each other with a minimum of words, and collaborating with each other, at least for this afternoon, as though they had done at least a dozen jobs together before this. Hilda, Delaney’s secretary, whom Jack had enlisted to help them, had been taking it all down in shorthand, and by six o’clock, when fatigue made them call a halt, she had a huge sheaf of notes that she took home with her to transcribe.

After she had gone, Jack accepted a cup of coffee that Max, in silent, anxious attendance, had prepared. Jack sipped the coffee gratefully, leaning back in his chair and thinking pleasurably of the work they had accomplished that day. “Maybe I’m delirious or suffering from shock,” he said, “but I think this is finally going to be a wonderful picture.”

Bresach, also drinking coffee, out of one of the two cups in the apartment, grunted. “Control yourself, Andrus. Beware of the euphoria of the depths.”

“It’s not euphoria,” Jack said. “I’m being as cold-blooded as I know how to be. I repeat—I think we’re going to have a wonderful picture.”

“Non-vomitous,” Bresach said. “That’s as far as I’ll go.”

Jack put down his cup and stood up and stretched. “All right. Wonderful and non-vomitous.”

“How do you think Delaney will take it?” Bresach asked.

“He will thank us for saving his life.”

“You don’t think you’re being naïve?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Jack said. “If he was up and around, he’d probably object to a lot of things we’re doing. Not all, but a lot. But this way, he’ll get to see the whole thing, already done. Whatever you may think about him, he’s no fool, and even if he wants to recut it somewhat or add one or two of the old things, he’ll recognize that it’s been improved.”

“Well,” Bresach said, shrugging, “you know the man better than I do.”

“Yes, I do,” Jack said. “Shall we keep going tonight? I can be back here by about nine o’clock.”

“Oh.” There was a curious little silence, and Bresach and Max exchanged glances.

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

“Nothing’s the matter,” said Bresach. “It’s just that Holt invited me to dinner. He told me to ask you to come, too. Max, too. I think he feels guilty if he doesn’t pay for dinner for at least twenty people a night.”

“When did you see Holt?” Jack asked. He had avoided talking about Holt’s proposed deal to Bresach and had been grateful that Bresach hadn’t mentioned it. He would have to make a stand sooner or later, but he wanted it to be as late as possible, when the other problems had been solved.

“I went there this morning,” Bresach said. “To his office.”

“What did he say?”

“He made a very generous offer,” Max said quickly.

“He’s a very generous man,” Jack said. “What did he say?”

“More or less the same thing he told you last night,” Bresach said. “X number of dollars for the story and a weekly salary to work with Delaney when he gets out of the hospital and can get around to preparing the script and shooting it.”

“X number of dollars,” Max said. He waved his hands agitatedly. “Why don’t you tell him? Fifteen thousand dollars! It’s a fortune.”

“You forget, Max,” Bresach said, smiling with a touch of malice at his friend, “that I’m the son of a rich father and I despise money.”

“I don’t care how rich your father is,” Max shouted. “You don’t have enough money to eat three meals a day, and you know it.”

“Take it easy, Max, take it easy.” Bresach patted Max’s shoulder soothingly. “Nobody says I’m turning the money down.”

“What did you tell Holt?” Jack asked.

“I told him I wanted to talk to you first,” Bresach said. “I told him I trusted you. Not with girls…” He grinned sourly. “But with something like this. He said you were coming in with him and Delaney as producer…”

“That isn’t definite yet,” Jack said.

“Last night,” Bresach said, “you said you didn’t want to comment at the moment. How about this moment?”

Jack walked over to the window and stood with his back to the room, looking out at the dark roofs of the buildings across the court and the lighted windows of kitchens in which women were preparing dinner. He thought of Delaney, lying in his hospital room, planning, even now, how he was going to make the picture of Bresach’s script. He remembered Delaney’s excitement and hope for the project and he remembered how much he owed Delaney. But he knew the time had come to decide how much he owed the boy, too. With all his violence, and all his talent, Bresach was vulnerable and could be easily damaged. Easily crushed, perhaps. If this first venture went wrong, if Delaney appropriated it, corrupted it, overlaid it with the tricks and curlicues and sure-fire melodrama and sentimentality that had disfigured his work in the last ten years, there was no telling what the effects would be on Bresach. Aside from what it would do to the story itself, which was delicately and unsentimentally composed, and which would fall apart if it were done wrongly. A third allegiance. To a hundred or so sheets of badly typed paper. And Sam Holt—What did he owe Sam Holt?

“Mr. Andrus,” he heard Max begin to speak.

“Sssh,” Bresach said. “Let the man think.”

Irrelevantly, the youthful voice made him remember his own son, and the letter in the airplane and the letter from Chicago. He stared out across the court into the lighted windows, feeling the chill of youthful eyes upon him, Bresach’s, Steven’s, his own, when he was their age, Delaney’s, at the time when Delaney had come for the first time into the dressing room in Philadelphia. Two whole generations of young men, he thought, sons and fathers intermingled, are waiting for me to betray them.

Let the man think…

If a question like this had been placed before that young Delaney who had entered Jack’s life that night, how would he have answered it? Jack smiled a little to himself, remembering the violence of Delaney’s harangue about poor Myer’s play and the stricken expression on the producer’s face before he fled the room. Well, Jack thought, in honor of my friend, in gratitude for what he has taught me…

He turned back toward Bresach and Max. “You’d be a fool to let anyone else touch it,” he said. “Especially Delaney. Now I have to go to the hospital, and after that I have to go back to my hotel to shave and dress. When you find out what restaurant Sam Holt is taking you to, call and leave a message. I’ll join you later.”

He was conscious of Max’s sad, reproachful glance as he picked up his coat and left the apartment.

Delaney was sitting up in bed and eating his dinner when Jack came into the room. He had been shaved and his complexion was ruddy and he was having a glass of red wine with his meal. He waved his fork when he saw Jack. The equipment for the oxygen was nowhere in sight. He looked as sound as he had at the airport when he had come to meet Jack, and his voice had its old throaty power when he said, “Should I ring for dinner for you, too? It’s a hell of a restaurant.”

He had awakened that morning feeling good, he told Jack. It was as simple as that. He had secretly walked around the room when the nurse was out, and his legs weren’t wobbly and there were no pangs in his chest. “If it wasn’t for the godamn cardiogram,” he said, “I’d have packed my bag and been out of here by noon. Do you think that cardiogram could be all screwed up?”

“No,” Jack said.

“It’s possible,” Delaney said, almost as though he thought that if he convinced Jack, he could leap out of bed. “Don’t neglect the possibility. Doctors’ve been wrong before, you know. And Italians with machinery…”

“Italians are better with machinery than anybody in the world,” Jack said.

“Well, anyway,” Delaney said, grumbling like a little boy, “I’m going to go to the john by myself. I don’t care how they scream. They’re through slipping me their bedpans.” He drank some of his wine. “This is damn good wine. I tell you, Italians know how to run a hospital.” He held the wine up in front of his face and frowned, as it brought something back to his mind. “Remember what that poor bastard Despière said about Italian wine?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be tactful,” Delaney said. “I read the papers this morning.” He finished the wine. “I told him he was going to get his fool head blown off. You know, I have the feeling he expected it, and he didn’t care one way or another…”

“He cared,” Jack said.

“Then what did he keep going for?”

“Maybe he needed the money.”

Delaney made a face. “I suppose if you’re going to get killed you might as well get paid for it.” He started on a plate of vanilla ice cream. He ate with gusto, noisily stuffing a dry biscuit into his mouth along with the ice cream. “Italian ice cream—best in the world. Girls, ice cream, and fast cars—what more does a country need? I should have come here when I was twenty-five. With a whole godamn heart. If he had to be killed, maybe it’s just as well he did it now, before he finished that piece on me.” Delaney grinned. “The Frenchman didn’t like me. Oh, no, my boy, the Frenchman couldn’t stand my guts. When he looked at me and he didn’t know I was watching, it was like a big sign on his face, ‘I think Maurice Delaney is Sonofabitch Number One.’ In French. Do you know how to translate it into French?”

“Not literally,” Jack said. He wanted to steer Delaney away from this subject. Uneasily, he tried to remember where he had hidden the manuscript of Despière’s article.

“Marvelous ice cream,” Delaney said, putting down his spoon. He rang for the nurse, and leaned back comfortably against the pillows propped against the tilted back of the bed. “This has been a refreshing day,” he said. “They even plugged in a phone this afternoon.” He waved to indicate the instrument on the table next to the bed. “The doctor’s allowing me two calls a day. I only made one and they still owe me one. I looked at that phone for an hour before I made up my mind who I wanted to call first. Clara or Barzelli. I was going to toss a coin, only I didn’t have a coin on me.” He smiled, making fun of himself. “Then I decided, what the hell, I’m an old man with a bum heart, why kid myself, why not make peace in the family. It only took three minutes of talk and the battle was won. Clara’s coming over in an hour. They’re putting up a cot in here and she’s going to sleep here, give the nurse a night off. She’d be here now, but she promised she’d have dinner with Hilda. In the long run, you can’t escape the clutch of women, Jack. But a man has to try.” He sighed contentedly. “I feel so good I could smoke a cigar. And I hate cigars.”

As Delaney rattled on, enjoying his reborn sense of vitality, Jack felt reassured about what he had come to say. Delaney might not like it, but he would be able to take it.