Nightwork

24

The sound of hammering woke me up. I looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was six forty. I sighed. Johnson, the carpenter who was working on the new wing of the house, insisted upon giving you what he called an honest day’s work for your money. Evelyn stirred in the bed beside me, but did not awake. She was breathing softly, the covers half-thrown back, her breasts bare. She looked delicious lying there, and I would have liked to make love to her. But she was cranky in the morning, and, besides, she bad worked late the night before on a brief she had brought home from the office with her. Later, I promised myself.

I got out of bed and parted the curtains to see what the weather was like. It was a fine summer morning and the sun was already hot. I put on a pair of bathing trunks and a terry-cloth bathrobe, got a towel, and left the room, barefooted and silent, congratulating myself for having had the good sense to marry a woman who came complete with a house on a beach.

Downstairs, I went into the guest room, which was now transformed into a nursery. I could hear Anna, the girl who looked after the baby, moving around in the kitchen. The baby was in his crib, gurgling over his morning bottle. I stared down at him. He looked rosy, serious, and vulnerable. He didn’t resemble either Evelyn or myself; he just looked like a baby. I didn’t try to analyze my feelings as I stood beside my son, but when I went out of the room, I was smiling.

I turned the bolt on the second lock that I had installed on the front door when I moved in with Evelyn. She had said that it was unnecessary, that in all the time she and her parents had the house there never had been any trouble. So far there had been no uninvited guests, but I still made certain the bolt was in place each night before I went to bed.

Outside, the lawn was wet with dew, cool and agreeable on my bare feet. “Good morning, Mr Johnson,” I said to the carpenter, who was putting in a window frame.

“Good morning, Mr Grimes,” Johnson said. He was a formal man and expected to be treated formally. The rest of the building crew wouldn’t arrive until eight, but Mr Johnson had told me he preferred working alone and that his early-morning labor, when nobody was around to bother him, was the best part of the day. Evelyn said the real reason he started so early was that he enjoyed waking people up. He had a Puritanical streak and didn’t approve of sluggards. She had known him since she was a little girl.

The new wing was almost finished. We were going to move the nursery into it and there would be a library where Evelyn could work and keep some books. Up to now she had to work on the dining-room table. She had an office in town, but the phone was always ringing there, she said, and she couldn’t concentrate. She had a secretary and a clerk, but she always seemed to have more work than she could comfortably handle between nine in the morning and six at night. It was amazing how much litigation went on in this peaceful part of the world.

I circled the house and crossed to the edge of the bluff. The bay stretched out below me, glittering and calm in the morning sunlight. I went down the flight of weathered wooden steps to the little beach. I took off the bathrobe and took a deep breath and ran into the water. It was still early in July and the water was shockingly cold. I swam out a hundred yards and then back and came out tingling all over and feeling like singing aloud. I took off my trunks and toweled myself dry. There was nobody else on the whole stretch of beach at that hour to be offended by momentary male nudity.

Back in the house, I turned on the kitchen radio for the early news as I made myself breakfast. There was speculation in Washington that President Nixon was going to be forced to resign. I thought of David Lorimer and his farewell party in Rome. I sat at the kitchen table and drank my fresh orange juice and lingered over bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. I pondered on the special, marvelous taste of breakfasts that you made for yourself on a sunny morning. In the fourteen months since we had been married, I had become addicted to domesticity. Often, when Evelyn came home tired from the office, I prepared dinner for both of us. I had made Evelyn swear never to tell this to a soul, especially not to Miles Fabian. On his subsequent visits, after the first touchy evening on which they had met, Evelyn and he had come to terms. They would never be friends, but they were not unfriendly.

Fabian had been in East Hampton for three weeks, helping me get ready for the opening. Early in the year, he had gone to Rome and had gotten in touch with Angelo Quinn and made a contract with him for all his output. He had done the same thing with the man whose lithographs he had bought in Zurich. Then he had come out to Sag Harbor and outlined a scheme that I had thought was insane at first, but which, surprisingly, Evelyn had approved of. The plan was to open a gallery in nearby East Hampton and have me run it. “You’re not doing anything, anyway,” he said, which was true at the time, “and I’ll always be available to help you when you need it. You have a lot to learn, but you certainly picked a winner with Quinn.”

“I bought two paintings for my girl,” I said. “I didn’t intend to start a career.”

“Have I steered you wrong up to now?” he demanded. “No,” I admitted. Among the other things on which he had not steered me wrong, like gold and sugar and wine and Canadian zinc and lead and the land in Gstaad (the chalet would be built by Christmas and every apartment had been rented), there was also Nadine Bonheur’s dirty movie, which had been playing to full houses for seven months, in New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles amid cries of shame in church publications. Our names, happily, were not on anything connected with the picture except the checks we received each month. And they went directly to Zurich. My bank balances, both open and secret, were impressive, to say the least. “No,” I said, “I can’t say that you’ve steered me wrong up to now.”

“This area is rich in three things,” Fabian went on, “money, potatoes, and painters. You could have five shows a year just with local artists and you still wouldn’t begin to tap the total product. People are interested in art here and they have the dough to invest in it. And it’s like Palm Beach – people are on vacation and are free with their money here. You can get double the price for a picture that you’d have to sweat to get off the wall in New York. That’s not to say that we’d just stick with this one place. We’ll start modestly and see how it goes, of course. After that, we could look into the possibilities of Palm Beach, say, Houston, Beverly Hills, even New York. You wouldn’t be against spending a month or so in Palm Beach in the winter, would you?” he asked Evelyn.

“Not completely.” Evelyn said. “No.”

“What’s more, Douglas,” he said, “it would launder a reasonable portion of your money for the tax hounds. You were the one who wanted to live in the States and they’re bound to come after you. You could throw open your books and sleep at night. And you’d have a legitimate reason to travel in Europe, on the search for talent. And while you were in Europe you could make the occasional necessary visit to your money there. And, finally, for once you could do something for me.”

“For once,” I said.

“I don’t expect gratitude,” Fabian said aggrievedly, “but I do expect normal civility.”

“Listen to the man,” Evelyn said. “He’s making sense.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Fabian said. Then, to me, “You don’t object if something that is in both our interests happens to be a project that is dear to my heart, do you?”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“You can be ungracious, can’t you?” he said. “Nevertheless – permit me to go on. You know me. You’ve tagged along with me through enough museums and galleries to have some notion of what I think about art. And artists. And not just what they mean in terms of money. I like artists. I would have liked to be one myself. But I couldn’t. And the next best thing is to be mixed up with them, help them, gamble on my taste, maybe one day discover a great one.” Part of this may have been true, part pure rhetoric, for the purpose of persuading me. I doubted if Fabian could have distinguished which was which himself. “Angelo Quinn is good enough,” he went on, “but maybe one day some kid will walk in with a portfolio and I’ll say, «Now I can give up everything else. This is it, this is what I’ve been waiting for».”

“Okay,” I said. I had known from the beginning I couldn’t hold out against him. “You’ve convinced me. As usual. I’ll devote my life to the building of the Miles Fabian museum. Where do you want it? How about down the hill from the Maeght Museum in St-Paul-de-Vence?”

“Wilder things have happened,” Fabian said soberly.

We had rented a bam on the outskirts of East Hampton, painted it, cleaned up the interior, and put up our sign – The South Fork Gallery. I had refused to put my name on it. I wasn’t quite sure whether my refusal was influenced by modesty or fear of ridicule.

Now, Fabian would be waiting for me there at nine o’clock that morning, surrounded by thirty paintings by Angelo Quinn that we had spent four days hanging on the barn walls. The invitations to the opening of the show had gone out two weeks in advance and Fabian had promised free champagne to about a thousand of his best friends who were in the Hamptons for the summer and we had arranged for two policemen to handle the parking problem.

I was finishing a second cup of coffee when the telephone rang. I went into the hall and picked it up. “Hello,” I said.

“Doug,” a man’s voice said, “this is Henry.”

“Who?”

“Henry. Hank. Your brother, for God’s sake.”

“Oh,” I said. I had called him when I got married but hadn’t seen or spoken to him since. He had written to me twice to say that the business still looked promising, which I took to mean that it was about to go under. “How are you?”

“Fine, fine,” he said hurriedly. “Listen, Doug, I’ve got to see you. Today.”

“I’ve got an awfully busy day. Hank. Can’t it…?”

“It can’t wait. Look, I’m in New York. You can get here in two hours… ” –

I sighed. I hoped inaudibly. “Not possible. Hank,” I said.

“Okay. I’ll come out there.”

“I’m really jammed…”

“You’re going to eat lunch, aren’t you?” he said accusingly. “Christ, you can spare an hour every two years for your brother, can’t you?”

“Of course. Hank,” I said.

“I can be there by noon. Where do I meet you?”

I gave him the name of a restaurant in East Hampton and told him how to find it.

“Great,” he said.

I hung up. This time I sighed aloud.

I went upstairs and dressed.

Evelyn was just getting out of bed and I kissed her good morning. For once she wasn’t cranky at that hour. “You smell salty,” she whispered as I held her. “Deliciously salty.” I slapped her fondly on her bottom and told her I was busy for lunch, but that I’d call her later and tell her how things were going.

As I drove toward East Hampton I decided that I could give Hank ten thousand dollars. At the most, ten thousand. I wished he had chosen another day to call.

Fabian was prowling around the gallery, giving little touches to the paintings to straighten them, although they all looked absolutely straight to me. The girl from Sarah Lawrence we had hired for the summer was taking champagne glasses out of cases and arranging them on the trestle table we had set up at one end of the barn. The champagne would be delivered in the afternoon by the caterer Fabian had hired. The two paintings from our living room were on the walls. Fabian had put little red sold tabs on them. “To break the ice,” he had explained. “Nobody likes to be the first one to buy. Tricks in every trade, my boy.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I said. “Neither do I,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking.” I recognized the tone. He was coming up with a new scheme.

“What is it now?” I asked.

“We’re underpricing,” he said.

“I thought we’d been through all that.” We had spent days discussing prices. We had settled on fifteen hundred dollars for the larger oils and between eight hundred and a thousand for the smaller ones.

“I know we talked about it. But we set our sights too low. We were too modest. People will think we don’t have any real confidence in the man.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Two thousand for the big ones. Between twelve and fifteen hundred for the smaller ones. It’ll show we’re serious.”

“We’ll wind up the proud owners of thirty Angelo Quinns,” I said.

“Trust my instinct, my boy,” Fabian said grandly. “We’re really going to put our friend on the map tonight.”

“It’s a good thing he won’t be here,” I said. “He’d swoon.” “It’s a pity the young man wouldn’t come. Give him a haircut and a shave and he’d be most personable. Useful for lady – art lovers.” Fabian had offered to pay Quinn’s way across from Rome for the show, but Quinn had said he wasn’t finished painting America yet. “So,” Fabian said, “two thousand it is, right?” “If you say so,” I said. “I’ll hide in the John when anybody asks what anything costs.”

“Boldness is all, dear boy,” Fabian said. “The breaks are coming our way. I was at a party last night and the art critic from The Times was there. He’s down for the weekend. He promised to look in tonight.”

I felt my nerves grow taut. Quinn had only gotten two lines in an Italian paper for his show in Rome. They had been appreciative, but they had only been two lines. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said. “Because I don’t.”

“The man will be stunned,” Fabian said confidently. “Just look around you. This old barn is positively glowing.”

I had looked so hard and so long at the paintings that I no longer had any reaction to them. If it had been possible, I would have driven out to the far edge of the island at Montauk Point and stayed there looking at the Atlantic Ocean until the whole thing was over.

There was a tinkle behind us and I heard the girl say, “Oh, dear.” I turned and saw she had dropped a glass and broken it. I supposed they didn’t have any courses on the handling of champagne glasses at Sarah Lawrence.

“Do not grieve, dearest,” Fabian said as he helped pick up the pieces. “It’s a lucky omen. In fact. I’m glad you did it. It reminds me we have a cold bottle of wine in the fridge.”

The girl smiled gratefully at Fabian. In the three weeks she had been working for us, he had won her over completely. When I spoke to her, she seemed to be trying to catch a weak message being tapped through a thick wall.

Fabian went back into the little room we had partitioned off as an office and brought out the bottle of champagne. He had insisted upon having the refrigerator put in as an essential piece of the gallery’s furniture. “It will pay its keep in the first week,” he had said as he told the workmen where to install it.

I watched him expertly tear off the foil and unwind the wire. “Miles,” I said, “I just had breakfast.”

“What better time, old man.” The cork popped out. “This is a great day. We must treat it with the utmost care.” His life, I had discovered, was replete with great days.

He poured the champagne for the girl and myself. He raised his glass. “To Angelo Quinn,” he said. “And to us.”

We drank. I thought of all the champagne I had drunk since I met Miles Fabian and shook my head.

“Oh, by the way, Douglas,” he said, as he filled his glass again, “I nearly forgot. Another of our investments will be represented here tonight.”

“What investment?”

“At the party last night, we had a distinguished guest.” He chuckled reminiscently. “Priscilla Dean.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. A good part of the abuse heaped on our movie had been directed at the feminine lead. Her photograph, in the nude and in the most provocative positions, had appeared in two nationally circulated magazines. Crowds followed her in the streets. She had been booed by a section of the studio audience when she appeared on television. It had added to the receipts of the movie, but I was doubtful of what it would do for Quinn’s reputation. “Don’t tell me,” I said, “that you invited her here tonight.”

“Of course,” Fabian said calmly. “We’ll be in all the papers. Don’t worry, Gentle Heart. I took her aside and told her that her – ah – her connection to us must remain a closely guarded secret. She swore by the head of her mother, Dora,” he said, “you realize that anything we say here is never to be repeated anywhere.”

“Of course, Mr Fabian.” She looked puzzled. “I really don’t understand. Who is Priscilla Dean?”

“A low woman.” Fabian said. “I’m glad to see that you don’t go to the movies or read filthy magazines.”

We finished the bottle of champagne without any more toasts.

Henry was waiting for me when I got to the restaurant a little after twelve. He was not alone. Seated next to him on the banquette was a very pretty young woman with long auburn hair. He stood up as I came over to the table and shook my hand warmly. He was not wearing glasses, his teeth were capped and even, he was tanned and healthy-looking and had put on weight. He had dyed his hair and he could have passed for a man of thirty. “Doug,” he said, “I want you to meet my fiancée. Madeleine, my brother.”

I shook hands with the lady, choking back questions. “Hank has told me so so much about you,” Madeleine said. She had a low, pleasant voice.

I sat down, facing them. I noticed that there were no drinks on the table. “Madeleine has never been out here,”

Henry said, “and she thought she’d like to take a look.”

“I really wanted to meet you,” she said, staring directly at me. She had big gray eyes that I guessed could be blue in some lights. She did not look like a woman who was engaged to a man who was reputed in some quarters to be impotent.

“This calls for a drink. Waiter…” I called.

“Not for us, thanks,” Henry said. “I’m off the stuff.” He sounded slightly defiant, as though challenging me to comment. I said nothing.

“And I’ve never been on it,” Madeleine said.

“In that case, no drinks,” I said to the waiter.

“Shall we order?” Henry said. “I’m afraid we’re pressed for time.”

Madeleine stood up and Henry and I stood up with her. “I won’t be having lunch with you gentlemen,” she said. “I know you have a lot to talk over. I’ll take a walk and look around this pretty little town and come back and join you for coffee.”

“Don’t get lost,” Henry said.

She laughed. “Not a chance,” she said.

Henry’s face as he watched her walk toward the door was curiously intense. She had slender legs, a good figure, and her walk was ladylike but sensual. Henry seemed to be holding his breath, as though he had momentarily forgotten to breathe.

“Holy man,” I said, as the door closed behind her, “what is all this?”

“Isn’t she something?” he said, as he sat down.

“She’s a lovely girl,” I said with conviction. I didn’t say it to natter either him or her. “Now, spill it.”

“I’m getting a divorce.”

I nodded. “It’s about time, I guess.”

“More than about time.”

“Where are your glasses?” I asked.

He laughed. “Contact lenses,” he said. “That friend of yours, Fabian, sure sent me to the right man. Give him tiny regards when you see him.”

“You can do that yourself. I just left him.”

“I’d love to. But I have to be back in New York by four.”

“What were you doing in New York this morning?” Somehow, it had never occurred to me that it was possible for my brother to escape Scranton.

“I live there,” Henry said. “Madeleine has an apartment there. And the business moved up to Orangeburg. That’s just about thirty minutes from the city.”

The waiter had come back by now with two glasses of water. Henry ordered shrimp cocktail and a steak. His appetite, as well as his appearance, had improved.

“I appreciate your coming all the way out here to see me, Hank,” I said, “but what was the hurry? Why did it have to be today?”

“The lawyers want to have a handshake on the deal this afternoon,” he said. “We’ve been working on it for three months and they’ve finally got everything together and they don’t want to give the other side time to come up with more objections. You know how lawyers are.”

“Not really,” I said. “What deal?”

“I didn’t want to bother you with it until it was definite,” he said. “I hope y ou don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Now if you’ll begin at the beginning…” “I told you the business looked promising…” “Yes.” Guiltily, I remembered that I had considered the word “promising” in his mouth as a synonym for failure.

“Well, it turned out to be a lot better than that.” He was silent as the waiter put the shrimp cocktail and my salad in front of us. When the waiter had left, he said, “Better than any of us ever dreamed.” He dug heartily into the cocktail. “We had to expand almost immediately. We have more than a hundred people working for us in the plant right now. The stock’s not on any of the boards yet, but it’s gone way up in value. We’ve had feelers from a half-dozen companies who want to buy us out. The biggest offer is from Northern Industries. It’s a huge conglomerate. You must have heard of them…”

“No,” I said, “I’m afraid I haven’t.”

He looked at me disapprovingly, like a teacher at a pupil who neglected his homework in school. “Anyway, they’re huge,” he said. “Take my word for it. They’re the people who’re ready to give us the go sign today. They’re ready to offer us – our company, that is – a half million dollars.” He sat back and let this sink in. “Does the figure grab you?”

“It grabs me,” I said.

“We should have the money within a couple of months,” Henry said, resuming his meal. “What’s more, we – the two boys who came up with the idea and myself – retain running control of the business for the next five years – now, listen to this – at three times the salaries we’ve been paying ourselves, plus stock options. You’d be in on the options, of course, along with me…”

I wished Fabian was there at that lunch. It was the sort of thing he would wallow in.

The waiter brought Henry his steak and he began to wolf it down hungrily, eating a baked potato and a roll, both heavily buttered, along with it. Before long he would have to watch his diet. “Figure it out, Doug,” he said, through a mouthful of food, “you put in twenty-five thousand. Our third of the stock will bring us thirty-three percent of half a million. That’s one hundred and sixty-six thousand. Your two-thirds of that…”

“I can do the arithmetic,” I said.

“That’s without taking into account the options,” Henry said, continuing eating. Either the hot food or the chanting of enormous figures had made his face flush and he was sweating. “Even with today’s inflation and all that crap…”

I nodded. “It’s a nice bundle.”

“I promised you you’d never regret it, didn’t I?” he said harshly.

“So you did.”

“No more other people’s money,” he said. He stopped eating and put his knife and fork down. He looked at me soberly. His eyes, through the contact lenses, were deep and clear. The little red furrows on the side of his nose had disappeared. “You saved me from drowning, Doug,” he said in a low voice. “I can never thank you enough and I won’t try.”

“Don’t try,” I said.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “I mean – well – about everything?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“You look good, kid, you really do.”

“And so do you,” I said.

“Well—” He shifted uneasily on the banquette. “The decision is finally up to you. Is it yes or no?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

He smiled widely and picked up his knife and fork again. He finished his steak and ordered blueberry pie à la mode for dessert. “You’d better get some exercise, Hank,” I said, “if you’re going to eat like that.”

“I’m taking up tennis again.”

“Come on out here and play sometime,” I said. “There’re a thousand courts at this end of the island.”

“That’d be nice. I’d like to meet your wife, too.”

“Anytime.” Then I began to laugh.

He looked at me suspiciously. “What’re you laughing about?”

“On the way to town this morning,” I said, “after you called, I made up my mind that when I saw you today I wasn’t going to let you have one cent more than ten thousand dollars.”

For a moment he looked hurt. Then he began to laugh, too. We were both laughing, a little hysterically, when Madeleine came back to the restaurant to join us for coffee.

“What’s the joke?” Madeleine asked as she sat down.

“A family affair,” I said. “Brother stuff.”

“Henry will tell me later,” she said. “He tells me everything. Don’t you. Henry?”

“Everything,” he said. He took her hand and kissed it affectionately. He had never been an open or demonstrative man, but that, too, I saw had changed, along with the eyes, the teeth, the appetite. If stealing a hundred thousand dollars from a dead old man could put the expression that I saw now on Henry’s face, felony became a virtue and I would steal ten times over from ten dead men.

When I took them to their car, Madeleine gave me their address. “You must come and see us soon,” she said.

“I will,” I promised. None of us had any idea of how soon it was going to be.

The show, Fabian assured me, was a great success. At one time there must have been more than sixty cars parked outside the barn. The room remained crowded, as people came and went. The champagne got a good deal of serious attention, but so did the paintings. What comments I could overhear in the din of conversation were enthusiastic. “All on the plus side,” Fabian whispered to me when we both found ourselves together for a moment at the bar. I didn’t see the critic from The Times, but Fabian told me he liked the expression on the man’s face. By eight o’clock, Dora had put red tabs on four of the big oils and six of the small ones. “Phenomenal,” Fabian exulted as he passed me. “And a lot of people have told me they’re coming back. What a pity Lily couldn’t be here. She’d adorn the room. And she loves parties.” His speech was a little thick. He hadn’t eaten all day and he had a glass in his hand at all times. I had never seen him drunk before. I hadn’t thought he could get drunk.

Evelyn seemed somewhat dazed by it all. Quite a few of the guests were theater and movie people, and there were four or five well-known writers whom she recognized but had never met. In Washington, she had never been impressed by the senators or ambassadors she had known, but this was a world that was new to her and she was almost tongue-tied when she had to talk to a man whose book she admired or an actress who had moved her on the stage. I found it an endearing weakness. “Your friend, Miles,” she said to me, shaking her head. “He knows everybody.” “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. Evelyn had to go home early, because she had promised Anna the night off. “Congratulations, darling,” she said as I accompanied her outside to her car. “It’s been splendid.” She kissed me and said. “Ill be waiting up for you.”

The night air was cool after the heat of the crowded gallery and I stood outside for a few minutes, enjoying the clear, unsmoky evening air. I saw a big Lincoln Continental drive up and Priscilla Dean get out with two graceful young men. The men were in dinner jackets and Priscilla was wearing a long black dress, with a bright red cape thrown over her bare shoulders. She didn’t see me and I didn’t think I had to go over to say hello to her. I followed them warily into the gallery. There was a little hush as she entered the room, and eyes turned in her direction, but the conversation rose quickly to normal pitch. It was a polite and well-mannered group, and I guessed that most of the people there, like Dora, were not the sort who patronized the kind of theaters in which The Sleeping Prince was playing, or subscribed to the magazines in which Priscilla Dean, unclothed, was so prominently featured.

Fabian himself escorted her to the bar. I didn’t see her look at a single painting. By the time all the other guests had left, it was past ten o’clock and she was alone at the bar. Drunk. Very drunk. When there had still been a dozen or so people in the room, the two young men had tried to persuade her to leave. “We’re expected for dinner, Prissy, darling,” one of them had said. “We’re way overdue. Come on. Please”

“Fuck dinner,” Priscilla said.

“We have to go,” the other young man had said.

“Go,” Priscilla said, steadying herself against the bar. Her cape had fallen to the floor and a generous portion of her excellent upper body was on view. “And fuck you, too. Tonight I’m an art lover. Fags. My old friend from Paris, Miles Fabian, will take me home. won’t you, Miles?”

“Of course, dear,” Fabian said, without enthusiasm.

“He’s an old man,” Priscilla said, “but oo la, la. Nadine Bonheur has spread the word from Passy to Vincennes. A for effort. Très bien. That’s French, you fags.”

By now, the last of the guests had vanished. I gave silent thanks that Priscilla had arrived on the scene late and that Evelyn had had to go home to mind the baby. Dora was staring at Priscilla with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. She had told us when we interviewed her that she was looking for a quiet, clean job where she could catch up on her reading. I avoided Fabian’s eyes.

“Stop hanging around, for shit’s sake,” Priscilla said to the two young men. “One thing I can’t stand is people hanging around.”

The two young men looked at each other and shrugged. They said good night civilly to Fabian and me and told us how much they had liked the paintings. “Incidentally,” the older of the two said, “we’re not homosexual. We’re brothers.” They made their exit with dignity, and a minute later I heard the Lincoln Continental start up and go off.

Fabian bent to pick Priscilla’s cape from the floor. He staggered a little and almost fell, but recovered quickly. He put the cape over Priscilla’s shoulders. “Time to go beddy-bye, dear,” he said. “I shouldn’t drive in my condition—” At least, I realized gratefully, he wasn’t that far gone. “But Douglas will drive us nice and slowly.”

“Your condition.” Priscilla laughed raucously. “I know what your condition is, you old goat. Give me a kiss, Daddy.” She held out her arms. “In the car,” Fabian said.

Priscilla held onto the table. “I won’t budge until I get my kiss,” she said.

With an uneasy glance at Dora, who had shrunk back against the wall, Fabian leaned over and kissed Priscilla, Priscilla wiped her mouth with the back of her hands, smudging her lipstick, “I heard you can do better than that,” she said. “What’s the matter – out of practice? Maybe you ought to go back to France.” But she allowed Fabian to lead her to the door.

“Dora,” Fabian called back, “put out the lights and lock the doors. We’ll clean up in the morning.” “Yes, Mr Fabian,” Dora whispered.

We left her there, not moving, rigid against the wall, as we went out.

Priscilla insisted upon sitting between us in the front seat. “Cuddly,” she said. She had spilled champagne down the front of her dress and the smell was unpleasant. I rolled down my window before I turned on the ignition.

“Now, dear,” Fabian said, “where are you staying?” “Springs,” Priscilla said. “That’s it. Springs.”

“Where exactly is Springs, dear?” Fabian said patiently. “What road?”

“How the hell do I know what road?” Priscilla said. “Just drive. I’ll show you the way.” “What’s the name of the people you’re staying with? We could call them and they could give us directions.” Fabian sounded like a policeman trying to get information from a lost child on a crowded beach. “Surely, you must know the name of the people you’re staying with.”

“Of course I do. Levy, Cohen, McMahon, something like that. Who cares? A bunch of jerks.” Priscilla leaned over and turned on the radio. The music from The Bridge on the River Kwai crashed through the car. “Come on, Mr Clean,” she said angrily to me, “get this crate moving. You know where Springs is, I hope.”

“Go to Springs,” Fabian said.

I started the car. But two minutes after we had passed the sign that read, Welcome to Springs, I knew it would be a miracle if we ever found the house that Priscilla was gracing with her presence that weekend. I slowed down at every fork and crossroad and every house we passed, but Priscilla only shook her head and said, “No, that’s not it.”

No matter how much money we were making from The Sleeping Prince, I thought, as I drove, it wasn’t worth this.

“We’re just wasting time,” Priscilla said. “I got an idea. I have two girl friends in Quogue. On the beach. You can at least find the Atlantic Ocean in Quogue, can’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “They’re fantastic. Original swingers. You’ll love them. Let’s go to Quogue and have a gang bang.” “Quogue is an hour away from here,” Fabian said. He sounded very tired. “So Quogue is an hour away. So what?” Priscilla demanded.

“Let’s have some fun.” “We’ve had a very long day,” Fabian said.

“Who hasn’t?” Priscilla said. “On to Quogue.” “Perhaps tomorrow night,” Fabian said.

“Fags,” Priscilla said.

We were running through woods, on a small, dark back road that I didn’t recognize, and I wasn’t sure how I could get back to town without roaming all over the Hamptons for hours. I had just about decided to try to make my way back to East Hampton and find a hotel room for Priscilla and dump her on the sidewalk, if necessary, when my headlights picked up a car facing me, pulled over to the side of the road, with its hood up and two men looking down into the motor. I stopped the car and called out, “I wonder if you two gentlemen could tell me where…”

Suddenly I realized I was looking into the muzzle of a gun.

The two men came over to the car, walking slowly. I couldn’t see their faces in the dark but could make out that they were both wearing leather jackets and fishermen’s long-billed caps. “They have a gun,” I whispered to Fabian, across Priscilla, whom I felt stiffening beside me.

“That’s right, brother,” the man with the gun said. “We have a gun. Now, listen careful. Leave the key in the ignition, because we’re going to take the loan of your car. And get out, nice and easy. And the old guy, too. He gets out on his side. Also nice and easy. And leave the lady in the car. We’re going to take the loan of the lady for a while, too.”

I heard Priscilla gasp, but she sat absolutely still. The man stepped back a pace as I opened the door and got out. The other man went around to Fabian’s side. I heard him say to Fabian, “Get over there with your partner.” Fabian came around and joined me. He was breathing heavily.

Then Priscilla started to scream. It was the loudest, most piercing scream I have ever heard.

“Shut the bitch up,” the man with the gun shouted to his partner. Priscilla was still screaming, but she was lying back, with her head on the wheel and kicking at the man, who was trying to hold onto her legs.

“For Christ’s sake,” the man with the gun said. He moved a little, as though he was going to get at Priscilla from the driver’s side. His gun had drooped a little and Fabian lunged at him. There was an enormous noise as the gun went off. I heard Fabian grunt as I jumped on the man, dragging his gun hand down. Our combined weight was too much for him and he fell back, the gun clattering to the pavement. Priscilla was still screaming. I grabbed the gun just as the second man came around the front of the car in the glare of the headlights. I fired at him and he turned and ran off into the woods. The man who had had the gun was crawling away on his hands and knees, and I fired at him. He jumped up and ran into the darkness. Priscilla was still screaming.

Fabian was lying on his back now on the pavement, holding his chest with his two hands. He was breathing in loud, irregular gasps. There was a little light reflected off the road top from our headlights. “I think we’d better get me to a hospital, old man,” he said, with long spaces between the words. “Fast. And tell Priscilla to please stop yelling.”

I was trying to lift Fabian, as gently as possible, into the back seat of the car, when I became conscious of headlights approaching from behind me. “Sorry,” I said to Fabian, who was half in and half out of the car now. “There’s somebody coming.” I picked up the gun again and stood between Fabian and the oncoming car. Priscilla had stopped screaming and was sobbing wildly in the front seat, hitting her head dementedly against the dashboard. I didn’t know which was worse, her screaming or this.

As the car approached, I saw that it was a police car. I dropped the gun I was holding. The car came to a halt and two policemen jumped out, their revolvers in their hands.

“What’s going on here?” the one in front asked harshly.

“There’s been a holdup. Two men. They’re in the woods somewhere. My friend’s been shot. We’ve got to get him to a hospital right away.”

“Whose gun is this?” The policeman asked, bending down to pick it up from where it was lying at my feet.

“Theirs.”

“You jumped a guy with a gun?” the policeman said incredulously.

“Not me,” I said. “Him.”

“Holy man,” the policeman said softly.

He helped me put Fabian into the rear of the car, while his partner, a thin man with glasses, who looked too young to be a policeman, went to inspect the car with the hood up that the two men had been examining when we drove up. “That’s the car, all right,” he said when he came back. “We’ve been looking for it. It was stolen last night at Montauk. We got a description from a gas station at Three Mile Harbor. Lucky for you.”

“Real lucky,” I said.

He looked curiously at Priscilla, who was still knocking her head against the dashboard, but he didn’t say anything. “Follow us,” he said. “We’ll lead you to the hospital.”

With the lights of the police car all flashing and the siren going, we sped down the dark roads. Coming the other way, I saw first one, then another police car racing past us toward the scene of the holdup. They must have sent out a call by radio from the car ahead of us.

The operation took three hours. Fabian had lapsed into unconsciousness before we reached the hospital in Southampton. An intern had taken one look at Priscilla and had her put in a bed under heavy sedation. I sat in the anteroom of the emergency ward, trying to answer the questions of the policemen about what the men looked like, the sequence in which things had happened, what we were doing on the road at that hour, who the lady was, whether or not I thought I had hit one or both of the men when I fired at them. It was hard to sort the things out. My mind felt numb overwhelmed. It was hard to make the policemen understand who Priscilla Dean was and how it happened she didn’t know where she lived. They were unfailingly polite and not suspicious, but they kept asking the same questions, in slightly different ways, over and over again, as though what had happened couldn’t have happened the way I thought it bad. I had called Evelyn as soon as they wheeled Fabian into the operating room and told her Fabian had had an accident but I was all right, not to worry. I told her I’d give her the details when I got home.

It was about midnight when the young policeman came back from using the phone to tell me the two men had given themselves up. “You didn’t hit either one of them.” He couldn’t help grinning as he said it. I would have to go to the police station in the morning to identify them. And so would the lady, he added.

When Fabian was wheeled out on the operating table he looked calm and peaceful. The doctor, in his green smock and mouth-mask, now hanging at his throat, looked grave as

he pulled off his rubber gloves. “It’s not so goods” he said to me. “We’ll know better in twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours,” I said dully.

“He’s a good friend of yours?” the doctor said.

“A very good friend.”

“Where did he get that long scar on his chest and abdomen?”

“Scar? I never saw a scar,” I blinked. “I guess I never saw him except with his clothes on.”

“It must have been something fierce,” the doctor said. “It looks like shrapnel. Was he wounded in the war?” The doctor , was young, too, no more than thirty-two or thirty-three, and I wondered, briefly, what he knew about wars.

“Yes,” I said, “he was in a war. He never told me he was wounded though.”

“Live and learn,” the doctor said briskly. “Good night.”

When I went out of the hospital, there was a flash in my eyes and I cringed. But it was only a photographer, taking my picture. Wait until tomorrow, friend, I thought, when they get dear old Priscilla Dean down to the police station. There’ll be some pictures to be taken then.

I drove home slowly, the road blurring uncertainly before me. Evelyn was waiting up for me and we each had a Scotch as we sat in the kitchen and I told her the whole story of the evening. When I finished, she bit her lips and said, “That miserable woman. I could strangle her with my bare hands.”