Nightwork

'Finally,' he said, 'we'll have to try to uproot the old Puritan in you. Meanwhile I suppose I'll have to take you as you come.'

'The way I take you.'

He had been going in and out of the bedroom through all this, coming out with various articles of clothing that he stowed in one bag or another. Now he emerged with the pretty blue Tyrolean jacket. This would look very good on you, Douglas,' he said. 'It's a little large for me. Would you like it?'

'No, thanks. I've had my skiing for the year,' I said.

He nodded soberly. 'I understand. What happened today took the edge off Alpine joys a bit.'

'I never wanted to come here in the first place.'

'Sometimes you have to do things to please the ladies,' Fabian said. 'Apropos of that. Do you want to tell me why Eunice decamped?'

'Not particularly.'

'I regret you didn't see fit to take my advice,' Fabian said. 'It was good advice.'

'Oh, come on, now. Miles! Enough is enough. She told me everything.' Somehow, the sight of this handsome, completely composed man, every hair in place, his trousers and shirt fitting him perfectly, his shoes with a high mahogany shine, deftly packing his array of bags, the perfect traveler for the jet age, suddenly infuriated me. 'All about you. Or at least enough about you.'

'I haven't the faintest notion of what you're talking about, old man.’ He tucked a half-dozen pairs of socks neatly into a| comer of a suitcase. 'What in the world would there be to about me?' 'She's in love with you.'

'Oh, dear,' he said.

'You had an affair with her. I'm not in the business of accepting hand-me-downs.'

'Oh, dear,' he said again. 'She said that?’

'And more.'

'Ever since I've met you,' he said. 'I've worried about your innocence. You have a terribly low threshold of shock. People have affairs. It's a fact of life. People you're associated with. More or less permanently. Good God, man, have you ever been to a wedding at which the bride hasn't had an affair with at least one of the guests?'

'You might have told me,' I said, knowing it sounded foolish.

'What good would that have done? Be reasonable. I suggested her to you with the best intentions in the world. For both you and her. I can vouch for the fact that she's a marvelous girl. In bed and out, not to put too fine a point on it.'

'She wanted to marry you.'

'A passing whim. I'm much too old for her, for one thing.'

'Oh, come now, Miles. Fifty's not all that old.'

'I'm not fifty. I'm long past that, if you must know.'

I looked at him incredulously. If he hadn't told me when we first met that he was fifty, I'd have found it hard to believe that he was much over forty. I knew he found it easy to lie, but I couldn't see why he would pretend to be older than he was. 'How much past?' I asked.

'I'll be sixty next month, old man.’

'You must tell me your secret.' I said. 'Someday.'

'Someday.' He snapped a suitcase shut decisively. 'Women like Eunice have no sense of the future. They look at a man they've taken a fancy to and they see only their lover, ageless with passion", not an old man sitting by the fire in slippers a few years from then. There's no need to tell anyone what you've just learned, of course.'

Does Lily know?'

'Not on your life,' he said briskly. 'So, you see, I rather thought I was doing both you and Eunice a good turn.'

'It didn't quite work.' I said.

'Sorry about that.'

I almost told him about Did; Wales lying naked on my bed, but realized in time that it would not increase his esteem for me appreciably. 'Anyway,' I said, 'I think it's better for all concerned that Eunice went home.'

'Perhaps you're right,' he said. 'We'll never know, shall we? By the way, is there anybody you'd like me to call or see while I'm in America? Any messages?'

I thought for a moment. 'You might telephone my brother in Scranton,' I said. I wrote down his address. 'Ask him how he's doing. And tell him all is well. I've found a friend.'

Fabian smiled, pleased. 'You certainly have. Anybody else?'

I hesitated. 'No,' I said finally.

'I look forward to it.' Fabian put the slip with Henry's address on it in his pocket. 'Now, if you don't mind, I have to do my yoga exercises before my bath. I imagine you're going to change for dinner?'

Yoga, I thought, as I left the suite. Maybe that'» what I ought to take up.

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