Nightwork

'I wish I could go back to school all over again.'

'Don't we all?' he said.

* * *

'How do you like your lunch?' Lorimer asked. We were sitting out on the terrace looking across at the great fountain, with the four enormous carved feminine figures of the Rivers. It was certainly a better idea than having a sandwich and a beer at the bar of the tennis club.

'I like it fine,' I said.

'Don't spread it around,' Lorimer said. 'In certain high-toned circle» it is accepted doctrine that the food is inedible.' He grinned. 'You'll be marked as a crude yokel for life and you'll only get to meet a principessa with difficulty.'

'Well. I can say I liked the view, can't I?'

'Say you just happened to be strolling through the Piazza Navona by accident. At night. If the subject comes up.' He stared thoughtfully at the fountain.' Dwarfing, isn't it?'

'What's dwarfing?'

'Those big girls. That's one of the reasons I prefer Rome to New York, say. Here you're dwarfed by art and religion, not by the steel and glass fantasies of insurance companies and stockbrokers.'

'Have you been here long?'

'Not long enough. And the sons of bitches are trying to move me out.' He tapped the bulge in his jacket made by the envelope I had given him. He had taken it out, slit it open, and glanced through the pages hastily while we were waiting to be served. When the first course and the wine appeared, he had jammed the pages back into his pocket without comment. 'That's what this is all about,' he said, tapping the jacket for the second time. They're after me. I know it and they know I know and we're all waiting for someone to make the wrong move. I sent along some recommendations that were not received - ah - with enthusiasm in certain quarters. I pushed through some contracts. Evelyn was in on it, too, in Justice and her head is on the block, too. We tried to get the money to the right people in this beautiful, lamentable country, with its desperate inhabitants, not the wrong people. A difference of opinion. Possibly fatal. Don't boast that you know me. There're spies everywhere. When I get back to my desk, the papers will have been moved. Do I sound paranoid?'

'I wouldn't know,' I said, 'although Evelyn hinted...' 'It happened before,' Lorimer said, 'and it sure as hell can happen again, with what's going on in Washington. What McCarthy did to the old China hands for coming in with an unpopular message will look like a tea party compared to what that bunch in the White House are capable of pulling off. Orwell was wrong. It shouldn't have been nineteen eighty-four. It should have been nineteen seventy-three. Do you think they'll get that second-story man out of the White House?'

I shrugged. 'I haven't been following it closely,' I said. Lorimer looked at me oddly. 'Americans.' He shook his head sadly. 'My bet is he'll still be there till the next election. With his foot on all our necks. My next post will probably be in some small African country where they have a coup d'etat every three months and shoot American ambassadors. Come and visit me.' He grinned and poured himself a full glass of wine. Whatever he was, he wasn't frightened. 'I'm afraid I won't be able to devote any time to you this week. I have to go to Naples for a few days. But I can get back for tennis again on Saturday and there's a poker game on Saturday night, mostly newspapermen, nobody from the embassy.. A Evelyn wrote you were a devout poker player....'

'I'm sorry.' I said. 'I won't be here. I have to be in Porto Ercole Saturday.'

'Porto Ercole?' he said. 'The Pellicano?'

'As a matter of fact, I have a reservation there.'

'For a fellow who's just arrived in Italy, you know your way around. The Grand in Rome, the Pellicano in Porto Ercole.'

'I've been briefed by a friend,' I said. 'He knows his way around everywhere.'

'You'll love it,' Lorimer said. 'I go up there for weekends whenever I can. They have a nice tennis court. I envy you.' He looked at his watch, then started to pull out his wallet to pay.

'Please,' I said. 'On me.'

He put his wallet back. 'Evelyn wrote you were independently wealthy. Is that true?'

'More or less,' I said.

'Three cheers for you. In that case, it's your lunch.' He stood up. 'Do you want me to drive you back to the hotel?'

I think I'd like to walk.'

'Well thought out,' he said. 'I wish I had the time to walk with you. But the executioners await. Arrivederci, chum.' He strode off, toward his car, brisk and American, the statues looming over him, toward the desk on which the papers had been moved in his absence.

I finished my coffee slowly, paid. and walked leisurely in the general direction of the hotel, reflecting that Rome, as seen by a pedestrian, was a different and much better city than Rome seen from an automobile. For that afternoon, at least. Lorimer's description of Italy as a beautiful, lamentable country, peopled with desperate inhabitants, seemed only partially correct.