Nightwork

'Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main,' Evelyn sang as we walked toward the dock. She had made me stop at a pharmacy and buy some Dramamine. I had the feeling she shared Mrs Quadrocelli's low opinion of the sea. 'Are you sure you're not going to drown me when you get me out on the water?' she said. 'Like what's-his-name in An American Tragedy when he finds out Shelley Winters is pregnant.'

'Montgomery Clift,' I said. 'I'm not Montgomery Clift and you're not Shelley Winters. And the picture wasn't called An American Tragedy. It was A Place in the Sun.'

'I just said it for laughs.' She smiled sweetly at me.

'Some laughs.' But I smiled back. It wasn't much of a joke, but it was a joke. At least it was a sign she was ready to make an effort not to be gloomy for the rest of our time in Europe. The long haul through France would have been hard to take if she just sat in her comer of the car, silent and withdrawn, as she had done on the trip that morning from Rome. After the phone call to Fabian I had told her I had to drive to Paris and asked her if she wanted to come along.

'Do you want me to?' she said.

I want you to.'

Then so do I,' she had said flatly.

Quadrocelli saw us as we approached the dock and jumped off the boat spryly and hurried to meet us, robust and nautical in his shapeless corduroys and bulky blue seaman's sweater. 'Come aboard, come aboard,' he said, bending to kiss Evelyn's hand, then shaking mine heartily. 'Everything is ready I have arranged all. The sea, as you notice, is calm as a lake and the well-advertised blue. The picnic basket is secured. Cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, fruit, wine. Adequate nourishment for sea-going appetites...'

We were about twenty yards away from the boat when it blew up. Bits and pieces of wood and glass and wire flew around us as we all dove to the pavement. Then everything became deadly quiet. Quadrocelli stood up slowly and stared at his boat. The stern line had been torn away and the stem was drifting at an odd angle from the dock, as though the boat had been broken in two just aft of the helm.

'Are you all right?' I asked Evelyn.

'I think so,' she said in a small voice. 'How about you?'

'Okay,' I said. I stood up and put my arm around her. 'Giuliano...' I began.

He did not look at me. He kept staring at his boat. 'Fascist!,' he whispered. 'Miserable Fascist!.' People were now streaming out of the buildings across the wide quay and we were surrounded by a crowd of citizens, all talking at once, asking questions. Quadrocelli ignored them. Take me home, please,' he said to me quietly. 'I do not believe I trust myself to drive. I want to go home.'

We shouldered our way through the crowd to our car. Quadrocelli never looked back at his pretty little boat, which was sinking slowly now into the oily waters of the harbor.

In the car. he began to shiver. Violently, uncontrollably. Under his tan, his face took on a sickly pallor. 'They could have killed you, too,' he said, his teeth chattering. 'If you had arrived two minutes earlier. Forgive me. Forgive all of us. Do/ce Italia. Paradise for tourists.' He laughed eerily.

When we reached his house, he wouldn't let us go in with him, or even get out of the car. 'Please.' he said, 'I must have a discussion with my wife. I do not wish to be rude, but we must be alone.'

We watched him walk slowly, looking old, across the driveway and to the door of his house. 'Oh, the poor man,' was all that Evelyn said.

We drove back to our hotel. We didn't say anything about what had happened to anyone. They would find out soon enough. We each had a brandy at the bar. Two dead, I thought, one in New York, one in Switzerland and one near miss in Italy. Evelyn's hand was steady as she picked up her glass. Mine wasn't. To sunny Italy,' Evelyn said. 'O sole mio. Time to go, I'd say. Wouldn't you?'

'I would,' I said.

We went up and packed our bags and were paid up and out of the hotel and on the road north in twenty minutes. We didn't stop, except for gas. until after midnight, when we had passed the border and were in Monte Carlo. Evelyn insisted on seeing the casino and playing at the roulette table. I didn't feel like gambling, or even watching, and sat at the bar. After a while she came back, smiling and looking smug. She had won five hundred francs and paid my bar bill to celebrate. Whoever would finally marry her would marry a woman with sound nerves.

* * *