Nightwork

Evelyn drove out to Orly with me in the rented car with a chauffeur. The Jaguar was in the garage, waiting for Fabian. Evelyn was going to stay in Paris a few more days. She hadn't been in Paris for years and it would be a shame just to pass through, she said. Anyway, I was going to Boston and she was going directly to New York. She had been carefree and affectionate on the trip through Prance. We had driven slowly, stopping often to sight-see and indulge in great meals outside Lyon and in Avallon. She had taken my picture in front of the Hospice de Beaune, where we toured the wine cellars, and in the courtyard at Fontainebleau. We had spent the last night of the trip just outside Paris at Barbizon, in a lovely old inn. We had dined gloriously. Over dinner I had told her everything. Where my money had come from, how I had met up with Fabian, what our arrangement was. Everything. She had listened quietly. When I finally stopped talking, she laughed. 'Well,' she said, 'now I know why you want to marry a lawyer.' She had leaned over and kissed me. 'Finders keepers, I always say,' she said, still laughing. 'Don't worry, dear. I am not opposed to larceny in a good cause.'

We slept all night in each other's arms. Without saying it to each other, we both knew a chapter in our lives was coming to an end and tacitly we postponed the finish. She asked no more questions about Pat.

When we reached Orly, she didn't get out of the car. 'I hate airports,' she said, 'and railway stations. When it's not me that's going.'

I kissed her. She patted my cheek maternally. 'Be careful in Vermont,' she said. 'Watch out for changes in the weather.' 'All in all,' I said, 'it's not been a bad time, has it?' 'All in all, no,' she said. 'We've been to some nice places.' My eyes were teary. Hers were brighter than usual, but dry. She looked beautiful, tanned and refreshed by her holiday. She was wearing the same dress she had worn when she arrived in Porto Ercole.

'I'll call you,' I said, as I got out of the car. 'Do that,' she said. 'You have my number in Sag Harbor.' I leaned into the car and kissed her again. 'Well, now,' she said softly.

I followed the porter with my luggage into the terminal. At the desk, I made sure I had all the checks for my bags.

* * *

I caught a cold on the plane and was sniffling and running a fever when we landed at Logan. The customs man who came up to me must have taken pity on my condition because he merely waved me on. So I didn't have to pay any duty on the five Roman suits. I took it as a favorable omen to counterbalance the cold. I told the taxi driver to take me to the Ritz-Carlton, where I asked for a sunny room. I had learned the Fabian lesson of the best hotel in town, if I had learned nothing else. I sent down for a Bible and the boy brought up a paperback copy. The next three days I spent in the room, drinking tea and hot rum and living on aspirin, shivering, reading snatches from the Book of Job, and watching television. Nothing I saw on television made me happy I had returned to America.

On the fourth day my cold had gone. I checked out of the hotel, paying cash, and rented a car. The weather was wet and blustery, with huge dark clouds scudding across the sky; not a good day for driving. But by then I was in a hurry. Whatever was going to happen I wanted to happen soon.

I drove fast. The countryside, in the changing northern season, was dead, desolate, the trees bare, the fields muddy, shorn of the grace of snow, the houses closed in on themselves. When I stopped once for gas, a plane flew overhead, low, but unseen in the thick cloud. It sounded like a bombing raid. I had crossed this stretch of the country, at the control» of a plane, hundreds of times. I touched the silver dollar in my pocket.

* * *

I reached Burlington just before three o'clock and went directly to the high school. I parked the car across the street from the school and turned the motor off and waited, with the windows all turned up to keep out the cold. I could hear the three o'clock bell ring and watched the flood of boys and girls surge through the school doors. Finally, Pat came out She was wearing a big, heavy coat and had a scarf around her head. With her myopic eyes I knew my car, forty yards away from her, was only a blur to her and that she couldn't tell whether anyone was in it or not. I was about to open the door and get out and cross over to her when she was stopped by one of the students, a big fat boy in a checkered mackinaw. They stood there in the gray afternoon light, talking, with the wind whipping at her coat and the ends of her scarf. The window on my side was beginning to mist over from the condensation of my breath in the cooling car, and I rolled it down to see her better.