Nightwork

I contemplated the perfectly dreamy afternoon ahead of me, starting with a scrumptious bottle of champagne (on my bill) and groaned. A young man, swinging ahead of me down the street on crutches, his leg in a cast, heard me and turned and stared curiously at me. Everyone to his own brand of trouble.

I turned and looked into a shop window. My reflection stared back at me. A youngish-looking man in expensive ski clothes, on holiday in one of the most glamorous resorts in the world. You could have taken my picture for an advertisement for a chic travel magazine. Money no object. The vacation of your dreams.

Then I grinned at myself in the window. An idea had come to me. I started down the street, after the man on crutches. I was limping a little. By the time I passed him I was limping noticeably. He looked at me sympathetically. 'You, too?' he said.

"Just a sprain,' I said.

By the time I reached the small private hospital conveniently located in the center of town, I was giving a fair imitation of a skier who had fallen down half the mountain.

* * *

Two hours later I came out of the hospital. I was equipped with crutches and my left leg was in a cast above the knee. I sat in a restaurant for the rest of the morning, drinking black coffee and eating croissants, happily reading the Herald Tribune of the day before.

The young doctor at the hospital had been skeptical when I told him I was sure I had broken my leg - 'A hairline fracture,' I told him. 'I've done it twice before.' He was even more skeptical when he looked at the X-rays, but when I insisted he shrugged and said, 'Well, it's your leg.'

Switzerland was one country where you could get any kind of medical attention you paid for, necessary or not. I had heard of a man who had a slight fungus growth on his thumb and had become obsessed with the idea that it was cancer. Doctors in the United States, England, France, Spain, and Norway had assured him it was only a slight fungus infection that would go away eventually and had prescribed salves. In Switzerland, for a price, he had finally managed to have it amputated. He now lived happily in San Francisco, thumb-less.

At one o'clock I took a taxi back to the Palace. I accepted the sympathy of the men at the desk with a wan smile, and I fixed a look of stoic suffering on my face as I clumped into the bar.

Flora Sloane was seated in a comer near the window, with the unopened bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice on the table in front of her. She was dressed in skintight green slacks and sweater that made the most of her generous, and I must admit, well-shaped bosom. Her leopard coat was on a chair beside her, and the aroma of her perfume made the bar smell like a florist's shop full of exotic tropical plants.

She gasped when she saw me stagger in, using the crutches clumsily. 'Oh, shit,' she said.

'It's nothing,' I said bravely. 'Just a hairline fracture. I'll be out of the cast in six weeks. At least that's what the doctor says.' I collapsed on a chair, with a sound that sensitive ears would have distinguished as a smothered groan, and put the cast up on the chair across from me.

'How in hell did you do it?' she asked crossly.

'My skis didn't open.' That much was true. I hadn't touched them that day. I crossed my skis and they didn't open.'

'That's damned peculiar,' she said. 'You haven't fallen once since you've been here.'

I guess I wasn't paying attention,' I said. 'I guess I was thinking about this afternoon and ...'. Her expression softened. 'You poor dear,' she said. 'Well, anyway, we can have our champagne.' She started to signal the barman.

'I'm not allowed to drink,' I said. The doctor was most specific. It interferes with the healing process.'

'Everybody else I know who's broken bones went right on drinking,' she said. She was not a woman who liked to be deprived of her champagne.

'Maybe,' I said. 'I have brittle bones, the doctor said.' I grimaced in pain.

She touched my hand lightly. 'It hurts, doesn't it?'

'A little,' I admitted. 'The morphine's beginning to wear off.'

'Still,' she said, 'we can at least have lunch....'

'I hate to have to disappoint you. Flora,' I said, 'but I'm a bit woozy. Actually, I feel like throwing up. The doctor said I'd better stay in bed today, with my leg up on some pillows. I'm terribly sorry.'

'Well, all I can say is you sure picked the wrong day to crash.' She brushed at her cashmere bosom. 'And I got all dressed up for you.'

'Accidents happen when they're fated to happen,' I said philosophically. 'And you do look beautiful.' I heaved myself to my feet. Or rather my foot. 'I think I'd better go upstairs now.'

'I'll come with you and make you comfy.' She started to rise.