Nightwork

She strode over to the reception desk with the air of a woman who had been used to five-star hotels all her life, but just as she was about to give her name to the clerk behind the desk, two of the three American children, who had remained in the hall, broke into a loud argument about whose turn it was to go up to their room and take the first bath. So I couldn't hear the name that the lady gave the clerk. If I ever had children, I thought grimly, I would never travel with them.

I sat glued to my chair while the lady signed the hotel registration card and threw down her passport. I could not see its color. Finished at the desk, the lady didn't go towards the elevators, but strode directly into the bar. I touched the silver coin in my pocket and stood up and started toward the bar. But just as I reached it, she came out. I stepped back to let her pass me, and made a little hint of a polite bow, but she paid no attention to me. I could not tell what the expression on her face meant.

I sat in a corner of the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda. The bar was empty and dark. There was nothing I could do for the moment but wait.

* * *

I was still there at seven o'clock, when she came back. She was wearing a severe black dress with two strands of pearls looped around her throat and was carrying her brown coat. Obviously she intended to go out. She stopped at the door and scanned the room. The American family was seated around a table, the mother and father drinking martinis, the children Coca-Colas, the father from time to time saying, 'For God's sake, will you kids stop yelling?' An elderly English couple was seated across the room from me, the gentleman reading a three-day-old copy of the London Times, the woman, in a billowing flowered print, staring vacantly into space.

An Italian group near the bar itself chattered continuously, and I could make out the word disgracia which they had been using over and over again, with great intensity, ever since they had sat down fifteen minutes before. There was no way of my telling who or what was disgraceful.

No one but myself was sitting alone.

A little grimace twisted the generous red mouth of the woman at the door. Her skin was pale, with a delicate pink flush over the prominent cheekbones. The eyes were dark blue, almost violet, the figure, frankly revealed by the sober dress, willowy, the legs slender and finely shaped. I decided she was not pretty, but beautiful. Just the sort of woman a man who was bold and shameless enough to steal seventy thousand dollars at the Zurich airport would be likely to take away on an illicit holiday from an adoring and crippled husband.

She noticed me looking at her and frowned slightly. Frowning became her. I lowered my eyes. Then she came across the room and sat down at the table next to mine, throwing her coat over the other chair at her table and dragging a pack of cigarettes and a heavy gold lighter out of her bag.

The waiter on duty hurried over to her and lit her cigarette. She was the sort of woman who is served immediately on all occasions. The waiter was a handsome, dark young man with the soft, watchful eyes of a fighting bull, and he showed splendid teeth in a wide smile as he bent gracefully over the lady's table to take her order.

'A pink gin, per f avare,' she said. 'No ice.' British.

'Another Scotch and soda, please,' I said to the waiter.

'Prego?' The smile on the waiter's face vanished as he faced me. He had not questioned me when I had ordered before.

'Ancora un whiskey con soda,' the lady said impatiently.

'Si Signera.' The smile appeared once more. 'Molto grazia.'

Thank you for helping out,' I said to the lady.

'He understood you perfectly well,' she said. 'He was just being Italian. You're American, aren't you?'

'I guess it sticks out all over,' I said.

'Not to be ashamed,' she said. 'People have a right to be American. Have you-been here long?'

'Not long enough to learn the language.' I felt my pulse quickening. Things were going along infinitely better than I had dared hope. 'I just arrived last night.'

She made an impatient gesture. 'I mean here in the bar.'

'Oh. For about an hour.'

'An hour.' She had a clipped manner of talking but the voice was musical. 'Did you by any chance see another American gentleman wander through? A man of about fifty, though he looks younger. Very fit. A little gray in the hair. Perhaps with a questing look in his eyes. As though he was looking for someone.'

'Well, let me think,' I said craftily. 'What would his name be?'

'You wouldn't know his name.' She looked hard at me. Adulteresses, even British ones, I had just discovered, weren't anxious to broadcast the names or exact locations of their lovers.

'I wasn't paying any particular attention,' I said innocently, 'but I seem to have noticed somebody who might answer to your description at the door. Around six thirty, I would guess.' I wanted to keep the conversation going at any cost, and I wanted to keep the lady in the bar as long as possible.