Nightwork

'Exactly.' He beamed, as though he had just presented me with a gift of great value. 'Our partnership would continue as before. Whatever new capital you brought in would of course still be reserved to you. The profits would be shared. As simple and as equitable as that. I hope I've proved to your satisfaction that I am of some use in the field of investments.' 'I won't even comment on that,' I said. The workman is worthy of his hire,' he said sententiously. 'I don't think you'd have any trouble explaining that to your wife.'

'That would depend on the wife.'

'It would depend on you, Douglas. I would expect you to choose a wise girl who trusted you and loved you and was anxious to give substantial proof of her devotion to you.'

I thought back over my history with women. 'Miles,' I said, 'I think you have an exaggerated notion of my charms.'

'As I told you once before, old man,' he said, 'you're much too modest. Dangerously modest.'

'I once took out a pretty waitress in Columbus, Ohio, for three months,' I said, 'and all she ever let me do was hold her hand in the movies.'

'You're moving up in class now. Douglas,' Fabian said. 'The women you're going to meet from now on are attracted by the rich, so inevitably they are surrounded by older men, men who are engaged almost twenty-four hours a day in great affairs, who have very little time for women. Along with them there are the men who do have time for women but whose masculinity very often is ambiguous, to say the least. Or whose interests are transparently pecuniary. Your waitress in Columbus wouldn't even enter a movie house with any of them. In the circles in which you're going to move now, any man under forty with an obvious income of his own and who shows the slightest evidence of virility and who has the leisure to have a three-hour lunch with a lady is greeted with piteous gratitude. Believe me, old man, just by being your normal, boyish self, you will be a smashing success. Not the least of the benefits I mean to shower on you is a new conception of your worth. I trust you will ask me to be the best man at your wedding.'

'You're a calculating bastard, aren't you?' I said.

'I calculate,' he said calmly, 'and I intend to teach you to calculate, too. It's absurd that the perfectly good verb, to calculate, should have a bad reputation in the modern world. Let schoolgirls and soldiers wallow in romance, Douglas. You calculate.'

'It all seems so - so immoral,' I said.

'I had hoped you would never use that word,' he said. 'Was it moral to abscond with all that money from the St Augustine Hotel?'

'No.'

'Was it moral for me to hold onto your suitcase when I saw what was in it?'

'I should say not.'

'Morality is indivisible, my boy. You can't select certain chunks of it, as though it were a pie waiting on a table to be cut up and served. Let's face it, Douglas, you and I are no longer permitted the luxury of morality. Let's understand each other, Douglas; it wasn't morality that made you run from Herr Steubel - it was a huge reluctance to share a cell with him.'

'You've got a fucking argument for everything,' I said. 'I'm happy you think that,' he said, smiling. 'Let me present some further arguments. Forgive me if I repeat myself in assuring you that whatever I suggest is in your best interests. I haven't hidden from you that your best interests are my best interests. I am thinking of the quality of life that you and I are eventually going to lead. You agree, I imagine, that, no matter what we do, we will have to do it together -that we will always have to be close together. Just like partners in any enterprise, we will have to be in constant communication. Practically on a day-to-day basis. You do agree, don't you?' 'Yes.'

'For the moment, except for the little disagreement in Lugano, it has been quite pleasant to wander about as we've been doing.'

'Very pleasant.' I hadn't told him about the Alka-Seltzers and the tightness around my waist.

'Eventually, though, it will begin to pall. Going from hotel to hotel, even the best ones in the world, and living out of a suitcase is finally dreary. Traveling is only amusing when you have a home to return to. Even at your age...'

'Please don't make me sound as though I'm ten years old,' I said.

He laughed. 'Don't be so sensitive. Naturally, to me, you seem enviably young.' He became more serious. 'Actually, our differences in age are an asset. I doubt if we would be able to continue for long if we were both fifty or both thirty-three. Rivalries would develop, differences in temperament would arise. This way you can be impatient with me and I can be patient with you. We achieve a useful working balance.'

'I'm not impatient with you,' I said. 'Just scared shitless from time to time.'

He laughed again. 'I take that as a compliment. By the way, has either Lily or Eunice asked you about what you do for a living?'

No.'

'Good girls,' he said. 'Real ladies. Has anybody asked you? I mean, since the happening in the hotel?'