Nightwork

'I could tell it was you,' the girl went on, 'even a mile away on the slope. You used to ski with a very nice, pretty lady. Is the here with you?'

'No,' I said. 'You were reading Wuthering Heights the last time I saw you.'

'Kid stuff,' she said. 'You once led me down Suicide Six in a snowstorm. Do you remember?'

'Of course,' I said. lying.

'It's nice of you to say so. Even if you don't. It was my accomplishment of the year. Have you just arrived?'

'Yes.' She was the first person who had recognized me since I had come to Europe and I hoped the last.

'Are you going to stay here long?' She sounded like a little girl who was afraid to stay alone at night when her parents were going out.

'A few days.'

'Do you know Gstaad?'

This is my first time.'

'Maybe I could lead you this time.' Again there was the languid gesture of pushing her hair back.

That's very kind of you, Didi,' I said.

'If you're not otherwise occupied,' she said formally.

A boy with a beard came back through the door and shouted, 'Didi, are you going to stand there gabbing all night?'

She made an impatient gesture of her hand. 'I'm talking to an old friend of my family. Screw off.' She smiled gently at me. 'Boys these days,' she said. They think they own you body and soul. Hairy beasts. You never saw such a spoiled bunch of kids. I fear for the world when they finally grow up.'

I tried not to smile.

'You think I'm peculiar, don't you?' It was an accusation, sharp and clear.

'Not at all.'

'You ought to see them arriving m Geneva after holidays,' she said. 'In their father's private Lear jets. Or driving up to the school in Rolls-Royces. A royal pageant of corruption.'

This time I couldn't help smiling.

'You think the way I talk is funny.' She shrugged. 'I read a lot.'

'I know.'

'I'm an only child,' she said, 'and my parents were always someplace else.'

'Have you been analyzed?' I asked.

'Not really.' She shrugged again. 'Of course, they tried. I didn't love them enough, so they thought I was neurotic. Tant pis for them. Do you speak French?'

'No,' I said. 'But I guess I could figure out what tant pis meant.'

It's an over-rated language,' she said. 'Everything rhymes with everything else. Well, I've enjoyed our little conversation. When I write home, whom should I send your regards to, my mother or my father?'

'Both,' I said.

'Both,' she said. That's a laugh. There is no both. To be continued in our next. Welcome to never-never land, Mr Grimes.' She put out her hand and I shook it. The hand was small and soft and dry. She went through the door, the embroidered flowers on her plump buttocks waving.

I shook my head, pitying her father and her mother, thinking, maybe going to school in Scranton wasn't so bad after all. I took the elevator and went upstairs and ran a hot bath. As I soaked, I played with the idea of writing a short note to Fabian and quietly getting on the next train out of Gstaad.

* * *

At dinner that night, there were only the four of us. Lily, Eunice, Fabian, and myself. As unostentatiously as possible, I kept studying Eunice, trying to imagine what it would be like fitting across the breakfast table from her ten years from now, twenty years from now. Imagining sharing a bottle of port with her father, who hunted three times a week. Standing at the baptismal font with her, as our children were christened. Miles Fabian as godfather? Visiting our son at what would it be - Eton? All I knew about English public schools had been gleaned from books by men like Kipling, Waugh, Orwell, Connolly. I decided against Eton.

The few days of skiing had given Eunice's complexion a pretty flush, summery colors. She was wearing a figured silk , dress that clung to her figure. Buxom today, would she be stately later? The old saw had it, as Fabian had pointed out, that it was just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one. But was it?

The sight and sound of her and Lily surrounded by lolling, arrogant young men (at least they seemed so to me) at the table with the magnum of champagne on it had made me flee from the bar. There was no denying that she was a pretty girl, and there would undoubtedly always be young men of that caliber and class in attendance. How would I take that if she were my wife? I had never really thought about what class I belonged to or what class other people might think I belonged to. Miles Fabian could leave Lowell, Massachusetts, behind him and pretend to be an English squire. I doubted that I could ever get rid of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and pretend to be anything but what I was - a grounded pilot, a man trained as a kind of superior technician, dependent on a payroll. What would the guests at the wedding be whispering about me as I stood beside the altar of the English country church waiting for the bride to descend the aisle? Could I invite my brother Hank and his family to the wedding? My brother in San Diego?

Fabian could educate me to a degree, but there were limits, whether he recognized them or not.