Part 15 (1/2)

When they reached the outskirts of Cannes, the girl told Craig the name of Reynolds' hotel. It was about six blocks away from the Carlton, inland, behind the railroad tracks. When they got there, Reynolds, now awake, said thickly, ”Thank you, everybody. Don't bother to go in with me. Perfectly all right. Good night.”

They watched him walk stiffly and self-consciously into the darkened hotel.

”He doesn't need any more to drink,” Craig said, ”but I do.”

”So do I,” said Gail McKinnon.

”Don't you live in that hotel, too?” Craig asked.

”No.”

He felt a foolish sense of relief.

All the bars they pa.s.sed were closed. He hadn't realized how late it was. Anyway, stained as they were from Reynolds' blood, they would have been a disturbing sight for any late-drinking patrons. Craig stopped the car in front of the Carlton but left the motor running. ”I have a bottle,” he said. ”Do you want to come up?”

”Yes, please,” she said.

He parked the car, and they went into the hotel. Luckily, there was n.o.body there. The concierge, from whom Craig got the key to his apartment, had been trained since boyhood not to change his expression at anything he saw in the lobby of any hotel.

In the apartment Gail McKinnon took off her coat and went into the bathroom while Craig poured the whiskies and soda. There was the pleasant domestic sound of running water from the bathroom, sign of another presence, a barrier against loneliness.

When she came back, he saw that she had combed her hair. She looked fresh and clean, as though nothing had happened to her that night. They raised their gla.s.ses to each other and drank. The hotel was quiet around them, the city sleeping.

They sat facing each other on large brocaded armchairs.

”Lesson for the day,” Craig said. ”Don't go out with drunks. If he hadn't had the good sense to fall down those steps, you'd have probably wound up wrapped around a tree.”

”Probably.” She shrugged. ”The hazards of the machine age.”

”You could have asked me to drive you home before the fall,” Craig said, forgetting that he had been perhaps just as drunk as Reynolds.

”I had decided never to ask you anything again,” she said.

”I see.”

”He was raving against you when he made his swan dive. Reynolds.” The girl giggled.

”Just for one little nasty crack eight years ago?” Craig shook his head, marveling at the persistence of vanity.

”That and a lot of other things.”

”What other things?”

”You once took a girl away from him in Hollywood.”

”Did I? Well, if I did, I didn't know about it.”

”That makes it even worse for somebody like Joe Reynolds. He hit her, and out of spite she told him how all-round marvelous you were and what other women had told her about you and about how intelligent and sensitive and funny you were. What do you expect him to feel about you? And you were such a big shot out there when he was a pimply-faced boy just breaking in.”

”Well, he must feel better about me now,” Craig said.

”A little,” the girl said. ”But not enough. He's given me a lot of the information that's in the stuff I've written so far about you. And he's suggested a t.i.tle for the piece.”

”What is it?” Craig asked, curious.

”The Once and Future Has Been,” the girl said flatly.

Craig nodded. ”It's vulgar,” he said, ”but catchy. You going to use it?”

”I don't know yet,” she said.

”What does it depend on?”

”You. What you seem like to me finally when I get really to know you. If I ever get to know you. How much guts I think you still have. Or will. Or talent. It would help if you let me read the script you're giving to Walt Klein tomorrow.”

”How do you know about that?”

”Sam Boyd is a friend of mine.” Sam Boyd was one of Klein's bright young men. ”He told me he was coming over here in the morning to pick up a script you owned. We're having breakfast together.”

”Tell him to come for the script after breakfast,” Craig said.

”I'll tell him.” She held out her gla.s.s. ”It's empty,” she said.

He got up and carried both gla.s.ses over to the table where the bottle was. He made the two drinks and carried them back. ”Thanks,” she said, looking up at him soberly as she accepted the gla.s.s. He leaned over and kissed her gently. Her lips were soft, welcoming. Then she averted her head. He stepped back as she stood up.

”That's enough of that,” she said. ”I'm going home.”

He put out his hand to touch her arm.

”Leave me alone!” she said sharply. She put down her gla.s.s, seized her coat, and ran toward the door.

”Gail ...” he said, taking a step after her.

”Miserable old man,” she said as she pulled open the door. The door slammed after her.

He finished his drink slowly, then put out the lights and went to bed. Lying naked on the sheets in the warm darkness, he listened to the occasional rubber swish of a car on the Croisette and the tumble of the Mediterranean on the sh.o.r.e. He couldn't sleep. It had been a full night. The liquor he had drunk drummed at his temples. Bits and pieces of the evening formed and reformed kaleidoscopically in his brain-Klein, in his velvet jacket, introducing everybody to everybody, Corelli and his two girls, Green p.i.s.sing forlornly on the expensive green gra.s.s, Reynolds' blood ...

Add to the mixture ... The game (was it a game?) of Gail McKinnon. Her flickering young-old sensuality. Invitation and rejection. Remember and regret the lushness of Natalie Sorel, try to forget David Teichman, death under the studio wig.

Craig moved uneasily in the bed. It had been like a gigantic Christmas office party. Except that in other businesses they weren't held twice a week.

Then there was the soft, half-expected knock on the door. He got up, put on a robe, and opened the door.

Gail McKinnon was standing in the dim corridor.

”Come in,” he said.

HE was aware that it was light, that he was not yet awake, that there was soft breathing somewhere beside him, that the phone was ringing.

Without sitting up or opening his eyes, postponing the day, he groped for the phone on the bedside table. A faraway voice, through a curtain of mechanical buzzing, said, ”Good morning, darling.”