Evening in Byzantium (35 page)

They walked back to the hotel. They were solicited several times by whores. “Disgusting,” Patty said. “Open like that.” He said he didn’t want to go to the Hennessy party. “You know as well I do, Mr. Craig,” he said, “parties like that aren’t for me.” He went into the lobby of the hotel with Craig just in case there was a message from Anne. There was no message.

“If I hear anything before I leave, I’ll let you know,” Craig said. He felt uneasy in the boy’s presence, as though he were deserting him.

“You’re a friend,” Patty said. “I regard you as a real friend, Mr. Craig.”

Craig watched the enormous form of his daughter’s lover limp forlornly out into the night through the lobby doors.

I have done my duty as a father, Craig thought, as the boy disappeared. Or part of my duty.

The door to Hennessy’s apartment was open, and the noise of the party could be heard all the way down the hall. It was the unmistakable noise of success. Hennessy’s movie must have been very well received that evening. There was also the equally unmistakable smell of marijuana floating out through the open door.

In my day, Craig thought, we just got drunk. Was there what the professors of sociology called a value judgment there?

The room was crowded as Craig pushed in. Murray Sloan, the critic from the trade paper, was standing next to a big table ranged with bottles. He was not smoking marijuana. Faithful to an older tradition, he was loading up on free whisky. On a big couch against the wall on the other side of the room Gail was sitting next to the hero of the evening. Hennessy was in his shirt sleeves, in suspenders, beaming and rosy and sweating. He was sharing a joint with Gail, who looked remote and cool, beyond the noise and celebration.

“How did it go tonight, Murray?” Craig asked Sloan.

“As you can see.” Sloan waved his glass at the chattering guests. “They slobbered over it.”

“Is that what you’re going to write?”

“No. I’m going to write that it was full of genial, rough American humor and that the audience reaction was all that the producers could hope for. It is a candidate for the highest honors.” Sloan teetered a little, decorously, and Craig could see that he had done his drinking diligently. “Another thing that I am not going to write is that the money spent on hash tonight would have financed a small-budget pornographic film. Another thing I am not going to write is that if it wasn’t for the free liquor, I would never go to another festival. And how are you, my friend? Is there any news of you I ought to put on the telex?”

“No,” Craig said. “Have you seen Ian Wadleigh around?”

“No,” Sloan said. “Old drinking companion. Notable by his absence. I heard about his big night with Murphy in the restaurant. He’s probably crawled into a hole in the basement and pulled it in after him.”

“Who told you about that?” Craig asked sharply.

“The wind speaks,” Sloan said, teetering and smiling. “The Mistral mutters.”

“Have you written anything about it?” Craig asked.

“I am not a gossip columnist,” Sloan said with dignity. “Although others are.”

“Has there been anything in any of the columns?”

“Not that I know of,” Sloan said. “But I don’t read the columns.”

“Thanks, Murray.” Craig moved away from the critic. He hadn’t come to the party to spend his time with Murray Sloan. He made his way across the room toward Gail and Hennessy. Corelli, the Italian actor, was there, sitting boyishly on the floor, showing his teeth, with his inevitable two girls. Craig couldn’t remember whether he had seen these particular two girls before or not. Corelli was sharing his cigarette with the girls. One of them said, “Pure Marrakesh heaven,” as she exhaled. Corelli smiled sweetly up at Craig as Craig nearly stumbled over his outstretched foot.

“Join us, Mr. Craig,” Corelli said. “Please do join us. You have a
simpatico
face. Doesn’t Mr. Craig have a
simpatico
face, girls?”

“
Molto simpatico
,” one of the girls said.

“Excuse me,” Craig said, being careful not to step on anyone as he made his way to Hennessy and Gail McKinnon. “Congratulations, Hennessy,” he said. “I heard you killed them in there tonight.”

Hennessy beamed up at him, tried to stand, fell back. “I am immortal tonight,” he said. “Move over for the new Cecil B. DeMille. Isn’t this a nice party? Booze, hash, and fame, with the compliments of the management.”

“Hello, Gail,” Craig said.

“Why, Malcolm Harte, as I live and breathe,” Gail said. Craig couldn’t tell whether she was drunk or drugged.

“What’s that, what’s that?” Hennessy said querulously. “Did I invite anybody else?”

“It’s a private joke,” Craig said, “between Gail and myself.”

“Great girl, this kid,” Hennessy said, patting Gail’s arm. “Drank me drink for drink all night long while my fate was being decided on the Côte d’Azur. Interested in my early life. Up from slavery. Amateur boxer, truck driver, stunt man, pool hustler, bartender, publicity man … What else was I, dear?”

“Garage mechanic, farmhand …”

“That’s it.” Hennessy beamed at her. “She’s got me down pat. Perfect American banality. I’m famous, and she’s going to make me famous, aren’t you, dear?” He passed his cigarette to Gail, and she drew in a long draft, closing her eyes as she did so.

This isn’t any party for me, Craig thought. “Good night,” he said as Gail opened her eyes and slowly let out the sweetish smoke. “I just wanted to tell you I’m leaving for New York tomorrow.”

“Traveling man,” Gail said, giving the cigarette back to Hennessy. “Good night, traveling man.”

He was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It seemed to him that he had never been asleep, that he was in the middle of one of those dreams in which you feel you are really awake but are dreaming that you are asleep. He fumbled for the telephone in the darkness.

“I knocked and knocked,” Gail said, “but nothing happened.” Her voice sounded as if she, too, were in his dream.

“What time is it?”

“Three
A.M
.,” she said, “and all’s well. I’m coming up.”

“No, you’re not,” he said.

“I’m floating, floating,” Gail said. “And I’m horny. Beautifully horny for the touch of my true love’s lips.”

“You’re stoned,” he said.

She giggled. “Beautifully stoned. Beautifully horny. Leave the door open.”

“Go home and go to bed,” he said.

“I have a joint with me. The most beautiful Moroccan kif. Leave the door open for me. We’ll drift away together into the most beautiful Moroccan heaven.”

He hesitated. He was fully awake now. The familiar dreamy caressing voice troubled him, traveled insinuatingly along the electric circuits of his nerves.

Gail giggled again. “You’re crumbling,” she said. “My true love is crumbling. I’m on my way up.” There was the click of the telephone.

He thought for a moment, remembering what it had been like to make love to her. Young girl’s skin. The soft, bold hands. It would be the first and last time he would ever know what the rest of the world seemed to know about drugs. Whatever else Gail was at the moment, she was certainly happy. If he was to share that secret and delicious happiness for an hour or two, who would be the loser? He was going to be on another continent in twenty hours. He would never see her again. Another ordered life was to begin for him tomorrow. He had one last night to enjoy the pleasures of chaos. He knew that if he kept the door closed, there would be no sleep for him that night. He got out of bed and went to the door, unlatched it. He was naked, and he stretched out on top of the bed sheets and waited.

He heard the door open, close, heard her come into the room. “Sssh, sssh, my true love,” she whispered.

He lay still, heard her undress in the darkness, saw her face briefly in the flare of the match as she lit up. She came over to the bed, got in beside him without touching him, moved a pillow, sat up cross-legged, propped against it, the pinpoint of light glowing and getting larger as she pulled at the beautiful Moroccan kif. She handed him the cigarette. “Keep it down as long as you can,” she said in her dreamy, remote voice.

He had given up smoking, from one day to the next, more than ten years ago, but he remembered how to inhale.

“Beautiful,” she whispered. “Beautiful boy.”

“What was your mother’s name?” he asked. He had to ask quickly before the smoke began to take effect. Even the first lungful was already at work.

She giggled. “Full fathom five my mother lies,” she said. She reached for the cigarette, touched his hand. He felt as though his body was being swept by a soft, warm wind. It was too late for questions.

They finished the joint slowly, alternating it from hand to hand. The room was misty with smoke. The sound from the sea outside was musical, a rhythmic, soothing resonance, an organ in a cathedral. She slid down beside him, touched him. They made love timelessly, tracklessly. She was all the girls, all the women of that southern coast, the plump, lustful woman stretched out on her belly in the sun with her legs apart, the blonde young mother at the pool, all of Corelli’s bread-brown, bread-warm girls, Natalie Sorel, white-bosomed and dancing, Constance spelling Meyrague.

After, they did not sleep. Nor talk. They lay side by side in what seemed like an endless, perfect trance. But when the first light of dawn slanted in through the shutters, Gail stirred. “I must go now,” she said. Her voice was almost normal. If he had had to speak, his voice would come from miles away. It made no difference to him whether she went or stayed, whether anyone went or stayed. Through a haze he watched her dress. Her party dress.

She leaned over him, kissed him. “Sleep,” she said. “Sleep, my true love.”

And she was gone. He knew he had a question to ask her, but he didn’t know what the question was.

H
E was almost finished with his packing. He moved with a minimum of luggage, and he could pack for anywhere in a quarter of an hour. He had a call in for Paris, but the operator had reported that all lines were busy. He had told her to keep trying.

When the phone rang, he picked it up without enthusiasm. He didn’t relish having to explain to Constance that he wasn’t going to take her to lunch on Monday, after all. But it wasn’t Constance. It was Bayard Patty speaking in a voice that sounded as though someone had him by the throat. “I’m in the lobby, Mr. Craig,” Patty said. “And I have to see you.”

“I’m in the middle of packing and …”

“I tell you I have to see you,” Patty said in that strangling voice. “I’ve heard from Anne.”

“Come on up,” Craig said, and told him the number of his apartment.

When Patty came into the room, he looked wild, his hair and beard disheveled, his eyes red-rimmed as though he hadn’t slept in days. “Your daughter,” he said accusingly. “Do you know what she’s done? She’s run off with that fat old drunken writer, Ian Wadleigh.”

“Wait a minute,” Craig said. He sat down. It was an automatic reaction, an attempt to preserve at least the appearance of reasonableness and convention. “It can’t be. It’s impossible.”

“You say it’s impossible.” Patty stood over him, his hands working convulsively. “You didn’t talk to her.”

“Where did she call from?”

“I asked her. She wouldn’t tell me. All she said was she was through with me, for me to forget her, she was with another man. That fat old drunken …”

“Hold on a second.” Craig stood up and went over to the phone.

“Who’re you phoning?”

Craig asked the operator for Wadleigh’s hotel. “Calm down, Bayard,” he said while waiting for the call to be put through.

“Calm down, you say. You’re her father. Are
you
calm?” Patty strode over and stood close to him as though he didn’t trust any message that Craig might give or receive and wanted to hear everything that was said with his own ears.

When the operator at Wadleigh’s hotel answered, Craig said, “
Monsieur
Wadleigh,
s’il vous plaît
.”

“
Monsieur
Wadleigh
n’est pas là
,” the operator said.

“What’s she saying?” Patty asked loudly.

Craig waved to him to be quiet. “
Vous êtes sûre, madame
?”

“
Oui, oui,
” the operator said impatiently, “
il est parti
.”

“
Parti ou sorti
, madame?”

“
Parti, parti
,” the operator said, her voice rising. “
Il est parti hier matin.”

“
A-t-il laissé une adresse?
”

“
Non, monsieur, non! Rien! Rien!
” by now the woman was shouting. The Festival was abrasive for hotel operators’ nerves. The line went dead.

“What was all that about?” Patty demanded.

Craig took a deep breath. “Wadleigh checked out yesterday morning. He didn’t leave any forwarding address. There’s your French lesson for the day.”

“Now, what are you going to do?” Patty demanded. He looked as though he was going to hit something. Probably me, Craig thought.

“I’m going to finish packing my bags,” he said, “and I’m going to pay my bill, and I’m going to drive to the airport, and I’m going to take a plane for New York.”