Two Weeks in Another Town (53 page)

“Oh, it’s not so terrible,” Barzelli said. She seemed ironically amused by the incident. “He’s a young man. Young men fight. He’ll be all right in the morning. All he needs is a new pair of glasses.”

As Jack was bundling Bresach and Max into the cab he heard Tucino complaining, “One night Tasseti doesn’t come, and this happens. Just when you need him. If Tasseti was here, I assure you nobody would have hit a guest of mine and got away with it.”

“Why do you say guest of yours?” Barzelli asked. “Mr. Holt paid the bill.”

“I was speaking in a wider sense,” Tucino said, with dignity, as he walked toward his car.

In the taxi, the only sound for a while was Max sucking on his lip, which had been cut. Then Max said, “I didn’t like that man’s face. He looked like a commissar. That girl has my complete pity, having to live with a man like that.”

He went back to sucking his cut lip.

All the way home, Bresach sat in the corner, his head against the window, weeping silently. There was nothing to be said, no comfort that he would accept, and the other two men held their peace and kept their heads averted as the taxi rattled through the narrow streets of the sleeping city.

When the taxi stopped, Max said to Jack, “You do not have to come up. I will take care of him. Come on, Robert,” he said to the boy, with infinite gentleness.

Jack watched the two of them disappear into the dark, vaulted doorway, then told the driver of the cab to take him to his hotel. On the way, it occurred to him that Veronica and her husband were probably still at the night club, finishing their champagne, the man with the face of the commissar, as Max had put it, stonily continuing the punishment he had begun when he had told Veronica, “Sit up. Do not be a child.”

Last chance, last chance, Jack thought. Tomorrow she will be in Athens and it will all be over.

For a moment, he hesitated. He even leaned forward to speak to the driver. He sat there, poised on the edge of the seat, uncomfortable, insecure, as the taxi took a corner fast. Then he sat back, thinking, No, let the poor girl rest in her insured Swiss bed.

Five minutes later he was at the door of his hotel.

T
HERE WERE TWO MESSAGES
waiting for him at the hotel—both of them from Clara Delaney, both of them requesting Mr. Andrus to call Mrs. Delaney at the hospital, no matter what hour he got in.

On the way up to his room in the elevator, he kept staring at the messages, scrawled almost illegibly by the night operator of the hotel.
At the hospital, at the hospital,
he read over and over again. The wake, he thought guiltily. It amused me this night to pretend we were attending Delaney’s wake.

Jack hurried down the silent, carpeted corridor toward his door. He unlocked it, leaving the key in the lock, and went directly to the telephone on the desk in the salon. The maid had left a single lamp on, next to the telephone, and the instrument gleamed in the tight cone of light in the shadowy room.

It took a long time to reach Clara Delaney at the hospital. The nurse on duty at the desk at the switchboard at first refused to call Delaney’s room at that hour and only went to speak to Clara after a heated argument.

Jack looked at his watch. It was two thirty-five. While waiting, he thought of Sam Holt saying, “In Rome—in the best place in Rome,” and the blood around Robert Bresach’s eyes after Veronica’s husband had broken his glasses.

Finally, there was a series of clicks on the phone, and Clara’s voice, saying, “Hello.”

“Clara,” Jack said, “what is it? Has anything happened?”

“Who is this?” Clara asked. She sounded irritated and sleepy.

“Jack. You left a message for me to call. I just got in, and…”

“Oh,” Clara said flatly. “Jack.”

“Is Maurice all right?”

“About the same,” Clara said. There was a curious dull tone in her voice, a lack of resonance, that made whatever she said sound hostile.

“I’m glad you finally decided to go and see him, Clara,” Jack said, thinking, It’s just like Clara—when she finally condescends to visit her invalid husband, she makes sure to destroy his night’s sleep. “I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.” Now that he knew that Maurice hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, Jack was sorry he had called. Whatever Clara had to say to him could be better said and more easily endured in the morning. “Look, Clara,” he said, “it’s awfully late. I’ll be coming by the hospital tomorrow night as usual, and…”

“No you won’t.”

“What did you say, Clara?”

“I said you won’t be coming by the hospital tomorrow,” Clara said. “I won’t let you into Maurice’s room.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Maurice’s friends are permitted to come and visit him,” Clara said. “You’re no friend.”

Jack sighed. “Clara,” he said, “obviously, whatever you have to say is very unpleasant, and it’s too late now to be unpleasant. I’ll speak to you in the morning…”

“You’ll never speak to me again,” she said loudly. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing to poor Maurice, while he’s been lying helpless on his deathbed. He’s told me everything.”

“What have I been doing to poor Maurice?” Jack asked. He knew it would be better to hang up immediately and take his chances on reaching Delaney directly in the morning, but he couldn’t help being curious about this new attack of Clara’s.

“Betraying him,” Clara said harshly, her voice whistling in the telephone. “After everything he’s done for you…”

“Now, Clara,” Jack said evenly, “try to talk reasonably, like a woman in full possession of her senses. Just how am I betraying Maurice?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Clara said shrilly. “I’m through with all that. We had it all out tonight, Maurice and I, and we decided that from now on he’s going to listen to me, he’s going to let me take care of him. He realizes that all his life he’s been too wild and thoughtless and trusting, and he’s paying for it. Now,” she said triumphantly, “if anybody wants anything from Maurice Delaney, they have to come to me first.”

The born jailor, Jack thought, has finally reached the apex of her profession, she has been given the key to the jail. “I don’t want anything from Maurice,” Jack said, “and I don’t want anything from you. But I’ll come over right now and straighten this out.”

“Don’t bother,” Clara said. “You won’t get in. I’m at the door. From now on he’s not going to waste his time and affection on people who stab him in the back…”

“All right, Clara,” Jack said quietly, “I think that’s enough for tonight. I’ll try to figure this out in the morning. I’m going to bed now.” He prepared to hang up.

“I know everything,” she shouted, and Jack wondered how many patients the mad, dry voice was rousing into pain and anxiety in the sleeping hospital. “And now Maurice knows everything. Everything about his good friend, John Andrus, that he picked up out of the gutter when he was a dime-a-dozen actor in New York without a penny to his name. Don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on behind his back. Don’t think I don’t have my sources of information. Hilda calls me three times a day, and I spoke to Sam Holt myself just ten minutes ago. You can’t hide anything from me…”

Maybe, Jack thought, if Maurice is lucky, he will die before dawn and never have to listen to his wife’s voice again.

“I’m not trying to hide anything, Clara,” Jack said, keeping his voice low and calm in the hope that his example would have a soothing effect on her. He knew that she was in the same room as Maurice and he wondered what listening to that mad, wailing, nighttime voice, with its burden of misery and hatred, was doing to the sick man.

“Do you deny that you tried to put Maurice on the shelf for a year?” Clara shouted, as loud as ever.

“I tried to convince him to save his life,” Jack said. “I don’t deny that.”

“Save his life!” she screamed. “Don’t you worry about his life! He’ll outlive you and me.” There was no testimony, medical or otherwise, Jack realized, that would ever make Clara believe that the vital, energetic man she had married was not immortal. In a crazy way it was a tribute to Delaney and a tribute to the power of her love for him. “You tried to get him out of the way for a year,” she went on, “while you and that boy took over. You knew how much that boy’s script meant to Maurice. You knew how he loved it. You knew it would put him right back on top again if he did it, so you schemed to take it away from him. And you took advantage of him while he was lying helpless to get him to agree. And you even had the gall to tell Maurice to his face that you told the boy not to let Maurice do it. Because you thought he was too weak to fight back. Do you deny that?”

“I don’t want to talk to you any more, Clara,” Jack said. “I don’t think you’re sane enough to listen to reason.”

“Oh, I’m sane all right,” she said wildly. “And that’s just why you tried to hide all this from me. Because you didn’t want to get found out. And it’s not enough that you’re trying to ruin Maurice’s future—don’t think I don’t know how you and that crazy boy are plotting to change everything he’s done on the picture, all the beautiful, subtle things, to spoil everything. This is Maurice’s last chance, you sonofabitch, and you’re trying to kill it, deliberately kill it, and you have the courage to come to his sickroom and pretend to be worried about him, pretend you’re his friend, send him flowers.”

I’ve got to hear her out, Jack thought, holding the receiver away from his ear. Let her get it all out, and then talk to Maurice…

“And I know why you’re doing it, don’t think I don’t!” She ranted on. “You’re jealous of him. You’ve always been jealous. Because he’s successful and that’s iron in your soul, his success. And because he slept with that whore of a wife of yours and you’ve never forgiven him…”

Jack heard Delaney’s voice, at a distance, “Clara,” Delaney said, “for Christ’s sake, shut up.”

“I’ll shut up when I’m good and ready,” Clara said, in full flood. Then, again to Jack, “Don’t think you’re going to be able to squirm out of this. Maurice has already spoken to Holt. You’re off the picture and that crazy boy, too. Tucino’s taking over tomorrow morning and he’s finishing it up, and you can go back where you belong, with the other clerks…”

“I want to talk to Maurice, please,” Jack said.

“You’ll never talk to him again as long as you live,” she said.

“Oh, Christ—” It was Delaney’s voice. “Give me the phone.”

For a moment, there was only the sound of Clara’s harsh breathing, then Delaney’s voice came over the line, weary, toneless. “What do you want to say to me, Jack?” he asked.

“Is it true that you told Holt you wanted Tucino to finish the picture?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“Listen carefully, Maurice,” Jack said. “It’s not for me I’m saying this, it’s for you. I’m going to get Holt to keep Tucino away and let Bresach and me finish the picture for you. It hasn’t got a chance any other way…”

Delaney sighed. “Jack,” he said flatly, “if I hear you’re anywhere near that set tomorrow I’m going to get out of bed and come down and get behind the camera myself.”

“Maurice,” Jack said, “this may be the last chance I get to talk to you—maybe the last chance
anybody’ll
get to talk to you—so you’ll have to listen to the truth for once. You’ve ruined yourself out of vanity, Maurice, and you’re completing the ruin tonight. And your wife serves your vanity, because she
wants
you in ruins. Because then you come to her, because when you’re sore and hurting, you’re all hers. She told me that herself the third night I was in Rome, Maurice. You’re a man teetering on the edge of a cliff, and everybody knows it. Everybody but you, Maurice. I’ve done everything I can to pull you back—there’s still a chance you can be saved—There’s still a lot to be saved. You proved it when I talked to you this evening in the hospital. Don’t throw it away…”

“You finished?” Delaney said.

Jack sighed. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m finished.”

“Get out of town, Jack,” Delaney whispered. “Fast.”

Slowly, Jack put the telephone down. There was a little mechanical click and then the room was silent.

Lost, he thought. And I thought tonight I had rescued him. Jack remembered his self-satisfaction that evening and shook his head sadly. There was one more thing to be done. He picked up the phone again and asked for Holt’s number. He’ll be awake, Jack thought. Tonight everybody is awake.

“Sam,” he said, when he heard Holt’s voice, “I suppose you know why I’m calling.”

“Yes,” Holt said. “Mrs. Delaney did me the honor of telephoning me fifteen minutes ago.”

“I guess that winds it all up then,” Jack said.

“Not necessarily,” Holt said. “I’d like to respect Maurice’s wishes as much as possible, Jack, but there’re many other people involved and a great deal of money. If you’ll agree, we’ll continue just as we are now, with you as director, and hope that Maurice finally will listen to reason.”

“No, Sam,” Jack said. “He won’t listen to reason and I won’t continue. He got me down here and he’s given the signal to go. And I’m going.”

“I understand,” Holt said. “I’m terribly sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’m going to get the first plane out of here I can,” Jack said. “Will you get hold of Bresach and explain it all to him?”

“Of course, Jack.”

“If you ever come through Paris, look me up, Sam. I’ll take you and Bertha to dinner.”

“I certainly will,” Holt said. “You can depend on that. What time is your plane?”

“I think there’s one around one o’clock I can get on.”

“I’ll have your check at your hotel during the morning,” Holt said.

Jack laughed ruefully. “You’re not getting much for your money, are you, Sam?”

“I’m in the oil business,” Holt said. “I’m used to gambling. And losing.”

“Are you going to go on with the deal with Delaney and Tucino?” Jack asked, curiously.

There was a long pause on the line. “I honestly don’t believe so, Jack,” Holt said. “I guess I’ll stick to the oil business. I seem to be able to handle it better.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack said. “Well—take care of my friend Delaney for me, Sam.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much I can do there,” Sam said quietly. “Or anybody. Good night, Jack.”