Hot Night in the City

by Trevanian

  "If anyone's guilty of setting traps, it certainly isn't my brother. He doesn't need your sister's paltry dowry. He owns a flourishing establishment in Cambo."

  "I daren't think what kind of establishment."

  "A hotel, if you must know. One of Cambo's best. It was my father's and my grandfather's before him. But my father died, and it was obvious that my talents ran more to the literary than the commercial, so we agreed that the hotel should be my brother's. He runs it with my mother."

  "Your mother's in on this too, is she?"

  "Now just a minute!"

  "I'm going to Cambo, and that's final! I don't trust any of your wild clan of Basque brigands."

  "I take offence at your— How did you know we're Basque?"

  "Everyone in Cambo is Basque—except for the poor patients who go to take the waters and end up being tricked into marriage. Then too, there's the matter of your eyes."

  "My eyes?"

  "Yes, your eyes. Those notorious 'melting brown' Basque eyes that feature in so many cheap romantic novels."

  "I know nothing of romantic novels."

  "But my sister does. She devours them. And that's why I'm going to Cambo-les-Bains with you."

  "Oh, you are, are you?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "How?"

  "How?"

  "Do you have a ticket?"

  "Of course I have a— Well... no, actually. My brother has our tickets."

  "Ah! Then how do you propose to get on the train?"

  "Well, I'll just have to— Wait a minute. You have a ticket! For your sister."

  "O-o-oh, no, you don't!"

  "Oh, yes, I shall! And if you don't let me use her ticket, I'll follow you onto the platform, and I'll cry and sob and accuse you of... of running off with some tart and deserting me and our children! Our seven children."

  "You wouldn't dare."

  She lifted her chin and regarded him coolly.

  And he had the sinking realization that his adversary was not inhibited by the slightest sense of fair play.

  "I'd do anything to save my sister from the fate worse than death: a bad marriage."

  As though to punctuate this declaration, the carriage lurched to a stop, bringing them once again into a contact that had a brief physical—but only physical—resemblance to an embrace. The cab door was snatched open, and light from an ox-eye lantern flashed in their faces. "Train for Hendaye?" the porter asked. "You'd better hurry, m'sieur-'dame. They're closing the gates to the platform now."

  The young man sprang out onto the pavement beside the impressive mass of the Gare d'Austerlitz. She descended, pointedly ignoring his proffered hand, as the porter seized two valises (the young woman's and her brother's) from the box of the cab and hastened into the station. They followed him to the turnstile, where the young man fumbled for the tickets for an eternal ten seconds before he found them in the first pocket he had checked. They slipped through the gates as they were closing, and they ran for all they were worth. She soon fell behind with a little cry of dismay, and he swore under his breath but he grasped her hand and drew her along behind him at a speed that not only cost her the last semblance of grace but even endangered her balance as they sped down the platform to where their porter stood beside the portable steps at the door of their car, making frantic signs for them to hasten. As they passed the dining car, the young woman glimpsed faces looking out upon their hectic race with expressions of unfeigned amusement blended with... something else, something that she would not identify until later, when recognition would make a tingle of embarrassment and outrage rush up the back of her neck into her hair.

  With all the flair of gesture and oiliness of manner that mark the veteran tip-seeker, the steward showed them to their chambrette, deposited their valises in the racks, and turned up the gaslamp that displayed the 'new art' Guimard impulse to create foliage out of glass and metal. After the coin had been pressed into his hand and he had glanced down upon it with a thoroughly Gallic blend of resignation and disdain, the steward said that service in the dining car would begin in fifteen minutes, and he would make up their beds while they were dining. As he put his hand on the door handle to leave, he winked at the young man and tipped his head towards the young woman with a lift of the eyebrows.

  She caught this yeasty, man-to-man communication in the mirror as she was taking off her Trilby fedora, and she spun around. Raising one hand to stay the steward's departure, she asked the young man, "Did you tip him?"

  "Well... ah... yes, of course."

  "Give me that tip," she ordered the steward.

  The steward recoiled and stammered, "But, mam'selle, but... but..."

  "Give it to me!" She held out her hand, and with a grimace of genuinely heartfelt pain, the steward turned his hand over and let the coin drop into her palm.

  "Now get out of here! And if we push one of those buttons for a steward, you'd better not be the one who comes tapping at the door. Do you understand me?"

  "But, mam'selle, I..."

  "And what makes you so sure I'm a mademoiselle?"

  "I'm terribly sorry, madame. I thought—"

  "That's a lie. You've never had a thought in your life—other than filthy ones! Out. Out!"

  The steward vanished, closing the door behind him with a thoroughly miffed click, followed by a defiant snap of his fingers, a dental mutter of outrage, an incensed extension of his neck, a petulant out thrust of his lower lip, and a disdainful flare of his nostrils, which catalogue of manly outrage he displayed only after he was sure he was safe from her.

  "You were pretty hard on him," the young man said, not without a certain astonished respect.

  "And you were pretty compliant. What did you think his little wink meant?"

  "Oh, he didn't mean anything. Not really. That's just how men are."

  "Exactly!"

  "Well... after all..."

  "What?"

  "Well, what should he think? You're young and attractive... in your way... and you're not wearing a wedding ring. And then there's the matter of your—"

  "What makes you think I'm not wearing a wedding ring? I haven't taken my gloves off yet."

  "No, but naturally I assumed... Are you? Married, I mean?"

  "As it happens I am not. And then there's the matter of my... what?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "After that twaddle about my wedding ring, you said, 'And then there's the matter of your...' My what?"

  "Well, your dress, to be frank."

  "And what about my dress?"

  "I will not be cross-questioned in that imperious tone."

  "You shall! What about my dress?"

  "Well, it's very... ah... modern."

  "Modern?"

  "Short, then. It's short. Short!"

  "My dress comes to exactly three inches from the ground. I refuse to obey the dictates of fashion that oblige a woman to drag her dresses in the mud—and much worse than mud—just to assure men that her reputation is sufficiently unassailable to make her worthy of their attentions... attentions that are, of course, designed to urge her to do something that will damage her reputation."

  "I wouldn't dream of denying any woman her right to wear what she wants to wear. But if a woman shows three inches of ankle to every passerby, then she must accept—"

  "I accept nothing! And it's not three inches of ankle. It's three inches of tightly buttoned shoe."

  "Ah, so you say. But when you stepped down from the cab, there was a bit of leg visible above the shoe."

  "An inch or two of stocking. Of thick, black stocking."

  "Are you sure it's not a blue stocking? And are you sure it's a stocking, and not a bloomer?"

  "Oh, so you have something against bluestockings and against the courageous Miss Bloomer?"

  "I am a thoroughly modern man, and if I had my way, every woman would be as liberated as the bluest of the bluestockings, and God bless them all. But you can't blame the majority of men for—"

  "I ce
rtainly can blame them. And I do! And as for you... Ha!"

  "Ha?"

  "You claim to be a modern man. And yet, even while rushing to save your brother from the clutches of the sweetest, gentlest little romantic fool in the world, you took time to notice exactly how many inches of ankle I revealed while alighting from the cab. How like a man! Men like you are the reason I became an actress."

  He blinked and pressed his hand to his chest. "I am the reason you became—?"

  "I'd rather not discuss it further." She turned away from him and looked fixedly out at the horizontal blur of snow streaking across the patch of gaslight. She focused back to the surface of the window and saw his reflected face, his eyes looking at her with intensity.

  "Well? What is it?" she asked the window.

  "Are you really an actress?"

  "Does that seem so impossible?"

  "No, but... I'm in theater myself. I'm a playwright. And also," he added with a dismissive shrug, "an occasional critic for newspapers."

  "Critic, eh? I might have known."

  "Meaning?"

  "That I might have known."

  "Where have you worked? Perhaps I have seen you. I may even have reviewed you."

  "I am with André Antoine's Théâtre Libre," she said with pride.

  "Oh," he said with a falling note. "Strindberg, Zola, Ibsen, all that lot. Plays of 'social significance.' " There was a shudder in his voice.

  "You disapprove of social drama? Or is it significance that frightens you?"

  "I disapprove of the phony realism. Of the way the actors mutter and scratch themselves and turn their backs on the audience. That's every bit as affected in its way as the most smoke-cured of the hams rolling their 'r's' and tearing a scene to tatters with their bare teeth. What have you appeared in?"

  "Oh... lots of things."

  "Such as?"

  "Well, I was in Hedda Gabler, for one. And A Doll's House. And Thérèse Raquin."

  "I saw the Théâtre Libre production of Hedda Gabler. In fact, I wrote a review of it. But I don't remember you."

  "I didn't say I played a major role in Hedda."

  "Even in a supporting role, I'd remember that splendid mane of cupric hair, and that sassy uptilted nose."

  "Well, my part was... well, actually, the director wanted me to concentrate on the internal aspects of my character. On what was seething beneath the surface so powerfully that to express it in words would be redundant."

  "I see. You're saying you didn't have any lines."

  "I'm saying that I played an intensely sensitive young serving girl who was aware of the family's innermost suffering. I reflected my sensitivity and awareness to the audience, and I believe they felt my.... ah... my..."

  "I see. Have you had any speaking parts?"

  "Well... no. Not as such. I'm still learning my craft. It's my first season with André."

  "Great heavens! Your brilliant career with 'André' is barely off the ground, and yet you're willing to let it slump while you run off to the Pyrenees to save your poor consumptive sister from the fate you claim is worse than the fate worse than death."

  "I find your snide comments neither amusing nor illuminating. I can see why you chose to become a critic."

  "I write reviews only to broaden my knowledge of theater... and to earn a bit of money. As I told you, I am a playwright."

  "Oh? And what have you written?"

  "Oh... dozens of things."

  "Such as?"

  "Well... for instance, I permitted the Gaieté Theatre to perform one of my pieces just last month."

  "The Gaieté? But they do nothing but low farces."

  "I'm not ashamed to admit that my play was a farce. A tightly written, uproariously funny farce, as a matter of fact."

  "And you have the cheek to turn your nose up at social realism. You who offer nothing but asinine romps, improbable coincidences, mistaken identity, and trite screen-scenes featuring wayward husbands caught hiding from avenging wives, all this crammed into three frantic acts of babble and confusion!"

  "That shows how much you know! My play was only one act!"

  "Ah, so you write one-act curtain warmers to get idiot audiences in the mood for the real farces that will follow. And you dare to sneer at plays that deal with human suffering and social issues and the criminal oppression of women! Humph!"

  "Actually, nobody really says humph. It's just a literary convention."

  "Well, I say humph. Especially when I'm talking to writers of trivial..." She frowned. "My sister is not consumptive. What on earth gave you that idea?"

  "Er-r-r-r," he struggled to catch up with this lurch of subject. "Oh, I see where you are. Well, I deduced that your sister had weak lungs because the waters of Cambo-les-Bains are famous for improving two conditions: consumption and what are euphemistically called 'Woman's Problems'. Since this latter tends to befall mostly women of 'a certain age' with little to occupy their overactive imaginations, I naturally assumed that—"

  "That would be Aunt Adelaide."

  "...Aunt Adelaide?"

  "My father's sister. She came to look after him after our mother died. But lately she's become a little... none of your business. Sophie accompanied Aunt Adelaide to the spa for a course of the waters to treat her... ailments."

  "Sophie being your sister?"

  "Aren't you listening? My father could hardly let his silly sister go down there all alone. She's an even greater romantic than our Sophie. You know, I'll bet anything that Aunt Adelaide is in on this plot of your brother's to snatch poor Sophie from her family. I'm starving."

  "Er-r-r-r." That lurch again. "Ah! Well, the steward said that they—"

  "Don't mention that insinuating, low-minded worm to me."

  "All right, but the Unmentionable Invertebrate said that they would begin serving in fifteen minutes, and that was..." he fished out his watch and snapped it open "...twenty minutes ago. I assume you'd rather not dine with a crass purveyor of trivial farces, so I'll await your return before—"

  "Nonsense. We'll dine together."

  He was surprised... but oddly pleased. "So, I guess I'm not all that bad after all."

  "Your badness has nothing to do with it. I have no money."

  "Oh."

  "Shall we go?"

  "Ah... by all means."

  They were conducted to a table at the far end of the 'American' dining car, which obliged them to walk a gauntlet of frank curiosity mixed with—something else. She called up a mental snapshot of these very faces peering out at them as they dashed frantically for the train, and suddenly she recognized what this something else was: complicity. Benevolent complicity! As we foretold it would, a tingle of embarrassment rushed up the back of her neck into her hair at the realization that these romantic busybodies took it for granted that they were eloping lovers rushing off to their honeymoon. Probably leaving irate parents and jilted fiancés in their madcap wake. Oh, the humiliation of it! Actress that she was, it was not having an audience that she minded, it was the absurdity of her role in this vulgar farce.

  Man that he was, he had noticed nothing.

  She sat in rigid dignity, her lips compressed, her attention riveted on the menu, but painfully conscious of smiles, whispers, and nudges out on the defocused edges of her peripheral vision. She looked up to see him nod politely at two smiling women sitting at the table opposite, beaming at them. Sisters, obviously; unmarried, probably; and nosy without a doubt. His social smile dissolved under her disapproving frown. "What's wrong?"

  She leaned forward towards him and smiled an actress's smile: all in the lips and cheeks, nothing in the eyes. "Don't you realize that everyone is looking at us?" she asked in a honeyed whisper, though there was asperity in her tone.

  He looked around. "Why, yes, now you mention it. They seem a friendly enough lot. The old gentleman down there just waved and winked at me."

  "If you wink back," she whispered sweetly, "I'll kick your shin so hard that you'll limp the rest of your
life." She smiled and patted his hand.

  "I don't understand."

  "I believe that. They think..." she beckoned him with her finger, and he leaned over the table towards her. "They think we're newlyweds."

  "But that's ridiculous!"

  "Keep your voice down."

  "But why should they think—? I mean, what right do they have to imagine that I'd—"

  "Keep your voice down!" she rasped. "The last thing I want is for them to think we're having a lovers' quarrel. That would be meat and drink to them."

  He looked again over at the two maiden sisters. The plumper one pursed her lips and shook her head in a gesture that said: naughty, naughty (but adorable) children.

  "Ohmygod," he muttered.

  "Exactly," she said.

  "Well, you need have no fear for your reputation, mademoiselle. I'll see to it that it suffers no harm."

  "My reputation is no concern of yours. I'm perfectly capable of defending it myself."

  "Perhaps so, but you will have our chambrette to yourself. I'll spend the night sitting up in the smoking car. Staring out the window... alone... cold."

  "You'll do nothing of the kind! You—" She controlled the intensity of her voice and forced herself to smile on him as she whispered, "You will not feed their gossip with the choice morsel that we've had a spat and I've made you spend our wedding night sitting up in the smoking car. You will spend the night sitting up in our chambrette, staring out the window, if you wish, cold perhaps, alone certainly, while I shall be sleeping not a meter away, totally undisturbed by and totally indifferent to your presence. And now, dearest husband, I believe I am ready to order."

  "I've lost my appetite," he said petulantly.

  "You will, nevertheless, order a full meal. And you will eat every crumb of it. I'll not have these people thinking that we are rushing through dinner so that we can— That we're rushing through dinner."

  The waiter's smarmy solicitude extended to placing a bud vase on their table: a single white rose of chastity, soon, presumably, to be dutifully surrendered. She acknowledged the vase with a dry, "How very kind," uttered without unclenching her teeth.

  They were halfway through their soup (large bowls only half full, in consideration of the swaying car) when, after a brooding silence, he spoke out in midthought. "It's not as though I were unaware of—or indifferent to—the social injustices that women face every day. Quite the contrary. It's just that... Oh, forget it." He shrugged.