Kurt looked at him. There was never a question in his mind that the girls might not come to dinner. Only one thing troubled him. “How about the money for the flowers?”
Sergei laughed. “Lay it out. What the hell, you can afford it with a twenty-five-percent cut.”
2
Sue Ann stuffed another chocolate into her mouth and rose from the chaise longue. She walked across the room and stopped in front of the long full-length mirror, dropping her negligee. She stared at her naked reflection with dissatisfaction. “Christ! I must have put on at least fifteen pounds since I came to Switzerland.”
“It’s not that bad,” Maggie replied swiftly.
“It’s those damn chocolates,” Joan said, “they’ll do it every time.”
Sue Ann turned to look at her friends, sitting on the couch. “How do you two do it? You’ve been here two years and you’re both as thin as you were back home.”
“We were the same the first year,” Joan said. “But then you taper off.”
“It’s that damn school,” Sue Ann answered. “It’s like a prison. There’s nothing to do but eat. I couldn’t wait for the holidays.”
“Well, here we are.”
“And I can’t get into one of my evening dresses,” Sue Ann said. “What the hell can I wear to dinner tonight?”
Maggie grinned. “Why don’t you go like you are? It would save a lot of time.”
Sue Ann walked back to the box of chocolates and picked out another. “Don’t think I wouldn’t like to. I’m so horny I’ll probably come when he kisses my hand.”
***
“Is the table to your satisfaction, your highness?” Emile asked respectfully.
Sergei looked it over critically. “It’s perfect, Emile. Sometimes I wonder why you aren’t at the Ritz in Paris. You should be where your talents would be truly appreciated.”
Emile bowed. “You’re too kind, your highness. Your usual aperitif?”
Sergei nodded and Emile walked away. Sergei looked around. He had been aware of the curious eyes of the other diners as he came through the room. He knew the picture he made. Evening clothes made him appear even taller and the white of his shirt front contrasted nicely with the deep winter tan on his face. He nodded politely to several people he knew, then picked up the drink that the waiter had unobtrusively put down. He sipped it slowly. His guests should arrive at any moment. He had sent his card up to their suite before he entered the dining room.
He glanced up as the three girls came in. My God, he thought as he got to his feet, she’s wearing absolutely nothing under that dress!
Sue Ann was heavy but she was tall enough to get away with it. She walked straight her flesh and the silk of her dress moving together with a liquid fluidity, her breasts straining against the thin chiffon. She stopped in front of him and held out her hand. “Dax spoke about you quite often.”
Sergei smiled. He lifted her hand to his lips. The other girls giggled. That was one consoling thought—at least she didn’t giggle. There was some hope for her after all.
“And what shall we call you?” Sue Ann asked after they had all been seated. “It’s kind of awkward if we ‘your highness’ you all night.”
“Why don’t you just call me Sergei? After all I’m not really a prince, you know. My father is only a count.”
“You enjoy winter sports?” he asked politely a moment later.
“Oh, yes,” the other two said almost as one. “Not me,” Sue Ann said bluntly. “I’m from the South. I hate snow and cold.”
He looked at her with a kind of surprise. “Then why did you come here?”
She stared into his eyes. “For a good time. I like to ball.”
“Ball?”
“You know, ball. Have fun. The things you can’t do in a girls’ school.”
“I think I know what you mean.” He began to smile. “I must say I approve. Skiing and skating are a waste of time.”
The orchestra began to play and he got to his feet. “I trust your dislike for sports does not extend to the dance?”
Sue Ann laughed and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I love to dance.”
The music was a tango and he felt the softness and the warmth of her through the thin silk dress as he pressed himself against her. He was a better dancer than she but because he was she never knew it. He led her sinuously into the dance until they seemed to mold into one liquid movement. He felt the press of her large warm breasts against his chest and looked down into her face. Her eyes were almost closed and her lips were parted. This one is ready, he thought. He let his strength flow into his loins and pressed himself against her.
Her eyes flicked open suddenly and she stared up at him. “Sorry, I couldn’t help that.”
She smiled. “Don’t apologize. I love it.” She pressed herself tighter to him as they finished the dance.
He led her back to the table and then dutifully danced with the others. But neither had the demanding, driving sexuality of Sue Ann, though in their own way, they were more attractive to him.
When he sat down again he unobtrusively moved his chair so that their legs could touch. Later he found her hand under the table and placed it on his hardness. And all the while he kept making light conversation as if nothing at all was going on.
After the main course, the orchestra began to play another tango. He looked at her. “Our dance?”
She nodded and started to get up. Suddenly she stopped and sat down again. “Damn!” she said furiously.
“What is it?”
She glanced at the other girls, then at him. “I knew I should have worn panties. I’m all wet and it’s gone through the dress. Everyone will see.”
“What will we do?” Maggie asked.
“We could sit here until they close,” Joan said.
“Don’t be a damn fool, the restaurant doesn’t close until two in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Sergei smiled. “I can handle it. No one will know.”
“You can?”
“Sure.” He leaned toward her. As if by accident his hand knocked over the glass of champagne, which flowed down into her lap.
“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry!” he exclaimed in a voice loud enough to be heard at the nearby tables. He got to his feet dabbing at her with his napkin. “A thousand apologies for my clumsiness!”
Sue Ann began to smile as the waiters hurried up solicitously. She got to her feet the two girls and the waiter surrounding her. “You will come up to the suite for coffee and dessert, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
He remained standing until they had left the room, then sat down again and called for the check. He signed it with a flourish. As he was crossing the lobby on his way to the elevators, Kurt walked up to him. “Well?”
“Don’t worry, this one will pay the rent.”
Joan opened the door for him. He entered the room. Sue Ann was seated on the couch in a negligee. “Everything all right now?” he asked, smiling.
She nodded.
“I took the liberty of ordering coffee and sweets. Then a pot of caviar and more champagne.”
“Caviar and champagne?”
“It’s the best thing for a long happy night.”
Maggie got to her feet. “We’ll go to our rooms.”
Sergei spoke to her but kept looking at Sue Ann. “What for? I thought we were going to have a party.”
“But there’s only you.”
“Why do you think I ordered caviar and champagne?”
Sue Ann began to laugh. This was the kind of language she understood. “You think you’re pretty good.”
He smiled, looking down at her. “I’m the best there is.”
“Enough for all of us?”
“I’m a very simple man. It’s the only sport in which I indulge. Everything else is a waste of time.”
Sue Ann looked at the other girls. “What do you say, kids? I’m willing.”
Maggie and Joan looked at each other hesitantly.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Sergei laughed. “I always put on a better show when there’s an audience.”
***
“I’m hungry,” Sergei said.
“So am I.”
“You two go ahead,” Maggie said sleepily. “I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“What about—” Sergei never finished his question, for Joan was fast asleep. He looked at Sue Ann and grinned. “It looks like just the two of us.”
“That’s the way it would have been,” she said with a slight edge of sarcasm, “if you weren’t such a showoff.”
He laughed again and got out of bed and padded naked into the sitting room. He sat down on the couch and began to spread the thin toast with butter, then liberally covered it with heavy spoonsful of grosgrain caviar.
He looked up as Sue Ann came in and stood beside him. “Help yourself,” he said, gesturing, his mouth full.
“You’re a pig!”
He didn’t answer. He picked up another slice of toast. “I thought you Continentals were supposed to be such gentlemen.”
“If you want to be treated like a lady go put some clothes on,” he retorted.
She stared at him for a moment, then turned and went into the bathroom. When she came back she was carrying two white terrycloth robes. She tossed one at him while she shrugged into the other. She sank into the chair opposite him. His robe still lay where it fell, across his lap.
“What are you staring at?”
“Nothing.” She hesitated, then asked, “Just between the two of us, what were you trying to prove?”
He stared back at her, suddenly aware that she was brighter than he had thought. “What do you mean?”
“O.K., so Dax is your friend. But he wasn’t the only man I ever went to bed with.” He didn’t answer.
“Were you trying to show me that you were a better man than Dax?”
He grinned. “No, you were right the first time. I’m a pig. I just thought it would be fun to bang all three of you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t buy that. You’re not that stupid.”
“O.K.,” he said, suddenly angry, “so I was trying to prove I was a better man.”
“You don’t have to get angry. You are, you know.” She smiled. “You’ve made your point. You’re the most man I ever had.”
He relaxed suddenly.
“I’ve never known anything like you. I kept coming all the time. Even while you were with them. Each time they did, I did. After a while I got mad. I wanted you for myself. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him. “What are you going to do about it?”
He got to his feet suddenly. “Come on, get some clothes on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To my place, where we can be alone.”
She looked at him, hesitating. Then she gestured toward the other bedrooms. “What about them?”
“Fuck them,” he said, “let them find their own. You’re the only one I want.”
3
The March sunshine bounced off the snow, sparklingly blinding. It poured through the open window into the room, where they sat at breakfast.
“I think you’re going to have to marry me, boy.”
Sergei picked up his glass of orange juice. “What for?”
“The usual reasons. I’m knocked up.”
He was silent.
“You never figured on that, did you?”
“I thought about it,” he said, “but I figured you’d taken care of things.”
She smiled. “Who had the time? Are you angry?” He shook his head. “Then what are you thinking?”
“I know a doctor. He’s very good.”
This time it was Sue Ann who didn’t speak. After a moment he could see the tears hovering just behind her eyes. Her voice was flat and dull. “O.K., if that’s what you want.”
“No,” he answered harshly, “that’s not what I want. But can’t you see what they’ll do to you?”
“I don’t care. I’m not the first girl that ever went to the altar carrying a package.”
“That’s not what I mean. Look, it’s O.K. for you to be having fun and games with a phony prince. But marrying one is another story. They’ll make you a laughingstock!”
“My grandfather left me fifty million dollars, which I get all of when I’m twenty-five or I marry, whichever comes first. With that kind of money we can piss on all of them.”
He stared at her. “That’s just what I mean. That makes it worse.”
Suddenly she was angry. “What the hell kind of a gigolo are you anyway? Isn’t my money as good as anybody else’s? That old man in Monte Carlo, whatever his name is, or that woman who keeps sending checks from Paris?”
He stared at her. “You know?”
“Of course I know. Don’t you think my father’s bankers were after me the minute they found out I hadn’t gone back to school and was living with you? They gave me the whole dossier.”
He fell silent. After a moment he said, “And you still want to marry me?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
“You’re a fool then. You know what I’m like. I used to think there was something the matter with me before I met you. One man was never enough. There were times I used to do it with three men in a day, one right after the other. I was beginning to think there wasn’t a man alive who could give me all I wanted. Then I found you.”
“And that’s reason enough to get married?”
“It’s enough for me. What other reason do you need if two people can make it together like we do?”
“There’s something called love.”
“Now you’re beginning to sound like an idiot. Maybe you can tell me exactly what love is?”
He didn’t answer. A kind of sorrow came over him, together with a pity for her. Then he looked into her eyes and saw the naked terror revealed there. That he might refuse her. And suddenly he understood. The fear of what she was, had been, and would be if there weren’t one man she could cling to.
A kind of smile crossed her lips. “We’re very much alike, you and I. We’re doers. All the rest are talkers. If what we have isn’t love, then it’s the nearest thing to it that either of us will ever know.”
The pity in him overpowered his reason. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that the very reasons she advanced were the things that would destroy their relationship. He knew deep inside that in time neither of them could keep from seeking satisfaction with others.
“O.K.” he said, wondering which of them would be the first to succumb, “we’ll get married.”
***
It was planned as a quiet little wedding in a small church just outside Saint Moritz but it turned out to be something entirely different. The Daley money was just too important to be ignored, and in the end it was held in the cathedral with a hundred guests and throngs of reporters.
“You don’t look happy,” Robert said as they waited in the vestry.
Sergei came back from the door through which he had been looking into the crowded church. “I’ve yet to see a happy bridegroom.”
Robert laughed. “You’ll be all right once we start down the aisle.”
Sergei looked at him. “I know, but it’s not that I’m worrying about. It’s after.” Robert didn’t answer. He, too, had his doubts.
Sergei turned back to the door. “Dax should have been here. He would have been amused by all this. I wonder if he ever got the invitation. You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
“Not one word, not since he left Cambridge a year ago. I wrote him several times but he never answered.”
“It’s a strange, wild country, I guess. I hope nothing has happened to him.”
“He’ll be all right. Much more will be happening to us.”
Sergei shot him a quick look. “You still think there’ll be war?”
“I don’t see how they can stop it.
The war in Spain is almost over. The Germans have finished their warmup. That much you know from your father’s letters.” Robert laughed. “So now Chamberlain is going to Munich to talk to that madman. It’s all a waste of time. Nothing will do any good.”
“What does your father say?”
“He’s transferring everything he can to America. He even wants Caroline and me to go back there.”
“Are you?” Robert shook his head. “Why not?”
Robert shrugged. “For two important reasons. I’m Jewish, and I’m French.”
“What can you do? You’re not even a soldier.”
“There will be something,” Robert said. “At least I can stay and fight. There are too many of us fleeing before that monster already.”
The sound of the organ came into the room. Robert peeked out the door, then turned back. “Allons, mon enfant. Now it is your turn to be a man.”
The wire-service reporters were standing at the back of the church as the couple knelt before the altar. “Think of it,” the AP man said. “In ten minutes he walks out of here gone from broke to fifty million bucks.”
“You sound jealous.”
“You’re damn right I am. At least it should have been an American boy. What’s wrong with good old American boys?”
“I don’t know,” Inna Andersen, who was covering the nuptials for Cosmo-World, whispered cattily from his right, “but from what I heard she tried them all and they were found wanting.”
“Now, now.”
“I wish I could afford that caviar-and-champagne kick,” the INS man said. “It really must do the trick.”
“Don’t get big ideas. Us poor people better stick to oysters.”
The AP man looked at him and smiled. “That’s fine, but what are we going to do all summer?”
4
The rustling of fallen leaves brought him from sleep and he reached out, his hand closing over the rifle lying on the blanket beside him. From the corner of his eye he saw Fat Cat, already on his feet, blending silently into the trees. Muffling the sound with his blanket, he pumped a cartridge into the firing chamber of the rifle and waited.
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