Episode on the Riviera

by Mack Reynolds

  She moaned for him, but five years had passed since Steve Cogswell had played at love with Fay Hanlon. Five years in which he had desperately tried to prove her charges against him a falsehood. Rushing through his mind, like the flickering of an early Chaplin movie, went the faces of Danish girls and Swedes, of a Polish refugee he’d met in Paris, and a Parisian girl he’d spent a night with in Madrid, the wife of a Turkish diplomat he’d had an explosive affair with in Torremolinos, and the many tourist beauties he’d bedded here on the Riviera.

  Much had gone by since last he’d known Fay’s body. His fingers touched her here and there. His lips artfully played with her mouth and throat and burgeoning breasts, stirring a tumult of sensation within her.

  It occurred to him that in spite of her appetites and sensuality Fay had probably never been subjected to other than very basic love techniques.

  He whispered, “Have you ever had anyone do this to you, Fay?”

  “Oh, no … no, don’t. Oh, Steven, don’t do that. You’re killing me.”

  He moved slowly, ever so slowly. A touch here. A tantalizing of zones of Eros there. A kiss. A nibble.

  She didn’t know which way to turn. It was excruciating.

  Somehow, Steven Cogswell seemed to be out of himself and away from all this even as he practiced a hundred tricks of eroticism upon her highly sexed, all-demanding body. He seemed to be able to stand back and watch, even as he performed. His own body, after all this stimulation, required animal fulfillment, but not as Fay’s did. He could, at the same time, remain mentally aloof.

  He played upon her naked, writhing body as a musician plays an instrument. And the music he brought forth was symphonic to her, but little more than discordant clashing notes to him. Even as he deftly and deliberately lifted her to a dizzy peak of feeling, a contempt and disgust were growing within him. Not solely with her, but with himself and the role he was playing as well.

  She fell asleep, instantly, upon completion, a sleep of total exhaustion, and Steve Cogswell got up from the bed and looked down at her.

  Welling up from within him was the contempt that he had felt for all women, these past five years, after their surrender to him. Fay proved no different from all the rest.

  But this was Fay! This was the reason for it all! All these years he had been telling himself that though he slept with other women, he was still, beneath it all, in love with Fay.

  But now he could see what he had been blind to before. The grossness that had begun to become evident in her face. Too long had she allowed herself to be the product of her passions. Her hips — the hips he had been admiring only an hour before — he saw now were beginning to show the first signs of fat. Her breasts were overly heavy, her legs beginning to lose firmness through lack of exercise.

  His mouth feeling thick with distaste, he dressed himself. He put on a pair of heavy Swiss hiking shoes. He wanted to get out of here, and to walk, and to think.

  She still slept as he left the trailer and made his way to the main highway. There was a feeling of cleanness, somehow, within him. It was as though he had been scoured by some powerful detergent. He was free. Free, at last, of Fay and the neurosis within him that had been Fay-based.

  He strode through Beaulieu and toward Monaco, enjoying the warmth of summer air, the incomparable Riviera scenery, the breath of cool moisture in the wind that breathed over the Mediterranean.

  I feel like running along the road at as fast a clip as I could make it. No, I feel like dropping into one of the bars along here and buying everybody champagne. No, I don’t. No alcohol. I don’t need alcohol. I’d like to go into the Casino and drop every cent I have on one number. I feel lucky. I feel luckier than I’ve ever felt before.

  He had to laugh aloud at himself. He might feel lucky, but he didn’t have enough money on hand to do any gambling, though he might be hot as a rocket. Not that he cared about the money. Let Conny take over his trailer and car. It was no longer important. He’d make out. Either at this job or some other.

  In fact, he was getting tired of babying tourists. He’d have to look around and get into something with more of a future. Perhaps with one of the American engineering firms opening offices in booming, rapidly industrializing Europe.

  A horn honked behind him, and he stepped further to the side of the road. It honked again, and he turned impatiently.

  Nadine Whiteley waved to him from her Simca. She was headed in the opposite direction, back toward the Pavilion Budapest.

  He walked back to her, said something jokingly, but she was obviously upset. He slipped into the seat next to her, dropping his own thoughts for the while and brought his mind to her problems.

  Steve said, “The contessa said you were looking for me, Nadine.”

  “Yes. Yes, I was but that was earlier.”

  “Something to do with Silletoe?”

  She was shaking her head in distress. “I don’t know why I bother you. It isn’t your problem.”

  He tried to bring her out of her depression with a light touch. “As representative of Far Away Holidays, your problems are mine so long as you’re on this package vacation.” He looked at his watch. “And that lasts until tomorrow at eleven o’clock, when your plane takes off for London.”

  “Oh, don’t laugh at me, Steve.”

  His voice turned serious and he put a hand over hers, where she gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I wouldn’t laugh at you, Nadine, only with you. You’re a special person in my books.”

  Suddenly, there parked on the Shoreline Corniche, halfway between Beaulieu and Monte Carlo, she poured it all out to him. With the exception of old Dr. Levine, he was the only person in her life to whom she had bared her past.

  She told him of Uncle Nat, and the rape, and the suicide. Of Roger Stuart and the thing that had happened to break up their engagement. Of Jerry Silletoe and her infatuation with him, and how it had come to a tragic climax. Of her resolve to face reality and deliberately to seek a love affair on the Côte d’Azur. And when she got that far, she looked pleadingly at him and flushed in embarrassment.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “And you picked me to be your temporary lover.”

  “Don’t be angry with me, Steve. I’m so confused. Sometimes I think I’ve spent the past ten years and more being confused.”

  “I wasn’t angry. Flattered. You’re an attractive woman, Nadine.”

  She told him the rest of it. The latest developments. Of Silletoe and the photographs he had managed to get. And of the threats he had made.

  The muscles in Steve Cogswell’s jaws worked.

  She ended miserably, “Perhaps he’s right. He’s strong and ruthless. Perhaps that’s exactly what I need. This confusion can’t last forever. I tell you, Steve, I’ll wind up in an institution. It’s just too — ”

  “No!” he snapped. “Jerry Silletoe wouldn’t answer anything. That’s obvious. And the moment he’d milked your fortune away from you, you’d be dropped. Don’t bother to think otherwise. Where were you to meet him today?”

  “He was going to get airplane tickets and pick me up at the Pavilion this afternoon.”

  “And you didn’t tell him anything to the contrary?”

  “He … he dominates me, Steve. I’m so confused. I just don’t seem to have a will of my own.”

  “Let’s go back to the Pavilion and wait for him. Sooner or later we’re going to have to have it out with Jerry Silletoe and it’s a lovely day for having it out. Thus far, things are going fine with me.”

  She slid over in the seat and he walked around the car and got behind the wheel. He drove the Simca back to the parking lot of the contessa’s villa.

  • • •

  They didn’t have to wait for Jerry Silletoe. As they got out of the car, he arose from a stone bench upon which he’d been seated in the gardens that bordered the parking area. It occurred to Steve Cogswell that this was probably where Silletoe had waited the other night before assaulting and robbing him.

 
Silletoe sauntered forward easily, in full possession of himself and undoubtedly of the opinion that he controlled the situation. He smiled at Nadine and said, “About ready, darling? We have two hours before the plane takes off.”

  Steve said, “She’s not going, Silletoe.”

  Silletoe’s hard eyes went to Steve’s and he looked the other up and down in contemptuous amusement. “Who told you that you had an opinion coming, Buster?”

  Very clearly the words of the Nazi paratrooper now employed as a houseman at the Casino came back to Steve Cogswell. You are raised a gentleman. You do not understand fighting. I understand fighting, this enemy of yours understands fighting. There is no gentlemen when there is fighting. There is only destroy or be destroyed. Sometimes there is only kill or be killed.

  Steve said clearly, ‘She’s not going, Silletoe. Not with you. Not today, or any day.”

  Silletoe grinned. Incongruously, it made the man’s gross face take on a boyish quality. He looked down at the ring on the second finger of his right hand. “That cut of yours is just about healed up again, isn’t it, Buster?” Suddenly he glided forward in attack.

  To Steve Cogswell it seemed as though his metabolism instantly changed. He seemed to be moving in a slow-motion world. A slow-motion world in which he was the only living thing traveling at the old rate. Nadine Whiteley stood to one side, motionless, both hands to her mouth. Jerry Silletoe was advancing, slowly but in grim and savage determination.

  There is no gentlemen when there is fighting. There is only destroy or be destroyed.

  Steve Cogswell’s right foot, heavily shod with the Swiss hiking boot, lashed out cruelly to crack against Jerry Silletoe’s shinbone. Still moving, seemingly in slow motion, the other’s mouth opened in a roar of pain and he began involuntarily to bend forward to grasp his leg.

  Quickly, efficiently, Steve Cogswell clasped his hands into a double fist and brought them crashing upward under the other’s chin. Silletoe’s head snapped back and he reeled backward, his mouth already gushing blood.

  But Georg Herzog had been correct. Jerry Silletoe was an old pro when it came to street fighting, when it came to goon squads on the waterfront, when it came to union busting, when it came to a professionally administered beating.

  He was down, but up again on one knee. He spat out a tooth, grinned even in his pain, muttered something incoherent that ended in “Buster,” and then came in again to the attack.

  Steve’s feeling of perfect timing, of moving more quickly than the other was still with him. Silletoe attacked, in fighting stance, but Steve Cogswell worked on instinct. Had he attempted to meet Silletoe on his own grounds, he would have lost. But he didn’t.

  It was somewhat the position a chess expert finds himself in when confronted by a tyro. The tyro fails to make the standard moves and throws the pro off his game by doing the unexpected.

  Steve rushed forward to meet his opponent but at the last split second he turned sideways and brought the heavy, spiked boot up in a kick to the side that gave him triple the leverage of a simple kick forward. In this position, the boot crushed into the kneecap, and the crack of bone could be heard over the rattling of the gravel upon which they battled.

  Jerry Silletoe made a low animal cry of pain and began to slump forward. Steve moved in closer, grasped the other man’s hair in both hands and slammed his head down savagely even as he brought his knee up into the other’s throat.

  Air whooshed from Silletoe’s lungs, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

  Steve shook his head. He couldn’t remember the other touching him, even once, but his body ached in several places and the side of his neck burned as though from a glancing, skin-abrading blow. Nadine stood watching him in fascinated horror.

  He growled to himself. The past two or three minutes must have been the most brutal sight to which she had ever been submitted. However, the paratrooper had been right and there was no expecting combat to be pretty.

  He said to her now, “If I know Silletoe’s type, he’s got his most important property on him. He wouldn’t trust it with anyone else.”

  Steve went down to his knees and began tearing at the other’s clothing. The wallet came first but there was nothing in it beyond the usual papers and a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of francs. He patted the other’s pockets, but discovered nothing more than routine possessions.

  Surprisingly, it was Nadine who came up with the answer. “A money belt,” she whispered.

  Steve unbuckled the unconscious man’s belt, zipped down the fly and pulled his pants open, his shirt tail out. Yes, there it was. A heavy money belt. Steve whipped it off and unsnapped the several pouches. He came to his feet.

  There were two negatives and Nadine had no need to hold them to the sun to know what they were. There was also a large sheaf of new francs, at least twenty-five thousand of them.

  Steve looked at her. And she at him.

  He said, “Let’s go somewhere and have a drink. A celebration is in order.”

  She looked down at the unconscious man. “But … but how about Jerry?”

  That proved too much. Steve broke into spontaneous laughter in spite of himself. He said, “Somehow, I can’t work up much interest in Mr. Silletoe’s problems. However, I’ll give Carla a shout and she’ll see that he’s taken care of.”

  • • •

  They enjoyed a strange euphoria. It was as though floodgates of emotional tension had broken for both of them and the pressures had been relieved. They felt like teenagers on their first date. Everything that was said was amusing. Everything seen was charming. Everything tasted was delicious. It was not quite dark as yet, but there were stars in the skies.

  They stopped in Beaulieu at La Réserve and Steve introduced her to the champagne cocktail, failing to explain its sneaky attributes. He quoted Art Buchwald, “I like champagne because it tastes like your foot’s asleep,” and she dissolved into laughter.

  They left La Réserve and went on into Monaco and had more champagne at the Summer Sporting Club, and then to the cabaret at the Casino.

  Somewhere along the line he gave her a thumbnail autobiography and they decided that he was going to have to leave the Riviera and the hedonistic life he’d been leading and get back into industrial engineering. She agreed, though, that it would be impossible to return to Gunther & Cogswell. He was well rid of Fay and Mart.

  Somewhere along the line, she amplified her own biography, which she’d touched upon that afternoon while parked in the Simca. And they decided that the thing she must do was return to the States and take Dr. Levine’s advice about seeking psychotherapy.

  And then they decided that all this was much too serious, in view of the fact that they were celebrating his release from Fay and hers from Silletoe, so they moved on to the Empire Room of the Hôtel de Paris for more champagne, and then to Le Knickerbocker to dance.

  Five years of heavy drinking had given Steve Cogswell a tolerance for alcohol that allowed the evening’s hilarious sampling of champagne to leave him only slightly affected. But of a sudden it became obvious that dancing was no longer for Nadine.

  “I feel bubbly,” she giggled.

  Steve looked at her, He cocked his head to one side and considered. Finally he said, “You look bubbly.”

  “Maybe I better go home, Stevie darling. The waiters are beginning to look bubbly too. Especially that nice, red-faced one.”

  “When that happens,” he nodded sagely, “the only thing to do is go home and sleep it off.”

  “I hate to ruin the party, bubbly. I mean Stevie.”

  “That’s okay,” Steve said. “But don’t call me Stevie. That’s what Mart always called me and he’s gone to fat these days.”

  “I’ll call you darling,” she said, “because I like you and you’re so bubbly.”

  “That I am,” Steve admitted. “Both bubbly and darling. Wait till I get the check.”

  “The waiters are bubbly, too,” she giggled, “but not like you.�
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  “Nobody is as bubbly as me,” Steve said. “It runs in the family.”

  He paid the check and managed, without too much difficulty, to get her out to the Citroën. They should have come in the Simca convertible, he decided, as he drove back to the Pavilion Budapest. The rush of the night air might have revived her. As it was, Nadine sat beside him, her head on his shoulder, soundly asleep, and snoring a slight little snore that amused him. The fact of the matter was that he was a bit tight himself but not impossibly so. He still felt fine.

  He parked the car in one of the contessa’s garages, and tried to revive Nadine with gentle shake, without luck.

  He grinned down at her. “You can use the relaxation,” he told her, “after the emotional wringer you’ve been through.”

  He went around to her side of the car, opened the door and slipped one hand under her knees, the other behind her shoulders, and lifted her out. She seemed light and comfortable in his arms, and his hand under her thighs tingled with the warmth of the softness of her legs.

  Let’s see now, she had mentioned a couple of days ago that she was in a room that enabled her to look down upon the beach and see his trailer. The only room where that was possible would be Number Eight.

  He carried her to the back entrance of the villa to avoid observation and then after managing to wrestle the door open, to the back stairs and up to the second floor.

  The door to Number Eight was unlocked. There were no keys at the contessa’s. He got her inside, and stretched her out on the bed.

  He stood for a moment, hands on hips, and scowled down thoughtfully at her. “Well, I don’t imagine you’d mind,” he said softly. “I’ve seen you in your birthday suit before.”

  Working gently, he managed to slip her simple cotton sports dress over her head. Beneath, a concession to August heat, she wore nothing other than brassiere and panties, both silken. He considered for a moment, shrugged and lowered both straps down over her shoulders and arms.