Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw Page A

swung the Simca into it and turned off the motor. He was sure it wouldn’t be there when next he needed it.
    “Thank you for the ride,” the girl said, getting out of the car. “I like your friends the Murphys. And I’m sure I’d like you if I ever got the chance.”
    He smiled, rewarding her manners. “I’ll be around,” he said vaguely.
    He watched her stride off along the Croisette carrying her tape recorder, Murphy isolated in a capsule. Her long brown hair shone over the blue polo shirt. Standing there in the bright sunshine, he felt deserted. He didn’t want to be alone that afternoon, remembering what it had been like when he was twenty-seven. He had the impulse to hurry after her, touch her arm, walk beside her. But he fought the impulse down. He went into the bar, drank a pastis, then wandered fretfully over to the rue d’Antibes and saw half a dirty movie. It had been made in Germany and featured bosomy lesbian ladies in high leather boots in rural settings, glades and waterfalls. The theatre was crowded. He left and went back toward his hotel.
    Two hard-faced whores on the corner near the tennis courts stared at him aggressively. Maybe I should do it, he thought. Maybe it would solve something.
    But he merely smiled gently at the two women and walked on. There was applause coming from the tennis courts, and he went in. A tournament was being played, for juniors. The boys were wild but moved with dazzling speed. He watched for a few minutes, trying to remember the time when he had moved that fast.
    He left the courts and went around the corner to the hotel, avoiding the terrace, which already had the beginning of the evening assembly of drinkers.
    When he picked up his key, the concierge gave him some messages that had come in for him in his absence. He had to sign for a registered letter from his wife that had been forwarded from his hotel in Paris. He stuffed the messages and the letter into his pocket without reading them.
    In the elevator a short man with a paunch wearing an orange shirt was saying to a pretty young girl, “This is the worst festival of all times.” The girl could have been a secretary or a starlet or a whore or the man’s daughter.
    When he reached his apartment, he went out onto the balcony and sat down and regarded the sea for a while. Then he took the messages out of his pocket and read them at random. He kept his wife’s letter for last. Dessert.
    Mr. B. Thomas and his wife would like to dine with Mr. Craig tonight. Would Mr. Craig be good enough to call back? They were at the Hotel Martinez and would be in until seven.
    Bruce Thomas was a man whom he didn’t know well but liked. He was a director and had had three hits in a row. He was about forty years old. He was one of the men Craig had been thinking about when he had told Gail McKinnon why he had never been tempted to direct. Tomorrow he would tell Thomas that he had returned to the hotel too late to call him back. He didn’t want to dine that night with a man who had had three hits in a row.
    Sidney Green had called and wanted to know if he could have a drink with Mr. Craig before dinner tonight. He would be in the bar at eight. Sidney Green was a man who had directed three or four movies and who had been hired by an independent company to prepare a series of pictures. The independent company had stopped operations a month before, and Green was in Cannes looking for a job, beseeching everyone he met to put in a good word for him. He would drink alone at the bar tonight.
    Miss Natalie Sorel had called and would Mr. Craig please call back. Natalie Sorel had been one of the two magnificently gowned and coiffed ladies at the party the night before whom Gail McKinnon had noticed and celebrated. She was a fairly well-known movie actress, originally from Hungary, who played in three or four languages. She had been his mistress for a few months, five or six years ago, when he had been doing the picture in Paris, but he had