Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw Page B

lost sight of her. She was going on forty now, still lush and beautiful, and when he had seen her at the party, he had wondered why he had ever broken with her. They had spent a weekend together, he remembered, at Beaulieu, out of season, and it was one of the most satisfactory memories of his life. At the party she had told him she was getting married. Miss Natalie Sorel represented too many complications at the moment, he decided. Her phone would not ring.
    There was a hand-written note from Ian Wadleigh. He and Wadleigh had had some drunken evenings together in New York and Hollywood. Wadleigh had written a novel that had been widely acclaimed in the early 1950s. At that time he had been a boisterous, witty man who argued loudly in bars with strangers. Since then he had written several disappointing novels and had worked on a lot of screenplays and had gone through three wives and become a drunk. Craig hadn’t seen Wadleigh’s name in print or on the screen for years, and he was surprised to see Wadleigh’s signature on the envelope.
    “Dear Jess,” Wadleigh wrote in a loose scrawl, “I heard you were here and thought maybe it would be heartwarming to tie one on together, for old time’s sake. I’m in a flea bag near the old port where the poor folk lead their short, nasty, brutish lives, but they’re pretty good at taking messages. Call when you have the time. Ian.”
    Craig wondered what Wadleigh was doing in Cannes. But he wasn’t curious enough to call the number Wadleigh had noted at the bottom of the page.
    He opened his wife’s registered letter. She had typed it herself. She was two days late in getting her monthly check, she wrote, and she was notifying her lawyer and his lawyer. If she did not receive the check within one day, she would instruct her lawyer to take the appropriate steps.
    He stuffed all the loose bits of paper into his pocket and sat back and watched the darkening sea as the sun set.
    The sky clouded over, and the sea turned a stony gray, and a light rain began to fall. The wind rose, and the fronds of the palm trees along the waterfront clashed with a mechanical dry noise. A white yacht, pitching in the swell, its running lights on, made for the old harbor.
    He went in off the balcony and flicked the switch on the living-room wall. The lights came on, pale and watery. In the yellowish glow the room looked shabby and unwelcoming. He got out his checkbook and sat down at the desk and wrote out a check for his wife. He hadn’t added up his balance in the checkbook for weeks, and he didn’t do it now. He put the check in an envelope and wrote the address. Now a stranger’s house, although still full of his books and papers and the furniture of half a lifetime.
    He pulled open the drawer of the desk and took out the script, one of six copies that were lying there. It had no cover, and the title was on the top page— The Three Horizons. There was no author’s name under the title. Craig took out a pen and leaned over the desk. He hesitated for a moment and then wrote, “by Malcolm Harte.” It was as good a name as any. Let the work be judged entirely on its own merits, with an unknown name on its cover. The reactions would be purer. His friends would not be tempted to be lenient, his foes unaware of a new opportunity for derision. He recognized the cowardice there, but the good sense, too, the search for accuracy.
    Methodically, he repeated the inscription, writing it neatly on the remaining five copies. He put a copy of the script in a manila envelope and wrote Bryan Murphy’s name on it.
    He thought of calling Constance. She should be home by now. And cooled down after the outburst of the morning. But if she weren’t home, he knew it would sadden him, so he didn’t pick up the telephone.
    He went down to the crowded lobby, smiled without warmth at two people he knew but did not wish to talk to. At the concierge’s desk he mailed the check to his wife and asked to have the script