Two Weeks in Another Town by Irwin Shaw Page B

quiet and the breeze is fresh and where they can see the George Washington Bridge and Jersey from the window. And I want them to have everything this hotel has to offer. Let them send down for champagne and caviar and roast pheasant and put it all on my bill.’ Then he kissed them good night and told them they would have tickets for California on the Chief two days later and he left them alone.”
    Jack stopped, caught in the memory of those distant days which his own voice had evoked, those forgotten catastrophes, lost hopes, spent tears, that vigorous honesty, that rough, effective, human doctoring, that youthful belief. He hadn’t told them about himself at that time, either, about Delaney’s hiring him, too, almost casually, without compliments or duplicity, and he hadn’t told them about his own wife, his first wife, either, and how she hated Delaney and hated what Delaney meant to Jack. Well, that wasn’t part of the story and it wouldn’t fit into an article in a French magazine. “So,” Jack said, looking down at his plate, and beginning to eat again, “that’s what it was like in New York a hundred years ago, when I was young.”
    “If I was writing the article,” Veronica said, and Jack was conscious that she hadn’t moved her eyes from his face, “I would put it all in like that, every word, just the way he said it.”
    “What does it prove?” Despière shrugged. “That we were all better when we were young? Everybody know that.”
    “Maybe,” Veronica said, surprisingly, “that wouldn’t be such a bad thing to put in an article. Not such a bad thing at all.”
    “He was terrific with the ladies,” Miss Henken said, chewing away like a grazing spinster horse at her spaghetti and clams. “I heard. It was common gossip. He had them all. Put that in. That’s what people like to read.”
    “Listen to Felice,” Despière said gravely. “She has her finger on the public pulse.”
    “I bet,” Miss Henken said, looking with sandy-eyebrowed archness at Jack, “that when you were young, when you looked the way you did in the picture, I bet you had them all, too.”
    “I will draw up a list for you, Miss Henken,” Jack said, with distaste, “before I leave Rome.”
    “He’s a married man now,” Despière said, grinning, “and a pillar of government. Don’t disturb him with lascivious memories.”
    “I was just paying him a compliment,” Miss Henken said, aggrieved. “Can’t you even pay a man a compliment any more?”
    Jack caught Veronica’s eye, across the table, and Veronica smiled at him, swiftly, secretly, tilting her head. Why, Jack thought, surprised, she doesn’t think I look so bad even now.
    Despière, who missed nothing, caught the almost imperceptible interchange, and he leaned back in his chair, regarding them both, his heavy eyelids almost closed, deciding, Jack realized, how he was going to make the girl and Jack pay for the moment. “Be careful what you say to the man,” he said lazily. “His wife is famously jealous. Aside from being beautiful. She is so beautiful,” Despière went on, “that when Jack leaves town she becomes the most popular lady in Paris. By the way, Jack,” he said, “did I tell you? I got a call from Paris this morning from a lady and she said she saw your wife last night. Did I tell you?”
    “No,” said Jack, “you didn’t tell me.”
    “She was at L’Eléphant Blanc at three in the morning,” Despière said. “Dancing with a Greek. The lady didn’t know who he was, but he was very light of foot, she said. She said Hélène looked beautiful.”
    “I’m sure she did,” Jack said shortly.
    “They’re the happiest married couple I know,” Despière said to the girls, his revenge completed. “Aren’t you, Jack?”
    “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I don’t know all your other married friends.”
    “If there was any chance of success,” Despière said, “Hélène is just the sort of girl I would apply myself to. She