Episode on the Riviera Read online

  Steve said to the office girl, “Back a day sooner than I’d expected, Mary. How’s it going?”

  Mary Ballentine said, her voice strange, “Nothing new, Mr. Cogswell.”

  “Where’s Mr. Gunther?”

  “I dont know, sir.”

  He frowned at her. “Do you have a cold or something, Mary?”

  “No, sir.”

  Steve said, “Fay’s not here either, huh? Wasn’t there work enough to keep her busy?”

  “I suppose not.” Mary Ballentine refrained from looking at the large pile of mailing she had on her desk and at which she’d been busily working.

  In a way, right then, Steve knew. His mind went blank, unthinking. He left the office without speaking further to Mary Ballentine, got into his car and drove home. He parked a half-block away and walked the remaining distance. He entered by the back door. It was a small house, but in a good neighborhood and ultra-modern throughout. They had been in it only six months. Nineteen years of payments still to go, Steve thought dully.

  They hadn’t even had the decency to perform their sexual gyrations in some neutral zone. They were on the bed, in the bed, all over the bed — in Steve and Fay’s room.

  Mart Gunther looked up, his face chalky, his eyes wide and stricken. “My God, Stevie,” he blurted, “I can explain this!”

  That was too much. Too utterly, flatly, incongruously too much. Steve Cogswell began to laugh. A broken and all but hysterical laugh.

  Save for one stocking and her garter belt, Fay was nude. Beautifully, wonderfully nude, as only Fay could be. The body, the one and only body, that Steve Cogswell had come to love so desperately.

  Save for his small, tight, European-type briefs, Mart Gunther was nude too. Steve wondered, even as he laughed, what the other offered Fay that he, Steve, couldn’t.

  The man was no Olympic star, physically. In fact, his waist was already getting on the heavy side, and his body, untouched by the sun this summer, was a lardy white.

  It was obvious that the man had already been aroused by the time Steve Cogswell had entered the room. With the removal of the remaining stocking and the garter belt — a matter of moments probably, since the bed had a disheveled, clothes-strewn appearance that denoted passion and haste — their act of love would have been speedily consummated.

  Act of love? Steve’s laughter choked off.

  Raw, meaningless, animal sex. Two animal bodies grinding together, reaching the crest of emotional climax together. A sow in heat and a rutting boar to serve her. It had no more meaning than that.

  Mart Gunther rolled away in such wise as to be at the far side of the bed from Steve. His face was pasty and his lips drawn back so that his teeth showed.

  Had Steve likened him to a boar? A fearful rat was the better term. He was not even thinking in terms of protecting the woman with whom he’d been in lust the moment before.

  “Now listen, Stevie,” he said again, his voice high. “Don’t do anything until you give me — us — a chance to explain.”

  What did he expect, for Steve to begin shooting?

  And that was when Fay had exploded.

  Fay the aristocrat. Fay of the controlled voice. Fay of the Boston Hanlons. Fay the groomed. Fay the lady. To Steve’s confused mind came the meaningless phrase, Fay the Lily-Maid of Astolat.

  Fay exploded and from her white lips, from that horrible gash in her hate-filled face, from that twisting, hating tongue came a stream of obscenity that sent Steve Cogswell back a full step in shock.

  And then some of her sentences, her incoherent phrases, began to make sense.

  “You cheap, undersexed jerk … You half-man … What have you got to complain about? … You can’t do it…. You can’t make a woman feel it, like it…. What the hell do you care if somebody else does the job for you? … Why, I’ve had kids in high school knew how to jazz better than you….

  “All this crap about the beauty of my soul and this fiddling around, and petting, and admiring my goddess-like body like you call it…. My goddess-like body, hell … I’m a woman. A woman, understand? … Do you know what a woman is, you sad sack? … Get out of here! … Get out of here and let a man, a man with something on his mind besides work, work, work, do what a man’s supposed to do….

  “To hell with your work … To hell with you sitting around in the evenings with your plans and your layouts and your — How I hate a man who can’t perform in the saddle! … How I’ve hated to be married to a cheap creep who doesn’t know how to handle a woman…. God, how I’ve loved cheating on you, Steven Philip Cogswell!”

  There had been more. It was still going on when he stumbled from the room.

  He hadn’t known. He hadn’t had the slightest idea …

  • • •

  Steve Cogswell finished his cigarette, staring up at the trailer’s ceiling as he smoked. Now the girl beside him was stirring. Confound it, he couldn’t remember her name. The tourists came down at the rate of sixty-seven a week, in season, and it was just beyond him to remember them all.

  Of course, he’d been at the party with her the night before, but he couldn’t remember the night before. Not beyond the point when that fluttery Dave Shepherd had rung in the bottle of absinthe. Steve could only remember drinking the first frappé — and he’d probably had more.

  The girl’s eyes opened and she smiled sleepily at him. “Morning, Steven,” she purred.

  Purred was the correct word. She was a kitten. Blond as blond, wide and blue of eye. Rounded and silken white — in spite of the two weeks on the Riviera. Steve decided wryly that she’d probably spent more time in bed than on the beach.

  Steve ground out the cigarette butt in the tray next to the bed and attempted to keep his voice pleasant. “We’ll have to get going,” he said “I’ve got to get all you holiday-makers together and down to Nice in time for the plane to London.”

  The blonde pouted at him. “Don’t I even get a morning kiss, lover?” She half-closed her eyes, slumberously, but at the same time made a girlish attempt to cover her revealed breasts.

  Steve rolled from the bed, relieved to find he was wearing the bottom half of pajamas. “You’re a glutton,” he told her, hoping his voice was light and that she wouldn’t take offense. “Look, I’ll slip into the bathroom first and get organized. I’m simply fanny-deep in work on a Friday morning. I’ve got to run into Monaco.”

  “Not even time for a spot of breakfast?” she wailed.

  He had pulled out a drawer and was fishing forth fresh clothing. Faded blue linen slacks, a Madras sport shirt — official attire on the Côte d’Azur. He brought out rope-soled sandals, colorful socks.

  She was saying, looking about the small trailer room, “Goodness, you Yankees really take your caravans seriously. How large is this, anyway?”

  “Twenty-eight feet,” Steve muttered. “It’s not considered particularly big in the States.”

  “But a bathroom, and a fridge in the kitchen, and TV and armchairs there in the living room, and that little bar. Why, it’s just like a real home.”

  “It’s the only home I’ve got,” Steve said drily. Damn, but he wished she’d shut up.

  “And all aluminum,” she wondered. “Did you bring it from the States with you?”

  He shook his head, his hand on the bathroom door. He had to be polite to this blister. It was bad policy for him to mess around with the Far Away Holidays clients. Antagonize one and they could put in a beef to the head office in London. Too many complaints and that’d be the end of this job, and if there was anything Steve Cogswell didn’t want it was to have to leave the Riviera, looking for some other employment.

  Decent jobs weren’t a dime a dozen for an American in Europe, and particularly in France. You needed a work permit to take a job in France and to get it you had to prove it was a position a Frenchman couldn’t hold down.

  In this case, John Brett-James, the boss up in England, had claimed his customers felt more secure if their Riviera representative was eith
er British or American, and France, of course, bent over backward to baby the tourist trade.

  Steve said, “I bought it from a couple of rich tourists who brought it over and then didn’t want to be bothered with the rigmarole of shipping it back.” He could have added, but didn’t, “Your friend Conny Kamiros lent me the money.”

  He went into the bathroom, hurried through a shave and shower, dressed and then emerged.

  She was still in bed. He said, “I’m going to have to scoot. Your hotel is the Ruhl, in Nice, isn’t it? When you’re dressed, you can go up to the villa and the contessa will call a cab for you. You’d better hurry. The plane arrives at eleven and you’ll have to be at the airport at least an hour ahead of time.”

  She was half-scowling at him, and began to say something, but he ignored it and left the trailer and headed toward the villa himself.

  It was a beautiful day, as all days are beautiful on the Côte d’Azur in August. Behind him, the blue-green Mediterranean, unbelievably clear, sparkled in the morning sun. To his left was Cap Ferrat, with Saint Jean snuggling on the peninsula. To his right was the semitropical town of Beaulieu; Little Africa the old-timers called it, the warmest town come winter on the Riviera.

  The Contessa Carla Rossi had her estate charmingly situated between the two small resorts and with a small private beach, one of the best in the vicinity. It was a break for Steve, being able to park his trailer down near the beach and slightly to one side, his electric and water outlets hitched up to the unused gardener’s cottage. A break for which he was properly thankful. The regular tourist parking grounds at this time of year were a crowded horror and the beaches near them unusable.

  He climbed the score or more stone steps that wound up the rocky way to the main house and strolled across the lawn to the French windows of what had once been one of the proudest villas on the Riviera and was now the Pavilion Budapest, an ultra-swank pension operated by Carla Rossi. The contessa, like so many of the Riviera’s titled folk had fallen on harsh times.

  Not so harsh as all that, however. Her former Italian banker husband, now deceased, had been an ardent admirer of Matisse and of Picasso, before those artists had drawn the world’s acclaim. Most of his friends had thought Conte Rossi was doing the painters a philanthropy when he bought their works at a few thousand frances a throw. There were at least a dozen prime examples of the work of each in the Pavilion Budapest, and had the contessa sold one or two of them, she would certainly have had no need to rent out her home to tourist guests. But that wasn’t the contessa’s style. Hardly.

  Carla Rossi was in the swank, crystal-chandeliered living room when Steven entered. She was dressed in black Capri pants, a soft blue pullover, and with matching blue velvet ballet shoes. The contessa was probably in the vicinity of forty but her figure was that of a nineteen-year-old — and she knew it.

  She was standing, hands on hips, legs spread, and glaring ruefully at the wreckage of last night’s party. She looked at him when he entered, her face impish. The contessa reminded Steve of the Gabor sisters — Zsa Zsa, probably. Which wasn’t too far out since Carla Rossi had been bora in Hungary. She said to him, “Carla is beginning to think that the tourist business isn’t worth it.”

  “Ha,” he said.

  “What is this ha, you wolf?”

  “You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself, unless you ran this place. Besides, you love to throw parties and can’t afford it. So you need these suckers to pony up the money.” Steve scowled at her. “What do you mean, wolf?”

  “I saw you with poor Conny’s girl last night. That awful blond witch.”

  Steve made a face. “She’ll be up here in a few minutes. Get her a cab and get rid of her, won’t you, Carla?”

  “Ha,” she snorted. “The same as ever, eh? Last night she was the darling. This morning she disgusts you.” She looked at him archly. “Carla is glad we have never got around to a — what do you Americans call it? — a roll in the hay. I am afraid our friendship would not survive it, Steve.”

  She was speaking the truth, as a matter of fact, and Steve knew it, but he only grunted, “See you later, honey bun.”

  He made his way toward the side door which led toward the villa’s garages. At the door he met Dave Shepherd, snorkle and flippers in hand and dressed in a flaming pair of bathing trunks. Dave was a semipermanent resident at the Pavilion Budapest.

  Steve pretended to wince at the bright color. “That outfit will scare away all the fish,” he protested. “Skin diving is bad enough in this area already.”

  Dave giggled. “My dear,” he said. “Do you really like them?”

  “No,” Steve said flatly. “See you later, everybody.”

  Dave called after him, “Oh, you have no taste, dear boy.”

  Steve grunted something to that under his breath and made his way to the garage. His Citroën ID station wagon was neck to neck with the contessa’s aged Rolls and half a dozen cars ranging from a Thunderbird to a Lancia belonging to current residents.

  • • •

  He took the shoreline Corniche into Monaco, about ten kilometers, or six miles, to the east, passing through the harbor-side resort of Beaulieu and later through Eze-s Mer on the way.

  Where France ended and Monaco began was hard to tell. The tiny principality, some 370 acres in all, half the size of New York’s Central Park, had neither border guards nor customs. You were in France one moment, and Monaco the next, and who was to care?

  He drove down Boulevard Princess Charlotte to Avenue du Berceau and turned left, parked the Citroën as near to the tiny office of Far Away Holidays as he could and traversed the rest of the way on foot.

  Elaine Marimbert had already opened up this morning, as she usually did. She was a cute little Monegasque, one of the less than three thousand citizens of the tiny nation, and as proud of her country as though it had been a world power.

  Monegasque she might be by nationality but French she was in language, in cultural background, and in the undeniably Gallic appearance she boasted. These days, in common with some twenty million Frenchwomen, she was copying the hair-do, the pertness, and the flashing eyes of Brigitte Bardot and on her it couldn’t have looked better. Petite, chic, ultra-modern, she was a decided asset to Far Away Holidays and Steve appreciated her, even though her hobby did seem to be snidely heckling him.

  It was because of her value as an assistant that he had never allowed the girl’s charms to impress themselves upon him. He had seen her eye his six-foot, lanky form, run her eyes over his open, typically American face, and there had been approval in her glance.

  But Steve knew what would result. They’d wind up in bed, sooner or later, and that would be the end of their relationship and probably result in her quitting her job. He just couldn’t be more than coolly polite to a woman once she’d surrendered to him.

  Today Elaine wore the sport clothes the weather demanded, a cleverly designed dress in the latest style down from Paris, and clever sandals, probably from across the nearby border in Italy.

  Elaine looked up at him as he entered. “Bon jour, Monsieur Cogswell.”

  “Speak English,” Steve told her, but smiling his own greeting. “You need the practice. Any crises this morning?”

  “Mr. Kamiros called. He wants you to call back. There’s a cable from London. Two of the tourists scheduled to stay at the Venise et Continental, in Menton, canceled at the last minute. There’ll be only sixty-five on the plane today.”

  “Damn it,” Steve growled, “that’s the third last-minute cancellation for that hotel in the past month. Jules will be a hornet.”

  Elaine said mildly, “At this time of the year he shouldn’t have any trouble filling his rooms with casuals off the street.”

  Steve said, “A hotel manager likes to know where he stands, not to depend on last-minute guests dropping in. What did Conny want?”

  “He didn’t say, Monsieur Cogswell. Should I get him?”

  “I suppose so,” Steve said. He h
ad a premonition that he wasn’t going to like what Conny Kamiros was going to say.

  He didn’t. The Greek gambler’s voice was as soft as usual, but what he said hurt. He wanted, in brief, the five thousand dollars Steve owed him.

  Steve sputtered, “Hell, Conny, you know I don’t have that kind of money on hand. I was figuring on paying you back a thousand at a time over a period of several years.”

  “That was before my rather inflated ego was sandpapered, my friend,” the Greek tycoon said softly.

  Steve said in irritation, “Well, I haven’t got it, Conny, and you can’t get blood out of this particular turnip. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not soon enough, Steve.”

  “It’ll have to be.”

  Constantine Kamiros said evenly, “When I sent you over to Nick to pick up the loan you wanted, what kind of paper did you sign, Steve?”

  Oh, oh! Steve Cogswell sent his mind back. It was one thing, the easygoing Conny shrugging his heavy shoulders and telling Steve he’d be happy to let him have five thousand with which to buy the American trailer that was available for a song. But it was another thing when you confronted his secretary-business manager, Nicholas Lindos, not exactly famous as being a quick man with a buck — no matter what currency was involved.

  Nick had drawn up papers using the trailer, Steve’s Citroën, and for all practical purposes the clothes on his back, as collateral. And Nick had been bitter, even then. He hadn’t thought that Steve’s all was enough backing for a loan of that magnitude. Not that Steve had worried. Conny had told his friend that he was in no hurry and even hinted that if Steve never paid him back, he wouldn’t mind.

  He thought Steve would like the trailer and he wanted him to have it. It fitted in with Steve’s way of life. Work on the Riviera with the tourists for six or seven months of the year and then batting around Europe for the remainder, living it up, drinking it up, wenching on the grand scale.