A Kiss Before Loving Read online

  “Any mail?” Shell asked, yawning.

  “A cable and two letters,” Hobbs said. He was a wizened old man, a Barry Fitzgerald type. Story had it that he was a deserter from the British army in World War I and had never returned to England. His French wife supposedly put up the money for the lease on this old fleabag.

  Hobbs had the cable and letters in his hand, but he held them for a moment as he said flatly, “It’s the third of the month.”

  “Oh?” Shell said, registering surprise. He dug his hand into a pocket and brought forth some of his take of the night before. “I’ll let you have enough for two weeks, on account.”

  “When we gave you that room at a discount,” Hobbs said wearily, “it was with the understanding that you would pay by the month and strictly on time.”

  Shell began to explain something about money coming through from the sale of a painting but Hobbs handed him the letters and waved a hand negatively. “All right, all right,” he said.

  Shell started up the stairs, ripping open the cable as he went. It was from Bigelow Warren and it read: ARRIVING ON THIRD SEE ME AT GEORGE FIFTH SOONEST.

  The third? That was today. Bigelow Warren! Well, happy days were here again. Shell wouldn’t have to worry about food, liquor and a bit of spending money for the next couple of weeks, at least. The cartoonist was undoubtedly in town for one of his periodic binges.

  One of the letters was from Connie Lockwood. He scanned it quickly. Happy days were no longer here again.

  Chapter Three

  THE RELEVANT part of Connie’s letter was in the first paragraph.

  Darling, darling! Surprise, surprise! I’m coming to Paris! It’s been so long, so very long, and I just can’t wait another year, nor even a month. I’m afraid with all your prominent friends, with all those beautiful French girls (yes, darling, I’m jealous), with all the wonderful distractions which you write about, that you’ll forget your poor little New Elba me. At any rate, I’m coming.

  There was more. She’d received a small inheritance from some uncle Shell had never even heard about. It was enough for the trip. She asked various questions. How should she come, by ship or air? What kind of clothing should she bring? There was a lot of the romantic gushing that was typical of small-town Connie Lockwood. But the important part was all there in the first paragraph.

  His thoughts took off both ways from the middle. Not only was she coming — and he had no illusions about being able to turn her back — but evidently she could hardly wait. It might take her a week or so to get a passport, but then she’d be on her way.

  He climbed the five floors to the tiny upper room that was his and pushed open the door. He seldom bothered to lock it. There wasn’t anything worth stealing. Even had there been, no sneak thief would have bothered to climb this far in this cheap a hotel. Property is safe when you have insufficient to worry about.

  He sat on the side of the sagging bed, faintly surprised to find it properly made. The aged maid often didn’t go to the trouble of doing the rooms on the top floor. They were all taken by such as Shell Halliday; students, expatriates on their uppers, unsuccessful artists. And most of them were usually in arrears with their rent.

  His eyes went around the room: The small table, the two rickety chairs, his easel — long untouched — and his palette and paints, gathering dust. Against the wall were a dozen or so of his paintings, mostly unfinished. A washbowl, a bidet, two suitcases stuck under the bed, a warped, plywood wardrobe, and a cheap Van Gogh print stuck on the wall with a pin. That was it.

  He tried to picture Connie here, her eyes going around the walls, the furniture, the drabness, even the dirt. The Lockwoods were only moderately well off, even by New Elba standards, but he doubted if Connie had ever, in her some twenty-five years of life, seen anything like this except in a movie.

  He tried to picture Connie and wasn’t sure that he could. Four years, five years — exactly how long was it? He tried to bring her to mind, and although he could do a fairly good job on her figure, her clothing, the way she walked, ridiculously, every time he tried to recall her face it was Sissy Patterson’s that intruded on his mental eye.

  Connie. How did he really, truly feel about Connie now? Why … why … he loved her, of course. It had always been Connie, almost as far back as he could remember. Yes, of course he loved her. And someday, somehow, all the old dreams would come about — someway. And it would be Connie and Shell, just as they’d always planned.

  Damn it. He felt confused and, for some reason, angry.

  Shell put down the letter and looked at the cable again. Bigelow Warren was arriving in town today.

  Of all the celebrities Shell had written home about, Bigelow was the only one he really knew. Bigelow Warren, the Mort Sahl of the cartoon strip. Bigelow Warren, the new darling of the world of satire, with his little-boy character, Bobby, who made such biting comments on the adult world of politics, socio-economics, world affairs and even religion. No sacred cow was safe from the barbs of little Bobby, who provoked the most sophisticated to gales of belly-laughter — to the great profit of his originator.

  Shell had met the humorist under circumstances typical of the two of them. Bigelow, dead drunk and open to the exploitation of anyone from B-girl to cutthroat, of which there are ample of both in the world of Paris night life. Shell, looking for a mark, some tourist to whom to show the sights.

  Somehow, it hadn’t worked out as usual. A spark seemed to strike them both and their strange friendship began. Shell Halliday saw the cartoonist back to his Right Bank hotel, got him to bed and left, without realizing a cent.

  To his surprise, he met the fellow again the following night, once again stoned to the gills and in a Montparnasse clip joint where your chances of not being taken for everything you carried in your wallet were negligible. Bigelow recognized him and fell on his neck. Nothing would do but they must see the town together, Bigelow Warren picking up the tabs, and Shell seeing he wasn’t clipped.

  Shell had him back to his hotel by two in the morning.

  And the following night, he ran into him still again.

  This time they made a business deal. Bigelow explained, owlishly, that he was on a wee vacation and while about it had decided to see if he could make the French vintners put on an extra shift. If Shell would act as his companion, remaining moderately sober himself so that he could keep an eye on Warren, he’d pick up all the checks and pay ten dollars a night to boot.

  That had been more than three years ago and, ever since, Bigelow Warren turned up two or three times a year for one of his two-week to a month blowouts. He was a periodic drunk who didn’t touch the stuff back in New York, saving it for the big binge the need for which sooner or later welled up from within. His inner bitterness didn’t all distill in the acrid words with which Bobby castigated society.

  • • •

  Shell made a decision. Face it, after more than four years in Paris, Bigelow was the nearest thing to a friend he had. He’d see what the humorist had to say.

  He stripped out of his corduroys, tossed them over a chair negligently and brought his tweed suit from the closet. He got his last clean shirt from a suitcase, selected a tie and made himself presentable enough to enter the swank halls of the George Fifth Hotel, that home of the celebrity-seeking, restless American abroad.

  The George Fifth was on the avenue of the same name and right down from the Champs Elysées. In spite of the expense, Shell didn’t feel like further exercise today. He’d had too little sleep, too much drink and horizonal refreshments the night before and, besides, his thoughts were still playing anguished hopscotch. He took a cab.

  The George Fifth is the old standby of the Hollywood, Broadway, Miami Beach crowd seeking their own kind, bright lights, a real dry martini and whatever else it is that café society seeks. It was only midafternoon but Shell knew the bar, which was through the lobby and shortly down the hall to the right, would be packed. He hesitated momentarily, wanting a drink now, then r
emembered the prices and made straight for the desk to get Bigelow’s suite number. There’d be a drink there. There was always a drink in the vicinity of Bigelow Warren when he came to Paris.

  The cartoonist, admittedly, wasn’t afraid to spend his money. He’d confided to Shell once that he was able to deduct practically all the expense of his Paris binges from taxes. He marked his visits down to business and, for that matter, did consult some of his European markets while on the Continent. He’d spend two or three days on business and two or three weeks on his pub crawling, and evidently even Uncle Sam was satisfied.

  At the George Fifth he had what must have been one of the largest suites in a hotel that trended to swank suites. By the looks of it, two or three bedrooms, as many baths, and a living room large enough to throw a good-sized dance in. As usual, on seeing such opulence, Shell closed his eyes in pain.

  He said accusingly, “What are you doing with a pad this size? You won’t average four hours out of the twenty-four in it.”

  Bigelow Warren laughed hugely, switched the glass he held in his right hand to his left and greeted Shell with warmth.

  “Shell!” he crowed. “Come on in. Have a drink, man. You look like life’s been getting you down. Have a brandy. Civilized drink. None of this whiskey stuff. Yep, whiskey is for hillbillies.”

  Shell looked him up and down and grinned wanly. Same old Bigelow Warren. A shaggy edition of Jack Carson, playing a not too comic part of a periodic drunk. Possibly six foot two and as much as two-twenty in weight. He was a bear of a man, only his good posture and continual nervous activity kept anyone from thinking of him as overweight.

  When he was drinking, Shell had seen him put away a bottle of either whiskey or cognac before noon, and then, hardly started, go out on the town, not winding up until dawn.

  Bigelow took in his Parisian guide, bodyguard and wassailing companion. Shell Halliday, somewhere short of thirty and already — temporarily, at least — out of life’s running. Bigelow didn’t know the full Halliday story, but he didn’t have to. It was the same you’d hear in Hollywood, on Broadway — or in Milan, if your forte was music. The artist who didn’t make it. The writer who didn’t make it. The opera singer — with a frog in his throat. The defeated.

  But he was still a good-looking man, Bigelow decided. A good face, a body not yet gone to pot in spite of the life Shell must lead. And, to Bigelow Warren’s belief, a good heart underneath that margarine spread of cynicism.

  Bigelow led him back to the side table where already was collected at least a dozen bottles, a huge silver thermos bowl of ice, a score of glasses of assorted sizes and all the other equipment for a well-turned-out bar.

  His own glass was empty. As Bigelow refilled it he read off his collection. “Anything you want, Shell. Scotch, rye, bourbon, rum, vodka, cognac, Armagnac, Metaxa — ”

  “What the hell is Metaxa?” Shell asked.

  “Metaxa, you ignorant clod, is Greek brandy. Stone-age stuff. I’m on a brandy kick. Unless I forget, I’m going to drink only brandy this vacation. Friend of mine in Philly told me you didn’t have so much of a hangover on brandy. Made from grapes. Very healthy. Properly aged. No fusil oil or whatever it is you take out of whiskey by sticking it in charred oak casks for a few years.”

  “I’ll have Scotch,” Shell said. “Look, how long are you over for this time, Biggy?”

  The cartoonist looked down into his glass. “I don’t know. I’m all caught up on the Bobby strip. Besides, I’ve got a larger staff now. All I have to do is feed them some ideas and they do all the work. Hell, I don’t even have to do that. I’ve got two full-time gag men — you’ve met Sammy and Bill. All I have to do is okay or jazz up a little, the ideas they get. Maybe I’ll stay for a month this time.”

  Shell grunted, pouring his own whiskey and adding soda and ice. “A month. Wow. At the pace you go, no man nor beast could stand a month.”

  “Well, I think I’ll take it easier this time.” Saying which, the big man threw back his current drink and poured another.

  “Ha,” Shell said sourly.

  Warren looked at him again, up and down. “Where’d you get that suit, Shell? Have you lowered your standards a fraction and turned to pickpocketing?”

  Shell looked at him in moderate indignation. “What kind of a crack is that? I have my legitimate sources of income. Among other things, I sold a couple of paintings last week.”

  The cartoonist, who’d made his way back to a divan and slumped onto it, looked at Shell in surprise. “Sold two paintings? Two of your paintings?”

  “Well, no,” Shell admitted. “I met a tourist last week who wanted to buy a painting in Paris but was afraid he’d be taken by a gallery. Since I was an artist myself, he thought I could help.”

  “Why didn’t you show him your own stuff?” Biggie wanted to know, his eyes bright with amusement.

  “I did. He didn’t like it.”

  “So?”

  “So I took him to Jan Luchtvaart’s studio. Jan sold him a Montmartre street scene and one of the Seine.”

  “And you got a cut from Jan?”

  Shell shrugged defensively. “A gallery would charge Jan forty per cent for anything they sold for him. Why shouldn’t I get a cut? Sure, he paid me.” Shell took a chair, too, and sipped unhappily at the drink.

  Bigelow was frowning. “Enough to buy that suit? It must have been quite a sale.”

  “Special deal,” Shell admitted. “I’ve been lining up this tailor as somebody to take tourists to and I talked him into doing this outfit up by way of a sample I can show any prospective customers.”

  Bigelow got up and walked to his improvised bar and took up his bottle. He was shaking his head. “With your kind of mind, I wonder you don’t go back to the States and get rich on Wall Street.”

  Shell looked down into his glass, empty now.

  “Look, Biggy, I can’t go back.”

  His drinking companion looked down on him. “Yep, I noticed something was wrong when you walked in here. What’s up, Shell? Can I help?”

  Shell got to his feet and poured himself another whiskey. “I doubt it,” he said. “Did I ever tell you — maybe in my cups — what I’m doing in Paris?”

  Bigelow narrowed his eyes slightly, thoughtfully. “Not all at once, but over a period of time I’ve more or less picked it up. You were the home town’s pride, kind of Michelangelo come out of the Midwest, so everybody saw you off at the train, that sort of thing. And then you found out when you got over here that you didn’t have it on the ball.”

  “That’s about it, actually,” Shell growled.

  “And you couldn’t face going home.”

  Shell handed him Connie’s letter. “This came today,” he said simply.

  Warren squinted into his face a moment, then down at the letter. He read the first few paragraphs but didn’t bother to finish it. He said, “The girl back home, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve been writing them you’re a big success over here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hasn’t anybody from the home town ever come over before, in all these years?”

  “Once or twice. New Elba isn’t very big. And then I pretended to be out of the city when they showed up. But I can’t do that this time.”

  Bigelow looked at the first paragraph of the letter again and raked a beefy hand back through his perpetually ruffled hair. “No, I guess not. She’s on her way, all right, and you’re not going to be able to chill it.”

  They sat for a moment, drinks forgotten, and Shell stared morosely at the floor.

  Bigelow growled, “You could write her and say you’re married to an Italian countess or something.”

  “No. No, I couldn’t do that.”

  “Still go for her, eh?”

  Shell twisted his face, unaccountably disturbed by the question. “Well, all the way back to high school it’s always been Connie.”

  “I see.”

  Bigelow got up, went to
the sideboard and brought back the bottle of Scotch. He poured a stiff slug into Shell’s glass, then poured himself one, forgetting his oath to drink only cognac.

  “You could go back and face the music,” Biggie suggested. “Isn’t there any kind of work you could do back home to make a living for her?”

  “Theoretically, I could go into my father’s hardware business.”

  “Theoretically?”

  Shell shifted his shoulders bitterly. He held up two fingers and brought them together. “Look, for four years I’ve been telling them Picasso and I are like this.”

  They thought about it some more. “Damn it,” Bigelow said, “I came over here to drown my own sorrows, not to worry about somebody else’s.”

  “What’ve you got in the way of sorrows?” Shell grunted. His eyes were on the floor again.

  Bigelow shot a glance at him and for a moment his usually open face was bleak. But he said, softly, “Yeah.” Then, “Well, let’s see. I’m supposed to be an idea man. Or used to be before I started hiring my ideas.”

  His expression lit up. “Listen.”

  Shell looked up at him.

  The heavy-set cartoonist began pacing the floor, nervously. “Listen. I got it. Yep, I think I’ve got it.”

  He hurried down to the end of the room, hurried back. He pounded one fist into the other a couple of times as though impatiently waiting a final point or two to be cleared.

  “Now listen,” he said finally. “You’ll let her come.”

  Shell said bitterly, “How could I stop her, short of writing I’d just contracted leprosy?”

  “No, listen. You let her come and when she arrives, you’ll play the part you’ve been writing them about all these years. You’ll be the big successful Paris artist.”

  “Ha,” Shell snorted.

  “No, wait. You’ll move in here. Except for the Ritz, it’s probably the only hotel in Paris she’s ever heard of. Swankiest place in town.”

  Shell was staring again.