THE DINNER PARTY WAS at some impoverished Danish Count’s. His family had lost everything to the Germans, von Anders told me. I figured his mama must have kept back a little of the family jewelry, when I saw the house. It was on one of the narrow, walled, cobbled lanes halfway up the hill. Inside, geometric figured tiles stretched away gleaming under high ceilings. It was a long way from the hippies I had left down in the Port. It was another world. I was bored with it even before we got inside the big iron-studded door.
We ate outside on the terrace. I sat between two ladies who tried desperately to find some common ground to talk to me about. It was sheer hell for all three of us. We went back inside for coffee, and four fat hairy Greek maidens started cleaning up the terrace behind us. Inside, the Count broke out a large silver tray on which was laid out a liberal amount of hashish, pipes, picks, cleaners and matches. This was the lark of the evening.
I had been introduced to a number of people, all in violently colored sports clothes. One of them was the tall, self-assured, white-haired gent I had met at lunch, Ambassador Pierson. When the tray came out, he came over to me and shook hands again. A record player was playing rock music.
“You’re Freddy Tarkoff’s business friend, am I right? I somehow didn’t get that at lunch.”
“Yes,” I said. That was certainly one way of describing me.
“I thought so. Well, it’s nice to have you aboard.” He smiled again, at his little joke. “I’m just saying good night. I hope we’ll see each other again while you’re here.”
“I hope so,” I said. It was a barefaced lie. “You’re leaving so soon, Ambassador?”
“Yes, I am. I don’t hold with all this hashish business. I know it’s supposed to be chic. But as long as it is against the law, I don’t feel I can hold with it. Come on, Liza.” His handsome wife smiled and shook hands with me.
Several others were leaving, too. I didn’t know if it was for the same reason. An awful lot were staying, too, and helping themselves to the pipes. All that baloney von Anders had been giving me in the afternoon about her social disgrace over buying hashish looked like a pretty large-scale exaggeration. Technically, you could even call it a lie. When the Count, who was a big meaty man and rather pompous, offered a lighted pipe to me, I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll take a good stiff drink instead.”
From somewhere von Anders came toward me holding a glass of her own, her eyes unnaturally bright. She had been at another table at dinner and I had hardly seen her. I shot her a sudden sharp glance, and she flushed. She knew what I was thinking, all right. I said only, “Having fun?”
She nodded hard. “Yes, I am. But it’s a problem. Some of us are dead set against smoking hash.”
“A lot of you think it’s a great lot of fun.”
She nodded again. “I’m in that part.”
I looked around. “Pretty hip bunch of people. I just left some of the real ones.” There wasn’t a soul under 40 in the room. Let alone under 30.
Von Anders gave me a long, calculating look. “We’re not really hip. And most of us know it. Do you want to dance?”
I shook my head.
“You don’t dance rock? Do you mind if I do?”
“No.”
“You’re not having much fun, are you?”
“No. But that doesn’t matter.”
“But you’re not having fun.”
“I’m having as much fun as anybody.”
She looked around. “You know, it’s true. They all look labored, don’t they? They labor at the dancing, and labor not to look self-conscious. They look awkward and unsure about smoking their hash. They’re a little ridiculous.”
She laughed. “What can I do to make you have fun? Shall we go talk somewhere?”
“If you want.” But I didn’t move. She was still wanting me to take care of her “blackmail” case. And I knew I was going to do it. In spite of myself. It was already all set up. And now my feet seemed reluctant to take the first step into it all.
Beside me, von Anders seemed to gather herself all together, as if consciously fitting herself deliberately to my mood. She leaned back against the wall alongside me.
At the record player the rock music stopped and some Greek songs were put on. A line formed, mostly of women, and began to do one of the complicated Greek dances, led by one older woman. A few of them did it quite well. When the number ended there was a gay call to all go off to what they called the “dancing taverna,” a place called Georgio’s. A phone call was placed for horsecabs.
“It’ll take a while,” von Anders said beside me. “Let’s go out on the terrace.”
Outside on the terrace it was beautiful. We could see over most of the town below, and the harbor with its yachts. The moon was there. Far down, the light from the little lighthouse winked regularly like a pulse. The four hairy Greek maidens had cleaned up the terrace and there was nobody out there but us.
“I thought only the Greek men did those dances?” I said.
“In the old days. Not any more.”
“Woman’s lib, hunh?”
She laughed. “Greek women’s.”
We sat on the parapet and she began asking me questions about myself.
“You’re certainly a peculiar man.”
They were interested questions. She was fitting herself to me the way only an expert woman can, when she seriously sets her mind to a man. It was easy enough to see through it, but all your meat and your glandular system responded to it just the same anyway.
I was reluctant to talk about myself. All this stuff was part of what I had been trying to keep out of the front of my head since Athens. Slowly, I let a few facts about me emerge. I told her how I had come home to Denver from the Second Great War itchy. I told her how I had studied law in Denver on the GI Bill, and then gone into practice. How I was attracted to private investigations work more and more, instead of to pure law, because it was more exciting. How I drifted from Denver to Chicago to pick up more business, and picked up a wife and one daughter. How I moved on to New York, and picked up a second daughter. I didn’t tell her about my partner, and his death in Chicago. I didn’t tell her about my wife and the divorce. I didn’t tell her about Freddy Tarkoff and my latest job for him.
“And twenty years later, here I am. Not much of a story.” I swallowed from my drink. “About the same as any middle-aged man. Who outgrows both his wildness and his optimism. And finds himself in a profession almost by accident. Finds out that his youthful dreams can’t stand the mass of weight life loads on them. In general, human beings seem able to afford almost any luxury except ideals. I guess next to children, ideals are about the most expensive luxury there is.” My smile felt tough enough.
“You make me feel my age,” von Anders said. “I try to forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Whatever your age is, you don’t look it.” I paused like a pro actor. “At least, not in this moonlight.”
I thought she might grin. She simply shook her head and looked at me. After a moment she said, “I know what you’re going to say to me. You’re going to say I lied to you this afternoon.”
“It looks that way. Doesn’t it.”
She spoke stubbornly. “I told you the truth.”
“Not if you told me you were being blackmailed for buying hashish. These people all have it in the house.”
“Does that mean you won’t go on with my investigation for me?”
“I never take clients who aren’t honest with me.”
“You’re cruel.”
“And you’re pretty. Very pretty. But whatever you’re afraid of, it’s not what you told me.”
“Me? Pretty?” She looked down at herself with mock dismay. “I’m only an old married woman, divorced, living on a substantial alimony I mean to hang onto.”
“But very pretty.”
From inside somebody called to us. The horsecabs had arrived. We went in and trooped out with the others. Somehow, by some ploy I was unable to divine, Chantal managed to get us a horsecab to ourselves. I was already thinking of her to myself as Chantal, now. It never took long, did it?
In the cab, when we had jerked and swayed and tottered away and the horse had worked himself into a gait, she slipped her hand into mine. I let it lie there.
She said, “You’ve been married. Are you still?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Divorced?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know whether to answer that at all, or not. “Incompatibility,” I said shortly.
“Sexual or social?”
But before I could react, she raised her hand and said, “Don’t answer that.” The hand found its way against my cheek as if by accident; for a second. “That was an unfair question.”
“I’d just as soon not talk about it,” I said.
“Was it recent?” She answered herself, “It was recent. Freddy Tarkoff told me.” A pause. “That’s how I knew. So you see? I lied to you another time.” Another pause. “You’re really quite a fellow.” She leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the cheek.
I didn’t respond. She was hitting a lot closer to home than I felt comfortable with, whether Freddy Tarkoff had talked to her about me or not. The horsecab was just arriving at the lights of the “dancing taverna.”
It was all very moving, all very romantic, and it was all too easy. As we got out of the cab I said, “Did Freddy tell you anything else?”
“No. Nothing. And Freddy doesn’t know anything about me ever buying any hashish.”
“I’ve had lots of people tell me I’m quite a guy. Almost always they had some ulterior motive.”
She flushed. “You are a bastard!” She turned and ran away from me toward the door. But at the door she stopped and waited for me. So that when I came up we could be seen walking in together. Fine.
We passed through a tiny restaurant with a zinc bar and about four tables, all closed up now, and came out into a huge barn-like patio which was entirely roofed over with a corrugated plastic roof. A massive jukebox sat against the back wall, and a badly poured concrete floor stretched away. There were a lot of cheap chrome-and-formica tables. A lot of them were occupied. It was tacky and cheap but that didn’t bother our mob.
Many people from the party were there ahead of us, and were laughing and calling out to each other as they were being seated at one big long table that was being made up for them out of empty singles. They were treated with extreme deference by the owner and his waiters. Like local gentry come down among the commons. And they were all very aware of their higher status. So was Chantal. Subtly, in front of my eyes, von Anders changed her coloration like a lizard and became a “Countess.”
I had already spotted Girgis at a table with a pretty American girl. Girgis grinned and nodded at me. But Chantal’s eyes passed right over him as if he wasn’t there. At the table we ordered a drink which it seemed to take an hour to get.
The whole foray was a bad idea as far as I was concerned. I was embarrassed by the airs put on by our big table. Everyone at it treated the rest of the place like peons. Especially the Danish Count, who treated the waiters—and the owner—with indulgent contempt, as if they were his personal serfs. The waiters seemed to like it but I wanted to slug him.
The only thing interesting was the Greek dancing. But few were good at it. Girgis, though, stood out as a beautiful dancer, and as a sort of natural leader. He was a cock of the walk, here. He wasn’t showing off for the gentry or Chantal. He was simply enjoying himself. But even watching him palled in that place, with that bunch of aristocrats.
“I’m going outside a while. Breathe some air,” I said to von Anders. She looked at me. A kind of contained panic came on her face. “Do you want to come?” I added.
“Oh, I—” She looked at the other women near her. “I shouldn’t really. But—all right.”
Outside, she took my arm. “I was terrified you were going to leave me there.” She paused. “They are going to think we are starting an affair.”
“Let them. Maybe it’s a good idea,” I said.
“That’s easy for you to say. But I have to live here.”
Nevertheless, she held on close. I felt the weight of her one breast lying on my arm. She must have felt it. Out here, there was another, open patio, and below it a few steps down to a beach, and beyond the beach the sea. I walked us down to it.
At the edge of the sand I let go of her and stepped back and looked around.
“I didn’t expect to find the sea here,” I said. “I thought we were going inland.”
“Everyone thinks that,” she said. “No, we really only crossed a neck of land from the yacht harbor. That’s all.”
Then, without any more words at all, she had slipped into my arms and I was kissing her deeply on the mouth without having expected to. I was surprised. It was as if the two innocuous comments about the sea had meant something else. Tentatively I put my tongue in her mouth and she received it hotly, moistly; so hotly, so moistly, and with such an eagerness that it brought a sexual metaphor image into my mind. After, she put her ear against my chest. “I can hear your heart,” she said like some damn adolescent kid. Then, “I’m afraid. He’s got me scared.”
“I don’t think it’s him you’re afraid of,” I said.
“Oh, but it is.”
I let go of her, and without either of us suggesting it we walked back inside.
In the huge covered space the others were getting ready to leave. “I’ll take you home,” I said.
“Oh, no. No, no. I have a ride home. With the Sandersons. Thanks just the same. But they live just above me.” And she walked over to them. “Good night,” she said brightly. “Thanks for coming.”
I was not about to let the others see my surprise. So I nodded. “Don’t forget our lunch date tomorrow.”
“Yes. All right. Call me.” She took the male Sanderson’s other arm.
The others were trooping out. I was nonplused by the suddenness of her leaving me. I sat down for a few minutes, almost ordered another drink, then didn’t.
Out on the concrete floor the poor people went on dancing Greek dances.