You Find Him – I'll Fix Him

  She shook her head.

  'You won't do that. I've talked to Giuseppe Frenzi about you. He gives you a very good reference. I wouldn't have brought you up here if I wasn't sure of you.'

  'Just why did you bring me up here?'

  She stared at me: the expression in her eyes made me suddenly breathless. There was no mistaking that expression: she was giving me an invitation to go ahead and make love to her.

  'I like the look of you,' she said. 'One can get very tired of Italian men. They're so intense and so direct. I asked Giuseppe to bring you to the party, and here we are.'

  Don't imagine I wasn't tempted. I knew all I had to do was to get up and take her in my arms and there would be no opposition. But it was all a little too blatant; too cold-blooded, and this attitude of hers shocked me. There was also the question of my job. I was more interested in holding on to that than fooling around with her. I got to my feet.

  'I see. Well, it's getting late. I've got some work to do before I turn in. I'll be moving along.'

  She stared up at me, her mouth tightening.

  'But you can't go now. You've only just come.'

  'I'm sorry. I've got to go.'

  'You mean, you don't want to stay?'

  'It's not what I want to do: it's what I'm going to do.'

  She lifted her arms and ran her fingers through her hair. That is perhaps the most provocative gesture a woman can make. If she has the right shape, there is no more telling move she can make than to raise her arms and look at a man as she was looking at me. I nearly fell for it, but not quite.

  'I want you to stay.'

  I shook my head.

'I really have to go.'

  She studied me for a long moment, her eyes expressionless. Then she shrugged, lowered her arms and stood up.

  'All right, if that's the way you feel.' She crossed to the door, opened it and went out into the hall. I went after her and picked up my hat that I had left on the hall chair. She opened the front door, glanced out into the corridor and then stood aside.

  I was reluctant to go. I had to force myself out into the corridor.

  'Maybe you might like to have dinner with me one night or take in a movie.'

  'That would be very nice,' she said politely. 'Good night.' She gave me a distant smile and shut the door in my face.

III

  Of course it didn't remain like that. I wish it had, but a relationship between a man like myself and a girl like Helen is certain sooner or later to become complicated.

  I tried to put her out of my mind, but I didn't succeed. I kept seeing the expression in her eyes when I had left her, and that did things to me. I knew I was inviting trouble, and yet there was this fascination about her that made any trouble seem unreal. In my saner moments, I told myself that as far as I was concerned she was rank poison, but in my less saner moments I told myself – who cares?

  For the next five or six days she was constantly in my mind. I didn't tell Gina that I had met Helen at the party, but Gina has an awkward knack of being able to know to some extent what is going on in my mind, and I caught her looking at me several times with a puzzled, inquiring expression.

  By the sixth day I was more or less a dead duck. I had got this blonde, lovely girl so much on my mind that I found I wasn't concentrating on my job. I decided to ease the strain, and when I returned to my apartment, I called her.

  There was no answer. I called three times during the evening. At the fourth try, around two o'clock in the morning, I heard the receiver lift and her voice said, 'Hello?'

  'This is Ed Dawson,' I said.

'Who?'

  I grinned into the receiver. That was a little too obvious. That told me she was as interested in me as I was in her.

  'Let me jog your memory. I'm the guy who runs the Rome office of the Western Telegram.'

  She laughed then.

  'Hello, Ed.'

  That was better.

  'I'm lonely,' I said. 'Is there any chance of you coming out with me to-morrow night? I thought if you hadn't anything better to do, we might have dinner at Alfredo's.'

  'Will you hold on a moment? I must look in my little book.'

  I held on, knowing I was being given the treatment and not caring. After a two-minute pause, she came back on the line.

  'I can't manage to-morrow night. I have a date.'

  I should have said it was too bad and hung up, but I was too far gone for that.

  'Then when can you fix it?'

  'Well, I'm free on Friday.'

  That was three days ahead.

  'Okay, let's make it Friday night.'

  'I'd rather not go to Alfredo's. Isn't there somewhere else quieter?'

  That brought me up short. If I wasn't thinking about the danger of us being seen together, she was.

  'Yeah, that's right. How about the little restaurant opposite the Tevi fountain?'

'I'd like that. Yes, that would be lovely.'

'I'll meet you there. What time?'

'Half-past eight'

'Okay: good-bye for now.'

  Life didn't mean much to me until Friday. I could see Gina was worried about me. For the first time in four years I was short-tempered with her. I couldn't concentrate, nor could I work up any enthusiasm for the job on hand. I had Helen on my mind.

  We had dinner at the little restaurant. It wasn't a bad dinner, but I can't say I remember what we ate. I found talking difficult. All I wanted to do was look at her. She was cool, distant, but at the same time, provocative. If she had invited me up to her apartment I would have gone and to hell with Sherwin Chalmers, but she didn't. She said she would take a taxi home. When I hinted I would go with her, she handed me a beautiful brush-off. I stood outside the restaurant, watching the taxi edge its way up the narrow street until I lost sight of it. Then I walked home, my mind seething. The meeting hadn't helped: in fact it had made things worse.