Beecher let him go, and Maurice straightened his coat and bowed carefully to Laura. “I must apologize,” he said. “I am not...” He frowned, searching for words. Then he sighed as if the effort were too much for him. “You will excuse me, please.” He walked slowly up the terrace steps and disappeared into the crowd.
“It is me who must apologize,” Don Willie said anxiously to Laura and Beecher. “He is crazy, no?”
“He didn’t like me, but I don’t know if that means he’s crazy,” Beecher said.
“What did he say to you?”
“Hell, let’s skip it,” Beecher said.
“But I must know. I must know how he insulted you. What did he say? Tell me, please.”
Beecher shrugged. “Just that Americans are all fat, lazy warmongers. That was the general idea.”
Don Willie took out a large handkerchief and wiped his damp forehead. “I am relieved it was nothing personal. People who say such things are fools. A country is many different ideas, many different persons. I met Maurice in the village and asked him to my party because I do not like to make him feel left out. He was nice then, very quiet and sober. Now he makes this fight, insults my friends. It is my fault. You must be careful with the French. They are very nervous, very difficult, like women. Ach! What am I saying?” He patted Laura’s hand contritely. “Now I must apologize again. But for a woman to be nervous and difficult that is all right. It is spicy, no? You treat them nice and they are no longer nervous and difficult. But you cannot make a Frenchman happy the way you make a woman happy. They are very strange. With their talk of food and wines and how they love their country. On mange bien in France they say, kissing their fingers as if no one else knew about putting fire under meat. It is my fault. I should not have asked him.”
“Well, maybe I wasn’t very tactful with him,” Beecher said.
Don Willie put his hands on Beecher’s shoulders and looked at him with smiling approval. “Why should you be tactful? You are a man! Someone insults your pretty lady, where is the need for tact?” Don Willie patted Beecher’s arms. “Yes, you are a man,” he said, but he was no longer smiling, and there was an expression of thoughtful appraisal on his round, flushed face. “I too am a man, I think,” he said. “I make up my mind quick. There is a lucky thing about this party tonight. Lucky for me and — who knows? Lucky, too, for you, Mike Beecher.” He dropped his hands to his sides and turned to Laura. “Would you excuse us a little minute, my dear? There is something I wish to talk to Mike about.”
“Why, yes, of course,” Laura said. “I’ll amuse myself. Run along.”
5
The flamenco dancers performed for an hour. Afterward an immense buffet supper was served on the terrace. There were turkey and ham and roast suckling pig, shrimp and lobster and snail, artichokes with lemon mayonnaise, and platters of hot and cold vegetables decorated with intricate designs of pimiento. Corks flew up from bottles of French champagne. Some of them bobbed about in the centerpiece of floating geraniums and roses.
Laura sat on the wall beyond the swimming pool, her skirt spread over her knees, and her legs crossed at the ankles. Beecher stood beside her with a hand resting against the small of her back. There was nothing behind her but the vast silver sea, and a hundred-foot drop straight down to the beach.
“Come on now,” she said. “Tell me about Don Willie. You’ve been looking mysterious long enough.”
“Care for everything else to eat?”
“Goodness, no. I won’t be able to look at food for days. What did he want?”
“Well, he offered me a job, that’s all.”
She looked puzzled. “Do you want a job?”
“To put it more accurately, I need one.”
“Well, aren’t you excited then?”
“I don’t know if I want or need this particular job.” He looked at her with a smile. “There’s one inducement, though. The job’s in Morocco. And Don Willie wants me to go down with him Monday on the 11 P.M. flight.”
She seemed confused for an instant. “But that’s when I’m going.” Then she grinned. “Mike, how exciting. Are you going with him? Oh, please! Don’t make me drag it out of you. What kind of a job is it?”
“Don Willie’s got brokerage offices in Rabat and Casablanca. They sell desert development issues. Oil, water, ores, that sort of thing. Very high yield, but all very shipshape, with the Moroccan securities commission keeping an eye on things. I speak Spanish, for one thing. Most Moroccans do, you know. Secondly, I’m an American. Customers will equate American with financial solidity, he feels.” He lit a cigarette and flipped the match over the wall. “Maybe I’ve been wrong about the guy. But I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
Beecher shrugged. “I don’t like him. Never did. And I don’t trust him. It’s not a business or personal thing. It’s a philosophical point. I just don’t think any good will come out of my helping to extend his...” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m getting cloudy as hell, I know. But you can’t wind up with something you didn’t start with. You’ll just have more of it. That’s what I mean. We’ll have more of Don Willie in the world. And even though it’s just business, it’s his business, his personality and his ambitions that will be growing. And maybe the less we have of all that the better.”
She smiled. “If you were trying to lose me, you succeeded.”
“I know I must sound damned woolly.”
“I was going to suggest something devious. Why not make the trip anyway? We could see a little bit of Morocco together, and you wouldn’t have to take the job if you didn’t like it. But it’s more serious than that, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. In the moral sense, if you’ll pardon one more deep purple patch, it would be paying a high price for a free plane ride.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’ll think it over.” And he would, Beecher realized; perhaps his feeling about Don Willie was just an unreasonable and stupid prejudice. And, on a more mundane level, he needed a job and this was a good one. Four hundred dollars a months, plus a percentage of the yearly sales as a bonus, and a living allowance to be paid in Moroccan francs. Beecher realized that his mood had turned sour. Until now he had felt great. The fight with the Frenchman had restored his confidence. He had handled himself well, he knew, patient at first, determined to avoid a scene, and then, with the chips down, facing the challenge with a good healthy anger. There had been no compromise, no tactful smile, no retreat to a fresh drink. But in spite of all this Beecher felt troubled.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked him.
“Nothing very interesting.”
Don Willie’s proposal had put all his problems into an uncomfortable focus, he realized; it was consoling to maintain that he was too old for the pace of America, spiritually and emotionally out of touch with its confident driving expansion. This qualified him to do nothing but sit in the sun and drink until his money ran out; but Don Willie’s offer couldn’t be evaded so conveniently. It was work he could learn. And the salary was good. He had no out, considering the matter practically, unless he confessed frankly that he was too lazy or too insecure to try his hand at it.
Laura touched his shoulder. “Look, Mike.”
Beecher glanced up. The Frenchman was coming toward them through the garden. He was moving slowly and unsteadily, but with an unmistakable sense of purpose. The crowd had thinned out by now; many of the Spaniards had gone, and the remaining guests were standing about the bar on the terrace. Beecher and Laura were alone in the flag-stoned area behind the swimming pool. The beach was a hundred feet below them. There was the fragrance of flowers in the cool air, and a breeze made a tiny whispering sound in the folds of Laura’s skirt. Beecher saw that the Frenchman had his right hand pushed deep into the pocket of his blazer.