This Time We Love Read online

  At this point, Max was feeling guilty about the manner in which he had avoided the little publicity man in the past weeks. It had been Bert Fix who had come to warn him about the thugs and the little guy was certainly there trying when the chips were down. He might not be much of a help, but he tried. A nasty drunk Bert could be, with scarcely a friend in town, but drunk or sober he evidently stayed with you in the clutch. Max began spending occasional evenings with the other again, sometimes going out on parties that involved visiting firemen free-loading on the Horatius public relations department.

  It was under these circumstances that he dropped into the apartment shared by Bert and Jeanette on the Piazzo Amerigo Capponi, on the left bank of the Tiber and near the Vatican. He had a semi-date with Bert for dinner at the Colony and was to pick him up. But plans had changed due to a last-minute job the flack had to finish and Jeanette was alone when Max arrived.

  She was alone and worried about something. For that matter, Max had realized that the tiny publicity department secretary had been upset for some reason for quite a time and had the vague feeling that somehow it concerned him. She got him a Stock brandy, serving it the way he liked with soda and a small amount of ice, and sat him down on the living room sofa.

  Max relaxed. He had always liked Jeanette, and liked to spend time in the home she’d made for Bert in the apartment he’d rented for their stay in Rome. He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “What’s on your mind, Jeanette? There’s something.”

  She sat across from him, hands in her lap, and took a deep breath. “Max,” she said, as though coming to a sudden decision, “what were the circumstances under which you were beaten up that night?”

  He took another sip of the Italian brandy, and shrugged. “I’d been up to Clara’s apartment. When I left, Bert came up and warned me about those — ”

  She interrupted him. “How did he know about it?”

  Max raised his eyebrows. “He heard somebody talking in a bar.”

  “But weren’t those men Italians?”

  He didn’t know what she was getting at. “Seemed to be.”

  “But Bert doesn’t speak Italian. He couldn’t have accidentally listened in at a bar.”

  Max looked at her.

  She was on the verge of tears. She leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Max? It was Bert who must have — how do they say in the gangster films? — must have fingered you. Bert’s a friend of Giotto’s. He led those three thugs to where he knew you were.”

  Max bug-eyed her. “But why?”

  “Oh, Max. He’s always been like this. He’s a little man and he knows it. When he gets drunk, he gets aggressive, wants to fight. Usually his opponents do no more than laugh at him. Brush him off. Which is only the more infuriating. Then you came along. Max, how many fights have you been in, with Bert present, since you’ve been in Rome?”

  Max was still staring at her. “Well, three, I suppose.”

  “You don’t seem to be the sort who gets into fights.”

  “I’m not.” It was becoming clearer by the minute to Max.

  “Don’t you see? Bert becomes sadistic when he’s drunk. He wants to fight. He wants to see men battered and knocked unconscious. You’ve been the greatest thing that ever happened to him. You and he together — always a team when the fight starts — fight under odds and usually win. Max, he provokes these fights, deliberately, just to get you into action.”

  Max sat back in his seat. “I’ll be damned,” he nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  She got up to mix him another drink and got one herself this time. Max knew she seldom drank, and this one was dark with brandy, a real charge. However, she belted it back in two or three gulps and poured herself another. With a body no bigger than hers to absorb that alcohol, Max, decided, tiny Jeanette was going to be swacked in no time at all.

  “Well, I’ve had it,” she said decisively. “I’ve stuck with him for years, to the point where I have no real friends — they can’t bear Bert. But now I’ve had it. He’s got to the point, in his new delusions about his fighting abilities, that he takes it out on me when he can’t find anyone else.”

  She finished her drink and, still standing before him, hiked up one side of her dress to her thigh and said, “Look!” There was a large black and blue mark there.

  Max, through sheer automation, went into his young-biddy routine. “Mighty tasty-looking stems,” he said with an exaggerated leer.

  But Jeanette didn’t choose to take it in the humorous way it was intended. The girl, Max suddenly realized, was on the verge of hysteria. Her voice, usually so softly shy, had a strained element in it. “Do you think so? Really, Max? Bert’s always told me that he was the only man I could ever expect to attract. I’m so … unimportant.” She drew the dress hem up with both hands, and both hands trembled, until it reached the edge of silken briefs. “Are my legs really pretty?”

  His heart went out to the child. Woman she might be in years. Child she evidently was in life.

  “Here. Come here,” he said to her. He drew her down on his lap. “Let me tell you something, Jeanette. You’re one of the prettiest little things in Rome. Everybody I know likes you as much as they dislike Bert.”

  She buried her face in his shoulder. “Yes,” she wailed. “But they like me condescendingly. Nobody wants me. I’m too — I’m so unimportant. Bert is the only man who’s ever wanted to — to take me to bed. Nobody, even Bert, wants to marry me.”

  He stroked her leg, above the knee. Now that he bothered to notice, they were lovely legs. Small, almost dolllike, but perfectly shaped. In spite of himself, he felt manhood stir within him. “Look,” he told her gently. “You have it all wrong. You’re as attractive as any woman. The reason men don’t flock after you is that you’ve been practically married to Bert, and, frankly, you’re awfully shy. You don’t realize that you’re as desirable as the next girl. More so.” To emphasize his point, he let his hand go further. The girl squirmed, and relaxed somewhat. “You’re a lovely girl,” he added.

  She said, drawing in her breath and her voice becoming defiant, stronger than Max had ever heard it, “Would you … would you like to come into the bedroom, Max?”

  He wasn’t exactly ready for that, but on the other hand he could feel his throat tightening as he talked. Max was all man and this tiny thing was built as beautiful as a Swiss watch, a tiny Swiss watch.

  He caught her up in his arms and strode quickly toward the bedroom in which he had stayed the night of the street assault.

  “No. No.” she said into his neck. “The other room. In Bert’s bed.”

  Inwardly he shrugged. The quirk in her that would give her satisfaction by being unfaithful to her lover in his own bed, Max didn’t understand, but it made little difference to him. He was furious at the movie flack.

  Her face burning but determined, she hurried out of her clothes. “Nobody … nobody but Bert has ever seen me this way before,” she said, her voice uneven. She posed briefly, attempting provocation, grinned shyly up at him and turned completely around, as though a model. “Am I truly pretty?”

  Max’s voice was heavy now, thick with urgency. She was the cutest thing he had ever seen. With her high heels off, and nude except for her briefs, she couldn’t have been five feet in height. But she was perfectly formed, from the trimmest of ankles, the shapeliest of legs, to mature hips, a thrilling mons Veneris, to softness of belly and uptilting breasts, small but once again perfect.

  Max began fumblingly to discard his own clothes. She came closer. “Let me help.” The girl was more frank than he had expected, now that the bets were down. Max had gone into this feeling more or less charitable. Now it didn’t look as though he was going to be doing a kindness however. Hardly.

  She looked down and her voice was somewhat startled. “I — but you’re so large.”

  He carried her to the bed. Her eyes were worried now. Some of the alcohol had evidently gone out of her. He stretched her out and stroked her body a
dmiringly. “You’re a beautiful woman, Jeanette.”

  “Max … I … I’m afraid, Max.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “But … I’m so small … I don’t think … I’m sorry,” her voice was worried, hesitant. “Perhaps … I could do something else for you.”

  Max grunted. Evidently little Bert had gone to some effort to train the girl in some far-out alternatives. He said, easily, “I think we can make it, honey. I’ll take it easy. Here, let me fix this pillow under you.”

  At this stage, gentleness was hard to maintain. Max entered her slowly, with care, and he could feel her body relax as she accepted him. First relax and then gently move. And then become more demanding. Before they had reached climax he actually wondered if he was not inadequate for her needs rather than being too much.

  He left her asleep, still nude but with a sheet thrown over her body. Her face had relaxed its tenseness and she slept as a child sleeps. Max looked down at her wonderingly. With the possible exception of a Japanese he had once bedded in Kobe, she was the smallest woman he had ever known. Passion had stripped him of conscience, or otherwise he would have never gone through the act once he had seen how toy-small she really was.

  She had told him that Bert Fix was to meet him later at Jerry’s, on Via Veneto, and now, being careful not to awaken her, he dressed himself, let himself out of the apartment, and drove over the river to the downtown section.

  He parked the car at the end of Via Veneto on Via di Porta Pinciana, next to the Pinciana Gate and paid the car watcher the usual hundred lire for parking. It occurred to him, idly, that Rome was the only really large city of which he knew where there were no parking meters. The reason, he supposed, was twofold. Italian unemployment was such that a car owner needed the protection of a guard, particularly at night.

  He strode down the two blocks to Jerry’s, wondering, as he had before on Via Veneto, at this street in the spank center of Rome on which you heard more English spoken than Italian and where it was easier to procure a hamburger in a restaurant than it was spaghetti.

  Jerry’s Bar, at 155 Via Veneto, is located one floor down and directly across from Bricktop’s, that must of visiting Americans with a touch of nostalgia. Jerry Chierchio, a New Yorker, opened his place in ’59 and it became the American film hangout overnight. Small enough to be truly intimate, there were three stools at the bar proper and six tables with additional seating for perhaps a score in the adjoining room. A Wurlitzer juke box at one end of the bar, complete with Doris Day, Sinatra and Peggy Lee, making with such bits as September in the Rain and Begin the Beguine, checked tablecloths, and the only real American-style sandwiches in town made Jerry’s the success it was.

  As Max entered, a voice from the far end yelled, “Hey, Maxie pal. Here I am, ol’ pal.”

  Bert evidently already had a load on. The flack was rapidly losing his ability to hold his liquor. When Max had first known him, he had seemingly become really loaded only once a week or so. Now Max couldn’t remember seeing the guy sober of an evening for quite a time.

  Possibly it was his, Max’s, fault. Before, Bert Fix probably took some measures to watch himself, knowing that as soon as he overdid it he became aggressive enough to wind up with either a beating or a night in the drunk tank. But with Max available to bail him out of his scrapes, he let loose the reins.

  Bert was occupying one of the bar stools, and by the look on Paul’s, the bartender’s, face had evidently already been getting nasty. Bert Fix wasn’t overly popular in any of the better-known places that catered to the foreign element. At one time or another he’d had trouble in them all. A big spender he might be, but eventually no matter how big a spender you are you reach the top of the unpopularity poll if you’re a fighting drunk.

  Max came up and said, “Hello, Bert.” He said to Paul, “Make mine a martini, and give Bert whatever he’s drinking.”

  Bert said, aggressively, “And gimme the bill, Paul.”

  Max said gently, “I’m paying for this one, Bert.”

  Bert chuckled and scratched his little goatee. “Don’t be silly, Maxie, pal. All on Horatius.”

  “Not this one,” Max said easily. “I’m no newspaperman, Bert. I’d just as well keep my personal drinks off your swindle sheet.”

  The little man peered at him. “Wha’s a matter with you, pal?”

  “Not a thing,” Max said cheerfully.

  Paul had wandered off after serving the drinks, and now the customer standing next to Bert said ominously, “To get back to before, Mister, what else do you reckon’s wrong with Texas?”

  Max took the man in, keeping amusement from his face when he noted the cowboy boots beneath the well-cut tweed suit. Actually, there were two of them, one as big or bigger than Max himself, the other roughly the same size as Bert. And both had obviously been drinking.

  Bert turned to the larger one, sneering, “Loud mouths go with yellow bellies. The guy who’s gotta shoot his mouth off braggin’, he’s got a ’feriority … ’ferority … inferiority complex. He’s a coward an’ a basser.” Bert turned to Max. “That right, Maxie?”

  Max shrugged, noncommittally, and took a sip of his drink. Jerry’s martinis were as good as any in Rome.

  The smaller of the two Texans said, “If you wasn’t in yore cups, I would ask you outside, Mister.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, chum,” Bert told him. “Texans are biggest blabbermouths inna world. Me and my pal here’ll take you on any time. Any time at all.”

  The larger of the two looked darkly at Max. “You don’t like the Lone Star State either?”

  Max finished his drink and looked at the other in dismay. “Suh, I love Texas. In fact, I used to court a little old gal down Dallas way.”

  Bert stared at him.

  The Texan said, “This friend of yours — ”

  Max said, “No friend of mine, suh, I just found that out tonight. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll leave you to your quarrel.” Max nodded politely, turned and left.

  Chapter Nine

  HIS CUSTOMARY MORNING DEPRESSION was on him doublefold. It wasn’t Bert and the situation he’d left him in the night before. In fact, it would have been a pleasure to have waited and watched it out. He would have gladly held the smaller Texan’s coat for him.

  No, it wasn’t Bert. It was all of it. He was repelled by the whole Roman movie colony atmosphere. By the alcoholic publicity man and his sadistic needs, yes. But also by almost everyone he’d met here. Even Clara Lucciola, who was evidently so constituted that she could be supposedly happily married but have an all-out affair at the same time her husband was having an affair with another woman. At Filippo Giotto and his gangster tactics, his criminal connections. At nymphos such as Marcy McEvoy, and perverts such as big-name muscle man Clark Talmadge. At poor ambitious Andreae Latini and the depraved party at the Villa Piviali. At the conte and his desire for youthful starlets. It wasn’t just one or two of them, but them all. The pushing, knifing-in-the-back, competitive, ever-climbing, frenetic atmosphere that was movie-land. The tiny amount of room at the top, and the multitude that wished to gain that pinnacle. Of them all he could think now of only Nadine Barney as one who kept her basic character and worked in the field for the pure love of making films.

  Without getting out of his bed, he reached over to the night table and took up the letter he’d tossed there the night before. It had been awaiting him when he returned from meeting Bert, but he hadn’t felt like reading it at the time.

  He could see it was from Uncle Fred by the Fielding Toys stationery and even as he tore open the envelope he anticipated another plea for his return to his duties. Uncle Fred was getting along, Max decided. In the old days, the other would never have requested that Max return. In fact, he periodically threatened to fire him permanently, in spite of family ties. Actually, Max had once been a quarter owner of Fielding Toys through stock inherited from his father. But when he had come of age, he’d sold out to Uncle Fred and
went on a several-year toot that had taken him twice around the world. Only when the money had completely gone had he taken a job with the firm.

  Well, he decided sourly, Uncle Fred could go whistle for a time yet. He’d got a considerable bonus in a lump sum from Manny King and Mike Rogers as a result of his efforts on Horatius. It was enough to keep him going for a while, and Max was about to chuck everything and take off. Not for home and his job, but for South America and a few more months of living it up.

  What surprised him was his lack of enthusiasm for the trip. He felt sour, depleted and somehow uneasy.

  He tore off the end of the envelope, pulled out the sheet of Fielding Toys stationery and began to read. It was a demand that he return home, all right, but there was more to it than that. In fact, depressed though he felt, Max had to chuckle. Evidently, Uncle Fred had taken his suggestion for the drunken doll, the one that actually puked, seriously and had put the item into production. If there was anything unpredictable it was the American consumer. The red-nosed, evening-suited doll had taken like wildfire, selling through night clubs, bars, and liquor and bar supply houses as a novelty for adults. It was the single most profitable item Fielding Toys had brought out for years and sales were still pyramiding.

  Max chuckled again and continued to read. He’d have to demand a bonus for his suggestion. His eyebrows went up. Uncle Fred was also taking to heart Max’s suggestions about toys based on the breakaway special effects which Alec demonstrated to him on the studio set. Well, that made sense. It was a good basic idea.

  Uncle Fred wound up the letter with an uncharacteristic note. He pointed out his own age, alluded to Max’s duties to the Fielding family, a dozen or so of whom, cousins, aunts and uncles, worked in the firm. Max was the only one, Uncle Fred admitted, who seemed to have any executive ability and the imagination to create new items for a business that couldn’t afford to remain stationary.

  In sudden irritation, Max tore the letter across and threw it to the floor. What the hell was his uncle talking about? He, Max Fielding, had no obligations to the toy firm, any more than it had to him. He had sold his shares, the shares his father had laboriously accumulated over the years. He had sold out and blown the money. Since then, the only time he was under obligations was when he was earning his salary as a salesman. And he was the best salesman they’d ever had.