This Time We Love Read online

  But he was too intrigued by this first visit to the Villa Piviali to be really interested in either food or drink. He wandered around both the house and gardens, taking in the sight of his fellow man with all barriers down.

  Most of the persons he’d met thus far in Rome seemed to be present, except for the gentle Manfred King, Jeanette Pearson, Bert’s girl, and Nadine Barney. He couldn’t quite picture any of them at a present-day bacchanalia of this type.

  Marcy McEvoy he stumbled upon in a dark enough area of the gardens that he assumed she didn’t recognize him. He muttered an embarrassed apology, and backtracked. He could have saved his breath; neither of them bothered to look up from their exertions. Max didn’t recognize the man. Later he saw Filippo Giotto, his face furious, hurrying about the villa, obviously looking for his wife.

  Clark Talmadge in silken slacks and sport jacket was present and as usual off camera making no effort to disguise has tastes. Happily, he had zeroed in on a newcomer, although he gave the passing Max a wave.

  “Dear boy, didn’t I tell you that you simply must attend this party?” He had a glass of champagne in his hand, a tray with a full magnum of Mumm’s Cordon Rosé behind him. “Isn’t it divine?”

  Max couldn’t get used to this overgrown hunk of man talking the language of the fruit. The words that came out of his mouth where incongruous. “It’s quite a party,” he admitted.

  He looked at Talmadge’s companion and frowned slightly. The other fluttered, “Well, for goodness’ sakes, haven’t we met somewhere before?”

  Max said, “That’s right. “You’re Dave Shepherd, A couple of years ago you were living at Carla Rossi’s pension, near Nice.”

  “What a lovely memory,” the homo simpered.

  Clark Talmadge said suddenly, almost as though jealous of this conversation between Max and Dave Shepherd, “Dave dear, do let me show you around the villa. There are some utterly charming rooms upstairs with the most fantastic frescoes on the ceilings.”

  Dave looked at him archly.

  Max cleared his throat. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said.

  As the evening wore on, food and drink and even dancing, at least of the usual varieties, lost interest and a shrill note crept into the air, a sensual note. In spite of his own predilection for the hedonistic life, Max was somehow revolted by this whole thing. There was a surfeit that was cloying. He remembered once, as a boy, discovering a five-pound box of chocolates which his parents had evidently put away for the coming of Christmas. He had managed to get through the first pound with considerable enjoyment, and the second decreasingly so. By the time he was discovered the third pound was going down with little enthusiasm. His father hadn’t bothered to punish him; that much candy was punishment enough.

  Thus it was here. There was available in profusion every liquor he’d ever heard of and every food. And somehow he was neither hungry nor thirsty. There was probably, he suspected, every narcotic he’d ever heard of available — some of the company looked strangely bright-eyed and overly alert. He had the feeling, too, that there were few of the women present who wouldn’t be available for little more than the asking. The simple asking.

  To his mind, amusedly, came the old joke about the man who approached a strange girl on the street, and without even tipping his hat said, “Listen, I’m a man of few words, will you or won’t you?” and she answered, “Usually I don’t, but you talk me into it.”

  In fact, it had gone further than that. Evidently, there was no service so extreme that it wasn’t available for the conte’s guests. In his strolling about, a glass in hand, Max had drifted into one room which had contained ten or twelve girls of surprising pulchritude. His first reaction was that it was a lounge reserved for the women guests, and had begun his retreat. Certainly the bevy looked like a group of movie starlets.

  One quickly disillusioned him. She had been leaning easily against a wall, smoking a cigarette, but on Max’s appearance had immediately approached him, smiling. Her accent was heavier than Clara Lucciola’s but otherwise similar. The same throaty, sexual undertone.

  “You are lonesome?” Her red lips smiled provocatively and her eyes looked frankly into his own.

  Max blinked at her. The other girls in the room had brightened, too. It came to his mind that the whole situation resembled nothing so much as an ultra-expensive brothel. He couldn’t have been more correct, except that here evidently all was on the house.

  He said to the girl, trying to keep his eyes from following a plunging neckline that reached almost to her navel, “Well, no, not really. Just wandering around.”

  She then made a motion that cleared up all doubts about the nature of this collection of Italian beauties. The motion she made, still looking full into his eyes, was simple and direct, and ordinarily might have been most effective.

  She said, her voice low, “There are pleasant rooms upstairs.”

  Max said hastily, “No thanks. I’m not really …” He cut it off and finished his drink quickly. He was damned if he was going to flee this place like a teen-age kid.

  One of the other girls had drifted up, her eyebrows raised in sultry question. “Perhaps Monsieur prefers a French girl?” She ran the pointed tip of her tongue over her lips invitingly, making them moist.

  Max shook his head. “Girls,” he said, “you’re most hospitable, but I have a date for later tonight. Some other time.” He reversed his engines and retreated.

  For the second time that night — the first had been upon a quick introduction that Clara had made — Max met his host, only a few steps from the door of the room he’d just left.

  Conte Piero Piviali smiled hospitably. “Ah, the new gentleman whom Clara brought. I trust you are finding everything you wish?”

  Earlier, Max had formed only the vaguest opinion of this scion of one of Europe’s oldest and wealthiest families, but now, after Lonny Balt’s rundown and his own observations here, he looked closer into the man. Piviali was probably somewhere between fifty-five and sixty but every art known and available at any price had obviously been made to preserve him against the normal disintegrations which should have resulted from his debauchery. His face was overly pink and healthy, his eyes overly bright. Max wondered if the man himself used some of the narcotics he had been told were available for the guests.

  Max said, “Everything’s fine.” The next words came out, in spite of their obvious trite inadequacy. “You’ve got quite a place here.”

  The conte laughed, but there was a brittleness in the sparkle behind his eyes, a faintest of twitches at the side of his mouth. He motioned with his head to the room Max had just left. “You found no charmer to your taste? I am desolate. But perhaps you are not so conservative, eh? Perhaps something else …”

  Max didn’t know what the other had in mind, and suddenly he didn’t want to find out. Suddenly he wanted to get the hell out of this place. Suddenly it was too damned abnormal for his richest taste. “No,” he said, forcing himself. “I’m doing fine.”

  The conte laughed his brittle laugh and passed on to whatever his destination.

  During the evening, Max had danced once or twice with Clara Lucciola, shared some lobster with her at another time. She had found friends and drifted away from him, talking cinema shop. Now Max decided to have a last drink, round her up and suggest they get out of here.

  Getting a last drink was no problem at the Villa Piviali. Max made his way to one of the half-dozen or more bars spotted around the house and in the gardens and asked for brandy and soda.

  Three obvious Americans, two men and a girl, stood next to him. By the standards set by most of the guests present, they weren’t overly well dressed.

  One of the men nodded to Max and said, “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before. This your first appearance at a Piviali clambake?” There was something in his voice that suggested contempt, of what or whom Max wasn’t sure.

  He looked at the other. A nice-looking kid, somewhere in his early twenties, Max would e
stimate. His companions were in the same age group. They didn’t look at home in this atmosphere. Max nodded. “First, and I think last.” He finished half the brandy and added, “I suppose I’m just a country boy when the chips are down.”

  The girl looked him over approvingly. She was a somewhat plain little thing, but there was an appealing freshness. “You’re not in films, are you? The basic movie colony here is on the static side but newcomers do drift in.”

  Max said, assuming his young-biddy charm, and holding his right hand over his heart as though it needed stilling, “My dear, did anyone ever tell you that you looked like Ingrid Berman?”

  The two men laughed at the burlesque but the girl was one up on him. “As a matter of fact, yes. Ingrid did. I was her stand-in in a couple of films.”

  Max did a mock wince. “Stabbed,” he said. Then: “In answer to your question, I’d never worked in movies before but evidently I’m about to begin come tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh?” the boy who’d first struck up the conversation said. “Who’s casting?”

  Max shook his head. “It’s some special job I don’t really know much about. Bert Fix arranged it for me. This Italian producer, Filippo Giotto, is dubbing American voices into some old Italian films. So evidently I’m to be the voice of some actor or other.” He shrugged. “It pays fifty bucks a day, which doesn’t sound bad in these parts.”

  There was a moment of silence that had a strained quality, then the girl said drily, “No, not bad at all for that kind of work. Congratulations.” She turned to get another drink.

  Max spotted Clara Lucciola across the room, muttered a good-bye to the others and headed for her. This chamber was one of the larger in the conte’s rambling villa, opening on the gardens to one side, and featuring an ornate stairway which led obviously to sleeping quarters above. A frenzied six-piece orchestra was playing cha cha cha and a dozen or so couples were dancing. The conte, his eyes ever bright, too bright, stood to one side and let his glance wander as though in search of a guest less than pleased with his offerings.

  Max drifted up to Clara. “Having fun?” he said.

  The redhead looked at him appraisingly from the side of her eyes. She evidently read something in his expression and murmured, “I sometimes wonder if anybody ever really has a good time at one of Piero’s parties.”

  “Then why come?” Max said, for some reason feeling irritated.

  She shrugged shapely shoulders. “For various reasons. Your three American friends you were just speaking to across the room. They come to — how do you say — free-load. They are youngsters who have not quite made the grade, eh? They appreciate an occasional evening of the best of food and drink. Then there are those who come because it is the thing to do, the place to be seen. Perhaps I come under that category? Then there are those who frankly and unashamedly — is that the word — desire those things that the conte provides which are elsewhere most difficult to find. For instance, his special little theater down in the basement where he shows special films. Very special films.”

  “I missed that,” Max admitted wryly. He looked back at the three Americans to whom he’d been talking. “Unemployed actors?” he said. “I thought there was plenty of work here for extras and bit players.”

  Clara shrugged again, and her voice went flat. “Not exactly. Those three just aren’t photogenic. They’ve been making their way — dubbing.”

  There was something in her voice that Max didn’t get. He scowled at her.

  She curled the right side of her mouth downward, and said, still evenly, “They used to work for Filippo but he has lowered the pay scale to only fifteen thousand lire a day, about twenty-five dollars. Since the work is spasmodic that isn’t enough. So they are — what do you call it — on strike.”

  His scowl deepened. “But Giotto offered me fifty a day.”

  She smiled at him mockingly, but then her attention went to the center of the room, and her highly plucked eyebrows rose. Andreae Latini was there, at least half-drunk, wrestling with her dress and shrilling something in Italian that Max couldn’t make out.

  Clara murmured, “Ah, yes. I failed to mention another reason for attendance at Piero’s parties. Those on the way up — they hope — can be seen by producers and directors and gain their attention — they hope.”

  The creamy-skinned brunette met sudden success in her efforts to discard her clothes.

  “Cara, cara,” Clara murmured so softly as hardly to be heard, “it is not the way … not quite.”

  The dress dropped to lush hips and clung there for a moment. Predictably, the semihysterical girl, doing her caricature of a strip tease, wore no brassiere and the breasts which Max had admired the night before were suddenly in full view. They were as magnificent as he had known they would be, full, overfull, the nipples so pink as to be suspect of cosmetics.

  The girl threw her head back in an ecstatic motion, and brought her hands up to cup the twin glories as though offering them to all present. And as she did so, the dress, completely without support now, fell away to the floor.

  Andreae of the ebony black hair, of the creamy skin, of the patina of youth, and of the touch of adolescence was as innocent of lower underclothing as she was of brassiere. She threw her hands upward, a living Italian statue, unsurpassed by anything in Rome’s hundred museums.

  For some reason, Max was less than titillated. He took Clara’s arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he growled.

  The conte had swept up to the girl, a cloak from some mysterious source in his hands.

  Even as he and Clara Lucciola left the room, Max could hear the elderly roué saying to the distracted girl, “Venite con me, prego,” as he urged her toward the stairs.

  Clara said emptily, “So instead of the attention of a director or producer she hoped to sweep off his feet by the sight of her bosom, she winds up in the hands of Piero Piviali. I am surprised that it took him so long to get around to our Andreae … the poor child.”

  Max scowled at her, even while looking about the king-size parking lot for the Porsche. “It’s a little on the stomach-souring side, but not so bad as all that,” he growled. “The girl is evidently available, on this trip to stardom she’s out for. I doubt if she and Bert played gin rummy last night when he took her back to her apartment.”

  Clara looked at him almost demurely. “Max, darling, I assume that what that evil little Bert Fix did with our Andreae last night comes under the head of normal experience, and she is obviously quite big enough and old enough to decide whom to favor with her charms. But didn’t you know that the conte is the last of the Piviali line?”

  Max held the car door open for her. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  She raised her eyebrows to him. “You might use your imagination. The reason the conte has no children is quite understandable.”

  He supposed that he could have pursued the question further. Somehow he didn’t want to, didn’t want to know what Conte Piero Piviali was doing to the youthful movie starlet in the upper rooms of his ultra-modern version of Gomorrah and Sodom.

  It must have been one or two in the morning, and the Porsche sprinted along the ancient Appian Way unfettered by traffic. The redheaded Roman had her head back, the air rushing through her free locks in ungoverned joyance. She looked sideways at him, mischievously. “You are in a hurry?”

  “In a hurry to get away from that joint,” he said bitterly.

  “Ah, but you are not very flattering. I thought perhaps you were anxious to get Clara back to her apartment — or yours.” She reached over, as though idly, and caressed him intimately. “You were going to prove that you are not an ox.”

  Max felt his throat thicken. Her fingers were tantalizing.

  She murmured, “Ah, ah, already there is evidence. Perhaps my giant of a man is a man after all.” She slipped from her excellent English into a conglomeration of English and Italian, but which was perfectly understandable to Max. “Che sorpresa … but you are so largo.”
/>   Max, his mouth cactus-dry, got out, “It runs in the family. Cut that out, confound it. I’m trying to drive.”

  She laughed, a new husky element in her own usually liquid voice.

  Somewhere Max had once read that the perfect woman was an angel in public and a devil in bed. Clara Lucciola was far from an angel in public but she lived up to the second requirement to perfection. A devil in bed she was.

  Whether it was standard procedure with her, or if she was just improvising tonight, he didn’t know, but she most devilishly worked him up to a frenzy of passion, before they ever arrived at her home. She toyed with him, joked at him, fiddled with him, as he drove through the all but deserted Roman streets. By the time they reached the little piazza on which her house was fronted, he was rampant.

  She warned him about parking his car without a watchman, but he would have none of that. He had no time to put the top up and lock it, even. His voice was so thick he could hardly talk, as he hurried her across the street and up the stairs. As they climbed to her apartment, she put back her head and laughed in glee.

  She had hardly got the door open than he had her in his arms, mashed against him, his mouth demandingly heavy on hers, his tongue forcing open her full lips. He growled into her mouth, “The bedroom?”

  “Through here.” Her own voice was sultry with desire now.

  But still she tantalized him, undressing slowly before him, revealing bit by bit the figure that he knew would be there. Clara Lucciola boasted not the adolescent youth of Andreae Latini, but the four of five extra years had given her a maturity Max Fielding found even more desirable. Her breasts were perfect, her waist unbelievably small, her hips and buttocks flared out in such wise as it make it forever impossible for her to take a part which involved impersonating a man.