Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw Page B

smile. She put the dark glasses on again. Once more she was an antagonist.
    “Gail says you’re being stony-hearted,” Murphy said. It didn’t take him long to call girls by their first names. “Why don’t you give her a break?”
    “When I have something to say,” Craig said, “she’ll be the first to hear it.”
    “I take that as a promise, Mr. Craig,” the girl said.
    “From what I heard my husband spouting for the last half hour,” Sonia said, “you’re wise to keep your thoughts to yourself, Jesse. If it was up to me, I’d put a cork in his mouth.”
    “Wives,” Murphy said. But he said it fondly. They had been married twelve years. If they ever fought, they fought in private. The advantage, Craig thought, of late marriages.
    “People ask too many questions,” Sonia said. She had a quiet, motherly voice. “And other people give too many answers. I wouldn’t even tell that nice young lady where I bought my lipstick if she asked me.”
    “Where do you buy your lipstick, Mrs. Murphy?” Gail McKinnon asked.
    They all laughed.
    “Jess,” Murphy said, “why don’t you and I wander down to the bar and leave the girls alone for a cozy little preluncheon slander session?” He stood up, and Craig stood, too.
    “I’d like a drink, too,” Sonia said.
    “I’ll tell the waiter to bring one for you,” Murphy said. “How about you, Gail? What do you want?”
    “I don’t drink before nightfall,” she said.
    “Journalists were different in my day,” Murphy said. “They also looked different in bathing suits.”
    “Stop flirting, Murphy,” Sonia said.
    “The green-eyed monster,” Murphy said. He kissed his wife’s forehead. “Come on, Jess. Apéritif time.”
    “No more than two,” Sonia said. “Remember you’re in the tropics.”
    “When it comes to my drinking,” Murphy said, “the tropics begin just below Labrador for my wife.” He took Craig’s arm, and they started off together on the flagstone path toward the bar.
    A plump woman was lying face down on a mattress in front of one of the cabanas, her legs spread voluptuously for the sun. “Ah,” Murphy murmured, staring, “it’s a dangerous coast, my boy.”
    “The thought has occurred to me,” Craig said.
    “That girl’s after you,” Murphy said. “Oh, to be forty-eight again.”
    “She’s not after me for that.”
    “Have you tried?”
    “No.”
    “Take an old man’s advice. Try.”
    “How the hell did she get to see you?” Craig said. He had never liked Murphy’s hearty approach toward sex.
    “She just called this morning, and I said come along. I’m not like some people I know. I don’t believe in hiding my light under a bushel. Then when I saw what she looked like, I asked if she had brought her bathing suit with her.”
    “And she had.”
    “By some strange chance,” Murphy said. He laughed. “I don’t fool around, and Sonia knows it, but I do like to have pretty young girls in attendance. The innocent joys of old age.”
    They were at the little service hut by now, and the uniformed waiter there stood up as they approached and said, “ Bonjour, messieurs .”
    “ Une gin fizz per la donna cabana numero quarantedue, per favore, ” Murphy said to the waiter. Murphy had been in Italy during the war and had picked up a little Italian. It was the only language besides English that he knew, and as soon as he left the shores of America, he inflicted his Italian on the natives, no matter what country he was in. Craig admired the bland self-assurance with which Murphy imposed his own habits on any environment he entered.
    “ Si, si, signore, ” the waiter said, smiling either at Murphy’s accent or with pleasure at the thought of the eventual tip Murphy would leave him.
    On the way to the bar they passed the swimming pool set in the rocks above the sea. A young woman with pale blonde hair was standing on the side of the pool watching a little girl learning how to swim. The little girl had hair the