A Choice of Enemies Read Online Free PDF Page A

her, see?”
    Malcolm knew that Nicky was lying. He looked hurt. Cheated.
    “What in the hell’s the matter with you?” Nicky yelled.
    “Nothing.”
    But Nicky understood that Ernst, even if he never saw him again, had already cost him one of his best friends. More confused thanbefore, his sense of frustration and his temper both rising sharply, he went into the kitchen and refilled his glass.
    “Can’t you morons do anything but neck?”
    A tall West Point man and his girl broke apart.
    “You looking for a fight?” the West Point man asked.
    I am, Nicky thought. I sure am.
    And just about then in the parlour, the first of the beautiful, Milly Demarest, made her move. She took a likely young man by the hand and slipped down to the basement. The party pitch heightened. Pimpled boys, girls with little breasts, cast their frightened eyes about searchingly. Couples danced out on to the patio and then retreated into the garden. A soldier complained that his eyes hurt and out went the lights. Giggles, a few mock shrieks of protest, then the rustling of skirts. Those who had been left out fired frantic jokes into the dark.
    Nicky drifted over to the piano and began to play
Lady Be Good
. Peggy smiled at him adoringly. A brown, long-legged girl, Peggy, at twenty-seven, still had the impulsive manner of a girl ten years younger, but she had already swept through most of the European capitals collecting travel posters and beer labels and theatre programmes with which she hoped, one day, to paper the walls of a dream. A dream, an apartment, which included the famous Nicky Singleton knocking out his latest hit tunes on the parlour piano between television appearances.
    “Everybody says you play something divine, Nicky,” she said.
    Nicky stopped playing. He got up.
    “What’s wrong? Have I said something?”
    “No.”
    “I was talking to your German friend,” she said. “I like him.”
    “Well, I don’t. I wish I hadn’t brought him here.”
    “Do you want my car, Nicky? You can borrow it tomorrow, if you like.”
    Nicky realized that her gesture was no less crude, no less desperate, than his having offered Ernst sixty dollars. God, he thought, searching the room for Ernst, God. He took Peggy into his arms and kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks for the party,” he said. “You’re very sweet.” And then before she could spoil things with an unfortunate remark he moved away.
    Jimmy Marko sang:
    “You’re whispering why you’ll never leave me
,
    Whispering why you’ll never grieve me.…”
    Having eaten his fill, Ernst collapsed into an armchair and lit a cigar that had been given to him by a visiting professor from UCLA . These wild, amazingly affluent Americans both delighted and horrified him – look at the size of those cigarette butts – but what was to be done about Nicky? Ernst had indeed taken Frank’s wallet in the toilet of the
jazzkeller
, but he had never meant to keep it. Because Nicky had been kind to him, Ernst had wanted to make a gesture in return. He had hoped that by giving Frank’s wallet to Nicky, and saying that he had discovered it on one of the girls, he would ingratiate himself with him. But his scheme had backfired. Ernst sucked drowsily at his cigar. A thin pretty girl loomed up before him. She had obviously had too much to drink. “Aren’t you Terry Lewis?” she asked thickly.
    “No. I am not.”
    “My name’s Nancy.” She swayed slightly. “Would you like to dance with me?”
    Ernst got up slowly, unsure of himself.
    “You don’t
have
to,” Nancy said.
    As they danced round and round in the dark, bumping against other couples, Ernst took fright. Nancy rubbed against him; he felt her lips on his neck. If he didn’t respond she would be insulted. Butif Malcolm, or another unfriendly soldier, caught him with her, he might start a fight. A fight, and the police, would mean Sandbostel again. Maybe worse. Another consideration was that he didn’t want to embarrass Nicky.