“What’s the matter with you?” he exclaimed. “One minute you’re looking at Benton’s autopsy report and the next you’re screwing around with some playboy, snotty, stuck-on-himself kid! You couldn’t even wait twenty-four hours, Doc! How could you do that to Benton?”
“Marino, for God’s sake keep your voice down. There’s been quite enough yelling in this room.”
“How could you?” He looked at me with disgust, as if I were a whore. “You just get his letter and have me and Lucy over and then last night you’re sitting here crying. And what? None of it happened? You just start all over like nothing happened? With some womanizing punk?”
“Please leave my room.” I’d had enough.
“Oh, no.” He began to pace, wagging his finger at me. “Oh, no. I ain’t going nowhere. You want to fuck around with pretty boy, you can just do it in front of me. ‘Cause guess why? I’m not gonna let it happen. Someone’s got to do the right thing here, and looks like it’s gonna be me.”
He paced and paced, getting more livid with each word. “It’s not about your letting or not letting something happen.” My fury was gathering. “Who the hell do you think you are, Marino? Stay out of my life:”
“Well, poor Benton. A damn good thing he’s dead, huh? Shows how much you loved him, all right.”
He stopped pacing and jabbed his finger at my face.
“And I thought you was different! What was you doing when Benton wasn’t looking? That’s what I want to know! And all this time I’m feeling sorry for you!”
“Get out of my room now.” My self-control snapped. “You goddamn jealous son of a bitch! How dare you even allude to my relationship with Benton. What do you know? Nothing, Marino. He’s dead, Marino. He’s been dead for over a year, Marino. And I’m not dead and you’re not dead.”
“Well, right now I wish you was.”
“You sound like Lucy when she was ten.”
He stalked out and slammed the door so hard paintings shifted on the wall and the chandelier shook. I picked up the phone and called the front desk.
“Is there a Jay Talley in the lobby?” I asked. “Tall, dark, young. Wearing a beige leather jacket, jeans?”
“Yes, I see him, madame.”
Seconds later Talley was on the phone.
“Marino just stormed out of here,” I said. “Don’t let him see you, Jay. He’s crazy.”
“Actually, he’s just getting off the elevator now. And you’re right. He looks a little crazy. Gotta go.”
I ran out of my room. I ran as fast as I could through the corridor and down the winding, carpeted steps, ignoring the odd stares I got from well-dressed, civilized people who walked at a leisurely pace and didn’t get into fistfights in the Grand Hotel in Paris. I slowed down when I reached the lobby, lungs burning and out of breath, and to my horror watched Marino taking swings at Talley while two bellmen and a valet tried to intervene. A man at the registration desk frantically dialed the phone, probably calling the police.
“Marino, no!” I said loudly and with authority as I hurried over to him. “Marino, no!” I grabbed his arm.
He was glassy-eyed and sweating profusely, and thank God he had no gun because I was afraid he might have used it just then. I kept hold of his arm while Talley talked in French and gestured, assuring everyone there was no problem and not to call the police. I led Marino by the hand through the lobby like a mother about to discipline a very bad little boy. I escorted him past valets and expensive cars and out onto the sidewalk, where I stopped.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” I asked him.
He wiped his face on the back of his hand. He was breathing so hard he was wheezing. It occurred to me he might have a heart attack.
“Marino.” I shook his arm. “Listen to me. What you just did in there is unconscionable. Talley has done nothing to you. I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Maybe I’m sticking up for Benton ’cause he ain’t here to do it himself,” Marino said in a flat, worn-out voice.