"Let's not bring up happy old memories," he said lightly.

Then Antoine began to play "C'est triste, Venise" in Tracy's honor and made a small bow to her from the piano. Tracy smiled widely, like a little girl who had just received a present.

Then Antoine began to sing the words. Sentimental French bastard, Michael thought, displeased with the way Tracy was leaning forward, intent, singing softly, in her nice American French, along with Antoine.

The loud men came away from the bar, marching three abreast toward the piano. "Hey, listen to that, will ya," one of the men said, "he's singing frog."

"I do believe he is. Frog," one of the other men said.

They were standing at the piano now. "Hey, lissen, pal," said the first man, his voice booming, "you're in the good old U. S. of A., taking our money in dollar bills, the least you could do is learn the language."

Somewhere in the room, a woman hissed. The three men ignored her. Michael could feel his body tensing and Tracy, almost instinctively, put out her hand and touched his arm.

"Venice," said the third man, who had not spoken yet, "he's singing about Venice. I was there once and it smelled like a sewer."

"Come on, pal," said the first man to Antoine, who was bravely smiling as he sang, "give us a little 'Yankee Doodle Dandy.' "

"Sit still," Tracy said, gripping Michael's arm because she could see his fists clenching.

"Well, then," said the first man, who was the largest of the three of them, "if you won't we will." He started bawling, "The eyes of Texas are upon you . . ." and the other two men joined him, drowning out Antoine's faltering voice completely.

"All the livelong day," they sang.

Michael jumped up, tearing away from Tracy's grip on his arm. "Shut up, you fucking shit-kicking drunks," he shouted.

Grinning, the three men sang on. "Join in," the first man said to Michael. "We'll make it a quartet. You sing soprano." He put his arm around Michael's shoulders, the feel of his hand on Michael's arm not at all friendly.

Roughly, Michael pushed the man's arm away. The man swiveled and pushed Michael, hard, under the chin, with the heel of his hand. Michael hit him on the jaw, with a wild, intense pleasure as he saw the man's eyes go momentarily blank, Joseph Ling in the schoolyard all over again.

"Okay, pal," the second man said, "you asked for it." He hit Michael in the stomach and Michael doubled over. Then while the first man, who had recovered by now, held Michael's arms from behind, the other two hammered at his face, his ribs. Michael dropped to the floor. Dimly, from somewhere in the room, he could hear a woman screaming. Then he went out, as the first man kneeled over him and clubbed him with the side of his clenched fist twice more. The man stood up and looked around the hushed room. "Anybody else here don't like our choice of music, just step up here and voice your objections." Only Tracy moved. Sobbing uncontrollably, shouting, "Animals! Animals!" she sprang up, holding her glass, and threw her drink in the man's face. The man grinned. "Sit down, you New York whore," he said and pushed her violently back onto the piano. Then the three men marched abreast, deliberately, toward the exit, with everyone between them and the door getting silently out of their way.

He woke up in the hospital.

Tracy was sitting on a chair by the side of his bed. He tried to smile at her.

"How do you feel?" she asked, tremulously.

"Someone is exploding giant firecrackers inside my head," he said in a voice that he couldn't be sure was his own. "And it is no great pleasure to breathe. Otherwise I'm in tip-top shape." He began to feel himself sliding under again and he fought to remain conscious.

"You've been out for two and a half hours," Tracy said, "and you've got three broken ribs and a beautiful concussion. Otherwise, as you said, you're in tip-top shape."

Michael chuckled, then gasped as the ribs moved.

A nurse came in and said, "Oh, you've come to." She laid a cool hand on his head. "A little fever. Not too bad, considering. Here, this will help you sleep." She gave him an injection in the arm and he tried not to scream because his arm was so sore.

"Are you going to stay with him, Mrs. Storrs?" she said. "It's awfully late."

"I know. But I'll stay," Tracy said.

"Well, if he needs anything, push the buzzer. I'm just down the hall at the desk." She went out, footsteps noiseless.

"Now sleep," Tracy said, taking his hand.

"Well, it was to be expected, winding up in a hospital, it being my birthday and all." He smiled brokenly. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Ssh. Sleep."

He closed his eyes and slept, clutching his wife's hand.

CHAPTER NINE.

He had a week's growth of beard because his face was too sore and swollen to shave. The nurses refused to let him see himself in a mirror. The one he was fondest of, a robust Irish girl, said, "No, my lad, you don't want to see it. If my face was in that condition and I saw it, it would send me into a shivering shock for a month of Sundays." Her theory of convalescence was obviously that the ill were not to be pampered.

Tracy came in to visit him every day, but she saw that it was hard for him to talk, and she only stayed a few minutes and didn't say anything of importance and seemed in a hurry to get out of the room.

He was told that Antoine had also come to the hospital, but Michael had been sleeping, which he did most of the time, and the nurse sent him away.

By the end of the week he felt ready to leave the hospital. The firecrackers had stopped going off in his head and he could eat solid food again and his ribs only bothered him if he laughed or happened to cough. He got the hospital barber to shave him and when he looked into the mirror afterwards he chuckled grimly at his reflection. The swelling had gone down, but the left side of his face, or faces-there seemed to be two Michael Storrs in the mirror, with the ghost of a third-was streaked with a variety of colors, going from purple through yellow and a selection of sickly greens. The doctor assured him that his face would return to its normal color in due time but refused to discharge him. "You had a massive concussion, Mr. Storrs," he said, "and you have to remain under observation for at least ten days before we know for sure that something nasty won't kick up in your brain."

Michael didn't tell the doctor that when he looked at him he saw two or sometimes three doctors. If he had mentioned this interesting phenomenon, God knew how much longer they'd keep him in the hospital. He was grateful to the barber. If he had tried to shave himself, he would have had to guess which of the two or three faces to lather. .

Antoine, too, when he finally was allowed to visit, appeared in a multiple version, but he was glad to see the Frenchman just the same. He was tired of his own company and Antoine always cheered him up.

"How is it, mon vieux?" Antoine said.

"I'm bored. Otherwise splendid."

"You do not look splendid. Those barbarians."

"Did anyone ever find out who they were?"

Antoine shook his head. "The police came with the ambulance, but they said if nobody knew their names or where they were staying, there was very little the police could do. They were very insouciant about the matter. Les flics. Scum of society. What could be a question of life or death to a civilian is merely routine to a policeman. However-they were not insouciant about me."

"What do you mean?"

"They saw that I was French and they asked me for my passport." "Well, you have a passport, don't you?"

"Of course. Only it's French."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. The center of culture and science. Marianne, the mother of every civilized person everywhere. Only they then asked me for my permit to work in the United States."

"And you don't have one?"

Antoine shook his head sadly. "It is very difficult for a pianist. There are many unemployed American pianists, the man at the immigration office told me when I applied. He was barely polite."

"Ah, they'll forget it," Michael said, more because he wanted to reassure Antoine than because he believed it.

"I'm afraid they won't forget it," Antoine said morosely. "The policeman took down my name and address in one of those fat notebooks they carry."

"Did he say anything?"

"No. But he looked. The look was not sympathetic. There will be repercussions. In fact, there has been a repercussion. The boss fired me. If you go to The Golden Hoop, you will hear a fat blond lady playing the piano like a cow."

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry about. You behaved magnificently. Which is more than I can say about anybody else who was there that night, including me. And excepting Tracy. They hit her, too."

"They did?" Michael could feel something buzzing furiously in his head. "Why?"

"She called them animals and she threw a glass of whiskey into the face of their leader. Didn't you know?"

"Tracy didn't tell me anything."

"A noble woman. I believe you were on the floor and unconscious when she did it. What a fatal evening." Antoine. sighed mournfully. "I should have stopped singing when they came up to the piano and gotten up and walked with dignity to the men's room and locked the door. I always do the wrong thing in a crisis and my friends suffer because of it. I offer you my most abject apologies for my idiotic behavior."

"Cut it," Michael said curtly. "It was just one of those things. There must be at least a hundred fights a night in the bars of New York. A lot of them not as harmless as that one."

"Harmless." Antoine laughed bitterly. "More than a week in the hospital and with your face the color of the flag of a small African country. They could have killed you."

"Well, they didn't. Stop talking about it. You're supposed to cheer up people when you visit them in hospitals."

"I am not very cheery these days," Antoine said. "Forgive me. I am out of work and I have had to move-"

"Why? You afraid those three guys're looking for you? That's foolish."

"Not them," Antoine said. "They're probably back in Texas j pumping oil at exorbitant prices by now. The Immigration."

"Oh. Have you heard from them yet?"

* "Not yet. But they will come. I feel it in my bones. I can already hear the engines of the airplane warming up to take me to France. They will not dance in the streets to celebrate my arrival in Paris. The man from Marseilles was most explicit about what he would do to me if he ever saw me again. My life has turned into a sordid mess." "Your bones don't know anything about the Immigration," Michael said. "Don't be such an old lady."

"You can say that. You don't have to have a work permit. I have moved in the utmost secrecy to a small hotel on the West Side. A perfectly horrid small hotel, which is used almost wholly to house pimps, whores, dope pushers and women who scream all night as though their throats are being cut. It has one advantage. The police do not dare approach it. I will give you its telephone number if you promise not to give it to anyone else-not even Tracy. And if you ask for me, my name is now Rene Femoz."

"It's a nice name," Michael said, smiling. "Write it down for me. There's a pad and pencil on the table here." He watched Antoine scratch the name of the hotel and his new name and telephone number on the pad.

"There," Antoine said, laying down the pencil. "The new false Frenchman."

"Is there anything I can do to help you? A little thing like money, perhaps?"

"You have helped me enough and have suffered enough." Antoine put on his noble face, diminished in effect somewhat by the scar and his acne.

"Yes, I helped you to get fired and maybe deported. Why don't you get down on your knees and thank me? Do you need any money?"

"Not for the moment," Antoine said. "If there arrives another moment I will take advantage of your foolish generosity. It may be very soon. Thank you, my friend."

"Forget it. You'll pay me back."

"I never have paid anybody back in my whole life," Antoine said glumly. "It is an aspect of my character that I deplore."

Michael laughed. "All right. Then don't pay me back. I've just come into some money and I'll be able to eat no matter how deplorable your character is."

"And you?" Antoine asked. "When you leave the hospital what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to quit my job and get out of the city," Michael said, surprising himself as the words came out of his mouth, because he hadn't thought of anything but fleeing the hospital since they had stopped sedating him.

"Mon Dieu!" Antoine looked shocked. "Why would you want to do that? You are a prince in this city."

"The price is too high."

"Where will you go? What will you do?"

"I haven't thought about it yet. Someplace, anyplace."

"Please, don't do anything hasty. Just because of an incident in a bar over a foolish little pianist. The chances are a thousand to one you will never have another fight in your life."

"That has nothing to do with it. That just triggered it off. Something else-maybe a little less showy-would have triggered it off one time or another. I was getting ready for it a long time before that night, only I didn't realize it."

"Why don't you consult with Tracy before you . . ."

"It's none of Tracy's business," Michael said brutally.

"If you do go-and I implore you to think it over carefully, you are in no condition now to make grave decisions-if you do go, will you let me know where I can find you? I have too few friends to see my best one disappear into the wilderness of America."

"Of course I'll let you know," Michael said gently. "I couldn't bear not hearing you play the piano from time to time."

"You are my tower of strength and goodness, Mike," Antoine said emotionally.

"Will you for Christ's sake stop sounding like a literal translation from Racine?" Michael said roughly, to hide how deeply Antoine had touched him. "And now get out of here because the doctor said for my head's sake I should talk as little as possible."

Antoine stood up. "I've brought a small present for you." He fished in the pocket of his overcoat and brought out a pint bottle of Scotch. "I have been in hospitals a few times myself," he said, "and I know the dark moments when a little alcohol lifts the clouds. Do they frown on drinking here?"

"I imagine they do. I haven't put the question to them yet but my impression is that the motto for the organization is 'There shall be no pleasure within these walls.' "

"In that case, it would be wise to keep it from prying eyes." He stuffed the bottle under Michael's pillow. "Now I must go. Please come out of this place soon-and unchanged."

"Au revoir, Monsieur Femoz," Michael said.

He watched Antoine walk to the door and noticed that his walk was different, slower, less jaunty, as though he no longer heard the interior syncopated music to which he used to move.

Michael lay back wearily, but contentedly. Antoine's visit had cheered him immensely, but not in the way he had expected. Actually he had cheered himself. Antoine's questioning had brought him to a decision that he had too long postponed. "I'm going to quit my job and get out of the city," he repeated, whispering to himself, establishing it as a fact as he lay back on the pillow, feeling the comforting hard outline of the bottle under it, thinking, elatedly, Better times ahead.

He lay back luxuriously, his arms beneath his head, starting slowly, and with pleasure, to think of all the places he might want to go after he had told old man Cornwall they would have to find another man for his job.