Tender Is the Night

That night there is a big party, and Rosemary dances with Dick. She is persuaded to stay late by Mary North, who cannot convince her husband to go to bed, despite his scheduled departure the next day. Rosemary promises to help, but that means she cannot leave with the Divers, who go to bed early. Dick tries to get Rosemary to come with them, but she explains the situation with Abe North. He responds by saying, “Don’t you know you can’t do anything about people?” (78).

The party lasts well into the morning. As Rosemary makes her way to the hotel, she feels sad to have missed Dick but then cheers up upon seeing a large tree being transported and shaking in the truck-bed on its way to the Champs-Elysees.

At a train station the next morning, Nicole and Abe North meet privately and talk about the way they have felt about seeing each other this time. Though they have not been lovers, each has harbored a strong sentiment of love for the other for a long time, and they speak uncomfortably for a few minutes before Nicole is summoned away by a woman she recognizes in the train station crowd.

Abe takes the opportunity to cough and light a cigarette. He is sober after the grandiose party of the night before, and he looks weary and unhealthy. He continues to cough and talk cynically when Nicole returns.

They are joined by Mary North, Rosemary, and Dick. Together, they walk to the train, and Abe boards it. Suddenly, a violent scene occurs.

From a distance, the group witnesses the woman whom Nicole had recognized earlier pull a gun from her purse and shoot at the man she had been standing with. There is a tumult and the train stops. Dick goes to see what happened. The woman is arrested and the man is taken away on a stretcher.

The shooter’s name is Maria Wallis, and Nicole remembers that her sister Laura is living in Paris. Nicole runs away to phone her, while Dick offers to accompany the police escort taking Maria away. With Nicole gone, Dick and Rosemary have a moment to themselves. Rosemary expresses both her admiration of Dick and some insecurity in herself. Dick is distracted by his feelings for Rosemary so that, even after Nicole returns, he is unable to speak reassuringly to the group to give them a sense of closure.

With Abe gone and Mary departing later that afternoon, the gunshots fired in the train station seem to stand for the ominous and decisive ending to the group’s vacation in Paris. The sinister mystery of the woman and the gun hang over them, and as the Divers, Mary, and Rosemary leave the train station they overhear two men talking about it, commenting that, although the gun she used was small, there was enough blood on the woman’s dress to make a person think she had been in a war.

Mary North departs from Paris and Rosemary leaves for a singing lesson with an Italian instructor. The Divers are just preparing to leave the restaurant when Collis Clay comes (too late) to see Rosemary. He greets the Divers and sits with them. Nicole leaves. When the two men are alone, Collis tells Dick a story about a time Rosemary was allegedly intimate with a boy named Hillis on a train. The story makes Dick burn with jealousy. Later that day, he goes to the bank.

At the bank, Dick experiences minor social anxiety in selecting which teller to help him sign off on a check. He continues to ruminate over the story Collis told him about Rosemary and he does not want anyone to see that he is upset. While at the bank, he picks up a stack of letters, receipts, and other documents waiting for him.

Dick leaves and walks about Paris, not entirely knowing what he wants to do. He walks near the place where he knows Rosemary is, waiting for her. He reflects upon Rosemary and his own life, seeing this as a turning point for him.

While meandering around, Dick is approached by an intimidating stranger who claims to be a veteran from the war. The man pesters Dick with questions until Dick becomes aware the man is lying in wait to rob him, though the man claims to be merely selling newspapers. Dick says a firm goodbye to him and leaves.

Back at his hotel, Dick calls Rosemary at the café telephone. He confesses to her that he wants to be with her and she agrees. He makes love to her in her room.

Afterward, Rosemary goes back to writing a letter to her mother and Dick calls Nicole, insisting they go to dinner and a play to keep from brooding—about the Maria Wallis incident, he quickly adds. They go to the play and afterward go for a stroll, knock at Rosemary’s door (but there is no answer), and then go to bed.

Nicole awakes late the next morning to a policeman knocking at the door. Dick is not in the room. Nicole answers the door and learns the policeman is looking for Abe North. Astonished, Nicole says they saw him off at the train station the day before, but the policeman says he has proof Abe North has been in the hotel that very morning. He says they have arrested a Black man who is believed to be responsible for the theft Abe had complained of earlier, and now the police are looking for him to positively identify the man. After the policeman leaves, she waits in her room for Dick to come back.

A while later, Nicole is rung up by the hotel office and told a Black man named Crawshow is looking for Abe North to exonerate another imprisoned man named Freeman, as well as himself. Nicole ignores this and leaves to go shopping with Rosemary.

When Nicole and Rosemary come back to the hotel, they find Dick, who has been busy on the phone with several callers. Among the people he spoke to on the phone is Abe North, who told Dick he was going over to get Freeman out of jail. Nicole tells Rosemary about how nice Abe used to be in the old days and Rosemary wishes she could have been a part of those happy times. She inquires what happened to Abe to make him deteriorate, and Nicole responds, “So many smart men go to pieces nowadays” (99). Dick and Nicole disagree over why this should be. Dick afterward becomes paranoid that Nicole knows about the affair.

At lunch, they sit next to a group of high-rolling Americans, whose peculiar fashion-sense, reminiscent of an older generation, affects Dick, who meanwhile sees himself as entering into a new era of his own development.

Abe is at the Ritz bar in Paris, drinking. He chats with the bartender about ways he could leave Paris since he missed his train in order, he claims, to read the next installment of a story being published in town that day. He remains there, drinking, until his driver comes in to tell Abe that someone named Jules Peterson is looking for him. Abe, drunk, dodges Peterson and then leaves the bar.

After leaving a note for Maria Wallis, Dick walks around Paris some more, deeply contemplating his two loves, Nicole and Rosemary, and the predicament he is in.

Dick visits Rosemary’s room. The two begin kissing until Dick thinks of Nicole again. Rosemary stands up and says: “Oh, we’re such actors—you and I” (105). Dick and Rosemary hear a knock at the door. It is Abe North with a Black man named Peterson.

Back in the Divers’ room with Jules Peterson, Abe explains that Peterson was a legal witness to his being robbed by a Black man in a bar. Mistakenly, the police ended up arresting another Black man named Freeman, who was visiting the bar. The real culprit was at the bar when Abe and Peterson returned. It turns out that Abe, who was drunk at the time, was only robbed by a small amount, not the large sum he originally told the police. Since this incident, Abe’s life has been a whirlwind of avoiding the Black community of the French Latin quarter, all hunting for him and Peterson out of a sense of justice toward the wrongfully imprisoned Freeman.

Dick suggests that Abe go to another hotel and sleep off his drunkenness. As Abe leaves, he notices that Peterson is gone. Abe returns to the bar for another drink.

Alone in their room, Rosemary embraces Dick before leaving. When she returns to her room, she discovers with horror that a dead body is lying on her bed. She races to the Divers’ room and both Nicole (who had returned to the room) and Dick come to her room.

Dick, recognizing that this would ruin Rosemary’s career if word got out, quickly invents a plan. He carefully drags Peterson’s body into the hallway, then cleans the floor to erase all signs of movement. He then calls the hotel manager and lies, saying they stumbled upon a body in the hallway. The manager helps Dick, and when police arrive, they move the body so as not to disturb the hotel guests.

Dick returns to his room and comforts Rosemary, who now adores him for having helped her. She tells him that Nicole is in the bathroom. When Rosemary follows Dick into the bathroom, she sees Nicole hunched over beside the bathtub, behaving erratically and shouting accusatory and incoherent talk at Dick. Rosemary realizes that Violet McKisco must have seen similar behavior back at the Villa Diana and that Nicole has a mental illness.