Tender is the Night Book Two, Chapter Thirteen Summary

  • Dick walks into the party hall of the St. Moritz Hotel and sees Baby and Nicole looking pretty in their ski suits.
  • Some guys were talking to them, but they were in their own worlds.
  • Nicole looks happy to see Dick, and she asks where someone is.
  • Dicks says that someone missed his train, but that Dick will meet him in a bit. Then he compliments Nicole’s and Baby’s beauty.
  • Nicole pleads with him to be happy, to talk to some of the girls around. He says he doesn’t want to. He’s careful as he knows this is a delicate subject.
  • Baby starts talking business, updating them on the increase in the family fortune.
  • Dick says he has to go meet someone at the train station.
  • This "someone" is the 40-year-old Franz Gregorovius.
  • Baby isn’t impressed with him; Dick likes him; Nicole is scared of him.
  • Dick’s keeping his eye out for a pretty girl he’s been watching.
  • But Franz is here on business. He wants Dick to help him buy the old clinic where he met Nicole then run it together.
  • Baby encourages Dick to consider it; Gregorovius argues that Dick would have patients, and therefore new material for a book. Nicole says she’s all the crazy Dick needs, making Franz nervous.
  • Baby is thinking she wouldn’t have to worry so much about Nicole if she was living right near a clinic.
  • Dick says he needs to think it over, and then all the people in the hall head out to sleigh down the hill to another hotel.
  • Dick thinks Baby’s encouragement is another way to get him to understand that he’s a Warren family possession and he resents her, but tries to keep it inside.
  • On the way back down, he’s surly and argumentative.
  • When Dick takes Nicole to her room for bed, she mentions that Baby has a good idea.
  • Dick starts to respond with negative comments about Baby, but Nicole closes the door in his face.
  • But the next day, he gives Franz his enthusiastic acceptance of the offer to buy the clinic with Franz.