by Sally Quinn
“Oh, it was amusing. Kind of fun, actually. But it was all bullshit. Total, ridiculous, unadulterated bullshit.”
CHAPTER 6
Des had called shortly after the birthday party to see if she still wanted to show him her story.
Sadie had not returned his call but had asked her secretary to tell him she wasn’t quite ready yet for him to read it. She would call him when she returned from East Hampton in September. Even then she had put off calling him for weeks, and he had not pursued the matter.
Finally, even though something told her not to, she called him at the beginning of October.
“Lorraine Hadley says I’m crazy to trust you,” she said. “She told me never to trust a reporter. They’ll even destroy each other for a good story.”
She heard her own voice get lower, huskier. She hadn’t meant it to. She hadn’t meant to tell him what Lorraine said. She wanted him to tell her it wasn’t true.
“It’s true,” he said. “Finally, it’s true. We have no gods. We have no God unless it’s the First Amendment. In the end, I would betray you if I had to for a story. You should understand that.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Her voice caught. She didn’t want to hear it.
“Because I want you to trust me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will never trust me if I don’t tell you the truth. I’ll tell you something. One of my colleagues, a very good and decent reporter, once went down to Savannah to do a profile of your friend Senator Grayson Spence. They hit it off right away, got along like smoke. Senator Spence took him in, showed him around, introduced him to his friends, confided in him. They sat up late at night drinking and telling each other secrets. Senator Spence told my friend he felt like he was his son. They embraced and cried and told each other they loved each other. Later, my friend went back to his magazine and wrote a hatchet job on the good Senator. Really sliced him to ribbons. The Senator approached me in Congress one day, asked me back to his office. He was devastated, he said, by this piece. He was almost in tears. He’d never been so hurt, felt so betrayed. He asked me to find out what had happened. He said he didn’t understand, that he thought they had trusted each other. I went to my friend. I told him about my conversation with the Senator, and I said, ‘He thought you liked him.’ My friend nodded and smiled, then sighed. ‘I like ’em all till I sit down at my typewriter,’ he said. That’s a true story.”
“How am I supposed to feel about that?”
“You’re supposed to know that I understand and sympathize with my friend and colleague.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re not supposed to say anything. You’re just supposed to hear.”
“Is there no such thing as a reporter one can trust with anything? Or is that a contradiction in terms?”
“Pretty much.”
“How about your friend Jenny Stern at The Daily? People say she’s trustworthy, that you can tell her things and she won’t write it.”
“Don’t let that get out. It will hurt her reputation.”
“Are you saying Jenny is not a good reporter?”
“If people think they’ve got Jenny in their pocket, then she’s probably not a good reporter. And there are people who think that about Jenny.”
“You’re not very loyal. I thought she was Allison’s best friend.”
“She is. That’s because she’s trustworthy. She’s the only reporter Allison would ever trust.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. You can’t be proud of that.”
“Who said proud? It’s just a fact of life. It’s not a matter of pride or shame. If you live your life as an adversary you can’t belong to anybody.”
“Who said belong? And besides, what’s so bad about belonging to somebody?”
“If you belonged to somebody it wouldn’t be.”
“Desmond, are you going to read my short story?”
“Do you still want me to?”
“Why else would I ask you?”
“How can you be sure I won’t write about it in The Weekly?”
“I’ll just have to trust you, won’t I?”
“That’s like putting me in bed with a naked woman to test my celibacy.”
“Something like that.”
“Somebody’s going to get screwed.”
“It won’t be me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Trust me.”
* * *
Des was on his way over. He had read her story. He wouldn’t discuss it over the phone. She hadn’t thought it a good idea for him to come to the house. How could she explain to Rosey about the short story if he found out? But she set a time, finally, when Rosey was out of town, and she arranged to have Tilda do some errands for her at the Executive Office Building. Only the household staff were around. She debated where to meet him. The office would be more appropriate, but if the secretary came back and found them there she’d have to explain. She decided on the upstairs sitting room. It was quiet, there was a fire, they could have coffee or tea and discuss the story. It would be more private.
It was a dreary October morning, cold and damp outside. She would wear a sweater and pants. She tried on practically everything in her wardrobe. Gray was too dreary on a day like this. Her salmon sweaters looked too frivolous, her white too elegant, the rust and greens too fall-fashion-coordinated. What would a writer wear? Black. That looked serious and professional. She rarely wore black, only when she didn’t know what to wear. She put on a black turtleneck and black pants, just a touch of Laszlo Light Controlling Lotion, a tiny bit of eyeliner, a little mascara. She brushed her hair.
She patted her chin. It did seem that it was less taut than last week. She had always thought she would have her first face lift at fifty. Only in the last few weeks had she determined that it would have to be earlier than that. She would just have to hold her chin a little higher than she had before. These were not the thoughts or actions of a serious writer. She slipped on a pair of black leather shoes and looked at herself in the full-length mirror in her dressing room. She could still feel the chill from the night before in that room. It was the only room where the Secret Service would allow her to open a window at night to get some fresh air, so naturally when she went to get dressed in the morning it was always freezing. She would have to get a space heater.
She had asked the steward to lay a fire and to take all incoming calls. Shaw was coming at ten. Her palms were sweating. She didn’t know whether she was more nervous over the fact that she would be alone with him or that he was coming to talk about her story. She hadn’t realized how much she cared about this story. If he didn’t like it, it would crush a dream she had cherished for more than twenty years. If he did, well—if he did, she didn’t know. That was scary too.
She had given him only one. It was a new one she had written about her friend Dolly in Savannah. It was called “Fay’s Last Chance” and it was about a middle-aged married woman who has an affair with the tennis pro at the country club. Contentedly married to a doctor, living in the suburbs, she has noticed the crow’s-feet around her eyes and the bulge around her middle and has determined to break out of her rut before it’s too late. The tennis pro, tall, handsome, and muscular, asks her to leave her husband for him. Unlike Dolly, though, Sadie couldn’t bring herself to have Fay take the step. She had decided to leave the ending ambiguous, even though she thought her friend’s decision was a more modern ending and had more literary value. Every time she sat down at the typewriter to write the part about Fay leaving her husband, she had cold feet. Finally she had to let it slide. She wasn’t satisfied with the ending as it was and had written Des a note to that effect when she sent him the pages. Perhaps he could give her the conviction she needed to change it.
The steward was buzzing. It was just a few minutes after ten. Prompt, but not early. She took a last look in the mirror over the bar in the sitting room and walked over to the mantel
to wait for him. She had decided to have him shown upstairs.
The minute he entered the room she could feel his energy. The room seemed to vibrate as he walked over and leaned down hesitantly to kiss her on the cheek. Neither one of them was comfortable with that, yet it seemed too stilted to shake hands. He sort of grabbed her hand as he kissed her. They both laughed and pulled away a little too quickly.
“Electricity,” they said simultaneously, and laughed again, even more self-consciously. They both reddened a little and laughed again. They felt that giddiness which comes from being attracted to somebody before the attraction is acknowledged.
“Would you like some coffee or tea?” she asked, and burst out laughing.
“No, I don’t think so… well, yeah, sure, why not?” He was laughing too. There wasn’t anything funny to laugh at. She was relieved. Pouring would give her something to concentrate on.
He started to say something, then laughed, this time almost in a giggle. “Where should I put this?”
He was holding the manuscript.
“Oh, uh, just set it down anywhere—unless, of course, you want to put it in there.”
She gestured toward the fire.
“Ah, fishing for compliments.” He smiled.
“No, just giving you an easy out.” Her teeth were sticking to her lips. She kept licking her lips, hoping he would not take that gesture as deliberately provocative. How had she ever gotten herself into this charade?
She handed him a cup of coffee and saw that his hands were shaking.
She sipped her tea, looking down at the cup. He needed a haircut. She rarely saw a journalist who didn’t. Either that or their hair was too short. She surmised that it was because they hated to get haircuts and hated even worse to pay for them so they practically had their heads shaved every three or four months and then waited till their hair was much too long to go back again. Politicians were religious about haircuts. Every two weeks. Trim. He wore a rather shabby-looking tweed jacket, a wool tie, a wool plaid shirt, khaki trousers and loafers. His face was ruddy from the cold. She could smell his smell again, even though they weren’t that close. Rosey always wore some kind of lemon shaving lotion. It wasn’t bad. She didn’t even know what he smelled like.
She was thinking how handsome he was when he looked up over his cup and caught her eye. There was a twinkle in his eye when he looked at her, but when they caught each other’s glance they both became serious.
“Let’s get down to business,” he said.
“Why don’t you give me the bad news first?” she said, her voice rising nervously.
“I don’t work that way; it’s not good for morale.”
“How uncharacteristic of a journalist.”
“Don’t give me that.”
“So-or-ry.”
“Okay. Now, what I’m going to do is to tell you the good points and then get down to criticisms.”
“Then you don’t think it’s totally hopeless?”
“Of course I don’t. If I did, I would have told you on the phone to forget it. Could you do anything that was totally hopeless?”
“You haven’t experienced my singing.”
“There’s a lot about you I haven’t experienced.” He laughed.
She blushed and looked down at her cup. He cleared his throat.
“The good points of the story are these: the characters are clear, vivid; they are real people. That’s good. You made them believable and we have sympathy for them right away. The dialogue is pretty good—no, I would say very good. The story is interesting. I wasn’t bored; I didn’t want to put it down. It moves along nicely. It’s not prize-winning fiction, but it’s a good read. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a brave story.”
“Now for the bad news.”
“Listen to the good things. This is good work, really, much much better than I expected. Now for the bad. The subject matter is trite. I’ve heard the tennis-pro story too many times.”
“But it’s true. It actually happened to my friend in—”
“That’s what trite is. How do things get to be trite unless they’re true too many times? Nevertheless, that’s the story, and you can’t very well change it unless you make him a swim coach or the postman, and that’s even more trite. So we’ll stick with the tennis pro for now.”
“Whatever you say, Coach.” She hadn’t meant that. She hadn’t realized its implications until she said it. He didn’t seem to notice.
“The writing is not brilliant. Good at its best. It’s amateurish in places, but it is natural. It’s too long. It needs to be cut. That’s not a big problem. I could do that. A mean red pencil and it will be fine.”
“There must be more.”
“There is no ending. You’ve got this woman who has just turned forty. She’s bored in her marriage; the sex isn’t great or isn’t there anymore. The kids are away. She loves her husband, but she’s not in love with him. He is a prominent doctor and they have an important social position. She falls desperately in love with the tennis pro, the sex is fabulous, he loves her and he wants her to leave her husband for him, start a new life. Then it stops. She doesn’t do anything.”
“I know.”
“You’ve built this great case for her to leave the husband. In fact, you’ve given us no reason to believe she will stay, and then she doesn’t leave.”
“I know.”
“Well, why?”
She had been poring over her own copy of the story while Des was talking to her.
“Would you like some more coffee?”
“Why does she stay?”
“I could ring for—”
“Sadie?”
She looked at him again. Neither one of them smiled. He had a questioning look in his eyes. She couldn’t look away this time. For some reason, she wanted to cry. They kept looking at each other. She was unable to break the gaze. Instead she heaved a large sigh, then whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Well, you’ve got to think about it,” he said finally, his own voice little more than a gruff whisper. “Otherwise the story doesn’t work.”
* * *
“Baby, you realize this thing is going to be a giant Rat Fuck tonight.”
“No question.”
“Then why are we going?”
They were whizzing past the Washington Monument en route to the Castle at the Smithsonian Institution. The Woodrow Wilson Center was having a dinner for a visiting Russian delegation, in town to negotiate with Roger Kimball over his policy on Soviet political prisoners and human rights. Kimball had been putting a lot of pressure on the Soviets ever since taking office, and the Russians were balking.
“We’re going because we might learn something. We’re called reporters, remember? Besides, you sit up in your office all day staring out at the White House and the Capitol dome and sucking your thumb. You need to get out more and see some of the people you write about. It’s important, Des.”
“Thank God I have you to run my life.”
“Oh, knock it off. You’ll have a good time. Maybe you’ll get to sit next to some cute little translator.”
“No way. I’ll get some fat wife of a minor Soviet diplomat at the Embassy here. I’m too important for cute translators anymore. There are times when it pays to be a junior reporter. Like at Washington dinner parties, for instance.”
“This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. Let’s try to be positive. Maybe we’ll get a good story out of it.”
“You might. You always get to sit next to the men. I have to sweat it out making conversation with their wives.”
Des was slumped down in the seat of his Thunderbird, his left hand on the wheel, his right hand casually draped over the back of the other seat.
“No more pussy for old Desmond now that I’m a big-shot bureau chief.”
“You got La Divina at the birthday party. That should be enough to hold you for at least a year.”
“Jesus, will you knock that one off? You’re beginning
to sound like a broken record on the subject.”
They were silent for a while as he stepped on the gas crossing Fourteenth Street, which he knew would annoy her.
“Well, at least there’ll be plenty of vodka tonight,” she said finally. “You can always get drunk while I’m scooping you.”
“Not you, Sonny. Never. Why, beating the man you love out of a story would never cross your mind. You’re much too loyal for that.”
“Just watch my smoke, ol’ buddy.”
“Be careful you don’t self-immolate.”
* * *
Inside the Smithsonian Castle was a great hall where drinks were being served before dinner. The hall was filled with hundreds of gray-faced, gray-haired, gray-suited men and a few women in dowdy suits. In the center of the room stood a handful of celebrity politicians, Administration officials, and journalists swarming around each other like bees pollinating flowers. The standard configuration of Washington parties. The bar was a few feet away from the power center, and those celebrities who couldn’t find an academic to fetch them a drink broke out of the nexus at their own risk.
Des took the risk and was back in the circle within what seemed like seconds, a double Irish-on-the-rocks in hand.
“Thanks for getting me a drink,” said Allison.
“Oh, sorry, baby,” said Des. “I forgot.”
“You just didn’t want to wait for a glass of wine.”
Allison spotted Malcolm and Abigail Sohier a few feet away listening intently to a former Ambassador to Moscow expound his theory of Soviet–American relations. She strolled quickly over to where they were standing and nudged the Senator forcefully in the ribs.
Consummate politician that he was, Malcolm never even flinched, but Abigail let out a delighted giggle and came around to hug Allison, escaping the person she was talking to.
“Thank God you’re here,” she whispered. “How did you manage to drag Des along?”
“Kicking and screaming. He claims anyone who can decipher Washington invitations could tell from a glance that it was going to be”—she lowered her voice—“what the late Mrs. John T. used to call a Philadelphia rat fuck.”