She remembered: he had teased her about their evening last week in his house that nestled behind the trees on Dumbarton Avenue. After dinner, after the maid and cook had retired, he had poured the brandies, while she had studied the antique-filled gracious Tudor living room with its two fireplaces. She had felt drunk with excitement that night, reckless, and following the brandy she had blurted out, “Arthur, I don’t want to embarrass you, but where is your wife?”
“In Florida,” he had replied calmly.
“No-no-” Her hand had drawn an arc around the room. “I don’t see a single framed photograph of your wife. Isn’t that peculiar?”
He had remained unruffled, smiling. “Not at all, my dear. You see, I put them away in drawers before you came the first time. They’re still in the drawers.”
“Oh.” She had speculated upon that act. “What if she came home suddenly?”
Still unperturbed, he had said, “I doubt that she will be here for many months.”
Sally had then wondered if they were quietly being divorced, and prayed for it, but had not bothered him with it, for she wanted no definite answers so early, not until she was indispensable to him. “I see. Well, it is cozier this way. I wouldn’t want her glaring at me. You were thoughtful, Arthur. You think of everything.”
He had come to sit on the sofa beside her. “I don’t want you distracted when you are with me. These evenings mean too much.”
She had held out her arms, and he had gone into them, embracing her passionately, kissing her eyelids and forehead and ears and lips. And then the special telephone from the Pentagon had come between them. That had been that.
The next time together, he had kissed her again, caressed her, in his car in the parking lot outside the café in Potomac, and had briefly resumed after driving her to her home, but he had done no more.
She had desired him, and was ready to satisfy his desire when he made the demand. He had not yet demanded her, at least not until tonight in the Red Room, when he had been somewhat drunk and was dazzled by her low-cut white gown. After she had teased him about that time in his living room, the hiding of Kay’s photographs, he had become serious and so had she. He missed her every day, he had whispered. He wanted to see her more, be with her alone, know her better. She had waited expectantly for the final overture, the ultimate invitation, and then President Dilman had stolen him away.
She could not let go of their precious exchange, its promise and potential, and she was determined to play their scene out to its conclusion. Perhaps, because of whatever Dilman had told him, his mood had been altered and he would not go further with her. Or perhaps nothing had changed. She must find out. And so instead of going to the East Room to help direct the seating, her duty as President Dilman’s social secretary, she had followed Arthur Eaton upstairs.
She stood now, uncertainly, in the vast West Hall of the President’s private second floor. No one, not even the valet, was in sight. She wondered which of the fifteen rooms Arthur had gone into, and then she wondered if he would be conferring with someone or be by himself. The champagne bubbled behind her eyes, reinforcing her adventure, making her intrepid.
Stealthily she went to the Monroe Room, tried the door, peered inside. It was empty. Shutting the door softly, she started toward the Yellow Oval Room, and then, nearing it, she heard his voice. She stopped beside the partially open doors, listening, trying to determine whether Arthur was speaking to someone in the room or on the telephone.
He was addressing Tim-that would be Tim Flannery-but still no evidence whether it was the press secretary in person or on the telephone. She listened harder. Only Arthur’s voice could be heard, then silences, then Arthur again. No question now. Telephone. To hell with discretion.
She released the folds of skirt gathered in her hand. She peered down at the cleft between her breasts, which were pressed high by the built-in brassière cups of the evening gown. She took hold of her bodice at the waist with both hands, pulling it down an inch (the way it was meant to be) so that the milky rise at the top of her bosom was defined as her most attractive accessory. Lightly touching her hair to be sure every strand was in place, she straightened. Boldly she opened the first entrance door and walked into the Yellow Oval Room.
He was standing with the receiver at his mouth and ear, leaning against a sofa. When he saw her, he lifted his hand in welcome, smiling, but continued to listen to the voice on the other end. Suddenly he cupped the mouthpiece tightly and called out softly, “Be right with you, darling.”
Sally closed the doors, then wandered about the lustrous room, hardly listening to him, knowing only that he had apparently dictated something about Baraza, and was hearing Flannery read it back, and was suggesting revisions. On a fragile Louis XVI end table she noticed three books in a neat pile, the President’s reading, and when she bent to read the titles, she found them strangely incongruous with the furnishings of the living room. One was the latest Congressional Staff Directory, another Our CIA Defense by Montgomery Scott, and the third, at the bottom of the pile, a faded, mottled, secondhand volume, My Bondage and Freedomby Douglass. She drew the bottom book out from under the others and opened it to the title page, which read “My Bondage and My Freedom, Part I-Life as a Slave. Part II-Life as a Freeman. By Frederick Douglass.” It had been published in New York and Auburn by Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, in 1855. Sally turned to the lengthy dedication and then to the following page, and there, above the “Editor’s Preface,” was an inscription in pale blue ink, a slanting, definitely feminine inscription that read, “For my favorite Senator-the first Douglass would have been so proud of the present one. With enduring affection, Always, W.” The date was last year, the day and month President Dilman’s birthday, she remembered.
Sally examined the inscribed “Always, W.,” closed the book, lifted the others, and returned it to its former place. Going to the wall to the right of the fireplace, intending to study the two Cézanne paintings once more, her mind lingered on the inscription to Dilman. Her feline curiosity reached for, pawed and clawed for, a female W. connected with the President. Mrs. Wickland, wife of the House Majority Leader? No, unthinkable, not a personalinscription like this one. W.? At once, it came to Sally. W. for Wanda, Miss Wanda Gibson, the friend of the Spingers, whom Dilman had invited to the State Dinner tonight, who had neither responded to the invitation (gauche), nor appeared, although Dilman had insisted that she would (interesting). So Wanda Gibson, probably Wanda if she was the W., was a personal friend, even last year on his birthday. Intriguing.
Before she could speculate further, she felt cool, strong hands on her naked shoulders, and turned around to find herself looking up at Arthur Eaton.
“Business concluded,” he said. “I’m glad you came up here, Sally.”
“I thought you might need a secretary.”
He held her arms, squeezed them. “I might need someone who needs me.”
“I hoped you’d say that. I-I was unhappy the President interrupted us. It was going so well.”
“I was sorry, too, but it was important. He brought Baraza into line tonight. Not that it was so difficult. But I’m afraid he needed something affirmative to shore up his pride. In all my existence I’ve never been witness to anything like the social rejection that took place downstairs.”
“It was terrible. I hope he doesn’t blame it on me.”
“On you? Nonsense. You did what you could.”
“I swear, ninety-six of them accepted-accepted. Do you know how many showed up tonight? I counted the cards. Fifty-seven. I checked with my office right before dinner. And then with Edna. There was such a flurry of notes, telegrams, telephone calls, terribly apologetic, everyone fallen ill at once. I’ve never known an epidemic like that to sweep Washington. And the worst part of it was the cruel timing, the heavy last-minute declining, so that by the time I realized what was actually going on, it was too late to remove the table settings and chairs. I mean, it couldn’t be done, there was no time left. S
o there they were, those embarrassing chairs. I’m sorry for him. It’s so humiliating. It’ll be in all the columns tomorrow, you can be sure. No matter how many faults he has, he didn’t deserve this.”
“I don’t like it either,” Eaton said. “Whatever one’s views, there is such a practice as observing the social amenities. We have a generation of gauche boors.”
His usage of gauche brought to her mind what had been there a minute ago. “At least his friends showed up, the Spingers, the Abrahams, all-except one.”
Eaton’s eyebrows raised. “One?”
Sally savored her tidbit. “Have you ever heard of Miss Wanda Gibson? She works for Vaduz Exporters… no, of course you haven’t. Well, she lives with the Spingers, and as far as I can guess is an old friend of the President’s. He specifically invited her for tonight, and when she didn’t answer and I asked him what to do this morning, he went into a long thing about how she would show up anyway with the Spingers. He disowned any personal interest. He said that her export company traded with Baraza, and she would be someone Amboko and Wamba could feel at home with. Well, the President was mistaken. Miss Gibson did not appear. And also, I don’t mind telling you, and this I don’t understand at all, he was mistaken about Miss Gibson’s Vaduz company being involved with Baraza. I wanted to make conversation with Ambassador Wamba before dinner, so I mentioned Vaduz, and he looked blank, perfectly blank. He’d never heard of it. Do you think Wamba was bluffing? Or that the President didn’t know? Or-I know this is awful of me-that the President invented an excuse for inviting Miss Gibson?”
Eaton’s hands still held her arms, and he smiled and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea, Sally, but I do know you are the best representative the State Department has ever had in the White House.”
“Arthur, don’t make fun of me. I only want to be of help. I’d do anything for you.”
“Well,” he said lightly, “there are some of us who’d give a good deal to find out what the devil the President has in mind about that minorities bill, and a few other matters.”
“I can find out,” she said eagerly.
He shook her playfully. “I was kidding, Sally. We don’t need a secret operative in the White House. We’re both working with the President. If we do our jobs well, that is enough.” His smile went away. “I prefer you as you are, not as Mata Hari.”
She lifted her fingers to his neck and caressed it. “Arthur-before-you were saying before how much you missed me-how you wanted to see me more often-alone… I’d like that.”
“Right now I want to kiss you,” he said.
Her eyes went to the entrance doors, worriedly, and then to the balcony doors to her left. “Let’s go outside a minute.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“You’ll keep me warm.”
He released her, and she went to the first sash wood door. Opening it, she stepped out into the darkness of the Truman Balcony and stood beside the moist green pad that covered the white metal settee. He came to her in the shadows, and she went quickly into his hard arms, feeling her breasts flattened against his chest as his parted lips rubbed against hers and finally held to them. They clung to one another, and when his lips freed her, she gasped, “I love you, Arthur. I want you-you say it.”
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight.”
“When you’re through here, come straight to the house. You don’t have to go home tonight.”
“Will the servants-?”
“They are off. Just us, alone.”
“Yes, Arthur.” She heard her exultant heart beating wildly, and brought her hands up to hold his face, and kissed him quickly. “There’ll be a million years of time tonight.” She pushed herself from him and sought his hand. “Let’s get downstairs, before we’re missed… No, wait, I’ll go first, then you… I can’t stand these next hours. You do love me, don’t you, darling? You won’t be sorry, you won’t be sorry at all.”
In the middle of the front row of seats in the white-and-gold hall that was the East Room, President Dilman sat impassively, his arms resting motionless on the arms of his chair like the paws of a sphinx, as he watched with distaste the show being performed by the Hollywood and Manhattan entertainers.
His mood had been good an hour ago when he sat down with President Amboko and waited while the guests noisily took their places. His good mood had continued as the entertainment began with the five-piece orchestra on the raised platform before him doing its lively medley of George M. Cohan songs, ending on the rousing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
Then after the provocative blues singer, Libby Owens, backed by her own accompanist at the ornate mahogany grand piano with its gilt eagle legs, had rendered “St. Louis Blues” sweet and low, Dilman’s mood of well-being had begun to deteriorate. Just as he and so many of his fellow Negroes resented aggressive liberal whites who buttonholed them in ostentatious and determined displays of equality, speaking to them with proper indignation of nothing but Negro problems, he resented the slant and content of this show. The white entertainers, out of misplaced eagerness to parade their tolerance (look-we-are-on-your-side-fellow), had loaded their program heavily with both serious and humorous Negro sketches and songs. Dilman detested this kind of patronizing, well-intentioned though it may have been. If a Jew were President, he asked himself, would this same crowd have presented Yiddish jokes and songs?
He stared at the stage with displeasure. There was Herbie Teele, the brash nimble-limbed colored comedian, propped high on a stool, derby lopsided on his head, homely black face feigning solemnity, then wide-grinning after each burst of applause, twirling his cane and spouting his half-bitter inside integration stories and jokes. Why Herbie Teele tonight? Why this special routine? Would this same crowd have offered the same program to T. C., to The Judge, to Lyndon Johnson, to John F. Kennedy? Dilman doubted it.
He cast a sidelong glance at Amboko and then down the row at other members of the Barazan entourage, and they seemed appreciative enough. They were chuckling, beaming, and the constant eruptions of laughter from the rows behind indicated that Allan Noyes, the Party’s national chairman, had cast the evening right. At last Dilman once more had to blame himself for his own thin-skinned sensitivity, but he felt the way he felt, and there was no use trying to feel any other way.
He tried to be more attentive to the stage.
Herbie Teele, elastic mouth, brace of white chipmunk teeth, was concluding his routine.
“Well, all that I am, all that I hope to be, I owe to one of the pioneers of topical humor, my fellow Afro-American, Dick Gregory,” said Teele. “He went to jail so’s I could come to the White House. Like Dick used to say, these days I’m gettin’ a couple thousand a week for saying the same things I used to say under my breath. No matter what the goings-on in Mississippi, they’re really not readying to pass a law banning mixed drinks. So, like ol’ Dick, I’m not worried. The President is doin’ his best. He’s got the Reverend Spinger in there, and the Reverend is the only famous man I know who’s given out more fingerprints than autographs. The kids down South used to collect his signature on police blotters. Well, folks, let me bow out with one more to my mentor, Dick Gregory-like he used to think, I was just thinkin’ ”-Teele jumped off his stool and came to the edge of the platform and rubbed his cheeks vigorously-“now, wouldn’t it be a helluva joke if all this on me was burnt cork and all you folks were being tolerant for nuthin’?”
He slapped his hands, reared back and roared, and the audience behind Dilman gave out a great whoop of laughter and joy in unison, and applauded for a half minute as the audacious Teele pranced off the platform.
Dilman clapped halfheartedly, and when he had ceased, the two chandeliers above had dimmed, and Libby Owens, in her tight sequined skirt slit thigh-high, stood center stage, while her colored accompanist slid onto the bench behind the piano.
She drew the microphone to her and announced throatily, “For the finale, I shall render three haunting Negro spirituals by unkn
own bards.”
She began, and the room was hushed in the soft light. She sang:
“I know moon-rise, I know star-rise,
Lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
To lay dis body down.
I’ll walk in de graveyard, I’ll walk through the graveyard
To lay dis body down.
I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms;
Lay dis body down.”
The melancholy lyric moved Dilman, sent memory clutching backward for an almost forgotten part of his childhood, and he was too lost in the distant past to realize that someone, bent low, had hurried past the front row and crouched before him. He stirred, then was startled to find Beecher, the valet, on a knee waiting to address him.
“Mr. President,” the valet whispered, “Attorney General Kemmler is in the Blue Room. He must see you at once. He says it is urgent.”
Dilman’s heartbeat tripped. It is urgent. He had been so far away, rocking in the helpless cradle of the past, that he was unprepared to cope with crisis in the world of tall men.
Dilman shivered. “Tell him I’ll be right there.”
Silently the valet slipped away, and Dilman waited for the last of Libby Owens’ lyrics. As she finished the spiritual, and the room rang with applause, Dilman excused himself to Amboko, speaking under his breath, then hurriedly rose and went past the guests sitting in the front row and to the exit. He could see that first Eaton, then Nat Abrahams, were observing his sudden departure, and he shrugged to both. He went into the Main Hall, just as the piano resumed and Libby Owens sang, “Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you moan.”
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