The Man

by Irving Wallace

  The memory passed through her mind with the speed of enlightenment.

  Her gaze remained riveted to the doorknob. It had turned once, yet the door had not opened. She heard Dilman’s voice call out something to his valet. Still the door did not open, as she heard the distant reply from Beecher.

  Could she lift herself off the bed, retrieve her now fallen evening shoe, reach the second door, get through it and close it, before the President came inside? Maybe. She started to sit up, then saw the door beginning to open, and more clearly heard Dilman wearily relate the last of some instruction for the morning to his valet.

  Too late.

  Breath locked in her lungs, she kicked off her other pump, lifted her legs high, and rolled to the middle of the bed. Her hair was mussed, which was all right, and one of the thin straps that held up her green bodice had slipped loosely down her arm, and the skirt of her cocktail dress, a part of it, she knew, had caught to the blanket in her falling back and rolling, so that her garters and a portion of one thigh were exposed. She did not know which to cover first, her thigh or her lace brassiere, but then she covered neither, for the door was opening and she must pretend sleep, pretend to have passed out, and this way she would look it. Besides, in this privacy, he wasn’t a President or politician or any big shot at all, but just a poor, lonesome colored man who’d had no attractive woman around for weeks, and she was the best-looking female in the White House. Let him know, let him know. José had been diverted. The colored man would be diverted, too, diverted and flustered, and would not bother to reason and concern himself with why she was there. She’d make it, she was sure, confident now, if only the champagne didn’t make her nauseated. She released her taut muscles, threw one arm out limply, so that her bodice dropped even farther and one spidery cup of the white brassière was almost fully revealed.

  The door opened.

  Her eyes closed tightly, and she tried to contain her breathing to the natural shallow breathing of sleep.

  She waited for the exclamation from him, astonishment or harsh annoyance. Neither came. There were only the soft sounds of shoes rubbing on the carpet, of human movement, of a stifled yawn.

  She eased one lid open to form a slit of vision. He filled the thin, long frame: his broad back was to her, his dinner jacket already removed, his white suspenders and dress shirt sharply contrasting with his thick growth of kinky inky hair. His stubby black hands were unfastening the white bow tie. He undid it, dropped it on the table, opened his collar. He began to turn, and knowing middle-aged men, she guessed what was next. He would make his way to the bed to sit, remove his shoes and socks, and stick his feet into comfortable bedroom slippers before settling down to read.

  He had come around quickly, before she had closed her eye. For a second, she had the record of his petrified expression at discovering her: at once startled, at once confounded, at once agitated.

  Her eyelid covered the slit. She feigned deep sleep, inhaling and exhaling through her mouth. She sensed, not heard, his advance toward her.

  “Miss Watson-Miss Watson-”

  She must seem to be too drunkenly unconscious to hear him. She breathed on, squirming slightly to her side in his direction.

  “Miss Watson?”

  Her bare arm felt the light touch of his blunt fingers, and involuntarily the nerves beneath the skin jumped, but she remained inert. His fingers pressed into her arm, and then pulled at her arm, shaking her. The pretense was over. She must do what must be done well and speedily.

  She opened her eyes slowly, dazed eyes, closed them, then suddenly opened them wide in a double take, and instinctively hunched her shoulders in a position of self-protection. Her hand went to her mouth. “What-what are you doing here? What-where am I?” She tried to make her voice disoriented, distraught.

  He remained standing over her. “I’m afraid, Miss Watson, you fell fast asleep on my bed. You said before that you felt you’d had too much to drink, and you wanted to lie down. I don’t know how you found your way up here, but-”

  “Oh, heavens, did I? What an awful thing. I-I guess I wanted to find some out-of-the-way corner-I meant to lie down on the bed in the Rose Guest Room, but I-oh, I remember-I couldn’t make it, that’s it. I was going past here, and I felt suddenly ill, and your bathroom was the nearest, and after that I simply collapsed on the first thing I saw. I’m afraid I’ve made a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”

  “Not a bit. It happens sometime or other to everyone. It’s just that-” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he smiled weakly. “If I had come in with someone, it could have been embarrassing for both of us. Of course, it’s ridiculous-”

  She had not moved, lying there, her eyes on his Adam’s apple and his nervous fingers. She could see his gaze go helplessly from her naked thigh between the bunched hemline and the upper sheath of her silk stocking, to fix once more on the protrusion of her brassière cup. “I don’t know what to say,” she found herself saying. “What you must think of me. I’m ashamed. I hope you won’t hold this against me, I mean, against my keeping the job.”

  He swallowed, and tried to chuckle. “Hardly,” he said. “What I should do is offer you a drink, or something, to get you on your feet. But I think you’ve had quite enough. What I will do is send you right home in a White House car, Miss Watson.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President, thank you so much. You’re very kind.” She came up on an elbow, and then groaned, even as she forced a smile, groaned and touched her brow, to give validity to her having passed out. “Ouch. I have a cage of buzzards in my head.”

  He was instantly solicitous. “If you don’t think you can make it, I’ll have Mrs. Crail find you a room on the third floor.”

  “Oh no, not that, Mr. President. Mrs. Crail? She’d have me branded Hester Prynne-S for scarlet sinner-in ten seconds flat. I can make it under my own steam. I’m grateful to you.”

  She began to sit up, and as she did, Dilman started to turn away. “I’ll step out while you fix yourself.”

  “Oh,” she gasped, pretending to see for the first time her dropped bodice and revealed thigh. “Heavens, what a sight. Don’t leave-I’ll be out in a second.”

  In a rapid motion, knowing she had survived the ordeal, eager to escape, she swung off the bed. As she did so, her hip struck the bulging evening purse on the edge of the bed, and the purse hurtled to the floor, hit hard, burst open, and spilled its contents widely over the figured rug.

  She was momentarily horrified by what lay strewn about the rug, not her lipstick and compact, not her handkerchief and keys, but the bent index cards filled mainly with her clear writing, everywhere. She wanted to throw herself across them, hide them, gather them, but it was too late.

  Out of automatic gallantry, Dilman had crouched, gone down to one knee, retrieving her beaded purse, returning to it the lipstick and compact, the handkerchief and keys, and now he began to pick up the scattered index cards.

  “I-I’ll-please let me-don’t bother-” she cried out, yet she was unable to move from her sitting position on the bed.

  He had gathered some of the cards, but the frantic pitch in her voice made him glance at her with surprise, and then, almost as a reflex, down at the uppermost card in his hand.

  “It’s nothing-” she gasped out.

  He stared down at the index card, ignoring her, while his free hand groped for the rest of the cards on the floor. He placed these on the others, and stared at the new top card, which was also crammed with writing. He rose silently, leaving the purse on the floor, blinking at the cards in his hand.

  She could not see his full face; it was averted from her, lowered over the cards. She crossed her arms, dug her nails into her flesh to make the trembling cease. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, no way to brazen it out. She wanted to die, but could only wait for the first blow.

  His voice, issuing from the lips and face not fully visible to her, was surprisingly controlled, level, though chillingly soft and restrained. “You
have embarrassed both of us, Miss Watson-you have.”

  “Don’t believe-it doesn’t mean what you-”

  “It’s my own fault, of course.” His Negro modulation, the slurred vowels, had become more pronounced. “I should have known there is no one to be trusted. I should not have breached security by leaving my briefcase unlocked. Yet, I suppose I felt that my bedroom was-my own.”

  The blood and drinks had coursed to her head, and the room rocked, and she felt palsied by insane desperation and recklessness. “Believe what you want-but try to believe me-I swear it on the Bible-I was drunk-I came in here to-to use the bathroom, and then lie down-I bumped into your briefcase-and something was sticking out-I figured it couldn’t be important if it was sticking out-so I took it to read, to help me nap-I read only a few pages-then I started copying a few things because-because-you want the truth? I want to write a book about you one day, about being your social secretary, and I wanted these notes as inside stuff to put in my diary, to remember years from now when there’d be no security involved-I swear-it was just something that-that happened on the spur of the moment-believe me-”

  He turned toward her at last. She expected his features to be hardened into anger. She resented that they were only pitying, like those of a father listening to his daughter recount an improbable fib. “I see, Miss Watson. Do you mean to say that you’re in the habit of always packing note cards in your evening purse?”

  “No-no, of course not. I was taking those home from my office. I’d picked them up just before dinner, to use before coming to work in the morning.”

  He had moved closer to her, and was staring down at her now. “Or did Arthur Eaton put them in your purse, Miss Watson? Was that why you came here? For him?”

  She tried to summon up indignation. “Eaton? What ever has he got to do with it? Why would I come here for him?”

  “It’s all over Washington, Miss Watson. I don’t listen to gossip, but everyone seems to know about you and Eaton.”

  “Filthy troublemakers!” She was truly angry at last. “Filthy, dirty tongues. How dare they!” She was panting, but tried to be as controlled as he. “What would I have to do with that old man? I have my own crowd. Besides-how can you? He’s married, he has a wife. I know him only socially, because he’s an old-time friend of Daddy’s, and-”

  Dilman’s expression remained placid. “And he would like my job. In fact, as you now know, he has been trying to do my job, just as you have been trying to do Mrs. Eaton’s job. Very well. Now you can go to him and tell him I know.” He stepped forward to hand her the index cards, and his knee touched hers, and the contact, the proximity of him, his lack of anger, gave her a last mad surge of hope.

  “No,” she said, refusing the cards, “I wouldn’t do that to you. I think too much of you.”

  He lowered the cards to drop them into her lap, eyes avoiding her eyes and the exposed brassière. With a sob, Sally clutched both his arms, not allowing him to turn away and leave her.

  Dilman made no resistance. “Let go of me, Miss Watson.”

  “No,” she sobbed. “Listen-all right-I’ll tell you the truth-all right, you’re forcing me to-it’s terrible-but I’ll tell you. I-I didn’t come here to lie down, or for anyone else, but just for you, to be with you awhile alone and talk to you. I deliberately came here to wait, and became lonesome, and poked around-looking at your work-it has moved me, the way you work so hard, and nobody understands you except a few of us, like myself-and the cards, the notes, I did take them to keep busy, for my diary, honestly-that’s what it was. I’m not ashamed, I wanted to be alone with you, to tell you I understand what you go through, that you have a friend in me who-”

  Forcibly, he removed his arms from her grasp. “Miss Watson, I suggest you leave here at once.”

  “No, listen-” She believed it now. Who had known Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton as well as Mrs. Maria Reynolds? President Cleveland as well as Mrs. Maria Halpin? President Harding as well as Miss Nan Britton? She believed those stories as much as she believed in herself, now and here, and in what was possible. If she were to lose Arthur because of her failure, she might still have more than any woman on earth. Casting the index cards aside, she leaped to her feet, and the room went topsy-turvy, and she almost collapsed, grabbing Dilman’s arms, holding herself erect. She knew she was drunk, but she knew what she wanted. “-listen-I do care for you. I want to help you. Don’t you-don’t you want to know me better?”

  She had pulled close to him confidently, knowing the offer of her flesh had never failed her before. She waited for his concession to the inevitable, his embrace, and their friendship.

  “Miss Watson, get out of here.”

  Her hands released him, and she recoiled, looking at him with disbelief. For the first time, his face was set in pure black anger.

  There was one thing left. She’d had her elementary school in Negroes. She knew them too well. “You’re afraid of me, that’s all,” she heard herself say. “You’re afraid of getting in trouble because I’m white, Southern white, and somebody, and you’re colored. Don’t-don’t be that way. I’ve known plenty of Negro men. I consider them to be like-like anybody else-and when they get to know me, they appreciate me. Now you know, so-”

  She halted, frightened by the way his red-rimmed eyes protruded and blazed at her.

  “You’re a drunken, silly, sick young lady,” he said. “You get out of here, and you stay out of here, and never show your face in this house again.”

  As her self-assurance faded, her face became contorted by humiliation and rage. “You-you throwing me out-?”

  He turned his back to her, picked up her purse, took the index cards from the bed, fitted them into the purse, and placed the bag in her hand. “I’m throwing you out, Miss Watson. I’m sure Mr. Eaton will take you in.”

  She glared at him, reeled past him to the door, held the knob, and over her shoulder considered him contemptuously. “You hypocritical pig,” she cried shrilly. “You-with that nigger girl you’ve got stashed away-I know-I’m not forgetting-no low nigger is going to insult me. You’re damn right I’m going to Arthur Eaton. He won’t be forgetting either… Enjoy this house while you can, because, mister, your lease is running out, and from now on we want only gentlemen on the premises, nothing lower-you hear? No more of your indecent kind, only two-legged beings, you hypocrite!”

  Reluctantly Arthur Eaton reopened the concealed wall bar of his Tudor living room and took down the bottles and glasses. He prepared a Jack Daniel’s, with water, for Senator Bruce Hankins, and poured a generous amount of sweet liqueur from the Grand Marnier decanter for Representative Zeke Miller. Behind him, he knew that the elderly Hankins had settled on the sofa across from Wayne Talley, while Miller remained on his feet, spread-legged, in the pose of a public speaker impatient to begin a harangue. Talley, Eaton had observed, still had two-thirds of his Seagram’s whisky, and required no refill.

  About to take the two drinks to his recently arrived guests, Eaton, who had not been drinking, reconsidered his own need. The sight of the newcomers definitely left him with a bad taste in his mouth. To remove this taste, a counter-potion was required. Eaton studied the two rows of bottles on the shelves of his bar, brought down the Remy Martin cognac and an amber-tinted snifter that Kay had long ago purchased in Vienna, and he covered the bottom of the glass with the cognac.

  His eye caught the Roman numerals of the early English lantern clock on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. It was twenty-three minutes after eleven, too late for this, and too late for Sally Watson. When Talley had come over, after dinner, they had quietly reviewed the entire Baraza situation, from start to the present, as well as the withholding of the single CIA warning from Dilman. They had justified their act, one to the other, and Talley had been reassuring about the safety of their position. Sally’s precious news that Dilman had found out, or at least suspected what they had done, had been useful in alerting them to possible trouble. However, more important would b
e the degree to which Dilman could confirm, through the Director of CIA, exactly what they had withheld. If Scott was uncooperative or vague, Dilman would have no evidence with which to endanger the peace of the country. (If new evidence came-better, worse-the problem could then be handled by them openly.) On the other hand, if Scott had been informative and explicit this afternoon, Dilman might be foolhardy enough to act both against Talley and himself, and against the Russians, and the rift in foreign policy would have to be taken to the public-T. C.’s public still, he trusted.

  Eaton had hinted to Talley that Miss Watson had indicated she had means of learning what had transpired between the President and Montgomery Scott. Also, she had indicated that she might have the information for them this evening. Fortunately, Talley, who was anything but well-bred, had accepted this with delicacy. He had not questioned why Miss Watson should trouble to help Eaton, or, indeed, what her relationship was with Eaton. Of course, Eaton guessed, Talley knew about Sally Watson and himself. Eaton was never one to indulge in self-deception. There were few personal secrets anywhere between Foggy Bottom and the Hill. Yet, to Talley’s credit, he had behaved like a gentleman, an unnatural behavior no doubt induced by Talley’s realization that his own future was insecure and entirely linked with Eaton’s future.