On Green Dolphin Street

by Sebastian Faulks

  Frank worked his way down the names on his list, marking off those who would call back or could not help. He wanted to know who Kennedy’s choice of running mate would be if he won, and his problem was that the press secretaries still viewed him with suspicion, particularly when his reports had been less adoring of the candidate than his predecessor’s; they also knew that he would switch to the Nixon campaign after the convention, so that he was not a good investment of their time.

  Frank took a cab downtown to Pershing Square and found a place reserved for him in the Press Room at the Biltmore; there was a telephone, an ashtray and some paper cups, one of which he went to fill at the water cooler. Other reporters lounged about the room, reading the newspapers, gossiping about the first ballot.

  A young man in a blue bow tie, someone new to Frank, said, “Stu Symington’s still the best bet.”

  The others in the group looked skeptical, but a little worried.

  “Kennedy’ll make it all right,” said one of the older men. “It won’t be a stampede, but he’ll get it.”

  “If he gets Illinois and Pennsylvania,” said the assured youth with the bow tie. “But it’s a big if. Otherwise Symington has to have a chance. Or Stevenson. It’s not too late for Adlai.”

  The men dispersed to their typewriters and telephones, muttering dismissively, but manifestly upset by the young man’s conviction that the outcome was not yet decided. They wanted no surprises; they wanted to be right; they wanted the same story.

  “You Mr. Renzo?” It was a young woman with a Kennedy button on her bosom.

  “Yep.”

  “Message for you.” She handed him a piece of paper, and a small device attached to her belt let out an electronic squeal. She unhooked it and lifted it to her mouth. “Sure. I’ll be right over.”

  Frank looked at her in surprise: it was the first time he had seen people communicate in this way. It would, he thought, have been helpful on Guadalcanal.

  The message was from Mary: a telephone number. Frank put it in his pocket. He did not want thoughts of Mary to distract him; he would not think of her sitting up there in the canyon in her summer dress, slim legs tucked in beneath her as she read her book, waiting for his call, her dark hair pushed back by sunglasses, smiling with those full lips that always looked to him as though they could have been sculpted from clay then decisively finished at the edge with a sharp knife. Her lips were very … how would you put this … three-dimensional.

  He called the number anyway and spoke to Patricia Rosewell, who put Mary on the line.

  “Hello, Frank. Where are you?”

  Her English voice sounded cool, yet heavy with possibility; it sent a shudder through him, as when someone is said to walk over your grave.

  “I’m at the Biltmore. You coming down?”

  “We’ll come on Monday, for the count.”

  Her daring amazed Frank. She must be lying to Charlie, at least by omission, but she never seemed tense; and if she wanted to see him in New York, she just took the train.

  “I’ll be working through the count,” he said. “I won’t see you. I have an early deadline because of the time difference. Where’s Charlie?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a pause, then Mary said, “Why don’t you come up here for dinner? Patricia’s inviting a few people.”

  Frank rapidly calculated what he needed to do and whether he could make it in time.

  The sun was sinking as the taxi went up Sepulveda Boulevard and right onto the ridge of Mulholland; the driver went slowly, as though uncertain that he was allowed on such an elevated road, anxious not to trigger some neurotic security system. Beneath and to the right, Frank could still just make out the tall buildings of downtown, dim giants in a gray steam bath.

  Night had fallen by the time they arrived; it was hot and heavy with the sound of hummingbirds and cicadas. Frank had showered in his hotel, but the humid interior of the car had made his clean shirt stick to his back beneath his suit. He ran a finger around his collar as he walked up some crazy paving between the sodden lawns and rang the bell; the maid, in a pink apron and frilled hat, showed him outside to a table with a linen cloth and a bar set up on it. A Spanish-looking man troweled out chunks of ice into a glass, poured bourbon over it and wrapped the glass in a paper napkin. Frank took the drink onto the veranda, where he caught Mary’s eye in the lamplight; she came through the dozen people that separated them and laid her hand lightly on his wrist.

  “Come and meet Patricia.”

  Frank could sense how much Mary was enjoying his presence and the formal way in which she introduced him to his hostess, a tall woman with an equine face and uncorrected teeth.

  “Hi, Charlie,” he said, turning to his right.

  “Hello, Frank. Enjoying yourself? Got a drink, have you?” Charlie seemed reasonably in control.

  “Come on.” Frank felt Mary’s hand on his elbow. “There are some more people you should meet.”

  Away from Charlie, Mary’s manner relaxed again as she introduced him to a group of three women on the edge of the veranda. All the guests were in suits or cocktail dresses, but while the others were talking Democratic politics, these three were discussing their vacation plans.

  “Is that a Chesterfield?” said one of them, watching Frank take a cigarette from his pack. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  Mary was leaning with her back to the wooden railing, so that her hair was for a moment outlined by the light of the torches planted in the lawn behind, and it reminded Frank of the first time he had seen her, standing in front of the lamp in the living room at Number 1064. She stood watching him with a half smile on her face, as though she was expecting him to perform for her pleasure.

  The other women drew him into their conversation about the merits of Maine, Mexico or even Europe for their next trip, and they seemed to defer to him, to seek his opinion with particular urgency. All the time, he sensed the dangerous languor of Mary’s body; she was wearing a dress with a full-bodied skirt, a cotton print of enormous roses on long green stems, and he saw the way her thighs were arched forward as the small of her back was supported by the rail of the veranda. She had one shoe off and was carelessly rotating it on its heel with her toe. While he heard the words of idle conversation—beach, hotel, weather—he suddenly pictured Mary naked beneath her knee-length dress; he saw it rise up her thighs and felt his hand run up beneath it till it touched the fine black hair on its shy promontory and the parted flesh beneath; he caught her eye and he knew with certainty as he did so that she had registered what he was thinking, and that she approved.

  “I guess Europe seems a long way to go,” he said thickly, ashamed of the picture in his mind as he tried to grapple with the conversation.

  “So have you been to Europe?” one of the women asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said, gathering himself a little. “But only to take life.”

  “Come and get some dinner, you guys,” said Patricia Rosewell’s husband. “Juan’s set up a barbecue. We have shrimp and corn and steaks with his special chili sauce.”

  In the dark press of people moving off the veranda and down toward the garden, Frank stood behind Mary and allowed the back of his hand to brush over her dress.

  He slept badly that night. The rattle of the hotel room’s air conditioner did not disturb him, in fact it reminded him of home, but thoughts of Mary would not leave him. It could not really be that she had lost that English innocence, that motherly sweetness that made her sing “Some Enchanted Evening” in his shower; yet on the dusky veranda she had seemed like a force of nature that had somehow sought out the landscape of his longing and molded itself to each contour. He went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face and took some aspirin; but he was weary and red-eyed when he woke the next day.

  He made it to an unscheduled press conference where Lyndon Johnson’s aide, John Connally, pointed out that Kennedy was suffering from Addison’s disease, a degenerative malfunction of the adrenal glan
d that, in the absence of regular cortisone treatment, would eventually kill him. Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, put out a statement saying that the claim was “despicable.” It seemed to Frank that it certainly showed a degree of desperation on Johnson’s part, and he decided to go and see if the other purported front-runner for the nomination, Stuart Symington, was also being forced to consider extreme disclosures. He was particularly interested to see whether he would mention the activity that Kennedy himself referred to as his “girling.”

  It was easy enough to find out where Symington’s headquarters were, and Frank walked slowly down the hotel corridor, bracing himself for the encounter. He would need to talk his way past the security and the administration, but he calculated that Symington would want to be interviewed.

  The door to the suite was open, but the rooms were empty. There were mimeograph machines, several desks set up with extra telephone lines, bulletin boards and charts of the states and their delegate strengths; there were typewriters and soda machines set to dispense free drinks, but there were no people. If Symington’s own team had evidently concluded that Kennedy was going to win on the first ballot, there seemed little left to do but report the voting.

  He was late arriving and the hall was already full. The delegates with their placards and balloons and their striped hats did not look like political movers; they looked like vaudeville players or workers in a candy factory on an open-door day for children. Seated on the press platform, Frank felt a mild revulsion from them, something he sensed, from their resigned looks, that was shared by the other reporters. Only the young man in the bow tie still looked as though he expected a surprise; Frank saw him point to the galleries, which were filled with excited, chattering people.

  All sense of world-weariness evaporated when Eugene McCarthy spoke to nominate Adlai Stevenson. The mounting passion of the speech went through the hall like wind through a cornfield; the people in the gallery revealed themselves to be Stevenson’s as they raised their arms and cheered in response to McCarthy’s unexpected eloquence. Frank thought for a moment of his part-namesake, Joe McCarthy, dead of cirrhosis at forty-eight three years earlier: what he might have given for such oratory. Typewriters began to smack and clatter in Frank’s ears, as East Coast reporters set to work, frightened by the thought of missing a sensation to their early deadline, while the Biltmore echoed to the sound of Stevenson’s name and stamping feet.

  Frank checked his watch. There was no way of knowing if the galleries’ enthusiasm would actually affect the voting of the delegates, but if he waited till the count was done it would be too late to write the story of Kennedy’s dramatic setback. He would have to write it for real, as though it had happened, then, if it didn’t, he could change a few words and drop the whole description down the story. When the Pennsylvania caucus resulted in sixty-four of its eighty-one delegates going to Kennedy, he began to tone down his account of the great upset, but it was not until the end of the roll call, when Wyoming pushed Kennedy over the limit, that he was finally free to reorder the pages, change “developed unstoppable momentum” to “momentarily threatened” and “major upset” to “predicted outcome,” briefly describe Kennedy’s surprisingly limp acceptance speech and hurry up to the Press Room with his copy.

  The next day he heard that Kennedy had asked Symington to run for vice president. The consensus in the Press Room was that Kennedy had made a mistake; that Symington, as one of the grander columnists put it, was far too shallow a puddle to jump into, and that Kennedy could not beat Nixon without Lyndon Johnson’s help in delivering the South. Frank sent over news of this development, telephoned the office to make sure they had no queries, then took a taxi to a restaurant opposite the end of Santa Monica Pier, where he had arranged to meet Mary. He drank a dry martini and looked out at the ocean, lying limp against the shore, sparkling beneath the indefatigable light.

  He relaxed. They were a long way from Hagerstown, Maryland, and farther still from New Hampshire, with its icy covered bridges, where the campaign had begun. He looked at two Mexican boys playing ball, heading off along the pier; a girl was following down the boardwalk with a pink Hula Hoop. He wondered if politics meant anything at all to them. He himself had been invigorated by the process he had witnessed, but he doubted whether it was of much consequence to anyone beyond the obese women in paper hats on the convention floor and the swarthy union gangsters. He knew that Kennedy’s father had said that if his son was not nominated in Los Angeles, he would himself vote for Nixon in November. In his reporting, was he much more than a valet to these rich men?

  A waiter was leaning over his table. “Sir? Mrs. van der Linden’s sorry, but she can’t come. She’ll call you later.”

  Mary had received a call from Dolores in Washington to say that her father was trying to reach her, and so unusual was it for him to resort to the telephone that Mary feared that it could only be bad news. She calculated that it would be a little late for comfort in London, but if her father had thought it important enough to call, then she should risk disturbing them.

  Her mother answered. The sound of her voice was otherworldly. Mary stood by a picture window, framed by potted palms, looking down toward the Pacific. High in the almost cloudless sky she could see the vapor trail of a silently ascending airliner; at her feet was the polished wood of the floor, reflecting the even Californian sunshine. In her ears was Elizabeth’s voice, a little tired, sometimes echoing or delayed, but bearing its essential load: her brisk and habitual indifference to her own comfort; the minor friction of historic rules and remembered battles from Mary’s childhood; but above all a comforting partisanship, the fussing, unconditional flow of a mother’s love.

  It was eventually Mary’s father who, after various inquiries about the children and inconsequential pieces of news about London, revealed that Elizabeth had been back to see her specialist. He reported that the cancer had spread and was now inoperable; they could do much to limit the pain, but she would die within a few months.

  Mary replaced the receiver and breathed in deeply. She had no desire to weep or rail against what was happening. Her mother, after all, was still alive. Nothing had yet changed.

  Frank received no call from Mary the following day, so telephoned her the morning after. She explained what had happened and he tried to offer his condolences. He found it difficult, recognizing that in some ways, for all that he felt for her, he scarcely knew Mary. He was relieved that she did not take advantage of his vulnerability on this point; it would have been easy for her to vent a little constricted emotion at his expense, to indulge a petulant self-righteousness about how Frank had never even met her mother. But she took his sympathy graciously, as though Frank were the family’s oldest friend, and he admired her for it.

  “By the way,” she said, “Charlie wants to speak to you.”

  “Frank? Did you hear about Johnson?” Charlie sounded sober. “Apparently Kennedy’s offered him the vice presidency.”

  “But he’s already offered it to Symington.”

  “I know. Perhaps he wants to have two.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Unprecedented, I think. He’s sent Bobby to persuade Johnson to turn it down after all.”

  “Jesus, I should go,” said Frank. “But I can’t get past security at the top of the elevator.”

  “He has a private lift. Ask the blond girl at the desk.”

  “What’s the suite number?”

  “Hang on. It’s … 8315. You going to go?”

  “I might as well try.”

  Security in the Biltmore Hotel had slackened in the chaos, and Frank found it easy enough to reach the bedroom of number 8315, which acted as a waiting room to Kennedy’s office, housed in the sitting room beyond. Periodically, a woman Frank heard referred to as Mrs. Lincoln came in and out of the office; through the open door he briefly glimpsed both Kennedy brothers, Sargent Shriver and John Connally talking and waving their arms; one of them was invariably on the telep
hone.

  There were six others waiting in the bedroom, including a perspiring man with a cigar who called Mrs. Lincoln “Evelyn, honey,” but was referred to by her only as “Senator Bailey” in return. Frank made his request to speak to the candidate. He was sure he would be rejected, but it was helpful to him to be this close to what was going on; Mrs. Lincoln said he would have a long wait and told him to help himself to a glass of water. Pierre Salinger appeared from the corridor and went through into the office without knocking; a few minutes later he stuck his head around the door and said, “Four o’clock in the Bowl downstairs. The announcement. Tell the press.”

  Mrs. Lincoln reached for the telephone.

  “Bobby can’t get Lyndon to unaccept,” said the senator with the cigar, smiling widely.

  “What do they tell Symington?” said Frank, presuming on the emergency of the moment to join the conversation uninvited.

  “Nothing,” said a third man, standing with his ear to the office door. “Symington knew all along that Jack’d have to ask LBJ. He told me so.”

  The traffic of people through the suite continued for another hour. Voices were occasionally raised, but Frank sensed also a comic edge to the commotion; many of these men and women would have no finer moment than this, no time at which they would feel more wanted or more usefully alive.

  At five to four Mrs. Lincoln stood up portentously and coughed. She opened the door to the office again and for a moment there was silence as the occupants looked out. Kennedy sat behind a desk in his shirtsleeves, leaning back with his hands behind his head; he was smiling. Really, thought Frank, the panic over the identity of the potential vice president was morbid when Kennedy himself was so young.